High Heat

  “And so our killers used it…why, exactly?” Heat asked.

  “Maybe they’re trying to remind us that there was a time when Arab culture and science led the world,” Rook said. “Eurocentric historians refer to this time as the Dark Ages. But from the Middle Eastern perspective, it really was a time of great light. As a matter of fact—”

  “Uh, professor?” Raley said from behind his computer screen. “Do you mind if I intervene with something a little more relevant?”

  “Since when do professors care about relevance?” Rook asked, offended.

  “Well, cops do,” Heat said. “What do you got, Rales?”

  “I’ve been trying to run down the lead you gave me about Masjid al-Jannah,” Raley said.

  “Yeah? And?”

  “I think I finally got something. Remember how I used the length of the light bulbs to extrapolate the victim’s height?”

  “Right.”

  “I used the same methodology to get a measurement of the dimensions of the room in which the video was shot. And I could be a lot more precise, because I didn’t have to make guesses on the height of a kneeling victim.”

  Raley was clearly getting excited, bouncing in his seat. “Without that uncertainty, I was able to determine that the room in which the video was shot is exactly seventy-eight feet wide by one hundred and twenty-four feet long, with ten-foot ceilings. I then checked in with the Buildings Department in City Hall, where they keep construction plans and permits on file. It turns out there is only one building in the city of New York that has a room that is seventy-eight feet wide by one hundred and twenty-four feet long with ten-foot ceilings. And it’s the main worship room at Masjid al-Jannah.”

  “Great work, Rales. Can you start typing that up for a warrant?”

  “Already on it, Captain. I wrote it up while I was waiting for word from the Building Department. I can send it over to Judge Simpson’s chambers right now.”

  “Thanks,” she said.

  Then Heat turned to see Rook had that far-off look again.

  “What?” she asked.

  “Nothing, it’s just…Masjid al-Jannah,” Rook said. “It’s…It’s so perfect, really.”

  “How so?”

  “Well, you don’t get as many assignments in the Middle East as I’ve had without picking up at least a little bit of Arabic,” Rook said, already back in his professorial role. “Jannah is the Arabic word for heaven, but they don’t think of heaven in quite the same way we do, with harp-bearing angels floating on clouds. The Quran describes heaven as a garden, but jannah comes from an Arabic word that means ‘to cover’ or ‘to hide.’ That’s because, in Islam, heaven is not something that’s meant to be seen by mortals. It’s concealed, obscured from our view.”

  Rook paused for effect.

  “So if you were to translate Masjid al-Jannah exactly, you might say it’s the Mosque of the Hidden Garden.”

  “Yeah, well, it’s not going to be hidden much longer,” Heat said.

  Raley volunteered, “The imam there is Muharib Qawi. He emigrated from Yemen in 2006. He has a prior for, get this, making terroristic threats. He was able to keep his green card by plea-bargaining it down. His mug shot is rolling off the printer right now.”

  Heat walked over to the printer and grabbed a photo of a man with his head wrapped in a turban. He had dark eyes, a narrow nose, and a long, scraggly salt-and-pepper beard that flowed down from his chin onto his chest.

  “Muharib Qawi translates as ‘strong warrior’ in Arabic,” Rook volunteered.

  “Sounds like our guy,” Ochoa said.

  “Great, let’s saddle up and go,” Rook said, giddily. “I’ve got my bulletproof vest in the closet.”

  “Just hold your horses for a second there, cowboy,” Heat said. “First things first: Oach, can you put together a team to execute this warrant? I want to have some muscle in case they’re still holed up in there waiting for us. Pull some of the officers off the headhunt if you have to. Get the Bomb Squad to meet us there. The place might be booby-trapped. And call The Hammer and tell him I want to call in a chit to have the Aviation Unit get a chopper on standby in case we need air support. Also, tell ECT to be ready to move in once we’ve secured the building. This is our real crime scene. They’re going to find a lot more evidence there than they will in the Dumpster where the body happened to end up.”

  “Got it,” Ochoa said.

  “Rook, can you come into my office for a second?”

  “Of course.”

  The blinds were still closed. Heat clicked the lock on the door as she closed it behind herself. She turned off the lights.

  “I’m sorry,” she said in a husky voice. “But there’s something I think we need to take care of.”

  Then she unfastened one of the buttons on her blouse.

  “We have maybe twenty minutes right now,” she said. “It’ll take at least that long for Simpson to respond to the warrant request and for Oach to get a team assembled.”

  She undid another button. Rook’s eyes went down to the lacy fringe of her bra and the curve of her breast.

  “I know we said we’d do this tonight,” she said, with a little bit of a moan. “But I’m not sure I can wait any longer.”

  One more button gone. Rook’s eyes were wide.

  “Office sex?” he said, his tone reverent.

  She nodded.

  “Come over here,” she said, reclining on the floor on the far side of the room, by the wall. “I want you to take me right here. I’m afraid if we do it on the desk it’ll make too much noise.”

  Rook practically dove on the floor next to her. She rolled on top of him.

  “You have been an incredibly difficult suspect,” she said, then she pulled out a pair of handcuffs from her belt. “And I’m afraid our interrogation is about to get rough.”

  “How rough?” Rook asked.

  “I think it’s safe to say this will be an act of police brutality you’ll never forget,” she said.

  As she slipped one half of the cuff on Rook’s right wrist, she began gnawing on his earlobe. Rook’s breath was already ragged.

  “I have been so bad,” he panted. “Please, please punish me.”

  “Oh, I will,” she said.

  Then she quickly pulled his wrist to the side and fastened the other half of the cuffs to the leg of the radiator before rolling off of him.

  Rook looked over, his comprehension growing as other parts of him were shrinking.

  Heat was already hastily closing up her blouse.

  “Sorry,” she said. “But I can’t have you running around out there while our suspects are still at large. I’ll come unlock you later, once we have them in custody.”

  Rook just whimpered.

  Forty minutes later, Heat was back on 73rd Street, behind Pho Sure.

  She had decided on the restaurant as a staging area, reasoning that there had already been a police presence there most of the morning. If American ISIS was holed up inside Masjid al-Jannah, waiting to spring an ambush, they wouldn’t be tipped off anything new was coming.

  A warrant, freshly signed and e-mailed back from Judge Simpson’s chambers, was tucked inside her bulletproof vest. There were twenty officers with her: twelve from the Twentieth Precinct, including four detectives, and eight from the Bomb Squad, along with a bomb-sniffing dog.

  “Okay, we’ve checked the building plans and there are two main egress points: the front door and the back,” Heat said. “In addition, there’s a fire escape on the east side of the building, toward the back. Roach, I want you to take four officers and lead the team that covers both the back entrance and that fire escape. Rhymer, Feller, I want you and the rest of the uniforms with me up front.”

  “Now gentlemen,” continued Heat, the only woman in the group. “Please remember, this is a house of worship, and we need to treat it with respect. I don’t want to hear later that the NYPD acted like a bunch of jackbooted thugs. I am going to enter through the front door,
which our surveillance indicates is not locked, and announce we have a warrant. We have to be on alert, of course. But it’s more than likely these guys didn’t stick around the mosque, okay?”

  Heat nodded at a man who had already donned a blast suit, which looked like an armored astronaut’s outfit.

  “Once we determine there is no immediate armed response, Bomb Squad goes in first,” Heat said. “We’re going to let them and their dog’s nose do the work. McMains in Counterterrorism reminded me that these suspects probably wouldn’t hesitate to blow themselves up in the hopes of taking of few of us with them, so let’s not let our guard down until we’re sure this place is clean. Got it?”

  There was a general nodding of heads.

  “Now, if any of the suspects attempt to flee, try to detain them peacefully, of course. But if you have no other choice, you are authorized to use force. Repeat: you are authorized to use force. These guys have already murdered one person, and they’ve threatened to do the same to Rook, so in my mind that satisfies the legal requirement that they pose a threat of serious physical harm. Shoot to maim, not to kill. But don’t hesitate to shoot if you have to. Is everyone comfortable with that order?”

  More heads nodded.

  “Okay, Roach, you ready to move out?”

  “You got it, Captain,” Raley said.

  Ochoa suddenly had his hands on his hips. “Uh, excuse me, but I’m leading today, remember?” he said. “It’s the eighteenth.”

  Roach had decided they would split their co-leading duties by the day: Raley led the squad on odd-numbered days, while Ochoa handled the evens.

  “So I’m not allowed to answer when she says ‘Roach’?” Raley said indignantly.

  “On the nineteenth, you answer,” Ochoa said. “On the eighteenth, I answer. It’s called sharing. Why is that so hard for you?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe because when you were introducing yourself to Lana Kline, you were acting like I didn’t even exist.”

  “All I said was, ‘Hello, Miss Kline, I’m the detective squad leader.’ Which, on the eighteenth, is a statement of fact.”

  “You know, that’s so like you to—”

  “Guys, guys,” Heat said, holding her hands up toward both of them. “Do you think you can sort this out later?”

  “Sorry, Captain,” Ochoa said.

  “I’d say sorry, too,” Raley sniffed. “But apparently I’m not allowed to talk today.”

  Heat sighed and shook her head. “Okay, let’s just move out,” she said. “Let me know when you’re in position.”

  “I will,” Ochoa said, narrowing his eyes at Raley, almost challenging him to disagree.

  Ochoa led his team around the back of the building, while Heat took her group around the front and along 73rd Street. They walked quickly, sticking to the south side, the one the mosque was on, to limit their visual exposure.

  Heat held up a hand, bringing her team to a halt just short of Masjid al-Jannah. She was waiting to hear Ochoa was in place.

  Instead, she heard the distinctive pop of gunfire. It was coming from the back of the building.

  “We got a runner,” Ochoa called over the radio as more shots rang out. “He just jumped down from the fire escape and is heading east, toward Columbus. A guy in a white gown. I didn’t get the best look at him, but I’m pretty sure it’s Muharib Qawi. I’m in pursui—”

  And then Ochoa’s narrative was interrupted by an anguished yell, followed by more moaning that sounded almost animalistic until it suddenly cut out.

  “Man down. We got a man down. It’s Miguel! We got a ten-thirteen. Ten-thirteen!” Raley howled into his radio. The NYPD was moving toward plain talk in its communications. But in a crisis, Raley had fallen back on using the code for an officer in need of assistance.

  Heat had her weapon drawn, but she was calm, in control. This was not her first firefight, and the NYPD spent countless hours training for these kinds of scenarios.

  “Dispatch, you copy that?”

  “Roger,” crackled the voice of the dispatch officer, who was back at the precinct, ready to coordinate any other resources Heat might need to call on. “Sending assistance.”

  “Rales, you stay with your team and Ochoa,” Heat ordered. “Repeat: stay in position. Send two men after Qawi. He might just be a decoy meant to lure us away from the mosque.”

  Or Qawi might have been the only one inside, and he ran the moment he saw cops approaching from the back alley. Either way, she had a warrant to execute and a crime scene to investigate, pursuit of a suspect notwithstanding.

  “Dispatch,” Heat said into her radio. “Call Aviation and tell them to get that bird in the air. I want some eyes in the sky.”

  “Roger that,” the dispatcher said.

  Heat clicked off her radio. “The rest of you, take positions around the front entrance. Nothing goes in or out, got it?”

  Then she turned to Rhymer. Of the six officers on her side of the building, Heat had already determined that she and the slender Virginian were in the best condition for a footrace.

  “Opie, come on, let’s go run down a guy in a thobe.”

  Heat and Rhymer took off east, toward Columbus Avenue. As they reached the busy artery, a voice crackled on their radios. “Suspect turned left out of the alley, heading north on Columbus.”

  Sure enough, Heat saw a white flash as the imam crossed 73rd Street. She and Rhymer were perhaps a hundred yards behind.

  “Dispatch,” she said, talking as she was running. “I have visuals on a suspect running north on Columbus. I am in pursuit. I want all units in the area on alert.”

  “Roger that,” the dispatcher said calmly. And Heat trusted that the BOLO was now being broadcast on the other UHF channels currently being used by the patrol officers of the Twentieth Precinct.

  When they reached Columbus Avenue and turned left, Heat could see glimpses of Qawi, already a block ahead, weaving and dodging through Columbus Avenue foot traffic. She holstered her gun—there was no way she would have a clean shot with all the civilians around—and churned her legs.

  She kept expecting Qawi would turn right, down one of the streets that would lead to Central Park, which was just a block to the east. There were more hiding places in the park than just about anywhere else in Manhattan. But Qawi kept charging north, covering two blocks, then three.

  If Heat and Rhymer were gaining on him, it was only marginally. The other officers, the ones who had flushed him out from behind the building, were even farther back.

  As Qawi continued his desperate dash, Heat finally heard the sound of rotor blades in the air. The NYPD Aviation Unit had recently upgraded its light choppers to Bell 429s, and it claimed it could be anywhere in the five boroughs within fifteen minutes from a standing start. With proper warning, it turned out they could be on the west side of Manhattan in a shade over four.

  “Captain Heat, this is Police Two, we have eyes on the suspect,” the pilot said. “He just crossed 76th Street and is continuing north.”

  “Roger that,” Heat huffed into her radio as she streaked past, appropriately enough, the headquarters of the New York Road Runners, the organization that hosted the New York City Marathon.

  “Two units now southbound on Columbus, at 82nd,” the dispatcher advised.

  Heat heard the sound of sirens underneath the whir of the rotors. At 77th Street, Qawi finally turned right, in the direction of Central Park, as Heat thought he would.

  “Suspect now westbound on 77th,” she said into her radio.

  “Park Police have been notified,” the dispatcher crackled back. “They have units on horseback coming from the 79th Street Transverse.”

  Which meant with Heat applying pressure from the southwest, two cars coming down Columbus from the northwest, and the Central Park Police coming from the east, they would soon have Qawi rather neatly surrounded. Heat hoped he’d go peacefully. In addition to her usual aspirations for regular justice—as opposed to the instant kind that came from the b
arrel of a police gun—dead suspects couldn’t give up coconspirators. And Heat wanted the comfort of knowing the threat against Rook had been neutralized. Mostly because she didn’t want to have to keep him chained to the radiator forever.

  Heat felt her thighs burning and her speed flagging. She had to believe Qawi was just about out of gas as well—most clergy she knew didn’t exactly have a lot of time for cardio.

  Then she heard: “This is Police Two. The suspect is entering the natural history museum. Repeat: suspect has entered natural history museum.”

  It might have seemed like a mistake, in that Qawi was now trapped. Except a ripple of panic was coursing through Heat. Nearing midday on a Tuesday in October, the museum would be full of field-tripping schoolchildren and tourists. Both made for excellent hostages if Qawi was armed—or if, anticipating the police would eventually come after him, he had wired himself with explosives.

  In addition, the American Museum of Natural History was a warren of rooms and corridors, many of which had no windows. Which meant a police sniper wouldn’t have a shot. And it was filled with priceless and irreplaceable artifacts, which ruled out many of the other potential tactics that could be employed.

  All in all, it was an excellent place for Qawi to stage a standoff, and a looming nightmare for the authorities.

  “Okay. I want officers stationed at all the exits,” Heat called into her radio. “Now that he’s in there, let’s make sure we hop on him if he tries to get out.”

  “Should we call the museum and tell them to initiate lockdown procedures?” the dispatcher asked.

  “Negative. Repeat: negative,” Heat said. “I want him to think he’s gotten away, if at all possible. If he panics and grabs a hostage, we’re all in for a long day.”

  Heat clicked off her radio. “You stay here,” she called back to Rhymer, who had kept pace, just a few steps behind. “Cover this exit in case he doubles back.”

  She charged up the marble steps, past groups of students eating their bagged lunches and vacationers taking pictures.

  As she entered the Grand Gallery, she was greeted by two sights: an enormous life-sized stuffed elephant and a security guard’s desk.