Джеймс Паттерсон: The Red Book

He pulls out his phone, the screen lighting up in the darkness, normally a yellow color but through his night-vision goggles, the color is grassy green.

You haven’t checked in, Augustina writes. Is everything ok?

Disco takes a moment, staring at the message. What are the odds, he wonders, that the police have already made it as far as the house on Rockwell where they keep the girls, and thus to Augustina? What are the chances that the police, not Augustina, are sending this message?

No reason not to be cautious, he decides. Be vague and, more important still, give a fake location. His law office, sure, on the other side of the city.

Leave right now and meet me at law office, he writes. I will be there in about twenty min

That’s all he types before he hears the squeal of tires, the roar of an engine.

The phone falls from his hands as an SUV turns and bounces into the driveway, headlights on. Headlights changing to high-beam brights.

Blinding him with his night-vision goggles. He fires anyway, shooting in the direction of the vehicle, thwip-thwip-thwip and thunk-thunk of hitting metal, the splintering of glass, as the vehicle screeches to a halt on the driveway.

Chapter 108

I CREEP between two houses and look across the street. The house is dark. No car in the driveway. But the garage door is open. I can’t see in. Is there someone in there? Maybe a ladder? Too hard to tell. Too dark.

So I shield Augustina’s phone with my hand to cover the light while I type out the text message. You haven’t checked in. Is everything ok?

I hit Send. Drop her phone in my pocket. Ready my Glock. Get into a sprinter’s position, ready to pounce.

A small square of light appears in the garage, illuminating a man. Disco, limping forward in the garage, reading my text message from Augustina’s phone. Goggles covering his eyes.

“It’s him,” I say into my phone to Patti, who has crawled her SUV toward the house but still kept a half-block distance. “He’s got night vision, so use the brights.”

It’s not quite the flashbang I used at the industrial park, but it should help once again to turn his advantage into a disadvantage.

“Go!” I tell her.

I run between the houses and across the street, Patti’s vehicle beating me by only a second.

Her Jeep bounces onto the driveway, lighting up the garage, the high beams blinding Disco, but he fires indiscriminately, bullets hitting the Jeep, metal and glass, forcing me to drop low as the Jeep screeches to a halt.

“You okay?” I shout as Patti’s door opens.

“Yeah, yeah.”

Disco’s already disappeared around the corner of the garage, into what I assume is the backyard. We had no time to stake this place out—we just got here five minutes ago, after Augustina told us this is where he’d come—so I have no idea what’s awaiting us back there.

His goggles will adjust any second now, and he’ll have the advantage again in the darkness.

I run double-fisted, my Maglite at chin level to shine a path forward, my Glock in the other hand.

I turn the corner, and I can see instantly that he’s hobbled, that he can’t run well. He’s still well within my sight, moving down the concrete pathway toward the alley.

“Chicago police, Disco!”

Still with his back turned, he swings his arm back, an expert move, shooting behind him. I feel a bullet whiz past me as I shoot, by instinct, even though I want him alive, aiming low to the extent I’m aiming much at all.

Patti grunts and falls behind me, a thump in the grass.

I stop, shine the light on her. “Are you hit?”

“I’m okay, the vest,” she says. I shine the light on the bullet, square in the chest, stopped by the vest. A nasty bruise will be the worst she gets.

I shine the light forward again. Disco’s disappeared once more, but a smear of blood paints the side of the garage where he turned into the alley. I must have hit him.

I race to that blood smear, to that corner, cautiously in case he pops back around and fires. I reach the corner, stop, crouch down, and peek around the corner.

A bullet blasts the wood above me, right where my head was supposed to be. This guy can shoot. But he can’t run. He’s limping toward a car, but he won’t get there.

I shoot again and hit him again, this time in the right shoulder blade. The alley lights are enough for me to see that he has two wounds now, one close to the left kidney, the other in the right shoulder blade.

Already hobbled, now with two gunshot wounds, he can’t make it much longer. I’m surprised he’s still upright.

But he’s got nowhere to go.

“You’re done, Disco!” I shout. “You know it. Drop the gun or I drop you!”

Which in his world might be preferable to being caught.

He keeps moving forward, nothing more than an awkward shuffle, but still firing his weapon behind him, a bullet ricocheting off the pavement, another splintering the wood of the garage.

I stay low, size him up, and put one in his left calf.

He crumples to the ground. His gun bounces out of his grip. His hand scrabbles for the weapon, but he’s not going to reach it. Not before I reach him.

I raise a hand as I hear Patti coming around the corner, loaded and ready.

“He’s down,” I tell her.

“He’s not dead.”

“I know. I got him. There was a body back there by the driveway,” I say. “In the bushes. Check it out. And call in a 10-52.”

“You sure you wanna do that?” she asks.

I look at her. She’s got one eye on Disco, as do I, but he isn’t going anywhere.

“My way, right?” I say.

She nods. “Your way.”

“Then do it,” I say. “And hurry back. I need you as a witness.”

She rushes through the backyard toward the driveway.

I walk over to Disco, who can’t move laterally but has managed to roll himself over. I keep a close eye on him, making sure he doesn’t have another weapon.

He doesn’t. He’s done.

“I need…ambulance,” he says.

“You do,” I agree. “No question about it.”

The shoulder wound is survivable. The other bullet probably hit a kidney. So he probably doesn’t have a great deal of time.

And he probably knows that.

His breathing growing shallower now. I reach down and remove the night-vision goggles off his face, toss them. “Who’s the guy in the bushes?” I ask. “Porter?”

He closes his eyes, nods faintly. He grimaces, tries to adjust himself, but can’t prop himself up anymore. His head falls back against the pavement of the alley.

Patti comes jogging around the corner. “He’s dead. It’s Dennis Porter.”

I look at Disco, nudge him with my foot.

“Okay, Disco, it’s just us now,” I say. “Let’s see if you get that ambulance.”

Chapter 109

“YOU HAVE a chance to live,” I tell Disco. “You have a chance to get a deal that will give you witness protection if you help us catch the general. But none of that happens—I don’t even call that ambulance—until you give me some answers.”

He stares at me, fading. He’s out of options. And his fear of self-incrimination can’t be that high. He knows Augustina flipped on him. He must realize we already have him on any number of state and federal human-trafficking charges, not to mention attempted murder charges, that will put him away for decades. He’ll never see daylight again. Admitting to one more crime isn’t gonna make a difference.

The only question is his will to live. Some people in his position would rather bleed out, end it right there, than suffer the penal consequences.

“Ask him, Billy,” Patti whispers. “C’mon, there’s no time.”

I turn on my handheld recorder. “Vasyl Discovetsky, do you know a man named Nathan Stofer?”