Yardley Bell peeled herself off the kennel wall and ran for one of the cars as
she holstered her weapon. “I got him,” she yelled to Heat.
Still closing in at twenty yards, Nikki called, “We’re sealed off, he won’t get
far.” Just as Heat made it beside the Crown Vic, the DHS agent slammed the door and
fishtailed off, leaving Nikki to watch helplessly as she gunned it up the driveway
to the road.
Rook saw the whole thing. Relegated to the rear flank, relaxing on a gurney in the
back of a waiting ambulance, he first heard the dogs, then Nikki’s distant shouts.
That got him out and upright on the pavement in time to hear the high-pitched engine
of the ATV snapping twigs on its way through the woods to his left and the growl of
the Police Interceptor flying up the road behind him.
Vaja’s four-wheeler broke out of the thicket and onto Warburton. Rook’s first
impression was how small the Georgian seemed, looking like a kid joy-riding his dad
’s quad. Nikoladze whipped his head Rook’s way, but was really looking past him at
the oncoming car. He might have done better to keep crossing and try his chances in
the woods across the lane. Instead, he gunned it and tried to make a run for it on
the pavement.
In a swirl of wind and grit, the Crown Victoria blew past Rook and pulled beside
Nikoladze, slowing slightly to pace him. Before reaching the curve where a hidden
roadblock waited, Agent Bell brought the right quarter of her car to touch the rear
of his quad and jerked the wheel, executing what every law enforcement officer and
anyone who’s seen a freeway chase knows as a PIT maneuver. If it had been a car
instead of an ATV, it would have spun, lost control, and stopped, facing the
opposite direction. But it was an ATV.
It rocked wildly, nearly flipping over sideways. Nikoladze frantically worked the
handlebars, steering madly to compensate and balance. The quad corrected, then set
down hard with a bounce on its fat tires that sent the front end up in a wheelie.
But the front end never came back down. It continued its rise up and over the head
of the driver—until the rear wheels came up, too, and the entire vehicle went
airborne—upside-down, backward. Unable to hold on with his knees, Vaja Nikoladze
lost his grip and fell to the pavement on his back.
The ATV not only landed on top of him, it continued to rev and spin at a crazy high
speed, churning the wheels and grinding axles all over his face and body, shredding
his clothes and skin until it thumped over him like he was some meaty speed bump,
crashed in the woods, and left him bleeding, lacerated, and dying on the road from a
split skull.
Nikki Heat shifted in the front seat of her car, stirred from her nap by a rhythmic
plunking of dew drops from a tree branch onto her windshield.
It sounded like a ticking clock.
Not quite awake, and determined to stay adrift just a few more minutes, she squinted
to orient herself. Three flashlights moving in a line away from Nikoladze’s dog
kennel swept the woods, forming shafts of light stabbing at the wooly fog that had
woven through Hastings-on-Hudson after midnight. A forensic technician’s camera
strobe flared out of the Victorian country house’s upstairs window. Amplified by
the hanging mist, the flash took on the intensity of lightning without thunder.
In a few moments, Heat would resume her search of Vaja’s property with the DHS
team. She tapped the Home button of her phone to check the time. Nikki had budgeted
forty minutes of sleep and still had twenty precious more left to recharge.