toward me. Nice and easy. I’ve got three guns pointed at you and three on her.”
I muted my cell.
“Ready to tango, boys?” I said softly.
Ty’s voice came back first. “In Position Bravo, dancing shoes on.”
Then Adam. “I was ready to stomp all over him as soon as he gave the flag the finger.”
Then Zach. “The rabbit and I are hopping mad. Let’s kick some Russian ass.”
There were about two hundred feet between Chukov and me. I started walking toward him. Operation Nighthawks was under way.
The city that never sleeps was living up to its name. Even though the crowds had thinned, there were still hundreds of people all around us — some chattering away upstairs in the restaurant, some waiting for a late-night Metro North commuter train, and a steady stream of straphangers on their way to catch a Lexington Avenue subway or the shuttle to Times Square.
“Lots of foot traffic,” Adam said.
“We’ve got a pair of eyes on the Vanderbilt balcony checking out the main floor,” Zach said. “A cop. I can’t tell if he’s focused on you or just staring into space.”
I was halfway there, a hundred feet to go. I didn’t look up at the cop. I just kept walking.
I could see Katherine clearly now. Her tan pants were stained with dirt and grease, her hair was matted from sweat, and her eyes were red, puffy, and filled with dread.
When I got thirty feet away, I stopped and unmuted my cell phone. “This is as far as I go, Chukov,” I said.
I put the phone down, unlatched the medical bag, tipped it forward, scooped up a fistful of rhinestones, and let them trickle through my fingers and run back into the bag.
A smile spread across his jowly mug, and I knew that the worthless glass had passed for the real thing. I closed the bag and picked up the phone.
“You wanted to see them?” I said. “You’ve seen them. Now send one of your men over here with Katherine and he can have the diamonds.”
Chukov hesitated.
“Don’t take too long,” I said. “There’s a cop on the west balcony who is starting to get interested in this little tableau, and I think we all should get out of here before he decides to ask embarrassing questions.”
Chukov looked up at the cop who was standing on the balcony. He turned to one of his men: a big, burly, stoop-shouldered Eastern European.
“Grigor,” he said. That was all I understood. The rest was in Russian.
Chukov let go of Katherine’s arm. Grigor stepped in, gently tapped her shoulder, and said, “We go. Please.”
They walked toward me and stopped less than two feet away. I could feel the fear coming off Katherine’s body.
“Take the bag,” I said to Grigor. “Take it back to Chukov and get the hell out of our lives.”
I waited for him to bend down and pick it up. He didn’t. Instead, he nudged it into position with his foot, then kicked it hard. It skittered across the floor and stopped directly at Chukov’s feet.
It would take Chukov less than ten seconds to open the bag and realize the diamonds were fake. Grigor stood silently, one hand on his gun, the other on Katherine.
I tilted my head down toward my lapel.
“Release the rabbit,” I said.
Chapter 88
THE BEST WAY to get a greyhound to race around a track is to give him a mechanical rabbit to chase.
Our rabbit was an olive-drab rucksack packed with smoke grenades like the ones I had thrown the night I found the diamonds. As soon as Zach pushed the remote detonator, it exploded outside the prestigious Yale Club at 50 Vanderbilt Avenue, across the street from the terminal.
Our mission was to create chaos outside Grand Central before all hell broke loose inside.
It worked like gangbusters.
The explosion was not much more than noise and smoke, but the earsplitting boom was enough to cause a coronary a block away, and the billowing acrid cloud of smoke could have blanketed a football field.
The blast was far enough away that down on the main concourse it sounded like a muffled car backfiring. Those who heard it waved it off — a classic case of
Not so with the cops at the door. For them, standing around hour after hour, day after day, night after night, this was a
And despite the fact that the streets of New York are the sole jurisdiction of the NYPD, the MTA state cops bolted out the door like a pack of greyhounds from the starting gate, racing to nail the exploding rabbit.
Katherine heard it, too. If she could be any more petrified than she already was, the noise pushed her to the edge. After her body twitched from being startled, fresh tears made tracks over the ones already dried on her dirty cheeks. I desperately wanted to wrap my arms around her and apologize for the pain and suffering I had caused, and vow to spend the rest of my life making amends for it. But all I could do now was make that promise to myself. I turned my attention back to Chukov.
The noise didn’t faze him. He was too busy opening the bag. He reached in and grabbed a handful of the glittering stones. A second later his head snapped around and he screamed at me. The words were in Russian, but I needed no translation. It was the cry of a man who had just come up with a fistful of worthless glass.
“Light it up,” I yelled into the wireless.
Chukov flung the rhinestones to the floor and went for his gun. I reached for Katherine and screamed, “Close your eyes! Cover your ears!” as I shielded her with my body.
She was too dumbfounded to follow through with my instructions. I pressed her face to my chest, covered her ears with my arm, and braced myself.
Unlike the benign smoke grenades that had drawn the cops onto the street, the ALST471 magnum ultra-flash grenade produces a brilliant flash, a deafening concussive blast, and a shower of white-hot sparks. It’s the military’s nonlethal version of shock and awe — developed as a stun device for a variety of tactical operations, including hostage rescue. Launch one into a crowd and it leaves everyone temporarily blind, deaf, and totally disoriented. Adam and Ty launched two.
The flash grenades hit their marks and rocked the place. Even with my eyes closed and my ears covered, the white light and the thunderous noise were like a lightning strike.
The shrieks and cries of the throng who were caught by surprise bounced off the marble walls and echoed from the domed ceiling.
I screamed into my wireless for Zach, opened my eyes, and saw him running toward me.
“You’re safe, you’re safe,” I yelled at Katherine as I passed her over to Zach. “Zach, don’t let her out of your sight. Go, go, go!”
Chapter 89
ZACH PUT HIS arm around Katherine and half dragged, half carried her toward the stairway to the north balcony, our designated safe zone.
