them up the West Side Highway and over the George Washington Bridge, where the New York cops were relieved at the sight of two state patrol cars with four armed officers inside each, with one taking the lead while the other brought up the rear.
Not even Kane’s defense lawyers had been told what day Kane was to be transported, nor was anyone informed that they would be avoiding the interstates and traveling north on small country highways and back roads. The biggest irritation for Fulton had been having to pass his plan through Special-Agent-
in-Charge Grover, now blank-faced as he sat in the back next to Kane. The feds had insisted on participating-Kane had broken several federal, as well as local, laws, and the word was that after “the locals” were through with him, they wanted to talk to Kane about some of his international dealings with suspected terrorist organizations. Thus, the presence of Agent Haggerty and Grover, who’d essentially rubber-stamped Fulton’s plan.
“Yeah, well, if something goes wrong, it’ll give me a chance to shoot your ass and save the taxpayers a lot of money,” Fulton said and looked again in the mirror. The humor was gone from Kane’s face, replaced by a mask of such malevolence that the detective was suddenly reminded of one of his mother’s old sayings about letting sleeping dogs lie.
“I’ll remember that, Mr. Fulton,” Kane said, and turned his head to stare out the side window again as he clenched and unclenched his jaw.
Fifteen minutes later, Fulton was grabbing the “oh shit” handle above the door as Haggerty jumped on the brakes to avoid colliding with the car ahead of them. They’d come around a corner and found that the vehicle in front had suddenly slowed to five miles an hour as they approached some obstruction on the road ahead.
Fulton grabbed the radio microphone. “What’s the problem, Alpha?” he asked, calling ahead to the lead car.
“Mr. Fulton, there’s been an accident,” was the reply. “Damn, looks like a school bus turned over on its side. There’s an ambulance on scene. Should we lend a hand?”
Fulton opened the window and stuck his head out. He could see the yellow bus and the ambulance; a paramedic seemed to be administering to several children standing near the bus, while a second paramedic trotted toward the lead car waving his arms.
Furrowing his brow, Fulton asked aloud, “How come we didn’t hear about this on the scanner?” Each of the cars was equipped with a standard police scanner that should have at least picked up the call for help and the response from the ambulance crew.
Pulling his head back in, he yelled into the microphone and grabbed his gun out of his shoulder holster. “It’s a setup! Back up! Back up!”
As Haggerty and the drivers in the other cars began to comply, Fulton looked in the rearview mirror just as a figure clad in black stepped from a wooded area behind and to the side of the rear car. He recognized the grenade launcher on the man’s shoulder a moment before the rear state patrol car was struck and exploded in a ball of fire that lifted the vehicle off the ground and flipped it over onto its top.
“Get us the hell out of here!” Fulton shouted at Agent Haggerty, who sat with his mouth open looking in the rearview mirror at the burning vehicle behind them.
Up ahead, Fulton saw a paramedic dive in through the window that the driver of the lead car had rolled down. There was a blinding flash and then a full-throated roar as the man detonated a bomb attached to his chest. The suicidal act was so unexpected that Fulton was as stunned as Agent Haggerty, who looked like a man desperately trying to wake up from a nightmare.
Fulton quickly recovered and reached over to turn the steering wheel violently to the left. He jammed his leg across to hit the gas pedal, and the big sedan lurched off the road, striking another black-clad figure who was pointing an automatic rifle at them but did not fire.
“Drive!” Fulton yelled at Haggerty, who started to respond, but just then his head exploded from the impact of a bullet. A red mist filled the air as the agent slumped forward, his lifeless hands dropping to his sides.
The car continued for perhaps twenty-five more yards with Fulton trying to drive despite the obstacle of the dead man, but finally mired itself in the mud. It’s over, he thought. Shoot Kane before they get to you.
Fulton started to turn but saw, in his peripheral vision, that Kane’s hand was already moving toward him. He noticed that there was something in Kane’s hand, but there wasn’t enough time for him to wonder why his prisoner was no longer restrained. He felt a jolt on his neck from the stun gun and then everything went black.
When the lights came back on, Fulton was lying in the snow outside the car. He heard a man’s angry voice…Kane’s.
“You fucking moron!” Kane was shouting. “You could have killed me!”
“They were trying to escape.” Fulton recognized this voice after a moment as Special Agent Grover’s. “I had to shoot him. I knew the car would slow down in the field.”
“Knew?” Kane hissed. “You knew the car wouldn’t roll? You knew we wouldn’t plunge into one of these frickin’ ponds these hicks have out here? What do you mean, you knew?”
Fulton raised himself on his elbows, conscious that two armed, hooded men stood behind him with their guns trained on his back. They did not try to stop him from watching Kane berating the quaking Grover.
“You’re an idiot, and I can’t abide idiots,” Kane said. He reached up with the stun gun and zapped the federal agent in the face, knocking him to the ground. He then bent over and picked up the shaken man’s gun.
“No, don’t!” Grover pleaded weakly as he struggled to recover from the shock.
“You’re too stupid to live, Grover,” Kane replied and shot him in the face, blood and brains splattering the snow.
Kane nodded in satisfaction as the body twitched once then stopped. He walked over until he stood directly in front of Fulton. “You owe me one,” he said. “Saved you having to shoot him yourself, but I guess you won’t be shooting me today.”
“Fuck you,” Fulton replied. He figured that there wasn’t much of a reason for Kane to let him live, so he might as well go out cursing his executioner. Good-bye, Helen. Good-bye, kids. I love you.
Kane laughed and pointed the gun, but turned hearing a shout from down the road.
Fulton looked that way as well. The hooded man up near the first burning police car yelled again. Fulton thought the words sounded Russian.
The smaller of the two guards behind him spoke-surprising Fulton because the voice was that of a woman- in yet another language…Arabic, maybe…to the guard next to her. This guard also proved to be a woman and replied to her comrade in Arabic, obviously translating what the man on the road was saying.
“He wants to know what to do with the prisoner,” the first woman said to Kane in accented English.
Fulton looked at Kane and back to the scene on the highway. He could see one of the state police officers sitting on the ground, apparently wounded.
“Kill him, of course,” Kane said.
The first woman shouted a command in Arabic, which the second woman translated to German or Russian, Fulton wasn’t sure which, directing the translation back to the hooded man. She drew her hand across her throat for emphasis. The men on the road immediately shot the prisoner.
“Who’s injured?” Kane asked the first woman, nodding toward the man who’d been run over when Fulton steered the car off the road. The man lay on the ground, propped up on an elbow and talking to one of his accomplices, who knelt to give him a cigarette.
“Akhmed Kadyrov,” she said. “A Chechen.”
“Hmmm…gives me an idea,” Kane said. “Finish him and leave the body. We’ll call our friends later and suggest that this presents an opportunity.”
“And the infidel children?”
Kane scowled as though annoyed by one too many questions. “Must I tell you everything?”
“God, no!” Fulton shouted looking at the school bus where the children he’d seen earlier were now sitting, obviously crying.
The first woman shouted something else toward the men standing with the children. Apparently, one of the
