Vigilante

by Robin Parrish

  As such, Hastings had just yesterday attended a briefing with the eight agents-elect and Director Pryce, where a number of potential targets were examined in order to determine the first priorities of the OCI. There were arguments for and against various mob bosses, drug cartels, and homeland terrorist cells. Most of the room wanted to aim straight for the top of the heap, attempting to take down the most well-known and notorious crime lords in the United States. But Hastings had offered a countering opinion. With all their necks on the line and media scrutiny at its highest, what they needed first was a victory. Take down a group with fewer numbers that would put up less of a fight than the big dogs, he’d argued, and they’d establish their reputation. Gain the people’s trust, put other crime lords on notice, and start with momentum.

  It was a winning choice all around, and in the end the president got his wish.

  Starting that very afternoon, after the formal luncheon that would follow the ceremony, Janssen, Lively, and the six other agents would set their sights on the OCI’s first major target. A small-potatoes mob boss operating out of New York City, who had a relatively minor organization but a dangerous reputation.

  The name of their first target: Yuri Vasko.

  19

  A gnes Ellerbee tapped her pen rapidly on the long boardroom table, her agitation growing with every passing minute. The meeting room was packed today at the Gazette, and everyone knew why. The Hand.

  Since the coming of the Internet, newspaper sales were dying off across the board. A number of competing rags had already shut down or stopped printing in order to go entirely digital with their news delivery. But the Gazette doggedly refused to bow to the future, even though its sales had nosedived every bit as much as the others.

  That all changed when the mysterious vigilante dubbed The Hand appeared on the scene. Papers were flying off newsstands as fast as they could be printed, with obsessed natives and tourists alike desperate for any glimpse or word of The Hand’s latest exploits.

  Lynn Tremaine, editor in chief of the New York Gazette, had called an all-staff meeting this morning, and everyone was required to attend because she was not happy with the quality of coverage they were producing. The ruthless Ms. Tremaine possessed a sharp mind and an acid tongue, and every reporter in town knew it. Staying in her employ for more than two years was seen as a badge of honor by the few who managed to keep her happy that long.

  Agnes had not yet achieved her two-year mark but was getting close, having managed to fly under Tremaine’s radar for most of her tenure. Today’s meeting was testing her patience and she toyed with throwing out her aspirations to move up at the Gazette because of the inanity of it all. It’s not like she was well liked at the long-running news agency anyway; her lack of charm and her tall, thick build had always made her an outcast wherever she found herself.

  She didn’t care about that in the slightest.

  “Russell, Francine, I want lifestyle pieces about residents who have been saved by The Hand,” said Tremaine, handing out assignments with the finesse of a great white shark marking its next meal. “And don’t give me another piece of bleeding-heart sludge. We print newspapers, not tissues.”

  Agnes sighed. There was an eighty-ton elephant in the middle of the room, and she couldn’t believe everyone else was missing it.

  “Callie, Darnell, you’re on tourist duty,” continued Tremaine, going around the room. “Hit the pavement and give me balanced pieces that give voice to both sides—Hand supporters and skeptics. If I want any more eyewitness accounts from Farmer Turnip and his inbred offspring, rambling on about the ‘awesomeness’ of what The Hand can do, I’ll turn on the TV.”

  Agnes cleared her throat. She couldn’t take it anymore. “I’m sorry, can I ask a stupidly obvious question?”

  “Ellerbee,” Tremaine sighed, “when have you asked any other kind?”

  “Why are we focusing so much on public reactions to The Hand, instead of going after the man himself?” Agnes asked, undaunted by her boss’s insult. “He’s a flesh-and-blood human being with a real name, and yet no one is asking what that name is.”

  Tremaine extended a single eyebrow upward, and Agnes knew she’d hit paydirt.

  “Who is this man? What’s his story? Why is he doing this?” she went on, pressing her advantage. “I say we do some good old-fashioned investigative journalism and find out.”

  The boss sat back in her seat, pondering this behind her dark, calculating eyes. “You want to expose him,” she said.

  Agnes wanted that exact thing, but decided to employ a little diplomacy. “I want to introduce him. To the world. He’s captured the public’s imagination in a big way; don’t you think we should know if he’s worthy of all the attention and accolades? Now . . . imagine the Gazette being the first to bring this information to light.”

  Tremaine did not speak immediately, but Agnes recognized that a spark of interest had been lit, because she was sitting up straight while gazing at a nondescript spot on the conference table. “All right,” she finally said. “I’ll allow you to pursue this. But I want regular updates on your progress. And if I find that you’re not making any, you’ll be writing obits till you retire.”

  “I’ll find him,” Agnes replied with a rush of adrenaline. “That’s a promise.”

  20

  R emind me again,” said Alice, watching over Branford’s shoulder as the tiny camera mounted on Nolan’s special glasses gave them a live view of what he was seeing and doing. “Is this phase two now, or phase three?”

  Branford didn’t look up, though he hadn’t noticed her enter his cube. “Two,” he replied, “which means he’s engaged in more proactive, offensive maneuvers against specific targets. Stopping crime before it can happen. But he’ll get back to that later. . . . He’s dealing with a hostage crisis at the moment.”

  On the screen, Nolan was using his grappler to scale the side of a glass-sided skyscraper a few blocks west of Wall Street. Some disgruntled office worker there had been laid off from his company after thirteen years of employment. Apparently the company’s refusal to reward his loyalty had driven him to snap, because he was standing in his boss’s corner office on the thirty-ninth floor, a bomb-covered vest over his chest, aiming a pair of submachine guns at his former boss and the support staff. The crazed man had holed himself up with his hostages, barricading the door. He’d already shot a pair of building security officers who’d tried to talk him down.

  Alice was glued to the screen, her lips moving quietly as she prayed for Nolan’s safety and success. It had become her ritual over the last month, every time he went out. This was terribly dangerous work he was doing, and after all he’d done for her, she couldn’t help feeling like a mother hen to him, and to a lesser extent, to Branford and Arjay as well.

  Those two had taken their time in coming to accept her presence, but after the first couple of weeks, they seemed to get used to her. She was already fond of both of them and deeply impressed with the work they did, though she made no secret of the fact that she worried about how far outside of the law they were operating.

  She gave little thought to her husband or how long she would have to live there in the underground “home.” It was enough for her that she was safe. So she had decided early on that she would busy herself contributing to this work of theirs. Her medical skills had already been useful many times over, but she hated having nothing to do when Nolan had no scrapes or cuts to patch up. She was devoid of anything that might be of any use in field operations, but she was an excellent cook and she suspected it had been her culinary skills that had finally won over Branford and Arjay.

  As she watched, Nolan did the impossible. He was running up the side of the building, holding tight to that grappler gun thing of his, and it was a very disorienting sensation to see it happening from his point of view. It was as if the world had been set on its ear, and the vertical side of the skyscraper was now the ground. Now and then Nolan took a fleeting glance at the world around
him, and the dizzying sight of New York City’s towering edifices from this amazing perspective made her gasp.

  “How is he going to stop the hostage taker?” Alice asked while swallowing the sick feeling in the pit of her stomach.

  Branford glanced up at her for the first time, a moderately bemused look on his face, though she wasn’t sure if he was puzzled by the question or its answer. “He never tells me. I’m not even sure he knows until he does it.”

  They both turned back to the screen and watched as Nolan crouched to his knees; he’d arrived. As he leaned in close to the reflective glass to get a look inside, Alice could see that he’d stopped just shy of the thirty-ninth floor and was peeking up over the bottom edge of the corner office’s window. Nolan tapped the side of his glasses and the view turned to a dark blue shade, showing the people inside as human-shaped outlines of bright red. She could make out the hostage taker standing over the five hostages. They cowered on the floor with his two Uzis trained on them.

  Touching his thumb to his ring finger, Nolan placed his gloved palm up against the glass, and speakers inside Branford’s area played the same enhanced audio that Nolan was hearing through his headphones.

  The hostage taker’s voice was immediately heard, talking to one of his hostages. “You think I care about your family?” he screamed, placing the muzzle of his rifle up against the man’s head. “Don’t you get it? This office wouldn’t even be here without me, and you gutted me! My whole life was poured into this place, and if I’m going down, I’m taking all of you with me.”

  Branford spoke up. “He’ll never negotiate. He’s going to kill the hostages and then himself.”

  “Agreed,” Nolan replied. “Is the building secure?”

  “Negative,” said Branford. “Police aren’t far—maybe three minutes out. The other tenants in the building don’t even know what’s happening yet.”

  “What are you thinking, General?” Nolan asked.

  Branford sighed. “That five hostages are an acceptable loss if it means a nut job doesn’t blow a whole building apart.”

  Alice’s ears burned red. She reached down and snatched the headset off of Branford’s skull. “Give me that!” she hissed, putting the earpiece up to her ear and swatting Branford’s hand away when he tried to take the headset back. “Now, you listen. There is no such thing as an ‘acceptable loss.’ You hear me? Those people aren’t dispensable soldiers who signed up for danger. They’re regular folks, with families and jobs and lives, and you are going to help them, just like you helped me.”

  She all but threw the headset back at Branford, but not before she heard a soft but conviction-filled “Copy that” from Nolan over the speakers.

  Already Nolan was switching off the temperature-based setting of his goggles and springing into action. Releasing some of the coil from his grappler, he rappelled quickly down to the thirty-eighth floor and slammed his steel-hard fist into the glass while releasing the catch on the grappler. It recoiled instantly while Nolan tumbled to the floor and then continued the roll to stand on his feet.

  “Stairwell’s near the center of the floor,” said Branford, still eyeing Alice warily as if she might grab some other piece of equipment without warning. Only then did Alice notice that Branford had pulled up a blueprint of the building’s layout. She wondered how in the world Nolan and his friends had access to such information—not to mention virtually every security camera in the city—and made a mental note to ask him about it later.

  Ignoring the shocked gasps and stares from people in the spacious meeting room he’d leapt into, Nolan ran out, through a receptionist’s area and past a large space with cubicles on both sides. Alice wished she could get a better look at the people he was running past, but Nolan never stopped or even slowed. Right where Branford said it would be, he found the stairwell and darted up it to the thirty-ninth floor.

  “But won’t that man know he’s coming?” Alice asked. “Didn’t he hear the glass break?”

  Branford never moved his eyes from the screen. “Just watch.”

  Of course, she thought. Of course the man heard it. Which Nolan knew would be the case long before he broke the glass.

  She had come to learn pretty fast that these were the rules by which Nolan lived. She sometimes heard him muttering them under his breath: control the environment, account for all parameters, stay one step ahead, and adapt as the situation changes. His training had taught him how to know exactly when and how an enemy was going to strike so that he could have a countermove ready before the attack came. If he lost focus for even a millisecond, he would be vulnerable. But she knew he was far too good at this to ever lose focus.

  When Nolan reached the top of the stairs, he switched to X-ray and spun in a circle. The floor was empty—probably on the orders of the hostage taker—save for the crazed man and his captives in the far corner. But the one skeleton that was standing was walking away from the window now and toward the outer office.

  “Police have entered the building and are on their way up,” Bradford hissed.

  Nolan burst into the open and quickly ducked for cover behind a cubicle. The gunman’s skeleton appeared from the corner office and his head turned, scanning the area. His head stopped in the direction of the stairwell and remained there for a long moment.

  “He must’ve left the door ajar,” Branford whispered.

  The man took a step backward and then looked again around the office, a large, open space filled with dozens of cubicles. The partitions didn’t reach all the way to the floor, so he dropped to his knees and looked under them, searching for the intruder’s feet. But Nolan suspended himself atop a U-shaped desk so that he was visible from neither above nor below the thin partition walls.

  The gunman held up both of his weapons and, with a roar, pulled their triggers. A rainstorm of bullets showered the room as he spun in place, and Nolan flinched at the impacts of several bullets that hit him but couldn’t penetrate his graphene-infused clothes.

  The gunman’s skeleton spun to return to the corner office—no doubt to fortify himself against the intruder—and Nolan was already moving.

  At a dead sprint, Nolan reached the hostage taker in seconds. While running, he’d retrieved his staff and extended it, so that when he caught up to the man, he swept it into the backs of the man’s knees, causing him to buckle. The man’s trigger fingers tensed involuntarily and shot round after round wildly into the walls and the ceiling. He scrambled back to his feet, but Nolan was far too quick.

  Nolan stretched out his gloved hand and tapped his thumb to pinky. The electromagnet was activated, one Uzi flew from the man’s hand until Nolan grabbed it out of the air, and then he nabbed the second one. It was so fast the man had no idea what was happening until it was too late. Nolan stepped forward and landed a rock-hard fist against the man’s jaw followed by an uppercut beneath his chin, and the guy actually lifted several inches off the ground before going down hard, unconscious. Nolan ejected the guns’ magazines, pocketed them, and then tossed the useless stocks on the ground beside the crumpled man.

  “Hold it right there!” shouted a nearby voice, and Nolan heard the hammer pull back on at least half a dozen police-issue nine-millimeter semiautomatics.

  21

  Branford wiped gathering sweat from his forehead that was threatening to douse his eyes as he watched the events playing out on his screens.

  Nolan didn’t stop to count the number of policemen who had spilled out of the stairwell. He ran as shots were fired, and another tiny but powerful impact jabbed into his thigh. He raced into the corner office, locking the door behind him. He ran to the room’s center, grabbed the oversized desk, and dragged it quickly to the door to serve as a makeshift barricade.

  “Get out of there!” Branford roared.

  Nolan looked about, taking in his surroundings and by extension, his options. The five hostages were still kneeling on the floor up against a side wall, and with a wave of his hand, Nolan ordered them to stay
put.

  He ran over to the corner plate-glass window and looked out at the city. But he’d no sooner arrived there than his view was obstructed by a police helicopter that dropped into position and hovered right before him.

  “Open this door!” shouted a policeman out in the hall.

  Behind him, Branford heard the sounds of whispering. He figured Alice must be praying again. She seemed to do that a lot.

  Branford had no interest in prayers, instead scanning the building blueprints again, looking for options to feed to Nolan. All the while, he glanced back and forth to the primary monitor that relayed Nolan’s point of view. Nolan’s eyes were trained on the helicopter and the two men who sat in the open cargo area, rifle sights focused on the glass window.

  Angry pounding came from the office door, and then the thin door was cracked open and an arm pushed through, blindly searching for the doorknob.

  Nolan backed up five paces and then ran flat out toward the window and the helicopter waiting thirty feet beyond it.

  The glass shattered in an explosion of shards and Nolan plunged, first out and then down. Branford couldn’t believe his eyes as the picture swiveled from showing the ground rushing toward Nolan to the helicopter rushing away. Nolan’s grappler came into view in a flash and suddenly Nolan was no longer falling. He’d stopped in midair, the hook of the grappler having punched through the floor of the chopper.

  The pilot responded to his jump by pulling the helicopter away from the building, taking Nolan along for the ride. Seventy-five feet below, he dangled, clutching the grappler with both hands. Nolan built up momentum when the helicopter swerved away from the skyscraper and used it to swing toward another building close by that had a roofline only twenty feet or so below his current elevation.