“Who?” Tran asked.
“Oh, I think Gilgamesh would like a little outing,” she replied.
For the next three hours, the loft was turned into a staging area for guerilla warfare. Tran’s two men disappeared and then returned with several suitcases, which, when opened, revealed Mac-10 submachine guns with silencers and nightscopes. Another suitcase yielded K-bar knives, Rigel night-vision goggles, and headset radios. Lucy and Marlene returned from another shopping trip with black turtlenecks and black pants. “Afraid we had to pay top dollar at Macy’s,” Marlene said.
As the others dressed and prepared, the older of Tran’s men saw Ned cleaning his Peacemaker. He walked over to the younger man and tried to hand him a Mac-10. “You’ll need a little more firepower,” he said.
Ned shook his head. “I don’t know the first thing about that gun,” he said. “And probably couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn.”
“It fires a hundred rounds in the time it would take you to empty your gun,” the man said.
“It only takes one to kill a man.”
The man shrugged and left the cowboy inserting the .45-caliber rounds into the chamber.
They were ready with an hour to spare, a time each spent lost in his or her own thoughts, except for Lucy and Ned, who disappeared into her bedroom. Karp watched them leave but this time didn’t resent it. The young will find a way to celebrate life, even in the darkest times, he thought. He glanced over at Marlene, who stood looking out the window. He walked over. “Got that key?”
“What key?”
“Your Christmas key,” he said. “Get it, I want to show you something.”
When Marlene returned from their bedroom with the key, Karp led the way out of the loft, down the stairs, and to the building across the street. He punched in a security code to get in and flicked on a light switch.
“Oooh, now this is mysterious.” Marlene laughed as he led her to the elevator and hit the button to take them to the top floor. “So you’ve been keeping a little pad on the side for your mistresses, and now that we may all die, you were feeling guilty and wanted to show me, eh?”
“Would you stop with the mistresses,” Karp said, suddenly peeved.
Marlene realized she’d chosen the wrong moment for levity. “I’m sorry, Butch, I’m trying not to think about what’s happening with our son, or what could happen in the next few hours.”
“That’s okay, I shouldn’t have snapped,” he said. “I’m scared to death, too, and if I think about it too much, it might overwhelm me. I know I should be worried about all those people up at Times Square, but the only people on my mind are my family.” He tried a smile. “Anyway, enough of this; come on, I have something to show you.”
He led the way down a corridor to a door on the south end of the building. “Go ahead, use your key,” he said.
Marlene inserted the key in the dead bolt, turned it, and then opened the door. Karp put his arm around her waist to hold her back for a moment as he reached inside to turn on the lights. “It’s not quite finished,” he said. “But I hope you’ll like it.”
He let her go and heard her gasp as she entered. Essentially the inside was one large room with a tall, vaulted ceiling. The part away from the windows had been set up as a reading area with a couch, overstuffed chairs, and a stereo. But most of the room was empty, except for an easel that stood over by the big picture windows that Marlene had admired from her own home across the street. The sun had set but the twilight bathed the room in a soft glow as though gold dust had been sprinkled in the air.
“I don’t understand,” she said, turning back to Karp. “You kicking me out or something, buddy?”
Karp laughed. “Not in a million years. It’s just an art studio where you can get away from the hustle and bustle of the family and really concentrate on your painting. And over there,” he said, pointing, “is a sink and shelves for working in clay. In case you decide to expand on your artistic endeavors. It was supposed to be done at Christmas, but you know how construction goes in New York.”
Marlene was speechless for so long that Karp began to wonder if he’d messed up. Maybe I should have just stuck with the tennis bracelet idea, he thought. Then he really grew concerned when she began to cry.
“Oh, my God, Butch, I must have been a saint in my previous life—took care of lepers and fed the poor—to have deserved you as my husband,” she said. She walked over and flung her arms around his neck and began kissing him with an urgency that carried them over to the couch.
A half hour later, Karp and Marlene walked back into their loft holding hands. “We were beginning to think that perhaps you’d decided to go get Zak on your own,” Jojola said.
“How do you like your studio?” Tran asked.
“How did you know?” Karp asked.
“Easy. It’s my construction company doing the work.”
“Well, in that case, I’d like to talk to you about completion dates…missed completion dates, that is.”
“Maybe if you weren’t so picky with the paint colors and carpeting we might have—”
“Gentlemen,” Marlene interrupted, “can we take this up some other time. I believe we have a son and a city to rescue.”
Ten minutes later they were ready to go. The guns and other equipment had been repacked and taken to a van that was waiting outside. While the others trooped off down the stairs, Marlene said good-bye to Karp and Giancarlo, who’d emerged sleepy-eyed and in tears.
“Don’t go,” Giancarlo wept.
“I have to go get your brother, honey,” Marlene said. “He sent you to get help; we can’t let him down, can we?”
Giancarlo shook his head and crowded in against his father, who wrapped his arm around his son’s shoulders. “Just promise me you’ll come back,” he sobbed.
Marlene looked up and into her husband’s eyes. “I promise,” she said. She turned to go, giving a silent hand signal to Gilgamesh, who jumped up and bounded out the door ahead of her.
“Momma!” Giancarlo yelled, but she was gone.
Fifteen minutes later, a white van pulled up in an alley across the street from the theater. Nine people and one very large dog jumped out and headed into a side door of the older apartment building that faced the theater and had been opened by a young Vietnamese man in the uniform of a New York City police officer. A few minutes later, they were all safely in a dark room looking out at their target.
“Two men out front,” said a second young Vietnamese man, who was also dressed as a cop. “We don’t think they are using radios to communicate with those inside because we’ve seen them using hand signals. There is another man just inside the doors. He apparently asks those who enter for a password, which may be problematic as it makes sense that they have some sort of video surveillance unit inside the theater to watch the front. Once someone goes in, they don’t come back out, at least not this way, so this must be their access to the tunnels.”
“Well done, Minh,” Tran said. He turned to the others. “So it appears we will have to fight our way in, which will take our element of surprise.”
“Maybe not,” Jojola said. He’d been thinking about his dreams. Charlie Many Horses rarely spoke to him unless there was a good reason. “Remember what the bear said,” he said aloud.
“What?” Marlene asked.
“What the bear said,” Jojola repeated. “Lucy, what was that Arabic response?”
“Wa alaikum salaam?”Lucy replied.
“Yes, now give that to me again,” Jojola said.
After he’d repeated it until Lucy gave him a nod, Jojola turned to the others. “Okay, here’s my plan; if you have a better one, speak up.”
A few minutes later, the two men outside the theater watched an old bum who stood across the street facing them. The man’s long hair and beard were matted and he wore a filthy Santa Claus suit with high-top tennis shoes. He’d been standing there for an hour, just watching them; their shouts telling him to move on had done nothing
. Only now did he say something, and in a voice that seemed to bounce off the nearby buildings:
“AND BEHOLD, A PALE HORSE. AND THE NAME OF HIM WHO SAT ON IT WAS DEATH, AND HADES FOLLOWED WITH HIM. AND POWER WAS GIVEN TO THEM OVER A FOURTH OF THE EARTH TO KILL WITH SWORD, WITH HUNGER, WITH DEATH, AND WITH THE BEASTS OF THE EARTH.”
“Go away, crazy man,” one of the guards shouted, but he was distracted when his comrade tugged on his elbow and nodded to a man who was walking toward them. Their job was to watch for sudden increases in interest from people watching the theater or police activity. They’d grown more nervous as people filtered toward Times Square, but most of the celebrators had skirted the construction zone cones and yellow tape in front of the theater by crossing to the other side of the street. The stranger ducked under the tape, nodded to them conspiratorially, and hurried up the steps and into the theater.
“Must be a brother from the Philippines,” one of the men said to the other. “An ugly people, if you ask me.”
“Maybe. I saw some who looked like him when I was fighting for the jihad in Chechnya,” the second man replied. “But he looks like a fighter, so I’m glad to have him on our side. Can you see if he made it past Ahmad?”
“He’s giving him the password now.”
Inside the theater’s front door, Ahmad, the same large Yemeni who’d confronted the twins, stepped in front of John Jojola. “A salaam alaikum,” he said.
“Wa alaikum salaam,”Jojola replied.
The big man relaxed. “Why are you so late?” he asked.
“I’m supposed to report on the crowds,” Jojola said, nodding in the general direction of Times Square.
“Well, you better hurry; they’re almost finished with our little surprise for the infidels.”
Jojola hurried in, glancing at his watch. He had three minutes to find the surveillance equipment. He saw a door marked Employees Only and, on a hunch, opened it and went up the stairs. Sitting at a monitor in what would otherwise have been the theater’s technical booth were two sleepy Middle Eastern men.
“A salaam alaikum,”he said.
“Wa alaikum salaam,”they replied. “What are you doing here? You should be in the tunnel. There’re only three hours left.”
“Charlie Many Horses sent me with a message,” Jojola said.
“Charlie who? What message?”
“Charlie said to say, ‘Fuck you, you scumbag,’” Jojola snarled, drawing his knife from its sheath and lashing out with a foot that caught one of the men in the throat, propelling him into a wall.
The second man reacted by reaching for the radio headset he’d removed after Jojola got past Ahmad. But Jojola pinned his hand to the table with the knife. The man’s scream was cut short by the bullet Jojola put in his temple with the small .380 handgun with silencer he’d secreted in a boot.
Jojola turned to the other man, who sat with his back against the wall, trying to breathe through a crushed larynx. “Happy New Year,” Jojola said, pumping two rounds into his skull. He then whipped out the radio headset from his pants pocket, flipped the switch, and said, “Let’s go.”
Outside, a woman accompanied by a large dog came jogging down the sidewalk toward the two men out front. “Go around,” they shouted and waved.
“I don’t want my dog to get hit by a car,” Marlene shouted back, ignoring the fact that there were no cars on the street.
The two men looked at each other and shrugged, stepping back to allow the dog and woman to pass. “Nice doggy,” one said just as the woman made a movement with her hands. The next thing the man knew, the nice doggy had him by the throat. But there was hardly time for him to be frightened as with a shake of his head, the dog tore his throat out.
The second man backed away in horror but there was little to do but scream once before the dog was on him. Gilgamesh’s powerful jaws smashed through the arm the man had thrown up to protect himself, then bore in at the man’s neck. With a crunch, the man’s neck snapped.
Marlene looked up the steps just as a large black man emerged from the doors drawing a gun. “Help me,” she cried. “My dog’s gone crazy.”
“Stand back,” the man yelled, waving her out of his line of fire at the ferocious beast that was killing his comrades. Then a surprised look came over the man’s face and his gun clattered to the ground; he groped once at the hunting knife that protruded from his back and then collapsed.
Jojola appeared and wrenched his knife from the dying man and dragged the body inside. At the same moment, the white van pulled up in front of the theater and the rest of the team jumped out and hurried up the stairs, carrying several suitcases, except for the two Vietnamese “police officers” who quickly hauled the bodies of the two guards into the van.
“Nice doggy,” one of them said to Gilgamesh, who wagged his tail as blood dripped from his jowls. There was a sharp whistle and the dog turned and ran up the stairs, following his mistress and the others into the theater.
The two faux police officers set up traffic cones around the front of the theater and van, which they then festooned with crime scene tape.
The two officers then sprinted into the building.
The group made their way into the basement, Tran’s sappers easily taking out two guards at the entrance to a hole that had been dug in the foundation and led into an older sewer line. Electric lights had been strung along the main route, past side tunnels and holes in the walls where the brickwork had collapsed. Jojola noted tracks from many men as well as motorized vehicles. “Carrying something heavy,” he said, “probably how they brought the barrels into the tunnel.”
The electric lights ran out at a particular large hole in the sewer line but the tracks led through it into a large, dark cavern. The team put on their night-vision goggles and proceeded through with Tran’s men, Jojola, and Gilgamesh on point.
The team had stopped to discuss their next move when Gilgamesh began growling at the dark space in front of them, and then at places on each side. Where there had been no one, suddenly the goggles’ infrared sensors began picking up figures moving in the shadows.
“We’re surrounded,” Marlene said. The team formed a circle, guns bristling and pointed at the people moving in the dark.
“There must be a hundred of them,” Ned whispered. “Do we shoot?”
“No,” Lucy said. “I think we’ve found who we’re looking for…or he found us.”
The figures closed in around them and now the team could pick out individual faces—strange, emaciated, hollow-eyed faces, many disfigured or covered by sores—and made more ghastly by the green imaging of the goggles. They wore an assortment of clothing that appeared to have been scavenged from Dumpsters as well as more primitive robes and sack cloths. They carried weapons although these, too, were makeshift—a few guns, spears, knives, and even clubs.
Two of them, both wearing hooded robes that covered their faces, stepped forward. “So we meet one last time at the end of all things,” the taller of the two said and threw back his hood.
“David,” Lucy cried.
“Hello, Lucy.” He smiled but only briefly before his face grew grave again. “You shouldn’t have come, unless it is your wish to die here with us.”
“We might die, but first we have to stop these evil people from setting off that bomb,” Lucy replied.
“I’m afraid I can’t let you do that,” Grale said. “I…we’ve decided that this is the will of God. Jesus’s kingdom on Earth cannot be established until the last battle and this will be the beginning of it.”
“How can you say that when it means tens of thousands of people will die?” Lucy asked. “Innocent people, David. What happened to the good man who used to work in the Catholic soup kitchens and championed the poor?”
“Every man has to follow the path God has set for him,” Grale replied. “I am just an instrument of the Lord. I have hunted the demons in the depths below the Sodom of our times, but they are gathering in ever greater numbers. This explosion will a
lso destroy them. I know it may be hard to understand, dear Lucy, but what is it if thousands die but the world and mankind are saved?”
“You’re crazy, David,” Marlene said. “Who are you to say what God intends?”
“I know what I know, Marlene,” Grale said. “We will not try to stop these men.”
“Then step aside and let us pass,” Marlene replied. “If we succeed then that, too, would be God’s will.”
Grale shook his head. “I will not allow it. This is the moment the Bible speaks of.”
“Then you and your people will die. My son is in there, and I’m going to go get him.”
“Did you ever wonder why you named your child Isaac? The child born to be sacrificed to God,” Grale shouted. He raised his knife like Abraham at the altar and his eyes flashed insanely. “Leave now, while there is time to enjoy your family and lives before the end of days. But this is my kingdom and it is my will that shall be done.”
The small band raised their guns and prepared to be charged by Grale and his people. But Lucy walked up to Grale and slapped him so hard the sound echoed in the cavern and dropped him to a knee in front of her.
“That’s my baby brother in there, David,” she screamed into his shocked face. “If you don’t help, I’ll hate you forever.” She slapped him again, which knocked him to his hands and knees and set the Mole People to muttering and looking at each other and their downed leader for some sign of what to do.
At first there was no response. Grale’s head remained down. Then his thin shoulders started to shake and a strange sound came from him. It took Lucy and the others a minute to realize that it was the sound of laughter.
Grale looked up and rose to his knees with tears streaming down his face. He was laughing so hard that he grabbed his old wound in pain. But the mad light was gone from his eyes. “Oh, God, Lucy,” he said. “I tell you we’re standing on the edge of the abyss, the end of the world, and you tell me you’re going to hate me forever? The irony is just too delicious.” He looked around at the Mole People nearest to him, who fidgeted, unsure of whether they were supposed to join in the laughter or kill the up-worlders. “Well, I certainly can’t have that weighing over me for all of eternity. Now can I?”
Fury (The Butch Karp and Marlene Ciampi Series Book 17) Page 45
