Step On A Crack

Concern replaced his pride when Brian looked closer. His father was smiling, but it was his bad smile. The one he made when he was pretending not to be sad or angry.

His dad looked like Jeter all right, Brian thought.

After a big loss.

Chapter 68

IT WASN’T JUST the biting cold of the day that made me feel numb as I stopped before the checkpoint media podium. Usually, making a routine statement before the local news outlets filled me with butterflies. But when Will Matthews said that the commissioner had ordered an immediate press conference, I actually volunteered.

I knew those murdering bastards inside were watching-and I wanted them to see me, to hear what I had to say.

I looked out over the avenue-filling clutter of national network and worldwide press cameras and gazed dead ahead into the black lens of the camera in front of me.

“Within the past hour,” I said, “a rescue attempt was made to free the hostages. Gunfire was exchanged, and two men, an FBI agent and an NYPD ESU officer, were slain. Two other officers were wounded. Names will not be released until the families are notified.”

A concentrated wave of motion and sound swept through the newsies, starving wolves just tossed prime rib.

“Why was such a rash move authorized?” a male network reporter with chief-executive hair called out from the front ranks.

“The decisions of the on-scene command ca

“In what part of the cathedral did the rescue attempt take place?” asked a pretty middle-aged female reporter behind him. She had a microphone in one hand and an open cell phone in the other.

“Again, tactics can’t be divulged at this juncture,” I said. It was scary, even to me, how calm I sounded. A few minutes before, I was in a firefight. Now I was as collected as Colin Powell doing a troop assessment. Whatever the reason, I was proud of myself. To let the scum inside see that they had gotten to us in the slightest degree would have been an insult to the fallen men.

“This is a difficult situation, ladies and gentlemen,” I continued. “I know everyone wants to know what’s going on, but now’s not the time for full disclosure. It runs contrary to our purpose. We want to extract the thirty-two hostages safely.”

“And the hostage-takers as well?” someone called from the back. “What about them?”

I looked steadily into the camera again. I could almost feel my eyes making contact with Jack’s inside.

“Of course,” I said. “Of course we do. We want this to be resolved peacefully.”

I ignored the barrage of shouted questions as I stepped down from behind the wheeled podium. I almost knocked down a tall brunette reporter as I tripped over a taped-down media cable alongside the curb.

“C’mon, Mike,” Cathy Calvin said. “Who are these guys? You have to tell us what they want. What’s their angle?”

“Why are you asking me?” I said, putting an almost cross-eyed, confused look on my face. “Don’t you read your own paper, Ms. Calvin? I don’t know nuttin’, remember?”

Chapter 69

I HAD ALREADY arrived back in the command center bus and was sitting calmly with the phone in my hand when it rang, and I almost dropped the damn thing. I was still boiling, but I knew how useless that emotion was now. Anger felt good, but it wasn’t working. What I had to do now, I knew, was to repair things, salvage the bloody mess somehow.

And most of all, I had to keep Jack talking instead of shooting.

“Mike here,” I said.

“YOU LYING SON OF A BITCH!” Jack screamed.

“Now, now, Jack,” I said. “There was a mix-up. A communication flub. I wasn’t told about the raid until after it happened.”

I wanted to be as honest as possible in order to reach some middle ground, but under the circumstances, it was impossible. Truth was, I’d just tried to kill Jack and his accomplices and was pissed that we’d failed.

But I had to distance myself from all that. Act like I was just a cog in a large wheel that I couldn’t control.

“And please, Jack,” I said. “You were the one who was asking for straight talk a little while ago. What did you expect? Blowing away a priest, tossing him out on the steps like a Hefty garbage sack, wasn’t going to have any consequences?”

“That was an accident! I told you!” Jack said. “One of you pricks killed my friend. He died in my arms.”

“And one of you guys killed two cops,” I said. “This is a dead-end game we’re playing, Jack. I thought you wanted money. Killing people isn’t going to get it for you. It’s only going to get my trigger-happy, now completely pissed-off fellow cops to come in there shooting. I mean, let’s face facts. If you force us to raid the church, in the end, you’re not going to make it. You made a mistake with the priest. I can see that now. And we made a mistake, too. Let’s put what’s happened behind us and get this thing back on track.”

I waited. Though I’d made it up on the spot, it was a decent argument. Anyway, we needed more time to regroup, think up a new strategy. The secret tu

“Only part of the track I’m putting this on from here is the third rail, you lying sack of shit,” Jack just about spat in my ear. “You screwed up, Mike, and now I’m going to punish you for it. Come to the front door and pick up the trash.”

Chapter 70

I HAD CLEARED the entrance of the bus and was ru

I was crossing the wide sidewalk when a human form suddenly flew out the black space of the open door. I couldn’t tell whether it was a man or a woman.

The body skidded across the flagstone paving and landed facedown on top of a wilted flower arrangement. Male, I registered. Dark suit. Which hostage had been killed?

Breath scorching in my chest, I fell to my knees in front of the victim. I didn’t even bother looking for a pulse when I saw the torso. The lower back had been ripped apart and was horribly torn and bloody.

I was too late.

The victim was a middle-aged man. His shirt had been removed, and dozens of large, ragged stab wounds covered his back. What looked like cigarette burns went up and down his forearms. I’d seen my share of bodies, and I recognized that someone with a sharp knife, maybe even a box cutter, had taken out a lot of anger on this one.

The first thing I saw when ESU lieutenant Steve Reno helped me flip the victim was that the poor man’s throat had been slit.

My heart seized hard in my chest as I looked at the victim’s beaten and bloody face.

I turned to Reno beside me. “This is so wrong,” the big man said, staring at the corpse. Reno ’s voice was small and wounded, as if he was speaking to himself. “As wrong as it gets.”

I nodded my head as I continued to stare down, unable to take my eyes away.

Andrew Thurman, the mayor of New York City, peered up lifelessly into the leaden sky. A pulse of cold shuddered through me as I glanced up into the dark, towering arches where he seemed to be looking for some answer as to why this could have happened.

Steve Reno pulled off his Windbreaker and wrapped it around Mayor Thurman like a blanket. He crossed himself silently before he closed the mayor’s eyes with his thumbs.

“Grab his legs, Mike,” Reno said. “Let’s get him out of here. Don’t let the press get any shots.”