Джеймс Паттерсон - Killer Instinct

The smoke billowing up had turned into flames. The engine was on fire.

Cars only explode in the movies if the flames reach the gas tank, and it’s near empty. Fire plus fuel plus compressed air equals boom.

“Go ahead, get him out of here,” I said. “Get yourself out of here.”

“Where’s Sadira?” he asked.

“Still inside.”

Foxx looked at me. It was all in his eyes. Your call, Reinhart. Only we both knew what I was going to do.

“I’ll come back to help,” he said.

“Don’t you dare.”

I ducked down and climbed through the passenger side window, the flames now shooting through the air vents. I didn’t know what I had, seconds or minutes. The fire could rocket into the fuel line at any moment.

I called out Sadira’s name yet again, the back of the van so thick with smoke I could barely see.

But I heard her. Even with her mouth gagged she was able to make enough noise.

Everything was upside down. I was climbing on my knees along the ceiling of the van when I found her lying against the far side, one leg clearly broken. The other was bleeding from a huge gash above the thigh. She could barely move, her hands still tied behind her back.

I pulled the gag off her mouth. They’d used a ripped bedsheet. She was about to say something, only there was no time for conversation. I cut her off. “We’ve got to get you out of here,” I said.

There was no going back the way I came. The front of the van was now completely engulfed in flames. The blaze was coming right for us.

I turned to the back door. The same door I couldn’t open. It was the only escape.

Reaching for my Glock, the dos and don’ts of point-blank firing echoed in my head. Aim completely straight to avoid ricochets. That’s what you do.

But don’t shoot what can’t be shot.

That meant the hinges. Too much metal. Too thick. No, the best chance was targeting the latch where the door locked. If I could knock that out, my feet could do the rest.

Shielding Sadira, I emptied my clip in a half circle on the edge of the door. All I could do now was kick as hard as I could.

The fire was scorching my back as I angled myself as if doing the leg press at the gym. The way the door had buckled, I needed to aim low.

C’mon, feet, don’t fail me now…

Chapter 108

I WAS just about to kick when I heard the sound. Even before I saw what it was, I knew who it was.

Foxx was back. With a crowbar. He’d jammed it in below one of the hinges, prying open the door with one massive pull. There was a reason he was a gym rat, and it wasn’t so he could look good in front of a mirror.

“What took you so long?” I said.

“Maybe because you almost shot me?”

So much for the buddy-movie banter. The flames had overtaken the back of the van. Foxx made a beeline for Sadira, helping me lift her into my arms. She was in so much pain, and my running with her was only going to make it worse. But there was no choice. There was no time.

In that same buddy movie, the van would’ve exploded at the very moment we were out of harm’s way. Only this wasn’t the movies.

No, the moment I reached the ambulance came and went without any explosion. I gently placed Sadira on a waiting gurney, two EMTs immediately taking over.

I turned to Foxx, with a nod back at the van about a hundred feet away. I even cracked a smile. “Whatta ya know, the gas tank was full.”

BOOM!

The van exploded into a fireball, the sky above it filling with a massive cloud of thick black smoke and flames. Score one for the movies.

I watched for a moment, briefly entertaining the thought of Foxx arriving with that crowbar a little later than he had. When I turned back to the ambulance, the EMTs were lifting the gurney to load Sadira. I figured I’d ride with her to the hospital. She was in bad shape, but she’d live to tell about it—something I was banking on. Who were those two guys who had taken her? And why?

Foxx had already returned to the one he’d pulled from the van. The guy’s body language said it all. Dressed in jeans and a black sweatshirt, he wasn’t planning on saying anything. Another EMT was tending to him as the two cops from our car chase stood guard. Not that the guy was going anywhere. Forget making a run for it. He couldn’t even walk.

“Dylan.”

Sadira’s voice was so weak, but even with all the commotion around us I could somehow hear her. The way she said my name, it was as if she were whispering in my ear.

I climbed into the back of the ambulance. Neither EMT asked me who I was or gave me a hard time about my wanting to tag along. They’d seen me run out of the van with Sadira. If that didn’t buy me some slack, nothing would.

“What is it?” I asked her.

I suddenly remembered she’d tried to tell me something in the van.

“I was…about…” She paused, swallowed. She was already out of breath. “I was about to…call you.”

I could see how much it hurt for her to talk. The least I could do was fill in the gaps as best I could.

“You mean, before those guys broke into your apartment,” I said. “You heard from the Mudir?”

She nodded. “Rent a car…meet the Mudir near the train…”

“Yes, the train station.” The fact that he wanted her to rent a car most likely meant one thing. “He wants you to be a driver,” I said. But when? “Before or after the attack?”

“After,” she said.

This was good. Knowing where the Mudir wanted to rendezvous with her would be crucial if we stopped the attack without catching him.

“So what street around Penn Station?” I asked. “He must have told you an address, right?”

I waited for her to nod. Instead, she shook her head. “No,” she said. It was the whole point of what she wanted to tell me. “It’s not Penn Station.”

Chapter 109

I JUMPED out of the ambulance and sprinted over to Foxx while yelling his name.

“What the hell is it?” he asked.

“It’s Grand Central.”

“What is?”

“The attack,” I said. “The target is Grand Central Station.”

Foxx let that sink in for a moment. The implications. The logistics. The sudden loss of our leverage. “Holy shit.”

“It’s worse than that,” I said, looking at my watch. It was about twenty of eight. The Mudir had told Sadira to be in a white rental car at 46th Street and Third Avenue, right near the station, at 8:30 sharp. “Whatever’s going down, it’s all about to happen in less than an hour.”

Foxx had to make calls. Immediately. But right in front of us was a guy who clearly knew things about Sadira. Did he also know about the attack?

With his cropped blond hair, he looked more like a Hitler youth than a Middle Eastern terrorist, but that hardly meant there was no connection to the Mudir. He could’ve been Russian. He could’ve been anybody. What we couldn’t afford was his being useless. We had to get him talking. Fast.

He’d been staring at me since the moment I came over. His head was cocked, his eyes narrowed to a squint. I knew that look. It meant the same in any country and any language. The guy was sizing me up, trying to figure out if I was baiting him by what I told Foxx. I’m clever, but not that clever, dude…

Foxx reached for his cell while giving me the nod. The plan was to divide and conquer. He’d get the word to Evan Pritchard, who was camped at Penn Station, and I’d go to work on our mystery man here.

As soon as Foxx stepped away, I stared at the EMT, who thankfully was fluent in subtext and knew enough to step away as well. The two cops standing guard would still do their jobs, but their stares made it clear they would neither remember nor repeat anything they were about to hear.