The officer hesitated.

“Promise!”

He promised.

Sergeant Rhodes lay back on the bench. She shut her burning eyes. “It’ll kill you,” she muttered. “It’ll kill you.”

“What will?”

“It will,” Rhodes said.

And then she passed out.

Detective Gentry and Dr. Joyce arrived by squad car at St. Vincent ’s Hospital on Seventh Avenue and Eleventh Street. That was where Field Sergeant Rhodes and Officer Hotchkiss had been taken.

Rhodes had been hurried from the emergency room to surgery. She’d suffered two badly broken ribs, a punctured lung-it had been penetrated from the outside, not by one of the ribs-and dozens of severe bite wounds up and down her body. The back of the top of her right thigh and one of her heels were practically gone. The bottoms of both ears had been chewed away. She had lost a great deal of blood.

Hotchkiss had suffered severe lacerations of the face, scalp, back, and legs. He was pale and bruised, and it hurt to move. But when Gentry and Joyce asked to see him, he agreed. His physician and a burly, balding ESU lieutenant were standing beside the bed when they arrived.

Gentry always felt honored to be with someone who had put it on the line like the ESU squad had. They’d known there was danger and they walked right the hell into it. Gentry felt miserable about the deaths but it was partially offset by the pride he felt in this man.

Gentry smiled as he walked toward the bed. The men moved away. “Officer, I’m Detective Gentry, Midtown South. I want you to know you’ve got a lot of people proud and pulling for you, Officer Hotchkiss.”

“They cut us to pieces,” young Hotchkiss replied thickly from between slashed lips.

“You went in knowing there was bad news down there,” Gentry said. “That didn’t stop you.”

Lieutenant Kilar touched the officer’s shoulder. “You also saved the life of Sergeant Rhodes.That’s what happened down there.”

Dr. Joyce walked toward the bed. The men moved away.

“Officer, I’m Dr. Nancy Joyce. I’m with the Bronx Zoo. How are you?”

“Do I need…a vet?”

“No,” she smiled.

She knelt beside him and touched his left cheek with the back of her fingers. It was the only part of his round face that appeared unhurt. The injured police officer smiled up at her with his eyes.

“I want to ask you a few questions. You okay with that?”

He nodded once.

She smiled back. “What can you tell me about the little bats?”

“Not much. It was dark.”

“Do you know what size they were?”

He thought for a moment. “About mouse size. Mice with wings.”

“Their color?”

“I don’t know. I’m sorry.”

“It’s all right. You’re doing fine. What did the bats do first?”

“They attacked Sergeant Rhodes.”

“Where was she relative to you?”

“South of us, maybe two yards.”

“Did the bats come at you in a wave?”

“There were several waves, I think. It was difficult to see.”

“And they all flew at Sergeant Rhodes?”

He nodded. “Until we tried to help her.”

“Then what happened?”

“Some of them peeled off,” Hotchkiss said. “It felt like they were trying to push Brophy and me to the side while they also bit us.”

“And when you were leaving the tunnel? Did they follow?”

“Some of them did for a while. Then they stopped. Very suddenly.”

“One more question,” Joyce said. “The other two officers who were down there with you-”

“Lord and Nicco.”

“Lord and Nicco,” Joyce repeated. “What happened to them?”

The remnants of Hotchkiss’s smile vanished. The pain of the memory was evident in the slow downturn of his mouth, in his distant eyes. “The vic fell off a girder-”

“The who?”

Lieutenant Kilar explained, “The victim. The man they went in to find.”

“He fell,” Joyce repeated. “Then what happened? What did you see?”

Officer Hotchkiss continued slowly, “A shape. All I saw was a big, black, moving shape.”

“Could that have been a bat too?”

“What?” Kilar said.

Hotchkiss’s eyes grew red. “I don’t know. It was like Lord and Nicco just rose off the ground and dropped. They didn’t move after that. Brophy was fighting more of the bats than me, so he yelled that I should go get Sergeant Rhodes out of there. I did. Then we heard Brophy. He, uh…he wasn’t having a real easy time, screaming…” Hotchkiss began to sob.

The doctor moved behind Joyce and said, “Let him rest.”

Joyce nodded and rose. She looked down at Hotchkiss. “Thank you,” she said.

Hotchkiss nodded once and tried to stop crying as she walked away. The lieutenant and Gentry joined Joyce by the door.

“Doctor, what kind of crap was that?”

“Lieutenant?”

“You can’t be serious about what you were asking him,” the lieutenant said. “A giant bat?”

“We’re definitely looking into the possibility of a bat of unusual size and strength,” Joyce replied.

Kilar sneered. “If this is a joke, I’m definitely not in the mood for it.”

“Lieutenant, this is no joke,” Gentry said.

Kilar looked at him. “How do you know?”

“A deer was found way up in a tree,” Gentry went on. “People have been carried off and mauled. We’ve got impressions of teeth that match bat teeth, only much, much bigger.”

“You’ve also got bats on the brain,” the lieutenant said. “The two of you. This is ridiculous.”

“What would you think?” Gentry asked.

“Exactly what we’ve told the media.”

“That there’s a wacko down in the tunnel-”

“That’s right. An unbalanced individual who’s swinging an ax or knife and scaring up the bats that live in the tunnel. Teeth and knives are sometimes difficult to tell apart in badly mauled corpses-”

“That’s bullshit and you know it!” Gentry snapped.

“No, Detective,” Kilar snapped back. “A giant bat or rat or alligator in the sewer-that’sbullshit.”

“Lieutenant,” Joyce said, “I understand there’s another team ready to go into the tunnel.”

Kilar glanced over at Hotchkiss. He ushered the group into the hallway and shut the door.

“That’s right, Doctor,” the lieutenant said. “We’ve got three subway lines shut down. We’ve got the media way up our butts. The mayor has Gordy Weeks at the Office of Emergency Management ready to take this whole thing over if we don’t clear it up by the evening rush hour. I don’t want this slipping past the ESU, not on my watch. As soon as the mayor comes up to commend Officer Hotchkiss for his bravery, I’m going back to the command truck, and the team is going in. We’re going to find and stop whoever orwhat ever is behind this.”

“How will your people be protected?” Joyce asked.

“With exposure suits, which are thick and heavily insulated. They’ll have self-contained breathing apparatus, goggles, and electrical gloves and boots tight at the wrists and ankles. They’re to get in,” he lowered his voice, “recover the bodies, and get out. Once they do that, we’ll go in again, this time a little deeper.”

Joyce said, “The problem is that if the bats-not the large one but the ordinary little ones-decide to attack, all of your protective clothing may not be enough.”

“The team will also be armed.”

“Bats are notoriously uncooperative targets.”

“Look, Doctor,” Kilar said. “I don’t know enough to argue with what you’re telling me. Do you know Al Doyle at pest control?”

Joyce shook her head.

“He’s a good man. He’s on his way to the site, and he’s going to be running that side of things. He knows the weaponry, and he says we’ll be all right. But if you’d like to come along and advise him-”

“Lieutenant,” Joyce said, “these bats aren’t pests. We’ve tested saliva we found in the wounds. They don’t appear to be sick or rabid.”

“Al’s still in charge,” Kilar said.

“That’s not what I mean,” she said through her teeth. “The way the attacks start and stop all seem to be tied to geography. That’s not typical bat behavior-it’s not typicalpest behavior. This is a pattern no one’s ever seen before. Not me, not a rat catcher, not anyone. What I’m saying is you have to approach this very, very carefully.”