Terror Machine Read online

“And Tony,” Jake added.

  “No time to spare,” Susan announced. “Just walk the warrants downstairs. I’ve already arranged to have a judge present in chambers twenty-four seven for at least the next week. Those Bossonovs are getting every single orifice cleaned out.” Susan glanced at her phone. “I’m calling it now. Let’s break till the afternoon working session. Back here at four.” Susan was already halfway out of the room by the time she was finished speaking. One of her hidden talents was the utter domination of aggressive men. She did it by appearing to be more important than any of them. Perhaps she even was, but her fundamental trick was that she never allowed enough time for the question to be asked.

  Jake stood up and paced to the back of the room. He knew something important had happened. Beyond the niceties, he was very aware that he’d been chosen by the man in the back. He still didn’t even know who he was about to start working for, but he knew he should probably shake the guy’s hand. Jake observed his new boss for a brief moment. The man’s version of business casual was a half step higher end than the rest of the feds. Still no tie, but his light-blue shirt had elegant texture and was pressed and tucked in. His grey wool pants were hemmed up high and tight over lime-green socks and fine leather shoes. But what interested Jake the most was his belt. The man’s belt consisted of thick woven leather in a western style with an absolutely massive silver belt buckle pounded into the form of a bald eagle.

  “Excited to make your acquaintance, sir,” Jake said. “Just one question. Who are you?”

  “Sheldon White. Please call me Mr. White.”

  “Okay, Mr. White . . . I’m Jake Rivett. NYPD. I work for Susan, but you already know that. And what do you do?”

  “I kill bad guys, Detective Rivett,” replied Mr. White.

  ▪

  Jake Rivett was famous. As soon as he stepped out the front door of One Police Plaza, he immediately regretted his decision. He should have listened to Susan and chosen a different exit. Unfortunately, he’d locked his Ducati up in a small motorcycle parking zone at the very front of the building. Jake had to push himself through the throng of reporters waiting outside and calling his name. They were sticking their cameras in his face and screaming over one another like fans at a concert—while bombarding him with a volley of questions. It made matters much worse that he was a known quantity at One Police Plaza nowadays. A few news reports about Jake had popped up after the Flash Crash job, but when he’d singlehandedly taken down property mogul Arthur Metropolis, the cat was really out of the bag. He recognized the reporters and bloggers because it was always the same faces over and over again, and they certainly knew him. He was hard to miss. Jake could never figure out why the press was so interested in him specifically. It was deeply ironic. He had achieved more fame as a detective than a rock singer. He wasn’t sure if that was good or bad.

  “Detective Rivett, what’s the latest on the Abdel Hayat investigation?”

  “Why can’t you talk to us, Rivett? Don’t you think the American people deserve to know?”

  “Will there be another attack?”

  The last question hit Jake hard. He couldn’t let them see that, though. He rarely talked to the media, and when he did, it was only when a superior required him to. It wasn’t his job. Jake was sure he’d probably fail miserably if he answered any of these reporters’ questions. He also knew that Pete Mack was about to brief the president, who was in turn going to address the nation that evening. It was the president’s job to talk to America. Jake’s was simple: Bash the case wide open.

  Jake finally reached his bike and strapped his helmet on, but the reporters wouldn’t give up. They crowded around him like a rabid mob, their hands gesticulating and jowls churning. Jake took a deep breath. He leaned down and grabbed the crowbar he kept attached to the bike’s frame and whipped it in the air. He flipped the crowbar around in his hand, wound up, and smacked the steel tool against the pole that his bike had been locked to. It only took three loud reverberations before the reporters went silent. Without a word, Jake gestured with the crowbar ahead of himself, like a golfer parting the crowd for a shot. Once he had created a visible path, Jake ripped away from the circus that was One Police Plaza.

  ▪

  As Jake slid into the parking lot of Axel Bossonov’s truck rental enterprise, the cavalry had already arrived. The business was roped off with yellow police tape. Tony, Fong, a number of FBI agents, and a handful of SWAT operators stood on each side of the line, seemingly guarding the place. Jake strode up to Tony with a quizzical look on his face.

  “Where’s Mr. White?”

  “They told us they’re going to handle it inside,” Tony announced dourly.

  “Like hell . . .” Jake replied. He pushed past Tony and headed towards the small office inside the lot, where he could already see Mr. White and his sidekick, Shep Moseley. Both men were wearing blue FBI windbreakers, even though Jake knew they weren’t FBI agents. Moseley was much bigger than Mr. White, with strong alpha muscles but a downright goofy face and set of ears. Moseley was essentially the muscle, the Pinky to Mr. White’s Brain. Once Jake was inside the office, he didn’t break his stride. He swept past the two mysterious feds, towards Axel, and got right into his face.

  “Where’s Roschin?” Jake immediately asked.

  Mr. White and Moseley whipped their necks towards Jake.

  “You know who I am, Axel?”

  Axel Bossonov stared at Jake for an uncomfortably long moment. Rivett was, in fact, the very reason that many of Axel’s loved ones were in jail or dead.

  “Yes,” Axel finally said.

  “So where’s your nephew? Actually, where are both of them?”

  “Who you talking about? I don’t know? How would I know?”

  “Roschin and Petrov. The twins.”

  “They’re not my employees . . .”

  “We know they work here.”

  “Oh . . . maybe. Maybe independent contractors. Very complicated, running a business. Benefits, you know . . . I have a lot of nephews. Fuckall, I have a lot of kids. Hard to keep track of them all . . .”

  Jake turned to Mr. White. “You can talk to this bozo, ’cause I won’t. Totally old school. An expert at saying a whole bunch of stuff while saying nothing at all. Right, Axel?”

  “You never really understand a person until you sit down and eat pizza with him . . .” Axel replied.

  “The less they say, the more they know,” Jake replied. “I’m gonna look around. I imagine that you already took a glance at the search warrant.”

  Jake exited the small office and paced quickly back to his Ducati.

  “Jake . . .” Tony started, knowing exactly where Jake was going and what he was about to do.

  Jake reached for the crowbar latched to the side of his bike and whipped it around in his hands. He surveyed the massive parking lot. The lot was filled with all manner of industrial trucks and vehicles parked in loose lines up and down the property. He was actually impressed with the sheer size of the place. Who knows how Axel had gotten his hands on this piece of land and all this stuff. Jake probably didn’t want to know, or else he’d have to open up a whole new investigation. Ahead of Jake was a tall pile of junk metal, rising about twenty feet in the air. He sprinted towards the junk and climbed up the proverbial mountain. When he reached the top, he finally had a fantastic vantage point over the lot. The facility looked to be multiple acres in size, and Jake quickly realized that in addition to being huge, it was just a plain mess. It might take weeks for his detectives and the FBI to search the entire place.

  Not only did they not have weeks, but something else was nagging at Jake. At the end of the day, he didn’t believe that Axel Bossonov was a terrorist. Jake didn’t even think that Axel would knowingly aid and abet a terrorist, even for money. That just wasn’t in the game plan for mobsters like him. Jake knew these people and this area. The Russians, the Armenians, the Belarusians—none of them committed crime on behalf of any sort of god, unless that god
was a new luxury car or sending their kid to the right summer camp. They committed crime, usually forms of fraud, mostly because it was an easy way to make a lot of money. Money got them what they really wanted, which was status, and getting involved in a terror plot would torpedo that status quickly.

  While Jake thought, he caught a blur of motion at the far end of the business.

  “Roschin,” Jake murmured. Roschin Bossonov, clear as day, was dressed smartly and walking into the yard from a back exit. He headed towards a small shaded area, where a number of the company’s workers were sitting. The employees were chatting and observing the police activity with a detached interest, as if they were watching a mildly entertaining TV show. Jake leapfrogged down the junk pile and practically sprinted towards Roschin, with Tony and Fong in tow. Jake held the crowbar, rapping it against his hands every few steps. He neared the plastic chairs where Roschin stood in front of a handful of auto mechanics and painters.

  “Hey, Roschin. Such a treat to see you again,” Jake said.

  “Mr. Detective. Hard habit to kick.”

  “I thought the same thing, too. Where’s your brother?”

  “I dunno. I’m not his keeper.”

  “You two are like two peas in a pod. Where’s Petrov?”

  Like clockwork, Petrov appeared. He was also hustling back into the facility from the exit.

  “There’s the boy,” Rivett said. “So what you guys been up to while I was gone? Just renting out trucks to terrorists?”

  “Listen,” Roschin said. “Terrorist scum need fuckin’ die, detective. You know not what we do.”

  “That true, Petrov?”

  Petrov—a quiet man who many might call mute—simply nodded.

  “All right. Well, let me say that I take you on your word with that,” Jake said. “So where do you paint the fake license plates?”

  “Uh . . .” Roschin stammered for a moment, caught off guard. Then he quickly corrected himself. “What you talk about?”

  Jake glanced at Petrov’s fingers and forearms, which were splashed with paint. Jake was well aware that between the two brothers, Roschin was the one who talked and Petrov was the one who worked.

  “Where’s Petrov’s workshop?”

  No one in the entire crowd of men said a word, but they all seemed to be holding their breath. Jake knew he was onto something. He eyed a series of work benches inside the garage the men were sitting beside. He peered in. The benches were piled up with all manner of garbage—old sheet metal, car parts, license plates, pieces of electrical cabling, and cable brackets. Jake stepped inside with Tony and Fong. The two brothers followed him.

  “What’s all this crap?” Jake noticed that the work benches and lights were all clean, newer, and high-end with good wiring. But why were the tables covered in trash? He took his crowbar and with one large swipe brushed one of the work tables clean. Junk clattered in every direction. Jake could finally see clearly that the top of the bench was covered in white-and-blue paint splatter.

  “You guys just have an aversion to the truth, don’t ya?” Jake asked.

  “What? Is paint. We paint parts. All day long. Is our job,” Roschin said.

  “My guess . . .” Jake said and then continued, “is that, yeah, your guys may paint parts. But you’re also painting plates every once in a while. Most likely right on this table.”

  “You can guess, but a guess is a guess. Is not a fact. Is a fact that you’re still a moron.”

  Rivett didn’t take kindly to Roschin’s comment. There was a reason that Jake Rivett was Jake Rivett. It went way, way back—so far back that the only people who knew about it were his parents and Mona. But you didn’t make fun of Jake Rivett—especially not if you were a Russian mobster engaged in every possible scam and illegal activity on this side of the East River. Rivett pivoted and launched himself directly at Roschin. The two men toppled backwards across the room, with Roschin reaching to grab on to one of the work benches to prevent himself from falling. Jake continued to propel Roschin backwards, jamming the crowbar up against his neck like a vise. After a moment, Roschin was pinned against a back wall of the small shack. Roschin’s submission only lasted for a few seconds—as long as it took for Tony and Fong to yank Jake off him.

  “Fuck you, detective. I know you got a short fuse. I seen it!” Roschin yelled. “What you got next? Gonna do a murder on me? That solve your crime and find your little terrorist?”

  “Shut the hell up, Roschin. I’ll solve the crime and then I’ll deal with you,” Jake spat back while Fong did his best to keep them separated.

  “We’re going back to the office, Rivett. C’mon! Now!” Tony yelled.

  Jake stormed away with Tony, but Roschin was jogging behind them and trying to get in Jake’s face. As they neared the front office, Roschin began to complain to Mr. White and Moseley.

  “Your detective assault me! He assault me!”

  “Rivett?” Mr. White asked.

  “He’s full of it,” Rivett said. Rivett stomped past the agents and into Axel’s office again. Once inside, Rivett addressed Axel.

  “Bossonov, you’ve got a good thing going here. Good life, right? A business? But you think things are gonna stay this way? You think you and your nephews and whoever the hell else other goons you’ve got working for you are just gonna continue your merry little lives, driving around in your Mercedes while a terrorist cell is on the loose in my city? One that you helped? You are making the biggest mistake of your life. I know you’re a gambler, but you don’t wanna play with me. I am the wrong mark today, Bossonov. I don’t know what it is you like to do for fun. Maybe you still get those boxing gloves out? Maybe you like to hit up your ladies of the night for a freebie? The boss discount? Who knows, maybe you just go home to your wife and Netflix and chill. I don’t even care. But whatever it is you like to do, I am going to make sure that you never, ever, get to do that again. I am going to make sure you spend the rest of your life wishing you had done the right thing in this moment. All you got is this one time to change your future. You tell me the truth, right now? Then I’m out of your life again. Poof. Gone. Just like a bad dream.”

  Axel thought about Jake’s proposal for just a moment. Then he spoke. “I don’t know anything, Detective Rivett.”

  Jake was livid. But he had Mr. White behind him, so the crowbar he was holding in his hands was useless. There wasn’t much he could do besides steam up while he stared at Axel. And he couldn’t even stare at Axel, because he hated him so much. So instead he gazed right past Axel at the wall behind him.

  That’s when Jake noticed the marks on the wall.

  There was a line of small white plastic clips nailed into the wall above Axel’s phone and computer. They ascended up the corner of the room and then stopped. They were brackets, designed to hold a piece of cabling. But where were the cables? Rivett glanced up at the ceiling. He saw that a small piece of the drywall was missing from the corner.

  “You had cameras,” Jake suddenly said. “Where are they, Axel?” He pointed to the broken drywall and the empty cable brackets.

  Mr. White noticed as well, a sly grin appearing on his face.

  Jake glanced outside the office. Roschin was walking away from the group, heading across the lot and towards the back exit.

  “Roschin has the cameras, doesn’t he?”

  “Yes,” Axel replied quietly.

  Roschin began to jog. Jake stepped out of the office and immediately sprinted after Roschin, who saw him coming. Roschin began to run. Jake picked up his pace to match. Ahead, Jake could see that Roschin’s car was parked just a few feet outside the back exit. Roschin reached his car—a white Mercedes, of course—and jumped in. He started the engine. Jake was still about twenty yards behind him and wasn’t going to be able to catch up. Instead, he rotated his shoulder back as far as he could and heaved the crowbar directly at Roschin’s car. The crowbar rotated in the air like a tomahawk before smashing through the Mercedes’s back window. The window was blown to sm
ithereens, glass blasting in all directions.

  Roschin wasn’t fazed. He turned his wheels to the left and jammed the accelerator, peeling out of his parking spot. He raced the Mercedes down the street. Seconds away from escaping, a police cruiser suddenly rammed into Roschin’s car, T-boning the Mercedes from the side and immobilizing Roschin. Tony had smartly arranged for a few squad cars to guard the back gates. The preparation came in handy.

  Jake paced up to the smoking car. He discovered Roschin pinned inside the driver’s seat, finally defeated. Rivett glanced into the back seat of the Mercedes. Since the car’s dark-tinted window was broken, he could see what was inside. Sitting in an open cardboard box in the back seat of the car, clear as day, was a full surveillance system. There were eight cameras, a whole bunch of wiring, the master HD recording unit, and perhaps what Jake and the joint task force were really looking for—a break.

  CHAPTER SIX

  KATINKA JOHANSSEN SPENT MOST OF her time in front of the computer. As an MD and former graduate student in bioengineering at Penn State, this was to be expected. But the ennui of underemployment had increased her screen time exponentially. It had all begun with her dismissal from her PhD program and the ugly incidents that had resulted from said dismissal. It had ended up here, in this rundown walk-up in Flatbush, where she conducted video therapy over Skype using a third-party app that connected doctors to patients in need. Katinka was forced to operate from her kitchen, where she strung a tie-dyed cloth to hide the rack of pots and pans behind her. At least she was still practicing. She still had patients. But the billing rates were anemic for a doctor with her level of training, and her living situation did nothing more than punctuate her dramatic fall.

  Katinka’s career had begun with such excitement. Instead of a regular residency after medical school, she had opted to create her own PhD program at Penn State. Technically within the engineering school, her new position stood on the forefront of an entirely new field of medicine—the use of mechanical technology to treat mental disorders. She had held her advisor in the highest esteem possible, having read all of his books and covered his speeches and papers religiously. But at the end of the day, what she hadn’t been able to account for was the treachery hiding inside that man. She hated thinking about him, and yet she couldn’t stop herself. For a woman who studied compulsions for a living, hating him was her compulsion. Katinka thought about him every single day, sometimes for hours on end, and sometimes without eating or drinking or showering.