“Just take the two green wires out of the back of each of the detonators,” she said. “But they have to be unscrewed—that’s what takes a while.”
Jon listened to them moving around in the room, visualizing their panicked fingers trying to turn thin casings as fast as they could in the cramped little space, and feeling a sense of utterly helpless dread.
“Takes a while, for sure,” Halladay grunted as he continued the frantic work. “You’re not kidding.…”
“What’s the timer say?” Jon finally blurted out, unable to hold it in anymore.
“Don’t wanna take the time to look at it,” Amira responded through heavy breathing. “I did the ones close to it first, and moved away. I’ll check if I can.”
Moments that seemed like minutes passed, until Amira finally spoke again.
“It’s at thirty-nine seconds,” she said.
“Can you get all of them in time?” Jon asked, and then pictured them looking around in desperation.
“Not even close,” Halladay said.
“Get the hell out of there!” Jon screamed.
It sounded to Jon like they’d started running—he couldn’t tell for sure—but right after that it sounded like a geyser had sprung up from hell itself, and the line went dead.
Even though the restaurant was far away from the blast, the walls and floor were jarred violently enough to throw glasses and dishes off some of the tables.
Jon covered himself briefly, afraid the roof might fall in. When it didn’t, he let loose with a string of profanities and looked up again at the stained-glass ceiling, this time with anger. He vowed to put that God back on the shelf, or better yet, cast him into a pit.
27
Jon’s vengeful thoughts soon transitioned from a God he had never seen to the real live people who were behind the various crimes he had now uncovered. Politics didn’t concern him enough to be confused or distracted by their motives, but he did care about justice, and he knew that it was due for Gant and the two remaining mercenaries. He also knew that Render and Mayor King should face the consequences of their actions. And he was worried about what Williams was apparently doing under the Flatiron Building, mostly because of the innocent people in that area, and the fact that Mallory was one of them.
He wasn’t sure what, but he needed to do something quickly.
He didn’t have a car, because Amira had driven them and the keys were with her when the Below blew up. So he went with a gut feeling again, and called Ari Hegde as he got Shinsky up and ready to move outside. Jon knew that Hegde and Dixon were sympathetic to GS, but was counting on his guess that, like much of the MPD, they were more loyal to Render than to Gant. He also knew that whatever their politics might be, cops were usually devoted to other police, and the two Chaos Crimes officers wouldn’t want their friends at the Flatiron endangered.
“We’re on our way right now,” Hegde said when Jon asked him if he was near the blast. “Almost there.”
“I’ll be outside John’s Pizza on West Forty-Fourth,” Jon said. “I have one of the killers in custody, and a lot of info you’ll want to know.”
When Hegde said they would come to him, Jon hung up and directed Shinsky toward the front entrance of the restaurant and out onto the street. He wanted to be outside when the two cops arrived, so at least there would be other people around if his gut feeling was wrong and things went south.
The first thing he noticed when he stepped outside was the emerging daylight. The storm was over, and it had obviously done what was predicted by clearing out most of the remaining “black smoke clouds,” as they had been called. There was still a thin layer of gray clouds on the east side of the sky, but the sun was shining through them much like it would normally before the nuclear night had fallen. Since it had just risen and was near the horizon, however, the many tall buildings of Manhattan blocked it from hitting most of the streets directly. Seeing that, Jon remembered that the NYU professors had said it would likely be an hour or more after sunrise before the Dayfall would cause the apocalyptic effects they had predicted.
Even though Jon knew they had been paid to say all that, he wondered now if they had been right about the effects, but wrong about the timing, and whether something unusual was going on. One reason was Shinsky’s reaction to the daylight, even though most of it was still blocked by the buildings. The big criminal was rolling his head and pressing his eyes tightly together, and his body jerked as he tried unsuccessfully to lift his manacled hands up from his back to shield himself from the light. At first Jon thought this might be the kind of effect the NYU professors had predicted, but he himself didn’t feel it, and he realized that it could simply be a natural response for someone who had lived for so long without any sunlight. This interpretation was confirmed as Shinsky soon began to adjust to the partial daylight, and calmed down considerably.
Another reason for Jon’s initial concerns about a possible “Dayfall Effect,” however, was the flurry of activity he saw on the street around him. Crowds of people and cars were moving in nervous waves away from where the explosion had occurred, while cops and emergency workers were trying to get to it. But although the clamor of sirens and panicked voices was certainly chaotic, it wasn’t necessarily apocalyptic. Jon realized that this was probably what would happen anytime there was a huge explosion on a street in Manhattan, and he remembered that the three killers had done this and much more to cause the mayhem at the earlier times when the sun had come out.
So Jon concluded that the daylight itself probably wasn’t causing anything unusual, at least not yet, and he turned his thoughts to what he would do if it didn’t go well when Hegde and Dixon arrived. He figured he could run back into John’s Pizza and the underground, since they probably didn’t know about the access point there, or how to navigate the tunnels. He looked at the map of the underground on his phone to see where he could go down there to elude any pursuers, and he reloaded his gun in case he had to slow them down or stop them.
The two cops from the Chaos Crimes division soon arrived, with several other police cars in tow. They all parked on the street outside the restaurant, but Hegde and Dixon parked closest to him, and were the only ones that approached him when they got out of the car. The other officers either stayed in theirs, or stepped out among the migrating crowds in order to be available to assist them, or direct them out of the way of emergency vehicles that were passing on their way to the scene of the explosion.
Jon and the handcuffed Shinsky met Hegde and Dixon about halfway to their car.
“Who’s this?” Hegde asked, gesturing to the big hairy man.
“He’s one of your Chaos Crimes perps,” Jon said. “Congratulations for apprehending him.” This was the bone he was throwing out in the hope that it would induce the two cops to help him out. “We need to take him to the Flatiron now, not just to book him but also to protect him from some very powerful people who want him dead.”
“We don’t want anything to do with that,” Hegde responded, looking at his partner.
“Nothing,” Dixon said, shaking her head.
“Okay, listen,” Jon said quickly, going to Plan B. “There’s another reason we have to go to the Flatiron right now. Another of your perps is still on the loose, the one responsible for the arson during the daylight hours, and I have it on good intel that he’s laying a huge amount of explosives right under our headquarters.” This was an appeal to whatever altruism and cop loyalty Jon hoped they still had in them. “If we don’t stop it, this will be the worst chaos crime yet, by far.”
This approach seemed to work better, as the two officers looked meaningfully at each other and pulled one another back closer to their car to confer. As they did, Jon could hear an APB being broadcast over their car radio and whatever portable ones they were wearing. He couldn’t make out most of the words because of the noise on the street, but he could have sworn he heard his name spoken more than once. Maybe he was just inferring it, however, from the fact that Hegde and
Dixon glanced back at him repeatedly as they listened, and the bad feeling he got from their facial expressions.
When the APB ended, they rested their hands on the guns at their waists and approached Jon and Shinsky cautiously, stopping at a safer distance this time.
“That was from the Mayor’s office, by way of the Commissioner,” Hegde said, looking hard at Jon. “Seems that you are the prime suspect in the Dayfall murders now, and what’s worse you just blew up two fellow cops. Amira Naseem and Frank Halladay are both dead, and according to reports you were in the room with them just before they died, and were even talking to them on the phone when they bought it. What kind of sick—”
“Total bullshit,” said Jon, in shock despite the fact that he should have seen this coming. He looked at Shinsky, who was the only witness to the truth of what happened.
“If you have something to say, you better say it.” This was from the normally laconic Dixon, adding to Jon’s surprise. “You’re pegged as a cop killer, so as soon as someone in uniform recognizes you, you’re a dead man.”
She looked around at the various officers in the vicinity, none of whom were looking their way. Yet.
“I’m being framed by the Mayor,” Jon said. “Shinsky can confirm it.” He looked sideways and up at the big man, who nodded his head briskly. “Look, you guys can believe it about her, can’t you? After all, you’re GS sympathizers, right?”
This time Hegde spoke up.
“The APB also said that all GS agents have been directed to look for you and exercise extreme prejudice against you.”
Jon’s heart sank, but then the Indian man added, “Listen, man, I don’t believe everything I hear, especially when it stacks up so nicely, but I’m gonna have to take your gun.”
Hoping that the two cops might be objective enough to escort him and Shinsky to the Flatiron, or at least check into all of this more, he reluctantly handed his gun over to Hegde.
And then he caught the eye of a uniformed cop across the street who was looking right at him, and then down at his cell phone. The Blue Shirt gestured to a few of his friends spread across the street, and they all started trotting purposefully in his direction, hands on their guns.
“Oh, shit,” Jon muttered, backing away slightly, and then one or two of the approaching cops drew their weapons. Hegde and Dixon turned away from Jon and Shinsky and spread their hands to slow the others down, but the guns kept coming up and out, so Jon backed up more and thought hard about whether he could make it back into the restaurant without getting shot in the back.
Salvation came from the unlikeliest of places, as Shinsky suddenly decided to fulfill his own death wish. The addict/assassin screamed primally at the top of his lungs and barreled ahead into the middle of Hegde, Dixon, and the other oncoming cops. His wild charge effectively distracted them all for a few long moments, in which they riddled him with a hail of bullets while being careful not to shoot one another. In the time it took for his large lifeless body to finally crash down onto the asphalt, Jon had already disappeared inside the restaurant and sent up a quick prayer of thanks to the suicidal criminal.
Jon dashed down the stairs before any pursuers had even entered the pizzeria, used the key to get through the door in the basement, and made sure it was locked when he was on the other side. He was assuming that none of the cops pursuing him would have access to the underground, but just to make sure, he headed along the tunnel in the opposite direction from the Below where the explosion had taken place and found a dark spot to wait. He turned off his flashlight and watched to see if anyone came from the direction of the door, or from the ruined tunnel beyond it.
No one did, so Jon leaned back against a wall and thought for a moment. Then he pulled out the phone the Mayor had given him, and tried to call Hegde again. But the phone wouldn’t connect this time. He tried to call 911 and some numbers he knew outside of the city, but none of them worked. Finally, he saw the icon for Mayor King on the main screen and tapped that.
“Despite your best efforts,” he said when she answered the call, “I’m alive and well, and I will come to get you.”
“You shouldn’t have called those two cops and told them the suspect was still alive,” she said. “At least not on a device I control. But I was hoping you’d reach out to me.… I feel you deserve to know what’s happened since you did do the job I brought you here to do. You solved the case and gave me what I needed to get Render out of the race. Thank you.”
“So why does everyone want to kill me now?” Jon asked, though he could guess the answer.
“I confronted Render with the taped confession of the killer, and he agreed to back out of the referendum vote tomorrow, in exchange for secrecy about his involvement. Even though he wasn’t actually behind the murders, he would still be implicated in the public opinion because of his participation in the fraud. Render also demanded that Gant be spared any exposure.… He’s appalled at what his lieutenant did, but the man is a lifelong friend and Render wants him to be able to leave the city without prosecution.”
“And I know about the crimes both of them have committed,” Jon said, “not to mention yours in telling me to kill Shinsky. So you all need me out of the way, and it’s extra convenient for you to pin all the murders on me.”
“It’s nothing personal, Jon. You’re simply being sacrificed for the greater good. Isn’t that what you came here for … to make this city a better place?”
“What happened to Render’s commitment to protecting life in the city?”
“His love for his company and for Gant is greater than your one life, I’m afraid.”
“Not to mention his love for himself,” Jon said. “And what about your gratefulness to me, for what I’ve done?”
“I’m afraid my love for the city outweighs that consideration.”
“And yourself,” he responded angrily.
“Why don’t you just turn yourself in, Jon?” the Mayor said calmly. “If you don’t, we’ll have to find out who your girlfriend is, and make her an accomplice in your crimes. Which won’t be hard.”
Jon winced at the mention of Mallory, but was glad that King didn’t know her name yet. And the plan he was leaning toward began solidifying further in his mind.
“Fuck you,” he said.
“Okay, have it your way.” The Mayor sighed. “With all of the MPD and GS wanting your blood, you’d better not show your face on the surface.”
“That’s why you left my phone on,” Jon said, looking down at it and realizing this for the first time. “And were hoping I’d call you. So you can track me.”
“Smart boy. Well, I have to write a speech to give in an hour, when Render and I will be making a joint announcement about his withdrawal, and about how all the scary theories about Dayfall were fabricated. Everyone will see that their fears were unfounded and the daylight presents no danger to the city, and they’ll all know that I can keep them safe as their Mayor for a long time. Thank God there’s no term limit anymore.”
“There’s always a limit,” Jon said, and hung up the phone.
He frantically studied the map of the underground for a few more moments, memorizing selective parts of it as well as he possibly could in a short amount of time. Then he dropped the phone on the cement below him and stomped on it violently until it was in pieces.
28
The most self-preserving option Jon had at this point was to use the underground key to try and get out of the city somehow, find some federal agents and leverage them in an attempt to get protection while he worked with them to bring down the Mayor and Render.
The problem was that the pyro killer named Williams had taken enough explosives out of the Below to blow up the whole Flatiron District. That meant a lot of cops and other civil servants would die, and even though he didn’t know most of them, he had taken vows to do everything in his power to protect them. He thought about what Halladay and Amira had done, how they had willingly sacrificed themselves for a lot of people they didn
’t know. And he thought about the likely danger to Mallory, who was working in that area, and how great it would be to have the chance to get to know her better.
With all that in mind, the decision was not really that hard, and then it was just a question of how to get to the Flatiron. He didn’t want to head directly south in the tunnels under Broadway, because some of the lines were still in use, and there would be too many people and police and GS agents along that route. They all knew where he was right now, because of the call on the Mayor’s phone, so they would expect him to travel that route and “come to get her” as he had promised. So he decided to travel east along the 7 line, which was unused because its tunnel to Queens under the East River had flooded in the River Rise. When he reached the maze of tubes below Grand Central Station, he could switch to other unused tracks like the 4 or 5 lines, which also led down to the Flatiron District. From what he had been able to tell from studying the underground map, this plan would take him fifteen or twenty minutes out of his way, but would avoid the more significant dangers of the direct route.
Thankfully he was able to find his way to the unused tunnel of the 7 line without going back up to the surface. He had seen the route on the map twice, once when he was waiting for the other cops in front of John’s Pizza, and the other when he’d studied it before destroying the phone. And he was even more grateful that there was no one in the stairs and hallways leading to that tunnel, or inside of it when he got there. So he jogged alongside the tracks heading toward Grand Central, shining the flashlight periodically in front of him to make sure there were no major obstructions. He didn’t want to use it too much, because if there happened to be someone ahead of him they might see it. Police and GS employees would be suspicious of any activity they noticed in the underground, because that was his last known location.
The jogging reduced his travel time to the Grand Central area by about half, and in less than ten minutes he started to see some light up ahead. He hugged the side of the tunnel as he approached it, and then peered through a small bright window in a door that was a part of the wall at the end of the tunnel, which had been erected to seal it now that it was in disuse. There was a train concourse on the other side, populated by commuters and a few Gotham Security uniforms standing guard at several places in it.
Dayfall Page 18
