Immediately, he dropped to one knee, steadied his grip on his handgun, and aimed. As soon as a weapon appeared—an Uzi, by the look of it—he squeezed off a round, and just missed.
Abruptly, all hell broke loose. There was the pop! pop! pop! of semiautomatic-weapons fire. Kids scattering, grown-ups yelling, grabbing their kids and running in terror or throwing themselves to the ground. An Uzi appeared in the cameraman’s hand, too, but before he could fire, he was struck in the chest by a hail of gunfire and flew backward, slamming against the side of the van.
D’Agosta fired a second time at the goon he’d missed, stopping him with a well-placed round to the knee. The other turned toward the unexpected fire, swinging his Uzi and spraying automatic fire across the outfield; Pendergast, shielding two children with his own body, coolly dropped the man with a shot to the head. As the man went down, his Uzi swung wildly, still firing; small clouds of dirt erupted in the grass before Pendergast; then the agent fell sharply back, pushing the children out of harm’s way as a spray of blood suddenly darkened his arm.
“Pendergast!” D’Agosta screamed.
The goon D’Agosta hit refused to stay down. Now the man had rolled over and was firing on the van, the rounds whanging its side and sending chips of paint flying. A burst of fire came from its front seat; the Chinese goon went down again; and the van pulled away with a squeal of tires.
“Stop them!” D’Agosta yelled at the two agents. They were already up and running, firing futilely, their shots ringing off the van’s armored sides.
Now the head Chinese had reached the black Mercedes. As it roared to life, the two agents turned their fire toward it, blowing out the back tires as the car swerved into the lane. A round hit the gas tank, and the vehicle went up with a muffled thump, a ball of fire roiling skyward as the car left the lane and rolled gently into a grove of trees. The door flew open and a burning man got out, took a few halting steps, paused, and slowly toppled forward. In the distance, the television van was careening out of the park, vanishing into the warren of streets to the west.
The park was bedlam: kids and adults scattered across the ground, cowering and screaming. D’Agosta rushed to where Pendergast had fallen, relieved beyond measure when he saw the FBI agent was sitting up. The two Chinese were dead, and the cameraman, who’d practically been torn in half, was obviously on his way out, too. But no civilians had been so much as scratched. It seemed a miracle.
D’Agosta knelt in the grass. “Pendergast, you all right?”
Pendergast waved, face ashen, temporarily unable to speak.
One of the other FBI agents came running up. “Wounded? We got wounded?”
“Agent Pendergast. The cameraman’s beyond help.”
“Backup and medical are on the way.” And, in fact, D’Agosta could now hear sirens converging on the park.
Pendergast helped one of the children he’d protected—a boy of about eight—to a standing position. His father rushed over and clasped the child in his arms. “You saved his life,” he said. “You saved his life.”
D’Agosta helped Pendergast up. Blood was soaking through one side of his dirty shirt.
“That fellow winged me,” Pendergast said. “It’s nothing, a flesh wound. I lost my wind, that’s all.”
Slowly, hesitantly, people began converging on the park from the surrounding houses, crowding around the burning hulk of the Mercedes and the nearby corpse. Newly arrived cops were shouting, covering the corners, setting up a cordon, yelling at the gathering crowd to keep back.
“Damn,” said D’Agosta. “Those fuckers from BAI were expecting a firefight.”
“Indeed they were. And no wonder.”
“What do you mean?”
“I overheard just enough to learn Bullard’s men were calling the deal off.”
“Calling the deal off?”
“On the very eve of success, apparently. Now you can see the reason for the elaborate setup—the park, the children. They knew the Chinese would not be pleased. This was their attempt to avoid being shot to pieces.”
D’Agosta glanced around at the carnage. “Hayward’s gonna love this.”
“She should. If we hadn’t run that wiretap and been here to take down those shooters, I hate to think what might have happened.”
D’Agosta shook his head and looked at the burning Mercedes, now being hosed down by a fire truck. “You know what? This case just keeps getting weirder and weirder.”
{ 36 }