The Perfect Weapon

by Christopher Metcalf

  A framed photo on the wall above the couch caught his eye. It was New York, Manhattan really. Taken from an angle that showed the skyline in panorama. Two things stood out. First was the Empire State Building. The other was two things really, the World Trade Center towers. Out in the hall he heard the jangle of NYPD patrolmen’s belts. He called out to them, “Hold up guys, I'm coming out. FBI.”

  He walked over to the door and opened it and held up his FBI I.D., but asked them to stay out, at least until a bomb squad could be brought in to dismantle the remotes. He confirmed the Empire State Building was being evacuated as well as surrounding buildings. Lance walked back over to the windows to look at the chaos down the street as people ran in all directions. Below, police were stopping and diverting traffic around the area. He felt good for the moment. Disaster averted.

  Anwar, dead at his feet, had chosen secrecy and personal control over all aspects of the bombing, instead of bringing team members into this, his ultimate operation. This had allowed the terrorist mastermind to plan and prepare it all, but it also required him to detonate all the bombs himself instead of using timers or others to press buttons. Dumb luck won the day once again.

  He stepped back over to the door and spoke to the four officers in the hallway. They told him that investigators and bomb squad were on the way. He waited 20 minutes for police investigators, a bomb technician and the FBI to arrive. He explained the basics to the group in a matter of fact manner. They, and the officers standing nearby, took it all in, staying fairly quiet until one of them, obviously from Brooklyn, couldn’t help himself.

  “You jumped off the friggin' Empire State Building?”

  Lance nodded. “Just a few floors though. That ape lying in the street broke my fall.” After he described the number of bombs he saw on the sixth floor alone, the investigators called out additional bomb squads and called over to hasten the evacuation of the building.

  A half an hour later, Lance walked with a limp on the sidewalk heading south on 7th Avenue. Everything else was closed off. Anwar’s cell phone rang in his jacket. Lance had to admit as he pulled it out, that he liked being able to answer the phone while walking down the street. He hoped it was Marta. Maybe Seibel had given her this number. “Hello.”

  “Don’t quite know where to start. Everything is in motion. The evacuation, FBI and CIA teams are onsite and no one is dead at this point.” Seibel was sitting down now. Lance could tell by his voice.

  “And you were going to tell me about Marta?” Lance had his priorities straight.

  Geoffrey Seibel, for all his brilliance and vision and imagination, is a liar. He chose this moment in time, and in the life of his still very young protégé, to tell a whopper. He knew he was about to change the course of Lance’s life and possibly history. Hell, the guy had just single-handedly, literally single-damn-handedly, stopped a terrorist bombing that would have killed thousands and brought down much more than the Empire State Building. It would have changed America forever.

  A weapon, a tool this sublime, needed to be unleashed on the nation’s enemies in a cruel and unusual manner. Seibel chose now to reorient Lance Priest from solitary recluse who really trusted only one person, to wild animal that trusted no one and wanted most people dead for spite alone. It was dangerous, but Seibel had been planning this next phase for some time. Events had transpired to advance his timeline. The pendulum had swung. It would swing back with chaos in its wake.

  “She’s dead Lance.”

  The words silenced the cacophony that made New York unique in all the world. Lance did not hear sirens and voices and tires and horns and steam and engines and echoes and whistles and music and life and love and hope. He heard only the silence surrounding the words uttered by Geoffrey Seibel. He stepped into a doorway.

  “Repeat what you just said.” He sounded calm to anyone walking past.

  “I’m sorry Lance. She went to Jersey City this morning sometime after 1:30. The house she visited was blown up. It was a bomb. Most likely set by Yousef. She was on his trail.”

  He heard the words, but they didn’t register. He was numb, cold. His head twitched to the left. It had never done that before. “She was there, in Jersey City, when the bomb went off?”

  “Yes. We have controlled the situation this morning. Officially it was an explosion caused by a gas leak. Yousef was not there. He escaped.”

  Lance went colder. His head twitched again. “You saw her? Confirmed it was Marta?”

  “I did. I went to the hospital in the ambulance with her. She never regained consciousness. She was too far gone. Lance, I’m sorry.” He spoke the words to a dial tone. Lance had hung up.

  Chapter 47

  He needed to run. He sprinted south for blocks on 7th and then east on 18th, then south on 6th. He didn’t stop, couldn’t stop for miles. He only slowed down when he reached Canal Street, where he went east again until he came to Broadway. He turned south again. Instead of continuing on aimlessly, he stopped and leaned against a building, next to a doorstep. He sat on the step and put his forearms on his thighs, his lungs heaving, sweat dripping, hate seething. He was alone in the city; alone in the world. They both knew they lived on borrowed time from the start. It could never last. It was just that he was sure, positively sure, he would go first. He had not imagined life or the world without her because it had simply never crossed his mind.

  But something did cross his mind just then. Words.

  He could see words with white 3D letters and solid black behind them. They were the words Seibel had said 30 minutes earlier. The words from his last sentence before Lance hung up. “She never regained consciousness. She was too far gone.” Lance closed his eyes and examined the words. He saw them from the front, from the side and the rolled around behind them. He saw something that others never would, never could. The words were lies. They weren’t real. Seibel would never have said these words. They weren’t his. They were forced, fabricated, made up.

  Lance opened his eyes and shot up to 10,000 feet. He looked over at Jersey City and the general location of where he and Marta and the FBI team had been last evening. Then he looked down at the streets and roads to the hospitals in Manhattan. That meant one of the two tunnels. He looked down at the exits of each tunnel and the surrounding blocks to find hospitals on the map in his head. Within 11 seconds, he had narrowed it down to four hospitals on the west side of town.

  He stood and stepped into the office behind him. A secretary sat behind a desk. He walked around behind her desk and grabbed her phone and flashed his FBI I.D.

  “I need to use your phone. Thank you for your cooperation.” He didn't want to use Anwar's cell phone.

  He dialed 411. “Jersey City police please.” He smiled at the secretary as he waited for the number. “Thank you.” He hung up and dialed the number. “Yes, I need two things, please. I need to speak with the chief investigator on the explosion last night, and I need to know the name of the emergency medical service that responded and transported from the scene.”

  The woman at the other end of the line came back with a couple of questions that Lance easily batted away and then unloaded with several lies to convince her to be cooperative. He hung up with two more numbers to call.

  “Thanks again for the use of your phone. Your government really appreciates it.” He smiled again at the secretary. He dialed Jersey City Emergency Medical Services. A woman answered.

  “Yes, this is agent Randolph with the FBI. I am following up on the incident last night. Where did the unit transport the patient?”

  The clerk at the other end of the line looked over this morning’s log and found a unit had transported from Jersey City to St. Vincent’s. But no information about the patient was available. She could not confirm if it was a male or female or any patient status information. Lance knew it was her. And damn, he’d run right past the hospital 15 minutes earlier.

  He hung up and dialed Jersey City Police. A man answered on the third ring. “Detective Hernandez.”


  “Detective, this is agent Rudolph with the FBI anti-terrorism taskforce.”

  “Yes, what can I do for you?” The man was tired.

  “Just one question detective. Can you tell me if any of the bodies from last night have been I.D.’d?”

  “Just one.” He ruffled through some papers. “Mordari, Joaquin. He’s the only one so far.”

  “And the female?”

  “No female.”

  “What about the one they took from the scene?”

  “No female. There was no female among the casualties or injured on scene.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Who’s this again?” Lance had already hung up and was headed out the door, after thanking the secretary again.

  He walked at first. Needed to get clear in his head what he was thinking. If Seibel told him Marta was dead, the next obvious question was why. Why had he done it? What did he gain by doing it?

  It didn’t take Lance 30 more steps to figure it out. Seibel was trying to manipulate the situation for his gain once again. His gain was usually the government’s benefit, but still, he was a selfish creature at heart. Seibel was trying to manipulate Lance. That was clear. But how long did he think he could keep the lie about Marta's death a secret? He’d have to hide her away somewhere and keep her hidden for months, maybe longer. It was devious. Or, and Lance didn’t like this thought at all, maybe Seibel did plan on killing Marta to make some insane point.

  Lance needed to pick up the pace. He stepped into the street and hailed a taxi. Traffic was heavy, but it would be faster than walking, or running 20 blocks, and he’d be a whole lot fresher when he got there.

  During the taxi ride, he worked through his plan of attack once he reached the hospital. It involved deception and probably a god bit of killing. Maybe a lot of killing, if need be.

  The first familiar face Lance saw when the taxi came around the corner from 13th Street onto 7th was Fuchs. He was standing on the corner talking on his huge cell phone. Lance told the driver to keep going another block. He kept his head down while passing Fuchs. He had the taxi drop him off a block past the hospital on Greenwich and started back on foot toward a side entrance. Once inside, he stopped a nice elderly volunteer and asked for assistance locating a patient, or at least the ICU. The woman was most helpful and happy to hear that Lance was able to make it here from Au Claire, Wisconsin.

  She told Lance where to find the ICU, the best elevator to take and who to ask for once he was up there. He asked her for a hospital map before heading out. He memorized it while walking to the second bank of elevators.

  On the 9th floor, he stepped off and turned right. At the end of the hall he saw two CIA agents doing a lousy job of not looking like CIA agents. They missed him as he crossed the hall and stepped into a break room. He found a couple of lab coats hanging on a rack and took off his jacket to put one on. He put the cell phone in a pocket. Through another door in the break room was a doctor’s lounge. A third-year resident was sleeping on a couch. He plucked the I.D. off the guy's scrubs.

  He stepped back into the hall and walked toward the two men and then stopped to grab two footies from a box to put over his shoes. He took a surgical mask and put it on over his head but let it hang around his neck. He walked right past the two CIA guards with nothing more than a nod. Inside the ICU, he looked right then left and saw Seibel through several panes of glass. He was sitting in a chair beside a bed. Lance couldn’t see who was in the bed, but he had a good idea.

  Lance stepped to the right and into a washroom where doctors and nurses scrub up before visiting patients. Inside, he closed the glass door behind him and pulled the dead terrorist's cell phone from the lab coat’s pocket. He could see Seibel about 40 feet away.

  He dialed and waited. On the fourth ring Seibel picked up. Lance could see the phone come to Seibel’s ear. “Lance. I know this is difficult.”

  “I need to see you, now.” Lance was short.

  “I understand.”

  “Now. I’ll meet you on the corner of 7th and 16th in 15 minutes.”

  “Lance, I can’t get away. There is too much action here.”

  “15 minutes. Be there. Tell Fuchs to come as well. He’s with you, right?” And Lance hung up. He watched Seibel sit there for a moment. Twenty seconds later, he stood and walked out of the glass room and out of the Intensive Care Unit.

  Lance waited another 30 seconds and then stepped into the unit and down to the small glass room. From outside the glass, he could see her, see her injuries. She was bandaged and bruised and bandaged some more. She had an I.V. and an oxygen line. It looked like she had surgery not too long ago. Lance stepped in.

  He held her hand. It was just over a year and a half ago that she had stuck her head into his hospital room in Hawaii. Difference was, he was awake and conscious and able to stand on his own two feet. Following her out of the building to freedom was easy. Marta was in no shape to be moved. He couldn’t pick her up and carry her out. She truly needed intensive care. She was barely alive. But she was alive.

  She looked like hell, but he was just so relieved to see her. Pleased beyond belief to see her still breathing. Marta would pull through. She had to. He kneeled and put her hand to his lips and kissed it. He sang a couple of lines from one of her favorite Russian songs with his lips pressed to her skin.

  He stayed with her for an hour. He didn’t notice or look up to see Seibel and Fuchs standing out in the main area. They didn’t invade his privacy. Additional CIA guards had been stationed at the entrances and exits to the unit. A group of nurses had been herded into the nurse's station. They were all looking at him. Lance didn’t care. She was alive.

  Finally, just after noon, he pulled away from her. He kissed her on the forehead and stepped out of the glass box. He walked over to Seibel and Fuchs. They said nothing. Nobody wanted a scene in the ICU, so they all walked slowly out of the unit. Out in the hall, Seibel gestured toward the waiting room. Inside were two more CIA agents. All waiting family members had been ushered out. As Lance, Seibel and Fuchs took a seat, sirens could be heard racing by on the streets below. Lance looked in that direction instinctively. Seibel did not. Fuchs was indifferent. Lance noticed his German mentor had a number of scratches and bruises on his face and neck. They looked like the result of an explosion.

  A Peter Gabriel song, one of Lance's favorites, started playing in his head. The DJ in his brain only played this one when Lance, or Preacher, was in the mood to do bad, often very bad things.

  "She is hanging on." Seibel nodded.

  "Barely."

  "The doctors say it will be touch and go over the next 24 hours. Her injuries are life-threatening, very severe. She probably won't make it."

  "Obviously." Lance was not amused with his small talk. “So you have some explaining to do.”

  “I suppose this looks pretty bad to you. Like maybe I am playing with you and your life.”

  “Yep, just like Dallas all over again.”

  “Looks can be deceiving Lance.”

  “How so?”

  “As usual, I have my reasons and they are 'need to know.' Which means I need to know and nobody else does.”

  Lance laughed. It was an empty laugh. “That’s fine. I don’t give a crap about your little geo-political games. Why did you tell me she was dead? What do you gain? How does it help national security?”

  Seibel turned to Fuchs for a moment and then back to Lance. “Preacher, nothing is ever as it seems. Nothing. Marta is the person you know, and she is also someone completely different, something totally alien to you.”

  “How’s that?”

  “She is loyal Lance. Loyal to her mission above all else. And she has never, and I mean not ever, failed.” Seibel nodded.

  Lance analyzed the words. He knew of her activities since Baghdad right up until today. She had only failed twice, in Baghdad and yesterday, when she was nearly blown up. “Never?”

  It was Fuchs who answered this time, “Never.
Better percentage than you or me or anyone else. She may not have your unique skills, but she makes up for it in tenacity and commitment. I would never want to go up against her.”

  Seibel continued, “She has completed every mission given her. Including you.” Those were the words Lance was waiting to hear. The words he had been looking at from front and back and still did not want to hear. In his heart, he was fine with Marta playing a part, a role. But he did not want to think, want to admit that she had never been changed by him. It was naïve, he knew.

  “So, she completed her mission with me?” Lance asked.

  “Lance. I’m sorry. Yes, she did.” Seibel was somber.

  “Can I ask what that mission was?”

  “Look around you. Where are you? What have you done?”

  “She was supposed to make sure I came to New York? That I track Anwar?” It seemed more than a little weak.

  “She did it. You did what no one has been able to do. You found him, killed him. I wasn’t sure you could do it, but she was. And so was he.” Seibel pointed a thumb at Fuchs. “And what do you know? You end up saving thousands and a national landmark. You are the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen.”

  “After her.” Lance corrected him.

  “No, she is excellent and trustworthy and remarkably dependable. You, on the other hand, are utterly unique in your approach to life and death. You are like nothing any of us have seen before in your creative ability to solve our problems.”

  Lance was back to Marta’s two failures. But then another round of multiple sirens sounded on the streets below and then an alarm sounded throughout the building. ‘Code Yellow. Code Yellow. All mass casualty personnel report to stations. This is not a drill. Repeat, this is not a drill.'