Give Us This Day

by Tom Avitabile

  .G.

  Paul instinctively turned in the direction of the beep and caught a glimpse of someone moving between the cars to his rear. He ran towards the middle of the span.

  .G.

  Brooke followed from the far side of the cars. Then Paul disappeared. Brooke lost him the next time she popped up between the cars. She stood and scanned the area but saw no sign of him among the people who got out of their cars to see why the traffic was at a standstill. She ran over the edge of the roadway and up ahead saw Paul climbing down the slanted girders of the bridge. Smaller lattice-like straps of steel across the girders made for a simple ladder of sorts.

  Brooke closed her eyes. She considered just calling it in and letting the cops handle this, but she knew Paul would not give up, and he’d use the people in the cars as hostages at some point, and maybe get away. Then she remembered all the death and pain this son of a bitch had caused and before she had a chance to stop herself, she holstered her gun and was over the side fitting her foot into the lattice work while holding onto the grimy girders.

  .G.

  Paul jumped the last few feet from the girder down onto the pedestrian walkway. The M train rumbled right down the middle of the bridge that carried cars and subway traffic between Brooklyn and Manhattan.

  Paul looked back and, seeing the woman’s arms and hands holding onto the steel cross-girders as she descended, took a shot at her.

  .G.

  The bullet hit the beam and shattered in front of Brooke. It caused her to slip and fall the last five feet to the ground. Her vest took the brunt of it but a fragment pierced the fleshy part of her left arm. Her sleeve became wet with blood but it wasn’t too deep.

  She groaned as she shook away the pain and unsteadily got herself up. A runner who was jogging by stopped to help her.

  “Thank you. But take cover. Get everybody down. I’m a cop and there’s a guy with a gun up ahead. Get everyone down.”

  Another shot rang out and skidded across the concrete of the walkway. There were only a few pedestrians on the walkway. And the jogger crouched low and yelled at those who were walking.

  The walkway provided no cover for her. The cyclone fence that separated the walkway from the train tracks had a service gate a few feet from her. She took out her gun and fired three times at the lock. She swung the gate opened and got out of the line of fire as a bullet whipped by where she had been standing a split second before. The long fence between her and Paul offered a small amount of cover, in that he couldn’t get off a clean shot through the chain link from an angle.

  .G.

  From his cockpit, Tom called out over the NYPD radio frequency. “The woman, Stiletto, is pinned down in a gun fight in the middle of the Manhattan Bridge. She needs help.” He didn’t notice the red indicator light flashing above the “recording” button of the copter’s high-resolution camera.

  .G.

  Paul aimed but couldn’t get a clear shot through the wire of the fencing, so he found the next gate and also shot the lock off. Once inside the subway’s right-of-way he advanced along the tracks towards Brooke’s position.

  Brooke was taking cover behind a tool shed on the trackside of the bridge. As she peeked around the corner, a shot ricocheted off the edge of the structure. Instinctively, she let out a groan and flailed her body against the shed as if she were hit.

  .G.

  Paul saw her get hit and he stepped up his pace. With his gun stretched out in both of his hands, he carefully approached the shed that Brooke had used for cover. He was four feet from the side of it when she suddenly rolled out on the floor and fired as soon as she cleared the shed. Paul couldn’t drop his weapon fast enough and his bullet angled over Brooke’s head. But Brooke’s shot was also a little off the mark. Instead of being dead with a solid hit center mass, Paul grabbed his side.

  “Drop the gun!” Brooke commanded. “Drop the gun or I will drop you where you stand,” she said, getting to her feet in three separate painful moves, while keeping the gun trained on his heart.

  “Okay . . . Okay.” He dropped the gun. “You know we can still make a deal.”

  Brooke’s blood began to boil. “How much? A million?” She fired into his leg and he fell back onto the tracks. “A million for Nigel? Or two million for Charlene Logan?” She fired into his other leg. “Make it three million for Cynthia.” She fired again in his thigh. “Or make it five”—she fired again into his other thigh—“for my staff—nineteen people that will never go home again.”

  Paul was in agony. But he managed to pull a small .32 caliber pistol from his waist. He cocked it and aimed it at Brooke.

  Neither heard it, but she saw it out of the corner of her eye. It was a blur for a split second, then the speeding front of the M train slammed into Paul just as he got a shot off. Brooke averted her eyes to the moment of impact. When she opened them a second later she said, “. . . and that was for Joe Garrison.”

  Then, as though she had just seen something she couldn’t make out, she tilted her head sideways. The look on her face was one of someone trying to remember what she had just been thinking. Then she coughed. Blood trickled down from her lips and she collapsed.

  Chapter 48

  The Departed Shall Return

  Attack plus 3 days

  The steps of City Hall were outlined in black bunting as tribute to the ten citizens who’d perished and the many other deaths suffered by those thwarting the attack. That number of citizens, although too high even at ten, was far less, by a factor of a million, than if the evil scheme had succeeded. A somber mayor sat next to the President of the United States while the Cardinal of New York delivered the invocation from the podium. The families of the fallen wept as they sat in chairs lined up at the foot of the steps.

  Although officially a day of national mourning, it was also a day of recognition. The opportunity, as the mayor put it, “to hail the bravery of a few, who gave so much, to protect so many.”

  Also on the steps that clear blue morning, consoling each other, were the survivors of Brooke’s decimated team. Peter Remo and, Vincent “Kronos” DeMayo (as the president would call his name), stood with Detective Rolland Harris. NYPD Police Officer Kylee Boyce, who’d stopped the Fifth Avenue truck bomb, stood at attention. Next to her was James Aponte, and a few other folks who’d helped authorities uncover the various threats. The directorate of MI6 was in from London to honor the memory of Nigel Otterson. Tom Colletti, the news chopper pilot, was also on the steps while in the gallery below, the wife and kids of the Moonachie Township police officer he’d saved smiled at him in deep appreciation.

  There were easels spaced between American flags on poles with the pictures of the forty-two who died defending the city. They were the faces of the federal agents from Brooke’s unit that had died in the line of duty in the rocket attack. As well as the soldiers and police officers, including eight from New Jersey and one from the Yonkers PD. On the other side of the steps, the seventeen Con Ed workers who’d died in the assault on Big Allis were also honored in black-draped, framed photos.

  Considering it his solemn duty, Sergeant Major Richard Bridgestone, who normally would not expose himself at such a public gathering, compromised his operational security and attended the ceremony, standing in the place where Brooke would have stood.

  The mayor finished his remarks. The wailing of bagpipes started up as the NYPD Emerald Society paid its tribute.

  The president looked down at the box of medals for posthumous bravery he held in his lap. Too many, he thought. Then he thought of Brooke.

  The television networks had made the decision to carry this somber event without comment. Just letting the ceremony unfold before the cameras. The bagpipes’ eerily mournful tones dissolved into revered silence. The only sounds being heard were wafting in on the morning breeze; the far-off beat of security helicopters standing guard at high altit
ude and the light murmur of traffic off in the distance.

  In this silent moment, the church bells of New York City pealed as a coordinated farewell to her dead.

  As the sound of the last bell rang out and then faded back into the ambient rumble of lower Manhattan, the president got up and walked to the microphones. He bowed his head for a second. His emotions evident as he took a deep breath before unfolding from his suit pocket his prepared remarks. “Our freedoms and our liberty are the most precious of American ideals. They endure today because of the price the good men and women, who we gather here to commemorate this day, have paid. This city, this nation, has suffered a blow, but not a knockout. Our way of life will never be extinguished, never be abridged and never be placed asunder, not as long as heroes like the ones we honor today live among us . . .”

  .G.

  Nurse Phyllis Pasquarella was holding up her iPhone and showing her day-shift replacement the most impressive selfie she’d ever taken. It was of her and the President of the United States! Standing right next to her at her station on the fifteenth floor. Both women’s eyes were wide in excitement as the very man she had stood next to in the picture, was now on the TV addressing the nation.

  The tall navy officer interrupted, “Excuse me . . .”

  One look and Phyllis said, “Room 1501, first room on your right.”

  .G.

  She was sleeping. There were IVs in her arm and a soft plastic oxygen cannula under her nose. The navy man looked down to see the Medal of Freedom pinned to her blanket. It had been awarded to her personally by his and her “boss,” who’d been there an hour earlier. He was sorry he’d missed the moment but his thirteen-hour flight from Diego Garcia had fought head winds over the Pacific. He had heard how the president insisted that the hospital be his unannounced first stop. The rerouting of the motorcade for the impromptu visit and little ceremony had driven his secret service detail crazy.

  Now with just the two of them in the room, he approached her and kissed her forehead, smoothing back her hair gently with the trembling tips of his fingers, trying not to disturb her. He didn’t expect his reaction to be the one of trepidation and fear that hit him the moment he saw her, in this room, in the bed, hooked up to all manner of machines.

  The doctors had told him over the phone that she wasn’t even aware of the bullet that severed her femoral artery in the gunfight on the bridge. Adrenaline, he thought.

  The beeping of the respiratory monitors punctuated the low sound of the TV as the president continued to speak about courage . . . about her.

  He put his hand on hers. He felt the surgical tape on the IV needle in her arm under his fingers. The president finished his remarks and a lone bugle played “Taps.” Even on the TV behind him you could hear it echoing off the buildings across the way from City Hall.

  Her lips were dry and parched. He poured some water into a cup and, with his finger, lightly moistened her lips. She stirred. Her eyebrows raised then her eyes half opened.

  He smiled and said softly, “Hi, babe. You had us all worried here.”

  It took a second for her eyes to focus but then she closed them again as a broad grin escaped from her sleepy face. “Mush, you’re home!”

  “For good. I am going to take care of you. Be there for you. Be there for our family.”

  She nodded her head in a gesture for him to come closer.

  He leaned in, kissing her on her cheek as he did.

  She swallowed a dry swallow then said, “We’ll have . . . have to work on that . . .”

  .Give Us This Day.

  A Letter from the Author

  So you can sleep tonight…

  Thank you reading Give Us This Day. Rest assured, not one thing in this book will lend a credible idea to any persons wishing to do harm to America or any country. In every case where technology is defeated to create calamity within this book, I have exaggerated the effect, impact, and ease of manipulation. No scenario in this book is possible, due to safeguards and redundancy throughout our infrastructure. If I write that a shift in frequency raises the temperature of a transformer core, it does, but only by mere degrees, well within design specs. I simply, for dramatic purposes, grossly exaggerate the heat produced and consequences thereof. In fact, anyone trying to replicate any of the scenarios in the book, would immediately be frustrated, identified, and stopped. Hey, maybe that would be a good thing? Okay, any knuckleheads reading this: try it!

  Acknowledgments

  Writing is a very solitary experience. Yet, luckily for me, it has also been a very collaborative medium. I am blessed to have some incredible people who lend their expertise, experiences, knowledge, and smarts to my writing, thus helping me write about lives I have never lived. In no particular order they are:

  Col. Mike Miklos, US Army Ret.—for the warrior code, spirit, and details that guide my depicting of all things military and homeland- defense-centric.

  Len Watson—A polymath whose grasp of applied technology along with his own authoring chops greatly enhance my journey through the technosphere.

  Anthony Lombardo, Retired First Grade Detective NYPD—An amazing weapons, police procedure, and law enforcement culture human database with a great smile and warm and friendly way about him that makes some of the more gory things in life more accessible.

  Marie McGovern—A genius who can spot a dissonant note in 130,000 words with laser-like accuracy and mete out a hammer-like critique that helps me bang out all the dents and rough spots in the forming story.

  George Cannistraro—A brilliant author in his own right, his sense of story dynamics informs every plot point and pivot I write. He has a very acute sense of balance between plot and character.

  Gary Stanco—The financial wiz who turned my meatball knowledge of financial markets into a palatable offering of fine prime rib. Any “financial irregularities” you may have encountered are purely the results of my ignoring his excellent advice for the sake of the story.

  Grant Blackwood—The author who is entrusted with carrying on the spirit and the letter of one of my literary heroes, Tom Clancy. Grant was there at the beginning of this novel, and his message of “irrational optimism” has guided not only this book but many other parts of my life as well.

  Kurt Skonberg—A partner in a leading New York law firm who guided me through the fun, exciting, and breathless world of securities collateralization (or is it collateral securitization?) and still manages to be one of the funniest and coolest guys I know.

  David Ivester—An acquaintance who became a fan, a fan that became a beta reader, a beta reader that became an editor, and they all, I’m delighted to say, became my friend.

  Chris Zizzo—An analytical engine disguised as a really great guy. His objective, no-holds-barred review of my work deftly challenges me to be better in my construct, logic, and application of technology.

  Lou Aronica—My publisher and muse. He never tells me what to write but rather compels me to write better. Also, I am deeply grateful to Lou for slotting this book in for production, sight unseen and manuscript unwritten. That kind of faith in my work is as good as it gets.

  Ellen Russell – Who kept me on the politically correct straight-and-narrow with amazing insights into women-in-the-workplace etiquette. No sooner had she pointed out a faux pas in my dialog than no less than the President of the United States fell prey to the same oversight and was publically excoriated by feminist groups for it. If only he had Ellen Russell to advise him as well.

  Nora Tamada—A new member of the team who took a decent manuscript and shaped it into a readable book. Her exemplary work is everywhere your eyes fell as you read this novel.

  And Monta who sets the tone for my desire to write a female character that approaches her level of beauty, kindness, and intelligence.

  Lastly, as I am always aware, I thank you, the reader, for without you I am writing
to myself. Thank you for coming along on this trip. I hope you had a good read. Let me know about it: Tom@TomAvitabile.com.

  About the Author

  TOM AVITABILE, a Senior V.P./Creative Director at a New York advertising firm, is a writer, director, and producer with numerous film and television credits, a professional musician, and an amateur woodworker. He has an extensive background in engineering and computers, including work on projects for the House Committee on Science and Technology. His novel The Devil’s Quota became a Barnes and Noble #1 bestseller, as did The Eighth Day, the first installment of his Bill Hiccock “thrillogy” that includes the novels The Hammer of God and The God Particle.

  Bonus Content

  SLIPPING ONE BY HOMELAND SECURITY – REAL WORLD

  by Tom Avitabile

  A symphony orchestra tunes to the oboe as its tuxedoed musician plays a “Concert A.” Since the oboe cannot go out of tune, they trust it implicitly. Then, once all the musicians are tuned to it, harmony and music flow easily without a discordant note. That notion of synchronicity and harmonics were the underpinning for the main plot/threat in my novel, Give Us This Day. Our national electric grid is also a finely tuned entity in which every instrument on the grid must be in harmony with one another. Otherwise, like a flat note bellowed out in a beautiful sonata, the results are disastrous.

  Except that, in the case of the 320 million megawatt-hours of deadly U.S. electrical power outputted daily, a single discordant note can have apocalyptic consequences. Every day the music of the grid seamlessly harmonizes a trillion watts of power, smoothly and uneventfully as it is transmitted and consumed all over the world. Power station engineers and transmission line techs trust implicitly in the fundamental note to which the entire grid is tuned.