The Eighth Trumpet (The Jared Kimberlain Novels)

by Jon Land

  Cathy Nu sighed nervously and went back to writing. “We’ll have to have men posted on almost every rooftop as well, then.”

  “Be difficult to handle all potential windows.”

  “Spotters from both ground level and above,” Cathy proposed. “Each with a particular grid to sweep.”

  “Fine, but there’s another possibility as well: detonation from a ground-level stimulus. Tell me about me people underneath the balloons.”

  “The handlers, you mean? Thirty-five to fifty people on each one, depending on its size and complexity. All volunteer Macy’s employees.”

  “Make sure there are sufficient numbers of police and security people sprinkled in for good measure. All should be equipped with walkie-talkies tuned to your channel.”

  They passed out of the tunnel and sunlight flooded the cab, stinging their eyes.

  “Forecast’s the same for tomorrow,” Cathy reported. “Only warmer.”

  “Let’s check out the route.”

  “This is the real starting line,” Cathy Nu told him as they stood at the corner of Central Park West and 77th Street. “The parade forms here and proceeds eighteen blocks to Columbus Circle. From there it veers onto Broadway and proceeds straight down it across Seventh Avenue to the finish line at 34th Street and Herald Square, the back of our store. Two and a half miles from start to finish.”

  “A million spectators per mile?”

  “With tomorrow’s forecast, it could be more.”

  “Give me an idea of the timing and organization,” Kimberlain said, ready to visualize it.

  “The floats, balloons, and bands are lined up separately, awaiting their signal to pull out into the parade as it proceeds down Central Park West. It’s quite a show in itself, watching it all evolve through the early hours. Anyway, clowns mostly fill in the gaps between the major displays, also serving to keep route delays to a minimum.”

  “What do you mean delays?”

  “Television dictates our schedule, for the most part. A number of bands and most of the floats stop at the finish line for a one- or two-minute performance. The rest of the parade is halted from around 36th Street back to protect against bunching.”

  “When is the lead of the procession scheduled to reach the finish line?”

  “Ten A.M., give or take five minutes.”

  “What does television do for the first hour?”

  “They cut back and forth between the starting line and Herald Square. Live entertainment, interviews with parade participants, lots of fluff basically to kill those minutes until the first of the parade reaches the cameras at Herald Square.”

  “Then no cameras follow the parade at the center.”

  “Not consistently. A few mobile cams, that’s all.”

  Kimberlain gazed ahead down the sprawling length of Central Park West. “Then we’ll be safe until ten o’clock at least. When are television ratings traditionally the highest?”

  “Between eleven and twelve. Could be as many as fifty million tuning in during that period.”

  Kimberlain almost shuddered at that comment, recalling fifty million to be the same number a Hashi killer had claimed would serve as witnesses.

  “That’s the hour the explosion will be planned for,” he said finally. “Optimum effect that way.” He walked a bit down from the starting line with Cathy at his side. “What else will happen by way of preparation tonight?”

  “To avoid possible snaring of the tethers, traffic lights will be removed and lampposts turned away from the streets.”

  “Blows one of my pet theories,” Kimberlain told her. “Thermal explosive detonators rigged into the streetlights. Turn them on all at the same time while the parade is passing and bang!”

  They continued walking, crossing over to the Central Park side of the street. Kimberlain’s eyes moved between the park grounds and the apartment and office buildings that towered over the scene across Central Park West. His feet grazed a steel grating which vibrated as a subway train passed beneath.

  “The subways run the whole route?”

  “Yes.”

  “And they’ll be active all day tomorrow?”

  She nodded. “With extra trains added.”

  “What are the chances of shutting them down?”

  “About the same as canceling the parade. With so many streets closed off and holiday parking rules in effect, it would be a disaster of a different kind to shut the system down on a day like tomorrow.”

  Kimberlain stopped and looked at her. “You want to talk about disasters, Cathy?” He hesitated long enough for another subway car to rumble past them. “Subway trains create a great deal of vibration. Assume the underside of Broadway along the route is packed with the C-12. When the vibrations reach their peak, perhaps increased by the weight of all those spectators, the explosives are detonated.”

  Cathy was writing again. “Police and transit personnel will be checking everywhere as soon as I get back to my desk.”

  “Have them check the subway ceilings too. Chunks and shards of asphalt being blown upward would be as deadly as shrapnel. C-12 could be packed in a way to imitate the effects of a localized earthquake.”

  More writing.

  “The point,” Kimberlain continued, “is that we’ve got to plan on two fronts: one, that they’ve somehow already got the plastique in place; and two, that their plan entails its not being present for us to find until the moments immediately prior to detonation. Which means advance security is all well and good, but the real cruncher is going to be those early hours of the parade.”

  “Is it possible they’ll call off the attack, knowing we’re onto it?” Cathy wondered.

  “No,” the Ferryman replied with total certainty, thinking of the mad obsession driving Jason Benbasset. “It’s not possible at all.”

  They walked silently for a long stretch. Pedestrian traffic thickened as they neared Columbus Circle, the sidewalks cluttered by the time they veered left onto Broadway. In his mind Kimberlain was visualizing the floats, balloons, and bands making their way toward the heart of midtown, enclosed and thus trapped by the buildings lining both sides. Starting at ten o’clock and stretching for two hours beyond that, all of Broadway down to Herald Square would be filled by the parade and the lines of spectators. He gazed up at the buildings again and thought of all the glass forming their windows being ruptured by the percussion of the vast C-12 blast. The effect would be akin to a billion darts fired down from the sky upon spectators crammed too close together to move along the entire Broadway stretch of the route.

  Cathy Nu had moved slightly ahead of him as they walked on, past the Marriott Marquis, the half-price ticket booth, the Newsday Building, and other landmarks Kimberlain stored in his head for future reference. At last the rear of Macy’s vast building rose up before him in Herald Square.

  “The parade ends here for each participant with a right turn and a brief stretch down 34th Street, where the process of dismantling for next year begins,” Cathy explained.

  “Let’s hope so,” said the Ferryman.

  “What do you think, Captain?”

  With night fully entrenched over the city, the Ferryman had briefed Captain Seven on all the security deployments and precautions that would be taken prior to and during the parade. As of now, two thousand security personnel were already on duty at the Macy’s warehouse in Hoboken, as well as along the entire route, on rooftops, and watching from windows, the greatest concentration centered at the starting line, where crews had already begun work. Before meeting the captain, Kimberlain had spoken again with Senator Thomas Brooks. Brooks had been unable to get through to the President until early Wednesday morning. It had taken the chief executive only a short time to confirm the existence of Outpost 10 and then to learn that all reinforcement efforts would be forestalled by a killer blizzard raging over the entire region.

  Meanwhile, the Rhode Island continued her deadly journey southward, continuing to avoid what had become a massive detection e
ffort, just as she was supposed to.

  “Can you come up with any chinks in the armor?” Kimberlain asked Seven.

  The captain had lowered himself to his knees and was sniffing at the sidewalk along Times Square.

  “This macadam’s new,” he said, gazing up. “I’d say not more than a week. Have it analyzed.” Back on his feet, he crossed dangerously close to the traffic streaking down Broadway. “And the white lane lines.”

  “What about them?”

  “Say our boys melted the C-12 into a liquid and treated it to come out white. Then they hit Broadway a few days ago disguised as the Department of Public Works and repainted the lines. Detonation could be ultrasonic or timer. Results the same.”

  “What else?”

  “Love the way you’re having all the contents of the balloons checked, but you forgot about the float tires. They gotta be inflated too, right? I’d check them just as close.”

  “Good idea.”

  “Of course. It’s mine.”

  “Fine, and if you’re done stroking your ego …”

  “I’d like to get something else stroked, and as I remember, Times Square is just the place.”

  “When all this is over, I’m buying,” Kimberlain told him.

  “Promises, promises.”

  “Anything more?”

  “All those ropes used to control, hold, and steer the balloons. Say you covered them with a clear liquid version of C-12 and really let it soak in. Ropes wouldn’t see sunlight again until the day of the parade. Could be rigged to be heat sensitive. Go boom! when the air hits a certain temperature and heats them up.”

  Kimberlain shook his head. “I don’t like it. They couldn’t depend on it being a warm or a sunny day.”

  “You’re right. I don’t like it either.”

  “You’ve got more, I assume.”

  Captain Seven shrugged. “What I’m out of is cannabis. Been so busy lately that I’ve neglected my bodily needs. How about working me up some from your police buddies?”

  “I like seeing you without smoke coming out of your eyes.”

  “You want me with a clear head, better get me some grass is what I’m saying. I’m gonna need the extra perception, ’cause the thing we gotta do, we gotta think of every little thing no matter how trivial it seems. See, the trouble is what we’re facing here is the fact that this fucked-up plan would have taken into consideration the possibility we would have found out about it. So every step we’re taking, they’d have expected us to take. Maybe they stay that one step ahead of us—a mile under the circumstances. So we look for more. We see every potential phase of this route as a potential weapon, and we see it the way they do, and when it’s over you use your new police friends to requisition some fresh lava bed stash for me out of the evidence lockers.” Then, after a pause, “We can’t stop the enemy from trying, Ferryman. We can only stop him from succeeding.”

  Lisa Eiseman caught up with Kimberlain just as he reached the parade starting point at Central Park West and 77th Street. As expected, a large crowd had gathered to view the inflating of the balloons and other work. The Ferryman knew hundreds of the security force were scattered among them and was glad he was having trouble picking most of them out.

  “You don’t look overjoyed to see me,” she said, fighting to catch his eyes.

  “Actually I am,” Kimberlain told her. “It saves me the bother of tracking you down to say I want you to fly back to Atlanta tomorrow morning.”

  “I’m a part of this too, in case you’ve forgotten.”

  “I haven’t. But I don’t want you on the streets tomorrow during the parade. I don’t need more to worry about.”

  She looked at him harshly, determinedly, mind already made up. Something had changed him after the time they’d spent in the cabin. The warmth she had tapped into had retreated deep inside him, making her feel that a touch of his flesh would freeze her fingertips. She couldn’t leave without trying to find out what had happened. Leaving now would mean losing him forever.

  “Don’t tell me to go back to Atlanta and suffer through it all on television, Jared, not knowing where you are or how close you are to dying, because if you succeed here there’s still Outpost 10 to worry about, and Atlanta’s only a hundred feet above sea level.” She wanted to reach out to him but stopped herself. “This is where I belong tomorrow.”

  “Not tomorrow anymore. It’s after midnight. Happy Thanksgiving.”

  “Mr. Quintanna has told me much about you, Quail,” the voice said to the figure in black standing before the video camera. “Did he explain why I had him summon you here?”

  Dreighton Quail shook his huge, masked head, making sure to do so in the direction of the lens.

  “You like death, Quail. You worship it. You must help me. We must help each other. Mr. Quintanna, give it to him.”

  Quintanna came forward with a black device the size of a transistor radio in his hand. Keeping his distance, he placed it in the outstretched glove of the Flying Dutchman.

  “My new life began three years ago tomorrow, Quail. And so shall the new world. Tomorrow. In the very place where my new life was forced upon me. The circle must be closed appropriately.”

  Beep … beep … beep …

  “That black box holds death, Quail,” the voice continued. “More death than you can possibly imagine, violent and awful. Imagine a million screams sounding at once. How far will that sound travel, Quail? How many ears will be scorched by it?” The voice let the questions linger with the expulsions of its thickening breath. “Mr. Quintanna will provide the details of your assignment. You will follow them to the letter. Is that clear?”

  Quail nodded, barely able to contain his growing excitement.

  A million screams sounding at once. And he was to be a part of it.

  The expectation set him trembling as he held the black box tight in his hand.

  Chapter 33

  DANIELLE AWOKE TO THE sound of dripping and the feeling of warmth where there shouldn’t have been any. Around her all was white, time suspended in the moment frozen when the frigid air assaulted her after the C-130 piloted by Bob Padrone crashed.

  “She’s coming around, Doctor.”

  Suddenly there was a woman by her side. Her thoughts cleared along with her vision. She was no longer out in the ice and snow, the violent storm circling all around her. She was in some sort of hospital wing or sick bay, spacious and well furnished. She smelled alcohol and realized the dripping sound was a glucose IV draining into her arm.

  A man in a white coat hovered over her and turned a penlight on before her eyes, blinding her once more.

  “Hold still,” he urged and maneuvered the penlight closer.

  Her memory sharpened. She had crawled from the smoking wreckage of the C-130, dragging the unconscious Padrone behind her. She had stayed close enough to the heat generated by it to keep them alive. The rest came back to her in splotchy recollections. Figures had emerged out of the white, emerged from a huge beast belching diesel smoke. It was a Snowcat, a larger version of the kind of vehicle used at mountain ski resorts. Someone had seen the crash. Someone had come to save her.

  Someone from Outpost 10.

  They raised her and Padrone by stretcher into the Snowcat and laid them out flat. Danielle recalled propping herself up enough to see what they were approaching out the front windshield. There was a complex of buildings all but lost in the storm and the harsh whiteness of the landscape. Outpost 10 was smaller than she had expected, with a central structure of three stories flanked by two others of one and two stories respectively. From the outer edges, long narrow buildings reached out far ahead of the complex into the Antarctic snowscape, looking much like arms extended from a chest and head. They were housings for the incoming oil lines, she assumed. This must have been where the pipes rose from underground to join up and utilize the vast pumping power of this one facility.

  As the Snowcat had drawn closer, Danielle saw the installation more clearly and hear
d the nonstop grinding of gears turning to keep the pumps active. There was no gate, just a single road plowed through the buildup from the storm, amidst the frozen, sloping tundra, leading toward the main complex of buildings. They drove up to a garage door that opened for them automatically. Before they pulled inside, Danielle managed to sit up higher and saw a number of Quonset huts containing a variety of heavy construction equipment. Work on Spiderweb, she guessed, was still going on. There would be a lot of people stationed here, and that would work to her advantage in the hours to come.

  Hours … Did she have that long left now? At least Outpost 10 hadn’t been overrun yet. Reason for hope, though not much.

  “Can you hear me?” the doctor asked her.

  Danielle tried to speak, but no words emerged. She could feel her lips moving, struggling to form sounds, and in the process more memories came flooding back to her, mostly of the complex itself. She remembered passing living quarters, dining halls, recreation rooms, and many arrows pointing to the base’s technological centers. It reminded her somehow of a school, so ordered and symmetrical.

  “Can you hear me?” the doctor repeated.

  “Yes,” Danielle managed finally and tried to form new words.

  “Louder, please.”

  “How … am I?”

  “You lost nothing to frostbite, but you came close.”

  “What about the pilot?”

  “Unconscious but stable. Came out of it a bit worse than you so far as injuries go. He must have overshot McMurdo in the storm.”

  “No … I wanted to come here.”

  “What?”

  She knew what she had to say next. “Outpost … 10.”

  The doctor pulled back at that and might have been about to move away when Danielle found the strength to latch on to his arm with her still numb fingers.

  “What time is it? What day?”

  “Thursday morning. Coming up on three A.M.”