by Marc Cameron
“Heartless bitch,” Ding mumbled, ignoring Clark as he came out of a little bodega and fell in behind the couple. Ding fell back, taking a moment to check out a vendor with a table full of used books in Chinese.
“I have the eyeball,” Clark said. “Half a block from the bridge.”
“Nearly there,” Midas said. “We’ll trap them in a pincer—”
“Let’s hold off on that,” Clark said. “If it looks like they’re going to get away, we’ll take them.”
“John,” Dom said, the need for vengeance straining in his voice. “They slashed the hell out of an FBI agent.”
“And he was after them for a reason,” Clark said. “Let’s see where they’re going. Dom, Adara, you deal with the police. The rest of you move toward the bridge. Let’s get a net around these bastards.”
At first it looked like the Pengs might take the Manhattan Bridge pedestrian walkway that led over the East River to Brooklyn. Instead, they stayed on East Broadway, going under the bridge, then paralleled the bridge along Forsyth Street. It looked like a county fair. Folding tables were laid out for several blocks, covered with assorted produce, from dragon fruit to durian—things Chinese people, not tourists, came to buy. Wizened faces sat under the makeshift shade of blue plastic tarps or large canvas umbrellas. Boxes of fruit were stacked high on the sidewalks behind the vendors. Refrigerated box trucks lined the streets.
It was still early enough that sunlight hit this side of the bridge, and the odor of fish and trash from the shadowed side streets gave way to the fruity perfume of the vendors.
Clark hung back a hundred feet or so, head down, shoulders hunched a little. Ding had fallen in behind him shortly after he’d taken over the eyeball, matching his pace but staying in the crowd of pedestrians.
With her back to Clark, Rene Peng stopped at a fruit stand where the street above began to curve back to the east over the sidewalk. Garret walked a few steps past her, glancing up at the pedestrian walk overhead, and then across Forsyth. He seemed tense, but Rene moved fluidly, now calm as a summer morning. She picked up a pear, held it to her nose, chatting amiably with the woman at the scale. The old woman nodded, looked up, past Clark, toward Ding. She leaned forward and whispered something. Rene held up the pear as if she was about to buy it—and then bolted.
The pear seemed to hang in midair for a long moment.
“They’re running north on Forsyth!” Clark snapped. “Toward Confucius Plaza and the bridge ramp. They may try and split up.”
Rene shot a glance over her shoulder, toward Clark again. She shouted in Chinese to her husband, and then both of them dug in, picking up their pace.
“Get after them, Ding!” Clark said. He’d done more than his share of running over the years, but it was no longer his strong suit. In any case, he had other ideas. “Jack, tell me you’re at the northeast corner of the bridge.”
“They’re in sight,” Ryan said.
Ding ran past Clark, the leather bag o’ guns looped over his shoulder, bouncing on his back.
“I’m here, too, Boss,” Midas said. “We got it all covered, the steps, Canal. Dave is posted in front of the Greek Orthodox church.”
“Outstanding,” Clark said. “Ding, cut to the east side of the street near Dave. They may split up.”
“John, they’ll see me—”
“Do it now!” Clark snapped, leaving no room for argument. “The rest of you spread out. Give me a ten-count, then make yourselves known. Remember, this pair just tried to murder an FBI agent. Ding and I are the only ones armed at the moment.”
Scanning the street for the nearest available weapon—there was always something—he snatched up a broom handle from one of the fruit stands as he walked past and began using it like a walking stick. He didn’t run, hardly even looked up. The old man at the table simply nodded as if he knew what Clark had planned, or didn’t care.
One way or another, this was going to be over soon.
“Now,” Clark said, reaching his own ten-count. “Let them see you. Grab them both if you can. If not . . .”
“She’s coming at you, John,” Midas said, clipped but in control.
Half a moment later, Ding came over the radio. “The male is on the ground. You were right. They split up.”
Clark continued to walk north, using his peripheral vision to watch Rene Peng as she got closer. She looked well past him, as if he wasn’t even there. He could see the knife in her hand, half drawn up in her sleeve. A half-grin perked the corners of her lips, as if she thought she’d won. Clark stopped as if to catch his breath as she got nearer, looking up at the spectacle of someone being chased—as anyone might do. He rested both hands on the stick, loosely, absent any apparent threat, careful not to catch her eye directly. One of the few benefits to being old in this line of work was becoming invisible.
She never saw the broomstick coming. Clark swung it hard, aiming through instead of at her knee. He used one hand, swordlike, but put his hips into it, pivoting as he turned. Rene Peng was not a tall woman, but she had an incredibly long stride. The heavy stick connected with an audible crack while her leg was flexed and in the air. Wood and bone shattered on impact. The force of her foot hitting the pavement exacerbated the damage, causing her to crumple in a screaming heap.
Sirens yelped on Canal, just a few hundred yards away.
Rene tried to push herself up, the blade still clutched in her fist. Clark let her have another well-aimed strike with what was left of the broomstick, aiming for the bleachers as he took out her right elbow.
The knife—still smeared in Nick Sutton’s blood—clattered to the pavement at the same time a white NYPD cruiser fishtailed onto Forsyth from Canal. Clark dropped the stick and stepped out of the street onto the sidewalk, not running, but moving with purpose. He faded into the gathering crowd, making it almost to the underpass by the time the cruiser reached the injured woman. Dom had described her and her husband as dangerous and possibly having weapons, so the responding officers were more interested in getting her handcuffed than they were in who might be running from the scene.
A second set of officers found Garret Peng, his jaw broken in two places, handcuffed to a standpipe next to the Greek Orthodox church.
“Everyone clear?” Clark said once he was sure responding officers had not only the woman but her bloody knife in custody.
Everyone was. Except Dom and Adara.
* * *
—
The ambulance disappeared down Doyers Street, sounding the air horn periodically to move traffic and mindless pedestrians aside as it jumped on Bowery toward NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital. The proximity to One Police Plaza and the New York Field Office of the FBI left the narrow street crawling with responding uniforms and Feds.
A ruddy blond agent named Bolton, hands encased in blue nitrile gloves, appeared to be the one in charge of the scene. He nodded to an Asian NYPD officer, who led Adara to the back of her patrol car under the auspices of getting her cleaned up.
Caruso shook his head in disbelief, biting his tongue so he didn’t say something he’d regret.
“What?” Bolton said, studying Caruso’s credentials. “Something on your mind?”
“Seriously,” Dom said. “You’re splitting up my girlfriend and me like we’re suspects?”
“Everybody’s a suspect,” Bolton said. “You know that.”
“We called you, remember?”
“Matter of fact, I do,” Bolton said. “So let’s go over that again, shall we? You, an FBI agent, just happened to stumble onto Sutton, also an FBI agent, who stumbled onto someone who then stabbed him?”
“That’s about the size of it,” Caruso said.
“How’d you know him?”
“Sutton was in the academy that overlapped mine. I thought I recognized him on the street and we came over to say hi. We found him here.”
/> “Seems awfully convenient,” Bolton said. “What office are you out of?”
“Director’s,” Caruso said.
Bolton looked at him through narrowed eyes as he handed back the credential case. “Be that as it may, I’ll need a written supplement from you.”
“Of course.” Caruso shrugged. “It’ll be about three lines long, but I get that you need it. Listen, Sutton said he left his wife and kid at Vincent’s, over on Mott. Somebody needs to go and let her know what happened. She should be with him at the hospital.”
“I’ll do that,” a familiar female voice called from around Bolton’s SUV. Caruso glanced up to find Special Agent Kelsey Callahan walking his way. Her auburn hair was shorter than it had been when he worked with her in Dallas. He was surprised to see her in New York. She’d been doing a hell of a job running the North Texas regional task force focused on human trafficking.
“I thought you were in Texas,” Caruso said, smiling despite the blood that painted the front of his shirt.
“I still am,” Callahan said. “The powers that be detailed me here for a couple of months to cross-pollinate the Interdiction for the Protection of Children techniques we’re using in Texas with task force here in NYFO. Human smuggling is human smuggling, you know. Turns out there’s a hell of a lot of it going on in New York City—much of it right smack in the middle of Chinatown, if you can believe such a thing. You got your sex workers, domestic servants locked in basements after their eighteen-hour days, your garment industry slaves—and, as it turns out, a hell of a lot of undeclared spies. Sometimes their duties overlap. Rene and Garret Peng were two that kept floating to the top like the turds they are. I perked up when their names came out over the radio a few minutes ago when you or somebody called nine-one-one. And you know everyone responds when we hear an agent down . . .” She stared at him hard, then glanced at Adara, giving her a once-over. “So this is the girlfriend?”
“She is indeed,” Caruso said. “Adara Sherman.”
“I heard she saved Sutton’s life.” Callahan looked up and down the street, even checking the roofline, as if she expected to find someone working overwatch. “So, your mature badass friend isn’t with you? John . . . what was his name again?”
Caruso gave her a Cheshire cat grin but kept a tight lip.
Callahan heaved a deep sigh and then patted Bolton on the shoulder. “You may as well cut them loose, Sean,” she said. “Take it from one who knows, you’re gonna get a call from the special agent in charge in about a millisecond, directing you to turn them loose anyway. It’s easier on the ego if it’s your decision.”
She hooked a thumb over her shoulder toward her car. “Come on, you two. Let’s go get Sutton’s wife to the hospital. I’ve got a couple of raid jackets you can put on over your bloody shirts so you don’t terrify the locals. Nick is a good soul. He’s a counterintelligence weenie, but we get along well enough. A good portion of the human cargo the snakeheads smuggle into the U.S. comes here under false promises, putting them in the trafficked-human category. Snakeheads and spies naturally overlap, and so did a ton of our cases.” She rummaged through her trunk until she found two dark windbreakers with FBI emblazoned on the back in large yellow letters. Callahan gave one to Caruso and one to Adara. “I’m not sure who you guys are,” she said, “or what you’re up to, but whatever it is, I’m glad you were doing it here in New York. Sutton was working on some sketchy people.” Callahan leaned in closer. “Spies,” she said. “Apparently, they’re all over the damn place.”
4
Father Pat West stood on the hillside trail eating longan fruit and pondering sin. Large tea plantations covered most of the hills north of Bandung near Lembang, but this spot was relatively wild, carpeted with ferns and native vegetation, a likely place for a run with his local chapter of Hash House Harriers. The sun was still low and orange, not yet high enough to burn away the morning fog that still shrouded the green mountains. It was as good a time as any to reflect on his own lapses in judgment. He’d committed enough of them in his sixty-two years, a few doozies, in fact. If there was one thing he’d learned after entering the priesthood, it was that everyone had a few doozies when it came to sin. The government had even given him commendations for some of his—in a former life. For good or bad, he was an expert on sinning. He certainly recognized it when he saw it get out of a Toyota along the dirt road halfway down the hill. Head turning this way and that like a lost bantam rooster, the strange little newcomer was dressed in running shorts and a lime-green T-shirt. West chuckled sadly to himself. The shirt was a sin in and of itself.
The priest held one longan fruit—the size of a jumbo grape—between his thumb and forefinger as he watched the strange man approach. He squeezed firmly until the leathery skin broke and revealed the translucent fruit inside. Tossing the skin, he popped the syrupy white glob into his mouth and then spit the hard mahogany-colored seed into the bushes. It was an oddly soothing process, helping West think. It reminded him of watching his grandfather eat peanuts on the front porch of his home in Virginia.
The newcomer spoke for a moment to a man named Rashguard—one of the Kiwi Hashers who was down getting a plastic cooler out of his car. Rashguard pointed directly at West. The newcomer nodded, then looked uphill with a gaseous expression before beginning the steep trudge from the parking area.
Through the trees, on the winding road below, more car doors slammed. Odd, West thought, to have so many visitors on the same day.
The priest was dressed for running—or, rather, fast walking. He’d run a great deal as a younger man, for enjoyment and as part of his rigorous training. He’d done a lot of things he regretted back then. One of his mentors, a man not much older than he was but with a lifetime’s more experience, had once watched him hoist a ninety-pound rucksack full of communications equipment and sling it nonchalantly over his back. “One of these days,” his teacher had said, “you’re going to regret this moment—lifting that ruck, that way.”
And West did.
He remembered many exact moments, moments that left all manner of damage that he hadn’t realized when he was young and foolish and looking for adventure . . . Now, his creaky knees protested if he ran more than half a mile. Any farther than that and he found it difficult to stand and give the liturgy at Mass the following day.
Seven other Hashers from the Bandung chapter of the Hash House Harriers stood at the starting area a dozen yards uphill. This included the “hare,” who’d already laid out the trail. The hare would leave momentarily, but did not want to miss out on the socializing before the event started. All the runners in the group were men, a mix of Europeans, Aussies, and Kiwis. West was the only American.
Started in the thirties by a British Army officer in Malaysia, Hash House Harriers was often described as a drinking group with a running problem. The Bandung group still drank, but they were more discreet than Hashers in other areas, aware of the Muslim sensibilities in this country.
A few hours to run and joke with friends each week was Father West’s small break from the work of overseeing Catholic relief efforts from Bandung to Papua. Hash runs were his little sin of indulgence.
Having eaten all his longan fruit, West began his stretch while the newcomer hiked up the hill toward him. The air was oppressively humid and unmercifully hot, as it always was in this part of God’s vineyard. But the moist heat turned the mountain into a dense wall of green jungle in every direction. Banana, durian, and papaya grew wild on the hills. Locals often joked that a stray cigarette butt would produce a tobacco plant in a matter of days. It would probably not be long before longan trees began to sprout from the seeds he’d spit out. Countless varieties of flowers fed countless insects, and the insects fed countless birds. Lizards skittered through the foliage. Macaque monkeys hooted in the treetops. Between the buzzing, chirping, and howling, the place was as loud as it was lush.
In order to reach Father W
est, the newcomer had to take a long set of switchbacks, putting him within yards of a small group of shanties set back in the jungle along a fast-moving stream that tumbled down from the mountains. A dozen eyes watched from the shadows, waiting to see which way he would go.
The hares tried as best they could to lay the course through uninhabited areas, but Indonesia was densely populated with many living in dire circumstances. It was inevitable that they crossed paths with beggars. Father Pat carried a few thousand rupiah for that purpose. When approached by a group, he’d direct them to Catholic services—careful to keep his words secular in this fiercely Muslim country—but he didn’t have the heart to say no to an individual.
Runs were open to everyone. Newcomers gave the group someone else to poke fun at. Hangdog and angry-looking at the same time, with the countenance of a piece of coal, this one was a likely candidate.
“Hi,” the man said. “Is . . . this . . . the . . . Hash run?”
“It is,” West said.
“Thank God.” The man bent over, hands on his knees, panting from the short walk.
“Thank God, indeed.” West hoped his outward smile hid his inward groan. “Welcome on behalf of the Bandung Hash House Harriers. Budgy has the guestbook up next to the flags. You will need to sign in.”
The man stuck out a hand, still bracing against a knee with the other. He swallowed hard from climbing the short distance in the heat. The trail only got worse from here. Even walking was obviously going to prove a challenge for this one.
“Geoff . . . Noonan.”
“Father Pat West.”
“No shit?” Noonan said, still catching his breath. “You’re the priest from the pic on the website?”
“Indeed,” West said again.
“You look different,” Noonan said. “But I’m glad I found you. You’re the reason I’m here.”