by Patterson
The Chameleon smiled. If this is Trager’s idea of private security, either he has no respect for me, or he wants to help me blow up his boat.
He walked up to one of the rent-a-cops and held out his tray. The man shook his head.
“Oh, please,” Gabriel said. “You don’t know what you’re missing. The shrimp are to die for.”
The guy shrugged, took a napkin, plucked a shrimp from the tray, looked left and right, then grabbed three more.
“I’ll be back,” Gabriel said.
He worked his way to the far end of the salon and stepped through a teak-framed glass door onto the main deck. There were a lot fewer guests out here, almost all of them smoking.
He found a quiet spot on the port side and got his bearings. The Brooklyn Bridge was behind him, which meant they were headed south toward Governors Island and the Red Hook section of Brooklyn.
They wouldn’t screen the TV pilot until dark, which meant the captain would sail all the way down to Sea Gate, or even Breezy Point, before circling back to catch the sunset over Liberty Island.
He had a little more than an hour to set the charges.
He found a door that said DO NOT ENTER, set down his hors d’oeuvres tray, and entered.
He took the two flights of metal stairs down to the engine room.
“Yo,” a voice called out. “Hold it right there, mate.”
Gabriel froze.
The man was a dark-skinned African-American, over sixty, wearing khakis and a faded denim shirt with the yacht’s logo on the left breast pocket.
“Hi there,” Gabriel said.
“Yeah, hi there,” the man said pleasantly. “How many fingers am I holding up?”
“Three.”
“Well, you’ve passed the vision test, so I’m assuming you saw the sign that said ‘Do Not Enter.’ Allow me to interpret it for you. This area is off-limits. So would you be so kind as to go back on deck where you belong?”
“It’s okay,” Gabriel said. “I’m with the caterer. Mr. Trager sent me down to get dinner orders from the crew.”
The man laughed. “Dinner orders? Maybe for the guys on the bridge, but Mr. Trager does not make a habit of serving dinner in the engine room.”
“My mistake,” Gabriel said, “but hey, man, we got food up the wazoo in the galley. You want me to bring you down a tray-shrimp, chicken, fillet of beef?”
The man frowned. “My head says no, but my stomach just chimed in with ‘you can do that?’”
“Can and will,” Gabriel said. “Heck, you and your buddies down here are probably the hardest-working guys on the whole boat. Just tell me what you want, and I’ll bring it to you.”
“Some of everything, heavy on the fillet of beef, and maybe a cold beer.”
“You got it. How many guys are working down here?”
“Three. Me, myself, and I,” the seaman said, laughing. “Name’s Charles Connor.”
“Well, Mr. Connor, you guys deserve at least two beers apiece,” Gabriel said, “so how about I bring you down a six-pack?”
“Thanks, but one’s my limit down here.”
“This is some major setup,” Gabriel said. “How do you run it all by yourself?”
“I don’t run it at all. Captain Campion runs it by computer from the bridge. Normally, once we’re under way, nobody even works in the engine room, but we got a full boat and the booze is flowing, so the captain sent me down here to keep an eye out for happy wanderers.”
“You mean like guys who can’t read the ‘Do Not Enter’ sign?” Gabriel said.
“More like horny couples, three sheets to the wind, who see the sign and figure they’ll sneak down and join the Hudson River version of the Mile High Club.”
“I’ll go get your dinner,” Gabriel said. “Hey, what’s that big noisy thing behind you?”
Connor turned around. “That’s a thruster. It’s what makes the ship-”
Once again The Chameleon squeezed the trigger of the stun baton, dumping an electrical charge of a million volts into his unsuspecting victim’s nervous system. The seaman dropped to the floor, numb and helpless.
“I lied about bringing you dinner,” Gabriel said, putting the baton back in its holster and taking out a fresh roll of duct tape.
Gabriel had no idea how many of the crew would be working down here, so this scene hadn’t been too tightly scripted. But considering it was all ad-lib, he thought both he and Charles Connor had done remarkably well.
Chapter 74
“We can’t climb up seven stories,” I said, “but we can climb down one. What’s on the eighth floor?”
As soon as I asked, I saw a spark in Kylie’s eyes. Hope.
“Dino. Dino Provenzano. He’s an artist. He works at home.” She turned to the door and yelled back at Spence. “I love you. We’re coming to get you.”
We took off for the stairwell. “Dino was the first to buy an apartment here,” she said, bounding up the steps. “He grabbed the top floor front, which has the best light: 8A.”
Within seconds, she was banging on the apartment door directly above hers. “Dino, it’s Kylie. Open up. Emergency.”
Nobody answered. Kylie kept banging and yelling. “Dino! Coralei! Anybody? NYPD. Emergency!”
Ten precious seconds later, Dino flung the door open, a paint-stained rag in his other hand.
“Dino, there’s a bomb in my apartment,” Kylie said, pushing her way in. “Get Coralei and get out.”
“She’s not here. She’s out walking the dog. What did you say was in your apartment?”
“A bomb.”
“Jesus,” he said.
“Ring all the bells,” Kylie said. “Warn the neighbors and empty the building. Then call 911 and tell them to clear the streets and evacuate the building next door. And tell them they only have fourteen minutes. You have a cell phone?”
Dino patted his pants pockets. “Yes,” he said, and started to go back inside. “Just let me get my laptop.”
“Get out. Now,” she said, shoving him into the hallway and slamming the door.
The living room was sparse. The furniture and the carpeting were all monochromatic shades of beige and earth tones. It was the walls that brought the space to life. Three of them were filled with color. At least twenty paintings. If they were Dino’s, he was damn good.
Kylie ran to the fourth wall. It was almost all glass. She pulled open a sliding door, stepped out onto a typically tiny New York City apartment terrace, and looked over the railing.
“It’s a fifteen-foot drop to our terrace,” she said. “I can do it. Oh shit-”
“What?”
“Rope. We need rope. Look around.”
There were no drapes-nothing at all in the living room that we could use to lower someone to the terrace below.
“Check the kitchen,” Kylie said. “I’ll try his studio.” We took off in opposite directions.
The kitchen was all stainless steel-neat, organized, orderly-not the kind of place where someone would store fifteen feet of rope. I was going through the motions of opening drawers and cabinet doors when Kylie called out.
“Zach, I’ve got it. In the bedroom. I need help.”
I headed toward the sound of her voice, figuring I’d find her ripping the sheets off the bed and tying them together. But I was wrong. She was kneeling on a dresser, her hands under a flat-screen TV that was mounted on the wall. It was a monster, at least five feet across.
“Help me get this down,” she said, grabbing one side. I jumped up on the dresser, grabbed the other side, and we lifted it up and off its mount.
It must have weighed sixty or seventy pounds. Kylie set her end down on the top of the dresser, and then, without warning, let go. I got caught off balance. I couldn’t hang on to it on my own, and the TV went crashing to the hardwood floor.
Kylie didn’t care. She grabbed onto the cable that was coming out of the back of the set.
“Co-ax cables,” she said. “Heavy-duty, all copper and pl
astic. It’s probably stronger than rope.”
“Probably stronger?”
“We’re about to find out,” she said. “The whole place is wired, but it’s all behind the wall. Help me rip it out.”
She yanked the cable hard enough that three feet of it tore right through the Sheetrock.
I grabbed on, and we pulled together, chewing up the wall from one end of the bedroom to the other, then up to the ceiling and into the next room.
“Get a knife!” she yelled.
I dug a small Swiss Army knife out of my pocket.
“Bigger,” she said, tearing at the thick cable.
I ran back to the kitchen, pulled a large Henckels knife from the wooden block on the counter. By the time I got back, Kylie had at least forty feet of co-ax exposed. I cut through it in one whack.
We ran back to the terrace and lashed it to the metal railing.
“You stay and secure this end,” Kylie said. “I’m going down.”
“No,” I said. “I’m going.”
“Zach, I weigh less, and it’s my husband.”
“Damn it, Kylie, you can’t control every goddamn thing!” I shouted. “When you get into that apartment, do you even have a clue about how to dismantle that booby trap?”
“I…no, but I figured I could…”
“Did you ever take a weeklong course in demolitions at Quantico?”
She shook her head. “No.”
“Then shut up and wrap this cable around me,” I said. “I’m going down.”
Chapter 75
We found the halfway point of the co-ax cable and wrapped it four times around the terrace railing. Kylie took one end, I took the other, and we braided them together.
I found a pair of work gloves in Dino’s studio and put them on. Then the two of us grabbed the end of the cable, backed up into the living room, and pulled as hard as we could.
It held.
“Ready?” she said.
I threw one leg over the railing.
“Eleven minutes. Go,” she said.
I swung my other leg over, jammed my toes into the narrow space under the bottom rail, and lowered the cable. It dropped at least five feet past Kylie’s terrace. I grabbed on for dear life, wrapped my left foot around the cable for stability, looked up to the sky, and whispered the last few words of the Policeman’s Prayer.
Please, Lord, through it all, be at my side.
There was no time for the rest. I lifted my right foot and stepped off into space.
The cable snapped taut. Once again, it held. And there I was, dangling eight stories above lower Manhattan, my life depending on all the skills I had learned in Coach Coviello’s gym class twenty years ago.
I relaxed my death grip and began to walk monkey-style, keeping my knees bent and my hands down, using my legs to keep me from sliding.
I heard screams from the street below. Then another one from above: “Zach, don’t look down! Focus.”
I focused. I looked straight ahead. All I could see was red brick. I moved slowly, hand over hand, inch by inch, brick by brick.
And then I saw a glimmer of glass-the top of Kylie’s terrace door. Another few feet and I was looking into her living room. Finally, my left foot connected with something solid. I lowered my right foot. Contact.
I looked down. I was standing on the seventh floor terrace railing.
I inhaled deeply, blew out hard, and with both legs on the safe side of the rail, I lowered myself to the terrace floor.
“I made it,” I said, looking up.
“I’m coming down,” Kylie said. “Nine and a half minutes.”
The glass door was unlocked. I took off my gloves, slid it open, and stepped carefully into the living room.
The Skype image I had seen on Kylie’s cell phone had been horrendous enough. But being in the same room with Spence-naked, bleeding, and taped to a chair-was that much worse. I’m not sure Kylie could have handled it on her own, which is why I lied to her about taking a demo course at Quantico.
“Spence, it’s Zach,” I said. “Don’t even turn around.”
He let out a long moan.
I stood behind him and stared at the front door. I had been right about the booby trap. Five feet to the right of the doorjamb, a block of C4 was molded to a table leg. There was a wire running from the doorknob to the charge.
Like a lot of cops, I had a few hours of basic post-9/11 bomb training under my belt. I didn’t know a lot, but I knew that if Kylie had opened the front door, it would have triggered the detonator, and the three of us would have been blown apart in an instant.
Spence couldn’t get out of the apartment until someone disarmed it. I sure as hell hoped I was that someone, because right now I was the only option he had left.
Chapter 76
Mickey had been right-rigging the explosives was not complicated. But it sure as hell wasn’t easy peasy. Sweat poured off The Chameleon’s face, and the white shirt under his waiter’s uniform was soaked through as he inserted the remote detonator into the C4 on the starboard side of the yacht.
“One down, two to go,” he said to the semiconscious seaman who was trussed, gagged, and secured to a six-inch-wide stainless-steel pipe. “According to my friend Mickey, all it takes is three perfectly placed charges, and you can sink this tub without a ripple. Let’s hope he was right, God rest his soul.”
The man pulled hard at his bonds, straining the veins on his neck and forehead.
“Don’t do that,” Gabriel said. “You’ll give yourself a stroke or some kind of a brain hemorrhage. Relax. Stick around for the fireworks.”
Connor stopped squirming.
“Good,” The Chameleon said. “You know, if you and I had met under different circumstances-I don’t know, like in a bar or something-I bet we’d have hit it off great. We’ve got a lot in common. You’re down here in the goddamn boiler room and all the stars are up on deck. That’s the kind of shit I have to put up with. I’m either a guy reading a newspaper in the back of a bus, or a businessman getting out of an elevator, or a dead soldier on a battlefield. Never the hero. Never the big star. You know what I’m talking about?”
The man’s only response was the tear that streamed silently over his duct-taped mouth and onto the floor.
“I know,” The Chameleon said. “It’s a crying shame the way they treat us. But that’s all going to change. Tomorrow morning’s newspaper, you and me-we’re going to be headliners.”
Chapter 77
Spence’s breathing was labored. One look at his bloodied face and I knew why. His mouth was taped shut, and his nose had been shattered. This time my little pocketknife was more than enough. I pried out the blade and cut through the layers of duct tape behind his head.
I had no time to be delicate. “This is going to hurt,” I said and yanked the tape off hard, taking hair and skin with it.
Spence hungrily sucked in a mouthful of air. “Bomb to the right of the front door,” he gasped.
“I see it,” I said, walking over to it. “Not very sophisticated.”
“Zach, Spence, what’s going on in there?” It was Kylie on the other side of the door.
“He’s okay,” I said, which was seriously stretching the truth. “Hang on. I’m trying to disarm the booby trap. In fact, I want you to stand in the stairwell…just in case.”
“I thought you said you knew what you were doing?” she said.
“I do,” I lied. “It’s just a precaution. Now, back off, dammit.”
“I’m going. Hurry up. We have less than eight minutes.”
Spence’s face was contorted with pain. I had no idea how he might help, but I was out of my element, and since I was about to do something that could kill us both, I figured two heads were better than one.
“Spence, can you focus?” I said. “I need you to track my thinking.”
“I’ll try.”
“Okay, the front door is the trigger. Opening it pulls the trip wire. Trip wire activates the blasting cap
.”
“And then we’re dead. Makes sense.”
“Now logic would dictate that if I pinch the wire and cut the piece closest to the door…”
“You take the door out of the equation,” Spence said. “No trigger.”
I pinched the trip wire between my thumb and index finger.
“Do it,” he said.
I cut the wire. One half fell to the floor. I opened my fingers and let go of the other half.
“We’re still here,” he said.
I opened the door and yelled out for Kylie.
She ran down the hall, then stepped into the apartment cautiously, eyes glued to her husband.
“Don’t go in any farther,” I said. “When Benoit Skyped us, the block of C4 he held up had a timer. The one I disabled doesn’t. There’s got to be another bomb somewhere.”
“We don’t have time to look for it,” Kylie said. “Let’s just get Spence out of here.”
“You can’t,” Spence said.
“Yes, we can,” Kylie said. “We’ve got six minutes and twelve seconds, and we’re getting you out of this building if we have to carry you out stark naked, chair and all.”
Spence’s body started to tremble. “You can’t get me out,” he repeated.
“Why?”
His eyes stared straight down at his feet. “That’s why.”
I followed his gaze. I hadn’t seen it before. Probably because there was almost no blood-just small dark stains where Spence’s feet had been nailed to the floor.
Chapter 78
“Oh my God,” Kylie said, kneeling down at Spence’s feet.
“He had a nail gun,” Spence said.
“We have to pry you loose,” she said, putting a hand on his left foot.
Spence’s head and shoulders jerked back hard, and he let out a gut-wrenching scream. “Don’t-don’t touch. Please.”
“Spence, we have to get the nails out.”