His thumb pressed the detonator button. A few moments later, a distant rumble became a tidal wave of sound that engulfed the traffic din from nearby I-595. He extracted the batteries, wiped his prints off both the detonator and batteries with his handkerchief, and rammed them into the exhaust pipe of a nearby, beat-up minivan.
“Carl Sanger” strode swiftly through the sprinkling rain, a smile breaking his chilly countenance.
“It’s showtime!” he said to himself, ignoring the questioning stares of several passersby.
Nick’s satellite phone rang. It was Rance Osborne.
“Dammit, Nick, this had better be good. I just blew off President Hanover to call you!” the FBI director growled.
“Nice to hear from you, too,” Nick retorted.
“Don’t give me attitude,” Rance warned, “because I’m definitely not in the mood.”
Nick hastily described his visit with Blossom Smith and the ominous outcome of their conversation.
“Holy shit!” Rance exclaimed. “Worldwide, you said?”
“That’s about the size of it.”
“What can we do?”
“I was hoping the fountain’s demon guardian might lend us a hand by eliminating Walkingman, but I’m not that lucky,” Nick explained.
“Your luck has run between slim and none as long as I’ve known you,” Rance said, exasperation tainting his words.
“Here’s what I think we should do. Have the president send out a worldwide alert outlining the terrorists’ game plan. Next, tell Hanover to convince his wife to cancel her plans at the VA Medical Center today and fly directly back to Washington,” Nick suggested.
“That it?”
“And pray that the terrorists fail.”
A fireball suddenly erupted and mushroomed on the gray northern horizon, followed by a thunderous shock wave that rocked the black Navigator as it passed the halfway point on the Howard Frankland Bridge above Old Tampa Bay. Tires screeched and steel bodies thudded as drivers on the bridge tried in vain to control their swerving vehicles. Agent Johnston deftly maneuvered between the aslanted vehicles in the burgeoning demolition derby.
“What in God’s name was that?” Rance shouted.
“Hell if I know,” Nicked replied, his nerves shaken. “But it looks from here that there’s been an explosion at Raymond James Stadium.”
“Where the Vice President’s going to speak this morning?”
“That’s the one.”
“Find out what happened and call me. Yesterday!” Rance abruptly ended their conversation.
Nick’s phone rang again.
“Hey, Nick, see the show?” Neo asked.
“Yeah, up close and personal. What happened?”
“Seems some asshole rigged the light towers with C-4 explosives and detonated them with a remote triggering device,” Neo reported grimly.
“You want me to check it out while I’m in the vicinity?”
“Nah. I’ve got enough guys on the scene. If this was the big terrorist strike we’ve been warned about, then the bastard was a little trigger-happy. He missed Vice President Donaldson by an hour,” Neo said. “FYI, Walkingman’s mug is being broadcast on all the local channels, four times an hour. Hopefully, someone will spot him and call it in.”
“It’s a long shot, but hey, stranger things have happened. Back to the explosion: My gut tells me that it wasn’t a mistake. I think Walkingman planned the early detonation to be a diversion from the real action,” Nick explained.
“Which is where?”
“My best guess would be the VA Medical Center, where I’m headed now.” Nick heard a ringing phone at Neo’s end of the connection.
“Hang on,” Neo said, and placed Nick on hold.
Neo returned a minute later. “The preliminary reports from the stadium estimate that nearly a hundred people were injured by the overhead blasts, but there’s no word if there were any casualties,” he explained tetchily. “I want this son-of-bitch, Nick, and I want him bad!”
“I’m with you on that. Just keep me posted,” Nick replied, and ended the call. He turned toward his driver. “Let’s shake a tail feather, okay?”
Agent Johnston nodded, switched on the strobing blue lights and siren, and floored the accelerator. The sudden g’s momentarily pinned Nick against his seat. The phone rang again. It was Rance.
“The President tried to persuade his wife to call off her plans and return to the White House, but she refused. You know Natalie; she’s so damned stubborn. She refused to cave in to terrorists,” Rance stated angrily. “Hanover’s hands are tied.”
“Thanks for the good news,” Nick said facetiously.
“Keep me in the loop, Nick,” Rance demanded and was gone.
Jay Walkingman donned his penguin tuxedo at 11:00 a.m. and started serving drinks to seated guests at 11:30. At noon, he told one of the other servers that a button had popped off his shirt, and he was going to see if one of the nurses could sew it back on. He exited the ballroom and walked nonchalantly to the maintenance closet down the hall. After checking to see if the coast was clear, he entered the small room.
He pulled his satchel from the supply cartons; uncovered the ice bucket, tumblers, and serving tray that he had hidden there earlier that morning; and quickly filled eight glasses with bottled water and ice. Then, he poured precisely measured amounts of his formula into each glass.
Two Secret Service agents escorted the First Lady and four other dignitaries into the hospital and down the hallway at 12:15. A smiling “Carl Sanger” greeted them and offered them the simple refreshment.
The two agents declined, but Natalie Hanover graciously accepted. “Thank you, sir. This dreadfully hot, sticky weather down here has left me parched.”
The other dignitaries laughed at her comments as if on cue and accepted the proffered drinks as well. “Carl” moved aside to let them pass, and when they had disappeared around the corner, he returned to the closet. When he reappeared, Walkingman was now “Ben Sanderson,” disguised with a brown mustache, green contact lenses, a neatly styled grayish-brown wig, a light-gray linen suit, a white shirt, and a red-and-gray-patterned silk tie. He glanced down the hallway and strode rapidly from the hospital.
Perfect, he mumbled to himself. Just fucking perfect.
Nick and Agent Johnston arrived at the VA Medical Center at noon after zigzagging through the stalled traffic. Nick raced past the checkpoints into the hospital ballroom. His blue FBI polo shirt clung to his perspiring body, and his hair was a damp mop. He didn’t care. He had a life to save.
He toured the kitchen, observing each of the employees, but none looked like Walkingman or acted suspiciously. He inspected the contents of the stainless-steel refrigerators for signs of tampering, but he didn’t know where to begin. Every food item had been freshly prepared, so the terrorist could have readily poisoned any of them. The bottled drinks were all properly sealed without any telltale puncture marks, but the coffee percolators, teapots, and pans of sizzling chicken breasts, like the refrigerator food, were easy targets. Nick was inclined to ship everything to an FBI testing laboratory, but he had a distinct feeling that the First Lady might object and insist that her husband assign the arrogant Orion Sector Director to a remote Alaskan post.
Nick watched as two Secret Service agents accompanied the First Lady and others into the ballroom through a side door. They ascended the risers to the dais. He froze when he spied the drinking glasses in their hands. Dammit! He was too late.
He ran across the ballroom and hurriedly ordered the Secret Service agents to escort the dignitaries into the prearranged, quarantine room for examinations and blood tests to determine if the fountain water poisoned them.
Nick listened to the angry buzz from the seated guests as the First Lady’s procession left the ballroom, but he disregarded it. The hospital director made the announcement that luncheon was officially cancelled, and the disappointed guests left the room under the watchful eyes of the FBI agents positio
ned at the exits.
Nick approached Arthur Belotti in the kitchen and identified himself.
“Are any of your employees missing?” he asked tersely.
Belotti looked around. “Where’s Sanger?” he shouted at his people over the clanging and banging commotion.
A young man, sporting a single earring and a slight lisp, waved his arm. “Carl had a shirt button pop, so he went out to find a nurse who could fix it,” he volunteered in a lyrical voice.
“Jesus, how long ago was that?” Belotti bellowed.
“Twenty minutes, I think,” the young man replied timidly.
“Can you describe this Carl Sanger?” Nick asked Arthur.
He rubbed his chin and gave Nick a brief description. The young man added that Carl’s eyes were blue.
Nick quickly relayed the description to hospital checkpoints and rushed from the ballroom. He scanned the hall in both directions, but saw no one who matched Carl Sanger’s description. As he sprinted toward the exit doors at the end of the hall, he spotted a closet door. On a hunch, he stopped and entered.
Formal clothing, a wig, a satchel, empty water bottles, a serving tray, and three empty glasses were scattered on the floor.
Nick flipped on the radiophone and alerted his men to detain any suspicious men, approximately six feet two and between 175 and 185 pounds, for questioning. When he stepped outside, he collided with a silver wall of rain that reduced visibility to a few feet.
He realized that their odds of capturing Walkingman in that weather were miniscule. He turned and headed toward the quarantine room inside and wondered how the other terrorists had fared abroad. Hopefully, not as well as Walkingman.
Nick was determined to stop that madman before he could inflict his poison on any more victims. But, since Walkingman changed his identity again, it seemed to be an impossible task.
Without Gabriella to lend a hand, Nick was in desperate need of a miracle; and suddenly, he knew exactly where to find one.
28
H
eavy, labored breaths hissed through the dark tunnel adjoining Aleck Tobhor’s animate fortress. The Zyloux paced back and forth along its narrow confines like a caged animal, waiting impatiently for its strength to be fully restored. Occasional, distressing strains escaped its throat, more terrible than the most savage wolf wail.
The Zyloux’s primal central nervous system crackled and arced from a sensory overload of potential prey. It detected the existence of numerous fortress trespassers and elixir thieves beyond the boundaries of its bleak habitation. Although it was now physically incapable of hunting and avenging these profane violators, its healing would be completed shortly, and those pathetic, two-legged creatures would pay for their sacrilegious acts with their lives.
Two soulless, bloodred eyes appeared in the absolute blackness and floated like volcanic isles in seas of luminous green. It sniffed the tunnel wall at the spot where Nick and the other survivors escaped its wrath. Their scents were still deliciously pungent. A deep growl rumbled menacingly from the Zyloux’s throat, and glutinous saliva trickled from its keen fangs.
Soon, it would be on the hunt and gorging itself on their souls.
Mindy Landers hiked along the filthy back streets of Queens in search of leftovers from the local restaurants. The western horizon was mottled with fading purples, oranges, and grays as the shadows of night deepened along her daily route. She took another swallow from the bottle of cheap whiskey in her large handbag and wrapped her threadbare shawl tighter around her shoulders. The cooling summer breeze chilled her thin bones.
She felt a little light-headed and stopped beneath a dark lamppost. Vandals had broken the lenses and bulbs of the neighborhood streetlights months ago; but the repair crew, as always for that depressed section of Queens, was slow to react. She shifted her weight from one aching foot to another, hoping to alleviate the dull pain. There wasn’t time to sit and rest. She had to cover her route on schedule if she expected any handouts.
Mindy resumed her nightly ritual, struggling to maintain her balance. Her senses weren’t what they used to be when she was a successful executive secretary for several large real estate firms. But as her beauty declined, so did her employment opportunities. Sleeping with the boss was suddenly replaced with sleeping in the park.
First she lost her jobs, displaced by younger, sexier Mindy Landers types. Next, she exhausted her unemployment. Then, she lost her condo and most of her belongings to the banks. Left with no employment opportunities, she did what any other woman in her position would do at forty-six years old - she prostituted herself to earn enough money to eat and find shelter.
Her first and only husband had been a drunk, and she had decided after the divorce to never remarry. There were no children or grandchildren to lend a helping hand and energize her spirit. Her parents were deceased. Her asshole brother didn’t want to have anything to do with her. If Mindy Landers had been suicidal, she’d have ended her life four years ago.
But she wasn’t. Hope warmed her wrinkled cheeks as she trudged down the murky street. Maybe she’d catch a break tonight. If not, maybe tomorrow. Mindy’s spirit was bent, not broken.
Mindy crossed a side street, mumbling. Speaking her dreams. Conversing with the ghosts of her past. Quelling the loneliness in her hazy whiskey world, where her best friend was a young, sassy, and flirty Mindy Landers.
A dark figure darted into an alley ahead of her, but Mindy wasn’t alarmed. She noticed them every night. Drug deals. Beatings. Rapes. All performed by shadowy, faceless people. They left her alone. She was too poor, too old, and too ugly to mess with.
Another dark figure stepped out of the alley and walked toward her. It was a man; she could see that now. He appeared to be well dressed and walked with the confident stride of a successful man. A hunter. A skirt chaser.
They were almost even when the man grabbed her arm and twisted her bony, weak frame around. Before the attack could register in her whiskey-fogged brain, the man held a damp cloth tightly to her face. Panicked, she sucked in the sweetly sickening odor and drifted into the darkest night of her life.
Lurdene Walken was the elder stateswomen of the Twenty-ninth Street prostitutes at forty-seven, but she could still give a man the ride of his life. The younger girls respected Lurdene, but they also had to earn a living. They displayed their youthful, nubile bodies in short-shorts, gauzy tube tops, and six-inch heels as they paraded along their one-block strip. Their territory.
Lurdene stayed to the shadows of the flickering neon bar lights, waiting for her regulars and those men with more than a quickie in mind. She had been doing this for thirty-one years, and it was the only way she knew to make a living. Had she been bright enough to squirrel away some cash in her youth, she might have been retired by now. But no, she had led the high life back then. Booze. Drugs. Fancy restaurants. Extravagant Caribbean spring breaks. Designer clothes.
She’d been a stupid little fool. Just an Alabama girl with stars in her eyes and a hankering for the big city life. New York fit the bill.
But there was no acting or modeling in Lurdene’s future. There were plenty of men who promised her those things for a taste of her sweet thing. But they never delivered after their orgasms. She discovered that she wasn’t alone in that category. There had been a multitude of others like her looking for stardom, but most settled for prostitution. Big bucks. The party life. A young girl’s dream.
A young, foolish, and ignorant girl’s dream, Lurdene thought.
And there she stood, her looks faded and menopause setting in, waiting to arouse some man. Who was she kidding? The men in her stable were half-blind, ugly as sin, and had peckers so small that they might, just might, tickle a flea. She was a has-been. Has been beautiful. Has been sexy. Has been flush with cash.
A black Cadillac parked next to the curb, and Janet, the boldest of the group, strutted up to the passenger’s side, leaned down to expose as much cleavage as the law would allow, and spouted her usual bullsh
it spiel. Suddenly, she stiffened and motioned to Lurdene.
Lurdene sucked in her stomach, stood tall and jiggled her sagging the breasts as she approached the potential score.
“I’ve heard some great things about you, Lurdene,” the man said with a wide grin.
He was a good-looker on the south side of middle age, and he wanted her. She was starving for a man like that after a steady diet of rejects.
“Well, darlin’, you heard right. What’s it goin’ to be?” she drawled.
“Ten thousand for the night.”
She appeared skeptical.
“At the Plaza. All expenses paid,” he added.
She frowned. “Yah’re not inta any of that kinky shit, are ya? Because if ya is, sugar, I ain’t yawr piece of ass.”
The man laughed. “No, no, nothing like that. I’m just in the mood for a good old-fashioned night out with a very sexy lady,” he replied.
Lurdene smiled, opened the door, and sank into the plush leather seat. “Ya want to wait, or start now, honey?” she asked in a husky voice.
“Now’s fine,” he said and pointed to his zipper as the Cadillac roared away from the curb.
“Mmmm, sounds delicious,” she purred, and lowered her head to his lap.
Suddenly, the man thrust a cloth over her face with a powerful vise grip; and after a brief struggle, Lurdene Walken sank into a dreamless, black void.
29
T
he rainstorm soaked Jay Walkingman by the time he made it to the Tampa Amtrak station and parked his motorcycle where it could be easily spotted by the police. This was just the beginning of their wild goose chase.
His expensive suit, tie, and shirt were ruined, but he couldn’t care less. His body was sore and bruised from the wind-driven rain thrashing his exposed body during his escape through the city, and he didn’t mind that, either. Jay was on top of the world at the moment, and a thorough drenching and pelting couldn’t extinguish the victory flame that burned hot inside him. His mission was an unmitigated success, and now he would move up in the world. The world of terrorism.
The Ancient Breed Page 19
