“I’m being reprimanded by the tower,” shouted the pilot.
“Land,” growled Carson, the boxy black pistol still menacing the man.
Just as the Bell side-slipped past the waiting jets, a third helicopter came roaring in from the right and alit in the only spot near the Gulfstream that would accommodate the larger Bell.
Words dripping with contempt, the pilot said, “What now, sir?”
Merkur said, “Put us down near the British Airways jet. We’ll go the rest of the way on foot.”
“You won’t get there before security is on you,” replied the pilot.
“We have an ace up our sleeve,” said Merkur. He looked to Pavel, then met Carson’s gaze. “You two deal with the helicopter when we’re getting close to the G6.”
Underhill lifted the aluminum boxes off the floor. Keeping hold of the handles, he balanced them on his knees and braced for landing.
The helicopter settled softly forty feet off the tip of the British Airways port-side wing.
As the door slid open, hot air tinged heavily with jet exhaust followed the howl of spooling engines into the cabin.
Undeterred, the two smaller helicopters landed side-by-side off the Bell’s port side and men in black with automatic rifles spilled onto the tarmac. They ducked and sprinted toward the Bell, covering half the distance by the time Carson and Pavel were taking a knee on the tarmac near the nose of their helicopter.
Out of the corner of his eye, Carson saw the pair of executives angling away from the Bell’s starboard-side. He saw the half-dozen muzzle flashes but didn’t hear the reports. The air-robbing impacts of a trio of 62-grain hunks of lead entering his body center of mass confirmed what his eyes had detected. And as he fell face first to the tarmac, the energy behind the speeding projectiles started his upper torso spinning to the right. In turn, Carson’s head followed. What he saw in the seconds before the pain caused him to curl up in a fetal position was at once satisfying and greatly disturbing.
Witnessing his boss and the morbidly overweight Underhill both take as many bullets to the body as he feared he had was the satisfying aspect. Seeing the case in the latter man’s possession shredded by bullets and spill punctured canisters to the tarmac didn’t sit well with him. For should he somehow survive and be whisked away for interrogation by whomever the shooters represented, he wouldn’t be long for the world thanks to the Bravo agent being released.
Spread by the Bell’s still spinning rotors, the Romero agent was dispersed to all points. In seconds the HVAC equipment atop the nearby concourses were sucking in microscopic particles and distributing them inside to be breathed in by untold numbers of workers and passengers. And unbeknownst to the aircrew and passengers aboard the four jetliners beginning to taxi toward the runway—nearly a thousand souls total—Merkur’s criminal negligence had also doomed every single one of them.
Chapter 40
Tony exited the Jamaica Line one stop prior to his usual stop. After the morning he’d had, he felt the blocks’ long walk to his brownstone through the neighborhood he had grown up in might help to purge his mind of the events of the day. Nothing doing. As he walked and dodged an inordinate amount of people stopped in place and fiddling with their smart phones, his mind was back at work. He imagined that the fire crews called from the four stations situated near 4WTC had already knocked the fire down and were trundling up the stairways in their heavy gear. While the attacks on 9/11 had occurred early enough on a workday that the number of lives lost were cut way short due to the thousands of workers still in transit to the towers, the opposite was true at 4WTC. However, though the events had occurred mid-morning, it was Sunday. Ninety-nine percent of the tower’s workers were probably making plans for lunch at home, or attending a Knicks preseason game, or, what Tony was eager to do—drinking before noon. Then there was his insider knowledge: He had checked in less than a hundred workers prior to the tragedy and follow-on fire. The loss of life, if there was any beyond Victoria’s, he guessed would be minimal. Could probably count on two hands how many were still on the upper floors when he had started his solemn walk to the subway platform.
The financial blow would be nothing compared to the towers falling. On the other hand, the blow to the builder’s ego would be catastrophic. How in the hell does the fire suppression system in a brand-spanking-new building fail? As if privy to information Tony was not, his stomach broadcast a loud prolonged growl.
He patted his ample midsection. “Trying to tell me something, fella?”
The action drew a funny look from a passing couple likely headed to one of the dozens of Starbucks peppering Brooklyn and Queens. It seemed to Tony that if the company didn’t slow their eastward expansion, they would be forced to open mini Starbucks inside of the already established stores.
Other than the long gone couple, people on the streets were carrying on as if nothing had happened on Manhattan. Sure, the fire wasn’t being attributed to terrorism, yet. That it was not caused by hijacked jetliners screaming in fast and low off the Hudson was a big part of it. The rest Tony attributed to normalcy bias. New Yorkers had been there, done that. Multiple times, in fact. And once a person had watched the thing unfolding on their doorsteps in real life, nothing else quite compared.
Tony felt naked walking the last few blocks to his place without his lunchbox and thermos in hand. Stomach still making noises, he stopped in front of a local bakery and looked in the window at the pastries on display. There were pillowy sugar-coated donuts, plump muffins dotted with blueberries, croissants drizzled with chocolate, and rolls in all shapes and sizes. He went inside and stood in a long line that looked stalled out at the moment.
There was the throaty rush of steam as a young barista converted fifty cents worth of ingredients into a five-dollar drink. The aroma of the beans in use started a tingling in the back of his throat. The case before him held scones and custard-filled items. Out of the blue a cough wracked his body. It originated deep within his lungs, and before he could bring a hand up to cover his mouth, the length of glass chest-high to him had mostly done its job.
His gaze fell first to the spittle dotting the glass top to bottom. There were rivulets of the stuff running to the black and white tiled floor. In one place a thick rope of snot had caught on the top of the sneeze shield and somehow ended up on the back side of the glass where it was just now beginning a slow-motion crawl to the baked goods below. Tony focused on the pancake-like pastries spewing raspberry filling from slits in their sides. In the next beat he was seeing the crushed and leaking body again and none of what was laid out within arm’s reach looked appetizing. Why commit suicide? he thought to himself. As he turned and walked past patrons wearing disgusted looks, what he wanted more than anything was in a bottle in his cupboard, which, thankfully, was in his apartment less than a hundred steps away.
***
Scaling the steps to the front door of his stoop was akin to what Tony imagined Sir Edmund Hillary had gone through to summit Everest. Collecting his breath on the landing, he stared through the door’s windows at yet another run of stairs disappearing upward to the shadow-filled upper landing. Wishing he had a Sherpa to help him the rest of the way, he unclipped the keys from his wide patrolman’s belt and worked them into the lock. Rent being lower than most of the places for blocks around solely because there was no elevator in the three-story brick building, Tony had no choice but to suck it up and tackle the twenty-four individual eight-inch high mountains rising before him.
The landing servicing his apartment and one other was dimly lit by a single sixty-watt bulb hanging on a frayed cord. Though nothing like outside this time of year, the still air was cool and welcoming.
Tony used three different keys to open three different locks and went inside. He shrugged off his windbreaker and hung it on the hook affixed to the back of the door. He left his soft-soled shoes in a jumble in the hall and padded to the kitchen, where he reached into the cupboard and retrieved the bottle of Old Crow tha
t had invaded his thoughts in the bakery. He carried the bottle and a tumbler taken from the drain board to the living room with him and plopped down on his faithful La-Z-Boy recliner. The only thing that had remained faithful for the duration of a thirty-nine year marriage recently gone by the wayside.
Picturing his wife and her new husband in their new multimillion dollar apartment in the Flatiron District of Manhattan, he switched on the television and tuned to WGN out of Atlanta. Though there was no sporting event going on at that moment, a replay of one was better than the macabre images that had taken residence in his head. Along with the booze, the game whose outcome he already knew would serve to help him forget the disparity between his and his ex’s lives.
The last thing Tony remembered after kicking the footrest up and downing the first three-finger pour of Old Crow was the game on the screen bracketed by his tube-sock-covered feet going to commercial and the sound of sirens kicking up outside his window.
Chapter 41
Shortly after entering I-69 northbound, Riker slid the Suburban into the center lane. It was where he preferred to be. Always had been. The center lane gave you options. Though not worried about an IED like the one that stole his leg and left him with anger issues and prone to phantom feelings in the nonexistent limb, he wanted to be able to choose from multiple routes of egress should another fast mover such as the Dodge fill up his rearview mirror.
He pressed the accelerator pedal to the floor and felt the Suburban’s front end rear up subtly. He shot a quick glance at the gauge cluster. Saw the needle sweep past sixty. Six seconds, he figured, had elapsed since leaving the entry-ramp. Not bad for a Soccer-Mom-mobile. As the rig leveled out and the hiss of the radials on grooved pavement began to infiltrate the cab, Riker glanced at the fuel gauge and saw that in the span of just a few minutes—many of them sitting inert with the engine idling—the red needle had dropped from three-quarters full to half. Maybe it had been his mind playing tricks on him, but nonetheless, in the short blip in time his eyes were focused on the gauge, he could have sworn he saw the indicator take a substantial dip closer toward Empty.
He pounded a palm on the wheel and cursed under his breath.
“What is it?” asked Tara.
“What’s gas cost these days? Three fifty or so?”
“About that. Why?”
“Because unless the attorney honors the digital signature thingy and puts the transfer through as promised, I’ve got less than a hundred bucks to my name.”
“I’m broke,” said Steve-O. “Payday is next Friday.”
Tara smiled at that and leaned over the center console to peek at the gauges. “I see your point,” she said. “Don’t sweat it. I’ve got a big wad of tips in my pocket.”
How much could a barista make in tips, thought Riker as he did some math in his head, concluding that every eleven or so miles this big beast sucked down the equivalent of one of those foo-foo coffee drinks she whipped up so expertly.
Not much, is what he came up with before grudgingly admitting that taking her clown car might not have been such a bad idea.
Tara said nothing. One hand went to the A-pillar grab bar. The other she planted on the dash as she lifted off of her seat.
“What is it?”
“The red car. You can’t see it?”
Riker shook his head. “I’ve become a little nearsighted in my old age.”
Tara tore her eyes from the distant scene. “Thirty-eight is old?”
“I’m forty-five,” said Steve-O matter-of-factly. “Richard Millhouse Nixon was president when Mom had me.” He went quiet for a beat. When he spoke again he was waving twin peace signs between the seats and saying, “I am not a crook,” in a voice eerily similar to that of the long-dead president.
“Better slow down,” said Tara, her voice now wavering. “This won’t stop like my car.”
It’s not an up-armored Humvee or bloated Land Cruiser skinned in Kevlar and fitted with inches-thick ballistic glass, thought Riker. It’s a production vehicle and should perform as such.
But it didn’t. Because what he didn’t know was that the SUV was closer in weight and maneuverability to what he had been tasked with driving over in the Sandbox. Still, he remained calm and stood hard on the brakes, which started the speedometer needle on a rapid plunge south from the hundred-mile-per-hour hash.
The Suburban’s nose dipped and the rear end waggled a bit.
“The hot rod is mangled—” began Tara.
“It’s a muscle car. And jersey barriers will do that,” interrupted Riker. “Under the overpass. Those are Humvees. And that boxy thing is an MRAP, if my eyes don’t deceive me.”
The Suburban was still moving at seventy miles per hour when Riker figured there was less than a football field’s length—give or take an end zone—for him to get her stopped.
Fearing the pedal might break off under his weight, he applied more brake. The pulsing from the hard at work ABS system caused the pedal to kick back against his boot sole like a miniature jackhammer.
Seemingly oblivious to the reality of what was rushing up at them, Tara asked, “What’s an MRAP?”
“Stands for mine-resistant armor protected. That one’s a Cougar, I think. Didn’t have them yet when I was over there.”
“Might have saved your leg.”
He flicked his eyes to the speedometer. Saw the needle sweep through sixty miles per hour.
“Might have saved more than that,” he proffered. “We lost lots of guys to roadside bombs before the up-armor program kicked in. I lost too many buddies to the effin things.”
The needle was passing fifty and almost to forty when soldiers dismounted the Humvee, stepped from the shadow of the overpass, and fanned out left and right of the crumpled red hulk.
Knuckles on both hands gone white, Tara said, “I see bullet holes in the windshield.”
“Usually happens to folks who don’t stop for roadblocks,” said Riker. He almost added Especially in the Sandbox but held his tongue for fear that voicing it would bring those particularly horrific nightmares back to life.
“Somebody is in big trouble,” crowed Steve-O from the back seat.
“Don’t think they’ll be getting any kind of punishment,” said Riker in a funereal voice. “If they didn’t catch a round before hitting the barriers, they died from the collision.” He saw where the floor pan had buckled near vertical to the front seats. He imagined that the big-block Hemi had punched through the firewall and come to rest deep inside the passenger compartment.
When Tara had initially hollered for Riker to stop, they were barely two miles north of the Commerce Street overpass and less than a mile south of the one currently filling up the windshield.
Now, just seconds later, as the soldiers were taking up positions behind the third layer of barriers, they were close enough to see the whites of their eyes. Riker glanced at the needle. Saw it creeping slowly downward toward thirty. “Stop, you big bastard,” he said through clenched teeth.
Bringing a monster like the Suburban down from over a hundred-plus-miles-per-hour in the distance allotted when they rounded the bend and Tara’s order rang out was akin to landing and stopping a Navy Hornet on an aircraft carrier’s deck. Only the Chevy had four disc brakes for stopping, not a tailhook hanging out back, nor the waiting arrestor cable and deck pendant to catch if it did.
With less than a hundred feet separating the Suburban’s front bumper and the Challenger’s jutting rear end, the ABS feedback ceased, the big rig came to a complete halt, and, consequently, the scenery all around snapped into sharp focus.
When all was said and done, the Suburban ended up cocooned by a roiling cloud of blue-white tire smoke and rocking on its springs several hundred feet closer to the wrecked Challenger than Riker would have liked. In short, they had bypassed the nearby off-ramp and were trapped on a run of highway blocked by a contingent of soldiers and cement barriers to the fore and an impenetrable run of traffic dividers to their left. And addi
ng insult to injury, the Humvees parked broadside behind the barriers sprouted top-mounted Ma Deuce heavy machine guns, the MRAP was training some type of heavy weapon on them, and the dozen soldiers clad in tan camouflage were brandishing black rifles—at least two of which were aimed at the thin pane of curved glass directly in front of Riker’s slackening face.
Chapter 42
The cloud of blue-white smoke that had come from the Suburban’s overtaxed radials was mostly dissipated when an artificially amplified voice said: “Turn off the motor and put your hands where we can see them.”
Tara ran her window down partway. Crisp air carrying a hint of death wafted in as she thrust her hands through the opening.
While Tara was busy complying, Riker was yanking the keys from the ignition and spinning the ignition key off the keyring. When he was finished, he threw the fob and ring full of keys to the road beside the SUV and stuck his hands out the window for all to see.
Tara asked, “Who are they?”
There was a whirring noise behind Riker’s head. Remaining rigid in his seat, he said, “Slow movements, Steve-O. We wouldn’t want to fall victim to the Indiana National Guard.”
“That’s the National Guard?” said Tara.
“Yep,” replied Riker as a female soldier in full battle rattle—Kevlar helmet, bullet-proof plate carrier, MOLLE rig bulging with extra magazines—skirted the red car and began a slow walk toward the Suburban. On the outside she was ready for war. That much was clear. Her movements, however, told a different story. She was light on her feet, footsteps tentative, almost as if she were ready to drop the rifle and run away should someone holler “Boo!”
Riker moved his head to the right to see past the advancing soldier. What he saw assembled on the road behind her cemented his next move. For barely visible next to the MRAP’s front end where she had been stationed before the loudspeaker belched the amplified orders was a waist-high mound of corpses. As if the Guard soldiers were working with some kind of a system, the unmoving bodies had been arranged with their heads all facing east. From his viewing angle, Riker saw jutting from the mound the scuffed soles of a dozen types of footwear ranging in sizes from toddler to adult. There were even a few bare feet, all pale and waxy and protruding from the mix. The sheer number of bodies stacked like cordwood shocked Riker into a momentarily silence, during which the reptilian part of his brain began sending the first jolt of adrenaline surging into his system. With the age-old fight-or-flight mechanism ramping up, he turned and regarded Tara with a thoughtful look.
Riker's Apocalypse (Book 1): The Promise Page 20
