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Bree and the detective got up and walked across the venue and out the front door. Duchaine and her bodyguards were standing about twenty feet away, scanning the traffic on Forty-Second and Lexington. The blond guy was on his phone.
It was seven thirty in the evening in midtown Manhattan. Traffic was heavy but flowing, at least in the eastbound lane of Forty-Second Street.
The blond guy must have seen the car he was looking for because he raised his hand. Bree caught a driver about ten cars back wave in return just as a cream-colored utility van floated into the near lane and stopped.
Cars behind it began honking.
The side door to the van opened. Three men in black hoods leaped out carrying pistols; they aimed at Duchaine and her bodyguards and opened fire.
CHAPTER 90
FRANCES DUCHAINE TOOK MULTIPLEbullets in the chest and torso at close range; she stumbled back and fell, dead before she hit the sidewalk.
The bodyguards, shot in the face and neck, were down before they got their weapons drawn. Pedestrians screamed and tried to get away.
The assassins turned and ran east on Forty-Second toward Lexington and the van they’d come in, which was still rolling. Bree and Salazar, both with years of training, took off after the assailants.
Bree had a federal firearms license and a permit to carry, and as she ran, she dug the Ruger from her purse. Salazar pulled up her gown as she half ran, half waddled, found her backup weapon in a thigh holster, and drew it.
The van crossed Lexington just as the yellow light turnedred, the gunmen in close pursuit. The detective shouted, “NYPD! Stop!”
They didn’t slow. A New York taxi headed south on Lexington took off on the green light, streaked across the intersection, and intentionally hit the slowest gunman in the leg. He stumbled, hit the curb, rolled on the sidewalk, and came up shooting. Salazar and Bree fired from the middle of Lexington and hit him square in the chest.
As she ran, Salazar screamed at the pedestrians, the taxi, and the other cars stopped in the intersection,“NYPD! Call 911! NYPD!”
The other two gunmen were still on Forty-Second, heading east toward Third Avenue and the van, which had slowed.
“Don’t let them get in it!” Salazar yelled.
Bree felt stitches in her dress burst as she lengthened her stride, trying to catch up to the two gunmen. A woman came out of a Foot Locker store and almost knocked her over.
Bree lost sight of the assassins as she struggled to keep her balance. A second later, she spotted one of them not thirty yards from the van, which moved at a crawl as it approached Third.
Where’s the other shooter? Where is he?
Bree cut diagonally off the sidewalk onto Forty-Second, looking for a clear shot at the gunman who was almost to the van, when the other shooter appeared from behind a sidewalk planter about thirty feet ahead of her. He fired and hit her in the left arm; she spun around and fell on her side in the gutter.
Shocked, disoriented, she raised her gun and searched for the shooter. She saw him just as he took three steps forward and aimed his weapon at her. A gun went off.
Part of the gunman’s head erupted and he died on the spot.
Bree tried to push herself up, but it was too painful; she sawSalazar passing in that odd waddle, her gun up as she stepped over the dead man. The last shooter was at the rear bumper of the rolling van.
“NYPD!” she shouted. “Drop your weapon!”
He half turned, swinging his pistol toward her.
The detective pulled the trigger.
There was an audible click.
The gunman’s pistol was almost on Salazar when Bree, ignoring the fire in her left arm, pushed herself up, pointed her pistol, got a sight picture, and shot.
The shooter doubled over like he’d been kicked by a mule, but he did not fall and he did not drop his weapon.
Bree shot him again and again, and finally he spun around, fell, and lay sprawled out in the street.
The van accelerated away.
