Lia was almost to Philadelphia, the virtual halfway point of the drive, when she saw the flashing lights appear in her rearview mirror. The thought of gunning the engine and trying to outrun them never entered her mind, not in a Chevy Cruze. So Lia pulled over into the breakdown lane on I-95 and punched on her flashers as the police car pulled up a discreet distance behind her.
It looked like a Pennsylvania State Police car. She knew it had been stolen as soon as the figures emerged from inside. Civilian clothes in the style of dark tactical wear, instead of uniforms. Not seeing a reason to extend the ruse.
Lia rolled down both the driver side and passenger side windows as the two men approached. She’d already tucked her gun under her right leg but, for now anyway, left both hands on the wheel.
The men might have been twins, impossible to tell apart in the darkness, as they came up on either side of the car with sidearms in plain view. The man on the driver’s side laid his hands on the sill of the open window and leaned forward, close enough for Lia to catch the greasy stench of fast food from a recent stop the two men must have made.
“You need to come with us, Colonel,” the one closest to her said, his Israeli accent entirely undetectable.
“To the airport or the morgue?”
The speaker glanced through the car cabin toward the man on the passenger side. “We’re on the same side here.”
“Then we should be working toward the same ends,” Lia told him. “In this case, that means preventing an unspeakable tragedy from taking place on American soil.”
“That isn’t our problem.”
“Ours or Israel’s?”
The man lifted his arms from the driver side window and backed slightly away. “We have our orders, Colonel.”
“I’m sure you do.”
“Please step out of the car. Don’t make us resort to force.”
Lia nodded, hands still glued to the wheel to keep the men calm. “Since you know my rank, I’m going to assume you know who I am, that you’ve been properly briefed.”
The man closest to her nodded. Lia thought the other man might have, too.
“Then you also know that I’m not getting out of this car.”
Lia could feel the men on either side of the car tense.
“I may die in what follows, but both of you definitely will. If you’ve been briefed appropriately on my reputation, you know that to be a virtual certainty.”
She paused, just long enough to let them consider that for a moment.
“My hands will remain right here in place, where you can see them, until you make a move. It then becomes a matter of whether you trust your skills are better than mine. So let me ask you a question, both of you,” Lia added, choosing that moment to glance toward the passenger side of the car. “When was the last time either of you saw action? When was the last time you smelled blood?”
Neither man responded.
“For me it was two weeks ago, on the beach in Caesarea.”
She could tell from the closer man’s expression that he knew exactly what she was referring to.
“I’m here, in America, after the people behind that attack. The men who gave you this assignment didn’t include that part in their briefing, did they?”
Lia could smell dank sweat rising off the closer man now, swallowing the scent of fast food.
“I could use your help instead,” she continued, “but I know that’s too much to ask. So I’ll only ask you to return to your car and let me go on my way. You could report that you were unable to find me, or you could tell your superiors the truth. They’ll understand. They’ll know you did the right thing. They might even have hoped you would do just that. Why else would they have sent only the two of you when they knew that wouldn’t be enough? Think about it.”
It was clear from the sudden flutter in the closer man’s eyes that he was doing just that. Weighing his chances, the odds, whether this was truly worth it.
“It will happen like this,” Lia told him. “Your friend on the passenger side will go for his gun first, but he’ll hesitate before firing, which will give me a chance to kill him.”
As she said that, she glanced ever so subtly out the passenger side window, where that man’s hand had indeed strayed to his holstered nine-millimeter pistol.
“You will have drawn yours in the meantime. You may get a shot off, might wound me, perhaps even mortally. But you’ll be dead before you can get a second shot off. That’s the choice before you, the decision you have to make. There’s no middle ground here, no need for further discussion. You have a job to do, but I can’t let you do it.”
Lia paused again.
“I’m going to drive on now, slowly, with both hands remaining on the wheel. I’m going to continue my mission to stop what’s coming, which will be very bad for America and almost as bad for Israel. You don’t have to believe that I’m right. You only have to trust me and make the choice that will see you safely back to your families. This isn’t what you signed up for, and once my efforts prove successful, you will be hailed for your judgment instead of having your families sobbing at your grave sites.”
In deliberate fashion, Lia eased her hand to the rental’s keys and turned the engine back on.
“So,” Lia resumed, “what will it be?”
CHAPTER
62
NORTHERN NEW JERSEY
How was the drive?” Brixton asked Lia Ganz, after answering her knock on the Westview Motel’s door.
“I ran into some old friends,” she said, leaving it there as she filed past him. “And you didn’t check the peephole.”
“Oops.”
“What am I going to do with you, Robert?” she asked, as he closed the door behind them.
He double-locked it and eased the swing bolt over for good measure. “Happy?”
“I won’t be happy until all this is over and we’ve won.”
Brixton watched Lia Ganz scrutinizing the room, paying special attention to the window and the sight lines beyond.
“I asked for a room facing the back,” he told her. “This was the best they could do.”
“This place is off the beaten path. You chose well.”
“They also take cash and don’t ask any questions. A struggling family operation.”
She finished her once-over. “Sounds like Israel.”
Brixton filled her in on all the details of his conversation with Sister Mary Alice Rose, focusing on the Y-12 National Security Complex and its vast stores of bomb-ready radioactive fuel in the form of highly enriched uranium.
“They’re going to blow it up,” he finished. “That’s got to be the plan. Once the vice president got wise to the president’s condition, they might have tried to draw her into the circle, then killed her when she refused to go along.”
“She must not have wanted to become an accessory to five million murders.”
Lia sat down on one of the beds, Brixton facing her from the other. “What’s your level of experience with this kind of threat?”
“Nuclear? Not much, Robert, beyond playing the scenarios out. And most of those scenarios involved a nuclear bomb itself, a suitcase-type model, specifically, as opposed to what we’re facing here, a dirty bomb.”
“I’m not sure that’s the actual term in this case, but we’re talking about hundreds of thousands of pounds here, anyway, not just a single car or truck. I can’t even begin to calculate the effects of that.”
“I can’t either. It wasn’t one of the scenarios we played out.”
“And I don’t know how we can stop this scenario from playing out, not cut off and hunted by the very forces we should be going to for help.”
“What happened to your contact, the man who approached you after your friend interceded?”
Mac, Brixton remembered. He hadn’t thought of him since, and was now struck by the fear that Mackensie Smith may have followed Panama into oblivion.
“I called him Panama because of the hat he wore. Beyond that,
the only thing I knew about him was the phone number he provided.”
“Don’t tell me … it’s been disconnected.”
“They’re tightening the circle, Lia. If you’re not in, you’re out. And we’re as out as it gets.”
“How do we get in?”
“Sister Mary Alice Rose,” Brixton told her.
“You mentioned a jailbreak,” Lia Ganz said.
Brixton nodded.
“From a secure federal prison in the middle of Brooklyn.”
Brixton nodded again, only once this time.
“Going in, guns blazing, loaded for bear.”
“Unless you’ve got a better idea, Colonel Ganz.”
“As a matter of fact, I do.”
“Let’s hear it,” Brixton prodded.
“They won’t kill her, at least not within the confines of the facility itself.”
“So they pick her up for a nonexistent transfer to parts unknown?”
Ganz nodded. “Those ‘parts unknown’ being heaven, in this case.”
Brixton frowned. “Close enough, I suppose. Could be we’re already too late. We could go in tomorrow with guns blazing to find Sister Mary Alice’s cell empty.”
“You ever hear of a federal prison transfer happening at night?”
He had to think about that. “Now that you mention it…”
“Exactly. And chances are the personnel at the Metropolitan Detention Center have never heard of a transfer happening after hours either, because they don’t happen at night, especially in this case, since the last thing this cabal led by the first lady would dare do is risk drawing attention to themselves by doing something that stands out. No, Robert, it’ll be tomorrow morning, likely first thing.”
“And how does that help us, exactly?”
Lia Ganz smiled. “Glad you asked.”
CHAPTER
63
BROOKLYN, NEW YORK
The woman pushing the man in the wheelchair down the sidewalk approaching the Metropolitan Detention Center attracted no attention from the pedestrians emerging from a nearby subway stop. They politely moved aside, sacrificing those few moments from their day so that the wheelchair wouldn’t have to alter its speed or path.
The sidewalk had been closed off in the area immediately before a fenced-in parking area where prisoner transfers, either coming or going, took place at the rear of the building. A massive black SUV rode the curb tightly, and four men wearing Windbreakers that identified them as U.S. Marshals flanked the open gate to steer pedestrians off the sidewalk for a brief detour onto the street. They made an exception for the wheelchair-bound man, sending him on while diverting the others, just as two more marshals escorted an older woman with white hair and shapeless clothes toward the gate.
Lia Ganz squeezed Brixton’s shoulder before returning that hand to the chair’s holds.
“Here we go,” she whispered.
* * *
“Eight a.m.,” Brixton had said the night before, after Ganz had laid out the initial plan. “That’s when the prison opens for business.”
“This nun’s escorts will be waiting,” Lia told him. “How long before she’s processed for the apparent prisoner transfer?”
“Between fifteen and eighteen minutes, assuming all their paperwork is in order.”
“That’s very specific.”
“I’ve been involved in a few of these myself over the years.”
“Under different circumstances than what we’ll be facing, I trust.”
“Entirely,” Brixton affirmed.
Lia Ganz had paid cash for the wheelchair at HomePro Medical Supplies, not far from the prison, which opened at seven. They’d loaded the wheelchair into the trunk of a cab, which dropped them a few blocks away, out of the sight line from the federal facility. At that point, Brixton had plopped down in the chair, craned his shoulders, and slouched appropriately to let Lia do the driving from there.
“Anything we need to go over again?” she asked him, when the building came within view.
“Just be careful when you dump me.”
* * *
“Here we go.”
In that moment, Lia Ganz rocked the wheelchair forward, pretending to have hit a crack in the sidewalk. Brixton barely needed to add any of his momentum as he was thrust forward, up and out of the wheelchair. He hit the sidewalk hard, just as the two federal marshals with Sister Mary Alice Rose between them emerged fully through the gate.
Instinctively, two of the marshals standing guard rushed to the fallen man, kneeling to provide assistance, and Ganz shoved the wheelchair into the nearest man, hard enough to strip his legs out from under him. Brixton grabbed hold of the other kneeling marshal’s shirt in what looked like desperation instead of calculation, the man hesitating long enough for Lia to launch herself on the other two guards, who came at her in tandem, coming to grips with what was happening. They were standing when they reached her.
Then they weren’t. In what seemed little longer than a heartbeat, Brixton recorded a flash of motion, the two men suddenly reduced to a blur at the center of a shape whirling around them. Sweeping their legs out, the upper half of their frames seemed to be separated from the lower. They landed with crunching impacts, facedown on the sidewalk, not moving.
The marshal Brixton was clutching tried to pull free of his grasp. Brixton hammered the man hard in the groin and used the next moment to jerk him down, face-first into the sidewalk, adding his second hand to the top of the marshal’s head. That man’s face seemed to compress on impact, his legs twitching as he passed out.
Brixton swung around, lurching to his feet while keeping his eyes on the marshals on either side of Sister Mary Alice. Both of them were going for their guns when Lia Ganz engulfed the one nearest her in a twisting flurry of blows. Brixton launched himself toward the other, but his gun was out and steady by then, which meant Brixton was too late and the distance between them too far for him to act fast enough.
So Sister Mary Alice acted, grasping the man’s gun hand with both of hers and pinning it against his body long enough for Brixton to get there and unleash his own strikes, which toppled the gunman. He was still conscious when Brixton leaned over to kick aside the pistol he’d shed. Then he turned to see the nun herself climbing back to her feet, her own efforts having led to a fall that had torn the material over both knees, revealing nasty scrapes where she’d landed.
“Let’s go!” Lia Ganz implored, rushing for the giant SUV after fastening plastic flex cuffs on the wrists of all the downed federal marshals.
Its engine was still on, purring, when she leaped behind the wheel. That left Brixton to help Sister Mary Alice into the back seat and then to tumble inside after her.
“Nice to see you again, Mr. Brixton,” she said to him calmly.
CHAPTER
64
BROOKLYN, NEW YORK
Good morning to you, too, Sister.”
“Don’t believe I’ve had the pleasure,” Sister Mary Alice said to Lia Ganz, not missing a beat when the big SUV screeched away from the curb, tearing into traffic amid the horn-honking protests of impatient drivers.
“Lia Ganz,” Lia greeted from behind the wheel.
“Your accent…”
“Israeli.”
“Oh, my. What have I done now?”
Brixton ignored the joke. “When did you learn you were being transferred?”
“This morning, when they woke me up in the pod I share with three other women. Told me to get dressed while they waited. Then they brought me downstairs. Wouldn’t even allow me to brush my teeth.” She glanced toward Lia in the driver’s seat, then back toward Brixton. “Were those men really federal marshals?”
“Yes,” Lia answered, before Brixton had a chance. “But this was no ordinary transfer.”
“Apparently not,” the nun said, managing a smile.
“We need your help, Sister,” Brixton said to her.
“You made that plain yesterday, Mr. Brixton.”
>
“There’s going to be an attack on Y-Twelve,” Lia Ganz picked up. “A big one.”
“Oh, my,” Sister Mary Alice repeated. “Not by federal marshals, I trust.”
“No, by some of the people they work for.”
“Oh, my, indeed.”
Brixton explained it all as well as he could while Ganz careened the big SUV through the congested streets. Even the summary was terrifying as he told it. How a shadowy government cabal led by First Lady Merle Talmidge had chosen to strike, both to secure indefinitely a mentally ailing president’s hold on power and to pursue a world-changing agenda that was to begin with a staged terrorist attack against the homeland.
“And I was the one who ended up in prison,” Sister Mary Alice said at the end, as Ganz squeezed the SUV into a no parking zone directly across the street from a parking garage, a block over from the Barclays Center. “So you’re saying that there are no terrorists.”
“The cabal behind this made them up. A straw man for what’s to come.”
“Come on!” Ganz ordered, lunging out of the SUV.
Brixton led Sister Mary Alice across the street in her wake, the three of them taking the nearest garage stairs to the fourth level, where they’d left Ganz’s rented Chevy Cruze, now complete with pilfered plates in case anyone was looking for the car. That would do for now, although Lia suspected they’d need another vehicle to complete the drive south.
“We’re headed to Y-Twelve, aren’t we?” Sister Mary Alice asked them both.
“Eventually,” confirmed Lia Ganz, as they reached the Chevy.
“We need to make a stop in these parts first,” said Brixton.
He gave Lia the address and explained where they were headed.
“You trust this man?” she asked him.
“I trust that he can provide the answers we need.”
Murder on the Metro Page 26
