Capture (Butch Karp Thrillers) (9 page)

“Should I take the shot?” he whispered.

“Negative. We’re only going to get one chance. Let’s see if we can’t get a better target when she leaves. She may feel safer when it’s dark. If not, we’ll take the best shot available then.”

Nadya Malovo didn’t relax until she was well inside the house. Granted, if the Americans knew where she was, they might attempt to kill her with a drone or a cruise missile. But she’d weighed the odds and—without knowing that her hunters had reached the same decision—concluded that the United States would not risk an international incident just to kill her.

She didn’t like putting her life in the control of men she had not personally trained. But the local mullah had a fierce reputation fighting jihad against her countrymen in Afghanistan and the Americans in Iraq. At least he had some experience and battle-tested men.

One of the men who’d walked out of the building on her arrival now pointed to a table on which there were several laptop computers open and running. He was a small man with distinctly Arabic features, which followed, since he was a Saudi.
“Salaam, assalamu alaikum
,” he said in formal greeting. “Please, have a seat.”

“Salaam,”
Malovo replied curtly, then remembered that she was here in part to cultivate this man’s goodwill.
“Assalamu alaikum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh.”
She turned to another of her hosts, a tall, thin black man, and repeated the greeting.

“Salaam,”
the man replied with a small bow. He smiled tentatively and added in English, “I apologize, but I don’t speak Arabic.”

Malovo nodded. She’d noted the British accent that identified him as a native of one of that nation’s former Caribbean colonies.

“All Muslims should learn Arabic so that they may read the Qur’an as it was intended,” the first man sniffed arrogantly. “Soon enough, all peoples will be required to speak Arabic, and to learn the Qu’ran.
Inshallah.
” He smiled condescendingly at the black man. “That means ‘God willing.’”

The black man’s eyes narrowed. “I know what it means,” he hissed.

Malovo had heard enough. She did not have time, or patience, for their spat.
How these people believe they can rule the world when they cannot be in the same room without quarreling is a mystery,
she thought.
But for now my employers need them.

“Since that glorious day is not yet here, we will speak English,” she said, and looked from one man to the other with a smile on her face but murder in her eyes.

The Arab bowed his head. He knew her reputation and decided that perhaps he had dangerously overstepped. “But of course,” he replied. “I did not mean to offend, only a suggestion so that my brother, Omar, might want to learn to read the words of the Prophet in his own language.”

“The words of the Prophet translate in any language to the truth,” Omar grumbled. “But no offense was taken, Ali.”

“Then we will speak no more of it,” Malovo said. It was a command, not a suggestion.

The men nodded and they all sat down at the laptops. “I’ve prepared a PowerPoint presentation on Operation Flashfire,” Ali said.

Malovo frowned. “You do realize that much of what the Americans have learned about the great jihad has been from computers they’ve seized. They’re good at recovering even material that was thought to have been destroyed.”

Ali’s smile disappeared. “I am aware that others have made that mistake. However, I assure you that only one copy of this presentation will exist when we leave here and that is on a computer far from this place. The hard drives have been programmed so that after we turn off these computers, they will self-destruct when someone attempts to turn them on again.”

Malovo nodded. “Then let’s see what you have gone through such trouble to prepare.”

A half hour later, the three conspirators closed the three laptops. “Your computers have now been rendered worthless,” Ali noted as he closed his and placed it carefully in a case. “Are there any questions?”

“It is a good plan and all appears to be in order as previously discussed,” Malovo replied. “My question is: Are you both prepared to go forward on schedule?”

Omar spoke first. “We are ready.” He and Malovo looked at Ali.

The little man shrugged and looked apologetic. “We are ready, too,” he said. “But you know that there is an unresolved piece of this puzzle. Nothing can be done until the Sheik has been returned to us.”

Amir al-Sistani, curse your duplicity
, Malovo thought. “We have
been trying to locate the Sheik and effect his…release. But so far we have met only resistance.”

Ali shook his head. “This is not acceptable. We cannot proceed unless he personally allows it.”

Malovo stared malevolently at the man. “We understand that was part of the original arrangement. But this contingency was not part of the Sheik’s otherwise brilliant concept.”
The idiot.
“Perhaps we did not make it clear that we are willing to pay a bonus for the plan to go forward, even if we cannot produce Mr. al-Sistani.”

Ali made a face as if what he had to say pained him. But in truth, he was enjoying having the upper hand over so formidable a woman. “You and your employer have made it abundantly clear that cost is no object. However, even if we wanted to go forward under such conditions, we could not, as the Sheik has powerful friends in my government who would not betray him.”

“But we are not even sure that he is alive,” Malovo pointed out. “Should jihad be held back because of one man?”

“Depends on the man.” Ali shrugged. “What do your spies tell you?”

“That he lives,” she replied honestly. “But that was two weeks ago. He is in the hands of a madman, and who knows his fate since then.”

“Madman or government agent? I find it hard to believe that a homeless beggar was able to thwart the Sheik’s attack on the stock exchange.”

“We have considered the possibility,” Malovo conceded. “But if he works for the government, no one we know—and we have highly placed sources in all security agencies—is aware of it.”

“Well, it is not our problem,” Ali replied. “It is your problem. Deliver the Sheik or we cannot proceed. Bring him safely back to us, and we guarantee that your schedule will be met and the operation will go forward. Is that not right, Omar?”

The black man nodded. “As God wills.”

Malovo wanted nothing so much as to dig her thumbs into their eyeballs.
But that won’t make you rich,
she cautioned herself. “Very well, I’ll report that everything is ready, except for arranging the return of Amir al-Sistani.”

Ali smiled and nodded. “
Allahu akbar
. God is great!”

“Indeed,” Malovo replied. “
Allahu akbar
! Now, it is time to leave. You will hear from us soon.”

At the doorway, Malovo hesitated and looked outside. The sun had set, and while it would not be absolutely dark for another hour, it would have to do. She did not like to stay in one place very long. At a signal, her bodyguards surrounded her and her two coconspirators and they walked out the door.

As she circled around to the passenger side of the truck, Malovo glanced up at the tall hill. Something wasn’t right. Her well-honed instinct for self-preservation caused her to dart suddenly forward just as a large angry insect zipped past her head. She heard a sound behind her like a melon split open with a hammer and then from the other direction the report of a large-caliber rifle.

Malovo glanced back and saw Ali lying on the ground, the top of his head missing.
Sniper!
Her mind screamed with the warning as she dropped to the ground and crawled to get under the truck. She looked up just as one of her bodyguards was knocked off his feet as a bullet passed through his chest in a gout of blood.

“Attack, attack!” she screamed, pointing in the direction of the rifle’s report. “Up there.”

Unsure of what they were attacking or in which direction to go, the bodyguards began firing in a variety of directions up at the hills. Two more of her men fell as high-velocity antipersonnel rounds punched cantaloupe-size holes in their chests. Now others were shooting down at them from where their sentinels had been.

However, these were battle-hardened men who quickly organized and began to direct their fire toward the unseen enemy on the hill. Two heavy machine guns were quickly set up and began raking the hillside, while other men began charging toward the enemy position with their assault rifles and rocket-propelled grenades.

With the firefight raging, Malovo felt the moment had come to make her escape. She jumped up and opened the door of the truck. The bewildered and frightened driver sat in his seat with his hands gripping the steering wheel. “Drive, you idiot,” she screamed.

The men she’d arrived with saw what was happening and ran for their trucks as the local men continued the fight. The trucks
lurched forward and circled to leave the village the way they’d entered.

The driver’s-side window of the truck Malovo was in disappeared along with the front of the driver’s neck. He clasped his throat with both hands and looked at his passenger as if hoping she would know what he should do next. Her response was to lean over and open his door, and then shove him out as she slid into his seat. She stomped on the gas pedal and the truck roared down the road.

“Let’s go, Ned,” Jojola yelled as slugs from a machine gun stung the ground above their heads.

“Dammit, I missed her!” Blanchett swore. He sighted down through the scope—now operating on night-vision settings—and fired at the fleeing truck below with no noticeable affect.

“Couldn’t be helped, she ducked at just the wrong moment,” Jojola replied. “One of those other jokers took it instead.”

“I don’t even know who he was. Maybe he’s one of those guys the State Department was worried about.”

“Fuck that,” Jojola replied. “He wasn’t here collecting for the March of Dimes. He’s a bad guy and so are the rest of those assholes you nailed. But a bunch more of them are heading this way. We’ve got to move.”

A rocket-propelled grenade struck the slope twenty-five yards away, showering them with debris. The two men jumped up and began running over the top of the hill as Ivgeny’s men on the other hillsides gave covering fire.

Out of sight, they paused a minute to catch their breath. “I can’t believe I missed,” Blanchett moaned.

Jojola turned and grabbed him by the shoulders. “Ned, forget it,” he said. “I’ve missed plenty of easier shots. You can’t account for the target doing something unexpected. Besides, Ivgeny has a little surprise waiting. She’s in a panic and heading right for him.”

As if to accent Jojola’s prediction, a muffled explosion echoed over the hills in the direction Malovo had fled. The Indian smiled and patted Blanchett on the back. “I think that was a good sign,” he
said. “Now let’s get going again. We’ve got to cover five klicks and we don’t have a whole lot of time to do it.”

Watching from a different hilltop two miles away, Ivgeny Karchovski and Lucy Karp stood for a moment looking at the burning wreck of a troop transport. A few seconds earlier, the trucks had come hurtling around the bend, fleeing the village. Assuming that Malovo would again be in the middle truck, Karchovski had allowed the first truck to pass the disabled cart and then detonated the IED buried beneath the hay when the second truck drew next to it. The explosion had blown the heavy transport off the ground and flipped it over. None of the occupants had escaped the ensuing flames.

After the explosion, the first transport had not even slowed down and was now heading toward them. The third stood idling on the road as if afraid to pass the same spot.

“Do you think she’s dead?” Lucy asked. When she wasn’t answered right away, she glanced over at her companion and was surprised to see what appeared to be a look of sadness on his craggy face. “Ivgeny?”

The mob boss looked down at Lucy as if she’d interrupted his dream. Then he gazed off in the direction of the village. “I heard Ned get two shots off before the others started shooting,” he said. “I hope he was successful. If not”—Karchovski stopped and looked at the burning truck—“no one survived that.”

Lucy glanced again at the tall man next to her, who looked so much like her father. In some ways they were such polar opposites—lawman and outlaw—but there were many more similarities, including integrity, honor, and, surprisingly, sensitivity.

“Ivgeny, I’m sorry.”

Karchovski faced her and reached out to pat her cheek. “Don’t be,” he replied. “Whatever feelings I might have once had, they died a long time before this night.”

Without saying anything else, he turned and walked to the motorcycle and started it. He patted the sidecar. “Come, beloved cousin, your prince awaits.”

A
N HOUR AFTER ENTERING
I
L
B
UON
P
ANE
, B
UTCH
K
ARP
regretfully turned down the offer of a second piece of cherry cheese coffee cake and joined Detective Neary in the Lincoln.

“One hundred Centre?” the detective asked.

“Yes, master, back to the salt mine.”

The detective chuckled. “I thought you was one of those guys who loves to work…burning the midnight oil all the time. Sees the kids on the weekend.”

Karp knew that the detective was kidding, but the comment struck home. He tried to be a good family man. With the kids he’d always made time to help with homework, attend school functions and sports events. He’d never been afraid to show his affection with Lucy and the boys, or felt he had to prove that he loved them by enforcing the rules he wanted them to live by. He was even teaching a role model class for the twins’ bar mitzvah courses.

And Karp more than loved his wife, he adored her. She was the most interesting person he’d ever met. She knew him better than he knew himself, and knew what to say and do at the right time. Their connection went beyond finishing each other’s sentences to knowing what the other was thinking. Combine that with the fact
that after nearly thirty years of marriage they still made love like wolverines, and he figured he’d found his soul mate.

Yet he knew that his family shared him with another love. Like one of those men whose duplicitous lifestyle with two wives and two families in two different cities. Only his other “family” was his job, and more often than not, it got the best part of him. It sapped his energy and his emotional bank. He’d come home after a fourteen-hour day or a seventy-hour week bushed and ready for a little quiet reading and then bed. Too often on weekends, if he wasn’t in the office preparing for trial, he was perusing evidence binders at the kitchen table, or otherwise giving off vibes that he wanted to be left alone. Of course, that would just make him feel guilty, for as much as he may have deserved a little downtime for himself, it would be at the cost of his time with the kids or with Marlene.

Yet it was more than just being a workaholic. The job itself was hazardous to himself and to his family.

Being a prosecutor could be a dangerous job in any jurisdiction. The world was filled with angry misfits and career criminals who might take offense to the notion of being held accountable for their crimes. But there was no denying that being the district attorney of New York—home to eight million people, a significant percentage of them criminals, including gangsters of every nationality—might increase the odds of an attack.

Yet taking even the sheer size and demographics of his jurisdiction into account, the amount of violence he and his family were subjected to went beyond the pale for other district attorneys as far as he could tell. Trying to look at it objectively and come up with an explanation why this would be, he reasoned that New York City had become a symbolic target for terrorists and criminal masterminds. Therefore, its law enforcement agencies, including the DAO, were simply on the front lines of a war the rest of the country wasn’t experiencing.
Yet.

“Maybe,
” Marlene had said one night shortly after the attack on the stock exchange,
“they see you as a symbol, too—a face and a name they can visualize as the threat to their plans, or a human being who represents a way of life they want to destroy.”

As far as Karp was concerned, he was just doing his job, enforcing the laws of the State of New York. Nothing personal about it. If the DAO couldn’t prove its case, then he didn’t care if it was Osama bin Laden himself, he wouldn’t let the case go forward.

Lucy argued that the seemingly constant maelstrom of violence surrounding the family wasn’t as simple as he was trying to make it out to be—a hazard of the job. Some of the violence that had been directed at him, and his family, had nothing to do with the DAO and was too extreme just for coincidence.
“There’s a reason why our family is in the center of all this,”
she’d argued.
“Like it or not, believe in God or not, call it fate or karma, but we’re
supposed
to be involved. I believe that David Grale is right. The world is headed for a final confrontation between good and evil, a battle, as they say, of biblical proportions.”

“So you’re basing this upcoming Armageddon on the prognostications of Grale, the Avenging Angel of Gotham City?”
he’d asked.
“And that we have been drafted into the Army of God without so much as a by-your-leave?”

“Something like that,”
Lucy had said, sticking her tongue out. Since childhood, she’d been preoccupied with the spiritual side, especially her mother’s Roman Catholic heritage, though Marlene was, at most, a Christmas and Easter Mass Catholic. Lucy, on the other hand, had even considered becoming a nun and claimed that she received “visits” from a fifteenth-century martyr named St. Teresa of Avila who offered wise advice and comfort.

Karp considered these manifestations to be psychological. His daughter even admitted that the saint appeared in times of stress and danger. But whereas she believed in a supernatural cause, he thought it was her mind’s way of functioning at a higher level when under pressure, a sort of survival mechanism having more to do with her adrenal gland than with guardian angels.

There were times when Karp considered whether he should walk away from the DAO. Move to someplace safe and warm, like Beverly Hills, where he could teach law, and enjoy more quality time with his wife and the boys. But he stayed because he loved what he did, knew he was good at it and that it was important. He didn’t see evil in the supernatural sense that Lucy did, but he knew
it existed in the hearts and minds of some people and that he had a responsibility to help combat them.

“Uh, sorry, I didn’t mean nuttin’ by that last comment,” Neary said, glancing over at Karp with a worried look on his face. “It was a stupid joke. And hey, thanks for gettin’ me that piece of coffee cake. It was even better than I remembered.”

“Don’t worry about it, Al,” Karp replied. “I know you were only yanking my chain. You just hit a little closer to home than I probably care to admit; maybe I need a wakeup call.”

The detective smiled and nodded. “Happy to be of service. Next stop, the salt mine.”

They drove the rest of the way to Centre Street in silence, each lost in his own thoughts. Neary with the pitiful performance of his beloved Yankees. Karp rewinding
The People vs. F. Lloyd Maplethorpe
in his mind. Lying in bed the night before, going over what he knew of the case, he’d wished that he’d been more involved with the actual trial strategy.

Karp had no problem with Reed being assigned to the Maplethorpe case. Stewbie was one of the most senior prosecutors in the Homicide Bureau and an excellent choice. And it wasn’t like he’d been on his own. His trial strategy had received the critical vetting by the bureau chiefs and other select assistant district attorneys who met every Monday morning to review important cases. It was an intensive process in which the ADA presented his case, as well as demonstrated that he had anticipated the tactics a defense attorney might use. Then they all tried to pick it apart.

Yet, you missed something
, Karp thought, then shook his head.

In the tradition of other celebrity murder cases, Maplethorpe had hired a dream team of famous attorneys, headed by Guymore G. Leonard. Tall, tan, and handsome as a movie star (and in fact he had appeared in several cameo roles in films produced or directed by former clients), Leonard was known for his fringed leather coats, cowboy hats, ostrich-leather boots, and his flair for the dramatic in and out of the courtroom. A darling of the media, he could always be expected to toss out a great quote, and seemed
to regard gag orders handed down by judges as a personal attack on his constitutional right of self-promotion. He lived on a ranch in Montana, and only rarely took on cases—preferring to rake in the proceeds from books, lectures, and consulting—unless they were the sort to place him firmly in the spotlight, as well as pay his outrageous fees.

Leonard was assisted by two other attorneys, Mark Hayvaert, a short, pugnacious man who looked and acted like a bad-tempered bulldog, and Jeremiah Hyslop, a Harvard law paper-pusher whose main purpose was to flood the court and prosecution team with motions and demands, which of course had to be answered. The purpose was, of course, to distract, delay, and keep the prosecution team responding to each trivial motion instead of focusing on trial preparation.

Leonard and his colleagues were attended by a large retinue of legal assistants, private investigators, and forensic experts, including psychologists, psychiatrists, sociologists—all with their individual area of expertise—and blood-splatter and ballistics experts. There was even a professor of linguistics whose sole purpose had been to throw doubt on one of the prosecution’s star witnesses, Harry Gianneschi. The professor had testified that Gianneschi had “misinterpreted” Maplethorpe’s comment “I think I killed her.”

Against this formidable army, Reed had been assisted by a young assistant district attorney only recently assigned to the Homicide Bureau. Her main function was to keep track of testimony and witnesses, and to know where to get her hands on documents and evidence.

Still, it should have been enough,
Karp thought as Neary turned right on Canal and headed into Chinatown. It was a simple case, and boatloads of spurious motions and superfluous experts didn’t change that fact.
Sometimes less is more.

Karp didn’t make a habit of second-guessing his assistant district attorneys. He believed in his mentor Garrahy’s maxim: Pick good people, train them well, put them through their paces at the Monday meetings, and then let them do their jobs.

Neary swung around the block so that they were heading north on Centre Street as they pulled up to the Criminal Courts Building
on the right. “Out in front or the Franklin Street side?” the detective asked.

“Out front would be great,” Karp replied. Sometimes he took the private elevator from the Franklin Street entrance of the courts building, an entrance used only by judges and other authorized court personnel, to an anteroom next to his eighth-floor office, which he could enter without even passing his receptionist. It was handy for arriving unseen, but usually he liked to enter the building the same way everybody else did, through the front door on Centre Street. It sort of got his head in the game. But the detective wouldn’t have understood, so he just explained, “I want to pick up a copy of the
Times
.”

“What for? Parakeet cage needs a new liner?” Neary replied with a snort. “Planning on going to the Fulton Fish Market and bringing home a little something in the sports pages for supper?”

Karp laughed. “Actually, I like the crossword puzzle,” he said truthfully. Word puzzles and watching movies were a habit he’d picked up from his mother.

Neary pulled over to the curb in front of the Criminal Courts Building next to a dark green newsstand. “Thanks, Al,” Karp said, getting out. “Oh, and I think I’ll walk home tonight.”

“Clay ain’t gonna like that.”

“I’ll break the news to him as gently as I can. But consider yourself off the hook.”

“Thanks, Mr. Karp, I wouldn’t mind getting home to the old lady while she’s still awake.”

There’s that twinge again. “I understand,” Karp said, closing the door and turning toward the newsstand just as the vendor greeted him.

“Good morning…m-m-motherfucker shitface…Butch. What will it be today? The…crap crap craaaaap…
New York
…oh oh nice tits…
Times
?”

Karp grimaced as shocked tourists on the sidewalk looked from the vendor to him and back, as if he’d encouraged the profanity.

There was only one man on the planet as far as he knew who sold newspapers, or anything else, with an accompanying stream of obscenities. However, Dirty Warren, the smiling vendor gazing at
him through thick, smudged glasses, had an excuse for his over-the-top verbiage. The little man suffered from Tourette’s syndrome, a misfiring of some of his brain’s circuits that caused facial tics, body twinges, and outbursts of inappropriate language that fell like pornographic commas into the middle of his sentences.

At least that’s his excuse for most of it,
Karp thought as he walked up to the stand. There were times when the skinny little man with the Pinocchio-shaped and perpetually drippy nose got angry or agitated, and then the cursing seemed a bit more deliberate. In fact, he’d once asked Dirty Warren, an apt nickname given his words and hygiene, if that was the case.

The newspaper vendor had looked genuinely shocked and without so much as cracking a smile replied,
“I don’t…oh boy oh boy, kiss my ass dickweed…cuss.”

Ever since, Karp had wondered if Dirty Warren was trying to be funny that day or if he really didn’t realize what his affliction sounded like. He did know that there was a lot more going on beneath the filthy orange stocking cap that Dirty Warren wore no matter what the weather than appearances and mannerisms had initially indicated when they first met.

Dirty Warren was peering at him innocently, his watery blue eyes magnified behind the glasses. “Good morning, Warren,” Karp replied. “Sure, a copy of the
Times
, please.”

“Thanks. Hey, I got one for you…whoop whoop butthole…this morning,” Dirty Warren said.

“Go ahead, give it your best shot,” Karp replied. He and Dirty Warren had been playing a game of movie trivia ever since they’d met years ago, with the newspaper vendor asking questions and Karp answering. So far the score was Karp, approximately a million, and Dirty Warren, zero.

“Who played David Filby in the…hoo hooo…1960 version of
The Time Machine
?”

“I hope you didn’t stay up all night thinking of that one. The answer is Alan Young.”