The Big Bad Wolf (Alex Cross 9)

He hit Mahoney!

He hit me!

We went down hard. Chest shots! Hurt like hell! Took my breath away. Fortunately, we were wearing Kevlar vests.

The man in his underwear wasn’t.

Mahoney’s return fire took out a kneecap; my first shot struck his thick stomach. He went down, spurting blood and howling.

We ran to the side of Andrei Prokopev. Mahoney kicked away his gun. “You’re under arrest!” Ned yelled into the face of the wounded Russian. “We know who you are.”

A helicopter appeared between the Century’s towers. A woman was screaming from one of the windows several stories above us. Now the helicopter was landing! What the hell was this?

A man came out of a window in the tower and dropped to the roof.

Then another man. Professional gunmen, it looked like. Bodyguards?

They were quick on the draw and began shooting the instant they hit the roof. HRT returned fire. Several shots were exchanged. Both gunmen were hit and went down. Neither got up again. HRT was that good.

The helicopter was setting down on the roof. It wasn’t media or police. It was there to get the Wolf and whisk him away, wasn’t it? There were shots from the helicopter. Mahoney and I fired into the cockpit. There was another rapid exchange of gunfire. Then the shooting from the helicopter stopped.

For several seconds the only sound on the roof was the loud, eerie whir of the helicopter’s rotor blades. “Clear!” one of our agents finally yelled. “They’re down in the copter!”

“You’re under arrest!” Mahoney screamed at the Russian in his underwear. “You’re the Wolf. You attacked the director’s house, his family!”

I had something else in mind, another kind of message. I leaned in close and said, “Kyle Craig did this to you.” I wanted him to know, and maybe pay Kyle back someday.

Maybe with zamochit.

Chapter 115

I HOPED TO GOD it was over now. We all did. Ned Mahoney flew back to Quantico that morning, but I spent the rest of the day at FBI headquarters in lower Manhattan. The Russian government had filed protests everywhere they could, but Andrei Prokopev was still in custody, and State Department people were all over the FBI offices. Even a few Wall Street firms had questioned the arrest.

So far, I hadn’t been allowed to talk to the Russian again. He was scheduled for surgery, but his life wasn’t in danger. He was being grilled by someone, just not by me.

Burns finally reached me at around four o’clock in the office I was using at FBI New York. “Alex, I want you to head back to Washington,” he said. “Flight arrangements have been made. We’ll be waiting for you here.” That was all he told me.

Burns signed off, so I didn’t get the chance to ask any questions. It was obvious that he didn’t want me to. Around seven-thirty I arrived at the Hoover Building and was told to go to the SIOC conference area on five. They were waiting for me there. Not exactly waiting, since a shirtsleeves meeting was already in progress. Ron Burns was at the table, which wasn’t a good sign. Everybody looked tense and exhausted.

“Let me bring Alex up to date,” Burns said when I entered the room. “Have a rest, kick back. There’s been a new wrinkle. None of us are very happy about it. You won’t be either.”

I shook my head and felt a little sick as I sat down. I didn’t need new wrinkles; I had more than enough already.

“The Russians are actually cooperating for a change,” Burns said. “It seems that they’re not denying Andrei Prokopev has Red Mafiya connections. He does. They’ve been monitoring him for some time themselves. They hoped to use him to penetrate the huge black market still coming out of Moscow.”

I cleared my throat. “But.”

Burns nodded. “Right. The Russians tell us—now—that Prokopev is not the man we’re looking for. They’re certain of it.”

I felt completely drained. “Because?”

It was Burns’s turn to shake his head. “They know what the Wolf looks like. He was KGB, after all. The real Wolf set us up to believe he was Prokopev. Andrei Prokopev was one of his rivals in the Red Mafiya.”

“To be the Russian godfather?”

“To be the godfather—Russian or otherwise.”

I pursed my lips, took a breath. “Do the Russians know who the Wolf really is?”