Patterson Array: NYPD Red

A section of the yacht’s massive steel hull opened like the door on the fuselage of a jetliner. An aluminum ramp telescoped out about six feet.

“Is that as far out as it goes?” Kylie said.

“It was designed to be lowered onto a dock,” Rothlein said. “Not for changing horses in midstream.”

There was an even shorter ramp extending over the side of our boat, and I stood on the edge waiting for the two ramps to line up.

“Zach, if you’re waiting for them to lock together like a couple of Legos, it’s not going to happen,” Rothlein said. “This is as close as we’re going to get.”

It was only a three-foot jump. Half my height. Easy on dry land. Not so easy when point A and point B are bobbing and weaving like two staggering drunks trying to cross Broadway against a red light.

“Go,” Rothlein said.

I watched the rhythm of the two ramps as they moved back and forth, up and down, hoping to pick up on a pattern. There was none. The water was too choppy.

“Don’t think about it, Six,” came the familiar taunting voice from behind me.

I jumped just as the Kristina caught some chop, and what had started out as a graceful leap turned into a flailing lunge. But both feet hit the ramp, and I stumbled into the arms of two crew members who broke my momentum and lowered me to the steel floor of the cargo hold.

Within seconds, Kylie was right behind me.

“Have you ever tried to get on the escalator at Bloomie’s during the Christmas rush?” she said. “This was actually easier.”

“I hate you,” I said.

Ordway stepped to the edge of the Kristina ’s ramp, sized up the gap, took a few steps backward, and got a running start.

Just as he was about to spring off, a crosscurrent caught the Kristina, tilting it, and dropping the front end of the ramp into the river. He didn’t have a chance. He pitched forward, and his chest slammed into the hard steel of the opposite ramp.

He slid into the water, floundering against the weight of his equipment to keep from going under.

I could hear Rothlein yell “Kill the throttle,” and the Shell Game zipped ahead, leaving the Kristina in its wake.

I radioed Rothlein. “Is he okay?”

“One of my guys dove in after him as soon as he hit the water,” Rothlein said. “We’ll have him back on board in two minutes, and if he’s game, we can line up another pass. Five minutes tops.”

If he’s game? Five extra minutes for Benoit to get off the boat? Another pass for him to spot us?

I keyed the mic. “Negative. Hang back. I’ll call you as soon as we have Benoit in custody.”

I turned to the two crew members. “Lock it up,” I said.

They retracted the ramp, and I took one last look at the Kristina as it slowly faded into the distance.

The steel door clanged shut.

Kylie looked at me. “Good call, Zach,” she said. “Let’s go find Benoit.”

Gabriel stood on the main deck looking out at the splashes of red and orange in the western sky. “Magic hour,” he whispered, using the time-honored film term reserved for sunsets as glorious as this one.

No director could ask for more perfect lighting. And there in the distance was the star of the scene. She was still just a gray shape, but he could make out the torch held high in her right hand, welcoming the tired, the poor, the huddled masses yearning to breathe free.

“Sorry to disappoint you,” he said, “but you’re going to have to settle for the rich, the oppressive, and the toxically greedy.”

The yacht had turned around and had just sailed under the Verrazano Narrows Bridge, which links Brooklyn to Staten Island. Miss Liberty would be ready for her star turn in about ten minutes. Plenty of time to plant the final bomb in the galley, go back downstairs to the Zodiac, and line up the parting shot.

He stood at the rail for one last lingering look, quietly marveling at the sun-streaked horizon, when he felt the first tear trickle down his cheek.

I can’t be crying. It wasn’t in the script. Everything was going so perfectly. It was all coming together as writ, but the tears-that caught him by surprise.

“Damn you, Lexi. You’re ruining my makeup,” he said, laughing into the warm evening breeze. “I miss you, baby. I should have let you have a bigger role. Maybe you wouldn’t have gone out on your own and-what the hell?”

It was another boat.

The river was filled with all kinds of fishing vessels and pleasure craft, but this one stood out because it was coming straight at them. The guy at the wheel was probably some millionaire, either drunk, stupid, or both.

It drew closer. But this guy wasn’t drunk. He was a pro, and Gabriel watched as he swung around and pulled up parallel to the bigger yacht.

He looked around to see if any of his shipmates saw it, but the buffet must have opened because there were fewer than a dozen people on deck, all of them too absorbed in themselves to notice the world around them.

Gabriel watched as the smaller boat kept pace with the bigger one, wave for wave, side by side, with military precision. And then, out of nowhere, a ramp extended from the yacht. A boarding ramp.

It was just at the waterline, and within seconds the other boat lowered its own ramp.

Impossible, Gabriel thought as he watched Detectives Zach Jordan and Kylie MacDonald pull an Evel Knievel across the makeshift bridge and disappear into the cargo hold of the Shell Game.

Im-freaking-possible. They were supposed to be dead, but there they were. Coming for him.

A third cop, decked in black fatigues and weighted down with a vest full of gear, stepped up to the edge of the ramp. Bomb squad goon here to put me out of business.

But the man in black wasn’t so lucky. Just as he was about to leap, the boat tilted, and he bounced off the ramp and into the water.

One less cop to worry about, but now there was no time to plant the bonus bomb. The three in the engine room were more than enough.

Gabriel had no idea how the two cops had managed to avoid getting blown up and then track him here. But it didn’t matter.

He stormed down the metal steps to the lower deck. “Glad to have you on board, Detectives,” he said, the tears in his eyes now replaced with white-hot rage. “You’ll be dead before the sun sets.”

“Engine room,” I said to the two crew members who helped us board.

“We can take you,” one of them said.

“Just point,” I said. “Then leave.”

They were trained not to argue with authority. One pointed, and they both left.

“This is my first time on a yacht,” I said to Kylie. “I hope they weren’t expecting a tip.”

We drew our guns and found the metal door that warned us to stay out in five languages.

The engine room looked exactly like the picture Rothlein had showed us, but it wasn’t nearly as loud as I expected. I was prepared for the clanking and banging I’ve heard in the movies, but this was more like the low rumble of a high-performance car.

We headed straight for the forward section, and there, molded to the hull, exactly where Ordway predicted it would be, was a thick gray block of C4, still bearing Benoit’s handprints. There were red, white, blue, and yellow wires buried inside the plastic along with a cell phone waiting to be triggered by a signal from a cell phone.

“It’s armed,” I whispered.

“Then we better find him before he jumps ship,” Kylie said. “We’ll split up. You go upstairs, and I’ll-”

The thud was loud, clear, and completely out of sequence with the steady rhythmic beat of the engine.