The Stone Monkey (Lincoln Rhyme 4)

Which made it a boss machine for drag racing.

But a bitch to drive at 130 miles per hour through a gale.

Squeezing the leather-clad wheel, feeling the pain in her arthritic fingers, Amelia Sachs piloted the car eastbound on the Long Island Expressway. She had a blue flasher on the dash--a suction cup doesn't stick well to convertible roofs--and wove perilously in and out of the commuter traffic.

As she and Rhyme had decided when he'd called five minutes before and told her to get the hell out to Easton, Sachs was one-half of the advance team, which, if they were lucky, might get to the beach at the same time the Ghost and any surviving immigrants did. The other half of the impromptu team was the young officer from the NYPD Emergency Services Unit sitting next to her. The ESU was the tactical branch of the police department, the SWAT team, and Sachs--well, Rhyme actually--had decided that she should have some backup with firepower of the sort that now sat in the man's lap: a Heckler & Koch MP5 machine gun.

Miles behind them now were the ESU, the crime scene bus, a half-dozen Suffolk County troopers, ambulances and assorted INS and FBI vehicles, making their way through the vicious storm as best they could.

"Okay," said the ESU officer. "Well. Now."

He offered this in response to a brief bit of hydroplaning.

Sachs calmly brought the Camaro back under control, recalling that she'd also removed the steel plates behind the backseat, put in a fuel cell in lieu of the heavy gas tank and replaced the spare with Fix-A-Flat and a plug kit. The SS was about 500 pounds lighter than when her father had bought it in the seventies. Could use a little of that ballast now, she thought, and snipped another skid short.

"Okay, we're okay now," the ESU cop said, apparently far more comfortable in a shoot-out than driving down the wide expanse of the Long Island Expressway.

Her phone rang. She juggled the unit and answered it.

"Say, miss," the ESU cop asked, "you gonna use one of those hands-free things? I'm just thinking it might be better." And this from a man dressed like Robocop.

She laughed, plugged the earpiece in and upshifted.

"How's the progress, Sachs?" Rhyme asked.

"Doing the best I can. But we turn off onto surface roads in a few miles. I may have to slow up for some of the red lights."

" 'May'?" the ESU cop muttered.

"Any survivors, Rhyme?" Sachs

asked.

"Nothing further," he answered. "The Coast Guard can only confirm two rafts. Looks like most people didn't get off."

Sachs said to the criminalist, "I hear that tone, Rhyme. It's not your fault."

"Appreciate the sentiment, Sachs. That's not an issue. Now, you driving carefully?"

"Oh, yeah," she said, calmly steering into the spin that took the car forty degrees off center, her heart rate rising not a single digit. The Camaro straightened as if it were on guy wires and continued down the expressway, its speed goosed up to 140. The ESU cop closed his eyes.

"It's going to be close, Sachs. Keep your weapon handy."

"It always is." Another brief skid.

"We're getting calls from the Coast Guard cutter, Sachs. I've got to go." He paused for a moment. Then said, "Search well but watch your back."

She laughed. "I like that. We need to print it up on T-shirts for the Crime Scene Unit."

They hung up.

The expressway ended and she skidded off onto a smaller highway. Twenty-five miles to Easton, where the lifeboats would land. She'd never been there; city-girl Sachs wondered what the topography was like. Would it be a beach? Rocky cliffs? Would she have to climb? Her arthritis had been bad lately and this thick humidity doubled the pain and stiffness.

Wondering too: If the Ghost was still at the beach, were there plenty of hiding places for him to snipe from?

She glanced down at the speedometer.

Ease back?