Patterson Array - NYPD Red

“Check the kitchen,” Kylie said. “I’ll try his studio.” We took off in opposite directions.

The kitchen was all stainless steel-neat, organized, orderly-not the kind of place where someone would store fifteen feet of rope. I was going through the motions of opening drawers and cabinet doors when Kylie called out.

“Zach, I’ve got it. In the bedroom. I need help.”

I headed toward the sound of her voice, figuring I’d find her ripping the sheets off the bed and tying them together. But I was wrong. She was kneeling on a dresser, her hands under a flat-screen TV that was mounted on the wall. It was a monster, at least five feet across.

“Help me get this down,” she said, grabbing one side. I jumped up on the dresser, grabbed the other side, and we lifted it up and off its mount.

It must have weighed sixty or seventy pounds. Kylie set her end down on the top of the dresser, and then, without warning, let go. I got caught off balance. I couldn’t hang on to it on my own, and the TV went crashing to the hardwood floor.

Kylie didn’t care. She grabbed onto the cable that was coming out of the back of the set.

“Co-ax cables,” she said. “Heavy-duty, all copper and plastic. It’s probably stronger than rope.”

“ Probably stronger?”

“We’re about to find out,” she said. “The whole place is wired, but it’s all behind the wall. Help me rip it out.”

She yanked the cable hard enough that three feet of it tore right through the Sheetrock.

I grabbed on, and we pulled together, chewing up the wall from one end of the bedroom to the other, then up to the ceiling and into the next room.

“Get a knife!” she yelled.

I dug a small Swiss Army knife out of my pocket.

“Bigger,” she said, tearing at the thick cable.

I ran back to the kitchen, pulled a large Henckels knife from the wooden block on the counter. By the time I got back, Kylie had at least forty feet of co-ax exposed. I cut through it in one whack.

We ran back to the terrace and lashed it to the metal railing.

“You stay and secure this end,” Kylie said. “I’m going down.”

“No,” I said. “I’m going.”

“Zach, I weigh less, and it’s my husband.”

“Damn it, Kylie, you can’t control every goddamn thing!” I shouted. “When you get into that apartment, do you even have a clue about how to dismantle that booby trap?”

“I…no, but I figured I could…”

“Did you ever take a weeklong course in demolitions at Quantico?”

She shook her head. “No.”

“Then shut up and wrap this cable around me,” I said. “I’m going down.”

We found the halfway point of the co-ax cable and wrapped it four times around the terrace railing. Kylie took one end, I took the other, and we braided them together.

I found a pair of work gloves in Dino’s studio and put them on. Then the two of us grabbed the end of the cable, backed up into the living room, and pulled as hard as we could.

It held.

“Ready?” she said.

I threw one leg over the railing.

“Eleven minutes. Go,” she said.

I swung my other leg over, jammed my toes into the narrow space under the bottom rail, and lowered the cable. It dropped at least five feet past Kylie’s terrace. I grabbed on for dear life, wrapped my left foot around the cable for stability, looked up to the sky, and whispered the last few words of the Policeman’s Prayer.

Please, Lord, through it all, be at my side.

There was no time for the rest. I lifted my right foot and stepped off into space.

The cable snapped taut. Once again, it held. And there I was, dangling eight stories above lower Manhattan, my life depending on all the skills I had learned in Coach Coviello’s gym class twenty years ago.

I relaxed my death grip and began to walk monkey-style, keeping my knees bent and my hands down, using my legs to keep me from sliding.

I heard screams from the street below. Then another one from above: “Zach, don’t look down! Focus.”

I focused. I looked straight ahead. All I could see was red brick. I moved slowly, hand over hand, inch by inch, brick by brick.

And then I saw a glimmer of glass-the top of Kylie’s terrace door. Another few feet and I was looking into her living room. Finally, my left foot connected with something solid. I lowered my right foot. Contact.

I looked down. I was standing on the seventh floor terrace railing.

I inhaled deeply, blew out hard, and with both legs on the safe side of the rail, I lowered myself to the terrace floor.

“I made it,” I said, looking up.

“I’m coming down,” Kylie said. “Nine and a half minutes.”

The glass door was unlocked. I took off my gloves, slid it open, and stepped carefully into the living room.

The Skype image I had seen on Kylie’s cell phone had been horrendous enough. But being in the same room with Spence-naked, bleeding, and taped to a chair-was that much worse. I’m not sure Kylie could have handled it on her own, which is why I lied to her about taking a demo course at Quantico.

“Spence, it’s Zach,” I said. “Don’t even turn around.”

He let out a long moan.

I stood behind him and stared at the front door. I had been right about the booby trap. Five feet to the right of the doorjamb, a block of C4 was molded to a table leg. There was a wire running from the doorknob to the charge.

Like a lot of cops, I had a few hours of basic post-9/11 bomb training under my belt. I didn’t know a lot, but I knew that if Kylie had opened the front door, it would have triggered the detonator, and the three of us would have been blown apart in an instant.

Spence couldn’t get out of the apartment until someone disarmed it. I sure as hell hoped I was that someone, because right now I was the only option he had left.

Mickey had been right-rigging the explosives was not complicated. But it sure as hell wasn’t easy peasy. Sweat poured off The Chameleon’s face, and the white shirt under his waiter’s uniform was soaked through as he inserted the remote detonator into the C4 on the starboard side of the yacht.

“One down, two to go,” he said to the semiconscious seaman who was trussed, gagged, and secured to a six-inch-wide stainless-steel pipe. “According to my friend Mickey, all it takes is three perfectly placed charges, and you can sink this tub without a ripple. Let’s hope he was right, God rest his soul.”

The man pulled hard at his bonds, straining the veins on his neck and forehead.

“Don’t do that,” Gabriel said. “You’ll give yourself a stroke or some kind of a brain hemorrhage. Relax. Stick around for the fireworks.”

Connor stopped squirming.

“Good,” The Chameleon said. “You know, if you and I had met under different circumstances-I don’t know, like in a bar or something-I bet we’d have hit it off great. We’ve got a lot in common. You’re down here in the goddamn boiler room and all the stars are up on deck. That’s the kind of shit I have to put up with. I’m either a guy reading a newspaper in the back of a bus, or a businessman getting out of an elevator, or a dead soldier on a battlefield. Never the hero. Never the big star. You know what I’m talking about?”

The man’s only response was the tear that streamed silently over his duct-taped mouth and onto the floor.

“I know,” The Chameleon said. “It’s a crying shame the way they treat us. But that’s all going to change. Tomorrow morning’s newspaper, you and me-we’re going to be headliners.”

Spence’s breathing was labored. One look at his bloodied face and I knew why. His mouth was taped shut, and his nose had been shattered. This time my little pocketknife was more than enough. I pried out the blade and cut through the layers of duct tape behind his head.