Couples

Chapter 104

Two squad cars pull up as the crowd begins to shout abuse at Lana. She barely ducks a full water bottle that flies at her head. An approaching veteran cop, Officer Murphy, puts his hand on his can of mace while surveying the protestors. "When we were briefed on white nationalists, I didn't think it referred to their hair."

A shout of "n*****-lover" erupts from the crowd.

Murphy motions for the other unis to move in. "You'd better fall back," he advises Lana. "And we need a sergeant."

"I'll fall back enough to call for a supervisor," Lana agrees. "But I'm not letting the mob think they can manipulate me or the vote."

"I understand how you feel," Murphy responds. "But don't start taking things personally, Springer, even if they're meant that way. We have to de-escalate the situation. The sergeant will tell you the same thing. We clear the path for people to vote. If you want to arrest whoever threw that bottle for assault on a police officer, you can do it when we get these people away from the door, and things quiet down."

"All right," Lana agrees. "I'll call from my unit."

Using his M24, Jack picks off the drivers of the two closest vehicles, causing them to swerve wildly while other soldiers attempt to take over the steering. With the lesser accuracy and range of handguns, Azra creates a barrier of bullets between her stand with Jack, and the Russians.

Even over the weapons fire, Azra can hear a Blackhawk helicopter getting closer. As more Russian vehicles approach, Jack is shooting out tires as well as taking out drivers. She's hitting anything she can to slow down their attacker's progress. A rope drops as the Blackhawk hovers overhead. "Go for it!" Jack yells over the weapons fire. "I'll cover you."

"That rope holds two. We can both go and keep firing until we're clear," Azra insists. "Come on, Jack, you're enough of a hero without dying in the process. The Russians aren't close enough yet to get a decent upward trajectory with the weapons they're firing." Azra pulls at his sleeve. "We can do this – together." Azra backs toward the rope, firing as she goes. "Jack, come on!"

Jack begins to move with her, grabbing onto the rope seconds after she does. The Russians fire toward the Blackhawk as it starts to lift. As adrenalin courses through Jack's blood, he doesn't even feel the Russian bullet that grazes his calf just before he's out of range.

Fascinated by the tiny American flags that lined the sidewalk leading to the poll, Lily points to one in the window of a bodega as Rick wheels her stroller back to the loft. "Vote!"

"It's a flag," Rick explains. "Voting is when Daddy made all those marks on that cardboard thing the nice lady told me to put through the machine."

"Vote!" Lily insists.

"It's a flag," Rick repeats, pulling out his phone. He brings up images of flags on buildings. "See, they're all over the place, not just where people vote."

"Flag," Lily repeats as a banner alert appears across the top of Rick's screen.

He clicks through to the developing story of a group that the Ledger's reporter describes as white supremacist seniors. He can just make out Lana, in uniform, at the edge of one of the still photos. A demonstrator in a captioned short video refers to the "black demon's whore." "Sonofa…," Rick mutters, catching himself before he finishes the expletive in front of his human sponge.

Still intent on the store window, Lily shifts her focus to a red, white, and blue cap. "Flag. Hat."

Rick gazes between it and the ones the seniors slinging obscenities at Lana are wearing, his stomach turning. "No, Baby. No hat today. Not one of those. We don't want that kind of poison seeping into your brain. But we can go to Imagination Patch, and you can have a pumpkin cookie. How about that?"

Lily's eyes brighten. "Punkin!"

Kate's only been in her unit down the block from Momentous Mops for two hours, but it seems longer. Her favorite local jazz station transformed without warning into all sports all the time. She'd be perfectly happy to hear a few baseball anecdotes. She could even share them with her father. But the broadcast is about football. And she misses the cool excitement of improvised sax. It can always make her boredom at keeping watch bearable. The sports talk can't come close to having that effect.

She might not be listening much longer. From her vantage, she can see a Momentous Mops Van being loaded to the teeth with cleaning equipment, including the latest British import vacuum cleaner. Kate guesses they're heading somewhere that highest quality is expected. She has good enough guesses as to the destination, to be able to hang back. Still, calling in Ryan and Esposito to play leapfrog couldn't hurt. With any luck, they'll soon spot the Lorenzo's next potential target.

The Blackhawk takes off while Azra and Jack cling to the rope, moving out of the range of fire as fast as possible. As the cord retracts, the pair are hauled in and directed to secure themselves. In the helicopter's dim interior, the dark stain spreading on Jack's pant leg is almost invisible. As her eyes adjust, Azra notices it, pointing. "Jack, you're bleeding!"

He looks down, shaking his head. "And here I thought we pulled that one off clean. I guess a Russian bullet managed the trajectory after all, but it doesn't look like much. You should have seen the last slug I caught."

Azra rolls her eyes, turning to a crew member. "Do you have a medic onboard?"

He shakes his head. "I can radio for one to meet us when we land. We're only 10 minutes out from base."

"Copy that but give me your IFAK," Azra demands. "I'll have a field dressing on that before we land."

Jack grins as the crewman passes Azra a canvas pack. "You going Florence Nightingale on me?"

"I'm making sure the crew doesn't have to scrub your blood out of the copter. They have better things to do." Taking a scissor from the kit, Azra cuts the fabric away from Jack's wound.

He scowls. "Hey, I like these pants. I wore them when I tossed an old KGB assassin in prison in Chechnya. They're good luck."

"They weren't today," Azra retorts.

"I'd say they were," Jack argues. "We both got out alive."

Azra tears open an antiseptic wipe packet to clean the graze. "You have a point."

Ryan eyes a mansion on the Upper East Side as the Momentous Mops' van pulls into a drive leading to a side entrance. "I wouldn't want to have to clean that place."

"Yeah, but I bet the Lorenzos would love to clean it out," Esposito responds. "And you see the garage? That thing's got to hold six cars. Probably BMWs and Teslas. Maybe a Ferrari or a Rolls."

"Well, Beckett won't need us anymore," Ryan figures. "We should head back to the precinct."

"On the way, we should stop at that specialty bakery Castle says is so great," Esposito declares. "Bambi wants some cool cupcakes, with animals or something on them, for her students. But she said they couldn't have any peanuts or soy. A couple of her kids have allergies. I promised her I'd get some."

"Wow, she's really got you going, hasn't she, Bro?"

Esposito snorts. "I'm buying cupcakes, not a ring."

Ryan nods knowingly. "Uh-huh. We'll see."