The Equalizer

by Michael Sloan

  McCall walked to the first booth and glanced around. Laddie was serving drinks to the boisterous table. The two servers, Amanda and Gina, were picking up more orders. Sherry was ushering a couple to a booth at the back. McCall leaned down, felt under the table at the first booth, and removed the silver bug. He slipped it into his pocket and looked out the window. He could just make out Katia’s figure striding down West Broadway. He didn’t have to see her face to know she was crying. Isolated, disoriented, afraid.

  There were too many like her.

  McCall’s shift was up. He shed his black Bentleys apron, put on his sports coat, and gave Laddie, who was back behind the bar, a wave. He kissed Sherry on the cheek—another ritual—and walked out of the restaurant.

  McCall picked up the tail on Broome Street. Chase Granger was about two hundred yards behind him. A raucous crowd spilled out of the Broadway Tavern. McCall mingled among them, stepped into the lobby of a fleapit hotel called The Excelsior, came out a side entrance onto Mercer Street, cut across to Broadway, and by the time he reached Grand Street there was no sign of the gregarious would-be Realtor.

  They needed to brush up on their shadowing skills at The Company.

  When McCall put the key into his apartment door the hairs stood up on the back of his neck. This time he had the Sig Sauer 227 in his jacket. He took it out, opened the door, closed it silently behind him, and stepped into the muted darkness of the living room.

  Kostmayer sat in the armchair waiting for him.

  McCall lowered the Sig Sauer.

  “You want a key?” he asked ironically.

  Kostmayer shook his head. “I don’t think you’d be a fun roommate. Brahms called me. He said you were going to rescue a damsel in distress tonight. He worries about you.”

  McCall crossed to the wet bar and poured himself a Glenfiddich.

  “This isn’t Company business.”

  “I know. But I’ve got your back, McCall. Just like always.”

  McCall nodded. He’d been alone for a long time and didn’t like bringing someone else into his careful world, not even Mickey Kostmayer. But hadn’t he already involved old Sam Kinney and Brahms? It was difficult to operate in a vacuum.

  “This has to be a single mission,” McCall said. “With no deadly force.”

  “They’re going to be shooting to kill. Whoever they are. They’re not going to give up their hostage without a fight.”

  “The odds against a friend of mine, Katia Rossovkaya, have to be evened up. But no one can die, or they’ll have no choice but to kill her. I can’t protect her or her daughter twenty-four-seven. Her situation has to go back to what it was. Without her having to perform some favors she’d rather not perform.”

  “How bad are these bad guys?”

  “Sexual intimidation, extortion, probably murder.”

  “Oh, really bad guys. Even if you can make an extraction tonight, what makes you think they won’t try again to get what they want?”

  “I’m going to talk to them about it.”

  Kostmayer nodded. “That should do the trick.” He got to his feet. “I’ll get you some weaponry. Jimmy’s still around. Works for a security company. When do I need to be back here?”

  “Before midnight.”

  “That doesn’t give me a lot of time.”

  “Be creative.”

  Kostmayer walked to the short hallway leading to the apartment door, then turned back.

  “I’m sorry about Elena.”

  McCall nodded.

  Kostmayer opened the apartment door.

  “Have you got a car?” McCall asked.

  “I can get one.”

  “Meet me outside the apartment building at 11:30 P.M. Don’t let anyone know what you’re doing. Jimmy will have a limited need to know. If Brahms calls again, tell him you talked me out of a rescue attempt.”

  “Oh, yeah, he’ll believe that. Maybe I’ll tell him to carefully watch the chimney on Christmas Eve. Later, McCall.”

  Kostmayer left the apartment.

  McCall took a swallow of Glenfiddich. It tasted of warm spice and honey.

  “Yes, later,” he said softly.

  CHAPTER 15

  Kostmayer pulled his black Chrysler Delta rental to the back of the Kore 58 Hotel on East Fifty-eighth Street. It was almost 1:00 A.M. in the morning and there was no traffic on the Street and no pedestrians. A huddled figure lay sleeping in a doorway—could have been a man or a woman—but he or she did not stir. That would have taken an earthquake. Kostmayer got out of the driver’s side, McCall the passenger’s side. Both of them were dressed in black. Kostmayer opened the trunk and picked up a Yankees sports bag, which he rested on the edge. He took a package wrapped in a plastic sheet from the bag and unwrapped a tranquilizer gun and a plastic container with three darts nestled in it.

  “This tranquilizer gun is state of the art, according to Jimmy,” Kostmayer said. “Experimental model. It delivers one of these ballistic hypodermic needles filled with a chemical compound. He gave me three options: paralytic, anaesthetic, or sedative. Personally I’d have gone for lethal, but he didn’t give me that choice, so I took anaesthetic. When it comes into contact with flesh the steel ball located above the plunger is slammed forward to deliver the dose.”

  “What’s in them?” McCall asked.

  “Curare. You know, that stuff the natives in Africa dipped their spears into before they threw them at Stanley and Livingstone. Curare is an alkaloid and is not actually toxic, but mix it with certain tree barks of the genus Strychnos and it becomes a virulent poison.”

  “Strychnos as in strychnine.”

  “Right. So we got some of that in these hypos, some nicotine, I swear Jimmy just crushed one of his cigarettes into each one, and some other ingredient that Jimmy wouldn’t tell me. This is a top-secret, illegal substance that would get Jimmy—and us—twenty years in a Federal penitentiary if anyone finds out we’ve taken them. There’s also a pinch of, and Jimmy insisted I write this down, because he knew you’d want to know…” He took a crumpled piece of paper out of the breast pocket of his shirt. “Phenyl-1-cyclohexyl-Piperidine.”

  “And that would be?”

  “Monkey tranquilizer.”

  “But it works on human beings?”

  “He says it will knock ’em out for an hour and a half if the dart isn’t pulled out of their skin right away. If it is, who knows? Use them judiciously. Jimmy could only get three.”

  “Good enough.”

  McCall put the tranquilizer gun in his belt and the package of three bloated tranquilizer darts into the pocket of his black jacket. Kostmayer handed him what looked like a pair of swimming goggles.

  “Night glasses, green background, three-times magnification, thiry-seven-millimeter objective lens up to a hundred yards.”

  McCall took them, slipped them into another pocket.

  “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.