The Frenzy Way (42 page)

Perez stopped the scooter and grabbed his radio microphone. “Dispatch, this is Patrol 476. Over.”

A voice crackled over the speaker: “Go ahead, 476. Over.”

“I’m outside the Central Park Zoo and—
Jesus Christ
!”

The running man had pitched face forward with a large black shape clinging to his back. The attacker seemed to have a coat of glossy black fur. At first Perez thought an ape had escaped from the zoo. Then the thing looked up at him with hate-filled eyes and bared its fangs at him, and he knew he had encountered something that couldn’t possibly exist.

“Oh, shit, it’s huge!”

The monster sank its fangs into its victim’s back, ripping flesh and fabric in a bloody streak as it arched its back.

Perez shifted into reverse, a gear to which he was unaccustomed to driving the box on wheels. “Get me backup
fast!”

Turning the scooter around, he glanced over his shoulder. But without his headlights trained on the spectacle, he found it difficult to see anything. He discerned a powerful black shape racing toward him, and he floored the gas pedal. In the rearview mirror, he saw the beast pursuing him on all fours.

“Madre!”

The thing galloped after him as fast as a horse. And then it disappeared.

For a second, Perez thought he had imagined the whole thing. Then something large and heavy crashed on top of the roof, just inches above his head, so loud and so close that he had to duck. He heard the scrabble of claws on metal and felt the scooter rock from side to side.

Before he had time to react, the vehicle tipped over on its right side and skidded across the asphalt in a shower of sparks. With his weight on his right shoulder and his face pressed against the window, through which he saw only his reflection over the asphalt, Perez twisted his head toward the left window above him. Lamplight shone through the glass. With his left hand he reached up and pounded the door lock. In that instant, the lupine features of the monster sprang into view, slobbering saliva from the fangs that jutted from its black lips.

Holy fucking shit!
Perez thought as he slammed his left hand into the steering wheel, blasting the horn nonstop. “Hurry!” he screamed into the radio.
“Hurry!”

Then the beast ripped the door from its hinges.

“All units near Central Park, this is Dispatch. We have a 10-13: Officer needs assistance. Repeat, all units, we have a 10-13. Proceed immediately to the Central Park Zoo vicinity. Over.”

Steering their RMP uptown, Mike Palmer glanced at his partner and nodded.

Moira Kanaly answered the call. “This is Charlie Six-Seven, 10–17. Over.”
We’re on our way to the location.

“Copy that,” came the crackling response. “Over.”

Palmer stomped the brake and twisted the steering wheel, swerving into the downtown lane and launching forward. Kanaly activated the siren and strobes, and they sped past Seventy-fourth Street.

“Looks like the Village doesn’t get all the action tonight,” Palmer said, his heart pounding with excitement.

At Sixty-eighth, he turned into the drive that cut across the park. They didn’t have to go far before a tipped-over scooter came into view. The headlights of their RPM illuminated the black silhouette of a seven-foot figure straddling the scooter’s side.

“What the
fuck?”
Kanaly said.

The figure appeared to be rescuing the officer who had been driving the scooter. Then it turned its head toward them, revealing the blood-streaked features of a snarling wild animal, and they saw that it had nearly chewed through the dead cop’s neck. Roaring at the oncoming vehicle, it discarded the corpse onto the ground.

Palmer braked and slammed the car into Park. “Get it!”

Both officers opened their doors and jumped out of the car. Standing behind their doors, they drew their Glocks and opened fire on the creature, which dived behind the scooter. Muzzle fire erupted from their weapons, and rounds ricocheted off the scooter’s metal skin as the reports filled the night, driving the animals in the zoo into a panic. Animal shrieks joined the gunfire in a dizzying arrangement.

Palmer quit firing and said, “Stop!” Kanaly ceased shooting as well. The polar bears and harbor seals and colobus monkeys continued to rail at the night. Moving around the car door, he advanced toward the scooter, approaching its underside. Kanaly moved almost in unison toward its roof. Stepping over the cop’s bloody corpse, Palmer signaled her to wait, then whipped around the back of the scooter, prepared to shoot. The creature—whatever it was—had vanished. “Clear!”

Kanaly raced around the other side of the scooter, a disbelieving look on her face. Turning their backs to each other, they scanned the perimeter with their Glocks clutched in both hands but saw no sign of the monster.

“Let’s call this in,” Palmer said.

Kanaly shook her head. “How?
You
call it in.”

“Man has won. The wilderness killers have lost. They have written their own death warrants in killing, torture, blood lust, almost fiendish cruelty.”

—Stanley Young, government biologist, administrator, wolf eradicator

The Agusta A-119 Koala, one of seven $10 million helicopters purchased by the NYPD after 9/11, soared through the darkened sky above the financial district. Inside the armor-plated chopper, outfitted with sophisticated surveillance equipment such as cameras, night vision, and heat sensors, two detectives piloted the craft while two snipers sat in back.

“Flight 10, this is Dispatch. Over.”

Detective Paul Langetti answered. “This is Flight 10. Over.” The NYPD Aviation Unit typically sent up to a dozen flights out of their base at Floyd Bennett Field.

“Central Park Precinct reports an officer down near the Central Park Zoo. Officers on the scene report the perp is possibly a wild animal. Two citizens were also killed. Radio cars have cordoned off allentrances to the park. Proceed and engage.”

“Roger that,” Langetti said, casting a disbelieving look at his copilot, Detective Barris Collins. “Think this is the Big Bad Wolf?”

With the Manhattan skyline below them, the detectives awaited an answer.

“Affirmative.”

As Collins piloted the bird uptown, Langetti faced the two snipers sitting in the rear compartment, both of them members of the Hercules Counterterrorism Unit. “You boys hear that? We’re up.”

The city rolled beneath them, man-made mountains sprinkled with gleaming yellow windows. Collins disliked flying this far inland; there was no place to set down in case of an emergency. Flying over Times Square, Central Park came into view. The flight had taken only twelve minutes so far and would clock in at fifteen. Noting the David Letterman Theatre below, he wished he was sitting at home watching the show.

The chopper’s control panel and camera monitors provided the only necessary illumination in the cockpit as the single engine hummed.

When Fifth Avenue appeared, Collins said, “Holy shit …”

They saw at least two dozen squad cars parked in the middle of the closed-off avenue, perpendicular to the lanes, front bumpers aimed at the park. Two NYPD Hummers rolled behind them.

“That’s nothing,” Langetti said.
“We’re
the big guns. Time for a little shock and awe.”

Collins tipped the bird’s nose forward, and the terrain below them turned dark as they passed over treetops.

“There’s the crime scene,” Langetti said as they flew over the Central Park Zoo and four vehicles came into view below. He trained the spotlight on the scene, then operated the front camera’s zoom control. They saw three radio cars and one CSU van parked in the street.

Collins glanced at the night vision screen. Eight figures flared bright red in the darkness. “Heat sensors are working.”

Ahead of the two squad cars, a three-wheeled police scooter lay on its side, a bloody corpse beside it. A second corpse was facedown a short distance ahead and a third corpse beyond that.

“That one’s missing his head,” Langetti said, staring at the monitor. “And there’s the head.”

One of the officers below waved to them, gesturing toward the park’s interior.

“We’re going in,” Collins said.

Behind him, one of the snipers checked his semiautomatic weapon.

Emergency Medical Services Detective Kyle Rourke had accepted his current assignment with grim anticipation. As a Black Hawk helicopter gunner in Iraq, he had served his country. Now, after five years back in the States, during which he had served in the NYPD’s Hercules force, he was airborne again, strapped into a harness in the backseat of an Agusta Koala.

Beside him, fellow EMS Detective Stephen Sinclair clutched his high-powered Barrett .50 caliber sniper rifle, which could hit a target from a mile away in daylight. Sinclair had no military combat experience and only limited chopper experience, but he had proven himself an expert marksman on more than one occasion. After eighteen months of service in EMS, every officer received a detective’s gold shield, an automatic promotion that investigative detectives tended to resent.

Like the pilots, the marksmen wore headsets for communication. Looking out the window, Rourke was surprised by the size of the park from the air: an enormous black patch surrounded by skyscrapers.

“I see something,” Langetti said in the front seat.

Everyone in the chopper trained their eyes on the glowing redimage on the monitor.

“We’re clear to go lower,” Collins said, checking the night scope.

“Do it.”

As Collins took the bird lower, Langetti played the spotlight over the grassy terrain.

Rourke glanced at Sinclair, checking on his subordinate. Sinclair nodded.
Ready.

“We’re opening the hatches,” Rourke said.

Each sniper opened his hatch, and the temperature in the cabin dropped. Rourke leaned forward, his harness protecting him, and raised his rifle. Under Langetti’s guidance, the spotlight blasted the treetops and clearing below with intense light. The bird descended to fifty feet … forty … thirty.

A figure staggered out from the trees, looking up at them.

Peering through the scope on his rifle, Rourke tightened his finger on the trigger.