Leeds United’s American debut was a true to-do of the old school, so it was filled with posh expat Brits, and even richer real Brits from the other side of the pond, in the Northern Territories.
There were obnoxious Brit big oil crooks and obnoxious Brit big media crooks and obnoxious Brit too-big-to-fail central banking crooks who lent them other people’s money. Coming in, they’d almost knocked down a former Brit supermodel famous for getting busted snorting heroin on the prime minister’s plane. There was even an old rock star from the early eighties drunk off his ass in one corner, slurring into the ear of a bitchy Brit magazine publisher who talked on the news shows from time to time.
It was the wife’s idea, of course. An old friend of hers from boarding school had married a Leeds boy who’d stepped in it and was actually a minor owner of Leeds United. So here they were. His wife was all about status, social networking, moving up the ladder. He couldn’t care less. Whatever she wanted. He was no dummy. As it turned out, “Happy wife, happy life” applied even to hired killers.
Besides, he was in a fairly good disguise, having dyed his hair silver gray to go along with his fake goatee. With some artfully placed stage makeup, he easily looked ten years older than his thirty-nine years.
They had done their homework. They could squeeze in a quick drink or two now that everything was set up. Especially for the one and only Leeds United.
Then the lady of the private suite came by and grabbed his wife, and he stepped out onto the field balcony, from which he saw that Leeds U was inexplicably still tied up with the American hacks. He had to say, the stadium was impressive. The vastness of it, the scope, and yet everything clean and crisp and polished, no expense spared. He looked out at the white scalloped frieze that rimmed the top of the venue, down the bowl of the terraced seating that increased in price the closer you got to the field.
Something Ancient Rome about it. All the different classes in separated seating. Senators and knights in the front row, sweaty plebes and slaves back in the bleachers. Come one and all to cheer the bloody circus.
“We might be scum, but we never run! Leeds, Leeds, Leeds!” said the wife’s friend’s boorish ass of a hubby, Terry Rich Jerk, as he came out onto the terrace in his smart tailored jacket and posh jeans.
“You know, I haven’t been this pumped up since me and the boys sent a manhole cover through a pub window in Millwall,” he said, reeking of Scotch as he clapped the British assassin on the back.
He was referring, as so many others liked to do, to the legendary brawl between Leeds and Millwall fans in 2007. Only problem was that Terry, like so many others, hadn’t been there, the assassin knew.
As one of the top head breakers in the Leeds service crew—the gang of hooligans who had supported Leeds U since the midnineties—he never missed a game when he wasn’t abroad.
There’d been no manhole covers through pub windows that day, but he and a few chums had set a chip van alight when things started getting interesting. Come to think of it, he’d actually broken a K-9 cop’s arm with a length of black pipe when her evil bloody dog bit his friend.
The British assassin smiled as he lifted his flute.
“The good ol’ days,” he said.
“Sally was saying you were in the Royal Marines, was it?”
The British assassin nodded vaguely.
Terry peered at him with his red face.
“What are you in now? Corporate security?”
“Executive protection, they call it these days,” the assassin said. “Ya need an armored S-Class? Tell Sally I know a guy.”
The British assassin looked at Terry as he laughed. He was an upper VP at the Bank of England. The Bank of bloody England! Who the fat sot had had to strangle in order to finagle his way into the upper realms of finance—where the real players pulled the strings, loaning to governments and setting the currency rates as they saw fit, out of thin fucking air—was beyond him. And the whole government-approved scam run for everyone in the small exclusive club getting richer and richer 24/7/365, year in, year out, no matter if rain fell from the sky or buckets of burning lava.
“It’s shit, New York,” Terry mused as he drunkenly looked out at the crowd. “Innit? I mean, London is shit, too, but this is worse. Now they’re playing football like it’s some kind of progress. Don’t they know bloody Liberia has football? It’s like they actually want to become a third world craphole. Anyway, where’d you grow up? In Leeds proper?”
“Off the York Road in Seacroft. You?”
“The other side. In Bramley. You’re in Brighton now, Sally said?”
“Yep,” he lied.
“Well, you’ll have to come by the place in town some Friday night and reminisce.”
The place in town, the assassin knew, being a town house mansion in the Boltons in Chelsea, where the gated piles started at about twenty million quid.
“That sounds like it might be nice, Terry,” he said as he gave another smile.
“Who knows? Maybe we could do a little business,” Terry said with a wink. “You never know when the merc might be in the market for a new machine gun.”
Chapter 69
Some inebriated young woman sloshed half a microbrew onto my shoes as I made my way through row C near the first base side of the main seating level.
At the end of the row, I came down two steps and knelt in the aisle and tapped the shoulder of a light-blue-clad gentleman sitting at the end of row A.
“Hey, how’s it going, buddy?” I said.
CIA operative Matthew Leroux smiled broadly as he looked at me. Beside him, his blond wife, Sophie, also clad in blue, rolled her eyes. They, like Arturo and me, were both sporting some pretty expensive-looking binoculars, I noticed.
“Mike, buddy! Small world!” Leroux said. “You a big New York City soccer fanatic, too?”
“Oh, the biggest,” I said. “I still have my Pelé Cosmos lunch box from second grade.”
“No way. Original owner, huh? I had to buy mine on eBay,” Leroux said. “But I just bought this nifty supporter blue scarf. What do you think?”
“Stylish. It goes with your eyes,” I said. “I see you’ve brought your wife, Leroux.” I turned to her. “I’m Mike. Detective Mike Bennett.”
“Oh, I remember you, Detective,” the pretty blond woman said, peering at me. I peered back at the intelligence in her green eyes. There was something else there, too, I could see. Something still and cold and dangerous.
I suddenly remembered the blood-splattered Hamilton Heights crime scene, and how this petite, friendly woman had more than likely done some of the splattering.
Were all CIA couples this nuts? I thought.
“All in the family, huh?” I said.
“All in every day, Mike,” Leroux said, taking a sip from his Bud Light.
“I hear that the family that watches soccer together stays together.”
Leroux smiled. “Couldn’t agree more,” he said, looking around.
“Think the visiting team has a chance?” I said.
“Overconfidence will get you every time,” Leroux said.
“You would know,” I said.
Sophie, still scanning with her field glasses, suddenly tapped Leroux on the arm.
“Third base side under the upper deck. The luxury booth. Twelve o’clock.”
I lifted my own glasses along with Leroux. I looked over at third base, then panned up. There were half a dozen men standing on a railed balcony. I scanned their faces, then looked at the photo. Then looked back.
“Third from the left?” I said. “Isn’t he a bit old?”
“Same nose and jaw,” Sophie said.
“Same cocky bearing and frown, too,” I said. “What do you think, Matt?”
Leroux focused his glasses, then stood.
“I say close enough for government work, Mike,” he said. “Give me your phone.”
He quickly typed his number into my contacts.
“We’ll take the right flank,
you take the left. Call me when you get on the luxury level. And don’t call for backup yet. This guy’s slippery. He’ll know if something’s up with security.”
“Hold up a second,” I said. “What are you going to stop him with? Your new scarf?”
“Don’t you worry about us,” Leroux said, patting his wife’s bag as they moved out of the row, into the aisle. “Let’s just get up into position before he figures it out.”
Chapter 70
From the deck of the luxury balcony, they heard the Yanks down in the section beneath cheering as one of the Leeds players got a yellow card for a hard tackle.
“Oh, I hope he didn’t rip his panties,” the drunken has-been rock star yelled as he hurled a plastic cup of beer at the blue-clad crowd beneath. “Piss off, ya useless lot of bearded hipster wankers.”
All the men out on the now crowded balcony started laughing at that. Then Terry’s arm was around the British assassin’s shoulder, and he put his over the shoulder of the rock star, and it was like a time machine. As if they were all seventeen again, jumping up and down with a “Leeds, Leeds, Leeds!” chant.
Terry pinched the waitress’s ass as he grabbed another bubbly. The British assassin drained his champagne and took a breath and drank it all in, there in the cold above the crowd.
This was the life. One more trigger pull, and he’d get the sour he’d been sucking all his life out of his mouth, once and for all.
He felt it a second later, right as he placed his empty on the tart’s tray. It was like a tingle along the nape of his neck, a sixth sense.
He glanced around left and right, down into the crowd below, without moving his head.
There were eyes on him.
Of all those eyes, someone was watching him. It was impossible that he knew it, but it was true. He was a watcher, and he knew. He could feel it. He’d seen it happen often enough to targets. The glass would come on them, and they’d suddenly run, dive, duck. There was something psychic between a hunter and his prey.
Now he was the one being spotted.
He looked down to the left, on the stairs two sections below. A guy was heading up them. A guy in a suit, cop all over him.
He sucked in a breath. Felt the hard beat of his heart in his chest as he held the breath.
He’d screwed up. Big-time. They shouldn’t have come here. He needed to get out.
Now.
He slowly stepped back inside. He got his wife’s attention, and then he touched his ear, giving her the bug out signal. They had planned contingencies to split up and regarding where to meet later. At least they weren’t looking for her.
Her eyes widened with a rare expression of fear, and then he was moving for the door.
There was no one yet out in the luxury level hall. The level had its own private elevator on the left, but that would be the first thing they’d be onto.
On his right, he saw a waitress go through a staff-only door. Following her, he saw that there was a small kitchen and wet bar behind it and another door on the other side of the room.
“Sir, can I help you?” the waitress said by the sink as he crossed the room.
He kept going. The new door led to a narrow, slightly curving back corridor. There were garbage bags in a gray plastic rolling bin on the right. As he hurried toward it, he saw the stainless steel threshold of a freight elevator just beyond it.
He poked his head in. Except for a mop and a yellow rolling bucket, the elevator was empty. Better yet, the car’s security key was in the console. He stepped in and turned the key and hit the Main Level button.
The elevator spilled him out into the great hall by gate 6, where he had come in. He faced the cavernous space and headed for the gate, walking steadily toward the dozen stadium security guards standing there.
He swallowed as he got closer and saw that there were two NYPD uniformed cops standing with the guards. He took a breath as he approached and forced himself to glance at them. They weren’t on their radios. They didn’t seem any more alert than usual.
A sudden roar from the crowd boomed out low and muffled in the high-ceilinged concourse.
It’s okay, he mentally coached himself. Just walk out. They don’t know yet. Fifty meters. You can do this. Just calmly walk past them.
He was outside in the plaza, fifty meters on the other side of the ratcheting turnstile, when he heard the yell at his back.
“Stop that guy in the white hoodie! Stop him!”
He didn’t turn around. Instead, he just moved north quickly, yet still passably casually. There were a hundred or so people moving around souvenir vendors and hot dog carts to hide among.
Then, as he reached the corner of 161st Street and River Avenue, where the elevated track was, he suddenly bolted beneath it.
He’d made it across River Avenue and was booking around the corner of the stair entrance for the uptown side of the subway when he almost ran straight into the uniformed beat cop coming at a run from the other side with his partner.
“Hey, yo! Stop!” the beefy Asian cop said, reaching out with his palm.
Instead of stopping, the Brit kept coming, and seized the cop’s hand and yanked hard, breaking two of his fingers. Then he reached and grabbed the baton out of his belt and cracked the other cop, a short Hispanic-looking woman, across the bridge of her nose. He brought the baton whistling back across at the first cop, breaking his wrist, as the Glock the guy was in the process of trying to pull from his holster clattered across the concrete.
The assassin scooped up the semiauto as he ran north up the incline of 161st. He needed to make the corner, he thought, as he flat out sprinted toward it, past shocked pedestrians out in front of the small, ugly run-down stores.
Just the first corner, he thought, his thighs and lungs beginning to burn.
The supersonic crackle of a bullet suddenly passed less than an inch to the left of his ear.
No! They were going to shoot him down in the back as he was running, the bastards!
The first bullet was followed by another that shattered the glass side of the phone kiosk on his left as he passed it.
Then he was around the corner, pulling off his hoodie, sweat flying and arms pumping in the cold as he ran for his life.
Chapter 71
Racing out of the stadium, I ran under the El on River Avenue and was twenty feet behind Matthew Leroux when he suddenly hopped up on the grass median between the lanes on 161st Street.
A woman across the street screamed as he produced a suppressed pistol and began firing right there in broad daylight at the sprinting Brit up the block.
“Are you crazy? Put that damn thing away! You’re going to kill someone!” I yelled, smacking the barrel of his gun down as I arrived.
“You’re right! I am! The president’s assassin!” he yelled back as he hopped off the median and started running north, after the Brit.
“Arturo,” I said as he and Sophie caught up to me. “The Brit just turned the corner and is heading south. You guys head south down River in case he tries to come around the block.”
People were coming out of the stores to gape as I ran up the north side of 161st Street behind Leroux. I thought I was pretty fast for my age, but Leroux was incredible. The commando was pulling away at an embarrassing clip.
I finally followed around the first corner onto Gerard Avenue and spotted Leroux in the middle of the street, already halfway down the block. Then he suddenly turned into an alleyway between two buildings on the right.
As I got to the entrance of the alley, I heard a clatter of metal and looked up. On the third-floor fire escape, I locked eyes with the gray-haired guy I’d just seen on the luxury balcony in Yankee Stadium.
For a split second.
I reared back in a kneeling dive to the asphalt as he pointed the Glock he was clutching. As the passenger window of a parked moving truck I’d just been standing beside exploded glass in my face, I scrambled out of the line of fire, to the right.
When the shock w
ore off enough for me to get my own gun out and hazard another peek upward into the alley, the Brit was gone. Instead, I saw Leroux booking up the fourth-floor stairs of the brown, rusted zigzag of the tenement fire escape like it was an Olympic event, and he was going for the gold.
Instead of taking the fire escape, I ran inside the building, through its lobby to its east side stairwell, and began running up.
An emergency alarm went off when I banged open the roof door, huffing and puffing, a minute later. Gasping for breath, I looked around the roof for Leroux or the Brit. To my right, ten feet away, was the edge of the building’s roof, the gap over a narrow alleyway, and then the edge of the roof of another building, to the north.
Had they hopped the gap? I wondered as I went to the edge, searching the next roof for any sign of either man.
I knew the answer to that was affirmative when I heard a gun pop twice on the other side of some huge AC units on the north building’s rooftop.
My phone rang a second later.
“I got him, Mike!” Leroux screamed. “He’s pinned on top of the building to the north! He’s cornered around the housing for the building’s elevator. Northwest corner. There are no more fire escapes, no more nothing. Call for backup, the cavalry, air strikes—everything you got! I’ll sit tight so he doesn’t go anywhere. Hurry! We finally got him!”
Chapter 72
No, no, bloody no!
The British assassin had come around the housing of the elevator equipment on the roof, hoping for a fire escape. But there was none. Over the edge of the north side of the building was a sheer four-story drop onto the roofs of the buildings on 161st that he’d run past. Worse, at the rear west side of the building, there was a five-story drop down into a concrete alley behind the building.
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