“Kenyan birth certificate.” said Rook. “Aw, come on, don’t say you weren’t thinking it, too.”
On the walk to her car to drive to the ballistics lab, Heat did what most New Yorkers were doing that day. She made a sky check and found it difficult to believe that in twenty-four hours those hazy, mundane skies would darken with the leading edge of a hurricane. Even with her attention drawn upward, she heard the crunch of sidewalk grit under a shoe, a little too close. She palmed the butt of her weapon and spun.
Heat found her own image reflecting back in Lawrence Hays’s aviators as he stood before her, grinning. “You know, even with your hand on that Sig I could still draw and shoot you before you cleared leather. If I wanted to.”
“I might surprise you.”
“You’d have to.”
She assessed him and felt no threat. He even took a step back and kept his hands visible. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”
The CEO of Lancer Standard seemed to be enjoying himself. He held up the first two fingers of his right hand, a plain-view sign of nonlethal intent, and dipped them into his front-jacket pocket. He came out with a slip of paper and offered it. When she opened it, she saw a Bronx address written there. “How recent?” Nikki asked.
“You’re welcome” was all he said. Then Hays strode off toward Amsterdam Avenue. She noticed the slight limp, verification that this was personal.
Heat put the assault plan together quickly, first dispatching Roach, Feller, and Rhymer up to the Bronx neighborhood to stake out the address in case Zarek Braun left. While they positioned themselves to observe, Nikki coordinated with the Emergency Services Unit to rustle up a SWAT team, then contacted the Forty-eighth Precinct about setting up traffic control. The idea was to keep people out and create choke points to keep her suspect in. None of this was new; Nikki had organized these raids more times than she could count.
But this one carried an extra crackle. “No room for mistakes,” she told the incursion team—and herself—as they armored-up in the staging area around the corner from the house. She envisioned Braun’s calm expression emptying the HK at her. Played back the mental picture of the scars and burns on the torso of Lawrence Hays. “Always think cover. Always just think.”
ESU had already taken survey photos of the building before she got up there, and she spread them on the hood of her Interceptor to familiarize herself with the ways in and of the exposure hazards. Next Heat knelt behind a junker refrigerator on a corner patch of lawn to scan the block with binoculars. This was an economically depressed area with a mix of abandoned duplexes and run-down saltbox cottages. In the growing dark she could make out Halloween decorations on some of the graffiti-tagged neighborhood doors. “You’ve cleared the surrounding houses?” she confirmed with the ESU commander.
“Affirm.”
“Don’t want any kids walking into this.” Satisfied all was ready, she said, “We’ll go in five.” Heat rose up from her hide and saw the worst possible thing she could see at that moment. Captain Wallace Irons, who must have bought his body armor at a big and tall came waddling up the street tugging Velcro and checking his sidearm.
When he reached her, Wally said, “What the hell is he doing here?” Rook finger waved from where he was standing off to the side in his personal bulletproof vest that read JOURNALIST instead of NYPD.
“Observing.”
“This is a police-only, restricted area.”
“Yes, sir, I know, but I have everything in hand. Rook is going to lag back with you while I go in.”
“Change of plan,” said Wally. “I am leading this incursion.”