The Chef - James Patterson Page 0,92

but anger and defiance in her brown eyes.

“We’ve got a shooter down there, but I can’t see who it is,” she says.

I sneak a peek and hear the rapid automatic fire of the shooter, but I see what she means: there are still knots of people down the street, fleeing or running into the buildings. More sirens sound and I know the wise thing is to wait for backup, but whoever said I was wise?

“Hang tight,” I say. “I’m taking a run.”

She says something but I can’t hear her, and I run down Canal Street, using everything I pass for cover: a mailbox, shrubs, even the skinny palm trees lining the streetcar tracks. Anything is better than nothing.

Along the way I see a college student crumpled on the street, his Tulane T-shirt stained with blood, pass piles of beads, Solo cups, sneakers, and flip-flops, and as I near Bourbon Street, I crouch behind a bus shelter—and finally get a chilling glimpse of the shooter.

Marching through the intersection, he’s calmly moving along, spraying bullets in long bursts in every direction at the fleeing crowds, as casually as a gardener watering a bed of roses.

He’s wearing a colorful costume—a court jester—and a masquerade mask with a giant hooked nose, disguided like the tractor driver I had dropped a few minutes earlier.

His weapon looks small, compact. An Uzi, perhaps, or a civilian version of the HK MP5. Something light and nimble. Easy to conceal under a billowy costume, and still packs one hell of a punch.

The strategy comes to view.

Shoot for a few minutes, hide the weapon, join the scurrying crowds, and then stop, take the weapon out.

Fire, kill, repeat.

Steeling myself, I creep even closer to him as he keeps on shooting.

Closer. Closer.

Barely a few dozen yards away from him now, I duck down behind a trash can and hold my breath.

I’m not counting his rounds. I have no clue how many his magazine holds. But I’m going to guess—no, pray—he’ll have to reload soon.

After a few more spurts of gunfire, he does.

As soon as the gunman pops out his magazine, I spring up from behind the trash can.

I aim and squeeze the trigger three times, steady and controlled.

POP! POP! POP!

My first shot nails him in the thigh, knocking him off balance.

My second shot misses him entirely.

But my third shot strikes his neck. Blood spurts. He goes down hard.

I cross the street and approach the gunman with caution, my sidearm aimed and ready to fire, just in case he’s still alive.

But by the time I’m standing over him, I see he’s not moving at all. His head is surrounded by a puddle of blood. His weapon dangles limply in his arms.

I kick it away anyway—down into the sewer, where a civilian or child or another bad guy can’t pick it up. Old police habit.

Then I squat down beside him—and give his chest a few hard raps with my knuckles. I’m not checking his pulse. I’m seeing if he’s wearing body armor like the tractor driver.

Shit. Just what I was afraid of.

He is.

Body armor, automatic weapon…I was lucky with a head shot.

But how lucky will me and other cops be again? Especially if the bastards are wearing Mardi Gras costumes, blending in, shooting, and then hiding their weapon to pop up a block later to start killing again.

I’m about to stand—when I notice the dead jester is wearing sunglasses over his masquerade mask—one red lens, one green.

Just like the first tractor driver.

Odd. No way it’s a coincidence. Is this a way for the attackers to identify one another in the melee? Or something else?

I lift them off the shooter’s face and place them up to my eyes.

They feel like some kind of tactical, vision-enhancing 3D glasses. Everything I see looks just a little crisper.

But then I glance down at the gunman—and see something even wilder.

His jester costume looks practically luminescent.

Like it was sprayed with some kind of fluorescent paint, but a kind only visible with these special polarized shades—and maybe under a black light, too, like the one I found inside that safe house!

It makes bloody sense, to be able to quickly ID your fellow shooters, your fellow terrorists, among the screaming crowds, so you don’t accidentally kill one of your own, while killing so many innocents.

A good strategy.

Which I’m going to use against the bastards.

Chapter 82

I STUFF the sunglasses into my pocket and scramble off the street. I take cover in the closest spot I can find, the doorway of a tacky souvenir