Reckless Endangerment (36 page)

A long ten seconds of silence. Khalid heard the sound of a submachine gun opening up—Jemil in the car out on the apron, from the sound, and then another from the Dumpster—Big Mahmoud, leaning on the trigger as usual. He would spray only the clouds and the trees shooting at that rate and probably a few bystanders as well. Khalid did not intend to stay around to find out which. He crawled through broken glass to the door that led from the office to the repair bays, and scuttled, bent nearly double, to the rear door of the garage.

The Mercury was there, smoking gently, no longer white. It had not received the full blast of the rocket’s charge, but a by-blow had been sufficient to render it permanently undriveable. Khalid said “
Elaghkna!
” (shit) and ran for the left side of the building. Poking his head around the corner at knee level, he observed that Jemil was still directing controlled fire at the Mexican’s car, which he now recognized as the Ford LTD Bashar had used. It was doubtful that he was doing any damage to the man, however, not with 9mm Parabellum. Khalid could not help but admire the positioning of the Mexican’s car, blocking lines of fire from the parked cars and all obvious cover on either side of the building. He really should have put someone on the roof with a Kalashnikov, he thought, but who could have imagined … ? What should be happening now was for Jemil to lay down a base of fire from the Dart and for Mahmoud, who was pouring slugs senselessly into the wreckage of the LTD, to work his way among the old tires to take the Mexican on his right flank, but Mahmoud would not have the sense to do this. When Mahmoud’s firing paused, Khalid yelled out in Arabic the order to do just that. Back came the shout, “I have no more ammunition.” Perfect. Then there was another flash-whoosh. Khalid ducked back behind the building and covered his head with his arms.

This rocket penetrated the engine block of the Dart and did what it was designed to do, which was to turn a small mass of solid steel into white-hot liquid. The car turned instantly into a fireball. The cars on either side burst into flame. Thick, choking black smoke poured into the air. From where he stood, Khalid could no longer see the Mexican’s car. He assumed that the Mexican could not see him either, and made his move. Pistol in hand, he raced around the rear ends of the flaming cars and, with a step on the running board, dived into the open window of the wrecker. There he found Hussein, crouched in the well of the driver’s side, holding his submachine gun like a teddy bear. There was white showing all around the pupils of his eyes as he stammered, “Effendi, I did not know what to do.”

“Then I will tell you what to do, Hussein,” said Khalid slowly, gasping for breath. “Start this vehicle and drive away.”

Enveloped in thick smoke, El Chivato did not see Khalid make his escape, but he heard the engine of the wrecker roar into life and saw the red blur as it pulled away from the curb. He heard sirens from many different directions. Even in Brooklyn, it is not possible to have a battle involving serious military hardware without attracting the attention to the authorities. El Chivato loaded his last rocket and carefully placed it with the rest of his equipment in a green duffel bag. He slung its strap across his chest, bandoleer style, and walked out of the smoke.

Cars were slowing down on Fulton Street to view the fire. No one took any notice of the slim youth as he walked quickly up the center line of the roadway. He could see the high red crane of the wrecker several streets ahead. At the first red light he walked up to the driver’s side of the first car in line and stuck dead Bashar’s 9mm Smith in the driver’s face.

The car was a black Chrysler New Yorker. As soon as El Chivato was in the driver’s seat, he gunned the engine and took off after the wrecker, cutting through the intersection of Fulton Street and Ralph Avenue against the light and causing a chorus of horns and two minor traffic accidents.

This maneuver caught the attention of the RMP called Seven Frank, manned by patrolmen Ed Graves and Manolo Echeverria. Seven Frank was a Seventy-ninth Precinct RMP, and it was responding to the “shots fired” call as a matter of routine. Seeing the smoke and hearing the fire engine sirens and seeing a large black car zoom through the intersection created a picture in the minds of the two patrolmen, a non-routine picture. Without a word Graves, who was driving, hooked a U-turn on Fulton and took off in pursuit. Echeverria called in the action and gave a description of the vehicle and its heading.

El Chivato swerved around a line of cars, driving down the center line of Fulton Street until he was directly behind the wrecker. He saw the flasher and heard the siren of the police car behind him, but paid no attention to it. He steered with his left hand, and with his right worked the wire-stocked AK-47 out of the duffel bag and placed it across his lap. After a moment he reached in again and brought out two Soviet RGN hand grenades and placed them in the cushioned rectangular hollow between the front seats that most drivers use to hold coffee cups and toll change.

Ahead, Hussein checked his rearview and spotted the Mexican tailgating them behind the wheel of the black sedan. Hussein was a much better driver than he was a street fighter, and he had a heavy, powerful vehicle to demonstrate it. He swerved from side to side, keeping the Mexican from coming up on his flank, and incidentally driving a half dozen cars into crashes of varying severity.

In Seven Frank, Patrolman Echeverria was working his radio, talking to his dispatcher, impressing upon her that this was something out of the ordinary. The dispatcher was responding, calling other RMPs in the area to set up a block somewhere up ahead.

“Holy shit!” said Patrolman Echeverria. This was not a phrase recognized in NYPD radio parlance. The dispatcher came back with, “Say again, Seven Frank.”

Echeverria said, “We’re taking automatic fire! A white male on the tow truck ahead of the black Chrysler, he just leaned out the window and fired an automatic weapon at us.”

The dispatcher acknowledged this and fielded calls from RMPs Three Eddie and Eight George, who said they were converging on the junction of Fulton Street and Bedford Avenue. They intended to close Fulton east-bound to avoid more civilian casualties, and wait for the fleeing vehicles to arrive. The dispatcher also fielded a call from Boy Sector ESU, which declared itself rolling toward the scene. The emergency service unit consisted of twelve heavily armed, specially trained police officers wearing attractive black costumes, Kevlar vests, helmets, and face shields. The dispatcher, hearing this, declared a “no further” on the call, on the reasonable assumption that this unit and the three RMPs represented enough police power to handle a couple of cars full of bad guys.

On the wide running board of the wrecker, Chouza Khalid fired another four rounds from Hussein’s Model 25, and cursed as they went high, shattering the light bar of the police car following. It was an impossible shooting task: he had to hold on to the door frame with his left hand and try to fire one-handed with his right, while the wrecker swerved this way and that and bounced wildly on the decrepit surface of the thoroughfare. He gave up and swung himself back into the seat, just in time to hear Hussein shriek, “What should I do? What should I do?”

Two police cars with their lights flashing were parked athwart the street, partially blocking all four lanes of the thoroughfare. White-helmeted police crouched behind the cars, and beyond these Khalid saw the flashing lights of a large blue and white van, which must mean reinforcements.

“Right turn!” screamed Khalid. “Don’t stop, smash through!”

This is what Hussein did: he floored the gas pedal, swung right, struck Three Eddie, the right-lane RMP, behind its rear wheel and knocked it skidding out of the way like a child’s toy. The two officers sheltering behind it, Joshua Rollins and Paula Nolan, were both dashed flat. The officers from Eight North fired after the wrecker but did not damage the massive vehicle.

El Chivato stepped on it too, roaring through the hole the wrecker had made in the roadblock like a running back following a guard. A bullet smashed through the left rear window of the Chrysler, spattering the back of his neck with sharp flakes of glass. He cursed, grabbed one of the grenades, pulled the pin, and tossed it backward out the window.

The grenade bounced twice and rolled, spending its forward velocity. After four seconds it exploded, three feet from the driver’s-side door of Seven Frank as it raced through the roadblock in hot pursuit.

Echeverria saw the flash and felt the heat of it, and heard the enormously loud sound. Something hard and hot slapped him on the side of the head. He looked over at Graves, who had no face and was on fire. Echeverria noted that he himself was on fire too, and that there was something that looked like a human lower jaw on his lap. Then Seven Frank crashed into the side of a parked truck.

Patrolman Lou Kravitzki of RMP Eight North sprang into his vehicle and grabbed the radio handset. He was the only cop available to do this at the roadblock, because his partner, Tom Parmignano, was giving CPR to Joshua Rollins, who looked to be going into shock with a cracked skull. Into the handset he shouted, “Eight North to Central. Ten-thirteen! Ten-thirteen! Officers down! Three … no, four officers down!”

As these magic words hit the air, the police world of north Brooklyn was transformed. The dispatcher pressed a button that generated a rapid, high beeping on all channels, and she repeated the message that police officers were injured at the junction of Fulton and Bedford. Kravitzki told his story over the air. Grenades. Machine guns. The cops in every RMP within five miles dropped what they were doing and sped forthwith to join the pursuit.

Bedford Avenue turns one-way north of Fulton Street, four lanes of normally fairly sedate traffic feeding commuters toward the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway and trucks toward the Brooklyn industrial zones. Into this flow, at just past six on a Tuesday afternoon, a nodule of chaos inserted itself.

Hussein, having crashed through a police barrier, having heard the bullets strike his machine, now had his blood well and truly up, and he hit on the plan of slowing down the pursuit by strewing wreckage across the avenue. Therefore he proceeded to slam his heavy wrecker into the cars he overtook, in the manner of small boys playing bumper cars at Coney Island.

Unfortunately, the traffic was moving too slowly to allow the creation of any really horrendous pile-ups, although nearly twenty people were injured and one was killed. Behind them, their pursuers, the Mexican and the cops, were indeed slowed by the wreckage, but not entirely stopped.

Khalid was an experienced criminal and a wily man, and so he realized that one could not long escape pursuit in the streets of a major city in a large red-painted tow truck. It was clearly necessary to ditch the thing, and in such a way that they could escape unobserved. Accordingly he gave orders to Hussein.

As the wrecker crossed Flushing Avenue, it bulled its way into the center lane. In the rearview mirror Hussein observed that the black car had done the same, and also that there were now three police cars visible, lights flashing, sirens screaming, besides the large van, in pursuit.

A few seconds later Khalid shouted, “Now!” and Hussein whipped the wrecker into a screeching right turn across two lanes of traffic and onto narrow Hayward Street. They were going forty as they made the turn into the heart of orthodox Williamsburg.

Khalid’s plan was to quickly make another right, and then, out of view of all pursuers, ditch the wrecker and lose themselves on the streets, get to a subway, steal another car. …

Two RMPs, far enough back in the parade to do so, peeled off to follow the tow truck, but El Chivato missed the turn. Screaming curses, he pulled right and made the next turn, onto Rutledge. The ESU van and four RMPs followed him. Williamsburg is not a good neighborhood for exciting car chases, however. The Hasidim who live there are very densely packed, and reasonably well-off, and there are lots of vehicles, both private and the property of religious organizations. They line the streets; they double-park with otherworldly disdain for the NYC traffic code; they move slowly in the narrow roads, which are typically jammed with pedestrians, many of whom cannot be counted upon to focus on the here and now.

The ESU van tore around the corner of Rutledge. In its front seat the response team leader, Lieutenant Paul McElroy, saw what was happening ahead and said to his driver, “Slow it down, we got him,” and shouted to the troops behind him, “Lock and load! We’re rolling out.”

The junction ahead, at Lee Avenue, was solidly plugged with vehicles. El Chivato did not, however, slow down. There was a short gap in the line of parked cars left open for a fire hydrant. He jerked his wheel, bumped over the curb, clipped the hydrant from its base, and shot along the sidewalk, scattering pedestrians like duck pins. A jet of water twenty feet high sprang into the air and quickly turned the street into a shallow canal.

People were screaming. A dark van in front of the ESU immediately stopped, blocking the street, and spilled a dozen Hasidim, who started giving succor to the injured people in the Chrysler’s wake.

“Get up on the sidewalk!” McElroy ordered the driver. “Follow the bastard!”

The driver inched by the Hasidic vehicle, mounted the curb, and was instantly blinded by the torrent of water falling on his windshield. He turned the wipers on, and when the window cleared, McElroy saw that the black sedan had stopped thirty yards ahead. A meat truck had been making a delivery to a butcher shop and had run two wheels up on the sidewalk so that the driver could set up a roller chute leading into the basement of the shop. The basement entry was the common New York type (quite unknown in Nogales) in which two steel doors set flush with the sidewalk could be raised to give access to underground. The sedan had crashed into this arrangement and buried its right front wheel in the cellar opening.

McElroy ordered his van to stop, yelled for his men to deploy, and leaped from the van himself, taking cover behind its open door. He saw the front door of the black sedan open. McElroy had run a squad in a Marine rifle company in 1967 in Quang Tri province, so he knew just what he was seeing. He wasn’t sure he believed it, quite, but he knew what it was. He screamed a warning—“Spread out, take cover, incoming,
incoming!
”—and raised his M-16, to try to shoot the son of a bitch before he got a round off.