“None taken,” Carl assured him.
“Okay, so here goes,” Rook said, then read his reply out loud as he typed it:
“ ‘I copy. Good to hear, because that means I can still vote for her and not the other guy. I’ll mail you that invoice as soon as I can!’ ”
The others seemed to be in agreement as Rook added, “I trust you could tell from my upturned voice at the end that I finished with an exclamation point. My hope, of course, is that Nikki will view it as a kind of ‘message received’ acknowledgment. As a writer, I’m particularly sensitive to punctuation, of course. But Nikki has really—”
“Rook! Just hit ‘send’!” Cynthia snapped, saying it with the exact timbre, cadence, and timing that Nikki would have.
“Got it,” Rook mumbled just as The Marlowe loomed into view.
Derrick zipped the rental car into a loading zone and hit the flashers—the best he could do, under the circumstances.
They hurried into the building, showing their IDs to a bored security officer who had been sending a steady flood of volunteers and staffers up to Gardner campaign headquarters on the eightieth floor for months now. He did not seem to notice or care that these four faces were new.
They huddled near the elevator as they waited for a car to arrive.
“Think they know we’re coming?” Rook asked.
“We wouldn’t have made it through security that easily if they did,” Carl said.
“We’re still going to have Secret Service waiting for us when we get out of this elevator, you know,” Derrick said. “Standard operating procedure would be for them to have at least three agents manning a metal detector. And we’re going to have to take care of them quietly, because there will certainly be others nearby.”
“A minor inconvenience,” Carl said. “I used to work with those guys from time to time. When they’re doing a public event, they’re on their game. But when it’s just another day, business as usual, they get a little bored.”
“Still, we don’t have any weapons,” Derrick said. “I don’t care how bored they are, we won’t be able to stultify them to death.”
“No, we’re going to do this old school,” Carl said.
“Oh, God,” Derrick said, slapping his forehead. “Here we go again.”
“Show some respect around your father,” Cynthia scolded. “What did you have in mind, Carl?”
“That depends. How are you at hand-to-hand combat, Cynthia?”
“This Secret Service agent,” she said. “Do you want him stunned, unconscious, or dead?”
“Unconscious will do nicely.”
“No problem.”
Carl grinned. “Okay, then it’s settled. Writer boy here is going to fake a heart attack. Do it big and noisy so they’ll be good and distracted. The moment he clutches his heart, the other three of us will each pick a man and be ready to put him out of commission. Sound good?”
They agreed. The elevator arrived and they climbed in.
“Why do I have to be the one to fake a heart attack?” Rook asked as they ascended.
“Do you have years of training in how to hit a human being in a manner that causes their brain to fire an overwhelming number of neurotransmitters at the same instant, thus overloading their nervous system and sending them into a state of temporary paralysis?” Carl asked.
“No. But I wrote about it once.”
“Then that’s why. If we hit them, they’ll go down. If you hit them, you’ll just piss them off.”
“Fair point,” Rook said, and continued the ride in silence.
When the doors opened, there were, as Derrick had predicted, three Secret Service agents on duty. And, as Carl predicted, they looked appropriately bored.
Derrick was first off the elevator. “Good day, gentlemen. We’re here to volunteer for the Gardner campaign.”
“Sorry,” one of the agents said. “We’ve been told no more volunteers for the time being.”
The other three had already entered the vestibule. It was clear Derrick was going to take down the agent he was talking to. With only the barest hint of eye contact, Carl and Cynthia assigned themselves to the other two.
“But we’ve come all the way from Omaha!” Derrick protested. “My family has been so eager to pitch in. These are my parents, Fred and Ginger. And this is my half-brother, Alexander. We’re all huge fans of the—”
Rook let out an agonized moan and bent at the waist. The agents all turned to him.
One started to say, “Sir, are you—”
Rook bellowed again, then clutched his heart. The moment his hand touched his chest, Carl, Derrick, and Cynthia sprang into action.
Cynthia’s leg flashed in the air, delivering a kick to the temple that was reminiscent of her daughter’s best efforts.
Derrick executed a devastating Marine Corps knife hand to the neck.
Carl, forever old school, punched his man’s jaw, landing the hit at the precise point where the bone met the ear.
All three agents dropped heavily.
“Good work,” Derrick said. “Take their guns and rip out their communication devices so they can’t notify backup when they come to. They’re probably expected to report in regularly, but hopefully we have a little time before anyone notices they’re not responding. Let’s get them handcuffed to the metal detector. That ought to keep them occupied for a while when they wake up.”
Rook, now upright again, had fixed Derrick with a dirty look.
“Alexander? Really?” he said.
“What’s wrong with Alexander?”
“It’s my middle name. And I hate it.”
“Fine. What do you want to be next time?”
“Edgar,” Rook said definitively.
“Edgar it is.”
A few feet away, Carl was staring, dazzled, at Cynthia.
“You really are a heck of a woman,” Carl said.
She looked at him with a provocative smile and said, “You have no idea.”
* * *
Having secured three insentient agents to the metal detector, the four would-be rescuers proceeded, with their newly claimed guns drawn, through the double doors, into Gardner campaign headquarters.
They were immediately confronted by the divider.
“Okay, so where is she?” Derrick asked.
“Still in the southwest corner,” said Rook, who had his phone out.
“That’s this way,” Derrick said, peeling off toward the left. “Let’s go.”
The other three followed. They immediately entered a large space filled with desks that had been arranged in no recognizable manner.
There were no people sitting in them, or standing near them, or meandering past them, as there clearly should have been. It made the room feel spooky and dead, like a beehive that was nothing but a series of empty honeycomb-shaped holes.
“Where is everyone?” Derrick asked, his weapon still up.
“I’ve got a bad feeling about this,” said Rook, who had remained unarmed but was somehow mollified about his lack of weaponry by his journalist’s bulletproof vest.
“Let’s keep going,” Carl urged. “Nikki is obviously not here. That’s what matters.”
They proceeded with caution through the room. Derrick led the way, with Rook behind him. Carl and Cynthia brought up the rear.
When they reached the office suite in the corner, Derrick stopped, held a finger to his lips, and listened at the door.
He heard nothing. Slowly, so that anyone on the other side wouldn’t notice it, he turned the door handle. Once he was sure the lock mechanism was clear of the jamb, he threw open the door and entered, gun first.
There was no one there. He whirled and confronted any enemy that might have been behind the door. But that spot was also empty.
Carl had already gone in to cover his son. Rook soon joined them, as did Cynthia, who stood near a desk with a computer and a monitor on it. The screen showed several different views of the outside rooms, still empty.
> The air reeked of clove cigarettes. Derrick pointed to his nose. Carl nodded, acknowledging the smell and what it meant: Colonel Feng had been there recently.
No one was speaking, mindful that Nikki was likely being held behind the next door, perhaps by Feng. Derrick walked as softly as he could and again listened intently. His concentration was so focused on the door and what might be behind it that he didn’t even see the rail-thin male figure rising up from behind the desk until he already had his gun trained at a spot just behind Cynthia Heat’s right ear.
“Drop your weapon,” a raspy voice barked. “Drop it. Now! Then raise your hands.”
Cynthia slowly lowered her weapon, placing it on the desk. Feng swiped it to the floor as she raised her arms.
The three men turned toward Feng, who had moved so that Cynthia was shielding him from the other two who were armed, neither of whom had a clean shot as a result.
“You. You. Drop your weapons,” Feng ordered.
“Not a chance, Feng,” Derrick said. “If you shoot her, I guarantee you the next bullet that flies will exit my gun and enter your head.”
“Drop them,” Feng shrieked. “Drop them.”
“Not gonna happen,” Derrick said, trying to see if he could even get his scope on some sliver of the unctuous Communist. But Feng was small—Cynthia Heat was actually a shade taller—and he used his lack of stature to his advantage. Derrick had nothing to work with.
Feng still had a one-quarter-finished clove cigarette in his mouth. He took a puff from it.
“Then I will tell you what’s going to happen, Derrick Storm,” Feng hissed. “I have better things to do than kill this woman. But I also have no plans to be killed myself. So I am going to leave the room with this woman as my hostage. You will not pursue me, unless you would like to see her dead. Then I’m going to leave this building. She will return to you safely once I am lost in the streets of lower Manhattan. Do we have a deal?”
Derrick could see the outline of the CD pressing through Feng’s cheap jacket. He hated to lose his chance at recapturing it.
But that now struck him as a problem for another time, some future mission that he and Jones could devise. Keeping Cynthia Heat alive mattered more.
“Fine,” Derrick said. “But mark my words, if you harm a hair on her head, I will spend the rest of my life hunting you. And I will not rest until you and three generations of your family are in the ground.”
“Of course, of course,” Feng said. “The American, always so brave in the rescue of his woman. We’ll be taking our leave of you now.”
Slowly they began inching out of the room, with Feng very careful about his positioning the whole time. They were just about to exit through the door when Carl Storm broke the silence.
“Wait,” he said. “I’d like to kiss her good-bye first.”
Feng’s face squeezed in anger. “You’ll do nothing of the sort.”
“Sorry, pal,” Carl said. “I’ve been waiting half a lifetime to meet a woman as incredible as this. And I’m not going to let her go without at least one kiss. You can shoot me for trying. But I guarantee if you do, my son here will make sure I’m not the only one who dies today.”
Derrick had no idea what his father was up to, but he said, “Sounds reasonable to me, Feng.”
“I’ll even drop my weapon,” Carl volunteered.
“Fine,” Feng spat. “Make it quick.”
Carl tossed his weapon into the corner.
“Gotta freshen my breath first, if you don’t mind,” he said, removing the Binaca from his pocket. “Don’t want to make a bad first impression.”
He pumped a squirt into his mouth. Then he turned to Cynthia.
“Want some?” he asked.
“I probably need it,” Cynthia confirmed.
“Open wide,” Carl said, walking toward Cynthia with the Binaca up.
And then, at the last moment, he diverted his aim and sprayed it at Feng’s face.
One of Binaca’s ingredients is SD alcohol 38F. While denatured, it is still highly flammable. And it did not, in this instance, disappoint.
The moment the leading edge of the spray hit the glowing end of Feng’s cigarette, it burst into flames, turning into a blowtorch that splattered into Feng’s face. The man roared and flailed backward, reflexively bringing his hands to his face to try to wipe away the flames.
Derrick Storm waited until his floundering target was well out of the way of Cynthia, who further helped matters by diving to the side. When he was sure he had a clean shot, Derrick pumped three bullets into the middle of Feng’s face.
The man died instantly, slumping against the door. Derrick walked over to him and quickly yanked the CD out of Feng’s pocket, stuffing it into his own.
Carl had gone toward Cynthia, helping her up off the ground.
“My hero,” she said, then added suggestively, “Are you that resourceful in everything you do?”
Carl waggled his dark eyebrows. “You have no idea.”
* * *
It was Rook, of all people, who played the role of the sober-minded, mission-focused guy.
He brought the momentary spirit of celebration that had gripped all of them to a halt by saying, “Guys, sorry to throw rain on the picnic, but you know whoever is in that next room now knows we’re here.”
Carl had taken back possession of his gun. So had Cynthia.
“Well, then let’s not pretend we still have the element of surprise,” Derrick said.
He strode over to the door he had once tiptoed up to and kicked it down. He entered the next office with his gun up. But a sweep of the room revealed it to be empty.
“Clear!” he shouted.
His eyes fell on a phone in a black case sitting on top of the desk. As the other three came in, he looked at Rook. “Is that your wife’s phone?”
“Sure looks that way,” Rook said grimly. No one had to bother saying the rest out loud.
Find My iPhone had done its job and found the phone. What it hadn’t found was the phone’s owner.
“So where is she?” Rook asked, his misery plain on his face.
The reply came from twelve stories farther up, where the unmistakable sound of helicopter rotors beating the air could then be heard.
“I’m sorry to say I think that’s her, making an unwanted exit,” Derrick said.
They ran over to the window in time to see a Bell 407 helicopter tilting away from the building. It was red, white, and blue and had LINDSY ONE emblazoned on the side.
It was impossible to see who was inside. But it wasn’t hard to guess that helicopter held a daughter, a wife, and a friend—all in the person of Nikki Heat.
“Fer Chrissakes,” Carl muttered. “Anyone got any good ideas? Because after that Binaca thing, I’m fresh out.”
There was a sickly silence as the helicopter floated farther away, pointed in the direction of the mouth of the Hudson River, the Verrazano Bridge, and the ocean that stretched out beyond it.
Then Rook said, “Captain Tyler’s Airborne Escapades.”
“What’s that?” Derrick asked.
“It’s a friend who has a seaplane docked at Pier 11.”
“That’s three blocks away,” Cynthia said. “Let’s go.”
Rook called on the way, alerting Captain Tyler that he would need to redeem his gift certificate in an unexpected—and quite urgent—manner.
Three blocks of sprinting later, they could already hear the six cylinders of a Continental IO-550-N engine roaring. The craft surrounding that engine, a Seawind 300C, was the newest and best seaplane on the market. It seated four adults and, at 100 percent power, reached a top speed of two hundred miles per hour—about twenty miles per hour faster than a Bell 407, which was all that mattered at this point. That the plane had been specially modified for skydiving was just a bonus at the moment.
“Welcome aboard,” Captain Tyler shouted over the din as Rook and company clambered on, their breath ragged from the run. “Seat belts on,
everyone. I’m going to get us up in the air quickly.”
“Thanks, buddy,” Rook shouted back. “Did you keep an eye on that helicopter like I asked?”
“Better than that. I got a lock on it on radar. They’re heading south-southeast at about one-three-oh.”
Rook pounded him on the shoulder. “Good work. I owe you one.”
“A feature about Captain Tyler’s Airborne Escapades in First Press will do nicely,” Tyler said.
“You got it. Now let’s take off.”
“Aye, aye.”
The Seawind was soon out on the Hudson River. Once it had the required 1,100 feet of water in front of it, Tyler floored the engines and the plane took flight.
They climbed steadily to five thousand feet. Then Tyler put on the autopilot and turned to his passengers.
“Okay, I’m keeping the throttle against the stops. We’re gaining on them, but slowly. And they’ve got about a seventeen-mile head start. Another fifty minutes or so, and we should be dead even with them.”
THIRTY-THREE
HEAT
The Taser had incapacitated Nikki Heat in at least two respects.
First there had been that initial jolt: fifty thousand volts of brain-frying fury that separated her from the ability to control either her mind or her body.
Then there was what it had allowed John Null to quickly do to her. With Heat unable to resist, the campaign manager had trussed her up like an eight-point buck he planned to toss on the hood of his pickup truck, securing her feet at the ankles and her hands at the wrist, then tying the two of those constraints together so that her body was bent into a parabola.
He dumped her into a mail cart borrowed from the seventy-ninth floor, like she was nothing more than a load of campaign junk mail, then took her for a ride in the elevator that was so disorienting she couldn’t tell if they were going up or down.
Then they emerged on the roof, and Heat heard the beating of the helicopter rotors that would deliver her to a watery demise.
Heat was slightly more functional at that point, enough that she could at least twist herself into a position where she could see the blue sky above her. She felt the downdraft from the blades pressing against her face as Null wheeled her toward the chopper.
Heat Storm (Castle) Page 31
