The Midas Code tl-2

by Boyd Morrison

“You’re sure he’s coming to lower Manhattan?”

  “He landed in Newark. The truck company is delivering material to New York construction sites. Wall Street and the Federal Reserve Bank are here. It’s the only location that fits.”

  “We’ve got standing patrols both on Wall Street and around the Fed. Any suspicious truck will be stopped.”

  “Orr won’t be that obvious. He’d want the gas cloud to cover as much of the downtown area as possible.” Another tuft of wind tugged at Tyler’s shirt. The wind.

  “Grant, check the weather. Where’s the wind coming from today?” It was hard to tell the general wind direction among the swirling air coming off the skyscrapers.

  After a few pecks at his phone, Grant said, “From the west.” The hospital was north of downtown.

  “Orr won’t be here,” Tyler said. “He needs to be in a construction zone upwind of Wall Street.”

  As they piled into the car, Riegert asked where they were going. Tyler told him to head toward the World Trade Center complex.

  * * *

  After they got out of the tunnel, Crenshaw headed south on Ninth Avenue, which turned into Hudson Street. The morning traffic was heavy, but Crenshaw handled the truck with ease. It had been his idea to use the semi in the first place, because he’d gone to truck-driving school.

  It was 8:30 by the time they reached the intersection at Church and Vesey. Crenshaw turned and came to a stop next to a sign that said NO STANDING ANYTIME.

  On the right was a grassy cemetery directly behind St. Paul’s Chapel. How appropriate, Orr thought.

  On the left were a smoke shop, a camera store, and a delicatessen. One of the vacant buildings was under renovation. The sign said, “Coming soon! The Safe Cracker. A unique New York restaurant experience. Wine and dine inside an actual turn-of-the-century bank vault.” A man was unloading supplies for the renovation from a truck that was double-parked in front of the restaurant. A brand-new bank was next to it, which had rendered the old bank obsolete.

  Behind them was the vast construction site to build the new World Trade Center tower.

  Orr smiled. The signs couldn’t be more auspicious.

  Crenshaw shut off the engine. Orr put Midas’s hand back in his pack with the Archimedes Codex and the golden hand.

  “We ready?” Crenshaw asked.

  “Do it.”

  They both set their watch timers to ten minutes. The bomb itself had no displays of any kind.

  Crenshaw entered the code. “Say ‘money’!”

  They clicked their watches, and the countdown began. In ten minutes, the bomb would go off. Even they couldn’t stop it from exploding now.

  Orr stepped down out of the truck. A car with government plates screeched to a stop in front of the cab.

  “Shit!” Crenshaw hissed. “Cops!”

  Orr’s hand went to the .38 revolver Crenshaw had given him at the truck stop along with six extra rounds.

  “Don’t panic,” Orr said. “Let me take care of this.”

  He put on his best smile and walked around the open door, but when he saw who was getting out of the back of the unmarked car, the smile shifted to a look of pure horror.

  No. No!

  It couldn’t be, but there he was. It was Tyler Locke. Back from the dead.

  How in the hell did Locke find him? The man simply did not give up.

  For a split second, their eyes met, and even though Tyler was unarmed, Orr felt a rush of unfamiliar emotion. Fear.

  “It’s Orr!” Tyler shouted.

  Orr raised his pistol to fire. Tyler dove back into the car before the bullets slammed into the opened car door, hitting a woman behind it. She clutched her shoulder and went down. Pedestrians screamed and ran in all directions.

  Orr turned to get his pack and make a run for it, but Crenshaw seized it first and jumped out of the driver’s door, shooting blindly as he went. Three shots came from the police car. Crenshaw cried out and went down.

  The cemetery was too open for an escape. Orr ran to the rear of the trailer and around the back. He peered around and saw Crenshaw lying on the street, cradling his leg. The backpack with the Midas hand lay next to him.

  Orr raced for the pack, but another officer came charging up to Crenshaw and kicked his gun away. He spotted Orr and yelled, “Freeze! FBI! Drop your weapon!”

  Orr fired two shots at the agent, who dropped to the pavement. Normally both his shots would have hit, but the lack of depth perception caused him to miss. With his damaged eye, he’d be at a severe disadvantage in a standing gun battle.

  Orr abandoned the backpack and ran across the street into the deli, cursing Tyler Locke the whole way.

  SIXTY-EIGHT

  The lightning-fast gun battle had been a blur to Tyler. Agent Immel went down with a shoulder wound. It wasn’t fatal, but she was out of action and stayed in the car to call for backup. Tyler circled around the truck to see Orr disappear into a deli.

  He stooped to pick up the gun of Orr’s injured confederate, ready to give chase, but Riegert stopped him.

  “I’ll get Orr!” He pointed at the man on the ground. “You make this guy tell you about the bomb.” Tyler nodded and tucked the pistol into his waistband. Riegert ran for the deli next to the bank being renovated into a restaurant. Tyler wanted to chase down Orr, but disarming the bomb had to be his first priority.

  “What’s your name?” Grant said, nudging the man with his foot.

  “Crenshaw,” the man said with a grimace, still holding his leg. “Peter Crenshaw. We have to get out of here.”

  Tyler grabbed him by the collar. “Crenshaw, is the strontium bomb already set to detonate?”

  Crenshaw looked surprised that Tyler would know about it.

  “I don’t know what you mean,” Crenshaw said.

  “The FBI found a lead hazmat suit at the warehouse you blew up. Half the building showed traces of radioactivity. That jog your memory?”

  Crenshaw nodded slowly.

  “Did you set it to go off?”

  Crenshaw nodded again.

  “When?”

  Crenshaw held up his watch. It was counting down and just under the eight-minute mark. Even if the bomb squad were on-site now, that amount of time would be slicing it thin, but Tyler had no idea when they would get here. It would be up to him and Grant to secure the bomb.

  Grant took the watch and put it on. “How do we disarm it?” he said, taking Crenshaw from Tyler and hauling him to his feet.

  Crenshaw shook his head. “You can’t. I designed it so that no one could disable it once it was armed.”

  “Where is it?” Tyler demanded.

  “It’s in the center of the trailer, but I’m telling you we have to go.”

  “Describe it. Now!”

  Crenshaw hesitated until Grant increased the pressure of his grip. “Okay! Okay! It’s two separate parts, unconnected but both synchronized to identical timers. The black box is the lead shield for the strontium, and it’s packed with C4, so the shield gets blown apart one second before the main bomb explodes.”

  “How big is the main bomb?” Grant asked.

  “Five hundred pounds, plus three hundred gallons of gas to incinerate the sawdust.”

  Holy God! Tyler thought. That was enough explosive to wipe out the entire block.

  “How do we disarm it?” Grant said, shaking Crenshaw, who began to blubber.

  “You can’t. No one can. I designed it with a collapsible circuit. Please! We need to leave.”

  “I’ll get the Geiger counter,” Grant said, and dragged Crenshaw to the FBI vehicle so that Immel could keep an eye on him.

  Tyler recognized Orr’s backpack lying on the ground. He unzipped it and saw that it still held Midas’s hand, the golden hand, and the Archimedes Codex. Tyler couldn’t let Orr get the Touch back, so he pulled the pack over his shoulders.

  Armed with the Geiger counter, Grant was first up the trailer’s ladder, followed by Tyler. They trotted along the taut tarp stretc
hed across the open trailer. Tyler sliced it open with his Leatherman. He and Grant pulled it back to reveal the pile of sawdust that filled the truck all the way up to the tarp. It had the consistency of mulch and supported their weight. Grant waved the Geiger counter over it until he found the strongest reading.

  They dug, revealing a black metal box buried in the sawdust.

  Tyler checked his watch. Seven minutes left.

  “Which bomb do you want?” Grant asked. He was already on Tyler’s wavelength. They had to separate the bombs, or they’d have a radioactive cloud over the entire downtown area.

  “You’re the better truck driver,” Tyler said. “Find someplace empty.”

  Grant glared at him. “In Manhattan?”

  “Just do your best. First, help me carry the strontium bomb. We’ll take it off the back of the truck.”

  “And then what?”

  Tyler remembered the new bank building and turned to look at it, but the bank renovation next to it caught his eye.

  Wine and dine inside an actual turn-of-the-century bank vault.

  “The old vault in the Safe Cracker restaurant,” Tyler said. “If I can put the bomb in there and close the door, it should contain the blast.” And he wouldn’t have to destroy the new bank’s vault in the process.

  They heaved the black box up. Their combined strength was barely enough to lift the lead container. They got back onto the tarp and shuffled to the back of the truck, Tyler’s ribs howling all the way.

  After they put the box down, Grant dropped over the side to open the rear doors. Tyler looked over the edge to see sawdust pour out, forming a pile on the asphalt.

  “Okay!” Grant shouted.

  Tyler sliced through the tarp and fell through the tear with the lead box next to him, guiding it as he slid down the avalanche of sawdust.

  Grant met him at the bottom with a handcart.

  “Courtesy of the delivery truck across the street,” he said.

  They put the lead box on the cart.

  “Go!” Tyler yelled as he dashed across the street with the cart.

  By this time, four police cruisers had converged on the truck. Immel was directing them despite her injury. Running for the truck cab, Grant shouted at her.

  “There’s a bomb in this truck and it’s about to go off! Where’s the bomb squad?”

  “Jesus,” she said. “They’re five minutes out.”

  “That’s too long. I need a police escort now!”

  “All right, where do you need to go?”

  Grant consulted his cell phone. “Albany Street. We’ve got five minutes.”

  He started the truck and didn’t wait for the police cars to get out of the way. He gunned the engine and smashed two of them aside. The other two cruisers roared off in front of him.

  “Agent Immel!” Tyler yelled before he went through the door where the Safe Cracker was being renovated. “This is the radioactive part of the bomb. Keep everyone out of here.”

  “You got it.” She pointed at the two remaining officers. “You at the front entrance. You take the back entrance. Get everyone out, and make sure no one else goes in.”

  As Tyler entered the old bank, he saw that the renovation was in its early stages. The floor had been stripped to the bare concrete, and the walls were prepped with white primer, ready for a coat of paint.

  Many of the workers had already gone outside to see what the commotion was. One of the police officers ran past Tyler, herding the remaining workers out the back door at the far end of the building.

  Tyler couldn’t miss the vault on the right. The immense circular door was ten feet in diameter and two feet thick. The bronze still held its luster after a hundred years of service, and the mechanism controlling the six-inch-diameter locking bolts was visible behind a new Plexiglas shield. The door’s massive weight would be more than enough to contain the blast of the bomb and shield the exterior from radioactive exposure.

  He wheeled the handcart through the aperture and into a space far larger than he was anticipating. The twenty-foot-deep vault extended twenty-five feet in each direction to the right and left. Here the work was more complete. On the inside of the vault next to the door was a hostess stand. A bar extended half the length of the long wall where the safety-deposit boxes would have been, leaving enough room for twenty tables. On one end, lumber was piled up in anticipation for laying the hardwood floor.

  Tyler pushed the handcart to a stop next to the stacked two-by-fours. A shame that the restaurant would never open now. No one would ever want to eat in a place that had been exposed to high-energy radiation.

  Tyler heard the footsteps of someone outside the vault door coming toward him.

  “You need to leave now!” Tyler yelled, thinking it was the police officer. He turned from the cart, and out of the shadows he saw the glint of a pistol aimed at his head.

  Tyler ducked just as a gunshot blasted. The bullet whistled past his ear. He ran and dove behind the lumber, Orr’s pack digging into his shoulder blades. He drew Crenshaw’s pistol and looked around the side, but two more shots chewed bits out of the wood before he could see anything. He fired blindly around the corner and heard the thump of someone hitting the floor. He peeked out, but he didn’t see a body. A voice confirmed his misses.

  “It’s simple, Tyler,” Jordan Orr said. “Either you toss the Midas hand over to me or in four minutes we both die.”

  SIXTY-NINE

  Orr must have come into the back of the old bank building and seen Tyler wheeling the bomb into the vault with the backpack on his shoulders. He was taking cover behind the other end of the bar. The lumber pile was large enough to shield Tyler, but they were in a stalemate. If Tyler made a break for the vault exit, Orr would cut him down.

  Tyler was hoping the police had heard the shots, but nobody came running to his rescue. He shrugged off the backpack.

  “It’s over, Orr,” he said. “I have the Midas Touch right here.”

  “That’s why it isn’t over,” Orr said. “If you give it to me, I’ll go.”

  “Where?” Tyler said. “Terrorism is a capital offense. The CIA will track you down wherever you go. You’ll be a wanted man the rest of your life, Orsini.”

  Orr was silent at hearing the name.

  “Did you know my father and Carol Benedict are alive, too?” Tyler asked.

  He heard Orr rasp out “Crenshaw” like a curse word.

  “I heard about your father, Orr,” Tyler said. “I know that’s why you’re here. Your big plan is a failure. Why don’t you give up?”

  “For what?” Orr said. “To serve consecutive life terms in an eight-foot cell? Or get the death penalty?”

  Tyler knew he was right. Orr now had nothing to lose, but Tyler had no intention of letting him get away with his crimes to live a life of luxury courtesy of King Midas. Not after seeing the appalling condition of his father this morning. Besides, even if he were thwarted this time, Orr wouldn’t give up on his vendetta, and with millions of dollars at his disposal he would eventually exact his revenge.

  “You failed every way you could, Orr. Grant and I found you. Crenshaw’s in custody. Your men are dead, and your bomb won’t irradiate Manhattan. You’ve left a trail of destruction behind you, and for what?”

  “You didn’t mention Stacy Benedict,” Orr said with delight. “She didn’t make it, did she? At least I got that right.”

  Orr’s breezy taunt hit home. Tyler’s stomach had been churning all morning because he hadn’t yet heard from Italy whether Stacy had pulled through.

  Something in Tyler snapped. With no time to think through his plan, he threw the backpack as hard as he could so that it landed behind the hostess stand.

  “You want the Midas Touch so badly?” Tyler shouted. “There it is. Go get it.”

  * * *

  Even though his destination was only a half mile away, Grant worried that he wasn’t going to make it. Too many tight corners with this beast of a truck. It was already down to
two minutes to go, and he was only turning onto Albany now.

  Grant hadn’t told the police why he wanted to get to Albany Street, but it was the only thing he could think of, and he didn’t have time to listen to other opinions. If they’d known what he planned, they might not have paved a path for him.

  He didn’t know New York well, but he’d checked the map on his smartphone when he got the idea for where to dump the truck. The closest option had been Albany. The entire route was just eleven blocks.

  Now he was four blocks away, and he could make out the blue water of his destination from his perch high in the truck cab.

  He was going to dump the trailer in the Hudson River.

  * * *

  As Tyler had hoped, Orr couldn’t resist the chance to get the Midas Touch back. Firing shots as he ran across the open space, Orr dove behind the hostess stand.

  If Tyler went for the vault door now, he wouldn’t get within five feet of it before Orr shot him. Orr thought he was safe behind the thick wood of the hostess stand knowing that Tyler’s 9-mm bullets wouldn’t penetrate, but he’d missed one crucial detail Tyler had noticed. The stand wasn’t anchored to the floor, because the hardwood hadn’t been installed yet.

  When he heard Orr unzip the pack to make sure the Midas hand was there, Tyler launched himself at the heavy-duty handcart and shoved it with all his strength toward the stand.

  As Tyler released the handcart, it fell backward onto its handles, but loaded with the lead box it had more than enough momentum to continue rocketing toward the stand.

  Orr heard the scraping of the cart’s handle and looked around the corner of the stand to fire, but the handcart smacked into the stand, knocking it backward into him. The pack went flying.

  With Orr down but out of sight, Tyler made a run for it.

  * * *

  With less than a minute to go, Grant blasted down the street, the needle on the speedometer pushing fifty. He kept the pedal mashed to the floor. He needed as much velocity as he could get.

  Albany was a narrow tree-lined street, and it dead-ended at a small circle. A courtyard separated the street from the Esplanade, a pedestrian path running along the river.