Manhattan Takedown (Karyn Kane #2)

by Tony Bulmer

  A lucky-break.

  A sacred turn of good fortune.

  Karyn ground her teeth. She couldn’t trust things to luck. You got slack like that, you got dead real quick. It was the way of things in Special Operations. Stepping out into the night rain, Karyn drew a breath. She had to shake off the cursed presence of Senegar. He had put on a good show in the stairwell, but where had he been when she had really needed him? The grubby little psycho with the suicide eyes had come close to gaining the upper hand; so close there was still a part of her lingering back there in the dark stairway. Senegar could have moved in. He could have taken that creep out close quarters style, no need to fire a shot. But he had held back—hesitated. It was almost like he wanted her dead. Like he wanted the drama to play out. Maybe the creep was looking to cash out of the bullshit game he had hooked her into.

  She was expendable.

  She knew too much.

  Her death would be convenient.

  Karyn sucked a cold breath and dismissed her thoughts.

  Maybe she was going crazy.

  Maybe the world of conspiracy was turning her crazy?

  They had said she was going crazy before.

  The dark bureaucrats from the seventh floor.

  Karyn’s thoughts sucked her back to the day of her secret court martial; the day they had drummed her out of the Office of Naval Intelligence and gifted the custody of her daughter to her ex-husband, Reed Goodman—Reed the sniper, Reed the retired military hero. A whole parade ground of medals strapped across his chest like he was some national treasure or something. What wasn’t to love about a guy like that? Him and his cute new wife Julia—the older woman—living together in wedded bliss. Enjoying their perfect little lives in the spoiled suburbs of Los Angeles, like nothing else in the world mattered.

  Karyn sucked another breath, more rueful this time. Nothing did matter. She was a ghost, a non-person; a fleeting shadow moving through the eternal night. Who else lived like this? Not real people, with real friends and real families. Who would notice if she disappeared off the face of the earth, disappeared for good?

  Sure, her mom would miss those unscheduled visits, that had grown ever more infrequent in recent years. But how often could she see her anyway, cruelly separated as she was, half a world away? Then there was her father—The Admiral. The man, who betrayed her, deserted her. Less said of him the better.

  The night air coiled in all around the square. Black rain angled down, shrouding the tombstone city. How strange it was to see one of the greatest, most vibrant cities in the whole of the world blacked-out—devoid of light. Karyn felt a deep sense of mourning. It was as though the city had been murdered. She stood breathing in the night, as the rain washed in against her upturned face. Her clothes clung to her body as the deluge hit—but the rain could not cleanse the troubles from her soul, nor could it wash away the sorrow, the hurt, the anguish and tragedy.

  Karyn’s mind boiled against the senseless injustice of the attacks. How sick and perverted were the minds that had engineered this tragedy? Where would these maniacs strike next? And what could they possibly hope to achieve by bringing the world economy to its knees?

  If only there had been more time.

  The Shangahai attack had been averted, why not this one too? How could a small group of religious supremacists organize and execute such a deadly attack without help?

  A sudden horrible thought amped through her—What if the terrorists hadn’t slipped through the net at all? What if they had been assisted in their fiendish endeavors? What if Chi Wu’s goons in the Chinese ministry of State Security were playing a double game? Surely it made sense? After all, the Chinese knew how to maximize the explosive power of the EMP weapons. They designed them. Of course, the Chinese had blamed Uyghur separatists for stealing the bombs. But who knew that for sure? Maybe the whole diabolical game was a double-bluff cover story to divert attention from an attack on one of their greatest economic competitors? The Chinese government was both ruthless and unscrupulous enough to do such a thing. They had been using covert-action to attack competitors worldwide for years. Maybe they were upping their game? Heading for total global supremacy by monkey wrenching their economic rivals?

  There was another angle of course and Karyn didn’t like it any better than the first—the Pakistanis. If the Chinese were telling the truth and the Uyghurs were running this thing, then those backwoods Islamasupremacists had to be getting help from somewhere. Big league attacks like the Mumbai hit were so far outside their modus operandi. It just wasn’t credible that they had pulled this job alone. Not only that, there was a long list of good reasons why their radical pals in Pakistan would want to help them out. They were border buddies first off. Pakistan was just a short mule-train hop across the mountains from the Uyghur province of Xinjiang. Second, there was the pirates-nest connection of radicalized Islamist fighters in both countries—vicious maniacs who hated anyone who disagreed with their narrow world-view. Third, there was the Pakistani state itself. An institutional government so broken and dysfunctional, that vast swaths of the country were run on a system of tribal anarchy. Moreover, the Pakistanis hated their nuclear-armed neighbor almost as much as they hated each other. They had carried out covert attacks on India before. No doubt they would do so again. But were they capable of carrying out an attack, so audacious and grotesque? The Pakistanis were devious, but they were also overwhelmingly inept. Whenever they tried to mount a covert attack, their slack-jawed secret services always left a wide trail of incriminating evidence all the way back to the Aiwan-e-Sadr Presidential Palace in Islamabad, or more often, the headquarters of the Inter-Services Intelligence Agency right next door. But no matter how many times they got caught, those Janus faced bastards always got away with it. Whether it was bombing their enemies abroad; sheltering al–Qaeda killer Osama bin Laden; or supporting America’s enemies in Afghanistan, the Pakistanis always played their strategic, territorial importance and nuclear muscle off against any threat of reprisal. They were immune. They could quite literally get away with murder.

  Karyn brushed strands of rain soaked hair away from her face and let the air fill her lungs. There was also a third explanation for this unholy mess, a possibility that was even more chilling than the others.

  Out in the square, the Special Operations Group were lighting flares. The ghostly flames burned furnace bright, reflecting the black rain, as it angled down against the roadway. DEVGRU were coming—the U.S. Navy Seals. They would swoop in from above. They would wield overwhelming firepower, suppressing all who stood against them. Very soon they would be here. Black shapes moving in out of the Godless sky; then almost before the realization hit they would be away, sweeping off into the darkened skies.

  Karyn heard the heavy thrum of approaching rotors blades now. V22 Ospreys, moving in from the ocean. She stared into the darkness. There were no stars tonight, just an endless roiling blackness stretching through to the end of time. A sudden presence loomed silently at her shoulder. She didn’t turn. She knew right away that Jack Senegar lord of the dark bureaucrats, was standing right by her—scrutinizing her.

  Frowning into the roiling sky, she said, “We didn’t have anything to do with this, did we Jack?”

  38

  Federal Reserve Bank, New Jersey

  Helen Fischer, the chair of the Board of Governors of the United States Federal Reserve Banking System, was a slight, rather homely looking woman of advanced years and wisdom. Born into a Brooklyn based banking dynasty, she had enjoyed a long and illustrious career as a PhD economist and acknowledged expert in matters of finance. But in all her years as a world-renowned expert on matters financial, she had never before encountered a beast so virulently unpleasant as Ploutos Capital Investments and their CEO Irving King.

  Helen Fischer sat at the head of the conference table and perused a heavy sheaf of notes, as her illustrious colleagues and a scrimmage line of corporate lawyers looked on. At length, she peered over her glasses and said, �
��The President is most unhappy Irving. Fluctuations in the balance of money supply are to be expected in a vigorous modern economy such as ours. However, the level of capitalization that Ploutos Capital Investments has leveraged against Indian capital markets—well, quite frankly the figures show a reckless disregard for the required level of financial rectitude. A player of your level Irving should be more circumspect in their dealings. The aggressive nature of Ploutos Capital’s strategy is destabilizing world markets. We would like you to mitigate your actions and take a more considered approach in your future dealings.

  Irving King lounged back in his leather conference chair. All eyes in the room turned toward him expectantly. King nodded very slowly, like he was giving this accusation the merit it deserved. After a long moment of thought, he gave a quiet laugh. He then pursed his mouth and ran his tongue across his lips very rapidly. The resulting noise was both vulgar and impatient. He looked slowly around the table at each of the seven members of the Federal Reserve Board, and their lawyers too. Finally, he said, “Screw the President. And screw you too Fischer. You jackass Communists have had your day. The new future of mankind is upon us. The days when private capital tipped its cap to central government are at an end.”

  Helen Fischer drew back rather primly, more primly than she had perhaps intended. “May I remind you Irving, that the Federal Government of the United States is at liberty to impose sanction upon organizations or individuals who are deemed to have operated outside the bounds of United States Law?”

  “Yeah? See where that gets you Fischer. I own the damn government and your prick friends In the SEC too. So don’t give me any of your smart chat about how the government is running things. Those days are over. Ploutos Capital is a transglobal entity. We move in the deep international waters outside the control of government—your pathetic threats of sanction are meaningless Fischer. If I chose too I could yank the financial rug from beneath your feet and have both you and your president thrown into the street like paupers. Now what do you think of that?”

  “It would seem Irving, that you are flushed with the euphoria of your recent successes. Hedging on failure and making money from the misfortunes of others—it is not the greatest way to win friends is it?”

  “I have all the friends I can use—every one of them in the right places.”

  “How convenient for you Irving. I do regret to inform you however that your friendship with the Federal Reserve will not be ongoing, should you choose to pursue your current business model. You see, we too have friends Irving, very powerful friends; the kind of people who could ensure your fortunes are reversed in the most permanent way imaginable.”

  Irving King laughed. “You think your ever-so-polite threats scare me Fischer? The days of your terrorist government are numbered. I have every financial market in the world covered—London, New York, Tokyo—all the others too. As the enemies of your outmoded system rise against you and your bureaucracy of failure, I will profit at every turn. There is nothing you can do to avoid this. The wheels of change have been set in motion. We are riding in the vanguard of a brave new order of evolved humanity—a new world of Humanistian values.”

  Helen Fischer and the Board of Governors looked visibly shocked

  “I have to inform you that your statement amounts to an admission of corporate malfeasance Mr. King; something that this board and the Government of the United States of America takes very seriously indeed.

  “Your diseased ramblings are immaterial Fischer. Ploutos Capital Investments will continue to seek an aggressive stance in the International Financial marketplace. I can assure you, that should you seek to impede the will of the financial markets, then the repercussions for you, your president and your soon to be defunct system of government will be most unpleasant. In fact a can assure you that they will be.” King rose to his feet. “This meeting is over.” He strode purposefully for the door then, his legal minions cowering in his wake. The worlds press were waiting outside, hanging ready like wolves, ravenous for the wisdom of the man they were now calling the richest man in the world.

  39

  Hells Kitchen, NYC

  It was morning. All the clues were there. The blowtorch sun slatting in through the broken window blinds, the cacophony of traffic noise rising up through the trees in the roadwork street outside. Erin Francelle lifted the pillow off the top of her head and opened one eye. The blue-hued digital clock read 07.57am. She was going to have to skip the gym again this morning. She groaned. Slammed the pillow back over her head. Her phone was going crazy already, the plink-plink of incoming appointments and news stories. When you manned the tiller on a nationally syndicated program like the Huds Helman Show, you had to keep on top of things 24-7. No easy task when your boss was a control freak boozehound who could swallow down more hard liquor in one evening than whole bar full of outlaw bikers. Yes, it had been quite a night last night. But unlike her, Helman had the constitution for excess. He could rage all night and still be up before the larks, fat cigar in one hand and a pint of heavily irished coffee in the other.

  Her cell phone was ringing again now, a five second pause then the rapid-fire plink-plink-plink of incoming text messages and emails. At this rate there would be wayyyyy more than the usual three hundred messages by the time she crash-landed in the office—wayyyyy more. Erin reached her phone off the bedside table and peered at it with one eye. A profanity laced rant from Helman. More missed characters and spelling errors than usual. He was upset. He wanted to speak to her urgent.

  She tapped the phone with her thumb and made the call.

  Not even a one beat ring and Helman picked up.

  “You watching this?”

  Erin scrunched her face. Felt her contact lenses eating into her eyes.

  “I’m off the clock Helman. What the hell are you talking about?”

  “Your damn boyfriend is what I am talking about. Have you seen this shit? It’s on every channel—every channel for Christssakes. Tell me you are on top of this—please God tell me you are—”

  “My boyfriend?”

  “The richest man in the world, that’s what they are calling him. You realize you gave him the bums rush don’t you?”

  Erin scrunched her face again. Her cat, noticing signs of life, had jumped onto the bed and was now trying to aggressively nuzzle the pillow away from her face. Erin pushed him away. “Not now Cosmo.”

  “What did you say? Is there someone there with you? Are you on heat or something? We got the news of the century unfolding, and you are in bed rutting?”

  “Listen Helman, I got no idea what you are rambling on about, but I am guessing your boyfriend and bum-buddy business partner Irving King has just reamed another bunch of saps out their life savings. Are you expecting me to get excited about that? You want me to ship him a kissy-kissy-bouquet and some love heart chocolates—sign a heartfelt little love note to go with it, so as you can meet him for a snuggle-up dinner date?”

  “The world is on fire! Get out of your sack and turn on the damn television would you? Those Communist loving Islamic radicals have done it again!”

  Erin closed her eyes. The world swirled around her, as the dry-sour taste of the champagne morning bullied her senses. She swung her feet slowly, reluctantly out of bed. The sun had warmed the reclaimed floorboards, unleashing flavors of their rich scented history. The wood caressed her feet. Erin pattered over to her kitchenette and fired up the television. The volume was turned low, but she could see right away that a monumental news day was unfolding. A spy in the sky news stream was relaying pictures of utter devastation. A vast smoldering cityscape gouged by a massive impact crater. The lower third banner was spinning with shock horror stock market news, as the headlines, Mumbai: a city destroyed flashed across the screen.

  Erin ran her fingers through her hair and cursed softly. Those poor, poor, people. Many lifetimes of industry transformed in an instant into a landscape of horror and carnage. What in the hell was the excuse this time? Which diseas
ed ideology was going to lay claim to this mindless atrocity?

  Cosmo the cat wound his way around her ankles, his thick fur pressing up close. She glanced down at him, a tight anxious look playing across her lips. Cosmo could feel her pain—he was trying to be nice, rather than mewling for his breakfast. But Erin’s eyes were already filling up with sorrow and fury. She clutched the kitchen counter, a thousand thoughts rampaging through her mind. Finally she said, “What’s going on Helman? Who the did this thing?”

  “World War Three is what’s going on—don’t you see? We have got to go to DEFCON 1 on the show tonight; make a first launch strike against the Godless forces of Communist inspired Islam and their fellow traveler familiars in the Federal Whitehouse.”

  “World War Three?

  “I said it before, I will say it again. This whole damn country has been sleepwalking into disaster for years; all those coffeehouse liberals coo-cooing like there was nothing wrong. But now we know the truth! The phony-baloney soft war is turning hot at last. Well, I am not going to stand for it, you hear me? There ain’t no way that Huds Helman is ever going to kow-tow to some prayer-mat kissing Commissar from Soviet Russia, or their narrow-faced pals in China either—are you listening honey? Do you hear what I am saying?”