"Me, too," Whittaker said, "otherwise somebody goan die, you know? Minute I see the pilot standin' out there, I'm headin' for the chopper. You know the ress."
"I do."
"Better be no tricks."
"There won't be," she said.
"No surprises," he said, and suddenly appeared in the window. "So long, Red," he said, and grinned, and was gone into the darkness again.
"It's Eileen," she muttered under her breath, and then, immediately, into the walkie-talkie, "Whittaker's moving back."
Carella would have been blind without Eileen's voice coming over the walkie-talkie. The voice of a good cop and a good friend filling him in, giving him updates on when it would be all right to come out and say hello to his father's killer. "Chopper's down …"
And then:
"Whittaker's moving back …"
And now:
"Pilot's out of the ship . . ."
Carella waited. Wade stood tensely beside him, his ear pressed to the cellar door, listening for any sound from outside there in the corridor.
Both of them had drawn their guns long ago.
Now they simply waited.
"Putting his hands up over his head …" Eileen said.
She was standing midway between Truck One and the helicopter, the flaps of her blue jacket dancing in the wind produced by the whirling blades, watching the pilot as he came to a stop just beyond the ladder leading down from the ship, sliding door open above him and behind him, his hair flapping wildly, his hands high over his head. She could not see anyone inside the ship.
"Kitchen door's opening," she said into the walkie-talkie.
She caught her breath.
"Whittaker's poking his head out, looking around …"
She waved to him. Let him know she was here. Everything according to plan, right? Soon as you've got the pilot, you let the girl go, and I'm waiting here for her. He did not wave back. Come on, she thought, acknowledge my presence. Let me know you see me. She waved again, bigger movements this time, more exaggerated. He still did not wave back. Just took a last look all around to make sure nobody was waiting out here to ambush him, and then began running for the helicopter.
"He's on his way to the chopper!" she shouted into the walkie-talkie. "Girl's still inside the house, hold steady. Inspector?"
"Yes."
"Who calls the play?"
"I do. Just tell me when the girl is clear."
"Yes, sir."
Silence.
"He's just about there now." More silence.
"He's behind the pilot now. Signaling to the door. The girl's out! Dolly!" she yelled. "This way! Over here!"
"Assault One, go!" Brady shouted.
They would later, in a diner near Headquarters downtown, over coffee and doughnuts as another hot day dawned over the city, try to piece together what had happened next, assemble it as they might have a jigsaw puzzle, pulling in separate pieces of the action from various perspectives, trying to make a comprehensive whole out of what seemed at first to be merely a scattering of confused and jagged pieces.
The girl was running toward her.
Purple hair like a beacon in the night.
"Dolly!" she shouted again.
"Hey! Red!"
She was startled for a moment, his voice coming out of the darkness near the helicopter where he stood behind the pilot. She turned to locate his voice, taking her eyes off the girl for just an instant.
"I lied!" he shouted.
And the girl exploded in blood.
They broke out of the cellar the instant Brady gave them the green light. Sonny had just released the girl and was poised for flight inside the side door, like a runner toeing his mark while waiting for the starting gun. The starting gun came from behind him, a shot fired from Wade's thirty-eight, catching Sonny in the right leg and knocking him off his feet before he could step out onto the porch. They were all over him in the next ten seconds, Wade kicking the nine-millimeter out of his hand as Sonny tried to sit up and raise the gun into a firing position, Carella kneeing him under the chin and slamming him onto his back on the linoleum-covered floor in the narrow corridor. Green linoleum, he would remember later. Yellow flowers in the pattern. Green and yellow and Sonny's wide-open brown eyes as Carella put the muzzle of his gun in the hollow of his throat. Jagged pink knife scar down one side of his face. "Do it," Wade whispered.
The girl came stumbling forward, rosebud breasts in the lavender blouse erupting in larger red flowers as the slugs from the assault rifle ripped into her back and exited in a shower of lung and blood and gristle and tissue, spattering Eileen in gore as the girl fell forward into her arms.
"Oh dear God," Eileen murmured, and heard the shots from inside the helicopter as the sharpshooter fired twice and only twice, but twice was more than enough. The first bullet took Whittaker at the back of his neck, ripping out his trachea as it exited. The second shot caught him just above his right cheek as the force of the first bullet spun him around and away from the pilot. He was dead even before the shattered cheek sent slivers of bone ricocheting up into his brain.
Behind the barricades, even The Preacher stopped chanting.
