Driving Heat by Richard Castle
She stuffed the gloom in her back pocket. This was not only the day to do positive, this was the moment.
Heat and Feller crouched behind a small Dumpster, each with one knee down on a street where old rounded cobblestones had reappeared, exposed where the newer blacktop had been worn away. The worn stones—a sign of neglect or nostalgia, take your pick—continued under the front gate of Channel Maritime and out along its wharf, which stretched about two hundred yards toward the Erie Basin. The scene within the property was just as Randall had described from his water surveillance.
A pair of workhorse barges, scruffy boys, each a hundred and forty feet long, were lashed by long sides to the dock, where hawsers wrapped around giant cleats. Between them, a smaller line ran from underneath a stained tarp that took the shape of a skiff bobbing in the gentle tide. The boat itself wasn’t visible from Heat’s vantage point, but Feller had confirmed seeing a patch of sky blue peeking out from under its drab camouflage. Rotting timbers, the skeletons of old boats, formed a pile against the brick warehouse, a relic of the golden age of shipping in Red Hook, before the containers had taken the business to Perth Amboy. Nearer to them, a sagging modular office trailer with a buckled roof sat close enough to the sidewalk to have gotten tagged with ornate initials and devils’ faces right through the chain-link fence. At the trailer’s far end Heat could see the hood of the silver minivan nosing out, minus a license plate. She heard a flutter as a plastic shopping bag caught on the top of the fence, billowed in the spring breeze off the water. Then the BearCat roared to life and things started moving.
After a soft squelch, Nikki’s earpiece filled with the buttery, reassuring sound of Lieutenant Marr’s voice: “Good for green.” She and Feller drew their sidearms and fell in behind the armored vehicle, taking cover with the SWAT team. The BearCat never revved, never had to flex a muscle. Over its enveloping rumble came the sharp ping of metal and Heat saw the gate whip open ahead and to her left, smacking into the fence and rebounding, only to be bounced back once more, mere steel shrugged off as the black Cat pushed onward.
The incursion played out like the symphony the field lieutenant had composed: A second BearCat parallel-parked to the east fence deployed a dark-blue waterfall of Emergency Services pros over the razor wire and onto the property; two Harbor Unit Zodiacs cut rooster wakes up the channel, slowing at each barge and the skiff to offload officers; Heat’s group branched out, half going for the warehouse to the right, the others, including Heat and Feller, staying in the shelter of the vehicle across the vulnerable open terrain between the entrance and the long trailer. “Window,” said Feller.
Heat had already spotted the movement. Someone inside the modular had parted the blinds for a glimpse and closed them. They swung, bent and dirty against the cloudy glass. “Team Alpha, action in the trailer,” said Heat into her walkie.
To her relief, Marr came back on immediately. “Team Alpha, holding fire, repeat, holding fire. We don’t know who’s in there.”
The door burst open and a big man rushed out, hopping the pipe railing beside the three steps and racing for the yawning gate behind the team. Just as Heat recognized him as one of the men who had grabbed Rook, he drew a gun from behind his back. “Gun,” said Nikki. The man fired one round that smacked the armor plate in front of her.
“Hold fire until he’s clear of that hut,” came the lieutenant’s instructions. Heat and her team countered to the far side of the vehicle for cover and waited.
“NYPD, freeze and drop your weapon!” blasted the bullhorn command from the BearCat. The man ignored that and doubled his pace for the gate, where a rear flank uniform was advancing. The man raised his pistol to shoot. Well clear of the structure, the team unleashed a volley on him that threw his body into the chain link and then to the ground, pouring red onto the old cobblestones.
The backup officer toed the dead man’s weapon aside and cleared him with a hand signal to the group. “In the trailer,” came the next PA call. “This is the NYPD. You are surrounded. Throw out your weapons and come out with your hands raised.” The driver gunned the monster engine as added incentive. No response.
They waited.
But not long. Using hand signals, the Alpha team set up in entry formation, with one cluster taking position behind a concrete ballast block near the steps and the other fanning right to the gap between the silver minivan and the far end of the trailer. Heat joined the squad behind the concrete cube just as they advanced on the door with a battering ram. She waited at the bottom of the steps and, during the ram’s backswing, right before impact, she heard glass break. “Back window!” Nikki called, and ran for the gate.
Heat got to the sidewalk just as another huge guy—the same one who tried for a penalty kick with her head—cleared his legs through the shack’s back window and started scaling the fence.
If he felt the pain of the razor wire, he didn’t show it. He scrambled over the concertina, letting himself fall and land hard in his own blood, which had dotted the sidewalk. Rugged and solid but UFC-quick, he vaulted to his feet and started to run. “Police, freeze!” called Nikki. He slowed and turned to regard her, actually scoffing, while in her earbud, she heard the all-clear from inside the trailer.
No Rook.
In that instant, Heat knew she wanted this one alive. For all she knew, this mouth breather was the only link to finding Rook. Or finding out what had happened to him. She holstered up and charged him.
The shock of realizing that this woman would come at him hand to hand caught the goon so much by surprise that she was able to knock him to the ground with her tackle. He got himself up on one elbow and, flailing with his other arm, tried to throw a clothesline at her as he had on Third Avenue. But she dipped, presenting her shoulder, and his blow struck at an angle that diffused its energy. Heat came back with a quick shot with the heel of her hand up into his nostrils, which brought the sound of crunching bone, but no protest. Instead, he log-rolled away from her and came up kneeling with one hand reaching for his back waistband. In that blink of an eye, Heat heard footsteps racing toward her and overlapping calls of “Gun!” and “He’s got a gun!” plus her own voice hollering “Hold fire!” and yelling “Don’t!” to him while she drew her piece and then, in a flash of instinct or poetry or just plain damn payback, she kicked him in the head, sending him tumbling back on the sidewalk with his Glock sliding into the weeds.
“Clear,” called Heat. Then she rolled him and cuffed him.
As the others rushed up, Nikki stood, bent over her prisoner, repeatedly shouting, “Where is he?” Feller and one of the officers manhandled the guy to his feet, and he gave Heat a stony glower over his swelling nose, but no reply.
“Let me to take this shithead for a ride,” said Feller. “He’ll talk.” He meant it, too. There was a street side to Randall, a part of him that was capable of anything under the right circumstances.
“We don’t do that here.” Lieutenant Marr’s comment came out as an observation rather than a reprimand. Like everyone else, he knew the stakes and understood the need to get information—and quickly; however, the field commander’s ethics were not situational. Even so, Detective Feller’s eyes probed Heat’s in silent appeal. Before she could reply, everyone’s two-ways crackled.
“K-Nine Four. Hostage located.”
Heat was already sprinting back up the sidewalk and making her turn at the gate by the time the transmission was repeated by the dog handler. Ahead she saw officers starting to gather around the farther of the two barges, and seconds later Nikki bypassed the gangplank, leaping from the dock to the gunwale, and disappeared down the open hatch into the bulkhead below deck. ESU officers had lit halogen lamps to illuminate the metal hold that rimmed the cargo box like an underground tunnel, with about the same dimensions of a mineshaft. She moved forward, ducking her head under the crossbeams, to where the K-9 sergeant was moving his dog out of her way. When the German shepherd moved aside, she gasped.
Rook was sitting
He made her laugh, as he always did, and she brought her fingers over her mouth in case the emotion welling below turned into a wail. “Are you hurt?”
“You mean all the blood? My bad. I made the mistake of going heroic and trying to head-butt one of my captors. The one who looks like an Orc.” He pointed with his chin over his shoulder at the cop. “Sir, are you going to get me out soon, or do I have to rip these shackles off so I can hug my fiancée?”
Heat could no longer restrain herself. She knelt and pulled herself to Rook, squeezing him, then pulling back for a deep kiss. When they parted, he said, “Um, a little Fifty Shades, wouldn’t you say?”
“No,” she said firmly with a side-glance at the other cops. And at the dog. “I definitely wouldn’t.”
“Oh, right.” He arched one brow and nodded toward his lap. “Awkward.” Then he turned to the others. “But you guys have seen just about seen it all over the years, right?…No?” Then the cuffs came off and he folded his long arms around her. They clung to each other while his rescuers wordlessly left them alone for their reunion.
Topside, while Rook refreshed his lungs with sea air and let his eyes adjust to the sunlight, Detective Feller took Heat aside. “What are we going to do with Beckham?” The goon who soccer-kicked Heat now had a nickname. Across the wharf, paramedics called in from the staging area were bandaging razor-wire cuts from his failed escape.
“Kidnapping’s federal,” she said. “FBI’s going to want jurisdiction.”
“What do you want?”
“To interrogate him myself, of course.”
The detective turned to face her. “I don’t see any wrinkle-free suits around here, do you?”
“Then I think it’s time you hustled Becks across the river and let him wait in our interrogation room. I’ll be right behind you.”
Randall set off, then turned to her as he walked backward. “Should I red-card him?”
“Enough. Just go.”
When she felt she had a sufficient head start on the Bureau, Heat phoned Special Agent Jordan Delaney to inform him of the raid. Vying for first dibs on an interrogation was one thing; Nikki’s sense of responsibility wouldn’t let her ignore protocol and allow agents and resources to remain tied up on a case she had already closed. Delaney thanked her for the information and asked how she had managed to locate him.
“The New York Public Library,” she said, then waited for his long pause.
It came. Then the agent said, “No, really.”
“Really.” Heat explained that her frustration with the cyber attack had led her to resort to a very low-tech data search. “I didn’t just go old school. I went old schoolgirl.”
Delaney laughed and congratulated her on the safe rescue of her fiancé. “I’m guessing Mr. Rook came out of it OK?”
“Yes, he did, thank you. As we speak, I’m outside a Banana Republic near Lincoln Center watching him pay for a shirt. One that doesn’t have bloodstains.” Back in Red Hook, Nikki had offered to have a patrol car drive Rook to his loft for a shower, a change, and a nap. His response was to call shotgun and ride with her to the Twentieth so he could dive right back into their investigation.
“Nothing serious, then.”
“Nosebleed. He says they didn’t abuse him. Except for poking him with a hypodermic sedative on the way to the hideout.”
“I want some one-on-one with him. A debrief.”
“Of course.” In an attempt to hasten an end to the call before the subject of her prisoner came up, she added, “I’m ten minutes from the precinct. I’ll have him call you when we get there.”
“Wait. Captain Heat?” She could tell by his tone that her ploy had failed. “You said one of the kidnappers survived. I want to speak with him, also. Immediately, in fact.”
“You bet. Like I said, back at the precinct soon. I’ll call.” She hit End before that went any further.
The good news about doing the right thing by the Bureau was that they were busy running checks on the kidnapper killed in the raid and on Beckham, whose real name was George Gallatin. The not-so-good news was that Special Agent Delaney didn’t wait for Heat to make contact on her schedule. By the time she and Rook entered the homicide bull pen, he had already been in touch with her prisoner, who was manacled and waiting in Interrogation One.
Rook enjoyed a round of handshakes and backslaps. Detective Ochoa said, “You’re showing me something, homes, coming right from your rescue to this place.”
“You kidding?” said Rook. “Wouldn’t miss it. Since my kidnapping, the entertainment value of this case has increased dramatically.” He then turned to Randall Feller. “Detective, I can’t thank you enough for your part in my rescue. Above and beyond. And, as a token of my appreciation…” He held out a Banana Republic shopping bag. “I want you to have this. It’s my bloodstained shirt.” Even Feller had to laugh.
Before she lost her prisoner to the feds, Heat asked Rook to brief them all on his experience, so the squad could pitch in on what to ask Gallatin when she got in the box with him. Raley handed him a cup of coffee, and he took a seat on Heat’s old desk to recount all he could remember from street snatch to rescue. “I have no idea how they knew I’d be at that restaurant. Either they were tailing me from Times Square where I’d been at my editor’s office at First Press, or they were following you, Nikki, and just hoped I’d come along to snag. The grab itself was pretty undignified.” He tipped his head toward Heat. “I could hear you coming for me, but clearly neither of us was a match for that much goon power. They shoved me in the minivan and, after I smashed my nose into one of them, they put a needle in my shoulder. Before I went out, I heard one of them say, ‘You’d better check in with Black Knight.” The detectives exchanged side-glances with each other. “What?”
Heat said, “Rook, are you making this up, because it’s OK, it was already an excellent adventure without you—”
“Turning it into a Monty Python remake?” offered Raley.
“OK, first of all, in Holy Grail, it was the Black Knight, not plain ol’ Black Knight. And I feel no need to embellish. It’s obviously a code name. Once, while I was cuffed in the barge hold, I watched the big one, Gallatin, dial Black Knight on his cell. I used an old reporter’s trick to memorize the phone number by following which digits he tapped on his screen. It’s this talent I have, like being able to read somebody’s memos upside down on a desk.”
Heat turned to a clean page in her notebook. “Great. Give me the number.”
“One sec.” He smiled weakly. “I forget. Gah! It’ll come to me.”
“Did you ever see this Black Knight?” asked Feller.
“A guy visited a couple of times to ask me questions, but they put a hood over me for that. Considering my circumstances, I didn’t think it would be a good idea to ask if he was Black Knight.”
“Weenie,” said Feller.
“So all I heard was his voice. It was deep, kind of Southern, but not quite Heart of Dixie.”
“Like Oklahoma,” said Heat.
“Yes! Or Texas panhandle. How did you know?”
“I think I may have encountered him in a parking garage.” She glanced at the wall clock. “Later for that.”
“And you were never beaten or threatened? Waterboarded?” asked Ochoa.
“Don’t sound so disappointed, Miguel. No. The guy, Black Knight, or whoever he was, just kept asking me a bunch of questions.”
Hoping for a link to Tangier Swift, Heat asked, “Was it about the SwiftRageous whistle-blow?”
“Ish,” said Rook. “Questions like, Did I
Nikki didn’t like the way George Gallatin had made himself feel at home in the box when she strode in. The muscleman had lounged backward in his chair as far as his restraints would allow and was balancing on the two back legs while he enjoyed his view of himself in the mirror. “I’d say be careful, you’re going to take a fall, George—but we both know you’re already set up to take one.” She let her paperwork drop to the tabletop at her place and took a seat. Becks seemed underimpressed and concentrated on his balancing act.
She kept at it, trying to find the pressure point. Heat didn’t want to lose sole possession of her captive before he gave up who he was working for. “Kidnapping is a Class B Felony carrying five to twenty-five in this state. Add to that resisting arrest and battery of a police officer. And I’m going to hazard a guess that you have a number of other warrants out, which would fill up your date book deep into this century.”
He let himself fall forward on the front legs of the chair, unfazed. “That guess you’re hazarding? It’s because you don’t even have a way to look me up on your fucking computers, do you? Don’t bullshit me. You have no levers to pull.”
“Mr. Gallatin—”
“You can pull my dick’s what you can pull.”
Comments like that rolled off Heat. Years in that room had inured her to abuse. But not prevented her from giving it back. “From what I’ve seen, I’d have to find it first. Why do you think I kicked you in the head instead of between the legs?”
Amused, he hunched his shoulders and made a primal yowl that shook the windows and, for a second, did make him seem like the Lord of the Rings Orc Rook had described. She flipped open her manila file and continued, “Your macho posturing will serve you well where you are going. But I am prepared to talk deal with you in exchange for information.”