Джеймс Паттерсон - Killer Instinct

“Yeah, that’s me,” I said. “Now I need you to lower your gun.”

“Why?”

“Because we don’t want any accidents,” I said.

The cop shook his head. “I hear you, but I can’t do that.”

“Sure you can,” said the Mudir. “Tell him, Agent Needham. We don’t want any accidents.”

Elizabeth winced in pain as the Mudir pressed his gun even harder against her head. “Please,” she told the cop. “Just do it.”

I kept watching the cop from the corner of my eye, his feet continuing to shift back and forth. It was a dance of indecision. Finally he lowered his gun, moving to the front of the car for cover. Perfect.

The Mudir and I now had each other’s undivided attention.

“What’s your plan, Professor?” he asked.

“That depends,” I said. “What’s yours?”

“I’m getting in that car with Agent Needham, and no one’s going to follow us,” he said.

I shook him off like a pitcher on the mound. “Not quite. You’re getting in the car with me, not her.”

Elizabeth wasn’t buying either plan. She was scared. But she was also angry. “Take the shot, Dylan,” she said. “Take it!”

She was serious. The Mudir knew it, too. He altered his stance a bit, tucking his head a little more behind hers.

But I wasn’t taking the shot. I was doing the opposite. I was laying down my weapon.

“I told you,” I said, kneeling. “You don’t want her, you want me.”

Slowly, I placed my gun on the pavement. Elizabeth screamed. “No! Don’t do it!”

“It’s okay,” I said. Trust me.

Hatred is a human flaw unlike any other. It will make you do the unthinkable. Even worse, it will make you not think at all. My plan had been to outsmart the Mudir. But sometimes the only way to outsmart someone is to convince him that you’re a fool.

I stood up and spread my arms wide. There was no way I could hurt him. “Now let her go and take me instead,” I said.

The Mudir smiled again. I’d just committed suicide. He was sure of it.

So sure that as he pulled his gun away from Elizabeth’s head in order to kill me, it never even occurred to him. He’d just made the biggest mistake of his soon-to-be-over life.

Take the shot, Dad.

My father fired from his perch in the scaffolding above the Duane Reade drugstore twenty yards away. As the blast echoed up and down the street, the Mudir’s lifeless body collapsed to the ground.

Elizabeth had no idea she had backup. No one else would either. The .44-caliber bullet that exploded through the Mudir’s brain would be as untraceable as the triggerman himself. This was old school. Off the books. The stuff that only ends up in one of those files stamped TOP SECRET.

“Are you okay?” I asked.

Elizabeth stood frozen for a few seconds with the Mudir at her feet, his blood fanning out across the asphalt. She didn’t answer. Instead, she walked over and hugged me tighter than anyone ever has.

I took that as a yes.

Epilogue It Goes On

Chapter 117

I’VE NEVER been a big fan of the expression It could’ve been a lot worse . But I understand why people say it. It’s one of the ways we deal with grief. A coping mechanism. We can better process a tragedy if we allow ourselves to think—to believe—that, yes, it could’ve been a lot worse.

Had it played out as planned, hundreds would’ve died in Grand Central Station that morning. Instead, the attack was thwarted and the thirteen terrorists, including the Mudir, were killed—but not before they took the lives of eight innocent people while firing back at agents. So, yeah, it could’ve been a lot worse. But I highly doubt the families of those eight who perished will ever see much of a silver lining. For them, that day was as bad as it gets.

I made a point of mentioning those thoughts in the email I ultimately wrote to the students in my Abnormal Behavioral Analysis class. They hadn’t heard from their professor since their final exam was abruptly cut short. I owed them closure, as well as some perspective.

They thought it was unfair that they couldn’t prepare for their exam. Then the real world interceded and taught them a lesson better than I ever could. No matter how prepared we strive to be, life is always there to remind us that we’re all sort of just winging it. On that note, I announced what I’d always intended—that they were each getting an A on the final exam. Even if that hadn’t been my intention, I still would’ve done it. They had enough to worry about. We all did.

“How are you feeling?” I asked.

Sadira smiled from her hospital bed. “I feel like I was tied up, thrown in the back of a van, and then the van flipped over three times at a hundred miles an hour.”

“I think it was actually four times,” I said. “But who’s counting, right?”

“So was it your idea?” she asked. “This so-called deal?”

“That depends. Did you accept it?”

“I told him I wanted to talk to you first,” she said.

Yes, the deal was my idea. Landon Foxx was skeptical, right up until the intelligence report came in regarding the missing Pu-239, weapons-grade plutonium, from a nuclear power plant in Iran. Viktor Alexandrov’s apartment had been turned upside down twice over in an effort to find out what package the Mudir had been expecting, but nothing had been found. Might it have been the plutonium? There was no way of knowing for sure.

But there was Sadira.

“You don’t have to help us,” I told her.

“Just like your Agency doesn’t have to help me,” she said. “At least, that’s what your friend was suggesting.”

It was somewhat jarring to hear her refer to Foxx as my friend. “He’s bluffing,” I said. “Trying you for murder requires too much discovery and cross-examination, two things the CIA avoid like the plague. Besides, the exculpatory evidence alone would probably get you a hung jury.”

“For a professor, you sure do sound a lot like a lawyer.”

“I should,” I said. “I’m married to one, after all.”

“Wait. You’re married? ” Sadira feigned heartbreak. “I thought you said you weren’t before our first date.”

“I know. It was all a ruse. Can you believe it?”

“Clearly, I did,” she said. “So you have a wife, huh?”

I laughed. “Not exactly.”

I told her about Tracy, as well as Annabelle.

“Sounds like you’re a lucky man, Dylan Reinhart.”

“I was,” I said. “But then I blew it.”

Chapter 118

THE VIDEO surfaced two days later. I should’ve known.

Among the slew of people escaping Grand Central Station, one of them managed to stop and film the Mudir after he’d taken Elizabeth hostage.

While the recording thankfully didn’t capture the Mudir’s head getting blown off, the shot from the “unknown gunman” at the precise moment I laid down my own gun raised a fair amount of questions among the news media. As they did with Elizabeth, they staked out where I lived in the hope of getting some answers. And as Elizabeth did, I stayed as far away from where I lived as possible.

But while the press didn’t know how to find me, someone else who saw the video did.

The call came right after another hospital visit, this one to Eli. After two hours of surgery and one slug of lead removed from his abdomen, he continued to be recovering nicely.

“Give my regards to Eagle,” he told me with a wink. He never asked if it was my father who delivered the kill shot to the Mudir. Nor did he have to.

“Is that really you?” I asked, answering the phone. It was Tracy calling.

“Meet me in the park in an hour,” he said. “You know where.”

I did. I knew exactly where.

An hour later, I arrived at Cleopatra’s Needle in Central Park, Tracy’s favorite place to think. He hugged me, but there was no smile.