“That’s not the truth?”

“I honestly think it’s too early to tell. But I don’t want to feed any half-baked revelations to that douche bag desk jockey captain in Human Resources down at One Police Plaza. Because that guy has never truly laid out for one.”

“Laid out?” Dr. Flaherty smiled coolly, leaning back in her caramel-leather-upholstered chair. “Interesting terminology, Detective. Because the literature says there are two kinds of people who react the way you did in the face of extreme danger. Top-performing athletes. And sociopaths.”

Fisk made an interested noise and crossed his legs. “I had a pretty good jump shot back in high school,” he said. “Just never got the NBA height, or the NBA legs.”

“So if you’re not an elite athlete . . . ?”

“I’m an elite cop,” said Fisk. “Or trying to be. Look, I think what this all boils down to is, can this detective before you do the job he did before the traumatic thing happened. In layman’s terms, there it is.”

She waited to see what he was going to come up with next, either dig a deeper hole or climb out and brush off his hands.

Fisk said, “I think the people of New York City will be better off with me inside the department than outside of it.”

CHAPTER 3

Fisk emerged from the trees, having traced a wide arc through them. Two killers on his trail, probably armed with AK-47s and who knew what other guns. Fisk had a sharp piece of plastic.

He was out of the tree cover and back into the maelstrom of snow. He was circling back toward the Jeep. At least, that was his hope. Had the snow let up a bit? He thought it had. Good for his visibility, but worse for him because now he was more visible, too.

Where was the road? Every facet of topography was smoothed over by the snow. They had been turning the Jeep’s engine on every twenty minutes or so for a few minutes of interior heat, but now he didn’t even have that sound to aim for.

Then he saw the snow craters. Faint, filling up quickly with freshly fallen snow, but there was a twin pattern, he could see it now. Faint skateboard-sized impressions: huge footprints.

That was why he had not heard the sound of the Swedes approaching.

They were on snowshoes.

He tried to match their stride, sweating through his North Face parka, but moving with renewed energy now that he felt he was on the right track. He checked behind him. Still no sign, but he knew they were there.

A broad hump appeared up ahead. Fisk paused before the snow-buried Jeep, steam from his huffed breath obscuring his view. Then he went at the windows with his forearm, clearing it in a broad swipe.

Holes in the cracked glass. The driver’s door open.

He checked the pulses of his comrades, because that was protocol, though it was clear there was no need. All had been sprayed with gunfire and dispatched with bursts to the head, execution style. The dash was cracked, the radio shattered, the smell of cordite hanging in the car. They had been ambushed at close range. Fisk suspected that not one of the agents’ sidearms had even cleared their holsters.

Stuffing was blown out of the backseat, such that Fisk wasn’t certain his Glock was gone until he searched. But it was gone. So was the satellite phone.

Fisk circled to the rear hatch, which had been left open. The ATF agent’s long guns were gone, no AR, no 870. Maybe they had hurled them away into the deep snow. Perhaps if he hunted around in the woods long enough he might find them. But he had no time.

Desperate, Fisk ran around to the front again. He felt under the dash. Sometimes cops screwed holsters to the firewall to hold a backup gun. But there was nothing there—no spare under the seat, no snubbie in the glove compartment.

Nothing.

Think. What did he have? The scraper.

What else?

Footprints.

Fisk looked around. He tried to remember the road in from I-87. There were more trees in the opposite direction, he was certain.

He looked at the dead agents one last time. He needed to make a noise. The anguish that came out of him was real.

“NO!”

No echo. His voice expanded into the snow, which quickly blanketed it like everything else.

But the Swedes must have heard it.

Fisk tightened his grip on the ice scraper and took off away from the Jeep, at an angle from the trees, away from the circle of footprints. These had to be easy to follow. He had to make certain that the Swedes didn’t give up on him and head back to their transpo rendezvous. They were moving faster than he was, thanks to their snowshoes. They were closing the gap. He let the images of the dead feds chase him into the snow, along with the Swedes.

One burst of gunfire shook him. He felt no displacement of the air around him, so the rounds never came anywhere close, but he didn’t want them shooting at him yet. He pushed himself as hard as he could, adopting a gallop-style gait that got his legs into and out of the snow as quickly as possible. And he never looked back. Gunfire would tell him if he was in range or not.

A roadside line of trees emerged out of the snowy curtain, a forward column of soldiers awaiting him. Fisk almost fell into the first black trunk, coughing into his sleeve so the sound would not carry. He pulled off his coat, and steam lifted from his soaked henley.

He stumbled several feet into the woods and found a low branch. The dark blue of his parka would stand out starkly from the snow. He hung it gently from a splinter on the branch.

Fisk hurried about ten yards away and dove headfirst into the ground cover. He used his empty hand to push more snow over his blue jeans and his green shirt, covering his knit cap as best he could.

The snow started to soak through his clothes immediately. In about one minute, his extreme body heat was gone, the sudden temperature change making him lightheaded. He lay as still as he could, slowing his breathing. Surprise was his only chance.

And then, suddenly, there they were. Vague colors moving through the snow curtain. Twin gray-black shapes. He heard the soft crunch, crunch, crunch of the snow beneath their flat shoes.

Then a voice of warning.

And burst after burst of gunfire.

Fisk could not help but flinch. His parka danced on the branch.

And then, just as he’d hoped, the snow plummeted down from on high once again. It landed hard on him and all around, falling with the force and weight of dozens of heavy down comforters. His view was blocked and his hearing muffled. He had not expected quite that much snow.

He hoped the parka was also buried.

His scraper hand was near, and he picked away at the snow before it hardened, creating first some airspace around his head, then carefully reaching out, trying to poke open a hole to see through.

He stopped and listened. A soft mutter of whispered conversation. A disagreement between the two men, perhaps. Who would go first, or who would take point.

Impossible to tell. Fisk felt the snow weighing on his legs and back. He rolled a bit back and forth so as to create a buffer of space, and so he didn’t get packed in there beyond escape.

Again, he went still. He heard faintly the soft shushing noise of someone sliding through the snow as quietly as they could. He cleared more space in front of him and the snow above it settled into the void—and then his hand was free.

He pulled it back immediately. He could see. Not well, but well enough to watch the two Swedes advance. They were already at the area where they presumed him to be buried and dead.

One was near the mound. He was exploring it with his boot, the muzzle of his AK-47 aimed and ready.

The other one was the flank. He was shockingly near, just a couple of yards away, his back to Fisk.