James PATTERSON - The Big Bad Wolf

Ned Mahoney was in the car with me, waiting for action: the takedown of Sphinx. If we couldn’t have the Wolf yet, he was our second choice; the consolation prize.

‘I wonder if Elizabeth knew about her husband’s secret life?’ Mahoney muttered.

‘Maybe she suspected something. They didn’t sleep together regularly. When I visited the house, Connelly showed me his den. There was a bed in there. Unmade.’

‘Think he’ll go to work today?’ Mahoney asked. He was calmly munching an apple. A very cool head to work with.

‘He’ll know we took down Sorokin and Fedorov by now. I figure he’ll be cautious. He’ll probably play it straight. Hard to tell.’

‘Maybe we should take him at the house. You think?’ He bit into his apple again. ‘Alex?’

I shook my head. ‘I can’t do it, Ned. Not to his family.’

‘Okay. Just asking, buddy.’

We waited. A little past nine, Brendan Connelly finally came out the front door of the house. He walked to a silver Porsche Boxster parked in the wraparound driveway. He had on a blue suit, carried a black gym bag. He was whistling.

‘Scumbag!’ Mahoney whispered. Then he spoke into his two-way. ‘This is Alpha One… we have Sphinx leaving the house. He’s getting into a Porsche. Prepare to converge. Vehicle/license is V6T-81K.’

We heard back immediately. ‘This is Braves One… we have Sphinx in full sight too. We’ve got him covered. He’s ours.’

Then, ‘Braves Three in place at second intersect. We’re waiting on him.’

‘Should be about ten to fifteen seconds. He’s heading down the street. Making a right. It’s the route he always takes to work.’

I spoke very calmly to Mahoney. ‘I want to take him down, Ned.’

He looked straight ahead through the windshield. Didn’t answer me. But he didn’t say no.

I watched the Porsche proceed at a normal speed to the next cross street. The Boxster eased into the turn. And then Brendan Connelly ran!

‘Oh boy,’ said Mahoney and tossed away his apple.

‘Suspect is going southeast. He must have seen us!’ A message came over the short wave.

I gunned our car in the direction where the Porsche had disappeared. I managed to get the sedan up to sixty-five on the narrow, winding street lined with gated McMansions. I still couldn’t see the silver Porsche up ahead.

‘I’m heading east,’ I spoke into the two-way. ‘I’ll take a chance he’s trying to get to the highway.’ I didn’t know what else to do. I passed several cars coming the other way on the quiet street. A couple of drivers sat on their horns. That’s what I would have done too. I was going seventy-five miles an hour in a residential area.

‘I see him!’ Mahoney yelled.

I stepped down hard on the gas. I was finally making up some ground. I spotted a blue sedan approaching the Porsche from the east. It was Braves Two. We had Brendan Connelly from two sides. Now the question was whether or not he’d give up.

Suddenly the Porsche shot right off the road and into a thicket of bushes that rose higher than the car’s roof. The Porsche tilted forward, then disappeared down a steep slope.

I didn’t slow down until the last second, then I braked hard and went into a controlled shudder and spin.

‘Jesus Christ!’ Mahoney shouted from the passenger side.

‘Thought you were HRT,’ I said.

Mahoney laughed. ‘All right then, partner! Let’s get the bad guy!’

I steered the sedan through the bushes and found myself on a steep hill dotted with large rocks and trees. When the first branches cleared, I had limited vision because of all the other trees. Then I saw the Porsche smack into a mid-sized oak, and career to one side. The car slid sideways another fifty feet before it finally stopped.

Sphinx was down.

‘Let’s go get the bad guy!’ I shouted.

Mahoney and I wanted Sphinx and it was personal with me, maybe with both of us. I let our sedan roll another fifty or sixty yards. Then I braked and the car stopped. Mahoney and I jumped out. We almost slid down the steep hill, which was slippery with mud.

‘Crazy son of a bitch!’ Ned Mahoney shouted as we stumbled ahead.

‘What choice did he have? He had to run.’

‘I mean you. You’re crazy! What a ride.’

We saw Brendan Connelly lurch out of the damaged Porsche. He held a handgun aimed our way. Connelly fired off two quick shots. He wasn’t good with a gun, though. But he was shooting real bullets.

‘Son of a bitch!’ Mahoney fired a shot and hit the Porsche – just to show Connelly that we could shoot him if we wanted to.

‘Put the gun down,’ Mahoney shouted. ‘Put the gun down!’

Brendan Connelly started to run down the hill but he was stumbling a lot. Mahoney and I kept gaining on him until we were only thirty yards or so behind.

‘Let me,’ I said.

Brendan Connelly looked back over his shoulder just then. I could tell he was tired, scared, or both. His legs and arms were pumping in a disjointed rhythm. He might work out in some gym, but he wasn’t ready for this.

‘Get back! I’ll shoot!’ he shouted – almost right into my face.

I hit him, and it was like a speeding tractor-trailer back-ending a barely moving compact. Connelly went down, cartwheeling crazily. I stayed upright. Didn’t even lose my balance. This was the good part. It almost made up for some of our misses and failures.

Connelly’s ignominious roll finally stopped after twenty yards, but then he made his biggest mistake – he got back up.

I was on him in a second. I was all over Sphinx, and it was where I wanted to be. Mano a mano with this bastard. He had sold his own wife – the mother of his children.

I threw a hard right-handed shot into the bridge of Connelly’s nose. The perfect shot, or close to it. Probably broke it from the crunch I heard. He went down on one knee – but he got up again. Former college jock. Former tough guy. Current asshole.

His nose was hanging to one side. Good deal. I threw an uppercut into the pit of Connelly’s stomach and liked the feeling so much I threw another. I crunched another right into his gut, which was softening to the touch. Then a quick, hard hook to his cheek. I was getting stronger.

I jabbed his broken nose and Connelly moaned. I jabbed again. I looped a roundhouse at his chin, connected, bull’s-eye. Brendan Connelly’s blue eyes rolled back into his forehead. The lights went out and he dropped into the mud, and stayed there, where he belonged.

I heard a voice behind me. ‘That how it’s done in D.C.?’ Mahoney asked from a few yards up the hill.

I stared up at him. ‘That’s how it’s done, Natty Bumpo. Hope you took notes.’

The next couple of weeks were quiet, disturbingly, maddeningly so. I found out I was being assigned to headquarters, as Deputy Director of Investigations under Director Burns. ‘A big, fat plum,’ I was told by everybody. It sounded like a desk job to me, and I didn’t want that. I wanted the Wolf. I wanted the street. I wanted action. I hadn’t come over to the Bureau to be a desk jockey in the Hoover Building.

I was given a week off and Nana, the kids and I went everywhere together. There was a lot of tension in the house, though. We were waiting to hear what Christine Johnson was going to do.

Every time I looked at Alex my heart ached; every time I held him in my arms, or tucked him in bed at the end of the day, I thought about his leaving the house for good. I couldn’t let that happen, but my lawyer had advised me it could.

The Director needed to see me in his office one morning during my week off. It wasn’t too much of a problem. I stopped in after I dropped the kids at school. Tony Woods, Burns’s assistant, seemed particularly glad to see me.