part0021

“Once they get there they are going to use her as a hostage, and they are going to demand we hand Jose over to them, and, I would guess, safe passage to Mexico.”

“Yes, that makes sense.”

“But the Feds are going to bring in one of their hotshot negotiators and this could turn into a Waco, and every hour that she is in there is an hour of risk where she could get raped, tortured or murdered.”

He was silent for three long seconds. Then he said, “What are you driving at, Stone?”

“I’m going to go in there and bring her out.”

“I absolutely cannot authorize that.”

“Sir, it makes no difference whether you authorize it or not. Dehan… We think Dehan is pregnant. I am not going to leave my wife and child in the hands of those animals while we observe protocol.”

His voice was barely a whisper. “Dear God… John, if you get killed...”

“I’ll make sure not to, sir. I can’t afford to.”

As I had expected, the van slowed at the intersection with Castle Hill and turned south. At Homer Avenue it turned left and pulled into the parking lot at the back of the church. I turned into the gas station and auto repair opposite the church and parked out of sight.

I sat a moment, trying to work out the best way to do something that had no right way of being done. That was when my cell rang again.

“Hey, pig, you wanna hear your bitch scream?”

I answered fast. “Let’s get one thing straight from the start. The first time she screams, SWAT moves in with flash-bangs and assault rifles and you all die. No negotiation, no warning. And if you come out alive, I will personally ensure you face trial in a state that still has the death penalty. From here to Arizona via Texas, there has to be some body with your prints on it. Whether there is or there isn’t, you can be sure I’ll find it. She just needs to scream once, Vargas.”

I put it on speaker and glanced at Bernie. Vargas was speaking.

“Yeah, I am standing in a puddle of my own piss, I am so scared. Now listen to me, pig. You wanna see your bitch alive, you gonna bring me Jose, then you are gonna arrange an air taxi to take me and my boys to Mexico, to Obregon. You got two hours. In one hundred and twenty-one minutes, I am gonna gang rape your bitch, and after that I am gonna start cutting off her toes and her fingers. Two hours, starting now.”

I pulled the Sig P226 from under my arm and cocked it. Bernie shook his head.

“What the hell are you going to do?”

I looked him straight in the eye and lied. “I’m going to offer myself as a hostage instead of Dehan, so I can feed information to the SWAT team.”

“That’s stupid, John. They’ll hold you both and they’ll remove your cell...”

He was talking and he was watching my eyes, and he knew I was bullshitting him. His voice trailed off. I said, “We’re wasting time. You’d better contact the Bureau and call in SWAT.”

I crossed the gas station and loped across the road to the church, then walked up to the front door. There was a printed sign that said the services had been cancelled for the day, but there were no guys waiting with automatic weapons. They’d be waiting for me inside. I hesitated for just a second, then I walked up and pushed through the large, plate-glass doors. They came at me from both sides, fast, with their weapons held out in front of them.

The guy on my right had a rattler tattooed across his face, sliding from one cheek across his forehead and down the other side. He had a crew cut and crazy eyes. He was small and wiry and held a Glock 17 in both hands, painted at my head.

The one on my left was fat. He had a Sancho Panza mustache and no tattoos on his face, but his arms and chest were smothered in them. His eyes were about as crazy as his friend’s. He said, “Don moof! Raise your hands.” I put them up. To his pal he said, “Cubrelo... ”—cover him.

My heart was pounding high in my chest. I was terrified. I knew I could die at any moment. But what terrified me most was what could happen to Dehan if I died. And that kind of terror can make you either overcautious or reckless, and sometimes you need to be reckless in order to survive.

Sancho closed in behind me and started patting me down. The Rattler closed in a step too, staring hard into my eyes. I knew from this moment on I would be dragged tighter into their control. What I did next I had never practiced. I had only ever seen it done on YouTube, but I knew the moment had to be when he found my Sig under my arm.

He hand fell on it and he reached for it. In that moment I slammed my hands together. My right smashed into his wrist. My left grabbed the barrel of his Glock and levered it in toward his face. It happened in one fluid movement in less than a second. Then my right index finger was over his and I pulled the trigger.

The slug punched a hole in his chest. His friend was still peering over my shoulder into the Rattler’s startled face when I turned to face him. He rushed me, stumbled over his pal and fell against me. We lost balance and as we went down he was staring up into my face with wide, terrified eyes.

We hit the ground and he was clawing at my gun hand with his nails, making a strange noise through his teeth and his lips. He was heavy and I was having trouble breathing. But some basic common sense in my head told me he was fixated on his pal’s Glock, so as he clawed at my hand, I flipped the weapon away. It hit the wooden floor and slid a few feet.

He scrambled off me and clawed his way after it. I was trembling like crazy but I managed to get on one knee and pull the Sig from under my arm. His hand was on the Glock and I shot him in the ear. He went still.

I could hear my own breathing rasping and trembling in my chest. I was shaking badly, but I got to my feet and ran toward the chapel. There was no sign of Vargas or Campbell or any of Vargas’s men.

I shouldered the swinging doors to the chapel and burst in, expecting to be riddled with bullets, but not knowing what else to do. I needn’t have worried. The chapel was empty. My heart was racing hard. I could feel my mind on the brink of panic. But a cold voice in my head told me the chapel was too easy to storm. They’d be upstairs, in Campbell’s apartment.

I ran down the aisle and scrambled onto the stage. At the back, on the left, there was a door, painted white like the walls that supported the great cross. I tried the handle and it opened. I was in a short passage carpeted in red with white walls. A dogleg at the end led out of sight. I followed the passage with the Sig held out in front of me and turned the corner. There was a broad flight of stairs that led up to a small landing with a single red door on the right.

I sprinted up the steps and paused in front of the door with my back against the wall.

They had kept Dehan’s GPS activated, and they must have known that we would follow it. They wanted that much so they could negotiate. But did they know I would come in alone, without the SWAT team? That was unlikely. They would expect the cops to follow procedure and enter into negotiations.

I aimed at the lock and put two rounds through it, then I kicked the door and burst in.

I was in a very spacious, open plan room. Over on the right was a kitchen with a breakfast bar and bare, redbrick walls. Over on the left there was an open fireplace big enough for a tall man to stand inside. To either side of it were tall, stained-glass windows, and ranged around it were leather armchairs and a sofa set on what looked like very expensive rugs on a bare, wooden floor.

Campbell was sitting in one of the armchairs, frowning at me. Leaning against the wall, with his arms crossed, also frowning at me, was Vargas. And halfway between me and them were two guys in denim jackets with the sleeves torn off and their arms covered in tattoos. They were Cabras , and they were holding AK47s and pointing them right at me.

On the floor, bound and gagged, was Dehan, and her eyes told me she was terrified.

Long seconds of silence passed. Then, with sudden violence, Vargas burst out laughing. It was a noisy, ugly laugh that would have suited a spotty fourteen-year-old better than this thirty-year-old psychopath.

I lined him up in my sights and knew I could kill him right then. He pushed off the wall and started walking toward me.

“You crazy son of a bitch.” His voice was mild, even agreeable. “You really are an old-school dinosaur, huh? A real live Dirty Harry. You come bustin’ in here with a semi-automatic, like you gonna save the world. I should let Guaco and Quique turn you into a fockin’ colander right now.”

He stopped beside the gorilla he’d called Guaco and chuckled.

“We gonna make spaghetti later, and we can use you to drain the water, right? You gonna have so many fockin’ holes in you. But I’m figurin’ if I call the papers and the TV channels, and I tell them we got the dynamic duo here, hosband an’ wife who clear up all the cold cases, both of them beautiful, right? The whole fockin’ nation is gonna fall in love with you and nobody is gonna want to see you executed by the bad ol’ Sinaloa boys, right. The political pressure to get you released is gonna be real heavy for the mayor and the governor and everybody from there on down. Am I wrong?”

He turned to the gorilla. “Péguele un tiro en la rodilla .”

Dehan screamed through her gag and I knew it was bad. I acted without thinking. I’m a pretty good marksman, but I was truly motivated too, and I put a slug right through the gorilla’s forehead. The last thing I saw of him was his eyes rolling up in his head as he keeled over backward.

By then I was running and screaming, heading straight for the other gorilla called Quique. I remember his eyes big and wide. I remember him raising his assault rifle and pointing it at my face. I was still screaming when I dropped to my knees and slid along the bare, polished boards as the burst of molten lead tore above my head.

The Sig was still in my hands, held out in front of me. I pulled the trigger twice and both rounds tore into the poor bastard’s lower belly. He screamed like a girl and fell to the ground clutching what was left of his genitals as a huge pool of blood expanded around him.

I clambered to my feet and ran, but I was too late. Campbell had got to his feet and in two strides he was standing over Dehan. He lowered himself so that one knee was on her neck. In his hand he held a kitchen knife.

Vargas joined him, looking at his two dead men.

“You one dangerous son of a bitch, Detective Stone.” He pulled a Glock 19 from his waistband and pointed it at me. He went to speak a couple of times but faltered. Finally he grinned and laughed.

“You thought I was Mommy’s Boy. You thought we was Mommy’s Boy. That’s smart. That’s real smart. You know what? I been killing since I was thirteen. Ain’t nobody ever caught me nor pinned anything on me ’cept when I was framed for possession by some asshole narc. And then you come along and say, ‘Whoa! This dangerous dude is Mommy’s Boy. He’s some weird-ass freaky serial killer.’ Well, pig, maybe we should show you how we done it.”

He glanced down at Campbell, who was staring fixedly at me.

“Now the reverend here, he the blade man. He like to cut. You feel me, cop?”

I spoke and my voice was thick in my mouth.

“If you hurt her, you’ll never get out of here alive.”

Campbell spoke for the first time.

“Correction. If they know we have hurt her. But we can cut her into little fillets and as long as they think she is unharmed, they will give us what they want.” He looked up at Vargas and smiled. “Start calling the press. The bigger the story about these two, the greater the pressure to negotiate.”

Vargas looked down at his phone and Campbell rolled Dehan on her back. He placed his knife at her throat and looked at me. “Drop your gun or I’ll cut her throat.”

“If you hurt her they will never give you what you want.”

“I’ll count to three.”

“Don’t do this.”

Vargas’s voice: “New York Times ? My name is Nelson Vargas. I am Mommy’s Boy and I am holding two NYPD detectives hostage at the Church of the Holy Father and Son at the End of Days, on Castle Hill Avenue in the Bronx. I wanna tell a reporter about these two detectives. See, they are married...”

Campbell said, “One—”

Vargas said, “But make it quick, bitch, I still have to talk to the networks.”

Campbell slipped the knife under Dehan’s blouse and cut through the material, exposing her pale belly and her bra. Time seemed to slow down. My eyes swiveled right and I saw Vargas, gloating on the telephone, leering, laughing. They swiveled back to Campbell, slipping the blade of the knife between the cups of the bra, looking at me, shouting, screaming, “Drop the gun or she dies! I will slice off her breast! ”

And Dehan’s silent, screaming eyes, knowing where the blade would go after it cut through her breast.

I bellowed, “All right! Stop! Stop! ”

And as I hollered the words, I held out the gun in front of me and pulled the trigger twice in rapid succession.

It was a shot at twenty-five feet in a highly stressful situation with a moving target. The risk was high. I could miss and hit Dehan, or I could miss altogether and he would kill her with his knife. But it was the only option open to me. If I had surrendered the gun we would both have been dead within minutes. So I took the risk, for the three of us.

Both rounds hit home. The first exploded Campbell’s left eye and the second went in just above his jaw, beside his ear, and the back of his head erupted. He half stood and keeled over backward.

I didn’t stop to watch. Vargas was gaping at me. I saw the phone drop from his fingers and I was already charging across the room. I reached him as his right arm was emerging from behind his back with his Glock in it. He swung it in a wide arc and the heavy barrel struck my face, gauging a deep slash across it. The pain was excruciating and I felt my legs begin to wobble. The gun was coming back for a backhander which I knew would cost Dehan her life. I could not afford to let it make contact.

Without thinking I smashed my own Sig hard against his wrist as he swung up at my face. He shouted with pain and staggered back. I was unsteady on my feet and I could hear my breath rasping in my throat. I stepped forward with my left and flung an ineffectual kick with my right at his groin. He staggered back and dropped his weapon, but he was a street fighter, raised in the Bronx, and he wouldn’t go down easy.

He clutched at his groin like he’d been hurt badly, and as I closed in he lunged forward and drove his head into my belly. I was half expecting it and absorbed the blow with my arms, but it threw me off balance and I stumbled sideways.

Then he came at me, charging, with his fists flying. A powerful right caught me on the shoulder and grazed my head. His left hook connected with my shoulder and my ribs, and a second right hook caught my nose and drove shafts of pain through my head.

He went to raise his weapon again.

Pain can be a great source of power.

Violence, rage and deep reserves I didn’t know I had suddenly welled up inside me and I stepped close inside his guard with my right foot, blocked his next punch with my left and put my full two hundred and twenty pounds into a right hook that almost tore off his jaw.

He went down like a sack of wet sand and I bent unsteadily to remove his shoelaces. I tied his ankles and his wrists behind his back and went to untie Dehan.