Jeffery Deaver - The Stone Monkey

Then he realized that the weapon had stopped firing.

He was out of bullets.

Had he hit the Ghost?

Oh, please, Guan Yin, goddess of mercy… Please!

But a shadow grew on the wall. The Ghost rose from behind the couch, unhurt, his own pistol in his hand. Breathing heavily, he pointed the black muzzle toward Chang Jiechi and walked around the furniture. A glance at the dead barbarian.

"You're Chang's father."

"Yes, and you're the devil who's on his way back to hell."

"But not," the Ghost said, "on your ticket."

The other barbarian, moaning and whispering hysterically in a language that Chang Jiechi did not understand, hovered over the body of his countryman. He then rose and started toward the old man, pointing the gun at him.

"No, Yusuf," the Ghost said impatiently, waving him back. "He'll tell us where the rest of them are."

"Never" was the defiant response.

The Ghost said to his confederate, "We don't have much time. Somebody will have heard the shots. We'll have to leave. Use the stairs. Not the elevator. Have the van waiting by the back door."

The agitated man continued to stare at Chang Jiechi with wide eyes, hands shaking in rage.

"Did you hear me?" the Ghost raged.

"Yes."

"Then go. I'll join you in a minute. Go!"

Chang Jiechi began to crawl desperately toward the closest doorway, which led to a dim bedroom. He glanced back. The Ghost was in the kitchen, taking a long filleting knife from a drawer.

Just ahead of Amelia Sachs, driving her bee-yellow Camaro at seventy miles an hour, was the building that contained the Ghost's safehouse apartment. The structure was huge, though, many stories tall and wide. Finding which apartment was the Ghost's would be a chore.

A sharp crackle in her Motorola speaker.

"Be advised, all RMP units in the vicinity of Battery Park City, we have a ten-thirty-four, reports of shots fired. Standby… All units, further to that ten-thirty-four. Have a location. Eight-oh-five Patrick Henry Street. All units in area respond."

The very building she was now bearing down on. The Ghost's. Was it a coincidence? She doubted it, though. What had happened? Did he have the Changs inside the building? Had he lured them there? The families, the children… She pushed the accelerator farther down and depressed the button of her mike, pinned to her windbreaker. "Crime Scene Five Eight Eight Five to Central. Approaching scene of that ten-thirty-four. Anything further, K?"

"Nothing further, Five Eight Eight Five."

"No apartment number, K?"

"Negative."

"K."

A few seconds later, Sachs's Camaro was up on the curb, leaving room for the ambulances and other emergency vehicles, which would soon be converging on the building.

As she ran inside, minding the slick, rosy marble floors, she noted that the flower beds near the front door overflowed with mulch, which was scattered on the sidewalks – undoubtedly the source of the trace that they'd found at the earlier scene.

There was no security guard or doorman station in the building but several people were standing in the lobby, looking uneasily at the elevators.

Sachs asked a middle-aged man, wearing workout clothing, "Did you report the shots?"

"I heard something. I don't know where from, though."

"Anybody?" Sachs asked, glancing at the other tenants.

"I think it was west," an elderly woman said. "High up, but I'm not sure where."

Two other responding RMPs pulled up out front and the uniformed officers ran inside. Sellitto, Li and Alan Coe were behind them. An ambulance appeared and then two Emergency Services Unit trucks.

"We heard the ten-thirty-four," Sellitto said. "This's his building, right? The Ghost's?"

"Yep," Sachs confirmed.

"Jesus," the homicide detective muttered. "There've gotta be three hundred units here."

"Two hundred seventy-four," the elderly woman said.

Sellitto and Sachs conferred. The name on the apartment directory would be fake, of course. The only way to find the Ghost would be a dangerous, door-to-door search.

Crewcut Bo Haumann strode into the lobby with more ESU officers. "We've sealed all the exits," he said.

Sachs nodded. "What floor?" she asked the elderly woman.

"I was on nineteen. West wing. They seemed awfully close."

A young man in a business suit had joined them. "No, no, no," he said. "I'm sure they were from fifteen. South. Not west."

"You sure?" Haumann asked.

"Absolutely."

"I don't think so," the woman offered in gentle disagreement. "They were higher. And it was definitely the west wing of the building."

"Great," Haumann muttered. "Well, we've gotta move. We could have injureds. We'll search everywhere."

Sachs's Motorola clattered again. "Central to Crime Scene Five Eight Eight Five."

"Go ahead, Central."

"Landline patch."

"Go ahead, K."

"Sachs, are you there?" Lincoln Rhymes voice said.

"Yeah, go ahead. I'm here with Lon and Bo and ESU."

"Listen," the criminalist said, "I've been talking to dispatch and correlating the reports from the people in the building who called nine-one-one. It looks like the shots came from either the eighteenth or nineteenth floors, somewhere in the middle of the west side of the building."

The speaker was a squawk box, not a headset; anyone nearby could hear the transmission. "Okay, you all hear that?" Haumann asked his officers.

They nodded.

"We're going to sweep, Rhyme," she said. "I'll call you back."

Haumann divided his officers into three teams, one for each floor – eighteen and nineteen – and one to divide up further and sweep the stairwells.

Sachs noticed Coe nearby. He was checking his own pistol – the large Glock with which he was a proven bad shot – and had sidled over to one of the ESU teams. She whispered to Haumann, "Keep him off the entry. He's trouble in a tac situation."

Sachs had some credibility with the head of ESU – he'd seen her under fire – and Haumann agreed. He walked over to Coe and spoke with him. Sachs didn't hear the exchange but since this was an NYPD operation, Haumann must've pulled jurisdictional rank and ordered the agent to stand down. After a moment of heated discussion, the INS agent's face was nearly as red as his hair. But Haumann had never lost the will – and demeanor – of the drill sergeant he had once been and Coe soon gave up his futile protests. He turned away and stormed out the front door, pulling out his cell phone, undoubtedly to lodge a protest with Peabody or somebody at the Federal Building.

The ESU head left a small team to guard the lobby then he, Sachs and a group of officers stepped into one of the elevators and started up to the eighteenth floor.

They crowded away from the door when it opened and one officer looked out with a metal mirror attached to a wand. "Clear."

Out they stepped, moving cautiously along the carpet, trying to remain quiet though their equipment rang like mountain climbers'.

Haumann gave the hand signals that meant to spread out. Two officers, armed with MP5 machine guns, joined Sachs and together they deployed to start the search. Bracketed by the two large cops, machine guns ready, Sachs picked a door and knocked.

There was an odd sound from inside, a faint clunk, as if something heavy was being set down next to the door. She glanced at the ESU officers, who leveled their weapons at the doorway. With a satisfying zip of Velcro, Sachs drew her pistol from her holster and stood back slightly.

Another clunk from inside, a scraping of metal.

What the hell was that noise?

A chain rattled.

Sachs put a few pounds of nervous pressure on the trigger guard of her weapon, though not on the trigger itself, and tensed as the door opened.