Patterson Array: NYPD Red

Kylie mouthed the word Benoit.

A second thud.

Engine rooms are not known for their acoustics, and we couldn’t tell exactly where the thuds were coming from. I went left, Kylie went right, and we slowly advanced in the general direction of the sound.

And then, a new sound. This one was human, but muffled. Deja vu. It was the same thing I had heard from Spence less than an hour ago. Only this time, I couldn’t trust the source.

Benoit was smart, and for all I knew it could be a trap. He could have heard us come in and figured a muffled cry for help would get us out in the open.

I motioned for Kylie to stay down.

“NYPD!” I yelled. “Come out with your hands over your head.”

The voice came back loud now, desperate, angry, and totally unintelligible. I pointed my body and my gun in the direction of the sound. And then I saw him. An older guy, obviously a crew member, duct-taped to a pipe.

“Over here!” I yelled to Kylie, and I dropped down and peeled the tape from the mouth of Benoit’s latest victim.

“NYPD,” I repeated.

“Bomb squad, I hope,” the man said.

“No.”

“Then cut me loose and get me the hell out of-Mother of God-Kylie? Kylie Harrington? Is that you?”

“Hey, Charles. Right now, I’m Detective MacDonald,” she said as I slashed the tape from the man’s arms and legs. “Are you okay?”

“I’ll be fine as soon as I get the hell off this ship. There are three bombs down here, and somewhere topside there’s a maniac with a cell phone who’s planning to set them off.”

“Benoit-how long ago did he leave?” I said.

“Maybe five minutes. He’s crazy. He thinks he’s making a movie. No camera, but this whack job is making a movie.”

“He can’t blow these till he’s off the boat,” I said. “Do you have any idea how he plans to get off?”

“He’s going to steal one of the Zodiacs, put some distance between us and him, then speed-dial us all to kingdom come.”

“Not if we can stop him first,” Kylie said, helping the man to his feet.

He was a little wobbly, and he grabbed onto a thick chrome pipe.

“Charles, you’re on your own,” she said. “What’s the fastest way to where Shelley keeps the Zodiacs?”

“Staircase D. Red door,” he said, pointing.

We took off.

“Kylie, wait!” he yelled out. “One more thing you should know.”

We stopped.

“Benoit showed me his script. He wants to blow up the ship with the Statue of Liberty in the picture,” Charles said.

“What does that mean?” Kylie said.

“It means that once he’s out on the river, and he can see the statue in the background, we are dead in the water.”

Rich, powerful businessmen always have an exit strategy, Gabriel thought as he raced down the steps toward the stern. In Shelley Trager’s case, it was the Zodiac Bayrunner, a fifteen-foot yacht tender with a sleek, fire engine red fiberglass hull and a forty-horse Yamaha outboard engine. At about twenty thousand bucks a pop, it was the rich man’s dinghy, and Trager, of course, had a small fleet of them.

Two were waiting for him at the swimming platform. He untied one, slid it into the water, and got in, taking care not to do anything stupid that might get his cell phone wet.

The evening light was picture-perfect, bouncing off the wake of the yacht as it slowly pulled away from him. But the statue was still too far in the distance. He had to get closer.

He started the Zodiac’s engine and, with about a hundred feet between him and the yacht, followed her, cupping one hand to his forehead to block out the sun. With both eyes fixed on Liberty Island, he waited for the perfect shot.

“O beautiful, for spacious skies,” he half talked, half sang. But he was so wrapped up in the visual that he wasn’t even aware of the sound track.

The first bullet snapped him out of his reverie. The gunshot rang out, instantly followed by the cracking of fiberglass as it bounced off the hull.

“It’s a rigid inflatable, you idiots,” he yelled at the two cops standing on the swimming platform of Trager’s boat. “You think you can sink this baby like it’s a rubber raft?”

Another gunshot. And another.

He crouched low in the Zodiac and yelled over the gunwale. “Keep shooting, assholes. You’re only making this movie better.”

By the time we got to the swimming platform, Benoit was following the yacht in one of the Zodiacs. He was far enough away to survive a blast, but close enough for us to open fire.

“Shoot out the pontoons!” I yelled. “Sink him. He can’t detonate with a wet cell phone.”

The Zodiac was going fast enough to raise its nose, and the blazing red sausage-shaped tubes that peeked just above the waterline made perfect targets.

We both fired. We both hit a pontoon. And we both expected the Zodiac to deflate like a balloon when the air is let out.

But it turned out that we knew as much about watercraft as we did about explosives. The bullets made direct hits, but nothing happened.

“Shit, it’s an RIB,” Kylie said. “The pontoon is rigid. It’s like shooting into Styrofoam.”

Benoit sat up and yelled at us. All I could make out was the word “assholes.”

“He’s slowing down,” Kylie said as our yacht started to draw away from the Zodiac. “He’s drifting out of range.”

“The hell he is,” I said, untying a second Zodiac and dropping it over the side. “Get in. I’m driving.”

I dove into the boat, yanked hard on the starter cord, and the Yamaha engine sprang to life. With my right hand on the throttle, I extended my left to help Kylie climb aboard.

She grabbed on, set one foot on the hull, and I leaned back to pull her in. It was a classic case of the right hand not knowing what the left hand is doing, because as soon as I leaned backward, my right hand moved the throttle. The Zodiac lurched forward, and I pulled Kylie into the drink.

She was underwater for less than five seconds, then popped up, sputtering. “I lost my gun.”

I maneuvered the boat in a circle, and when I got close enough to Kylie, I killed the power just to make sure I didn’t chop her into fish bait with the propeller.

She put her fingers on one of the fiberglass sides, but it was slippery. I grabbed her hands to pull her in, but there was no leverage. I leaned over the side of the boat and put my hands under her arms. “On three,” I said. “You jump up. I’ll pull.

“One, two, three.” Kylie bobbed up, and I threw my body back hard. Her clothes were drenched, and the water felt like it had added another hundred pounds, but I managed to drag her halfway over the side of the boat. I hung on tight as her hands found a chrome grab bar, and she pulled herself all the way in.

“I lost my gun,” she said again.

“My fault. I’m an idiot. I’m sorry.”

“Where’s Benoit?” she said, sitting up and pushing the wet hair out of her eyes.

Anyone else would have turned his boat around and tried to get away. But not Benoit. He had cut the engine and was letting his Zodiac drift. He’d had a front-row seat to every murder he’d committed so far, and he wasn’t going to miss the grand finale.

He sat up and raised his cell phone in the air.

Like a mime in the spotlight, he held up his middle finger. It hung there, silhouetted against the twilight, mocking us, defying us to stop him, and knowing we couldn’t.

And then, he turned the finger downward and pressed it hard on the dial pad of the cell phone.

I wasn’t sure if Kylie and I were far enough away from the yacht to survive the blast.

We were both on the floor of the Zodiac. I rolled over on top of her and covered her with my body.