The Burning Wire (31 page)

Chapter 59

AS HE DISCONNECTED
from Sachs, Rhyme felt another tickle of sweat. He finally had to resort to calling Thom and asking him to wipe it off. This was perhaps the hardest for Rhyme. Relying on somebody for the big tasks wasn't so bad: the range-of-motion exercises, bowel and bladder, the sitting-transfer maneuver to get him into the wheelchair or bed. The feeding.

It was the tiny needs that were the most infuriating . . . and embarrassing. Flicking away an insect, picking fuzz off your slacks.

Wiping away a rivulet of sweat.

The aide appeared and easily took care of the problem without a thought.

"Thank you," the criminalist said. Thom hesitated at the unexpected show of gratitude.

Rhyme turned back to the evidence boards, but in fact he wasn't thinking much of Galt. It was possible that Sachs and the ESU team were about to collar the crazed employee at the school in Chinatown.

No, what was occupying his overheated mind exclusively was the Watchmaker in Mexico City. Goddamn it, why wasn't Luna or Kathryn Dance or
somebody
calling to give him a blow-by-blow description of the takedown?

Maybe the Watchmaker had already planted the bomb in the office building and was using his own presence as a diversion. The satchel he carried might be filled with bricks. Why exactly was he hanging out in the office park like some goddamn tourist trying to figure out where to get a margarita? And could it be a different office altogether he was targeting?

Then Rhyme said, "Mel, I want to see where the takedown's happening. Google Earth . . . or whatever it's called. Pull it up for me. Mexico City."

"Sure."

"Avenue Bosque de Reforma . . . How often do they update the images?"

"I don't know. Probably every few months. It's not real time, though, I don't imagine."

"I don't care about that."

A few minutes later they were looking at a satellite image of the area: a curving road, Avenue Bosque de Reforma, with the office buildings separated by the park where the Watchmaker was sitting at that moment. Across the street was the Jamaican consulate, protected by a series of concrete barriers--the bomb blast shields--and a gate. Rodolfo Luna and his team would be on the other side of those. Behind them were official vehicles parked in front of the embassy itself.

He gasped as he stared at the barriers. To the left was a blast shield running perpendicular to the road. To the right were six others, parallel to it.

This
was the letter
I
and the blank spaces from the package delivered to the Watchmaker at Mexico City airport.

Gold letters . . .

Little blue booklet . . .

The mysterious numbers . . .

"Mel," he said sharply. The tech's head snapped up at the urgency. "Is there any passport that has the letters
CC
on the cover? Issued in blue?"

A moment later Cooper looked up from the State Department archive. "Yes, as a matter of fact, there is. Navy blue with interlocking
C
's at the top. It's the Caribbean Community passport. There're about fifteen countries in--"

"Is Jamaica one?"

"Yes."

He realized too they'd been thinking of the numbers as five hundred seventy and three hundred seventy-nine. In fact, there was another way to refer to them. "Quick. Look up Lexus SUVs. Is there a model with a five seventy or a three seventy-nine in the designation?"

This was even faster than the passport. "Let's see . . . Yep, the LX five-seventy. It's a luxury--"

"Get me Luna on the phone. Now!" He didn't want to risk his own dialing, which would have taken some time and might have been inaccurate.

He felt the sweat again but ignored it.

"Si?"

"Rodolfo! It's Lincoln Rhyme."

"Ah, Captain--"

"Listen to me!
You
are the target. The office building's a diversion! The package delivered to Logan? The rectangular images on the drawing? It was a diagram of the grounds of the Jamaican embassy, where you are right now. The rectangles are the blast barriers. And you drive a Lexus LX five-seventy?"

"Yes . . . You mean,
that
was the five hundred seventy?"

"I think so. And the Watchmaker was given a Jamaican passport to get into the compound. Is there a car parked nearby with three seven nine in the license plate?"

"I don't . . . Why, yes. It's a Mercedes with diplomatic plates."

"Clear the area! Now. That's where the bomb is! The Mercedes."

He heard shouting in Spanish, the sound of footfalls, hard breathing.

Then, a stunning explosion.

Rhyme blinked at the startling noise that rattled the speakers of the phone.

"Commander! Are you there? . . . Rodolfo?"

More shouting, static, screams.

"Rodolfo!"

After a long moment: "Captain Rhyme? Hello?" The man was shouting--probably because he'd been partially deafened by the blast.

"Commander, are you all right?"

"Hello!"

A hissing noise, moans, gasping. Shouts.

Sirens and more shouting.

Cooper asked, "Should we call--"

And then "
Que
? . . . Are you there, Captain?"

"Yes. Are you hurt, Rodolfo?"

"No, no. No bad injuries. Some cuts, stunned, you know." The voice was gasping. "We climbed over barriers and got down on the
other
side. I see people cut, bleeding. But no one is dead, I think. It would have killed me and the officers standing beside me. How did you know?"

"I'll go into that later, Commander. Where is the Watchmaker?"

"Wait a moment . . . wait. . . . All right. At the explosion he fled. Arturo's men were distracted by the blast--as he planned, of course. Arturo said a car drove into the park and he got inside. They're moving south now. We have officers following him. . . . Thank you, Captain Rhyme. I cannot thank you enough. But now I must go. I will call as soon as we learn something."

Inhaling deeply, ignoring the headache and the sweat. Okay, Logan, Rhyme was thinking, we've stopped you. We've ruined your plan. But we still don't have you. Not yet.

Please, Rodolfo. Keep after him.

As he was thinking this, his eyes strayed over the evidence charts in the Galt case. Maybe this would be the conclusion of both of the operations. The Watchmaker would be apprehended in Mexico, and Ray Galt, in an abandoned school near Chinatown.

Then his eyes settled on one bit of evidence in particular:
Chinese herbs, ginseng and wolfberry.

And another listing, a substance that had been found in proximity to the herbs:
Diesel fuel.

Rhyme originally had though that the fuel was from a possible site of an attack, a refinery perhaps. But it occurred to him now that diesel fuel would also run motors.

Like in an electric generator.

Then another thought occurred to him.

"Mel, the call--"

"Are you all right?"

"I'm fine," Rhyme snapped.

"You look flushed."

Ignoring the comment, he instructed, "Find out the number of the cop who called in about Galt being in the school."

The tech turned away and made a call. A few minutes later he looked up. "Funny. I got the number from Patrol. But it's out of service."

"Give it to me."

Cooper did, slowly. Rhyme typed it into a mobile phone database at the NYPD.

It was listed as prepaid.

"A cop with a prepaid mobile? And now out of service? No way."

And the school was in Chinatown; that's where Galt had picked up the herbs. But it wasn't a staging area or where he was hiding out. It was a trap! Galt had run wires from a diesel-powered generator to kill whoever was searching for him and then, pretending to be a cop, he called in to report himself. Since the juice was off in the building, Sachs and the others wouldn't expect the electrocution danger.

There's no power. It's safe. . . .

He had to warn them. He started to press "Sachs" on the speed-dial panel on the computer. But just at that moment his nagging headache swelled to a blinding explosion in his head. Lights like electric sparks, a thousand electric sparks, flashed across his vision. Sweat poured from his skin as the dysreflexia attack began in earnest.

Lincoln Rhyme whispered, "Mel, you have to call--"

And then passed out.

Chapter 60

THEY MADE IT
to the back of the school without being seen. Sachs and Pulaski were crouching, looking for entrances and exits, when they heard the first whimpers.

Pulaski turned an alarmed face toward the detective. She held up a finger and listened.

A woman's voice, it seemed. She was in pain, maybe held hostage, being tortured? The woman who'd spotted Galt? Someone else?

The sound faded. Then returned. They listened for a long ten seconds. Amelia Sachs gestured Ron Pulaski closer. They were in the back of the school, smelling urine, rotting plasterboard, mold.

The whimpering grew louder. What the hell was Galt doing? Maybe the victim had information he needed for his next attack. "No, no, no." Sachs was sure that's what the voice was saying.

Or maybe Galt had slipped farther from reality. Maybe he'd kidnapped an Algonquin worker and was torturing her, satisfying his lust for revenge. Maybe she was in charge of the long-distance transmission lines. Oh, no, Sachs thought. Could it be Andi Jessen herself? She sensed Pulaski staring at her with wide eyes.

"No . . . please," the woman cried.

Sachs hit
TRANSMIT
and radioed Emergency Service. "Bo . . . it's Amelia, K?"

"Go ahead, K."

"He's got a hostage here. Where are you?"

"Hostage? Who?"

"Female. Unknown."

"Roger that. We'll be five minutes. K."

"He's hurting her. I'm not going to wait. Ron and I're going in."

"You have logistics?"

"Just what I told you before. Galt's in the middle of the building. Ground floor. Armed with a forty-five ACP. Nothing's electrified here. The power's off."

"Well, that's the good news, I guess. Out."

She disconnected and whispered to Pulaski, pointing, "Now, move! We'll stage at the back door."

The young officer said, "Sure. Okay." An uneasy glance into the shadows of the building, from which another moan floated out on the foul air.

Sachs surveyed their route to the back door and loading dock. The crumbling asphalt was littered with broken bottles and papers and cans. Noisy to traverse, but they didn't have a choice.

She gestured Pulaski forward. They began to pick their way over the ground, trying to be quiet, though they couldn't avoid crunching glass beneath their shoes.

But as they approached, they had some luck, which Sachs believed in, even if Lincoln Rhyme did not. Somewhere nearby a noisy diesel engine rattled to life, providing good covering sound.

Sometimes you do catch a break, Sachs thought. Lord knows we could use one now.

Chapter 61

HE WASN'T GOING
to lose Rhyme.

Thom Reston had his boss out of the Storm Arrow chair and into a near standing position, pinned against the wall. In autonomic dysreflexia attacks, the patient should be kept upright--the books say sitting, but Rhyme had been in his chair when the vessels tightened en masse and the aide wanted to get him even
more
elevated, to force the blood back toward the ground.

He'd planned for occurrences like this--even rehearsing when Rhyme wasn't around, since he knew his boss wouldn't have the patience for running mock emergencies. Now, without even looking, he grabbed a small vial of vasodilator medication, popped the cap with one thumb and slipped the delicate pill under Rhyme's tongue.

"Mel, help me here," Thom said.

The rehearsals didn't include a real patient; Thom's unconscious boss was presently 180 pounds of dead weight.

Don't think about it that way, he thought.

Mel Cooper leapt forward, supporting Rhyme while Thom hit speed-dial button one on the phone he always made sure was charged and that had the best signal of any he'd tested. After two brief rings he was connected, and in five long seconds he was speaking to a doctor in a private hospital. An SCI team was dispatched immediately. The hospital Rhyme went to regularly for specialized therapy and regular checkups had a large spinal cord injury department and two emergency response teams, for situations where it would take too long to get a disabled patient to the hospital.

Rhyme had had a dozen or so attacks over the years, but this was the worst Thom had ever seen. He couldn't support Rhyme and take his blood pressure simultaneously, but he knew it was dangerously high. His face was flushed, he was sweating. Thom could only imagine the pain of the excruciating headache as the body, tricked by the quadriplegia into believing it needed more blood and quickly, pumped hard and constricted the vessels.

The condition could cause death and, more troubling to Rhyme, a stroke, which could mean even more paralysis. In which case Rhyme might very well dust off his long-laid-to-rest idea of assisted suicide, which that damn Arlen Kopeski had brought up again.

"What can I do?" Cooper whispered, the normally placid face dark with worry, slick with sweat.

"We'll just keep him upright."

Thom examined Rhyme's eyes. Blank.

The aide snagged a second vial and administered another dose of clonidine.

No response.

Thom stood helpless, both he and Cooper silent. He thought of the past years with Rhyme. They'd fought, sometimes bitterly, but Thom had been a caregiver all his working life and knew not to take the anger personally. Knew not to take it at all. He gave as much as he got.

He'd been fired by Rhyme and had quit in nearly equal measure.

But he'd never believed the separation between the two of them would last more than a day. And it never had.

Looking at Rhyme, wondering where the hell the medics were, he was considering: Was this my fault? Dysreflexia is frequently caused by the irritation that comes from a full bladder or bowel. Since Rhyme didn't know when he needed to relieve himself Thom noted the intake of food and liquid and judged the intervals. Had he gotten it wrong? He didn't think so, but maybe the stress of running the double case had exacerbated the irritation. He should have checked more often.

I should've exercised better judgment. I should've been firmer. . . .

To lose Rhyme would be to lose the finest criminalist in the city, if not the world. And to lose countless victims because their killers would go undetected.

To lose Rhyme would be to lose one of his closest friends.

Yet he remained calm. Caregivers learn this early. Hard and fast decisions can't be made in panic.

Then the color of Rhyme's face stabilized and they got him into the wheelchair again. They couldn't have kept him up much longer anyway.

"Lincoln! Can you hear me?"

No response.

Then a moment later, the man's head lolled. And he whispered something.

"Lincoln. You're going to be all right. Dr. Metz is sending a team."

Another whisper.

"It's all right, Lincoln. You'll be all right."

In a faint voice Rhyme said, "You have to tell her . . ."

"Lincoln, stay still."

"Sachs."

Cooper said, "She's at the scene. The school where you sent her. She's not back yet."

"You have to tell Sachs . . ." The voice faded.

"I will, Lincoln. I'll tell her. As soon as she calls in," Thom said.

Cooper added, "You don't want to disturb her now. She's moving in on Galt."

"Tell her . . ."

Rhyme's eyes rolled back in his head and he went out again. Thom angrily looked out the window, as if that would speed the arrival of the ambulance. But all he saw were people strolling by on healthy legs, people jogging, people bicycling through the park, none of them with an apparent care in the world.