Early Warning

by Michael Walsh

  The quickest way to the river was back the way he came. There he could wash off both the shit and the stench of Raymond’s martyrdom, cleansing himself of all the sins and getting ready for one more kill.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  The East River

  Kohanloo’s boat slipped in and out of the traffic. He kept radio silence, which was something he didn’t intend to break until the last possible second, to locate his contact in Red Hook.

  All things considered, the operation had been a success. They had struck a mighty blow at the Great Satan. Certain financial investments he had placed both for himself and for the mullahs would now pay off handsomely. There was the matter of the score he had to settle with Skorzeny, but that could wait until after the hero’s welcome he was undoubtedly going to get when he got back to Tehran.

  He looked at the radio. It didn’t look like much, but he had to assume that it was state of the art, that it would do its job, that it would make the contact as promised and planned. He almost lifted the receiver and cranked it, just to see if it was working, but decided against it. Patience was one of the great virtues, and curious, sinful man had such a hard time understanding that.

  He was lost in these thoughts for a moment until he gradually became aware of the thwack thwack thwack of an approaching helicopter, the beats growing louder. He did his best not to panic immediately. New York was filled with helicopters-police helicopters, private helicopters, news helicopters, sightseeing helicopters, now even military helicopters. Perhaps all the Brothers had been killed; perhaps the city was being reopened.

  He glanced skyward. No visual, but the sound was growing louder. It was also growing lower…

  “What a fucking moron,” said Lannie Saleh. “I mean, come on, it’s not like he’s obvious or anything.” He finished assembling the Barrett and got ready to hand it to Byrne.

  “First rule of police work, Lannie,” said Byrne, moving into position. “If criminals weren’t stupid, the cops would never solve any crime.” He shouted over at “Martin Ferguson”-“Can you take us down a little lower? I want to get a visual on him if possible.”

  “We’ll spook him.”

  “I don’t know what area of law enforcement you’re in, pal, but I’m a New York City cop, with a real live NYPD badge in my pocket and a formerly regulation.38 sidearm. I shoot some civilian and even under a state of emergency my career is meat and I’m lucky to be pulling down half-pension on Fire Island. Lannie?”

  Lannie angled the computer toward Byrne’s field of vision. They’d downloaded all known pictures of Kohanloo, and their mysterious benefactor had sent them a ton of surveillance photos as well, and had kept them coming until the transmission had suddenly gone dead a few hours ago. No matter, with enhancements, they knew every inch of his face the way his mother would. With other software, they could calculate his body mass, his weight, his height, then do a full-scale mockup of what he would look like in various positions, measured against objects they all knew. There was no chance, zero, that in person he would turn out to be shorter than they thought, or fatter. They’d know him in a dark alley. All they needed was one good visual and…pow! He’d be sleeping with the fishes.

  They had taken off from the Pan Am Building-everybody still called it that-and circled across the river, wheeling over Queens to come around over Randall’s Island, with the whole sweep of the river heading south before them. They were over a place where the ocean tides and the waters of the Long Island Sound collided with and the estuarial waters of the Hudson River and its effluent, the Harlem River. Sailors had long hated this part of the riverway, with its treacherous eddies and rocky outcroppings. No wonder it was called Hell Gate.

  “Take us down,” ordered Byrne.

  “Over or under?” asked Danny.

  “The bridges, you mean?”

  Danny nodded. “Under is better. You want to see his face, I can let you shake his hand.”

  “That’s what the scope is for,” said Byrne, patting it.

  “You’re the boss.”

  The chopper rose almost straight up in the air as it neared the Queensboro Bridge and both Byrne and Lannie almost lost their lunches. “Under’s better. A little trickier, but leave that to me.”

  Kohanloo saw the chopper suddenly peel off and shoot into the air as he approached the Queensboro Bridge. He breathed a little easier when he shot beneath it and didn’t see the damn thing. So it was a false alarm after all. Good. At the speed he was doing, Red Hook was less than 45 minutes away. He was going to make it.

  Danny rocked the chopper hard to the left as he ascended, then leveled off and headed straight across the river for Manhattan and the buildings of the East Side.

  “What the hell are you doing?” shouted Byrne. “I would have had him.”

  “Not under these bullshit RoEs,” shouted Danny. “You want a face-to-face shot, I’ll give it to you. But you boys are going to have to get used to riding with the pro from Dover, and that means no barfing, even if it is your chopper.”

  “Hold me down, Lannie,” shouted Byrne, elbowing his way forward to get the barrel of the Barrett into position. He had no intention of dying by falling out of a helicopter over the East River, but he also had to make his shots count. The first one would go through the engine block-at a relatively short distance the Barrett could blow right through it. It would be as if the boat had had a heart attack. The next round would go through the radio, if he could locate it quickly enough, and the third, once they had a positive ID on the scanner, would go through Mr. Kohanloo.

  It would have been possible, in fact, for him to have hooked up the sight with the computer and wirelessly relayed the images he saw for immediate ID, but in the rush no one had thought of that. Byrne was still old school, and trusted his eyes a lot more than pixels. Still, it was a blunder, so he’d better make the shots count and hope nobody asked about it later.

  Ferguson ’s skills were amazing. He keep the chopper low as they barreled down Second Avenue, darting in and out of the side streets in order to catch a glimpse of the river, and of the bogus Red Cross boat they were chasing, but without letting their man get the wind up.

  Byrne knew just where he wanted to take him now: between the Manhattan and Brooklyn bridges. They’d let him come out from under the Williamsburg Bridge, dodge the old Navy Yard and then trap him between the bridges, where they could dispatch him.

  “You’re sure you can put this crate under the bridges, no sweat?” yelled Byrne.

  “Ask me something difficult,” smiled Ferguson.

  Byrne thought for a moment. “Okay, where’s the best place to eat in Bayonne?”

  Over his shoulder, Ferguson flipped him the bird. The truth was, Byrne didn’t know. His old partner, Vinnie Mancuso, would have known, but Vinnie was sunning himself down at Rehoboth, ogling the pretty Delaware girls in their bathing suits, and thinking about getting fat and happy in early retirement.

  The chopper dove, and this time Byrne really did barf.

  You could mark your passage by the bridges, thought Kohanloo, and here was the Williamsburg, which would be followed in quick succession by the two more famous structures, the Manhattan and the Brooklyn bridges. How pleasing it would be in Allah’s sight some day to see them all collapse into the river, never to be rebuilt, their destruction, like that of the rest of the city, to be celebrated for centuries in the tales of the people, in the lore of the ummah. Truth to tell, Kohanloo was tiring of all this Western decadence. It made him feel sinful and dirty; it meant accepting the world on their terms, with their disgusting food and their whorish women. When he got back to Iran, he would repent, whip himself bloody on the feast of Ashura, and make everything in readiness for the coming of the Twelfth Imam.

  What a surprise they would get, no matter what happened to him. The fools may have been able to take down a handful of Brothers, but not unless Allah had cursed him and his work would they ever think to look for, much less find, the little parting gift he had
left them, the thing that required the blinding of the cursed CTU computers for just long enough to bring it ashore and take it to the last place where they would ever think to look for it-in one of their beloved hospitals, where its low-level radioactivity would never be detected by routine flyover surveillance and where it would stay, asleep, like the Holy Imam himself in the well at Qom, until such time as the Day of Reckoning was decreed, and then it would come alive and go off in a roar and a rain of holy fire.

  And to think it had been delivered to River House by this very craft, slipped into a van and deposited for safekeeping at the Jew hospital, Mt. Sinai, where they were so lax they openly allowed the Brothers to work as doctors, technicians, and orderlies. The Brotherhood of Man meant much to both cultures, but with a very different meaning of brotherhood for the Faithful, as the Chosen would soon find out. No matter what happened to him, whether he lived, Allah willing, or died a martyr, that in the end was why he had chosen to come. He had to see it, this miracle, this proof of the might and power of Allah and his divine wrath.

  “Showtime, boss.”

  Byrne moved into position. “Sit on my legs,” he said.

  They had circled round and were coming back up from the south. Since the East River was not really a river but an estuary, buffeted by the Sound and the waters of New York Harbor, there really was no up or down in the traditional sense, just as the waters of the Hudson sometimes ran north when the tide was high, the salt water engaging with the fresh water coming down from Albany. New York City had always been a swirl of misdirection.

  They were south of the Brooklyn Bridge, and high in the air when they saw the Red Cross boat emerge from beneath the Williamsburg. “Hang on, boys,” shouted Danny, and then the chopper dropped straight down, in a controlled dive that knocked the wind from Byrne’s lungs. Inside his coat, he could feel his father’s.38 slipping from the unbuttoned holster and start to slide. He made a mental note never to go up in a helicopter again, not if he could help it.

  Down they plunged until, at what seemed like the last possible second, Danny leveled her off and then, still heading lower but this time at a proper diagonal, darted under the Brooklyn Bridge.

  With his newfound piety, Arash Kohanloo decided he didn’t much care what happened. It would, however, be good to know whether his radio actually did work, whether there was as compatriot waiting for him in Red Hook. He took the receiver off the hook and cranked the ancient set-and he was, he had to admit, not terribly surprised when nothing at all happened. He was on a suicide mission after all.

  He cursed himself for not having shaved his body, as the law prescribed, for not making the proper ablutions a holy warrior should make, but there was nothing to be done about it now. Perhaps he could ditch the craft on the Brooklyn shore and make a run for it. There were plenty of Brothers in Brooklyn, and not just along Atlantic Avenue anymore, but everywhere; since 9/11 the city’s population of Arabs and Muslims had increased and grown more visible, in quiet celebration of the achievements of Atta and his men, and also in the anticipation of the glory that was surely to come when the crescent flew over City Hall, as someday fly it must.

  There was the Manhattan Bridge. He’d land there. He steered the boat sharply to port and made for the shore. He prayed to Allah, prayed for a sign that his decision was the right one.

  “What the fuck? Where is he?” In the gloom beneath the great bridge, they had lost the boat. “Lannie, find me this fucker, now.”

  Lannie was still hanging on to Byrne. “What do you want me to do, boss?”

  “Track him on GPS, radio, whatever. He must be emitting some kind of signal. Just find the bastard.”

  Lannie hesitated. “Okay, but I have to let go of you a little, boss.”

  Byrne braced himself against one of the seats as best he could. “Make it quick, find the cocksucker and then let’s get him.”

  Still trying to hold on to Byrne with one hand while operating the computer with the other, Lannie punched some keys. His eyes rotated as he tried to anticipate the charts, the signals, the points on the graphs, anything. There-

  “I got him, boss. He’s making for the Brooklyn shore.”

  Danny heard that and throttled forward, the chopper responding to the master’s touch. But he also turned sharply to the right; Lannie lost his grip on Byrne, who slid forward. His gun fell out of his suit pocket, toward the open door.

  Byrne had a choice: the shot or his father’s pistol. For years he had carried that gun around with him like a cross, as a way of honoring his dad, but now he realized that the gun was just an inanimate object, something that long ago lost any and all meaning for his father, something in fact that had failed him in his moment of need. All these years Byrne had carried it in his memory, even used it in his memory, had shot his own half-brother with it.

  There was the boat. There was the man. Ferguson, or whoever the hell he was, needed to make another turn and get them head-on at the target. And then he would take him out. “Get me a clean shot!” he yelled.

  Lannie saw what was going to happen, but there was nothing he could do. He dropped the computer and grabbed both of Byrne’s legs. If the gun went, the gun went; the Boss would just have to get used to the 9 mm.

  Danny threw her into a hard turn, spun once as he gained full control of the aircraft, then dropped her down practically to the water itself. Damn, the man was as good as he said he was. Not that it was up to him to be as good as he said he was.

  The miracle appeared before him, floating like an angry, evil dragonfly above the surface of the choppy waters. Allah be praised! He would now show himself worthy of this great honor that had been granted him.

  Arash Kohanloo reached for an AK-47 and begin firing it at the approaching helicopter.

  The windscreen was bulletproof, but Francis Byrne was not. He had to make his shot. No need for ID now. Just take him out. Byrne squeezed the trigger, aiming for the hull.

  The 50-caliber round punched through the boat as if it wasn’t there, tearing through the hull and exiting out the back. But he had missed the engine block itself, and so the distance between them was closing rapidly.

  The shot had also given away Byrne’s position within the craft. He could feel the bullet whizzing by his head as the man trained his fire upon him. “Don’t you people ever give up?” he groused to no one in particular, then realized what he’d said. No time for apologies. He heard Lannie’s answer as he fired-

  “No, Boss-do the Irish?”

  This time, the shot hit the engine block square and the boat suddenly went dead in the water. Not motionless, though: its forward moment kept propelling it toward the chopper.

  “Want me to pull out, Captain?” shouted Danny. The man was fearless, Byrne would give him that. “You can get a clean shot from any angle.”

  Byrne shook his head. “Evasive action, but keep me lined up.”

  Danny didn’t bother to shout that evasive action was going to be sickening action, as he would be swinging the craft from side to side, moving her up and down like one of those low-riders the Mexican gangbangers back in L.A. used to cruise and bruise. “Hold on.”

  The Koala hopped. Kohanloo fired another burst. Byrne squeezed the trigger.

  Arash Kohanloo felt the bullet tear off his right arm. Not go through it, but tear it completely off. The AK-47, still on full auto, fell into the river. The pain made him delirious, the blood made him happy. He smiled and cheered and yelled at the man with the rifle. “Shoot me again! Shoot again, you dog! You coward! You cannot kill me, for I am a Brother. I go to immortality!”

  Lannie fed him another round. This one was greasy, slippery, and as Byrne looked down at his hand, he noticed it was bloody. “What the hell?”

  Lannie held up a small vial of viscous fluid. “Pig’s blood. I want you to send this bastard to hell for what he does to me and my people and my faith. I want him cursed for all eternity, the Shi’a swine.”

  Byrne tossed the round back to Aslan. “Save it
for somebody who really needs it,” he shouted. “I’m going to send him to hell the good old-fashioned Irish way. With one in the brain.”

  “Allahu Akbar!” shouted Kohanloo.

  “Fuck you,” muttered Byrne, and he fired the third shot.

  The recoil knocked his father’s sidearm to the lip of the door…

  For less than a tenth of a second the world moved in slow motion for Arash Kohanloo, as Allah himself slowed it to a crawl. Gone was the pain, and in its place came the certainty of knowing that heaven was his, that all he had to do was reach out and embrace it, embrace his fate, embrace his destiny.

  The round entered Kohanloo’s open mouth, blew out the back of his head and then, on its downward trajectory, punched a hole through the bottom of the boat. Quickly, it filled with water and began to sink.

  …and as Danny throttled forward to fly over the wrecked boat, the gun toppled out the door and into the East River.

  Byrne looked at Lannie: “Get down there, right now. Hurry.”

  Lannie hesitated. “You mean, retrieve the gun?’ He would if ordered. From this moment on he would do anything his captain asked him to do.

  “No, you dumb raghead. Get on that boat before the fucker sinks and grab what you can. Martin, can you put us-”

  Already done. They were right over the sinking craft. Lannie threw out the rope ladder and went over the side-

  “Get papers, equipment, whatever. Forget the gun. And him,” he said, indicating the corpse, “you leave for the fishes.”

  THREE DAYS LATER

  EPILOGUE

  Falls Church, Virginia

  Cautiously, Devlin disabled the security services on his old house in the near Virginia suburbs of Washington. He had not been in the house since the events of last year, had assumed in the wake of the FBI raid, he would have to blow it, which meant he painstakingly had to clear the charges to once more render it habitable.