THE RACE WAS ON.
Jack rushed back into the park, where he found Richie and his patrol partner near the base of the Wonder Wheel.
“I spotted Hasni a minute ago,” said Richie, breathless. “He was moving south.”
“We’ve got company. Charlson’s boys.”
“How the hell did they know we were here?”
“I don’t know, but we better find Hasni fast. I don’t think he’s armed, but these goddamned cowboys don’t care—they’ll take him right out.”
He turned to the uniform. “Call in for backup. Here: show them this.” He handed over the photo of their suspect.
The cops fanned out and combed the rest of the park.
No luck.
As they reconvened for a quick powwow on the boardwalk, the sun was bright in their eyes. Jack looked up and down the wooden walkway, which was thick with roving crowds. When it came to trying to spot a suspect out in the open in New York City, only Times Square would be worse.
“Me and my partner will go this way,” Richie told the uniforms. “You two go south.”
“Wait a minute,” Jack said. He was looking down by his feet. Between the wooden slats of the boardwalk, he could just make out some sand and trash below. Back in his youth, he had smooched it up with girls in that shadowy realm—under the boardwalk, just like The Drifters’ song. At that time it had been open to the public and there had even been a few concessions down there. In the mid-nineties the city had raised the level of the beach almost to the southern edge of the walk, and blocked the other side with a fence, but there was obviously still space below.
He looked at the uniforms. “You ever get people down there?”
The patrolwoman shrugged. “Some homeless. They find ways to peel back a corner of the fence or clip a few links.”
Out of the corner of his eye Jack spotted the two feds, who had almost completed their own scan of the amusement park and were moving this way. He figured that if they spotted Hasni up in the crowds, they might not dare to shoot, but under the walkway would be another story. “How can we get down there fast?”
“The easiest way is through Shoot the Freak.”
“Let’s go,” Jack said to Richie. “If you find him,” he warned the uniforms, “don’t let him put his hands anywhere near his knapsack.”
OVER AT THE CRAZY boardwalk amusement, the barker made the two detectives before they even opened their mouths. “I got a license,” he growled, covering his mic with a beefy hand.
“This has nothing to do with you,” Jack said. “We just need to get down below.”
The barker was happy to send the cops on their way. “Climb over the railing there—there’s a ladder on the side.” He asked his customers to hold their fire as the detectives clambered down.
As they entered the space beneath the boardwalk, it took a few seconds for their eyes to adjust from sun to gloom. The hubbub of the resort above quickly faded away.
The dim alley, walled with sand on the other side, was densely littered with plastic bags, swatches of towels, and other debris. Massive wooden crossbeams, raised by thick columns planted in the sand, supported the walkway above. Tiny strips of sunlight came down through the boards and striped the sand, which was densely packed underfoot. The place offended Jack’s sense of hygiene, but at least it didn’t smell so bad; beyond a certain briny tang, most of the trash was so old that it had long ago lost its odor.
“You wanna split up?” Richie asked. “You head west and I’ll go east?”
Up above, the two uniforms had similarly divided, covering the boardwalk.
“Works for me,” Jack replied. He watched his colleague plod off down the dim corridor, and then Jack turned the other way. The air down here was damp, with a ghostly chill.
The visibility was poor, as mounds of sand rose up occasionally, and the forest of columns would offer Jack’s suspect lots of potential cover. He pulled his service revolver out of its holster and walked carefully on for twenty yards, listening to the thump of feet on the wood overhead and the muffled sounds of the amusement parks.
At his hip, his phone vibrated. He ignored it. Twenty yards on, it buzzed again. He picked it up and checked the source of the call. Ray Hillhouse.
Holding his gun with one hand, he flipped the phone open and pressed it to his ear. “What’s up?” he said, keeping his voice as low as possible.
“You’re not gonna like this,” the FBI man replied. “I asked around: there’s no word here about any investigation into a dirty-bomb plot. And the JTTF has never heard of it either.”
Jack stopped in his tracks. “Are you sure?” He was stunned, but he reminded himself that he needed to keep moving. Ahead, the gray sand rose up in a sloping mound. At its peak, he’d only have a few feet of clearance.
“I’m sure,” Hillhouse said. “I know a top guy at Homeland Security and he also swears he’s never heard of this case.”
Jack felt dizzy, as if the sand had shifted beneath his feet. For days now, he had been wondering if Nadim Hasni was really part of a terrorist cell. But did the cell even exist? “Did he say anything about Charlson?”
“He says the guy creeps him out. Charlson was a security contractor back in the first Gulf War, and there were rumors that he was involved in some kind of bad scene that got hushed up. I also checked out—”
“Hold on a sec,” Jack whispered. He had reached the top of the mound; on the other side, it sloped back down, revealing a cluttered little vista. About forty yards ahead in the dim alley, someone had set up a small blue camping tent on the sand. Scattered around it, he noticed other objects: a plastic lounge chair, a pile of plastic milk crates, and … he squinted to see better … a fiberglass shark, lying on its side, perhaps salvaged from some old concession stand or amusement ride. Ahead, the tent flap was closed. Jack was trying to imagine if Nadim Hasni might have gotten hold of such makeshift lodging when he saw something stir on the sand just twenty yards away, to the right. A prone human body. Young, male, with brown skin. A knapsack lay on the sand next to him.
“Jack?” Hillhouse said.
He hung up, stuffed his cell phone in his pocket, and gripped his revolver with both hands. He was just beginning to descend the slope when he spotted another figure in the shadows, stepping around the side of the tent.
A mild, grandfatherly, very reasonable-looking man.
Brent Charlson was also holding up a gun. He noticed Jack just as he caught sight of their mutual prey.
Jack accidentally stepped on an empty soda bottle and it crunched beneath his feet.
Nadim Hasni whirled to look at him.
“Put your hands up!” Jack said. “Don’t move!”
Nadim complied.
Charlson spoke. “Good job, Leightner.”
Nadim kept his hands up, but as he turned to see the federal agent, he visibly recoiled. He started to scramble backward, leaving his knapsack behind.
“Don’t move!” Jack repeated, pointing his gun.
Nadim stopped.
“You found him,” Charlson said. “I can take it from here.”
“I don’t think so.”
Charlson’s voice stayed eerily flat. “You don’t think so what?” Strips of light glinted against his spectacles.
All of a sudden, Jack thought about the bomb underneath his car.
“You can go now,” the fed told him.
Jack reached back with one hand and pulled a pair of handcuffs from his belt. He kept his voice calm and steady as he spoke to his suspect. “Nadim, I want you to stay very still, all right? You’re going to be okay.”
“I’ll take him into custody,” Charlson said to Jack. “Why don’t you go get your partner?”
“No!” Hasni cried out. “I do not go with this man. Never again!”
A sudden zipping noise. A grimy head poked out of the tent. “What the hell’s all this racket? I’m tryin’ to get some sl—” .
“Gun!” Charlson shouted. “He’s got a gun!”
Jack turned back to see a flash from the fed’s pistol, accompanied by a sharp report.
Still holding up his empty hands, Nadim slammed backward onto the sand.
Charlson spun around and pointed his pistol at Jack.
But Jack Leightner had his own gun up and at the ready. And he did something that he had never done in all his years with the NYPD: he fired his service weapon in an attempt to kill a man. As instructed on the departmental firing range, he aimed for central body mass. And hit it.
Charlson jerked backward and then looked down in disbelief at the red spot on his immaculate white shirt. And then he toppled back and splayed out, immobile, glasses askew across his pale white face.
Jack rushed over and felt the man’s neck for a pulse. He couldn’t find it but didn’t have time to ponder the complete and utter strangeness of the moment—he had just killed another human being—because he had someone else to check on. He hurried across the odd little encampment to the body of his long-sought suspect, also sprawled out amid the trash.
NADIM HASNI GURGLED FOR breath. He pressed his hand to his chest and then held it up before his eyes: it was slick with his blood. His head fell back and he moaned as he felt his life draining away, down into the cool sand.
Now he would never take part in the plan. Malik and Aarif and the others would buy the two Taxi & Limousine medallions. They would never again have to shift-lease their cars from other owners. But Nadim would never know what it felt like to be his own boss.
His eyelids slid shut.
“Abbu?”
He heard his daughter’s high, sweet voice in the darkness. And then he saw some shifting pink and orange points of light. As he moved closer, he saw that they were huge transparent umbrellas, glowing jellyfish, pulsing through an endless black sea.