Fear City (23 page)

Missed. By at least a dozen feet.

He was going to have to do this the hard way.

Still holding the bow, he gave chase at full speed. Reggie glanced over his shoulder and cried out when he saw how fast Jack was gaining. He tried to increase his pace but his knees wouldn't allow it. When Jack was close enough, he reached out to grab his collar, then had a better idea. Instead, he swung the end of the bow over Reggie's head and yanked back, catching him by the throat.

With a choking cry, Reggie's feet flew out from under him and he landed hard on his back. As he lay there stunned, with the wind knocked out of him, Jack used the bow to begin dragging him by the neck back toward the garage. By the time they reached the door he was kicking and clawing at the floor and the jamb, trying to regain his feet, but a series of yanking twists of the bow kept him on the ground until he was inside.

Jack dragged him through his spilled arrows.

“You're into arrows, Reggie?” he said as he knelt beside him and grabbed one from the floor. “How about we put one into you?”

He rolled him over and rammed it into his throat. The wicked barbed head plunged into the flesh left of center. Reggie levered up, eyes bulging. He looked like he was howling in pain but only a hoarse rush of air came out his wide-open mouth. He kicked and twisted as he made that strange sound.

Jack checked the new guy, who looked like he was having trouble breathing. Punctured lung maybe?

Satisfied that neither would be doing much more damage for a few minutes, Jack rushed over to where Bonita lay flat on her back, her arms flung wide, her sweater soaked red, her eyes open and glazed, fixed on the ceiling.

“No! No-no-no-no!”

He wanted to press on her chest. He didn't know CPR but even if he did, how do you resuscitate someone with an arrow in her heart? He'd seen the barbed heads on Reggie's arrows and knew he couldn't pull this one out without shredding her insides. He checked for a pulse, for breathing—nothing on both counts. He blew into her mouth and saw dark blood bubble up around the arrow shaft. He tried pressing on her chest but it only pushed more blood out around the shaft.

He heard a gagging cough—Rico.

Jack reached him in time to see him breathe his last. Reggie's arrow had pierced his neck so Jack pumped on his chest but it succeeded only in making crimson bubbles in the blood filling his mouth.

Jack felt himself losing it. He tried to keep a grip but the dark genie had escaped his bottle and was exulting in its freedom.

Jack stalked over to Reggie and began kicking him. He'd worn sneakers today so he wasn't doing near the damage he wanted. Cristin dead, Rico dead, Bonita dead, all because of this piece of human garbage. All Jack's fault.

“I let you live!”

The Mikulskis had warned him.

“They told me to kill you!” He kept kicking. “But I couldn't do it!”

One of the brothers' words echoed back …

These subhumans are like boomerangs. They somehow find their way back to you.

And Reggie had done just that. If Jack had dumped him in the channel as they'd wanted, or if he'd used the tire iron on Reggie's head instead of his knees, three people very dear to him would still be alive.

… the subhumans … once they're gone, you don't have to give them another thought. And believe me, they're not worth a thought after they're gone.

More kicking …

“I can't believe I let you
live
!”

Panting, he stopped and stood over the rasping, retching Reggie.

Time to rectify that mistake. And never, ever would he make it again.

As he reached for the arrow in Reggie's throat, to drive its ugly head deeper into his neck, he heard a groan. The big guy was trying to turn over.

Jack took a step toward him. “And who the fuck are you, by the way?”

Big Guy had arrived too late to hurt Bonita and Rico, but had he anything to do with Cristin? His wallet lay on the floor beside him. Jack checked it and found a driver's license under the name Brajko Klari
ć
. Probably real. Who'd make up a name like that?

He tossed it onto the keys and was turning back to Reggie when something caught his eye. A key fob … the familiar symbol on it stopped him cold. He picked it up for a closer look. No … couldn't be …

He slumped as he stared at it.

“Oh, no … oh, no…”

He was holding a piece of Cristin … made into a key fob.

Jack retched.

Here it was … the final proof that those were Reggie's arrow wounds in Cristin. And this guy, this Brajko Klari
ć
was there too … had cut off Cristin's tattoo, cut off her hands … probably raped her too.

Brajko Klari
ć
groaned as he flopped onto his back. His eyes showed no fear, only hate for Jack.

“You will die,” he rasped.

“Will I?”

Jack looked around for something, anything that would hurt him, maim him, damage him like he'd damaged Cristin.

Arrows … yes, the arrows.

Still on his knees, he grabbed one and rammed it into Brajko Klari
ć
's left eye. His scream was music.

“Was that how Cristin screamed?”

Jack found another. Brajko Klari
ć
's right eye was squeezed shut. No problem. Jack shoved the arrowhead through the lid and into the eye beneath.

Another scream—a long undulating openmouthed wail.

“Shut up!”

Jack grabbed a third shaft and plunged the point into his mouth, lodging the two-bladed head deep in the tissues at the back of his throat.

Brajko Klari
ć
bucked and kicked and spasmed and choked and gagged as blood filled his mouth. He had both hands on the shaft, trying to pull it out, but those big barbed blades were staying right where they were.

Jack rose and stepped back and watched him die.

It took a while.

Not nearly long enough.

When it was done, he turned back to Reggie. The subhuman lay on his back with blood pooling under his head—not a lot, nothing life threatening. By some miracle the arrowhead had missed the big arteries.

Too bad.

Jack hunted around until he found Rico's machete. He checked the edge—nicely honed. This would do.

He waved it before Reggie's fear-filled eyes.

Reggie couldn't seem to make any sounds except harsh, breathy rasps, but his mouth was working as if he was trying to say something. Finally …

“No!”

The arrow must have cut something speech related in his throat. His voice had no volume, no tone. More like air hissing out of a cut hose.

“For the moment we'll put aside the atrocities you committed here. Let's focus on the girl you raped, tortured, dismembered, and splashed with acid. Remember her? The one they called the Ditmars Dahlia?”

“Just a whore,” he said in his steam-hiss voice. “A nobody.”

“Not to me. She had a name: Cristin. And she was a friend … a very dear friend.”

And now the fear turned to horror. Weak as he was, with an arrow shaft jutting from his throat, Reggie tried to scrabble away on his back.

“Don't leave. I'm just getting started. How about I do to you what you did to her? You cut off her hands. Let's start there. After that, I'll find some acid for your face. I'm sure Rico has something around that will do the job.”

Jack wasn't sure of anything right now. He was out of control and he knew it. But every time he tried to get a grip he'd see Bonita or Rico lying dead with Reggie's shafts protruding from them, and then the dark would retake the helm.

Reggie's cry was more leaking steam.

“You want to say something? Don't bother. Nothing you can say will change what's going to happen here.”

He raised his hand and Jack swung the machete at it. Looking to lop it off at the wrist. At the last second he angled the blade upward so it would miss.

What am I doing?

If he cut off Reggie's hand he might not be able to stop the bleeding. Reggie would die. And as much as a dead Reggie was all Jack wanted in the world right now, this wasn't the time.

Not yet … not yet …

Because Reggie had had no beef with Cristin. He and the other guy had been put up to it. But by whom?

Cristin hadn't scratched
DAMATO
into her skin for nothing. She must have known she was a goner. Jack groaned at the thought of the terror, the helplessness, the hopelessness she must have felt toward the end. She'd wanted to leave a message that would help find her killers.

Well, Jack had found them. Or rather they'd found Jack. But who had sicced them on her?

Arabs … had to be Arabs. Reggie was linked to them, D'Amato was linked to them too, though in a negative way.

Jack would never know the answer if he killed Reggie now—
now
being the operative word.

He realized he had no idea what to do next. He was standing in a garage in Bushwick with three corpses and a speechless man that he needed to interrogate. Except he didn't know how to interrogate anyone. One wrong move and he could kill Reggie.

Not yet … not yet …

He couldn't afford to flub this. He had one source, one opportunity to answer the big question. This was too important to trust to his own inexperienced hands.

Call someone. Simple enough: When you're out of your depth, get advice. Well, he was sure as shit out of his depth. But who to call? Bertel? Yeah, he had a feeling Dane Bertel would know what to do, but he was out tailing his Mohammedans around Jersey City and Jack wouldn't be able to reach him until tonight. And would Bertel be all that interested? This might have some link to the jihadists, or just as easily might not. Bertel had no personal stake in this.

But Jack knew someone who did. Someone who carried a phone with him everywhere. Someone he was quite sure knew all the fine points of interrogating a person who might not want to talk.

He looked around. Rico had to have a phone here somewhere.…

 

8

Exactly ten minutes after Dane had parked—thirty minutes after he'd lost them—the Taurus with Kadir and the new Mohammedan passed by on its way back down from the Heights. He didn't see anyone new in the car, or anything visible in the rear seat.

He followed, expecting them to turn on Newark, retracing the way they'd come here, but instead they stayed on Summit all the way to Montgomery. Right on that and back to Kennedy. Kennedy south to Communipaw …

“Okay, I know where you're headed.”

He eased back and let them get farther ahead. They'd be turning onto Mallory and heading for that storage area, the Space Station.

Sure enough, the Taurus turned in there. Question was: Where were the rest of them?

Twenty minutes later the Taurus reemerged with Ramzi Yousef in the rear. A chance then that Abouhalima and the other unknown Mohammedan were still there, but far from definite. His best bet was to chase the Taurus. But as he put his Plymouth in gear, he saw the Chevy Nova easing up the Space Station driveway from the rear. It parked maybe twenty feet from the sliding gate. Redheaded Abouhalima stepped out from the passenger seat and trotted through the rain to the gate. He stared along Mallory Avenue, not in the direction the Taurus had gone but the way it had come, then trotted back.

They were expecting someone.

Something … a feeling that pieces were poised to fall into place made Dane take his car out of gear and wait a little more.

 

9

“Jesus cunting Christ!” Burkes said as he surveyed the carnage. “It's like William Tell meets Sweeney Todd!”

“Hey, watch it,” Jack said. “That little girl was very dear to me.”

He looked at Jack and must have seen the truth of that in his face, because he held up his hand, palm out, and said, “Easy, lad. I meant no disrespect to your fallen.”

After his call to Burkes—telling him the address and obliquely conveying that he'd encountered two people who'd been involved with their mutual friend—Jack had found a couple of dropcloths to cover Bonita and Rico. But the way the arrows stuck up under the cloths disturbed him, so he'd cut off the shafts just above the skin. Not an easy task because they were made of some kind of composite over an aluminum core. Took a hacksaw to get the job done.

He'd left Brajko Klari
ć
where he'd fallen.

Jack had cooled by the time Burkes arrived with his two bodyguards or whatever they were, all three wrapped in hooded rain parkas. Without a word they'd fanned out through the garage, taking it all in.

Burkes pointed to Rico's draped form. “Another friend?”

Jack nodded.

Burkes wandered over to where Brajko Klari
ć
sprawled with the three arrow shafts jutting toward the ceiling from the eyes and mouth of his blood-coated face.