‘Mr. Carter? Zeb Carter?’ The voice was young. Maybe it was scared, but Zeb couldn’t be sure.
He was driving, heading out from their office on Columbus Avenue, when the call came, from a number he didn’t recognize. A voice he wasn’t familiar with. He looked at Meghan beside him. She shrugged. She didn’t know either. Chloe, in the rear, indicated she had no clue. As did Bear and Bwana, who were on either side of her.
‘Who are you, ma’am? How did you get this number?’
‘Mr. Carter, is that you?’ She seemed to be desperate. Panic in her voice. He motioned for Meghan to trace the call and made to answer when she broke off.
‘Hey,’ she called out sharply to someone. ‘Listen. You—’ Something smashed, a sound Zeb knew all too well. A car window breaking.
‘Find her,’ he whispered urgently to Meghan, who was already punching keys on her screen, commanding Werner to trace and track.
‘Wait,’ the woman shouted, ‘you can’t…Mr. Carter, please—’
A sharp report ended her call. Another report, followed by dead silence. Zeb braked involuntarily, his eyes meeting Bear and Bwana’s in the mirror, the three of them silently recognizing what they had heard.
‘East Sixty-Fourth Street,’ Meghan yelled, her voice strained. She too knew what had just gone down. ‘Near Madison Avenue.’
Zeb floored his vehicle and jammed a hand over his horn, sounding it continually. They were near Columbus Circle—East Sixty-Fourth wasn’t far. Ten minutes. Fifteen at the most. Traffic wasn’t heavy, thankfully. He leaned forward as he drove, summoning the iron control that had stood him in good stead all his life. ‘Ma’am? Are you there?’ His voice was calm. Even. No trace of the volcano bubbling inside.
Silence mocked him. He reached out to the dashboard to dial the caller. Meghan slapped his hand away and motioned for him to concentrate on his driving. She called the number back. It was dead.
Zeb didn’t speak. He focused on the traffic ahead, seeking channels of clear space, filtering out ‘noise.’ No one spoke. All stared straight ahead, a sense of dread filling the vehicle.
They knew what they had heard. An execution. A cold-blooded killing of a woman who had been reaching out to Zeb for help. Zeb drove, the SUV sensing his rage and responding to every touch on the pedals. Past Sixth Avenue. Cutting past the red lights on Fifth Avenue and barreling ahead. Swerving past oncoming traffic. Ignoring the sudden blaring of outraged honking. A minute since the call had ended. His mind started racing, calculating, even as he hung a left and surged ahead on Madison Avenue.
‘Cameras at the scene. Getaway vehicles. Maybe an SUV.’
‘Gotcha.’ Meghan understood him. She got Werner to seek out traffic and CCTV cameras at the scene. Check their feeds to see if a hostile vehicle could be spotted. An SUV, because more often than not, hostiles used SUVs.
East Sixty-First Street flashed past. Zeb spotted a cruiser in his mirror, its light bar flashing. He accelerated. Now wasn’t the time to stop and explain.
‘Two minutes away,’ Meghan called out, voice tight. ‘Werner’s got a few cameras. No feeds yet.’
‘Keep looking. Chloe?’
‘Yeah?’
‘Call Chang or Pizaka. Get them to call off the cops on our tail.’
East Sixty-Third Street came and went behind. A trucker leaned out of his cab and swore as Zeb nearly swiped him. The string of curses fell behind as Zeb pushed on remorselessly—his eyes searching, all their eyes seeking, as the crossroads of East Sixty-Fourth and Madison Avenue approached.
Chloe was the first to spot it. ‘To our nine. A crowd around a sedan. Grey.’
‘That could be the one,’ Meghan confirmed. ‘Coordinates match.’
Zeb risked a quick glance as he drove past without slowing. The sedan half-climbed onto the pavement. Something or someone slumped across the wheel. Bystanders pushing and shoving. And then he was past East Sixty-Fourth, continuing on Madison Avenue. He felt his friends look at him in askance.
‘Getaway vehicle,’ he explained, tight-lipped. ‘Twelve minutes since the shooting. They’ll still be in the city. Maybe on Madison Avenue.’
‘You going to stop every speeding vehicle, bro?’ Bwana asked softly.
Zeb didn’t reply.
Will they be on Madison Avenue still? I would. It’s wider than the cross streets. More opportunity to speed up. East Sixty-Sixth Street approached. Lights turned red. Zeb didn’t let up. He filtered through lanes, flashed his lights and kept sounding his horn. An ambulance came from their right, its driver wide-eyed, heaving the wheel wildly to get out of their way. A tap on the brakes. A half turn of the wheel and they were past, behind the ambulance.
‘This is madness, Zeb. We can’t just go on.’ Meghan turned her pale face at him. Zeb didn’t answer. His mind kept replaying the call. Mr. Carter, is that you? Something black and shiny caught the light, far ahead. An SUV. Moving fast. Faster than the surrounding traffic.
He zeroed in on it, vehicles scattering away from his approach like leaves flung in a storm. Four vehicles separated them from the black SUV, a Tahoe. It powered through a red light on East Sixty-Seventh. Zeb followed. It might be the one. If not, we’ll do a citizen’s arrest for speeding.Traffic thinned out just past the lights, a slim opening for Zeb. He took it. He slammed the pedal, scraped past a cab, overtook another vehicle—a third slowed and got out of the way, and then he was neck and neck with the Tahoe, on its left. Darkened windows. Nothing visible, he noted from the corner of his eye. The Tahoe put on speed. Zeb’s SUV kept pace easily. Underneath its hood was a souped-up engine that could outrun any commercial vehicle on the road.
More open space ahead as drivers rushed to get out of the way. Zeb’s SUV got its nose ahead, then it was clear of the Tahoe. Zeb continued racing till a car length separated them. It became two car lengths.
‘Brace!’ he warned his friends and jammed the brakes, yanking the wheel hard, making the SUV fishtail diagonally across the lanes. He was out of the vehicle even before it had stopped, his Glock appearing in his hand as if by magic. Bwana and Bear leaped out from the passenger side, and the three aimed their guns at the fast-approaching Tahoe. Meghan and Chloe provided cover from behind. Though the approaching vehicle’s windshield, Zeb could see two men, both black, the driver panicking as he tried to control the vehicle, tried to stop it. He tried too late. The Tahoe smashed into Zeb’s SUV, metal screaming, people yelling in the background. Zeb’s SUV slid several feet, its tires protesting, rubber burning and issuing dirty white smoke. The vehicles came to a stop, the Tahoe’s front crumpled, Zeb’s SUV’s side doors bent and bucked.
‘Come out—hands above your head!’ Zeb ordered.
The driver didn’t respond. He was dazed and on the verge of losing consciousness. The passenger wasn’t in any better shape.
‘Go.’ Meghan came behind Zeb and aimed her Glock at the driver.
Zeb lowered his weapon and, approaching from the side to provide the smallest possible target, pulled the Tahoe’s door open.
‘Rear’s empty,’ Bwana called out from the other side of the vehicle. ‘Just these two dudes.’
Zeb grabbed the driver’s shirt and was pulling him out when several cruisers rolled up and surrounded them. A megaphone called out.
‘Stop! Raise your hands and step back!’
***
It took an hour for Zeb and his crew to extricate themselves, and that, too, only after Chang and Pizaka arrived at the scene. The two detectives listened quietly as Meghan narrated the events right from the time they had left their office.
‘You folks are lucky. Those guys in the Tahoe, they were running guns. There was a cache in the back. They belong to a small gang in the Bronx. If they were innocents, you would have been in a deep pile of doo-doo.’ Chang ran his hand over his short hair as he addressed Meghan and Chloe. ‘There’s something else…’
He hesitated and flicked a glance at Zeb, who was standing a few feet away, staring at nothing, his face an unreadable mask.
‘Zeb? Zeb?’ Meghan called out sharply. ‘Chang has some news.’
‘That girl,’ Chang began when Zeb joined them.
‘She wasn’t shot. The first shot you heard went into her seat. I think that scared her and made her break off from talking to you.’
‘What about the second shot?’ Meghan demanded.
On any other occasion, Chang would have wisecracked, something about patience. It wasn’t the time for humor, however. His eyes were somber. His face was grave. ‘The second round killed her phone.’
‘Spit it out, man,’ Bear urged him.
‘She wasn’t shot. She was beheaded.’
There wasn’t much more Chang could add. Bystanders had said four masked men leaped out of a black SUV as the sedan waited at a red light. They had run to the car and yanked its door open. One man had fired the two shots. Another man had grabbed the woman and hauled her out. A third man had drawn what looked out a sword and executed her. The attackers had shoved her body back in the sedan, along with her severed head, and escaped.
No onlooker had been able to raise an alarm. The swiftness of the execution and its brutality had curbed any natural instinct to help. The woman’s identity was still unknown. No onlooker had noted the SUV’s license plates.
‘We’re just minutes into the investigation,’ Chang said, trying to lift their spirits. ‘Something will turn up.’
Zeb led his friends away when Chang had finished and all police procedural formalities had been completed. He forced his mind to go blank, not to dwell on the execution. He blanked out the woman’s voice in his mind. He took a deep breath when he approached their SUV and looked at his palms. They were steady. Not a tremor. He opened the buckled door with difficulty and tried the engine. It turned reassuringly. He looked back at a loud sound. Bear and Bwana. Forcing the passenger door open. He set off when everyone had seated themselves, back to their office. An angry driver rolled up next to them and kept pace with them. He started cursing, gesticulating. It was New York. People drove in controlled chaos. What Zeb had done wasn’t controlled chaos. It was mayhem. Zeb had to be arrested, the driver swore. He ranted and spat. Bwana rolled down his window. He didn’t speak. He didn’t even look at the driver, who took one look at the large black man, and at his stone-cold visage. The driver swallowed, turned back to the road and accelerated away. At any other time, Meghan and Chloe would have sniggered. Not this time. Both were ashen-faced, Meghan’s eyes filling.
***
Zeb’s phone rang after what seemed like hours, the SUV’s speakers picking it up and amplifying it. Meghan reached to the dash and accepted the call.
‘Zeb?’ The voice was female, one they were familiar with. Clare, the director of the Agency, the clandestine government outfit they all worked for. What they weren’t used to, was the strange note in her voice.
‘Ma’am?’ Zeb replied.
‘Zeb, did you hear about—’
Another call came, from a number Zeb knew very well. He did something he hadn’t ever done. He put Clare on hold and took the incoming call from Avichai Levin, the Director of Mossad.
‘Achi?’ he asked. Achi. Brother. Levin and he went a long way back.
‘Zeb, my brother.’ Levin sounded terrible. ‘Did you hear?’
‘Hear what, Avichai?’ Zeb asked him, his sense of foreboding deepening.
‘They killed her, my friend.’ Avichai Levin, one of the most powerful men in the world, broke down and started sobbing. ‘They killed my daughter.’
Some people raged or swore in times of intense anger or stress. Others punched windows and walls, or broke glass. Broke something. Zeb did nothing. He stopped the vehicle in the middle of traffic and sat as if turned to stone while Meghan continued the call with Levin.
Mr. Carter, please…
Meghan hung up after finishing with Levin, apologizing to the waiting Clare, who brushed her apology away. They all knew Zeb. He wouldn’t have kept anyone on hold without reason. The vicious killing of Avichai Levin’s daughter was reason enough. Meghan ended the call and turned to Zeb. She flinched when she saw his face. It had an expression that she had seen only a handful of times. It was his death face.
Zeb Carter, the most lethal man she knew, was going to war.
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