Worst Case - James Patterson [82]
The .50 caliber sniper bullets had missed the detonator but hit him through both wrists, completely severing the nerves in both hands.
I felt sorry for Mooney as he wriggled on the floor, moaning and pumping blood.
But that was before he whispered, “Amen,” and lurched up and forward, going for the trigger with his chin.
The third shot came before I’d closed half the distance. The final bullet caught Mooney on his temple. Instead of falling forward, he fell over safely to the side.
“Cease fire!” I yelled into my radio as a thunder of steps came up the balcony stairs.
“No!” I screamed at Jeremy Mason, who’d turned to look at what was left of Francis X. Mooney.
I knelt down in front of the young man tangled in the strings of explosives, shielding him from the sight of Mooney’s body. He’d been through enough. We all had.
“Don’t move, son. It’s going to be okay now,” I said, wiping at the madman’s blood freckled across the boy’s face.
Chapter 97
I WAS TRYING to extricate the boys when one of the bomb techs tackled me from behind and shoved me back toward the stairs.
The St. Edward’s students came down less than five minutes later. Both of the dads were crying openly as they met them in the building’s foyer. Even the burly security chief, Quinn, sobbed as he wrapped his arms around his doorman son, who appeared a few minutes later.
The cops and brokers crowded outside on Broad Street broke into a cheer as the fathers and sons came out. Someone started up a chant of U-S-A for some reason. Relieved that we were both still alive, Emily and I hugged before heartily joining in.
It took the bomb techs half an hour to secure and remove the explosives. After they left, I went back up to the balcony with Emily and the Crime Scene guys. Head shots are horrible, and this one was no exception. Mooney had actually been shot out of his shoes. I stared at the bloody gouges the .50 caliber rounds had also taken out of the old building’s stone walls. Mooney had made an impact, all right.
I stood there silently with Emily as the medical examiner zippered the body bag closed.
“Check this out,” one of the CSU guys said, coming up to me with a sheet of paper in a plastic evidence bag. “It was stuffed into the pocket of Mooney’s jacket.”
WARNING TO A WORLD ON THE EVE OF DESTRUCTION was its title. It was a litany of what was wrong with the world. Facts about poverty and famine and disease. Across the bottom, Mooney had scribbled NO ONE IS LISTENING! in red pen.
Emily lifted an eyebrow at me as I removed the sheet from the plastic. I tore it in half. Then in half again.
“That bastard invalidated everything he had to say the second he started hurting innocent people,” I said, ripping it a third time. “Screw his message, whether it’s true or false. I’ll take C, none of the above.”
I felt Parker’s hand on the back of my neck as I tossed the ripped paper off the balcony.
“Amen, Mike,” she said as the torn pieces disappeared among the stock tickets that littered the floor.
Chapter 98
EMILY GOT OFF easy. She didn’t have to buy dinner that night after all. Parrish and Mason got together and insisted on throwing a dinner for the entire task force at none other than the famous Tavern on the Green on Central Park West.
They rented out one of the small dining rooms for the nearly one hundred cops who showed up. Schultz and Ramirez, who’d arrived early to the open bar, looked like they were into double-digit Bellinis. Most likely looking at a pay-grade increase, they wrapped their arms around each other when the hired ten-piece swing band started playing “New York, New York.”
“I want to wake up in a city that doesn’t sleep,” they sang, Rockette-kicking infront of the laughing tuxedoed musicians. “To find I’m A number one, top of the list, king of the hill.”
“See, I keep telling you this department is one class act,” I said, taking Emily by the hand. I danced her around the room with its crystal chandeliers and hand-carved mirrors. When we weren’t dancing, we drank. Champagne,