NYPD Red

Chapter 93



KYLIE AND I were pressed flat to the bottom of the Zodiac, waiting for the inevitable.

She kept count. “One-one-thousand, two-one-thousand, three-one-thousand…”

By fifteen-one-thousand the inevitable still hadn’t happened.

“Something went wrong,” she said. “Take a look.”

I lifted my head and peered over the gunwale.

“Game changer,” I said, ducking back out of sight. “I don’t think he can get it to blow. He’s talking to someone on the cell phone.”

“Maybe he’s calling tech support,” she said. “Don’t give him a chance to figure it out. Let’s take him.”

I sat up and reached for the starter cord.

The first bullet tore through the Yamaha engine, and I hit the deck. Three more shots flew over our heads.

I heard Benoit’s Zodiac race past us. I rolled over, grabbed my gun, and fired back, all noise and no accuracy. He did a one-eighty and came back at us. I yanked at the starter cord, but his first shot had taken out the engine.

He opened fire, and I flattened out yet again.

“Zach, I don’t have a gun,” Kylie said.

“I have a backup. Ankle holster.” I could hear the Zodiac bearing down on us again. “I’ll get it as soon as he passes.”

He didn’t pass.

He rammed us.

He clipped the front corner of our Zodiac, catching it at the perfect angle to lift it high and pitch me overboard. I flew out of the boat backward and hit the water headfirst.

It felt like somebody came up behind me and whacked me with a two-by-four. All I could see were blue spots on a field of black, and then I went under.

I’m not a natural-born swimmer, and I thrashed my way back to the surface, coughing up river water and jerking my throbbing head in all directions looking for Kylie. Our Zodiac had righted itself, and she was still in it, but there were at least thirty feet of open water separating the two of us.

Benoit made another U-turn, saw the gap between us, and roared straight down the middle, firing at me as he came. Somehow I had managed to hang on to my piece, and, keeping it above water, I fired back wildly without a prayer of hitting him.

His bullets were much more on target, cutting through the water to my left, my right, and one striking less than a foot in front of me. He barreled right past me and swung the Zodiac into a wide arc so he could make another pass. I knew it was only a matter of time. I was a fish in a barrel, and Benoit was hell-bent on shooting fish.

And then, over the roar of the engine, I heard Kylie yell, “Zach, fake a hit! Go under.”

Benoit was bearing down on me again, but much more slowly so he could line up his shot.

He fired once. I grabbed my right shoulder, stopped treading water, and dropped straight down. The last thing I saw before I let the river swallow me up was Kylie kneeling in a shooter’s position on the hull of the Zodiac, both arms outstretched, aiming straight at Benoit.

Aiming? Aiming what?

As of two minutes ago, her gun was at the bottom of the Hudson River.