Джеймс Паттерсон - Killer Instinct

That’s when he raised his right hand.

I could just make out the movement. The grip. The steel. The suppressor attached to the end of the barrel. Pffft!

The muffled sound pierced the air with barely a wake. Once, then twice. He’d shot my back tire followed by the front. It was all happening frame by frame, like clicking through one of those old View-Masters. My mind was desperately trying to fill in what my eyes couldn’t see.

He could’ve killed me if he’d wanted to. He didn’t want to. All he was looking for was a captive audience. He had it.

“Is the girl okay?” he asked.

Is the girl okay? You just maced me, my eyes are burning like hell, and you want an update on Elizabeth?

The mere question told me plenty, though. He truly had been trying to help her with the tip about Gorgin and his house up in Pelham.

“She’s okay,” I said.

Two words were pretty much all I could manage. I was bent over in agony, out of breath from the pain. Fine by him. He was there to talk, not listen.

“You don’t know me, and the mayor doesn’t know me. Do you understand? I see everything, Dr. Reinhart, and you clearly don’t. Not any longer. Not these days.”

He obviously knew who I was and what I used to be. He just wasn’t giving me enough credit for it.

All I needed to do was muster three more words.

“Look behind you,” I said.

Chapter 55

I WISHED I could’ve seen his face. Hell, I wished I could’ve seen anything.

But I saw enough.

Eli had turned to find the business end of a SIG P226 pointing straight at him. The man doing the pointing was only a set of eyes beneath a John Deere cap, the rest of his face covered by a red bandana. Old school. Like the Old West. Or, more likely, the best he could manage given such short notice. Either way, it worked.

Eli didn’t need instructions. He knew the drill. He laid down what looked to be a Remington R1 Tactical, given the raised sights to accommodate the suppressor. He then spread his arms slightly away from his body. No monkey business.

“About time you showed up,” I said to my cavalry of one. I immediately regretted it. Josiah Maxwell Reinhart suffered sarcasm even less than fools.

“That’s a damn funny way of saying thank you,” he snapped back.

“I could’ve done without the mace, that’s all,” I said. Slowly, I was getting my vision back. If only the pain would go away. “And how did you know he wasn’t going to kill me?”

“Who maces someone before they shoot him?”

Decent point, Dad. Still, “There’s always a first time.”

I walked over and frisked Eli. He had no other weapon. In fact, he had nothing else on him except a pack of Marlboros and a money clip stuffed with hundreds inside his blazer. No credit cards. No ID of any kind.

As soon as I scooped up his gun, my father lowered his. I could tell the old man was exhausted, although he’d never let on. He’d left Concord, New Hampshire, immediately after I called around midnight, arriving in his old, beat-up Jeep Commando at about four thirty in the morning.

“So now what?” he asked. I couldn’t blame him for wanting to keep the show moving. He’d been up all night.

“Now I talk to our friend Eli here,” I said. “It is Eli, right?”

I wasn’t expecting him to answer. What was I going to do, shoot him if he didn’t cooperate? We both knew that wasn’t going to happen.

No, I needed another form of leverage. Fast, too. The sun was beginning to peek over the building tops. Our dimly lit alley was turning into broad daylight. Last I checked, New York still wasn’t an open carry state.

Eli raised a hand, although not to ask a question. He was motioning to the breast pocket inside his blazer. “I’m going to smoke.”

That settled why Elizabeth couldn’t originally peg his accent. His voice was so gravelly in person it sounded as if he’d been born with a cigarette in his hand.

The hell you are, I was about to say. He was no longer in charge.

Turns out I wasn’t either.

“Jesus Christ,” said my father. “Is that you, Elijah?”

My father lowered his bandana. Eli—make that, Elijah—lowered his sunglasses. They both smiled.

“It’s me,” said Elijah.

“I thought you were retired,” said my father.

“Yeah, and I thought you were dead, Eagle.”

Chapter 56

HE CALLED my father by his old code name, the Eagle. They obviously had history. A somewhat complicated one, I was about to learn.

My father casually walked over to Elijah. The way the two were still smiling I thought they were going to hug.

Nope.

The very second my father was within range he delivered a roundhouse punch to Elijah’s gut. I mean, hard. I could literally hear the wind getting knocked out of the guy.

“That’s for macing my son,” said my father.

Elijah was now bent over and gasping for air, but I figured not for long. He was bound to retaliate, and I was ready to jump in between the two to make sure he didn’t. Instead, Elijah didn’t do anything. Not in terms of fighting back. He simply waited to catch his breath, straightened out his spine, and gave my father a slight nod as if to say he knew he’d had that coming.

When he proceeded to reach into his blazer, I figured he was finally having that cigarette. Nope again. Out came his money clip.

“Are those Dunlop Elites?” he asked, pointing to the tires on my bike.

“They were, ” I said.

Elijah peeled off five one-hundred-dollar bills and handed them to me. “That should cover it.”

I took the money. Apparently all debts were settled because, of all things, now my father hugged Elijah, and Elijah hugged him back. What the hell is going on?

There’s always been a weird unspoken code among operatives, no matter which flag they saluted, but this was even beyond weird.

“I take it you guys worked together?” I asked.

“Not really,” said my father.

“Let’s just say we didn’t work against each other,” said Elijah.

That was actually the first thing that sort of made sense in a screwed-up-world kind of way.

“Son, meet the Prophet,” said my father.

And like that, I was shaking the hand of the guy who only minutes earlier had maced me and shot out my tires. I didn’t think twice about it, though. The guy was a legend. Now he was officially real, too. Up until that moment, I’d never been fully convinced he actually existed.

Remember when President George W. Bush was assassinated at the Red Sea Summit in 2003? Of course you don’t. It never happened. It almost did, though. The story goes that the Prophet took out not one but two would-be suicide bombers in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt. What made that all the more incredible was that the Prophet was known to be a Mossad agent. He saved not only Bush’s life but also the lives of the leaders of Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and the Palestinians. Give that a moment to sink in. It was a Who’s Who of Israeli antagonists, if not outright enemies, and this guy saved them all in order to save Israel’s strongest ally. And you wonder why we always have their back?

The Prophet saw coming what no one else had. Hence, his nickname in the intelligence community from that day forward.

Clearly, he hadn’t lost his touch. He knew that someone would be staking out Mayor Deacon. If not Elizabeth, then someone who was working with her. I never saw him coming, but at least I thought enough to bring backup. Who knew they would know each other?

Do I call him the Prophet? Mr. Prophet?

“I need your help,” I just said instead.

He nodded. “More than you even know. The Mudir is only getting started. It’s all coming.”