by Frank Tayell
He’d gained access to Farley’s email accounts during the campaign. The man was a creature of habit. For a former spy, those habits were bad. He changed his passwords once a week, always on Sundays, and always from the computer in his home office. A small camera hidden behind the Revolution-era musket hanging on the wall recorded his every keystroke. Unfortunately, there had been nothing incriminating in any of those accounts since the man’s bid for the nomination had imploded. That was why Tom had come to New York. The email he’d sent should have diplomats talking, arguing, and threatening one another. Where was the greatest concentration of international politicians? The U.N.
Tom drummed his fingers on the desk, his eyes glued to the camera feeds. He was growing impatient, but he couldn’t rush, not now. Everything had been planned to the last detail and timed to the last second. He’d created a web in which he’d catch all the conspirators. Should any of the strands break, and he failed, a new era of darkness would be ushered onto the world. What if he didn’t get proof? What if no one talked, at least not in places to which he’d gained access? What if the email was ignored as the product of a fantasist? What if—
In the window on the laptop, a car drove into view. The time for doubting introspection was past. Red and blue lights flashed behind the grille, but there were no markings on the vehicle. Out of it jumped four men, all wearing black tactical gear, with bulletproof vests marked FBI. So far, so unsurprising. They didn’t enter the building. Instead, they lingered on the curb, waving pedestrians away.
“What are you waiting for?”
The answer came ten seconds later when another SUV pulled up. The figure who got out wasn’t wearing black, but a blue suit and brown overcoat. The clothes screamed detective even without the badge hanging from a chain around the man’s neck. Tom played around with the camera’s controls, enlarging the image until he was certain that it was a New York detective’s badge. He knew it was a fake. The face underneath that shock of white hair had haunted his dreams for the last month.
The man’s name was Powell. At least, that was the name he’d given the police in Maryland. His cover was good, but Tom had created enough false identities that he could spot a fake. In Maryland, after Powell had opened fire on Tom, and Tom had fled, the police had arrived on the scene. The real police. The white-haired man had presented credentials identifying himself as Agent Powell of Homeland Security and explained he was on a matter of classified national interest. Powell was the cabal’s hatchet man.
On the camera feed, he watched the armed group enter the building. Tom picked up the sat-phone, unplugged the tablet, and placed both in his pockets.
The armed group had reached the door of the apartment. Tom brought up a command line prompt, tapped in a few lines of code, and paused. He watched the group take a collective look at Powell. The man held up a hand, signaling they should wait. Powell held a hand to his ear. A puzzled expression crept across his face. He took out a phone. Odd. Tom wished he’d installed microphones along with the cameras. He could try to trace the call later. Powell hung up and motioned agitatedly with his hands. The group broke into the apartment. Tom turned his eyes to the final screen and smiled as he watched the men storm an empty room.
He took a moment to enjoy their confusion. The call to the White House had been routed through an empty apartment, six blocks from the partially constructed office building he was now in. He tapped the keyboard. The laptop’s screen went blank as almost all the contents were erased. He grabbed the hard hat and the paint-splattered rucksack and made his way to the bare concrete stairwell.
So far, everything was going to plan. Powell’s presence in New York was a surprise, but it wouldn’t be a problem. Within the hour, they’d have found the construction site and the laptop. It would take them at least a day to recover the files. Those would lead them to Mexico City, by which time Tom would be on a fishing trawler, out on the Atlantic.
The street-level traffic was more frenetic than usual, even for downtown New York. Bumpers ground into one another as cars shunted back and forth, trying to break free of inescapable gridlock. The sidewalk wasn’t much better. People barged along with their eyes fixed to their phones, or ran blindly, barely pausing to curse as they ran into one another.
There was no choice but to let the crowd carry him along. He waited until he was a block from the construction site before he pulled out the sat-phone and dialed a number he’d memorized long ago.
“Si?” a voice answered.
“Julio,” Tom said. “I’m calling in the favor.”
“You want your favor now?”
That seemed an odd thing to say. “I’ll need a flight. Today. One way,” Tom said, adding, “As we agreed.”
“I’m not surprised,” Julio said. “After this, you won’t be the only one. Do you know what’s going on?”
“What are you talking—” Tom began, then almost dropped the phone as a sprinting woman knocked him into the curb. She was shoeless. “Julio, I’ll be there in six hours.”
“Yeah. Sure,” Julio replied distractedly.
Tom hung up. That hadn’t gone entirely as he’d expected. Julio had a farm with an airfield from which he ran a flight school. It was his retirement job, the career he’d moved into when being a commercial pilot had become too dangerous. Julio had been in the wrong place at the wrong time, and seen something that he couldn’t ignore. He’d offered himself as a witness to a series of brutal kidnappings, and had become a target himself. Tom had arranged for a new identity and a new life in North America. In exchange, Julio had agreed to take him on a one-way flight. No questions. No manifest. No trace that Tom had ever been on the plane.
It would take six hours to get to the airfield. Six hours after that, they’d be at a landing strip in Canada. From there, he’d drive to the coast. Now he had to call Sophia Augusto and arrange for the boat that would take him on the final leg of his journey. Of course, he still wasn’t… wasn’t…
His single-track obsession with escape was finally derailed. Something had happened. Something big. He turned around, trying to see what all these people were running from. All he saw was a sea of faces, all wearing the same expression of disbelieving fear. His first thought was of those bombs on the day of the inauguration. Had Farley again guessed what Tom had planned, and organized something similar here in New York? No, he couldn’t. Not today. Surely not. There was no smoke in the sky, but, barely audible over the crunch of plastic and metal, the blaring of horns, and the yelling of hundreds of people were sirens and… were those screams?
On the far side of the road, a cyclist dodged through the stalled vehicles at an insane speed. She raised a bloody hand, waving it in a circling motion above her head. Turning in the saddle, she looked behind, and realized that whoever she’d been signaling to was no longer there. She didn’t see the cab driver open his door and didn’t have time to brake. The front wheel hit the door, and she went flying. Tumbling over the hood, she disappeared from view.
Tom tried to push his way through the dense crowd toward the woman.
“Out of the way!” an obese suit bellowed, elbowing Tom in the ribs. The pain cut through that treacherous instinct. No matter what had happened in New York, he was on the run. Suppressing a wave of guilt, he let himself be caught up in the throng. As his legs concentrated on moving, and his arms on pushing the jostling crowd away, that old instinct kicked in. He was escaping. Getting away was good, but now was the time to think of his destination. Maintenance crews were working on the Brooklyn Bridge. His plan had been to mingle with them before disappearing into an underground parking facility on the far side. He had a car there, and so would drive to Staten Island, change cars again, head to the mainland, and then to the airfield. It was twenty minutes since he’d left the construction site, and he was heading in the wrong direction. Powell would have traced the call to that location in another forty minutes. Not long after that, he’d have accessed the satellite feeds and seen the guy in the hard hat leaving
. He’d wanted Powell to waste time inspecting the work crew on the bridge, knowing that for each question asked, he’d get at least two in reply. He wasn’t going to make it.
He pulled off the hat and let it fall into the road. Head bowed, he pushed his way through the surging mob and into the relative calm of an alley. He took out the tablet, but hesitated before using it. If they traced his activity, they might link it to the call he’d made to Julio, and so be waiting at the airfield. But unless he found out what was going on, he’d never catch that flight.
He opened the browser and loaded a website. The entry of a stolen password later, he had access to the city’s transport management system. After one more click, he was looking at traffic-camera feeds for downtown Manhattan. It was chaos. The island was at a standstill. Where people weren’t running, they were supine on the ground, or staggering from spot to spot, clearly injured and suffering from shock. No one was helping them. Though he could hear sirens, there were no first-responders in the feeds. Three clicks later, he had a southbound view of Brooklyn Bridge. It was gridlock. As to what was causing this panic, he still couldn’t tell. The screen was small and the images indistinct, but he saw a man staggering through an intersection toward a school bus. His arms were outstretched as if he was seeking help. Tom closed the browser and opened the newsfeed. One word was common to all headlines: terrorist.
Detail and fact were missing from the hastily written articles, but twice he saw Grand Central mentioned. He swore. That was his plan B, to be used if Powell was close on his heels. He wasn’t going to catch a train, but he wanted to be seen going into the station. There was a spot, halfway down a platform that wasn’t covered by any cameras. It led to a service tunnel, the exit of which was opposite the fire door of a gym. In a locker was a change of clothes, and a rudimentary disguise that—
An animalistic scream cut through his thoughts. He looked toward the alley’s mouth, but couldn’t see what caused it. No matter. There was always plan C. He put the tablet away and set off down the alley, heading north.
When he was sure he was out of sight, he ducked into the lee of an emergency doorway. The lock was easily broken, and he entered the building. He opened the paint-splattered backpack. The reflective vest went inside, along with the work-stained overalls. Out came a pair of generic blue jeans, a thin black jacket, and an I-heart-NY cap. He splashed a small bottle of solvent on the boots and wiped away the paint. The last thing to come out was a compact red and black rucksack with an airline luggage-tag still attached. The paint-splattered backpack and clothes went inside. He slung the bag in front of his chest and hoped, at least to a casual observer, he looked like a tourist. He walked up the narrow stairs, and into a corridor. It was an apartment block. A small group had gathered near the door. Ignoring them as they ignored him, he went back outside.
The traffic here was just as bad. Bewildered drivers stood by open car doors as pedestrians ran past. There was another scream, and this one was far closer. It came from ahead. He clambered onto the roof of a freshly washed sedan.
“Hey! Hey! Get off my car!”
Tom ignored the irate driver as he scanned the roads. He knew he was being stupid, drawing attention to himself and thus negating the thin disguise, but he’d survived the last three decades thanks to information. If life was a puzzle, data was the key. It had become his lifeblood, his tool, his weapon, and without it he was feeling worse than unarmed.
A gunshot echoed around the towering buildings. Another. The screams grew louder, edged with fear and panic. He jumped down and kept walking. Another junction, another block, and another crowd too dense to push through forced him further away from where he wanted to go. Alleys and roads, doubling back, heading north, then south, east then west until he was on Kenmare, two stores down from the junction with Elizabeth Street. Here, the people had stopped running. They stood in clusters, not talking, but all with their heads glued to their phones, oblivious to the woman staggering across the junction.
Blood poured down the bespoke blue overcoat from a wound on her neck. Tom was halfway to her when she collapsed. By the time he reached her, there was no pulse. Part of her throat was missing. It was a miracle she’d made it this far. Shrapnel, he guessed, although there were no other wounds, nor was her clothing scorched from being in close proximity to an explosion. There was nothing anyone could do for her. He stood and backed away, walking into the opening door of a cab.
“Watch out!” a suited-man said, getting out of the back, dragging a suitcase with him.
“Yeah. Sorry,” Tom said, instantly ignoring the guy. He turned to the driver. “Do you have any idea what’s going on?”
“The radio says terrorists,” the driver said, pointing at his dash. “I’m going back to the depot. I can take you there, but nowhere else. Not today.”
Tom looked at the traffic. Part of him wanted to get inside the cab, to close the doors so he could rest, think, and find out the meaning to all this chaos, but it would be hours before the vehicles were moving freely again.
There was a shout from behind the cab. It turned into a horrified scream. The cab’s passenger was in the middle of the junction being attacked by… It was impossible. Tom stared in frozen shock.
The woman, the one he’d been sure was dead, was clawing and pawing at the man. Tom took a step toward the pair. The man was trying to push the woman away, but her hands had caught in his clothes. Her mouth opened, snapping up and down, getting closer and closer to his face. The man yelled a desperate plea for help.
There was a crash of metal as the cabbie tried to shunt the car in front out of the way. The sound brought Tom out of his daze. He ran to the fighting couple, reaching them as the woman clamped her mouth down on the man’s neck. An arc of bright red blood sprayed across Tom’s chest as he wrestled the woman off the injured man. She fought with an inhuman strength, flailing her arms and kicking her legs in an uncoordinated frenzy. He let go, jumping out of reach of those clawing hands. She staggered sideways, moving jerkily, as if each limb was moving independently of the others. Her right arm swiped around in an arc, and that motion pivoted her around.
It was like nothing he’d ever seen before. He backed off a pace, and she took one toward him, and another. Her hands reached out. Her fingers caught in the rucksack slung across his chest. With a surprisingly strong tug, she pulled him toward her. Her mouth opened. A gobbet of flesh she’d ripped from the man’s throat fell out. Horrified shock brought him out of frozen immobility. He shrugged off the pack. The woman sagged forward as the weight of the bag dragged her arms down. A low hiss escaped those bloody lips.
Tom kicked. There was a crunch as his boot smashed into her kneecap. Her leg buckled. She collapsed, jaw first onto asphalt. A tooth flew out, but she didn’t scream and her arms didn’t stop flailing. Tom ran. This time he paid no attention to where he was going.
It felt like seconds. It felt like hours. That woman’s bloody, blank face filled his vision until it was all he could see. He stopped, leaning against a wall. His heart was pounding, his vision blurred.
A month on the run, sleeping little, eating quick and cheap meals, it hadn’t prepared him for this. Nothing could have. But what was this? Some kind of drug, he supposed. A dirty bomb primed with an airborne hallucinogen. Did those even exist? They had to. The alternative was impossible. Forget the impossible, he told himself. Focus on the immediate. That, clearly, was reaching safety. Where that might be wasn’t an easy question to answer. He checked the sat-phone and tablet were still in his pockets. What he needed was a few minutes of calm so he could find out what was going on. There was the apartment in Harlem where he’d been sleeping for the last month. That prospect of safety evaporated when he remembered Powell. Wouldn’t the man have more immediate problems to concern himself with? Unless Farley and the cabal were behind this, whatever this was. No, that was fear speaking. What he needed was to get inside long enough for his heart to stop racing. Somewhere he could think.
A gun
shot came from somewhere far too close. Ahead was a coffee shop. Inside, two customers were helping a barista upturn tables against the floor-to-ceiling glass doors. That would do.
He was ten feet away when a siren burst into life behind him. Fear of impossible horrors was again replaced by that of Powell and capture. Resisting the urge to turn around, he kept his head bowed, but his eyes on the people inside the coffee shop. The siren drew nearer. A police motorbike overtook him, weaving a path down the road.
The police officer didn’t see the man, and Tom didn’t see from where he came. One second the bike was slowing to pass a cement truck whose driver-side door hung open; the next, a blood-soaked man tumbled out, onto the cop. The bike slewed into the side of a stalled limo. The rider fell off. Cop and man tumbled across the road in a jumble of arms and legs that kept on thrashing even after the two bodies had come to a halt.
Without thinking, Tom ran over to the pair, grabbing at the back of the snarling, thrashing man’s coat. He hauled him up and off, and tried to hurl the man away, but he was a dead weight. All Tom succeeded in doing was dragging the snarling man to his feet. The man’s arms swept out. A jagged white sliver of bone protruded from his forearm. A dark red ooze seeped from the wound, splattering droplets against the stalled truck each time the man flailed his arms.
Not a man. Not anymore. Tom shook his head, trying to clear it of a horrified fog conjured by being feet away from the impossibly inhuman.
“Get up!” he yelled at the cop. “Get up!” The woman’s hands twitched, her head moved back and forth, but she was dazed.
Tom kicked, aiming at the man’s legs. It had no effect. He crooked his hand and slammed his palm into the man’s chest. The monstrosity staggered back a pace, but then snarled again, swiping his one good arm at Tom’s chest.
