Manhunt: A Michael Bennett Story Read online

  She released my hands and stood up. I immediately stood as well. She stepped toward me, rose up on her tiptoes, and kissed me on the cheek. Then she whispered in my ear, “We’ll meet again.”

  Then she was gone.

  Chapter 34

  Three nights after Temir Marat was killed, I sat in the only safe place I knew in the entire world. In my living room with Mary Catherine, nine of my kids, and my grandfather.

  Mary Catherine was snuggled in next to me on the couch, with Chrissy and Shawna tucked in on the other side of me. The older kids all sat on the carpet as we watched the Jets on Thursday Night Football. It was a game against the Dolphins in Miami and every camera shot between commercials showed people walking along the beach in shorts. It just didn’t feel right to a New Yorker.

  Before the game, I had watched the news, where everyone was reporting the attack on the parade as just another terror incident. They went on to say the terrorist was shot by “authorities.” Reporters made it a point to say the suspect acted alone.

  That seemed to put an end to the terror attack that had rocked the city. Even Ricky said, “So you solved another one, huh, Dad?”

  “Solve isn’t the word I’d use. We cleared the case. That’ll have to do.”

  Eddie said, “It’s got people on their guard now.”

  I smiled. “For now, but people forget. Always. It’s got to be one of the fundamental laws of the universe.”

  Mary Catherine said, “You really think the attack will be forgotten?”

  “Not totally, but no one will think twice about next year’s parade. That’s how these things always go. People talk about never forgetting, but they forget remarkably fast. The Freedom Tower is a good reminder, but you have to be in lower Manhattan to see it.”

  Shawna looked up at me. “We’ll still go to the parade next year, won’t we?”

  Jane chimed in. “We have to, otherwise the terrorists win.”

  I didn’t know if she was serious or joking.

  Shawna still stared up at me. “Can we go?”

  I smiled. “Of course we’ll go. That’s our thing. Your mom loved it. In a way, we’re honoring her memory. St. Patrick’s and Macy’s are two parades we won’t ever miss.”

  There were smiles and cheers all around. Mary Catherine hugged me, then kissed me on the lips.

  About the Authors

  James Patterson has written more bestsellers and created more enduring fictional characters than any other novelist writing today. He lives in Florida with his family.

  James O. Born is an award-winning crime and science fiction novelist as well as a career law enforcement agent. A native Floridian, he still lives in the Sunshine State.

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  Stuck between two cartels in a desperate, bloody struggle for territory, Michael Bennett is on everyone’s hit list.

  A New York City cop as seasoned as Michael Bennett thinks that nothing can catch him off guard. But then a gorgeous, wealthy woman from South America posing as a photographer lures Bennett into a trap unlike anything he’s ever seen—nearly costing him his life. It’s up to Bennett to discover the true identity of his adversary before the ambush engulfs him.

  Read on for a sneak peek at the upcoming

  Michael Bennett novel,

  AMBUSH

  Chapter 1

  I watched the eight-story apartment building on 161st, about half a block from Melrose Avenue. Nothing special about it. Old window air-conditioning units dotted the facade, but the place had a certain charm. Of course, over years of surveillance in unsavory neighborhoods of New York City, I’ve learned to adjust my expectations.

  My partner, Antrole Martens, and I were sitting in his Crown Victoria. By tradition, the most beat-up car in our homicide unit went to the rookie on the squad. Despite the faint odor of vomit, Antrole had handled the assignment of the shitty car with grace in his six years with the NYPD. He understood he had to earn his place in the unit, but there was no doubt he was on his way up. I thought he was exactly the kind of cop we needed in a command position.

  I wanted this arrest to go well for him. I could still remember my first arrest in homicide. A pimp named Hermine Paschual. He’d stabbed a john who argued about the price. At the time, I thought I was changing the world.

  Now it was my job to make sure things went right. I said, “How sure are you about this tip?”

  He smiled. “Sure enough to drag your ass out here with me.”

  “Let your kids get a little older, and life get a little busier, and we’ll see how serious you take anonymous tips.”

  Antrole laughed. “That’s why I’m stopping at two kids. Thinking of you managing ten makes my head spin.”

  “Imagine what it does to me.” Just then, my phone rang and I looked down to see that it was my oldest girl, Juliana. I always answered the phone the same way when one of my daughters called.

  “Hello, beautiful.”

  “Hey, Dad!”

  There was no teenage disdain today. She was excited about something.

  “What’s going on, sweetheart?”

  “I’ve got big news. But I have to tell you in person.”

  “How about at dinner tonight?” I smiled when I heard her giggle. She was not a giggler by nature, so this had to be something good. Harvard flashed in my brain. Although I would’ve preferred Columbia, a few blocks from our apartment on the Upper West Side.

  Juliana said, “I can’t wait. I’ll tell the whole family at once. I gotta go. Bye, Dad. Love you.”

  Before I could even say “Love you” back, the connection was dead.

  Antrole deadpanned, “Can we squeeze some police work in now? After all, this tip was called in to you. I just happened to answer the phone at your desk.”

  “Let’s call Alice and Chuck to come with us. Maybe Harry, too.”

  Antrole said, “Why the party? We can grab this dope ourselves. We get all the glory and it’ll be easier to talk to him.”

  “He’s a suspect in a murder.”

  “And we’re NYPD detectives. I thought in the old days you guys used to make arrests by yourselves.”

  “Yeah, we also used to get shot more frequently.”

  “Am I going to have to shame you into coming with me? Besides, if we have a few minutes alone with this guy, who knows what he’ll tell us.”

  “I hate it when rookies make sense. Let’s go.” His excitement was contagious.

  Chapter 2

  Everyone out in the neighborhood made us for cops as soon as we started walking down the sidewalk. It wasn’t as if we were working undercover, but a young black guy in a sharp suit and an older white guy with a sport coat to cover his gun—we could’ve been in uniform and not been any more obvious.

  Our suspect had shot a customer who stiffed him on a bag of heroin, in front of a grocery store in Midtown with plenty of witnesses. A poor business plan all around.

  The tip said the suspect was in apartment 416. I didn’t trust the elevator to make it up all four floors without some sort of issue, so despite Antrole’s objections, we took the stairs. It gave me a minute to talk to my headstrong partner.

  I said, “Nothing fancy. We knock and hope he answers. Maybe we try the door to see if it’s locked. Otherwise, we come up with another plan that may or may not involve the SWAT team. Got it?”

  Antrole nodded.

  At each landing, I took a moment to get a feel for the surroundings. Antrole probably thought I needed to catch my breath, but this climb was nothing compared to the basketball games I played with my kids. I took it slow because every apartment building had its own aura. Sometimes it was because of the tenants and sometimes it was because of the area. Either could kill you if you weren’t careful.

  On the fourth landing, I said, “You ready for this? It doesn’t matter what happens, you’ve done a good job getting us this far. Now we have to use our heads.”

>   “You don’t have to talk to me like I’m some kid out of the academy. I have four years’ patrol experience and two years in the detective bureau. I’m only new to homicide. Homicide detectives are not the only ones that make arrests.”

  “I don’t have to talk to you like that, but I enjoy it. That’s one of the advantages of being senior.”

  I appreciated the smile that spread across Antrole’s face. Feeling out a new partner is always an ongoing process, but this guy was all right.

  He said, “This suspect might be the key to some of the unsolved homicides connected to the heroin dealers up this way.”

  “Could be.” Antrole was looking at the big picture—rare with new homicide detectives. It showed a ton of promise.

  The fourth-floor hallway was empty. That was always good. I paused at the stairwell and just listened to the sounds of the apartment building for almost a full minute. Nothing unusual. Latin music from one apartment. Someone talking loud in another.

  As we carefully made our way down the hallway, I heard a TV playing a daytime talk show loudly in another apartment.

  The cheap carpet was uneven over a wooden floor that broadcast sound. A wide set of windows at the end of the hallway took the edge off the gloomy vibe of the building.

  Then we found ourselves in front of apartment 416. Antrole slipped to the other side of the door and drew his Glock service weapon. I pulled my pistol, too, though I thought it was a little premature.

  We listened to the door and I put my hand against it to see if I could feel any vibration. Unexpectedly, it pushed open a few inches.

  I looked to Antrole, who angled his head to see into the apartment.

  That was odd. Drug dealers in this neighborhood rarely left their doors unbolted, let alone open. It was nice to catch a break once in a while.

  From my angle, I could see the suspect we were looking for sitting on a couch under a wide, dirty window. His head leaned back on the rear of the couch. He wasn’t moving. I motioned to Antrole that I saw someone inside.

  The young detective nodded and turned before I could tell him to wait.

  A shadow passed the open door, and I heard someone inside. It was a single word. Some kind of command. I wasn’t even sure what language it was. But the subsequent gunfire was unmistakable.

  The door appeared to explode and Antrole jumped to the other side of the doorway, his gun up.

  I crouched quickly and fired a couple of rounds into the apartment. I didn’t see a target; it was just to keep the shooters behind cover. We had to move and move quickly.

  The gunfire didn’t slow down.

  This was an ambush.

  Chapter 3

  Alexandra “Alex” Martinez aimed her Canon EOS-5D Mark III Digital SLR camera at the tallest of the three young men, who were dressed only in tight white underwear. The abs of all three looked like ice trays and their arms had just enough meat. But the tallest of the three, Chaz, was special. The camera loved Chaz.

  Alex realized she was barking at the model next to Chaz when he got too close. It was like having a Matt Groening character pop up in a Renoir.

  The top of this building in the Morrisania neighborhood in the Bronx provided an interesting urban backdrop, and conveniently put her in position for another assignment. Photographing nearly naked models was fun, but it didn’t pay the bills.

  This wasn’t a coincidence. Alex had planned the photo session to the last detail, including the location. Just like she did everything else.

  She checked her watch. They’d been at it for more than two hours, but she could wrap it up just about any time she wanted. That was the advantage of being prepared: you usually got the shots you needed quickly.

  Then she heard it. A couple of pops, seeming to come from the next block.

  The models craned their necks, looked over the side of the building in the direction of the sound. She could look down on 161st Street and see the front of the building the gunfire was coming from.

  She turned away from her crew as a smile crept onto her face. It was even more gunfire than she’d anticipated. Michael Bennett had been executed.

  Chapter 4

  Antrole and I crouched low. Gunfire had a way of triggering the instinct to ball up as small as possible. The ambushers kept firing high, as if they expected us to still be standing. It was a classic mistake. The holes along the door and the wall gave me an idea of where the shooters were in the room.

  Both Antrole and I started to return fire with our Glocks. The shooters had lost the element of surprise and our police training and tactics gave us the upper hand now. I saw a shadow move near the door and peppered it with .40-caliber rounds. Splinters and debris filled the open doorway.

  A bullet pinged off a metal doorframe across from me. It struck a Pokémon sticker between the eyes. I hoped the shooter wasn’t good enough to have aimed for it.

  A splinter the size of a toothpick lodged in my left hand. Pain shot up my arm and blood spread across my fingers.

  Now I could hear the shouts and cries from people in the other apartments, which distracted me from whoever was shooting at us. But only for a moment. A door opened a crack and a head popped out. All I could see was gray hair.

  Antrole shouted, “Police—get back inside!”

  Someone yanked the old man back into the apartment.

  Antrole backed against the far wall of the hallway and scooted to my side of the door, just as a wave of shots hit where he had been crouched. Shouting at the civilian had given away his position.

  He hunkered down next to me with his pistol up and I felt the tide turning. All we had to do was move down the hallway and wait for the cavalry to arrive. 911 calls had to be flooding in about now. Time was on our side.

  Then a shotgun blast blew a hand-size hole just above my head. Jesus Christ. It felt like a bazooka. I choked on some of the drywall dust launched into the air and blinked to clear it out of my eyes. Sweat gathered on my forehead and I felt myself pant.

  The shotgun racked on the other side of the wall. The shooter would fire again at any second.

  Antrole yelled, “Clip!”

  He was reloading so I needed to keep my gun up. Our training would save us.

  I saw a shadow pass the hole in the wall where the shotgun had done its work, and fired twice as Antrole opened up on the doorway again. Someone hit the floor hard on the other side of the wall.

  Bullets hit the wall all around us after Antrole fired. He stumbled awkwardly onto the floor.

  I looked down and saw that Antrole had been hit in the leg. Blood was pumping out onto the cheap carpet, making the washed-out colors in the fabric come alive with red.

  I leaned in close and said, “Can you walk?”

  “If it will get us away from here, hell yes.”

  It felt like maybe the gunfight was over. No one was shooting, a welcome change.

  Something flew out of the door and bounced back off the wall. It made an odd thumping sound on the floor right in front of the door. I saw it roll around in odd arcs on the ground.

  Too late, I realized it was a hand grenade.

  Chapter 5

  My eyes focused on the old-style army pineapple grenade, almost hypnotized.

  Out of instinct, I reached down and grabbed Antrole by the collar. He raised his pistol and fired at whoever had tossed the hand grenade from the other side of the door. It was tough pulling 180 pounds across the rough, cheap carpet, a lesson in physics and friction.

  I couldn’t tell how many shooters were left inside the apartment, but Antrole was laying down fire to keep their heads down. At least one of them was still active. I could hear him scuttling around the apartment, then he fired a round through the wall.

  Someone at the other end of the hallway popped out of their apartment and started to run. A young man in a white T-shirt disappeared down the stairwell. It distracted the shooter in the apartment, too. For an instant, everything went quiet.

  When I had dragged Antrole a fe
w feet down the hallway, his collar gave way and ripped completely from his coat. I tumbled backward onto the floor and felt a sting of pain, a finger on my left hand turned awkwardly. I desperately reached out to grab my partner again. It felt like I had dropped him down a well. I shouted something, but by now my ears were ringing so badly I don’t even know what I said.

  That’s when it happened. The grenade detonated.

  A giant wave of light and heat. I don’t know that I’d ever experienced anything close to it. I couldn’t even say it made a sound, my ears shut down so fast.

  I felt pain on my forehead, but only for a moment.

  Then everything went cloudy.

  Then it went dark.

  AMBUSH

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