NYPD Red 6 - James Patterson Page 0,81

said. “Sorry to keep you waiting.” His buddies laughed.

“You Bronx Auto?” Kylie said, picking up on the Jamaican accent. “I thought they were sending real detectives.”

Bigger laugh. Cops busting cops’ balls, even at a time like this.

“Son of a bitch,” the driver said as we skidded into a ninetydegree turn. “This wreck fits right in at the Webster Projects, but it ain’t worth shit on the golf course.”

He jammed the gearshift into low, got traction, and righted the car. “What’d they do?” he said. “Kill somebody and steal a bus?”

“Home invasions. One old lady died. And they’re legit EMTs,” Kylie said.

Brothers under the same blanket. A sobering detail. Head shakes all around.

“Armed?” the Jamaican asked.

“Presumed,” I said, my eyes glued to the chopper that had just settled onto a putting green. The bus tried to barrel through a sand trap. Big mistake. Wheels spinning, kicking up a sandstorm, it ground to a halt.

Doors were flung open. The driver, white, and his partner, black, scrambled out and headed for the helicopter, which was a solid fifty yards away. The black guy was fast, agile, but the driver, Banta—I was sure of it—was slow navigating his way out of the wet sand.

We weren’t doing that well ourselves as the car went slip-sliding across the slick turf. And then another spinout as the Impala did a complete one-eighty.

“Faster on foot,” Kylie said. She bailed out of the back door and ran toward the chopper. I jumped out after her.

The chopper was small, a single-engine, no markings except for a tail number. NYPD Aviation would be able to outrun it—if they were here. But they were still minutes away, and that’s all the time Banta needed to lift off and fly in any direction on the compass, land in a secluded spot, and drive off to parts unknown. That was Gary—always planning ahead.

The pilot must have been one of his EMS cohorts, because less than thirty minutes after Banta got the call that we were on to him, this guy showed up with the getaway plane, no questions asked.

I was a hundred feet away when the black EMS tech climbed into the chopper. Kylie was closer, but not by much.

Gary was going to outrun her. He knew it. I knew it. And Kylie knew it. Which was probably why she reached down to her right hip.

“Don’t shoot,” I screamed, my voice drowned out by the whump-whump of the rotors.

Kylie breaks a lot of rules and bends even more. She’s got a reputation as a maverick, and she’s proud of it. But there’s one rule that will cost her her job if she violated it. A cop cannot—repeat, cannot—shoot at a moving vehicle unless he or she is returning gunfire.

That means if a car is coming at me at seventy miles an hour, I have two choices: get hit or get the hell out of the way. Firing my gun is not an option.

There are no loopholes, no excuses. And in this case, there was no justification for shooting. Kylie’s life wasn’t in danger, just her pride. She was determined not to lose Banta.

He clambered into the helicopter and pulled the door shut. The engine whined, the blades spun faster, but Kylie didn’t stop. Just as the pilot pulled on the lever to create more lift, she jumped onto the landing-gear skid, brought her right hand up from her hip, shook it hard, and jammed it through the narrow vent window.

It wasn’t a gun. You don’t shake your gun. You shake your department-issued can of mace. It’s not much bigger than a tube of lipstick, but it packs more than enough wallop to incapacitate a cockpit full of bad guys.

The chopper smacked down hard as Kylie yanked her arm out of the window and pirouetted off the skid like one of the Flying Wallendas coming down from the high wire, ready to take a bow.

The chopper doors burst open, and the occupants spilled out, choking, wheezing, and dropping to the ground.

Kylie went directly to the fallen hero, cuffed him, and yanked him to his feet.

The boy band, guns in hand, joined the action and helped me take care of the other two in short order.

The rotors on the chopper eased to a stop, the last echo of the siren died out, and the civilians who had been watching—and recording—the action burst into applause.

Except for one man—one very, very angry man. He came running toward us yelling something about crazy bastards having to pay.

Hard to blame