Joe leaped to the ground to flatten himself and heard the bullet whiz by him while the man continued to run with the gun pointed in Joe's general direction. People started panicking and running away after hearing the gunshot.
"Shots fired! Shots fired!" Joe yelled into his earpiece. "Suspect is running west along 41st Street!"
"Far, you should be able to take a back alley to reach 41st!" Chet exclaimed over the headset. "You're very close!"
Joe stood up and took off in a full sprint down 41st Street. He thought he had lost the gunman when Joe caught a glimpse of him in a streetlight. The gunman turned around, and saw Joe, then he kept running. Joe continued his pursuit, and then the gunman turned towards Joe to fire another shot.
"Jar! Duck!" Frank yelled over the earpiece.
Joe dove behind a trash can when he suddenly heard a loud "OOF!", followed by a gun shot and the sound of shattering glass. Curious, Joe stood up from behind the trash can and saw Frank wresting with the gunman! Joe sprinted down the street and helped Frank overpower the gunman. Frank pulled zip ties out of his pocket and used them to handcuff the gunman. Joe saw the gun lying on the sidewalk near a mailbox.
"Stand guard over that until the police get here!" Frank yelled as he was restraining the now-handcuffed gunman. "Now what's your name?"
The man looked at Frank and started yelling in a foreign language.
"Try speaking English, pal!" Frank exclaimed as he shook the man. The man responded by spitting on Frank.
Frank punched the man in the face. "Try spitting on me one more time, pal!" he exclaimed as the gunman spit blood out of this mouth.
In the distance, police sirens could be heard, and a police car sped down 41st Street. Joe waved his hands to get the attention of the police car, and the car screeched to a halt near Joe. A policeman stepped out, with his gun pointed at Joe.
Joe immediately put his hands up. "That man tried to shoot me!" he exclaimed, pointing his head in the direction of Frank and the gunman.
"I got him right here," Frank said, pointing to the handcuffed gunman on the ground. "He tried to shoot at my brother!"
The policeman looked annoyed. "First of all, who are you guys, and why was he shooting at you?"
"I'm Frank Hardy, and this is my brother Joe," Frank said. "We're working on a case that Captain O'Rourke knows about. We were doing some surveillance in the area."
"What's the case?" the policeman asked.
"Well, I think you'll have to ask Captain O'Rourke about that," Joe said. "Not exactly something we should be discussing in public."
The policeman looked Joe. "Why was he shooting at you?"
Joe shrugged his shoulders. "That I don't know. He saw me, and then started running, so it made me suspicious immediately, and I started chasing him. That's when he pulled out a gun and started shooting at me. He wasn't one of our suspects, so I don't know what made him so paranoid. By the way, his gun is under the mailbox over there."
Frank smiled. "It flew that way after I tackled him. I managed to tackle him just before he tried to shoot at my brother, and his gun flew in that direction."
The officer helped the gunman to his feet. "You got anything to say?"
The man let out a stream of foreign words and, as the officer tried to replace the zip ties with handcuffs, the man struggled with the officer and broke free!
"Stop!" the policeman yelled as the gunman sprinted across the street, but the order was of no use, as the gunman ran around the corner and shot down an alleyway towards 40th Street. Frank and Joe sprang into action and chased down the now disarmed gunman. The gunman knocked over trash cans in an attempt to block the alleyway for Frank and Joe, but Frank and Joe jumped over the trash cans with ease.
"Chemo, keep track of us and let us know what streets we're encountering!" Joe shouted almost breathlessly into his earpiece. "The gunman got away and we're chasing him down right now!"
"I can hear you over your earpieces, so no need to shout at me," Chet chuckled. "I got you, guys! You're crossing 40th street right now and heading towards 39th. The radar doesn't quite show it, but you're in an alleyway, I take it?"
"Affirmative!" Frank yelled out.
"The gunman is heading westbound on 39th Street!" Joe exclaimed.
Frank and Joe took an immediate left and kept running westbound down the street.
"Where did he go?" Frank panted. "I think we lost him!!"
But immediately in the distance, they heard a commotion from the people on the sidewalk, and various items began flying in the air from where the gunman ran into somebody.
"Watch it, jerk!" they heard somebody yell out.
"There he goes!" Joe yelled out, still running westbound on 39th Street.
Frank and Joe got to where a man was picking up the items. "He went that way!" the man yelled out, pointing to another alleyway. "And when you catch him, pound his face in for me!"
The Hardys immediately darted down the alleyway and in the distance, they could see their gunman running rapidly. He had a significant lead on the Hardys, and when he stopped to turn around and see how far away they were, he knocked over more trash cans and darted into another alley on the left.
Frank and Joe's hearts were working overtime at this point, and their lungs were burning, but they persevered and stopped by where there were able to roughly estimate that he turned left.
"No alley here!" Joe panted, trying to catch his breath. "How on Earth did he escape out of this alley?"
"Unless he didn't escape," Frank said, and also trying to catch his breath.
"What? He's hiding?" asked Joe.
"I don't think he leaped in the air like Superman," Frank said sarcastically. "He's hiding somewhere. You can count on that."
Frank and Joe started walking around the alley and took their pencil flashlights out of their pockets. They started searching behind trash cans, dumpsters and cardboard boxes that were all over the place.
"If nothing else, we're making the rats scared," Joe chuckled, as rats were scattering down the alley.
"At least somebody's scared of us," Frank smiled grimly. "I'm afraid we lost our gunman for good."
At that moment, Joe held a finger to his lips. "I hear something," he whispered.
"Hear what?" Frank whispered back.
Joe zipped his lips and pointed to his ears, signaling Frank to listen.
Then Frank realized what Joe was hearing. He heard what sounded like a human whispering.
Frank looked at Joe and nodded. They turned off their flashlights, crouched low and started making their way towards a spot where 3 dumpsters were lined up together. Then they heard whispering again. The whispering was in a foreign language. Frank and Joe looked at each other, bewildered. Who's he whispering to, Frank thought to himself.
As if on cue, a voice appeared over what sounded like a walkie-talkie. "Get over here, now!" a voice growled. "I'm waiting at the street!"
Frank and Joe looked at each other. They started slowly walking their way down the alley towards 38th street, and keeping as quiet as possible. They were hoping to apprehend whoever was waiting on the street.
As they got close to 38th Street, they heard rapid footsteps behind them, and as Frank and Joe turned around, they were knocked over by the gunman! Instead of trying to assault the Hardys, he kept running towards 38th Street.
"After him!" Frank yelled out, and Frank and Joe broke into a full sprint towards 38th Street.
"He's turning westbound again!" Joe cried out, as they made yet another right hand turn and ran westbound on 38th Street.
As they ran down the sidewalk past various homeless people and leaping over various trash cans that their gunman was throwing towards them, a car passed by them at a high rate of speed. As the car reached the gunman, it slowed down, and the gunman ran to the car and dove into the car through the passenger's side window! The car then sped off and turned made a right hand turn to head north towards Times Square and Central Park.
"You've got to be kidding me!" Joe yelled out as they came to a stop to catch their breath. "He had an accomplice! Did you catch a license plate number on that car?"
Frank shook his head in disgust. "No, this happened so quickly that I never caught the plate number. I'm not even sure what the make of car was. Just that it was a white car."
"What was that all about?" Joe asked. "Why shoot at us? Unless he was some random crazy guy."
"I don't think so, Joe," Frank said. "I have a weird feeling he was the foreign contact that LPR had for their weapons."
"But how would they know who we were if that was the case?" Joe asked.
"It could be that he got paranoid when you looked at him," Frank said. "But he's a foreigner, he was armed, and he had a partner with a getaway car. Those can't be coincidences."
"Sorry to interrupt your chat, guys," Chet said, "but I'm on my way to come pick you guys up. I just got off the phone with Culligan and he told me to grab you guys and meet him at his office immediately."
"How did you have his number, Chet?" Frank asked.
"You left the business card in the console," Chet said. "And you left the scrambler on the phone, so I figured I'd better let Culligan know what was going on. And I know that Harry Young wanted us to get a hold of him if we ran across any foreign contacts, but I can't remember what I did with his card!"
"You put his card in your wallet, remember?" Frank said. "Anyways, we're at 38th and 8th Avenue. We're on the corner; you can't miss us."
"Look behind you, Frank," Chet said, and Frank saw the van had pulled up behind them. Frank and Joe ran towards the van and jumped in.
"I'll take the wheel," Joe said, "I know how to get to Culligan's office from here."
"Good work, Chet!" Frank high-fived Chet. "That was some fast thinking on your part, even though you forgot where you put Young's business card."
"Thanks," Chet said. "I knew you guys were in a real bind, so I made the phone call and Culligan told me to grab you guys ASAP. I panicked and forgot what I did with Young's business card!"
"By the way," Joe asked, "did you see a white car scream past you on 8th Avenue?"
Chet shook his head. "I didn't notice. I was too busy trying to reach you guys."
"That's ok, buddy," Frank said. "Let's get to Culligan's office and discuss what happened."
Minutes later, they arrived at the FBI office, and found Culligan's office.
"Hey, guys, sounds like you've had quite the night," Culligan remarked. "And Harry Young is racing over here. He wants to know about this foreign contact you encountered. And Captain O'Rourke is at the scene where this foreign contact tried to shoot at you guys. They're processing the gun right now seeing as it's their only clue right now. Chet here is quite the comms guy! He called me as soon as you guys were chasing the foreign gunman."
"I wonder if O'Rourke and Dad found prints on this gun?" Joe asked. "Now I'm curious as to who this guy is!
"Want some coffee?" asked Culligan. "I just made a pot if you want some."
Frank and Joe politely declined and asked for bottled water instead. Chet helped himself to a cup of coffee. Then Harry Young walked in.
"Excellent work, guys!" Young said as he helped himself to a cup of coffee. I didn't think that you guys would encounter a foreign contact so quickly! You know you were supposed to call me, right?"
Chet turned red in embarrassment when Young stared at him.
Coming to Chet's rescue, Frank said, "We didn't think we would've encountered a foreigner so quickly, either, but unfortunately, we lost him. He had a getaway driver, and they took off northbound towards Central Park on 8th Avenue."
Young smiled. "It proves that our foreign contacts are in town! Now to find those LPR guys. Did you have any luck with that?"
"Not a trace yet," Frank said, "but we were tied up with chasing this foreign guy."
"They've got to be around somewhere!" Young declared. "I can feel it!"
Just then, the phone rang, and Culligan answered it.
"Yeah, they're right here," Culligan said and handed the receiver to Frank. "It's O'Rourke."
Frank grabbed the receiver. "How's it going on your end, Captain."
"Not much to go on," said O'Rourke. "But the officer in charge was sure suspicious of you guys! But don't worry – I vouched for you and your brother."
"What did you learn about the gun?" asked Frank.
"Well, it was wiped clean, so there's no prints at all. Is Young there, by chance?"
"He sure is," Frank said. "Do you want to talk to him?"
"Put him on. I have some information he needs to know about," O'Rourke said.
Frank handed the receiver to Young.
"What do you have, Captain?" Young asked. A moment passed, and then his face paled, and Young was angry. "Thank you for that information, Captain. I'll see you in a few minutes."
"What's going on, Mr. Young?" Frank asked, seeing the agitated look on his face as he hung up the phone.
"The gun," Young said, "is a CIA-issued pistol!"