The kid looked disappointed but obeyed.
Erin put her mouth close to the manhole. She was pretty sure the heavy iron would stop a .45 slug. “Hey, you down there!” she shouted.
No answer.
“We know you’re there!” she called. “This is the NYPD! Where do you think you’re going to go? We’ve got thirty-five thousand officers we can call up. You can give up, or we can come get you. If we get you, and we will, you’re likely to get shot. So far you haven’t tagged any cops. But if you hit one of us, we’re going to get mad. Let’s end this day on a good note for everyone.”
“Chinga tu madre.”
The reply was faint but audible, and very impolite. Erin didn’t speak much Spanish, but she understood that much. She also had a pretty good guess who the guy was, based on his language of choice.
“Diego Rojas,” she said. “Give it up. It’s over.”
“You want me, perra, you come get me.”
“Listen, buddy,” she shot back. “You’re hurt. You’re stuck there. If you could run, you’d already be gone. I’ve got all day. Hell, I’ve got all week. It’s going to get pretty cold and dark down there. You need medical attention. Give it up. I promise you’ll get a doctor.”
More officers were arriving on scene. Erin stood up from the manhole as the Patrol sergeant approached.
“What do you think?” he asked in an undertone.
“He took a swan dive from the fourth floor,” she whispered back. “He’s lucky he wasn’t killed. No way is he running. He’s hurt bad. You see his blood there?”
“Gotcha,” the other officer said. “I’ll call HNT.”
Erin nodded. This was definitely a job for the Hostage Negotiation Team. There weren’t any hostages, of course, but they were the guys to bring in to talk down a barricaded suspect. The Patrol sergeant keyed his radio and called Dispatch with the request.
“Copy,” Dispatch replied. “Negotiator is en route. ETA fifteen minutes.”
“We’ll set up a perimeter,” the sergeant said.
“Let’s get some storm sewer plans,” Erin suggested. “Set some officers at choke points?”
“Copy that,” the sergeant said. He barked orders to the other uniforms. They quickly got organized, two pairs of patrolmen going to the nearest other sewer access points and locking down the site.
Erin was content to let their target marinate in the sewer. A little softening up would make him easier to take in. She pulled Rolf’s rubber Kong ball out of her jacket pocket and tossed it to him. The K-9 snatched it out of the air, plopped to his belly, and started happily gnawing. He’d done a good job and knew it. All was right in Rolf’s world.
“Mujer policía?”
The voice was faint, coming up from the manhole, and tight with pain.
“Yeah, I’m here,” Erin said, dropping to one knee beside the shaft. “How you doing down there, Diego?”
“I want a doctor.”
“We’ll get you one,” she said. “Where are you hurt?”
“My leg and… my cabeza.”
Erin knew only a little Spanish. “Your head?”
“Si.”
He was slurring his words a little and losing some of his English. Erin guessed he was going into shock.
“Hey, stay with me, Diego,” she said. “Here’s what I need you to do. I need you to drop your gun. I can’t help you if you shoot at me, okay?”
“Hey, Detective,” the Patrol sergeant muttered into her ear. “Why don’t we just wait for the negotiator?”
“This guy could be dying,” Erin said softly. “I don’t know if he’s got fifteen minutes. He sounds shocky.”
“He shot at cops,” the sergeant reminded her.
She nodded but didn’t turn away from the manhole. The guy really didn’t sound so good. “Diego?” she called more loudly. “Drop the gun. Now.”
There was a faint but audible splash.
Erin took a deep breath. “Okay,” she said to the officers around her. “Let’s get this lid open.”
The rookie came forward to lend a hand. The cover wasn’t fully seated in the shaft. It was heavy but not hard to shift. Metal grated on concrete.
“You don’t know what he did,” the sergeant objected. He stood with four other cops, guns pointed at the open hatch. “Maybe he’s got another gun.”
“Diego,” she called.
There was no answer.
“Diego!”
He mumbled something inaudible.
“Flashlight,” Erin said to the nearest uniform. He pulled his big Maglite and extended it to her. She took it, flicked it on, and shone it down the hole, keeping her head back from the opening. Anyone looking up would see only a bright light. If Rojas was waiting to shoot at someone, there was a good chance he’d fire now.
He didn’t.
Erin gave it a few seconds, then cautiously poked her head over the lip of the shaft, peering down. She saw a damp, circular hole with an iron ladder bolted to one side. A man lay crumpled at the bottom like a discarded piece of trash. She saw blood on his head. He was half-submerged in brown, filthy water. His head was sagging down. Even as she watched, he slumped sideways, his head going under the surface.
“Shit,” Erin muttered. There was no time to do this by the book. She shoved her Glock into its holster and thrust the flashlight back at the man who’d given it to her.
“Keep that pointed down,” she told him. “Bleib,” she ordered Rolf, who was perfectly happy to stay with his toy. Then she went down the ladder as fast as she could without jumping onto the poor bastard at the bottom.
It was a tight fit to work her way around the wounded man’s body. Erin was glad she was smaller than the average cop. She splashed into the water at the floor of the shaft, hissing at the icy cold that immediately shot up her legs. She bent down, grabbed him by the shoulders, and pulled him to a sitting position. In the light from the flashlight beam, he looked like a fresh-drowned corpse. She shook him and slapped his cheek.
“Diego!” she
