Free The Ultimatum: A Jeremy Fisk Novel by Dick Wolf Page A

sensation of eyes on him, or rather a single eye, through a spotting scope from one of the tall buildings uptown. As in Central Park, however, the wall of trees between the buildings and the crime scene would pose a substantial impediment to a sniper shooting from a high floor.
    Despite its proximity to the water, the park was essentiallywindless. As Fisk walked down the paved path to the castle, an unnaturally elliptical shadow caught up to him and then slowed to a stop, as if it had hit the brakes.
    He looked up. He might as well have been staring directly into the sun. Popping on his Oakleys and then squinting, he managed to distinguish from the blaze the silhouette of a round object hovering overhead, a blimp-shaped balloon no bigger than a bolster pillow.
    It appeared, in the glare, to be made of chrome, but really it was nylon. Fisk had seen refillable helium balloons like it before; you controlled them using a key-chain-size infrared remote. They also came in the form of a shark and as Nemo, the clownfish from the animated movie. Vendors by the ferry sold them for fifty dollars apiece, meaning you could probably find them in toy stores for ten.
    Piloting the little blimp was an Asian boy, seven or eight years old, with an oversize foam Statue of Liberty crown falling into his eyes. His mother watched his display of piloting with an open mouth. Dad snapped pictures with a phone.
    Fisk tracked down a vendor and paid his fifty, asking if he could have the Nemo model the guy was using to demonstrate the device, rather than taking the time to open a new one. Fisk piloted the nylon dirigible over an unoccupied patch of greenery. He sent it out, slowed it to a hover, and then brought it back around over his head, settling it in place to blot out the sun.
    With such a device, Fisk thought, trees would provide very little if any impediment—
    “Nice day for flying clownfish in the park,” came a woman’s voice.
    Fisk turned to find Chay Maryland, in an outfit that enabled her to blend into the crowd here or perhaps help her get answers from the crime-scene cops: An I ♥ NY T-shirt and cutoff jeans that directed attention to long legs—and spoke to her sprinting career more capably than a Georgetown track-team uniform would have.
    Fisk brought his flying fish in for a landing. “You didn’t follow me,” he said.
    “No need, I thought I knew you’d wind up here.” She looked at the remote control in his hand. “So this is what you do to blow off steam?”
    “Yeah,” he said, playing her game. “Calms me down.”
    Her smile faded. “I wonder if you could deploy a rifle with one of those?”
    To stonewall her further here would only send the reporter, with a vengeance, to another source. Countless unmanned aerial vehicle experts would be happy to regale her—and effectively millions of New Yorkers—with details of the lethal capability of microdrones. Better to stay in front of the story in order to control it, and, ideally, prevent it. “No, I don’t think you could use a balloon. Not one that small, anyway. It’s barely strong enough to transport a water pistol. But other systems could carry a rifle, absolutely.”
    “Which ones?”
    “That’s the question I’ll be trying to answer as soon as I get back to my office, if not sooner. I can tell you now, though, that five years ago, the Department tested the Shadowhawk UAV.”
    “The remotely piloted helicopter, right?”
    “Miniature helicopter. It weighs only about forty-five pounds. But it’s able to fly seventy miles an hour and fire stun baton rounds, shotgun shells and grenades, not to mention nine-millimeter bullets.” Fisk hoped that tossing her some background information might satisfy her investigative nature. “You can’t publish that, of course. The Department has managed to keep the Shadowhawk tests under wraps. A news story now would only compromise our methods if the city purchases the system, as Miami, Houston, and London