Alert: (Michael Bennett 8) (31 page)

“You’re the bombers. The terrorists,” I finally said with slow deliberation as I continued to bleed. With the drugs and the pain and the fear, it wasn’t easy to keep my voice steady.

“We are the bombers. This is true,” said the old man. “But we’re not terrorists.”

“No. More like pissed-off citizens, you could call us,” said the younger Russian, cutting in. “What’s the word? Disgruntled—that’s it. Call us disgruntled immigrants.”

“But enough about us,” said the old man, slapping the flail into a palm. “Let’s see what you know, okay? Question one.”

He lifted his booted foot over Yevdokimov and brought it down hard.

“Do you know why we killed this piece of shit?”

“The ransom,” I said carefully. “He found your video and tried to make money off it.”

The old pig looked surprised. “That’s right. Yevdokimov and I were associates. We actually used to work together in the KGB a lifetime ago. I contracted out a job for him, but he made a mistake. He tried to turn the tables.

“Now,” the old man said, stomping the body again with his combat boot, “Yev
is
my table.”

“When you were in the KGB, you worked with Rezende’s uncle,” I said, putting the pieces together. “In Cape Verde, to overthrow the Portuguese.”

“You know a little history, I see,” the old man said. “Which is saying a lot for an American. That’s exactly where I met Paulo Rezende and his tool of a nephew, Armenio. Paulo was there when I came up with the tsunami project back in 1971.”

Now I was confused.

“Yes. Surprising, isn’t it? This plan has been in the pipeline since before you were born, cop. The bureau called it Krasnyy Navodneniye.”

He smiled.

“Operation Red Flood,” he said.

“IT STARTED OUT
as a lark, really,” the old man continued. “One night, Paulo and I came back from a bombing run and were listening to the BBC news. A story about the latest volcanic threat on Árvore Preta and a geologist who speculated that one piece falling off the volcano might be a titanic tsunami threat to the United States.

“That got me thinking. Why not just get some dynamite and give that cliff a push? I put it over the wire back to the big boys in Moscow, and they just ate it up. A month later, they sent out a team of engineers and surveyors who concluded that it could be done. They commissioned and typed up a plan for exactly how to do it, down to the last detail. I actually got a promotion for think-tanking that attack. And why not? It was genius.”

“Why didn’t they do it?”

“They were thinking about it in late 1980, I heard. There was some seismic activity, so they were going to make it look like an accident, but then Reagan got elected, and they thought if the truth ever came out, he was just crazy enough to let the nukes fly.”

“Why now, then?” I said. “Why destroy New York now? Does Russia want to bring back the glory days and start World War Three?”

“No,” said the old man. “We have no political agenda. I gave up all that political shit years ago. I’ve been a good honest crook for the last twenty years.”

He looked over at the younger Russian.

“I did it for my son here,” said the old man, patting the other guy on the back. “For him and for my grandson.”

“Your grandson?” I said, panicking, thinking there was still another nut out there we hadn’t found yet.

“My son, Mikhail,” the younger Russian said, staring almost sadly at me. “We did it for Mikhail.”

THE YOUNGER RUSSIAN
took a photo out of his wallet and walked over and crouched beside me.

“Do you recognize him?” he said.

The picture was of a pale young teenager with a slightly misshapen shaved head. His eyes weren’t exactly level with each other. He was more than a little loony-looking, but I kept that to myself.

“No. Should I know him?” I asked.

“Yes. He was on the cover of the
Daily News
last year.”

Too bad I read the
Post
, I thought, not knowing where this could be going.

“Did something happen to your son?”

“I’m a thinker, an introvert, a shut-in, some might say,” the Russian continued. “I like books. Math, physics, mechanics, engineering, abstract things. But back in my twenties, I was a little more outgoing, and I had a dalliance with a stripper.”

“One of my workers,” said the old man. “I owned four clubs in Miami at the time. It was his twenty-first birthday. The least I could do.”

Father of the year, I thought.

“So she got pregnant, and Mikhail was born. He had problems from day one. Birth defects, then a diagnosis of autism, then schizophrenia. All these stupid diagnoses just to say he was mentally not okay.”

“Years of psychologists and medication and my favorite—therapy,” said the old man, disgusted. “Bullshit! All of it!”

“They wanted to institutionalize him,” the son continued. “But I said no. I knew there was somebody in there. Somebody smart who could be funny and who just needed to be watched over. So I took care of him. I raised him by my side; he was with me all the time. He was a big pain in my ass, but he was smart. We would play chess and cards. He was so good at cards. Could add in his head almost as fast as me.”

The son looked down at the floor wistfully as he took a breath.

“In 2012, he was doing okay enough that I was able to leave him with an aide every once in a while. The aide, I thought, was a good man, but he turned out to be not so good. Because he smoked dope and fell asleep one morning while I was at an engineering conference in Philly, and Mikhail left the apartment alone.

“He got on the subway, and I don’t know what happened, but that morning in upper Manhattan, he pushed a woman in front of the number one train.”

“At a Hundred and Sixty-Eighth Street,” I said, vaguely remembering the case now. “That’s why you blew it up.”

“Yes,” the son said. “You’re catching on. See, Mikhail was taken into custody. I’m away. Mikhail has no one, no ID. He can’t speak for himself, but he was obviously mentally sick. They should have taken him to a hospital, yes?”

“No,” said the old man bitterly. “Turned out the Manhattan DA knew the female victim and pulled strings to have Mikhail booked, put immediately into the system. Without learning the details about Mikhail’s condition. Without thinking about any of the consequences. Do you know the name of the man who was the DA at the time?”

“Mayor Carl Doucette,” I said.

He nodded, smiled.

“The
late
mayor Carl Doucette,” he said.

“So Mikhail is booked, and there’s no room in Central Booking to hold him, so they send him over to Rikers,” the son said. “My son cannot cope with this. He’s mentally sick, like I say, so he starts freaking. A corrections officer puts him in a room they have in the basement for people not cooperating. This room was over a hundred degrees. They said it was some boiler problem.

“It sure was a problem for Mikhail. They left him there for two days—my son. They forgot about him. My poor Mikhail. New York City boiled my mentally ill son alive.”

“WHY DID YOU
EMP Yorkville?” I said.

“Mayor Doucette had his mother at Sloan Kettering hospital,” said the old man, smiling again. “The precious old girl didn’t make it during the evac. Shame.”

“And Twenty-Six Federal Plaza?”

“The corrections officer who locked up Mikhail got a new job on the maintenance crew there,” said the old man. “I would have taken down an airliner if he was one of the passengers. To hell with him for slaughtering my grandson and to hell with this city and America. Oh, how you crowed when the Cold War was over; how much greater your country was than ours with your freedoms—or so you thought.

“And now look at yourselves. You have the freedom to land planes at the wrong airports, the freedom to shunt downtown trains onto uptown tracks, the freedom to kill prisoners by accident. Why? I don’t know. All I know is that you’re a pack of fools, and a fool and his civilization are soon parted.

“Because this isn’t over,” he said. “If it takes us twenty years, we’re going to make you bastards pay. I ran the Russian mob in Miami. I have millions of dollars and contacts and access to many interesting things. If you think Krasnyy Navodneniye is the only recipe in the old Soviet book of dirty tricks, think again. You should have thought twice before you fucked with my family!”

“I hear you,” I said, trying to buy some time. “I’m a father myself, and I can’t imagine how horrible it’s been for you. How angry you must be. What happened to Mikhail was a disgusting travesty that deserves justice. But think about all the other Mikhails out there who are going to die over this. You’re right about this decadent Sodom-and-Gomorrah direction we’ve taken of late. But there are still some good people out there.”

“What’s this? A Bible-thumping cop?” said the old man. “Spare the city for the sake of a few good people? Where are they? Who’s good? Wait. Let me guess. You?”

“Sure. I’m not so bad,” I said with a shrug. “Spare it for me. Why not?”

The old man dropped the flail and took out a Glock and pressed it to my forehead.

“If I were God, I might be tempted,” he said as he cocked the hammer. “Too bad for you: I’m the other guy.”

THAT’S WHEN WE
heard the noise. A heavy crunching sound followed by glass shattering.

It was coming from upstairs.

The old man still had the gun to my head as the two Russians stared at each other. The old man looked down at me with hate in his eyes, pressing the barrel hard against my head, but then there was another creak of wood. It was a footstep in the room directly above, and the younger man put a finger to his lips and the cold metal lifted away.

He cut a piece of duct tape and wrapped it around my mouth before the two of them went out the door. The massive shoot-out erupted thirty seconds later. Automatic gunfire in the next room starting and stopping and starting again. I hit the deck just before a round ripped a hole in the cheap wooden door.

Twenty seconds after that, I heard it. The three words I’d been praying for.

“He’s in here!” Emily said.

“How’d you find me? My phone?” was the first thing I said.

She nodded.

“That find-your-friend app comes in damn handy!” she said, smiling, as she unlocked my cuffed ankle.

“I’m glad we’re friends,” I said, finally standing. “There was an old guy and a younger one. Russians, like we thought. Did you get them?”

“The Filipovs. We heard. We got the younger one. He got hit and they found him a block away. They’d bugged out of a cellar door we missed.”

“What about the old bastard? He said he was KGB. Evil as a snake.”

“Not yet. But we have the whole neighborhood surrounded. He’s on foot.”

Emily handed me my Glock and I stumbled up the basement stairs behind her. Golly tamale, did it feel good in my hand at that moment. I could have kissed both it and her. They must have found it at the crash scene.

We went outside through the front door. I was shocked to see that the building was a small brick house at the dead end of a leafy residential street. To the right of it was a huge school or something—several dark buildings with a large empty parking lot beyond the guardrail at the end of the street.

“Where are we?” I said.

“Brooklyn. Manhattan Beach, Brooklyn. That’s Kingsborough Community College right there. We think he ran in there. Don’t worry, we’re on it. A dozen agents are on his tail. We’re going door-to-door.”

I immediately hopped the guardrail and started running across the parking lot.

“Mike, stop! What are you doing?” Emily yelled at my back. “You need a doctor.”

I didn’t have time to explain. I was probably still half in shock or something after the accident and beating, but wherever he was I had to find the crazy old evil prick. There was nothing this guy wouldn’t do to get away—no depths he wouldn’t stoop to. He had no qualms about killing another innocent person. I had to find him if it was the last thing I did.

I passed a guard shack and came down some steps and was running past a building when I noticed one of its doors was slightly open. I creaked it open some more, then I heard feet pounding on the stairs inside.

I ran in and up and got to the second floor just as the person left the stairwell onto the third floor. I was coming through the third floor’s swinging door into a dark hallway five seconds later when I felt something on my face, and a wire was tightening around my neck.

I was just able to get my hands in as the old bastard tightened the garrote. It was a steel wire, incredibly fine, like titanium dental floss. Blood squirted as it slid deep into the edges of my palms above my wrists.

I bulled back into him. We went through the swinging door into the stairwell and tumbled backwards, banging down the stairs. The garrote slackened as I fell on him on the landing, and I ripped the wire away from my neck with a hiss of breath.

I crawled to my feet, blood freely pouring from the cut meat of my palms. I turned as the old Russian was taking something out of his pocket. It was a straight razor.

Before he could cut me again, I kicked him in the right ear. I center-massed my size-11 Nunn Bush wingtip oxford right in his ear. Hard. I booted him like I never kicked anything in my life. His head slammed back at the crushing impact and bashed off the radiator with a low gong as the straight razor went flying.

As he was sitting there, stunned, I lifted him by his lapels with my bloody aching hands, yanked him up and off his feet, and with every nanoparticle of panicked strength I had in me, threw the evil old prick as hard as I could backwards down the next flight of stairs.

He was facedown when I got to him, his nose bleeding. I lifted him up again. I thought of all the people he had come a hair-breadth from wiping out, people like my kids. How he’d tried to kill me a split second before.