“This’ll only hurt for a minute, kid,” Mike said, cracking Henry over the head with the butt of the rifle.
Dibaba’s arms fell to his sides and a rivulet of blood trickled down the side of his face.
Mike fired the rifle again—in the direction of the gate through which we had entered—but high enough not to hit anyone.
Then he ran toward me and pushed me in the small of my back.
“Make tracks, Coop. I don’t know who’s there with him,” Mike said, “but it’s time for us to make tracks.”
FORTY-SIX
“Where are we?” I asked.
We had run more than the length of a football field, bobbing and weaving around tree stumps and branches, onto higher and firmer ground than the wetlands near the entrance. It was rough going because of the uneven terrain. Twigs scratched my face and hands as I tried to swat them aside to run.
Mike hadn’t let me turn on the flashlight in case any of the young men followed. He had cut an irregular path through the Bronx forest in hopes that they wouldn’t be able to find us.
It was the first time we had stopped to catch our breaths.
“I can see the monorail tracks ahead. That’s Wild Asia,” Mike said.
“Great,” I said, bending over with my hands on my knees. “I have a choice between a kid with a hunting rifle and scope—”
“I’ve got that gun now, Coop.”
“Or a Siberian tiger,” I said. “Did you kill Henry?”
“Two Tylenol and he can call a doc in the morning,” Mike said, putting his forefinger to his lips to quiet me. “He’s not our problem.”
We listened for voices or obvious noise coming from behind us, but there was none.
“That way,” Mike said in a whisper, directing me to keep going in the direction of the monorail tracks. “Get a little closer to one of the exhibits, and then I’ll call 911. It will be easier for the park security to find us that way.”
“Call now,” I urged frantically.
“Park security guards aren’t armed. I can’t bring them into this before real cops can get here and find our position.”
Of course Mike would have thought of that. There was no animal keeper or feeder who could take on the small army of drug dealers and smugglers.
He leaned his back against a thick tree and checked the rifle to see if it was loaded and how much ammunition he had. Then he reached under his jacket, into his shoulder holster, and handed me his service revolver—a powerful Glock 17.
“No, Mike,” I said, recoiling at the thought of taking his weapon.
I hated guns. I hated what they did when they got in the hands of people who shouldn’t ever have them. I hated how they took human lives. I hated that people used them to kill living things for sport.
He grabbed the waistband of my jeans and stuck the barrel of the gun down the front of my pants.
“You’ve been taught how to use it,” he said, holding my face between his hands. “Remember the safety, and just hang on to it if we get separated before help comes.”
I exhaled again.
Then Mike tapped my shoulder and told me to run with him. I put the flashlight—still unlit—in my left hand and kept a grip on the handle of the gun.
We were running as fast as we could go. I knew that to our right, beyond all the wooded area, was taller, thicker fencing that surrounded the entire zoological park. The Bronx River cut through the zoo—we had crossed over it on the monorail ride—so that body of water separated us from the main entrance and the office buildings, including the mini–police station house, which was not likely to have anyone on duty when the zoo was closed.
Any second now, I expected to encounter a raging beast, unhappy about the trespassers in its habitat. There weren’t supposed to be any in this area, but if criminals could break in, why couldn’t fierce animals break out?
When we reached the first clearing, Mike took out his phone, leaned the rifle against a dense bush, and dialed 911.
“Mike Chapman,” he said, giving the operator his shield number and command, but staying as calm as a pilot in heavy turbulence. “Ten-thirteen.”
He was giving the NYPD code for “officer needs assistance.”
“The zoo. Wild Asia. Somewhere on the eastern side, not far from the Bronx River Parkway.”
I was looking through the forested area for signs of anyone approaching. I was chilled and nervous and as jumpy as Henry Dibaba had been.
“I didn’t say ‘who.’ I said ‘zoo.’ The fucking Bronx Zoo,” Mike said to the operator. “Get a car here. Police, not park security. Situation involves gunshots.”
He was exasperated, and that heightened my own paranoia.
“No, lady. I didn’t code ‘animal down,’” Mike said, losing his patience. “The animals are fine. Shots fired. At people. We need cops stat, lady, before somebody’s dead.”
She was telling Mike to stay calm and remain on the phone with her.
“I can’t hold on. I’m almost out of juice and I need two hands to shoot, lady. Got it?”
He ended the call and motioned to me to keep moving.
We were finally in low grass. We were clear of the thick growth and I could run faster, not as worried about tripping over branches and rocks.
I was streaking across the open space. There were some lights up ahead—probably in one of the feeding pens—and I was running toward them.
“I think I see animals, Mike,” I said. “Antlers—maybe deer or gazelle.”
“Just go,” he said.
I knew those creatures I had seen were unlikely to harm me, and I knew they had to be separated from me by moats or twenty-foot-high glass enclosures or even electrified fences—just as they were kept apart from the Asian rhinos and the dangerous cats.
Mike had almost caught up with me. I was panting and sweating as I pulled in under the monorail tracks, resting at the edge of the lighted enclosure.
“Not there,” Mike yelled at me. “Get out of the light.”
But it was too late for that warning. I had made myself a target.
I heard a rifle shot explode and then a bullet crash into the concrete base of the monorail track that was just inches above my head.
FORTY-SEVEN
Mike had returned fire in the direction the shots came from and then pulled me under the shading of the elevated tracks.
We were crouching side by side behind a concrete tower, and Mike was rubbing my back with one hand.
“We just need to buy three or four minutes, Coop. That’s all the time it will take for a radio car to get here,” Mike said. “These kids will run at the sound of sirens.”
“Here? We just sit here in the open, because I was stupid enough to stand in the light and let them see me?”
“I want to move,” Mike said. “I’m thinking it out.”
“How?” I asked. “How do we move? How many of them are there?”
“Two. Maybe three,” he said. “Henry’s down for the count, the way I clocked him on the head. I think there’s only one gun between them. Only one round of shots fired each time.”
“All it takes is a single bullet,” I said. I was thinking of the way Paul Battaglia had pitched forward into my arms, his brains spurting everywhere.
“You okay without your jacket?” Mike asked.
I nodded. “I’m not shivering because I’m cold.”
“Take it off.”