“Whoa, check it out.” A small car floated sideways past Rook’s window. “Now there’s something you don’t see every day.”
“Not liking this, Rook,” she said in a low voice. “Not liking this.” The tide had risen significantly, coming up the top of her wheels.
“Maybe we should have risked the wedge instead of driving where? Toward the river?”
“Um, not helpful?”
“Just observing.”
“Just driving.” The engine became swamped and died.
“Not anymore.” While she tried to restart, the sky to the north lit up with a huge blue flash followed by another. “Lightning?”
One second later, the entire block fell into pitch darkness. The two-way crackled with multiple calls about an explosion at the Con Ed station on Fourteenth and advisories that all of Manhattan was blacked out south of Grand Central. Rook said helpfully, “I have a little squeezy flashlight on my key ring.” He indicated the backseat. “I’m thinking Mr. Cristóbal won’t miss us if we get out and walk to—” He stopped short as the car blazed with daylight.
The BearCat roared back, charging toward them. “Out, out, out,” called Nikki, but the flood had risen halfway up the doors and the resistance from water pressure made them impossible to push open.
Bang!
The impact threw them hard against their seat belt straps and deployed both airbags. Still conscious, Nikki wiped a trickle of blood from her nose and shook off the stupor from her face crashing into the inflated sack. Beside her Rook was coming out of it, too. Behind them the three-hundred-horsepower Caterpillar diesel revved. The BearCat rode high enough not to be bothered by the up-tide. Six tires securely gripped the wet pavement and the assault vehicle pushed them forward by its reinforced front-impact grill.
Helpless to do anything but go along for the ride, Heat pulled the hand brake to no avail. The black machine shoved them slowly but relentlessly off the street and down the ramp of a parking garage. In the fearsome blare of the BearCat’s head lamps, they saw their fate ahead of them. Submerged cars bobbed on the incline. The whole place was inundated by tidewater and filling fast.
White-water rapids cascaded down from street level into the underground garage, which had already filled enough to swallow the dozen or so cars they could see floating around them. Heat’s plain wrap banged to a stop when it crunched against the tangle of autos blocking the ramp. Still, the BearCat’s engine revved louder and louder, pressing them in place. Their attackers’ strategy was clear and chilling: to brace them there, trapped, to drown in the rising tide.
It wouldn’t take long. With the back windows blown out, the flow had already begun to gush over the side doors with impunity and both of them sat with water above their laps. “Can you move?” she asked.
“Yeah.”
Nikki undid her seat belt and got on her knees for a quick check of the situation. Because of the incline of the ramp, all she could see of the truck out the rear was the black steel ram on the reinforced front grill, which meant anyone up in the truck would be high enough not to see over it to them. The water had risen even more and Reese Cristóbal’s corpse bobbed up to her seat back. The back half of his head was gone. She fended the body away and said, “Come on, let’s move. We’re going to try an end around.”
“Problem.” He gave her a wide stare. “Seat belt’s stuck.”
“Is it your hands? Did you get hurt?”
“No, it’s the buckle. I keep trying and it won’t unlock.”
“Move ’em, let me.” Heat had to put her chin in the water to be able to reach the fastener. Somehow it had jammed from the impact or because of all the wet. “Damn.” She brought her face up and the look they shared in one instant spoke volumes about how bad it was—and how little time they had.