First Victim

just done? What you’re doing? There are human lives involved here. An active police investigation! Do you understand the consequences of these images?’’

‘‘Was that you who just fried our gear? You competitive bitch!’’

‘‘You can’t stay on the radio,’’ the pilot warned as air-traffic control began to call out to the aircraft.

The reporter screamed into the radio, ‘‘We’ll sue you!’’

The pilot mumbled, ‘‘They’ll ground me.’’

Stevie moved her hand away from the talk button rather reluctantly.

‘‘Check it out!’’ the technician shouted, handing a set of night-vision binoculars forward to Stevie.

‘‘I think they’ve made us!’’

Through the binoculars, Stevie watched in the eerie green-and-black environment of night vision as the crew ran forward toward the stacked containers.

‘‘They’re working the chains!’’

Below, a half dozen deckhands looked like ants as they hurried to free that top container.

The technician announced, ‘‘They’re going to dump it overboard!’’

The winch jammed with only forty feet of cable deployed as crewmen worked furiously to fix it. Nothing on Hana worked anymore; it was amazing that she even floated.

A crew of four sprang into action, carrying a fifteen-foot, twelve-inch-thick plank atop their shoulders as they climbed the adjacent stack of containers and then shoved the plank beneath the topmost container and hung their weight from it in an attempt to leverage the container up and over the side.

At the first considerable tilt of the container, the ship rocked and the loosened boxcar swiveled, cantilevered over the dark water below. One of the planks snapped and men fell forty feet to the steel deck. The ship rocked to port and the container miraculously pivoted most of the way back.

One lone figure scrambled up the stack and went at the huge door with a bolt cutter as the rain fell harder.

‘‘He’s letting ’em out!’’ the technician exclaimed.

‘‘We’ve got to

do

something,’’ Stevie cried helplessly.

‘‘What’s done is done,’’ the pilot said.

Far below, the huge container doors swung open. Massive bundles of fabric sealed in plastic cascaded down to the ship’s deck. Dark figures fled from that container, the first two falling forty feet to the deck below. A woman jumped into the dark water.

‘‘Follow her!’’ Stevie said. ‘‘Call the Coast Guard! Goddamn it, if only they hadn’t . . .’’ She caught herself about to chastise the press as she and her team had so often been chastised. That mirror was not one she wanted to look into. Several more illegals scurried down the walls of the containers, wild with their escape. Frightened. Terrified. The outnumbered crew was helpless to stop them.

The Live-7 chopper dove toward the black water and hovered over the ship. Stevie and her crew remained behind, staying with the woman who had gone overboard. The radio came alive with requests for the Coast Guard. The Hana would never make port, would never lead the police anywhere. Not to the sweatshop, not to Melissa. The press had ruined everything.

CHAPTER 67

eports from the covert surveillance teams established at both construction sites identified by LaMoia’s visit to City Hall had already suggested that Delancy Avenue Wharf was the container delivery’s backup location. For the last hour, three cars of Asian males had been observed driving the area, circling like hungry buzzards. Fifteen minutes earlier, two of those men had jumped the fence at the site and had hot-wired and fired up the crane, breaking any number of laws in the process. Boldt allowed himself the faint hope that his team still had a chance.

Boldt had been inside the Port Authority radar facility when LaMoia had called with word of the live news story and how the illegals had fled the container. Not only was the idea of following the SS Hana a bust, but there had been not a twitch of action at the naval yard. Despite these glaring setbacks, Delancy Avenue Wharf seemed their best bet to stay with the importers—the coyotes. One final chance for Boldt and his team.

Boldt ordered LaMoia to abandon the naval yard and to head downtown. ‘‘Get hold of someone at the INS,’’ he instructed. ‘‘Call Talmadge at home if you have to. Tell him we’re making arrests at Delancy Avenue and that we’d like someone from the INS present at the interrogations so there’s no perceived conflict of interest.’’

‘‘Where?’’

Boldt repeated the location and said, ‘‘This isn’t an invitation.’’

‘‘Coughlie?’’ LaMoia asked.

‘‘You can’t fish without bait,’’ Boldt said. ‘‘You don’t expect Talmadge to come downtown this time of night, do you?’’

‘‘You never know,’’ LaMoia said.

‘‘And if Coughlie shows up, stay glued to him, John.’’

As he drove the Chevy toward Delancy Avenue, Boldt remained in radio contact with detectives Heiman and Brown. Sometime in his years of service he had come to visualize the radio traffic—he actually saw the operation in his mind’s eye as officers spoke back and forth.

Heiman was watching the construction site crane. Brown was a loose tail on one of the three suspect vehicles. When Brown reported his mark had just executed a U-turn, Boldt understood intuitively that these guys had been tipped to the live news report. With his car five blocks and closing to Delancy Avenue, Boldt issued the order to arrest while driving at breakneck speeds to join them as backup. The two guys who had hot-wired the crane topped his list of desirable arrests and he made this clear to Heiman. These two had trespassed and compromised machinery. A laundry list of possible criminal charges filled Boldt’s head with delight. Cop work: There was nothing quite like it.

He wanted those two in an interrogation room. Despite the fact that Asian gang members were notorious for refusing to talk, if they were faced with the threat of multiple murder charges that carried the death penalty, Boldt believed tongues might wag.

The radio traffic won back Boldt’s attention. As Brown’s mark sped back toward Delancy Avenue, Heiman reported the two crane operators abandoning the machinery and heading for the fence. At the same time, a radio car recruited as further backup reported itself engaged in a high-speed chase and in need of assistance. The gang members had been smart enough to disperse in different directions, weakening the police. A block from Delancy Avenue Wharf, as Boldt rounded the last corner, a dark figure blurred through his headlights, and he reacted instinctively by slamming on the brakes and yanking the key from the ignition. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Heiman on foot heading the opposite direction. He heard the slowing siren of the remaining patrol car, and the distinctive pop of gunfire. He hated that sound.

Boldt jumped out of the Chevy and took off after that blur. The kid ran fast, turning down an alley into which Boldt followed. Behind him, a patrol car had pinned one of the vehicles, its officers engaged in a firefight. The adrenaline rush warped his sense of time. His gun was out, carried in his right hand. That blur up ahead, just rounding another corner, was all that mattered. Sirens wailed in the distance as additional backup made its way into the area. Boldt didn’t have legs, or lungs, only adrenaline-induced purpose. He shouted a warning. It echoed off the brick and asphalt.

The kid rounded another corner. Boldt heard his own shoes slap the wet asphalt. More claps of gunfire from far behind him. He rounded that same corner and came to an immediate stop. A dead end. Brick on both sides.