The three detectives and Rook maintained a tense silence as Nikki gas ’n’ gunned through crosstown traffic to the bridge at 59th Street. She had Ochoa radio ahead, and when they rolled up to the approach under the Roosevelt Island sky tram, Traffic Control had blocked feeder lanes for her and she roared onward. The bridge belonged to her and the two patrol cars running convoy with her.
They killed their sirens to avoid advertisement after they blew out of Queensboro Plaza and turned off Northern Boulevard. The address was an auto body shop in an industrial section not far from the LIRR switching yard. Under the elevated subway line at Thirty-?eighth Avenue, they located the small group of patrol cars from the Long Island City precinct that were already waiting a block south of the building.
Nikki got out and greeted Lieutenant Marr from the 108th. Marr had a military bearing, precise and relaxed. He told Detective Heat this was her show, but he seemed eager to describe the logistics he had put in place for her. They gathered around the hood of his car and he spread out a plan of the neighborhood. The body shop was already circled in red marker, and the lieutenant marked blue Xs at intersections in the surrounding blocks to indicate where other patrol cars were staged, effectively choking off any exit the suspects might attempt from the location once they rolled.
“Nobody’s getting out of there unless they sprout wings,” he said. “And even then I’ve got a couple of avid duck hunters on my team.”
“What about the building itself?”
“Standard issue for this neck of the woods.” He laid out an architect’s blueprint from the NYFD database. “Single-?story, double-?height brick box, basically. Office up front here. Machine shop and lavs in the back here. Storage here. Don’t need to tell you storage can be tricky, nooks and crannies, bad lighting, so we’ll just have to keep our heads on a swivel, right? Door here in front. Another off the machine shop. Three steel roll-?downs, two jumbos off the car park, one leading to the yard in the back.”
“Fence?” she asked.
“Chain-?link with vinyl cover. Razor wire all around, including the roof.”
Nikki ran her finger along a boundary line on his neighborhood plan. “What’s over this back fence?”
The lieutenant smiled. “Duck hunters.”
They fixed five minutes as the time for the raid, suited up in their body armor, and got back in their cars. Two minutes before go, Marr appeared at Heat’s window. “My spotter says the near rolling door is up. I assume you want in first?”
“Thanks, yeah, I do.”
“I’ll have your back then.” He checked his watch as casually as if he were waiting for a bus and added, “Spotter also tells me the truck with your plate is in the yard.”
Nikki felt her heart pick up a few BPMs. “That’s a break.”
“Those paintings pretty valuable?”
“Probably enough to pay a day’s interest on the Wall Street bailout.”
The lieutenant said, “Then let’s hope nobody puts any holes in them today,” and got in his car.
Ochoa popped his knuckles in the seat beside her. “Don’t worry. If the Russian’s in there, we’ll get him.”
“Not worried.” In her rearview mirror, Raley’s eyelids were half-?closed, and she wondered, as she always did with Rales, if he was that relaxed or was, perhaps, praying. She turned around to Rook, who was sitting beside him back there. “Rook.”
“I know, I know, stay in the car.”
“Actually, no. Out of the car.”
“Aw, come on, you want to leave me standing here?”
“Don’t make me count three, mister, or you’re grounded.”
Ochoa checked his watch. “Rolling in fifteen.”
Heat gave Rook an insistent glare. He got out and slammed his door. Nikki glanced into the car beside her as Lieutenant Marr brought his microphone up. On her TAC frequency she heard his relaxed “All units green light.”