Some inebriated young woman sloshed half a microbrew onto my shoes as I made my way through row C near the first base side of the main seating level.

At the end of the row, I came down two steps and knelt in the aisle and tapped the shoulder of a light-blue-clad gentleman sitting at the end of row A.

"Hey, how's it going, buddy?" I said.

CIA operative Matthew Leroux smiled broadly as he looked at me. Beside him, his blond wife, Sophie, also clad in blue, rolled her eyes. They, like Arturo and me, were both sporting some pretty expensive-looking binoculars, I noticed.

"Mike, buddy! Small world!" Leroux said. "You a big New York City soccer fanatic, too?"

"Oh, the biggest," I said. "I still have my Pele Cosmos lunch box from second grade."

"No way. Original owner, huh? I had to buy mine on eBay," Leroux said. "But I just bought this nifty supporter blue scarf. What do you think?"

"Stylish. It goes with your eyes," I said. "I see you've brought your wife, Leroux." I turned to her. "I'm Mike. Detective Mike Bennett."

"Oh, I remember you, Detective," the pretty blond woman said, peering at me. I peered back at the intelligence in her green eyes. There was something else there, too, I could see. Something still and cold and dangerous.

I suddenly remembered the blood-splattered Hamilton Heights crime scene, and how this pet.i.te, friendly woman had more than likely done some of the splattering.

Were all CIA couples this nuts? I thought.

"All in the family, huh?" I said.

"All in every day, Mike," Leroux said, taking a sip from his Bud Light.

"I hear that the family that watches soccer together stays together."

Leroux smiled. "Couldn't agree more," he said, looking around.

"Think the visiting team has a chance?" I said.

"Overconfidence will get you every time," Leroux said.

"You would know," I said.

Sophie, still scanning with her field gla.s.ses, suddenly tapped Leroux on the arm.

"Third base side under the upper deck. The luxury booth. Twelve o'clock."

I lifted my own gla.s.ses along with Leroux. I looked over at third base, then panned up. There were half a dozen men standing on a railed balcony. I scanned their faces, then looked at the photo. Then looked back.

"Third from the left?" I said. "Isn't he a bit old?"

"Same nose and jaw," Sophie said.

"Same c.o.c.ky bearing and frown, too," I said. "What do you think, Matt?"

Leroux focused his gla.s.ses, then stood.

"I say close enough for government work, Mike," he said. "Give me your phone."

He quickly typed his number into my contacts.

"We'll take the right flank, you take the left. Call me when you get on the luxury level. And don't call for backup yet. This guy's slippery. He'll know if something's up with security."

"Hold up a second," I said. "What are you going to stop him with? Your new scarf?"

"Don't you worry about us," Leroux said, patting his wife's bag as they moved out of the row, into the aisle. "Let's just get up into position before he figures it out."

Chapter 70.

From the deck of the luxury balcony, they heard the Yanks down in the section beneath cheering as one of the Leeds players got a yellow card for a hard tackle.

"Oh, I hope he didn't rip his panties," the drunken has-been rock star yelled as he hurled a plastic cup of beer at the blue-clad crowd beneath. "p.i.s.s off, ya useless lot of bearded hipster w.a.n.kers."

All the men out on the now crowded balcony started laughing at that. Then Terry's arm was around the British a.s.sa.s.sin's shoulder, and he put his over the shoulder of the rock star, and it was like a time machine. As if they were all seventeen again, jumping up and down with a "Leeds, Leeds, Leeds!" chant.

Terry pinched the waitress's a.s.s as he grabbed another bubbly. The British a.s.sa.s.sin drained his champagne and took a breath and drank it all in, there in the cold above the crowd.

This was the life. One more trigger pull, and he'd get the sour he'd been sucking all his life out of his mouth, once and for all.

He felt it a second later, right as he placed his empty on the tart's tray. It was like a tingle along the nape of his neck, a sixth sense.

He glanced around left and right, down into the crowd below, without moving his head.

There were eyes on him.

Of all those eyes, someone was watching him. It was impossible that he knew it, but it was true. He was a watcher, and he knew. He could feel it. He'd seen it happen often enough to targets. The gla.s.s would come on them, and they'd suddenly run, dive, duck. There was something psychic between a hunter and his prey.

Now he was the one being spotted.

He looked down to the left, on the stairs two sections below. A guy was heading up them. A guy in a suit, cop all over him.

He sucked in a breath. Felt the hard beat of his heart in his chest as he held the breath.

He'd screwed up. Big-time. They shouldn't have come here. He needed to get out.

Now.

He slowly stepped back inside. He got his wife's attention, and then he touched his ear, giving her the bug out signal. They had planned contingencies to split up and regarding where to meet later. At least they weren't looking for her.

Her eyes widened with a rare expression of fear, and then he was moving for the door.

There was no one yet out in the luxury level hall. The level had its own private elevator on the left, but that would be the first thing they'd be onto.

On his right, he saw a waitress go through a staff-only door. Following her, he saw that there was a small kitchen and wet bar behind it and another door on the other side of the room.

"Sir, can I help you?" the waitress said by the sink as he crossed the room.

He kept going. The new door led to a narrow, slightly curving back corridor. There were garbage bags in a gray plastic rolling bin on the right. As he hurried toward it, he saw the stainless steel threshold of a freight elevator just beyond it.

He poked his head in. Except for a mop and a yellow rolling bucket, the elevator was empty. Better yet, the car's security key was in the console. He stepped in and turned the key and hit the Main Level b.u.t.ton.

The elevator spilled him out into the great hall by gate 6, where he had come in. He faced the cavernous s.p.a.ce and headed for the gate, walking steadily toward the dozen stadium security guards standing there.

He swallowed as he got closer and saw that there were two NYPD uniformed cops standing with the guards. He took a breath as he approached and forced himself to glance at them. They weren't on their radios. They didn't seem any more alert than usual.

A sudden roar from the crowd boomed out low and m.u.f.fled in the high-ceilinged concourse.

It's okay, he mentally coached himself. Just walk out. They don't know yet. Fifty meters. You can do this. Just calmly walk past them.

He was outside in the plaza, fifty meters on the other side of the ratcheting turnstile, when he heard the yell at his back.

"Stop that guy in the white hoodie! Stop him!"

He didn't turn around. Instead, he just moved north quickly, yet still pa.s.sably casually. There were a hundred or so people moving around souvenir vendors and hot dog carts to hide among.

Then, as he reached the corner of 161st Street and River Avenue, where the elevated track was, he suddenly bolted beneath it.

He'd made it across River Avenue and was booking around the corner of the stair entrance for the uptown side of the subway when he almost ran straight into the uniformed beat cop coming at a run from the other side with his partner.

"Hey, yo! Stop!" the beefy Asian cop said, reaching out with his palm.

Instead of stopping, the Brit kept coming, and seized the cop's hand and yanked hard, breaking two of his fingers. Then he reached and grabbed the baton out of his belt and cracked the other cop, a short Hispanic-looking woman, across the bridge of her nose. He brought the baton whistling back across at the first cop, breaking his wrist, as the Glock the guy was in the process of trying to pull from his holster clattered across the concrete.

The a.s.sa.s.sin scooped up the semiauto as he ran north up the incline of 161st. He needed to make the corner, he thought, as he flat out sprinted toward it, past shocked pedestrians out in front of the small, ugly run-down stores.

Just the first corner, he thought, his thighs and lungs beginning to burn.

The supersonic crackle of a bullet suddenly pa.s.sed less than an inch to the left of his ear.

No! They were going to shoot him down in the back as he was running, the b.a.s.t.a.r.ds!

The first bullet was followed by another that shattered the gla.s.s side of the phone kiosk on his left as he pa.s.sed it.

Then he was around the corner, pulling off his hoodie, sweat flying and arms pumping in the cold as he ran for his life.

Chapter 71.

Racing out of the stadium, I ran under the El on River Avenue and was twenty feet behind Matthew Leroux when he suddenly hopped up on the gra.s.s median between the lanes on 161st Street.

A woman across the street screamed as he produced a suppressed pistol and began firing right there in broad daylight at the sprinting Brit up the block.

"Are you crazy? Put that d.a.m.n thing away! You're going to kill someone!" I yelled, smacking the barrel of his gun down as I arrived.

"You're right! I am! The president's a.s.sa.s.sin!" he yelled back as he hopped off the median and started running north, after the Brit.

"Arturo," I said as he and Sophie caught up to me. "The Brit just turned the corner and is heading south. You guys head south down River in case he tries to come around the block."

People were coming out of the stores to gape as I ran up the north side of 161st Street behind Leroux. I thought I was pretty fast for my age, but Leroux was incredible. The commando was pulling away at an embarra.s.sing clip.

I finally followed around the first corner onto Gerard Avenue and spotted Leroux in the middle of the street, already halfway down the block. Then he suddenly turned into an alleyway between two buildings on the right.

As I got to the entrance of the alley, I heard a clatter of metal and looked up. On the third-floor fire escape, I locked eyes with the gray-haired guy I'd just seen on the luxury balcony in Yankee Stadium.

For a split second.

I reared back in a kneeling dive to the asphalt as he pointed the Glock he was clutching. As the pa.s.senger window of a parked moving truck I'd just been standing beside exploded gla.s.s in my face, I scrambled out of the line of fire, to the right.

When the shock wore off enough for me to get my own gun out and hazard another peek upward into the alley, the Brit was gone. Instead, I saw Leroux booking up the fourth-floor stairs of the brown, rusted zigzag of the tenement fire escape like it was an Olympic event, and he was going for the gold.

Instead of taking the fire escape, I ran inside the building, through its lobby to its east side stairwell, and began running up.

An emergency alarm went off when I banged open the roof door, huffing and puffing, a minute later. Gasping for breath, I looked around the roof for Leroux or the Brit. To my right, ten feet away, was the edge of the building's roof, the gap over a narrow alleyway, and then the edge of the roof of another building, to the north.

Had they hopped the gap? I wondered as I went to the edge, searching the next roof for any sign of either man.

I knew the answer to that was affirmative when I heard a gun pop twice on the other side of some huge AC units on the north building's rooftop.

My phone rang a second later.

"I got him, Mike!" Leroux screamed. "He's pinned on top of the building to the north! He's cornered around the housing for the building's elevator. Northwest corner. There are no more fire escapes, no more nothing. Call for backup, the cavalry, air strikes-everything you got! I'll sit tight so he doesn't go anywhere. Hurry! We finally got him!"

Chapter 72.

No, no, b.l.o.o.d.y no!

The British a.s.sa.s.sin had come around the housing of the elevator equipment on the roof, hoping for a fire escape. But there was none. Over the edge of the north side of the building was a sheer four-story drop onto the roofs of the buildings on 161st that he'd run past. Worse, at the rear west side of the building, there was a five-story drop down into a concrete alley behind the building.

He crouched down in the corner, gripping the Glock as he stared at the brick edge of the elevator structure. He was going to die here. In one second, the professional who was chasing him was going to pop his gun around that corner and rake half a dozen 9mms into his chest and blow him away.