The Equalizer (21 page)

“I don't like you doing this alone.”

“You're backup only, Mickey.”

“Yeah, I got it.”

“I'll be back in twelve minutes.”

“I'll be timing you.”

McCall pulled back his wrist, exposing an Aquatimer Automatic Chronograph Cousteau Divers watch. He set the timer for twelve minutes. Kostmayer set his own watch to the same time and they hit each button together.

Then McCall ran down the street, turned a corner toward the distant FDR Parkway, and vanished.

He ran along Sutton Place and slowed his pace when he came to number five. It was laid back from the street with a high iron fence surrounding extensive grounds. Two big gates were locked. McCall skirted them and ran low to where there was a narrow walkway—it wasn't even an alleyway—along the east side of the fence. The branches of the trees on the grounds waved and trembled in the wind. Through that weaving pattern McCall could see the outlines of the house. It was Georgian in style, two stories, with only one light burning from a ground-floor room. Only the tree branches moved on the grounds.

But McCall knew the guards must be there.

He took hold of the fence and shook it. It didn't move. He climbed it without difficulty and dropped down onto the other side with his black Nikes making a soft, whispering sound on the grass. He stood still and listened. Nothing. He ran forward, weaving through the trees and shrubbery, avoiding the open spaces where moonlight flowed.

McCall went down onto one knee. He took what looked like a mini-iPad from his coat pocket. He pressed some buttons and the LED screen on it brightened. Punched more buttons and a schematic of the house appeared on the screen in a glowing blueprint: on the ground floor, a hallway, a living room, dining room, some kind of a study or office, two bathrooms. Stairs in the center leading up to a second floor with what must have been three bedrooms. Then another set of narrower stairs leading up to a small room in an eave.

An attic room.

He knew that's where she'd be. Out of the way, easiest to guard, no possibility of a prisoner getting out and wandering down a corridor.

He hit more buttons and turned the device toward the house. Now infrared heat forms glowed. Two of them moved around the front of the house, just beyond the tree line. Two guards. There was one more heat image of a human being in a room on the ground floor. No one on the second floor in the bedrooms—but two heat figures in the attic room. One was motionless. The other was moving. Back and forth. Pacing.

McCall looked down at the timer on his chronograph: three minutes and ten seconds had elapsed since he'd left Kostmayer at the Chrysler. He put on the night-vision goggles. Now his world was lit up. It was like having an owl's eyes at night, where everything was as bright as day, albeit tinged with olive green. An Emerald City owl.

The figure he'd detected moving had stopped. There was a bright green tip glowing. He'd stopped to light a cigarette.

McCall ran forward, keeping low. He reached the end of the line of trees. Forty yards separated them from the front of the house. Stone lions stood at either side of marble steps leading up to an ornate front door. The guard was turned away from McCall, looking out toward the ribbon of lights that moved along the FDR Parkway.

McCall pulled the tranquilizer gun from his belt and loaded in the first cartridge. He aimed using the night goggles. He needed the guard to turn just a little to his right.

McCall inched around into a better position.

The guard stretched, turning more to
his
left; not the target McCall wanted. He thought he would have to risk moving forward, and then the guard raised his hand to take the cigarette out of his lips. He half turned toward McCall, the skin of his neck exposed above his black tunic.

McCall aimed and fired the tranquilizer gun.

The dart hit the guard in the neck. He staggered for a moment, instinctively reaching back to pull the dart out of his neck, but that's as far as he got. He keeled over onto the narrow concrete path and didn't move.

McCall turned his head, searching for the other guard with the night goggles. Found him, walking toward the back of the house. He'd make a sweep, come around to the front from the other side.

McCall ran forward to where the first guard lay. He was unconscious. McCall grabbed him under the arms and pulled him back into the heavy shrubbery at the side of the house. He didn't remove the tranquilizing dart. He ran up to the front steps. Swept the area just ahead of him with the night-green goggles. He loaded the second tranquilizer dart into the gun.

And waited.

The second guard did not show at the other side of the house.

McCall had miscalculated.

Maybe the guard had heard his comrade fall to the ground. It had only been a dull thud, but there was only the wind sighing through the trees, and the traffic on the FDR might have been as far away as the 405 in Los Angeles for all of the noise it contributed.

McCall sensed the second guard behind him right before the man grabbed him. His arm went around McCall's throat and squeezed hard. He was incredibly strong. McCall threw himself backward with all of his force and smashed the guard back into the smaller wrought-iron fence that surrounded the front of the house. A Beretta 92FS pistol flew out of his hand. But his reflexes were like lightning. He kicked out at McCall's hand. The tranquilizer gun dropped to the pathway as the blow stunned McCall's wrist.

Then the guard attacked.

McCall fought off the blows, twisting, turning, not giving the guard a good target. Then he went for the man's face. Two fingers in his left eye and a chop to his throat. The guard staggered, but surprised McCall by plunging into him with a football tackle. It sent them both sprawling onto the path. McCall caught the guard with his feet in the solar plexus and heaved. The man went flying back. McCall's fingers found the cold metal of the tranquilizer gun. He turned over on his back.

The guard had picked up his fallen Beretta and aimed it.

McCall fired.

The tranquilizing dart hit the hand holding the gun. The guard stiffened and then shuddered as the mixture hit his bloodstream. He fell over and the Beretta 92FS hit the path with a loud clatter. McCall was up on his feet and dragging the man into the bushes in the next ten seconds. He dropped him beside his partner and stood still.

Waited.

No sound or movement.

He checked his watch.

Five minutes, thirty-four seconds.

He was late.

McCall ran for the front door of the house, taking out the mini-pad as he did so. The three heat forms were in exactly the same places they had been before. McCall ran up the stairs and tried the front door. He didn't think it would be locked. Daudov had two guards patrolling the grounds and wasn't exactly expecting the cavalry to arrive.

The door was unlocked.

McCall pushed it open and moved into the carpeted hallway. It was decorated with heavy pieces of furniture, a ponderous grandfather clock ticking in a corner like the one in Moses's antiques store. A stuffy, suffocating atmosphere. The faint sound of a television came from an open doorway on McCall's left. He took off the night goggles and dropped them into his jacket pocket. He ran to the living room doorway and looked inside. The third heat form was sitting on a couch watching a re-run of a CSI episode. McCall liked the actress who played the blood expert on it. She was beautiful and feisty and smart and reminded him of his ex-wife, Cassie.

The guard sitting on the couch was short and overweight and really caught up in the scene unfolding on the TV. He didn't even turn around as McCall aimed the last tranquilizer dart and fired. It hit the back of the man's neck and he slumped down.

It was a calculated risk. There were two more heat figures in the house. One of them had to be Natalya. The other was whoever was guarding her up close and personal. But McCall couldn't leave one of the guards conscious on the ground floor at his back.

He ran up the stairs to the second floor. Paused for one moment there, listening. Not a sound. He ran down the corridor to the middle of the house, where a very short hallway ended in five narrow wooden stairs up to the attic door.

He climbed them fast. He'd put the tranquilizing gun away. He had the Sig Sauer in his pocket, but if he had to use it, all of the stealthy planning and Jimmy risking jail time would be for nothing. McCall stopped and listened. There was no noise from beyond the thick wooden attic door.

He tried it.

The door was locked.

McCall took a ring of skeletal keys out of his pocket. He tried one, then more of them. The fifth one turned the lock.

With what seemed to him a very loud click.

McCall opened the door just wide enough to see inside. A very narrow room, a window at the far end, a dresser, two cane chairs, and a single bed. There were cigarettes and an ashtray on a table beside the door, and an iPhone.

A young man stood at the bed, his back to the door. He did not move as McCall crept inside. He had an iPod in his belt and ear pods in both ears. McCall looked at the Chechen's reflection in the mirror over the bureau. He recognized him from Dolls. One of the enforcers, the one with the ostentatious gold watch chain in a vest pocket of his suit. Whatever music he was listening to was sending him into raptures. He had not heard the sound of the lock in the door turning. He had not heard the sound of the door opening.

His full attention was on the figure—the fifth heat form—lying on the bed. Natalya's black hair floated over a pillow. Her face was pale. She was sleeping fitfully, a dark green comforter over her. Her jailor reached down and pulled the comforter off her body. She was wearing panties and a
Game of Thrones
T-shirt. Her body was glistening with sweat.

Kuzbec didn't move for a moment. Then he leaned down and fondled her left breast, gently, through the T-shirt, making the nipple harden. Natalya stirred, but didn't awaken. Kuzbec straightened and just stared down at her body.

And then McCall was behind him.

He threw his arm around Kuzbec's throat, grabbing his left arm at the wrist, finding the pressure point and numbing it. The arm would be useless. Kuzbec writhed, grabbing McCall's arm around his throat with his right hand, tugging on it. He might as well have tugged on a steel bar. McCall thought briefly of snapping the little creep's neck, but his own voice came back to him.

No deadly force
.

McCall exerted more pressure and Kuzbec stopped squirming and slumped down unconscious. McCall dropped him to the floor. The ear pods fell out of his ears, the music deliriously pounding faintly from them.

Natalya had awakened. She kicked herself back with her long legs until her back was against the wall. She stared wildly at McCall, without recognition. He took a step forward to her, his voice gentle.

“I'm here to take you home.”

She stared at him, her breathing shallow—and then with amazement, as she realized who he was.

“Put on your clothes,” McCall said. “We're going down the stairs and then we're going to walk right out the front door.”

There was a sound from below in the house.

Right on cue.

McCall turned toward the ajar attic door. Natalya slid off the bed and grabbed her jeans from the cane chair under the window. She pulled them on as McCall ran to the entranceway to the room. She pulled a turtleneck down over her head.

There were voices downstairs. Either Jimmy's chemical anaesthetics needed more testing in lab analysis, or reinforcements had arrived. Probably the latter. A guard shift change.

McCall turned back. “Change of plan. We'll use the window.”

He threw aside the cane chair. Natalya snatched up her Windbreaker, which had been at the foot of the bed, and put it on. McCall unlocked the window and pulled on it.

It didn't move.

He heard footsteps pounding up the stairs.

McCall put more weight behind the pull. This time the window creaked up a couple of inches.

The footsteps reached the second floor.

McCall pulled up.

Another inch.

Stopped.

The footsteps pounded closer.

One more inch.

No good.

McCall gritted his teeth and heaved one more time.

The window went up just high enough. He helped Natalya through it and followed her out onto the roof. He turned back, took the Sig Sauer from his pocket, and fired it through the open window into the room. The bullets hit the ajar door. Footsteps that had been on the attic steps retreated fast.

Out on the roof the wind was fierce. McCall grabbed Natalya's hand, but it was the girl who guided him down the slope of the attic room onto the flat part of the second-floor roof. They ran across to the edge where wooden latticework clung all the way down to the ground. Natalya climbed over and started down the latticework.

McCall turned.

No one followed them out the attic window.

They were waiting for more shots to be fired at them.

Just for an instant, McCall stood in another time and place, with the wind howling, while silhouetted figures ran across the roof toward him.

Then he shook off the memory, turned, and climbed onto the latticework.

Natalya was already on the ground. McCall climbed down fast and jumped the last few feet to the pathway. He didn't wait for anyone to run out of the front door of the house. He grabbed the girl's hand and propelled her through the trees toward the west side of the house.

Now came the sound of pursuit. They reached the high wrought-iron fence. Natalya climbed up it like a monkey. Behind her, McCall was a little slower, but not by much. They jumped down on the other side.

Kostmayer pulled up in the black Chrysler. McCall threw open the back door, pushed Natalya into the back, slid into the passenger side where the door was already open. He slammed it and Kostmayer drove away fast.

McCall looked at his Chronograph and hit the timer button.