by Ben Sanders
He touched Nina’s elbow and said, “Just hang back here a moment.”
He saw Luka moving ahead to where the doormen stood and the view of the road was better, felt his heart skip as a black SUV went past, slow at first and then punching the gas hard as it moved out of sight. He watched Luka track it up the street and then turn away, checking the oncoming cars again. The woman they’d seen in the hallway came out of an elevator behind them, walked past towing her air tank on its trolley, carrying a duffel bag with her other hand. Guys turned and watched—she got as much attention as Nina had—this beautiful woman maybe forty years old, making the air tank a sought-after accessory, not diminishing her cool.
Bobby watched her to the door and said, “We’ll wait here until the car shows up.”
Nina turned and faced him, looking up and making him feel exposed, no protection from his hat brim. She said quietly, “And then what happens?”
Miles Keller
It happened too fast.
In his side mirror he saw Lucy come out of the hotel and turn toward them, ignoring her skew-parked SUV and not hurrying in the slightest, the bag in one hand and her trolley in the other. For a moment, watching her come toward him with her easy walk, he seemed to float out of the stress of the moment, and it was just the image of a woman in a mirror. He had maybe two quiet seconds before he landed again: all the pressures of a safe getaway thumping back, amplified by absence.
He told the driver to open the trunk, and as the guy hit the button, Miles saw Lucy turn and head back for the hotel, as if his order had been the cue for cold feet. He watched her walk around the hood of the Navigator and unlock the driver’s door, and then heave the tank up onto the seat.
What the hell are you doing?
He dug in his pocket for the burner, thinking he could call her back. But in reaching for the phone he took his eyes off the mirror, and on the street ahead, one block up, he saw a black SUV idling curbside, and a guy with a gun standing next to it. No, two guys: the car’s rear door was open, and a second man jumped out, a copy of the first: head-to-toe black from mask to Doc Martens, and carrying the same weapon. They had a submachine gun each—MP5s, Miles thought. The second man slammed the door as the SUV took off, rear end sitting low and its tires squealing as it angled back into traffic. The first guy had his weapon up, swinging it to clear the sidewalk, passersby tripping backward with palms raised, like recoiling from brutal heat.
He felt the drop—the plunge into horror—and his first thought was:
They’re for me.
It was karma wrought perfect, the sort of thing that happened when you made a man your prisoner.
But they were moving now, and not in his direction—he watched them run through traffic toward the deadlocked westbound lanes—and Miles saw his driver wasn’t in on it. He was panicked, breathing “shit” as he glanced around, as if looking for the button that said EASY EXIT.
Miles said, “Don’t move.”
It was a weird sight on this kitschy stretch: cloned dark gunmen on the run, slightly hunched with weapons raised—cramped two-hand grips on their little MP5s. They stopped at a black Mercedes, guns aimed broadside from three feet, one man each at the front and rear windows. Miles’s driver threw an arm up in pointless reflex, and the noise as the guns fired was a jackhammer rattle, the Merc’s windows copping a full-auto blast, the shooters’ aim swinging for cabin-wide damage.
Miles knew that parts of him ran colder than in other people, and it was those parts telling him right now that he could just sit and wait this out. He’d be coming in late anyway, now the shooting had started. But then there’d be afterward, and afterward needed thought as well: how the moral value of every moment of his life could be summed, and the bottom line would be black or red when he ran the numbers late at night in the dark.
The tracksuit man was hunched forward, hands on his head, putting faith in plane-crash protocol. The mayhem was only seconds old, but the Merc was pockmarked and windowless, hunkered down on blown tires as Miles opened his door and brought the Glock up two-handed.
The noise on the street was a nightmare carnival, shouts and screams, and car horns to back them up. The gunfire had stopped, but the echo was still fading, rat-a-tat rolling down Canal Street. Miles laid the Glock across the Cadillac’s roof for balance, lined up the nearer shooter, and squeezed off two rounds. The guy was moving again as Miles fired, and both shots went wide, the Merc’s rear quarter panel notching two more holes. He corrected with a leftward jerk, but held his fire as the gunmen ran through stopped traffic, a slalom between bystanders as people ditched their cars to get away. Miles swung his aim, and then ducked as he saw the lead man break cover and line him up with the MP5.
He heard the gun’s chatter first and then the crash of breaking glass, the car’s windows falling in a curtain of white pebbles and the chassis listing suddenly as a tire went out with a boom.
A second’s pause, and the world was quieter post-gunfire, noises softened by the ringing in his ears. He risked a glance above the door, looked past jagged windows to see both shooters still running, the lead guy swapping out his magazine.
They were headed for the hotel.
Miles stood and felt glass slide off his back. He couldn’t fire again—the street was packed, and all he saw was collateral. And shit—he couldn’t see Lucy. The Lincoln was still there at the curb, and the driver’s door was half-open.
No air tank on the seat—she must have gone back into the lobby.
He saw a doorman sprinting in a crouch with a hand on his hat, pedestrians dodging stopped cars to get away. It was like a human mimic of a blast wave, crowds fleeing radially from the terror.
He was too far back.
He watched from fifty feet away as the shooters reached the hotel, and went in with guns raised.
Bobby Deen
He heard shots outside—machine-gun fire—and saw the whole lobby tense. The crowd ducked as one, like one of those dumb flash-mob dances, everyone losing two inches and then coming back to full height.
Nina said, “That’ll be for us.”
Bobby didn’t answer. People wasted time looking around, wanting a consensus on next moves, and then it was a race for the elevators.
He saw they didn’t have a chance.
There was already a rush behind them, and there wasn’t time to fight through. All very well keeping back from the door, but it had put them in no-man’s-land. He saw the air-tank lady again, hurrying with a group of people who’d come in off the street, and she wasn’t quite so cool this time, looking back across her shoulder toward the noise, unsure about where to go.
He heard more shots—a pistol followed by machine-gun fire—and he pushed Nina back behind a column as he drew his gun. The .38 felt like a fucking toy.
She said, “Don’t miss, whatever you do.”
He looked for Luka and saw him on the sidewalk, arm raised as he tried to shove his way inside. He must have got brave when he heard the noise, and then had second thoughts.
Bobby waited with his shoulder to the column, frantic people running past. The vibe was full panic, and he knew the shooters must be close. People were tripping and then crawling to get away. It looked like world news, footage from the Middle East, somewhere under UN sanction.
He saw Luka with his gun raised over by the check-in desk, cheek on his shoulder as he found his aim, and then the machine gun started up again, deafening in the stone-clad lobby, metal chatter and the dings of lead on concrete, veneer chips going everywhere.
People screamed.
He saw Luka go down, a red stitch line up his front, the guy still firing as he fell backward, glass in the street-front windows crazed with spiderwebs. Bobby’s view cleared, people hunkered fetal and letting him see the shooters: masked guys all in black, submachine guns held tight and high.
Nina was still there with him, close enough she could tell him things with just a look:
Kill them.
Save my life.
This was what she’d meant, the New York equivalent of blood in the water.
The fact that she was standing told him he could take them on. She wasn’t prone, making last-ditch prayers. She knew he could do it. He was right there with her.
At this range, she’d be safe forever.
He targeted the nearer guy and fired, hit torso but didn’t put him down. He heard a shot from the street and saw the second guy drop, and the nearer man was turning as well, bringing his gun around and moving sideways for cover, and Bobby saw that goddamn robbery cop, Miles Keller, coming in the front door with a Glock.
TWENTY-TWO
NEW YORK, NY
Miles Keller
He could see it in his mind before he got there, the lobby packed with victims and Lucy lying maimed. She came to him in nightmare glimpses, dazed and supine, mouthing things he couldn’t hear.
He dodged and shoved pedestrians, heard more gunfire from twenty feet away—a pistol crack this time, and then a machine gun in response.
Reaching the hotel entrance, he felt like the center of everything, like this was madness with him in mind. He saw bystanders watching from a block away, people hands-to-mouth in disbelief and others with their phones raised to get the footage. He could die now but have an e-life forever: searchable on YouTube until the end of the internet.
He had the Glock up as he went through the door, saw the lobby above gunsights, and with adrenal clarity: smashed glass on the ground and brass casings mixed through, a crowd of people by the elevators, most of them crouched or prone. He saw a guy lying bloodied at the check-in desk, someone else beside a column with a pistol raised, the two black-clad shooters closing in, wreaking bedlam.
Even midcrisis, everything breakneck and elapsing in split time, there was still part of him worried there’d be a bit to explain—why he hadn’t given them a blood-free option, whether it was a good idea to open fire with a crowd right there in front of him.
But what-ifs were a dead end even at the best of times, and right now he could see the nearer guy only ten feet away, an easy shot even with a borrowed Glock, and Miles lined up the guy’s collar and put a bullet through the back of his neck, just below his balaclava.
The bang and the red cloud came at once, and then the body was pitching forward, the guy’s arms slack and his open hands welcoming the floor. Miles kept the gun level and twitched left to aim at the second man, saw the guy was fast, turning at the sound of the shot, and the MP5 swinging with him. Miles waited a half-second—a long stretch of heart-in-mouth crisis time—delaying for a squarer target, and then went for it as the guy came quarter-profile.
His first shot hit the man’s chest, and Miles let the muzzle climb slightly with the recoil, put the next round through the guy’s nose and finally dropped him.
The dead trigger finger must have twitched on its way to heaven, because the corpse was firing as it fell, the MP5 in one hand shooting on full auto, tracing out a half-circle low to high, chips of tiled floor and concrete dancing.
People screamed with the last zombie volley, and Miles switched his aim to the man by the column, yelled at him to drop his gun. The guy seemed unperturbed with a weapon pointed at him, and he didn’t rush anything: put a hand on his tie and knelt carefully as he laid his pistol on the floor. He looked sharp in his suit, and he had a little hat that came low across his eyes. The clothes were spotless somehow, and with his calm demeanor and no trace of blood or dust he was an odd addition to the scene: like some emissary from another world, dispatched to study conflict.
People were still screaming, others on the ground or in shock, someone giving chest compressions to the bloodied man at the check-in desk. Maybe Miles was in shock too, the way he was hung up on this man in the hat. But it was hard to see how he fit the picture, whether he was a target or just happened to be there with a gun. He wasn’t a cop: a cop wouldn’t just stand there taking Miles’s measure with this backdrop of calamity, but then Nina Stone stepped out from behind the column, and things made sense.
The catastrophe was hers.
The killers wanted Nina. Who else was worthy of broad-daylight murder?
She saw him and waved, lifting a hand to him as she bent to collect a duffel bag. Shell casings and chips of concrete on the floor, three dead people, maybe more, and she took it all in her stride. Miles’s gun was still raised, aiming at the man in the hat, and the guy nodded slightly and touched the brim with one finger so it hid his eyes, and Nina’s look said: Isn’t it funny how this is all for me?
She took the hat man’s arm and they turned together—a gentleman and his lady, a bizarre sight amid the carnage—and Miles watched them cross the lobby until someone shouted, “Miles!”
He turned and there was Lucy, looking terrified behind her air mask. Her expression alone was a metric of how bad this was. How many times had he seen her looking anything but calm?
“Miles, what the fuck is going on?”
The mask was fogged, like she’d been hyperventilating. He pushed her hand away as she touched his wrist, trying to make him lower the gun. He saw she had his bag of money, and he realized he hadn’t thought about it since the shooting started. He’d come in wanting to save her. He didn’t care about his cash. That was one thing he could cling to at least: whatever they said about his actions, he hadn’t done this for the profit.
She was pointing now, but still looked ashen: “Jesus, you killed them. Look, they’re both dead.”
That was a new tone from her. She was normally the woman who’d seen everything.
She said, “How did you do that?”
He didn’t answer. He knew they had to leave, but instincts were at odds. Police training said secure the scene, ensure the dead were dead, help with first aid. But his inner heist man said he had to split.
The heist man won.
The heist man knew the cost of waiting. He put the gun in his coat and picked up the bag, grabbed Lucy’s wrist with his other hand.
“What happened? What’s going on—”
“We’ve got to go.”
“Look, they’re taking the car.”
He’d noticed already: Nina and her backup man in Lucy’s Lincoln Navigator, Nina at the wheel. But there was nothing he could do, and he watched the car take off eastbound, straddling the centerline to make it through the gridlock.
They came out onto the sidewalk, passed a concierge heading back inside, the guy walking with his hands on his head, face blank, moving so slow he seemed hypnotized.
There was a crowd of onlookers lining the far side of Canal, half of them with phones raised, like the stopped traffic was a grand parade that would start again soon. He saw the busted Mercedes with a crowd of people at the driver’s door, the shot-up Cadillac—
Shit, the Cadillac.
He glanced left and right, only a second’s indecision, but Lucy caught it anyway.
“Are you okay? Miles?”
On their left were more onlookers, flashing lights farther off and sirens sounding thinly. There was a subway entrance a block away, right there on West Broadway. Thirty seconds, and they’d be gone.
Miles said, “Shit. Dammit.”
“What—”
He said, “Take the money and get out of here.”
“What?”
He dug the burner phone from his coat and dialed Stanton. He passed her the phone. “If he doesn’t pick up, call him again. His name’s Wynn Stanton. He’ll help you out until I’m done here.”
“What are you doing—”
He cut in with a yell: “Take a train uptown—wherever—just go. And call Stanton.”
She said something else, but he couldn’t hear her through the mask.
He ran to the Cadillac.
The car looked like it had been dropped fifteen stories: glass everywhere, three tires blown. He opened the driver’s door, and the tracksuit man slumped and sagged against his belt. He was shot in his chest and stomach, eyes closed, drooling as his head hung forward.
Miles said, “You can’t die on me now. Jesus, don’t die.”
He leaned into the cabin, the blood smell thick and coppery, unclicked the guy’s belt. He sagged into Miles’s arms, head lolling like a sleeping child’s. Miles lowered him to the road, kicking aside glass, trying to make clear space.
The guy was mouthing something, focus distant as his lips moved. Miles stripped his coat off and bunched it on the guy’s chest wound.
The guy breathed, “Bent cop,” and went still.
“Shit. Don’t die. Don’t die.”
He checked for a pulse but didn’t get anything. He started chest compressions. Police showed up and had to pull him away. He watched from the sidewalk as tactical medics put the guy on a stretcher and loaded him in an ambulance. A minute later the detectives were there, asking for his weapon, and he knew he’d be going nowhere for a while.
TWENTY-THREE
NEW YORK, NY
Bobby Deen
Seeing Keller’s name in the apartment earlier lessened the shock of seeing him in person. The guy was in Nina’s orbit somehow, but the moment still had a dreamlike quality: Keller in the hotel lobby with what looked like a Glock, the man who’d killed Jack Deen now coming to Bobby’s aid. It was perfect irony that he’d probably never click to.
The guy looked like he was undercover as a hobo: long hair and a beard, aviator sunglasses, knee-length gray coat. Bobby watched him put the guys down in less than three seconds—one round for the first man and then two fast shots on the second, not quite a double tap.
It occurred to him obviously, that right now was the perfect chance to nail the guy. He was only fifteen feet away. He could just drill him and say it was an accident, claim he lost focus in the melee, aimed for a balaclava and hit Keller by mistake. Tragic. But the guy was so fast, sighting on Bobby before the second corpse had hit the floor, the Glock snapping up and ready for a headshot.