“I need an appointment to report a stolen car?” I asked.
McNeal, both hands on the wheel and not looking back, asked, “You behind any payments?”
“No liens on the title,” I said.
“It’s already parts,” said McNeal. “Don’t worry about it. Insurance company will buy you a fresh one.”
The joints in the pavement clicked under the car like a clock ticking at double time. “My son’s car,” I said. “An ’86 Camaro with a LT1 crate engine, custom headers, and a tuned exhaust. Not like we can buy another one.”
“I don’t think they’ll chop that one,” said McNeal. “Probably paint it and use a scrap VIN plate to get tags.”
“What’re the chances of getting it back?”
“We’ll do the best we can,” he said.
I asked, “What’re the chances of getting it back?”
“Slim to none,” said McNeal. “Sorry.”
We popped out of the Ditch onto Southfield Road with a loud foop. At Nine and Ten Mile roads, the intersections were held clear by suburban police cruisers. We went right on Eleven Mile and north on Marshal toward a dome of white light circled by helicopters that looked like mosquitoes with long white stingers. McNeal keyed up his radio and announced our location. Cruisers blocking the intersections moved to clear the way.
We eased past two ambulances and a fire truck. Matty stood in the middle of the street wearing a Windbreaker emblazoned with “FBI” in large white letters. She beckoned us with her arm and then stuck out her hand to halt the car. We piled out.
“Art, you don’t have to do this,” said Matty.
Wendy held onto my arm with both hands. “Don’t have to do what?” she asked.
“Khan thinks he and his son are going to get the money and drive away,” said Matty. “He insists that you personally hand the money over.”
“What about Karen?” asked Wendy.
“Karen is duct-taped to a chair and wired with plastic explosives. When Khan and his son drive away, we go in and disarm the explosives.”
“You’re just going to let them drive away?” asked Wendy.
“The car is rigged,” said Matty. “We can turn it off and lock the doors when they’re clear.”
“How do you know they won’t detonate the explosives with a cell phone?”
“We shut down the local cell towers,” said Matty.
“Satellite phone?”
“Nothing’s perfect,” said Matty. “This is our best chance to get Karen out. You walk to the door, hand over the suitcase, and walk back. You going to do this or not?”
“I have to talk to my wife,” I said.
Matty tapped her watch with her finger. “Khan’s son has been awake since the kidnapping—doing uppers. The psychologist says he’s borderline and not improving.”
Wendy and I stepped into the shadow of an ambulance. “Art,” said Wendy, “Karen is a friend but we still have two sons who need us now. They need their dad.” She threw her arms around me. “And I need you.”
I hugged back and said, “If I hand them the money, that restores their honor. They think they’re going to walk away winners. I just hand over the suitcase.”
“You think it will work?” Wendy asked into the shoulder of my sports coat.
“I think it can work,” I said. “And I think it can go to hell in a heartbeat. I think if we walk away and Karen dies we’ll waste years recriminating and making each other unhappy.”
Wendy let go of me and took a step back. She patted my chest with her hands. Her eyes red and face tormented, she said, “Do it, do it.” She threw her arms around me and strangled out one more, “Do it!”
I rubbed her back and kissed the top of her head. Matty started calling us. Wendy let go. I took my Colt out of the holster and tucked it into my waistband at the small of my back.
“Gimme your pistol,” I said.
Wendy fished it out of her handbag, and I snapped it into my holster. Wendy and I stepped back into the light holding hands. She wiped her eyes with her free hand.
“All right,” I said to Matty. “We’re ready.”
Matty held out a fat gold fountain pen with an onyx jewel on the clip. With her other hand, she held her headset tight to her ear. “This is our guy,” she said. “See him? Oh-two, see him?” She nodded at me. “Don’t shoot him.” She clipped the pen to my hanky pocket. “Mike and chip-cam in the clip,” said Matty. “Now the entry team sees and hears the same as you.”
A gray Lexus pulled into the drive and stopped behind the white SUV. The driver, wearing an FBI Windbreaker, stepped out of the car, leaving the motor running and the door open. He hustled into the nearby darkness with his hands in the air.
Matty handed me an earplug with a hoop to hold it on my ear. “Put this in your right ear. Keep Khan on your left. You will hear me,” she said. “Do what I tell you, when I tell you.”
I slipped it on. Matty clicked her headset. “You hear me?”
Her voice had a ghostly presence in my ear. “Yes, ma’am.”
Matty tapped her headset. “Don’t shout. I get your voice from the fountain pen mike. Let’s go.” She stopped and put her hand flat on my chest. “Wait, I gotta have your sidearm.”
I held out my coat. Matty took Wendy’s Maverick .380 off my hip. “That’s not your regular sidearm,” said Matty, her face doubtful.
“Kentwood has the Detonics,” I said. “The Shatner shooting. I plan to pick it up when I get back.”
We walked to a white van with an open sliding door. Inside, men in shirt sleeves manned video screens, wearing headsets like Matty’s. One of them handed me a black suitcase, a very heavy suitcase.
A sedan pulled up, and Khan stepped out of the passenger-side rear door. His neck brace teed up a smug face, and the black and blue of his bruises had shifted in spectrum to yellow and brown with the occasional hint of green.
“How smart are you now?” asked Khan. “Where is your joke for this?”
I tried for my best deadpan and said nothing.
“You will learn respect,” said Khan. He spread a sneer around for everyone. “All of you.”
Matty said, “Take him the money.”
“I want to see the money,” said Khan.
“You saw the money,” said Matty.
“If this is not a trick, you can show me the money,” said Khan.
“Put it on the ground,” said Matty.
Kneeling beside the bag, I zipped it open. Damned if it didn’t look full of money—twenties in bank wrappers, but stacked a little too close and a little too neat. Khan reached for the stacks. I slammed the lid.
“You can play with it later,” I said.
“You will put your money from your pocket in there,” said Khan.
From my pocket, I added Jamal’s fifty, some small bills, and the Canadian change I had left from the coffee I purchased at 7-Eleven in Windsor.
“Why do you have Canadian money?” asked Khan. I could see wheels turning in his head.
“I was at the casino in Windsor when they called me to come down here and play bellhop for you.”
“I am glad you had some money left,” said Khan. “It is not enough for too many bullets, but I can buy gasoline to burn infidels in their beds.”
I zipped up the case and said, “Aren’t you just a bundle of charm?” We started for the front door.
“You should not gamble with money that is not yours,” said Khan. A half dozen steps toward the house, he yelled something in Arabic. A shot shattered a window and thudded into the ground in front of me.
26
WE STOOD IN A PETRI DISH of icy white light, a half dozen steps from the door of the house, without a bush, or even a shadow, to offer sanctuary. With Kafkaesque calm, Matty Svenson provided the translation of Amed Khan’s outburst in my earplug. She whispered, “’This is a trick. Explode the woman. Send me to Allah. God is Great.’”
Khan lurched forward. I dropped the suitcase, grabbed him by the neck br
ace, and pulled him in front of me. A kick to the back of his leg dropped him to his knees. I snatched the Colt from my waistband and wedged the muzzle in Khan’s neck brace. “Show me Karen Smith alive, or I’ll show you Amed Khan dead!”
Matty whispered in my ear, still calm, “Back away from Khan and dive into the Lexus.”
I racked the hammer on the Colt.
“Kill me,” said Khan. “I die a martyr.”
“Your father says to kill him,” I announced to the house. “We’re all in agreement out here. Show me Karen Smith.”
“Back out! Now!” said Matty.
“You lie to trick me,” a voice yelled from the house.
“This pistol has a three-pound trigger pull. That’s a truth you can trust. Show me Karen Smith.”
The house remained silent.
Matty said, “Try to get him to take the deal.”
“The money is here, including every dollar that was in my pocket. The car is here. The motor is running. Show me Karen Smith. You can walk out. You can take the money and your father and drive away.”
“Yes!” called the voice from the house. “Okay!” The voice sounded singsong. “I show you Karen Smith!”
Matty said, “The psychologist said that was a threat.”
In the house, I could hear something being dragged across a carpet and then a tile floor. The front door swung in and a light in the entrance hall came on. Karen arced past the storm door as the chair she was taped to tipped sideways into view. Duct tape covered her mouth and chin. At the back of the house, I heard glass shatter.
Matty said, “The entry team is coming in.”
“Here is your bitch!” yelled the voice from the house. An arm and fist appeared. In the fist, I saw a black box with dangling wires and a thumb cocked above, ready to plunge down.
Matty said, “Run! Take cover!”
Less than twenty feet separated me from the hand with the plunger. The Colt felt like I was swinging it up through mud. With both hands on the weapon, I lined the sights at six o’clock—at the bottom of the wrist—and squeezed. I didn’t feel the shot, just realized the Colt was climbing left. The window in the storm door had fogged opaque with spiderweb cracks. I pumped two double taps into the aluminum siding a foot to the left of the door at shoulder height, ran to my right to get an angle to shoot past Karen, and popped another double tap at waist height through the doorjamb. In a bolt for the door, I thumbed out the magazine and slammed home a fresh one. Glass cascaded in pellets when I jerked open the door. From the darkness inside the house, I heard men yelling from different rooms, “Clear!”
The smell of urine burned my nostrils. Karen struggled against her bindings. Khan’s son lay on the floor with his right hand at a sharp angle to his wrist. He reached for the detonator with his left. From the nearby darkness, I heard a male voice yell, “Take the shot!” I snapped a round into the hand reaching for the detonator. Khan’s son rolled onto his back flailing his arms and legs and screamed—it seemed more in anger than pain.
I backed up to avoid the blood spray. Three black-clad men piled onto the wounded man. A fourth brushed by to get to Karen. A woman’s hand reached around me and grasped the Colt across the top of the slide. I flicked up the safety with my thumb. From behind me, I heard Matty say, “Hardin, you’re under arrest.”
The agent standing over Karen said, “Everybody freeze! This woman has fifty pounds of plastic wired to her chair and a peck bag of nuts, bolts, and nails taped in her lap. She’s soaked in urine. One static spark, and we’ll be there to see if this asshole gets the flock of virgins or a handful of white raisins.”
“Is that a wool jacket?” asked Matty.
“With a kiss of Italian silk,” I said.
“Great,” said Matty. “My jacket is nylon. We’re a static charge generator. Don’t blink, don’t move anything.”
“This is wired funny,” said the agent. An arm in a black sleeve reached around me and slowly lifted the camera pen out of my pocket. After a few silent seconds—that took what felt like minutes to pass—he said, “No, it’s not the camera, all the wires are white. Look at this. … Now here. I think that’s a battery pack. I don’t know if it’s in sequence or tandem. … Okay, I’m standing by.”
“Someone in here told you to take that last shot?” asked Matty.
“I didn’t hear shit,” I said. “I was on a frolic of my own.”
“I heard it,” said Matty.
“I thought the question was whether I heard it.”
“We have to tourniquet this arm,” said an agent with Khan’s son. “He’s going to bleed out.”
“Just pressure for now,” said the agent with Karen.
“You don’t even want to start getting cute with me, Hardin,” said Matty.
“I told him to take the shot,” said the agent with Karen. “Maybe we can talk about this in five minutes, if it’s still important.”
On the street, tires squealed as vehicles vacated the area. The constant drub of helicopters overhead faded to silence.
“Beck, Miller, and Campbell,” said the agent with Karen. “You in here?”
“Beck and Miller—in the kitchen, Boss,” I heard from the darkness in the house.
“This is Campbell,” said a fainter voice from the other direction. “I’m in the garage. We’ve got twenty bags of nitrate fertilizer and four fifty-gallon drums marked ‘Auto Racing Fuel’ out here.”
“You guys clear the area,” said Karen’s agent.
They all answered, “Check, Boss.” They left.
“Yeah,” said the agent with Karen. He didn’t seem to be speaking to us. “That’s what it looks like to me. I got four or five bombs. … Yeah, like every time he got bored, he added plastic and a blasting cap. … No, I don’t see a timer. But there’s the battery pack and a green light on the command detonator box.”
I heard him pull open a Velcro pocket tab. “No, he’s out. … Shot twice. … He quit moving two, three minutes ago. … I wouldn’t trust him if he was awake. I’m going to check the battery pack.”
The Colt started to gain weight. I put my left hand back under it.
“You moved,” said the agent working on the bomb. “Don’t move. Don’t blink. Don’t fart.”
“Why shouldn’t I fart?” I asked.
“Because that’s not the last thing I want to smell,” said Matty.
“It’s not wired to anything. He just wound the leads into a doll and buried them in the plastic. … Yeah, we still have a green light on the command detonator. I’m going to trace the wires down from the detonator with my fingers. … Okay, I’ve got a battery pack here. … See it? … You think? … Okay.”
I heard the first snip and made a start. The agent said, “Chill, if this goes, you won’t know it.” I could feel my collar getting damp. I’d always subscribed to the notion that you did know it, albeit not for long.
“Since we are all standing here on God’s bus stop, I have a question,” I said.
“Whatever it is, it’s probably none of your business,” said Matty.
“Since Karen is here,” I said, “whose body did they recover from the Detroit River?”
The agent working on the bomb said, “What do you mean, ‘No, wait’? I already cut it.”
“Khan’s daughter,” said Matty. “He caught her ‘dishonoring’ her family in a parked car with her American boyfriend.”
I had to urinate. I didn’t mention it. Wondering where to find the bathroom had it all over listening to the agent take the bomb apart.
Finally, he said, “Th-that, th-that, th-that’s all folks! This Looney Tune is over.”
Matty took her hand off the Colt and said, “Holster it.”
The bathroom turned out to be in the hall to the bedrooms. I took the back off the toilet before I flushed it. Maybe I was getting a little paranoid. Matty and the agent had moved to the kitchen and turned the light on. At the door, the ambulance crew had Khan’s son on a gurney with an oxygen mask strapped t
o his face.
Two med-techs hovered over Karen, who remained taped to the chair. Unable to remove the tape from her face, they had cut a slit in the duct tape over her mouth. She asked for water. “Karen?” I said.
Her eyes gleamed razor sharp with fright.
“Hang in there, kiddo.”
She closed her eyes and nodded. Since her legs were still taped to the chair, her bare feet thrust up in the air. I gave her foot a squeeze. It was cold. I rubbed it with both hands. “Wendy’s outside waiting for you.”
Karen’s chest heaved in a spasm of jerks. Without looking up, the med-tech said, “Mac, we need room to work here.”
I went to the kitchen and found that a clothing rod had been installed across the length of the kitchen. Police, airline security, Canadian immigration, and customs uniforms dangled from hangers among shirts marked for telephone, utility, and package-delivery companies.
“Don’t touch anything,” said Matty.
I put my hands in my pockets.
“That was your backup pistol,” said Matty. “You forgot you had it.”
A boat anchor in my pants? “Yes, ma’am,” I said.
The agent who had disarmed the bomb wore a flattop cut too short to yield more than a pinch of graying blond hair. At just under six feet, his muscular frame seemed out of place with the wrinkles across his forehead and at the corners of his eyes. He offered his hand and said, “Joe Erhardt.”
I took it for a shake and said, “Art Hardin.”
Erhardt took his hand back and said, “You saw the plastic and fired because you were in fear for your life.”
No stretch there. “Yes, sir.”
“One of the local news stations has tape they shot from a helicopter,” said Matty. “They don’t have your face. Don’t do any interviews.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“We’re telling the story. Period,” said Matty.
“What story?” I asked.
• • •
Matty’s FBI Windbreaker was too small for me to shrug into without exploding the seams. I walked out of the house with it hooked over my shoulder Frank Sinatra style, my glasses in my pocket, wearing Erhardt’s black ball cap.
Dead Bang Page 26