Page 42 of Witness 8

The most dangerous part of this was in the first few seconds of stepping out onto the street. One second after I opened that door, the patrol car would drive away, the doors on the Buick across the street would open and the two leather-clad, hairy-ass bikers would be on the street too, with weapons in their hands pointing straight at me.

I stared at the door.

Checked my phone.

Breathed.

Two minutes since the call.

We couldn’t tell what weapons the bikers were carrying. Since they were in a truck, and not on their bikes, Bloch guessed it would be small semi-automatic rifles. The kind that spit two hundred rounds a minute and kill everything in their path.

I stared at the door.

Breathed.

My phone rang.

Caller display read – BLOCH.

‘That’s the call,’ I said, and reached out to open the door.

Only Harry had pushed in front.

‘Wait, Harry!’

But I was too late. He’d opened the door.

Stepped out on the street.

I bolted out after him and then a lot of things happened all at once. The hitmen bikers were in the Buick, two cars down from the cops in the patrol car across the street. Bloch and Lake were standing ten feet from me on our side of the street. They’d all stood still. Waiting. Like a spring that was coiling tighter and tighter with every passing second and now, suddenly, unleashed with tremendous speed and force.

Soon as I set foot on the sidewalk, I heard the sirens. They were close.

I heard the engine starting on the patrol car. The wheels beginning to turn. They were ready to get the hell out of there before the shooting started.

The bikers were half out of the pick-up. The one closest to me, the driver, had a short-barreled AR-15 in his hand. He had a long gray beard over a black leather jacket. His eyes were red and wild. It was obvious that he’d passed the time in the pick-up smoking an eight-ball, or something equally dangerous, to get his blood up enough to kill me in the middle of a Manhattan street.

I couldn’t see his pal. He was on the other side of their pick-up. But the driver stopped dead before he could raise the rifle.

He’d heard the sirens. He got back into the pick-up fast.

An NYPD car screeched round the corner one block away to my left, tires smoking. I heard the engine gun over the siren as it accelerated toward me. The car hit the brakes right in front of the pick-up.

Sergeant Gray’s patrol car had pulled out, but then braked hard as another patrol car came down the street the wrong way, sirens blazing, blocking the entire road.

Cops poured out of the vehicles. Except the one that had been waiting for me.

Bloch ran over to the first cop out of the car. She pointed at the pick-up, cried, ‘Gun!’

The cops who were in front of me drew their sidearms, focused on the pick-up. I saw both bikers now, in the front. The passenger looked even more loaded than the driver. He still had the barrel of a riot gun sticking up in the air.

The cops who were blocking the road were out of their vehicles. They passed Gray’s patrol car and ran to assist their colleagues who were zeroing in on the pick-up, guns drawn, barking instructions.

The driver’s door of the pick-up opened an inch. The short barrel of an automatic machine gun stuck out.

The storm of gunfire from the police was deafening. Glass exploded from the windshield and driver’s window. From the rapid fire, the glass looked like the surface of a still pond that was broken with a sudden, heavy downpour of rain, shards dancing in the air.

The firing stopped. The bikers were a bloody mess.