Lincoln Rhyme: The Kill Room Part 52

Hostages. That was all Swann could think of to buy some time, negotiate his way out. Boston, coughing fiercely, was the first to see him. The man made a halfhearted lunge for his attacker but Jacob Swann drove a fist into the man's throat and doubled him over.

"Amelia," came a voice from somewhere on the other side of the spewing grenade. The young cop's. "Where is he?"

Swann then saw the woman detective, on her side, coughing and squinting as she gazed around her. A Glock was in her hand. Swann went for it-he hadn't had time to collect his pistol outside. He recalled her limping and the occasional wince, recalled too her references to the health problems he'd learned about when he'd hacked her phone. He now saw a frown of pain cross her beautiful face as she tried to rise and draw a target on him. The delay was enough for him to leap forward, tackling her before she fired.

"Amelia!" came the voice from the distance once more.

As they grappled fiercely-she was stronger than she looked-she shouted, "Shut up, Ron! Don't say anything more!"

She was protecting him. When Jacob Swann got her gun he'd fire in the direction of the shouts.

Slamming a fist into his ear, with surprising and painful force, she spat the chemical smoke residue from her mouth and pitched hard into him. Swann hit her in the side and tried to grip her throat but she shoved his arm away and delivered another blow to the side of his head. "Get out, Ron. Go for help. You can't do anything here!"

"I'll get backup." Running footsteps, exiting. A door in the back crashed open.

Swann elbowed her, aiming for the belly, but she twisted just in time to avoid a debilitating blow to the solar plexus. Sachs drove a fist into his side, near his kidney, which sent a burst of pain up to his teeth. Still gripping the wrist of her gun hand, he slugged her hard in the face with his left fist. She grunted and winced.

Thinking again of her injury, he slammed a knee into hers, and she gave a gasping cry. The pain seemed to be intense. It loosened her guard for a moment and his strong hand clawed farther toward the gun in her hand. He was almost to it. Another few inches.

He kicked her joint again. This time she barked a high scream and her grip on the gun slackened even more. Jacob Swann lunged for the weapon.

He touched the grip of the Glock-just as she flung her hand backward, releasing her hold. The pistol spiraled away, invisible in the smoke.

s.h.i.+t...

Tugging at each other's clothing, trading glancing blows and direct strikes, rolling on the floor, they fought desperately. Smelling sweat, smoke, a hint of perfume. He tried to force Sachs to her feet, which, with her damaged knee, would give him the advantage. But she knew it would be all over then and kept the fight on the ground, grappling and striking.

He heard voices from outside, calling for him to come out. The tactical teams wouldn't risk an entry with the smoke and their star detective inside, invisible through the smoke. Also, for all they knew he'd had an Uzi or MAC-10 hidden on him and would spray the first dozen officers through the door with automatic fire.

Swann and Sachs, sweating, exhausted, coughing.

He leaned toward her as if to bite; when she backed away fast he reversed direction and broke her grip. He rolled away and crouched, facing her. Sachs was in more pain and more winded. She was kneeling on the ground, cradling the joint. Tears filled her eyes from the ache and from the fumes. Her form was ghostly.

But he had to get the gun. Now. Where was it? Nearby, it had to be. But as he moved forward she glared at him, feral, hands turning from fists to claws and back again. She rose to her feet.

She froze and, wincing, reached for her hip, which like her knee also seemed a source of agony.

Now! She's in pain, distracted. Now, her throat!

Swann leapt forward and swung his left hand, open, toward the soft pale flesh of her neck.

And then pain like nothing he'd felt in years exploded up the arm he swung, pain from hand to shoulder.

He jerked back fast, staring at the stripes of blood cascading through his fingers, staring at the glint of steel in her hand, staring at her calm eyes.

What...what?

She held a switchblade knife firmly in front of her. He realized she hadn't been gripping her hip out of pain, but had been fis.h.i.+ng for the weapon and clicking it open. She hadn't stabbed him; he'd done it himself-with his furious blow aimed at her throat he'd driven the flesh of his open hand into the sharp blade.

My little butcher man...

Sachs backed away, crouching in a street-fighter knife-fight pose.

Swann a.s.sessed the damage. The blade had cut to bone between his thumb and index finger. It hurt like h.e.l.l but the wound was essentially superficial. The tendons were intact.

He quickly drew the Kai Shun and went into a stance similar to hers. There was, however, no real contest. He had killed two dozen people with a blade. She was probably a great shot, but this wasn't her primary weapon. Swann eased forward, his knife edge-up as if he were going to gut a hanging deer carca.s.s.

Feeling comfort in the handle of the Kai Shun, the weight, the dull gleam, the hammered blade.

He started for her fast, aiming low, imagining the slice, belly to breastbone...

But she wasn't leaping back or turning and fleeing, as he'd antic.i.p.ated. She stood her ground. Her weapon too-Italian, he believed-was positioned edge-up. Her eyes flicked confidently among the blade, his eyes and various targets on his body.

He stopped, backed up a few feet and regrouped, flicking hot blood from his left hand. Then moving in fast once more, he feinted with a lunge but she antic.i.p.ated that and easily avoided the Kai Shun, swinging the switchblade fast and nearly taking skin from his cheek. She knew what she was doing, and-more troubling-there wasn't an iota of uncertainty in her eyes, though evidence of the pain was clear.

Make her work her leg. That's her weakness.

He lunged again and again, not actually trying to stab or slash but driving her back, forcing her to s.h.i.+ft her weight, wear down the joints.

And then she made a mistake.

Sachs stepped back a few yards, turned the knife around, gripping the blade. She prepared to throw it.

"Drop it," she called, coughing frantically, wiping tears with her other hand. "Get down on the floor."

Swann eyed her cautiously through the smoke, watching the weapon closely. Throwing knives is a very difficult skill to master and works only when there's good visibility and you have a properly balanced weapon-and you've practiced hundreds of hours. And even striking the target directly usually results in a minor wound. Despite the movies, Jacob Swann doubted that anybody had ever died from being struck by a thrown knife. Blade killing works only by slas.h.i.+ng important blood vessels, and even then death takes time.

"Do it now!" she shouted. "On the ground."

Still, a flying blade can distract and a lucky hit can hurt like h.e.l.l and possibly take out an eye. So, as she jockeyed to get the distance right, Jacob Swann kept moving side to side and crouching further to make himself a small, evasive target.

"I'm not going to tell you again."

A pause. No flicker in her eyes.

She flung the switchblade.

He squinted and ducked.

But the throw was wide. The knife hit a china cabinet two feet from Swann and shattered a small pane. A plate inside, on a display rack, fell and broke. He was instantly back in stance, but-another mistake-she didn't follow through.

He relaxed and turned back to face her, as she stood leaning forward, arms at her sides, breathing hard, coughing.

She was his now. He'd get the Glock, negotiate some kind of escape. They could use the chopper for a ride out, of course.

He whispered, "Okay, what you're going to do is-"

He felt the muzzle of a pistol pressing against his temple. His eyes s.h.i.+fted to the side.

The young officer, Ron apparently, had returned. No, no...Swann understood. He'd never left at all. He'd been making his way through the smoke, carefully seeking a target.

She'd never been planning to skewer him with the switchblade at all. She was just buying time and talking, to guide the cop here through the smoke. She'd never intended Ron to leave. Her words earlier meant just the opposite and he'd understood completely.

"Now," the young man said ominously. "Drop it." Swann knew he was fully prepared to send a bullet into his brain.

He looked for a place where the Kai Shun wouldn't get dented or chipped. He tossed it carefully onto the couch.

Sachs eased forward, still wincing, and retrieved it. She noted the blade with some appreciation. The young cop cuffed Swann, and Sachs strode forward, gripped the Nomex hood and yanked it off him.

CHAPTER 89.

THE DISABLED-ACCESSIBLE VAN wove through the emergency vehicles and parked at the curb near Spencer Boston's house. Lincoln Rhyme had been at the staging area a few blocks away. Given his inability to wield a weapon, as he'd learned in the Bahamas, Rhyme thought it best to remain clear of the potential battlefield.

Which, of course, Thom would have insisted on anyway.

Old mother hen.

In a few minutes he was freed from the vehicle and he wheeled his new chair, which he quite liked, up to Amelia Sachs.

Rhyme regarded her with some scrutiny. She was in pain, though trying to cover. But her discomfort was obvious to him.

"Where's Ron?"

"Walking the grid in the house."

Rhyme grimaced as he looked at the smoldering trees and boxwood and the smoke trickling out of the expensive Colonial. Fire department fans had largely exhausted the worst of the fumes. "Didn't antic.i.p.ate a diversionary charge, Sachs. Sorry."

He was furious with himself for not considering it. He should have known Unsub 516 would try something like that.

Sachs said only, "Still, you came up with a good plan, Rhyme."

"Well, had the desired result," he conceded with some, but not too much, modesty.

The criminalist had never suspected Spencer Boston of anything more than leaking the STO order. True, as Sachs had pointed out, both Boston and Moreno had a Panama connection. But even if Boston had been involved in the invasion, Moreno was just a boy then. They couldn't have known each other. No, Panama was just a coincidence.

But Rhyme had decided that Metzger's administrations director would make excellent bait, because whoever was behind the plot-the unsub's boss-would want to kill the whistleblower too.

This was the help he'd enlisted Shreve Metzger for. Ever since he'd learned of the investigation last weekend, Metzger had been contacting everyone involved in the STO drone project and telling them to stonewall and dump evidence. These encrypted texts, emails and phone calls were sent to people within NIOS but also to private contractors, military personnel and Was.h.i.+ngton officials. This was how Unsub 516's boss had known so much about the case. Metzger had been feeding everyone virtually real-time intelligence about what was going on, so pa.s.sionate was he about keeping the STO program going. The boss, in turn, briefed the unsub.

But who exactly was that person?

At Rhyme's insistence, Metzger had called these same people an hour ago and told them the whistleblower had been identified as Spencer Boston and they should destroy any evidence linking them to the man.

Rhyme suspected that the mastermind behind the plot to kill Moreno's guard would order Unsub 516 to show up in Glen Cove to eliminate Boston.

So the administrations director, along with Sachs and Pulaski, waited inside. NYPD and Na.s.sau County tactical forces took up hidden positions nearby, a helicopter from Emergency Service included. The noisy wood chipper, to cover up the sound of the aircraft, had been Ron Pulaski's idea.

The kid was on a roll.

Rhyme now looked over Unsub 516, sitting shackled and cuffed on the front lawn of Boston's house, about thirty feet away. His hand was bandaged but the wound didn't seem to be too serious. The compact man gazed back at the authorities placidly, then turned his full attention to what seemed to be an herb garden nearby.

Rhyme said to Sachs, "Wonder how much work it'll be to find out who he's working for. I don't suppose he'll be very cooperative in naming the mastermind."

"He doesn't need to be," Sachs said. "I know who he works for."

"You do?" Rhyme asked.

"Harry Walker. At Walker Defense Systems."

The criminalist laughed. "How do you know that?"

She nodded at the unsub. "When I went out to the company to look for the airstrip? He's the one who came to get me in the waiting room and took me to see Walker. By the way, he was really a flirt."

CHAPTER 90.

HIS NAME WAS JACOB SWANN, the security director for Walker Defense Systems.

Swann was former military but had been drummed out-if that was what they still called it-for excessive interrogation of suspects in Iraq. Not waterboarding but removing skin from several insurgents. Some other body parts had been removed too. "Expertly and slowly," the report said.

Further datamining revealed that he lived alone in Brooklyn, bought expensive kitchen items and took himself to fine restaurants frequently. He'd had two emergency room visits in the last year. One was for a gunshot wound, which he claimed was inflicted by an unseen hunter when he was out after some venison. The second was for a bad cut on his finger, which he attributed to a knife slipping off a Vidalia onion when he was preparing a dish.

The first would have been a lie, the second probably true, Rhyme guessed, considering what they now knew was Swann's hobby.

Combine those ingredients with caviar and vanilla and you have a real expensive dish that's served at the Patchwork Goose...

A car pulled up near the police tape, an older-model Honda in need of some bodywork.

Nance Laurel, in her white blouse and navy suit, cut the same as her gray one, climbed out. She was rubbing her cheek and Rhyme wondered if she'd just applied more makeup. The a.s.sistant district attorney approached and asked if Sachs was all right.

"Fine. Little tussle. But he got the worst of it." A nod at Swann. "He's been read his rights. He hasn't asked for a lawyer but he's not being cooperative."

"We'll see about that," Laurel said. "Let's talk to him. I may need your help, Lincoln. We'll bring him over here."

"Not necessary." He glanced down at the Merits wheelchair. "They tell me it's particularly good on rough terrain. Let's find out."

Without a hesitation the chair sped over the lawn straight to the perp.