The Midas Code

SIXTY-SIX

Twelve hours later, Tyler was in his father’s ICU room getting his ribs wrapped by a nurse. He didn’t know if they were broken, because he’d refused an X-ray. His father was still intubated and continued to float in and out of consciousness during his recovery. Even lying there unconscious, with tubes hanging out of him, General Sherman Locke looked powerful, as if he would wake up any moment, rip the sensors off, and take charge.

Tyler had slept fitfully on the plane ride home. He felt guilty about leaving Stacy behind, his father wasn’t out of danger yet, and Orr still preyed on his mind. If Orr got away only to cause a catastrophe on American soil, Tyler would never forgive himself.

Just before the Gordian jet landed in DC, he received an update from Aiden, who had been researching any info he could find on Orr’s birth name. Aiden had discovered a Giordano Orsini from Connecticut who would be the same age as Jordan Orr. Orsini’s parents had been killed in a car wreck when the boy was ten, and the short newspaper article intimated that the crash might have been a murder-suicide. At Tyler’s request, Aiden was following up to see if there was more to the story, but it was really in the FBI’s hands now.

When the nurse was finished, Tyler put his shirt back on. At least on the plane he and Grant had been able to get a fresh change of clothes, but they both still stank. The compression bandage eased the ache in Tyler’s chest, but he’d turned down painkillers. Not only did most meds leave him nauseated, but he didn’t want his senses dulled. He could stand the pain until he was sure they had Orr in custody, assuming the one-eyed wonder was stupid enough to try to get back into the country.

Before he had tried to get some rest on the flight, Tyler had a long talk with Miles about Sherman’s escape from the warehouse and how he saved Carol Benedict and the two Muslim fall guys. The body found in the building’s wreckage still hadn’t been identified but was assumed to be one of Orr’s accomplices. Tyler told Miles about Gaul in the hope that the FBI might be able to use the link to track down Orr.

Grant knocked on the door.

“Hey,” he said. He glanced at Sherman’s inert form. “How’s he doing?”

“Still out.”

“Well, if you have a minute, I’ve got two FBI agents here. I’ve told them what I know, but they want to talk to you.”

“Sure. Will you keep an eye on my dad?”

“No problem.”

Tyler left the room and found a man and a woman in pressed suits standing outside. Only FBI agents could look so fresh at 6 A.M.

Tyler held out his hand. “Tyler Locke.”

“Dr. Locke,” the man said, “I’m Special Agent Riegert, and this is my partner, Special Agent Immel. Is your father going to be okay?”

“We think so.”

“Has he said anything?”

“He can’t. He’s got a tube down his throat. Where’s Carol Benedict?”

“She’s already on her way to Naples to see her sister.”

Tyler was itching for news about Stacy’s condition, but he hadn’t been able to get an update from the hospital because he wasn’t a relative.

Riegert flipped open a notepad. “Your friend Mr. Westfield told me quite a story. Care to give me your side?”

On the way back, Grant and Tyler had agreed to tell most of the tale but to leave out the parts that made them seem like criminals themselves, such as the incident in Munich and the heist at the Athens museum.

Tyler told the agents about the ferry puzzle, their investigation leading them to Gia Cavano, and the fight in the tunnels under Naples.

Despite the same story from both Grant and Tyler, Riegert and Immel were clearly skeptical.

“And you don’t have this geolabe any more?” Immel said.

Tyler shook his head. “It’s underwater in the Midas chamber.”

“And you don’t have any visual record of this chamber?”

“We did, but Orr got away with it.”

“You mean the man you’re also calling Giordano Orsini?” Riegert asked.

“Yes. Any luck finding him?”

“We’re looking into all possibilities right now, Dr. Locke.”

“How could you think Orr isn’t responsible for my father’s abduction?” Tyler said. “Miles told me you found evidence of radioactive material at the warehouse fire, and you have the proof-of-life videos we sent.”

Riegert put up his hands in a conciliatory gesture. “We are taking you seriously, Dr. Locke. Your credentials are beyond reproach. But you have to admit that your story does sound far-fetched. And, with two Muslim men involved, don’t you think radical fundamentalists are the more likely culprits here?”

“They’re innocent. I’m telling you, Orr is going to set off a radiological device somewhere in the US, and it might very well be today.”

“But why?” Immel said. “Where? What’s his plan?”

“I can think of half a dozen sites,” Tyler said. “DC, New York, Chicago, Fort Knox, Philadelphia. Anything within a twelve-hour driving range.”

“That’s the entire eastern seaboard,” Riegert said.

“That’s why you need to have every immigration terminal flagging both his aliases.”

“We’re doing that.”

“And what else?”

“We’re not at liberty to say.”

Tyler sighed. “I don’t know what else I can do for you, then.”

Grant appeared at the door. “Tyler, your father just woke up.”

Grant stepped aside as Tyler rushed into the room and went to the bed. Sherman’s eyes were open, but half-lidded. When he saw Tyler, he held his hand up.

Tyler thought he wanted reassurance, so he took it in his own hand.

“I’m here, Dad.”

Sherman wriggled out of his grip. So much for sentimentality.

Then Tyler realized that he wasn’t reaching out to his son. He was trying to sign.

His arms were weak, but he put them up long enough for Tyler to make out the two signs he was making.

At first Tyler thought his father was hallucinating, but Sherman repeated the sign. Blue truck?

Tyler turned to see Riegert and Immel standing in the doorway.

“Was there a truck at the warehouse?” he asked them.

Riegert narrowed his eyes. “How do you know that?”

“My father knows sign language. He just told me that the truck is blue.”

Riegert got his notepad out again. “Anything else?”

“Dad, can you remember anything else about the truck?”

Sherman made a slight nod. He used his left hand to spell out letters.

W I L B I X.

“Wilbix?” Tyler said. Another nod.

Grant plugged the word into the search engine on his replacement smartphone.

“Top find is Wilbix Construction,” he said.

“Dad, is it Wilbix Construction?” Another nod. Sherman patted Tyler’s hand and fell unconscious again.

“Where is Wilbix based?” Tyler asked Grant.

“New York,” Grant said. “Oh, man.”

Riegert tried to see Grant’s screen. “What?”

“Wilbix Construction is doing work at New York Downtown Hospital. That’s less than a mile from Wall Street.”

Immel already had her phone out. “This guy might be trying to detonate the bomb in lower Manhattan?” she asked.

“Possibly,” Grant said. “Maybe this has something to do with his parents’ deaths.”

“How?” Riegert said.

“I don’t know, but we need to get to New York,” Tyler told them. “Grant and I can identify Orr.”

“I’ll see how fast we can get a plane,” Immel said, looking at her phone contacts.

“That’s okay,” Tyler said. “I have my own.”

SIXTY-SEVEN

After Orr found an all-night infirmary to bandage his eye, even getting an old-fashioned black eye-patch in the process, he indulged in hiring a charter flight back to the US from the Rome airport with the last of his funds. His phone was underwater in the Midas chamber, so before his flight left he found an Internet terminal and emailed Crenshaw that he was on his way to Newark.

With Tyler, Stacy, Grant, and Cavano dead, the Midas chamber sealed up again, and the warehouse destroyed, there was almost no evidence left of Orr’s true identity and his connection to the Midas Touch. Crenshaw was the final loose end to tie up, and Orr would take care of him after he exacted his vengeance on the smug investment-banking firms of Wall Street and all who profited from their greed.

Crenshaw picked him up at Newark Airport at seven in the morning in a taxi. The weather was bright and clear, with only a slight breeze. Without a word, they rode to a truck stop where the semi was parked.

When they got into the truck, Crenshaw looked at Orr’s eye and said, “What happened to you?”

“Accident. Don’t worry about it.”

“Let’s see the Midas Touch.”

Orr reluctantly opened the pack and held up the container with Midas’s desiccated hand inside.

“That’s it? I was expecting rays to be shooting out of it or something.”

Orr had to admit that it looked less than impressive.

“Believe me,” he said, “it works.”

“I don’t believe you. You have proof?”

Orr gave him the camera, which Crenshaw hooked up to his laptop. He played back the video that Stacy had shot. Even on a tiny computer screen, the chamber was amazing.

Apart from saying “Wow!” a few times, Crenshaw was silent. When the video was over, he tapped a few keys on the keyboard and detached the camera. He removed the videotape and, before Orr could stop him, smashed it against the dashboard.

“What in God’s name are you doing, you moron? We need that to show the auction bidders!”

“I know. And now we’re full partners. I emailed it to myself. Don’t think I didn’t know you were going to kill me as soon as I armed the bomb. You’ve got the buyers, and I’ve got the video.”

Orr peered at Crenshaw and then laughed. A full-out belly laugh. “I didn’t think anyone was as devious as I was, Crenshaw. But I underestimated you. That doesn’t happen often.”

Crenshaw looked as if he didn’t know what to make of Orr, but he seemed satisfied. He put the truck into gear.

They took the Lincoln Tunnel into Manhattan. Orr noted with irony the sign at the entrance, which said NO FLAMMABLES OR EXPLOSIVES.

“Which location are we using?” Orr asked. They had five possibilities for where to park the truck depending on conditions, all of them locations where a Wilbix truck wouldn’t be out of place.

“Vesey Street, just east of Church.” It was just a block from the PATH train station.

The plan was simple. Park the truck on the street, set the timer on the detonator for ten minutes — too short an interval for any tow truck to respond — and walk away. They’d be on their way out of the city before the semi exploded.

Using every trick he knew, Tyler had piloted the flight from DC to Teterboro Airport in New Jersey in just one hour. Riegert had called ahead and arranged for a helicopter to meet them at the airport so they could avoid the rush-hour traffic. Agent Immel brought a Geiger counter to help locate the bomb. Grant, of course, had insisted on coming along.

The four of them had landed at the downtown heliport on the East River at 8 A.M. The New York FBI office had arranged for a car to be waiting for them.

On the way, Riegert discovered that a man fitting Orr’s description had gone through customs at Newark Airport an hour before under the name of Gerald Oren. The flag hadn’t gone out fast enough to stop him at the airport, but Riegert showed Tyler a photo from the security cameras, and the eye patch made identification easy. It was Orr.

Aiden had come through with more info about Giordano Orsini’s life. His father allegedly committed suicide because he’d been fired from his position as an investment banker and was up to his ears in debt with no prospect of finding another job. Orsini subsequently went into a never-ending string of foster homes and eventually fell off the map.

Tyler now understood why Orr was in Manhattan. Orr believed the ultimate revenge was to make himself rich while making the people he blamed for ruining his life suffer. The scope of his vendetta was staggering, requiring patience and planning that must have taken years, even decades. But Orr’s scheme had a twisted sense of poetic justice. Tyler just couldn’t comprehend the boundless reserves of hatred Orr would need to carry out his plan.

Riegert had taken the wheel and headed straight for New York Downtown Hospital. Given the time Orr had landed, he could already be in the city with the bomb. If Orr wanted to blend in, he’d head to the place where he’d expect to see other trucks from Wilbix. The FBI put out an all-points bulletin on the truck and asked Wilbix Construction to make sure all its vehicles were accounted for. But the search would take time, even with the FBI’s enormous manpower.

Four police cars had already converged on the hospital site, so when they arrived an officer told them they’d checked every Wilbix truck in the lot. None of them was the model stolen from Clarence Gibson in Virginia.

They’d stood beside the unmarked car, the wind blowing bits of dust from the construction site over them.

“What now?” Riegert said. “He’s not here.”

“He’s got to be in New York,” Tyler said. “I know it. I know Orr. He’d want to complete his mission as soon as possible.”

“You’re sure he’s coming to lower Manhattan?”

“He landed in Newark. The truck company is delivering material to New York construction sites. Wall Street and the Federal Reserve Bank are here. It’s the only location that fits.”

“We’ve got standing patrols both on Wall Street and around the Fed. Any suspicious truck will be stopped.”

“Orr won’t be that obvious. He’d want the gas cloud to cover as much of the downtown area as possible.” Another tuft of wind tugged at Tyler’s shirt. The wind.

“Grant, check the weather. Where’s the wind coming from today?” It was hard to tell the general wind direction among the swirling air coming off the skyscrapers.

After a few pecks at his phone, Grant said, “From the west.” The hospital was north of downtown.

“Orr won’t be here,” Tyler said. “He needs to be in a construction zone upwind of Wall Street.”

As they piled into the car, Riegert asked where they were going. Tyler told him to head toward the World Trade Center complex.

After they got out of the tunnel, Crenshaw headed south on Ninth Avenue, which turned into Hudson Street. The morning traffic was heavy, but Crenshaw handled the truck with ease. It had been his idea to use the semi in the first place, because he’d gone to truck-driving school.

It was 8:30 by the time they reached the intersection at Church and Vesey. Crenshaw turned and came to a stop next to a sign that said NO STANDING ANYTIME.

On the right was a grassy cemetery directly behind St. Paul’s Chapel. How appropriate, Orr thought.

On the left were a smoke shop, a camera store, and a delicatessen. One of the vacant buildings was under renovation. The sign said, “Coming soon! The Safe Cracker. A unique New York restaurant experience. Wine and dine inside an actual turn-of-the-century bank vault.” A man was unloading supplies for the renovation from a truck that was double-parked in front of the restaurant. A brand-new bank was next to it, which had rendered the old bank obsolete.

Behind them was the vast construction site to build the new World Trade Center tower.

Orr smiled. The signs couldn’t be more auspicious.

Crenshaw shut off the engine. Orr put Midas’s hand back in his pack with the Archimedes Codex and the golden hand.

“We ready?” Crenshaw asked.

“Do it.”

They both set their watch timers to ten minutes. The bomb itself had no displays of any kind.

Crenshaw entered the code. “Say ‘money’!”

They clicked their watches, and the countdown began. In ten minutes, the bomb would go off. Even they couldn’t stop it from exploding now.

Orr stepped down out of the truck. A car with government plates screeched to a stop in front of the cab.

“Shit!” Crenshaw hissed. “Cops!”

Orr’s hand went to the .38 revolver Crenshaw had given him at the truck stop along with six extra rounds.

“Don’t panic,” Orr said. “Let me take care of this.”

He put on his best smile and walked around the open door, but when he saw who was getting out of the back of the unmarked car, the smile shifted to a look of pure horror.

No. No!

It couldn’t be, but there he was. It was Tyler Locke. Back from the dead.

How in the hell did Locke find him? The man simply did not give up.

For a split second, their eyes met, and even though Tyler was unarmed, Orr felt a rush of unfamiliar emotion. Fear.

“It’s Orr!” Tyler shouted.

Orr raised his pistol to fire. Tyler dove back into the car before the bullets slammed into the opened car door, hitting a woman behind it. She clutched her shoulder and went down. Pedestrians screamed and ran in all directions.

Orr turned to get his pack and make a run for it, but Crenshaw seized it first and jumped out of the driver’s door, shooting blindly as he went. Three shots came from the police car. Crenshaw cried out and went down.

The cemetery was too open for an escape. Orr ran to the rear of the trailer and around the back. He peered around and saw Crenshaw lying on the street, cradling his leg. The backpack with the Midas hand lay next to him.

Orr raced for the pack, but another officer came charging up to Crenshaw and kicked his gun away. He spotted Orr and yelled, “Freeze! FBI! Drop your weapon!”

Orr fired two shots at the agent, who dropped to the pavement. Normally both his shots would have hit, but the lack of depth perception caused him to miss. With his damaged eye, he’d be at a severe disadvantage in a standing gun battle.

Orr abandoned the backpack and ran across the street into the deli, cursing Tyler Locke the whole way.

SIXTY-EIGHT

The lightning-fast gun battle had been a blur to Tyler. Agent Immel went down with a shoulder wound. It wasn’t fatal, but she was out of action and stayed in the car to call for backup. Tyler circled around the truck to see Orr disappear into a deli.

He stooped to pick up the gun of Orr’s injured confederate, ready to give chase, but Riegert stopped him.

“I’ll get Orr!” He pointed at the man on the ground. “You make this guy tell you about the bomb.” Tyler nodded and tucked the pistol into his waistband. Riegert ran for the deli next to the bank being renovated into a restaurant. Tyler wanted to chase down Orr, but disarming the bomb had to be his first priority.

“What’s your name?” Grant said, nudging the man with his foot.

“Crenshaw,” the man said with a grimace, still holding his leg. “Peter Crenshaw. We have to get out of here.”

Tyler grabbed him by the collar. “Crenshaw, is the strontium bomb already set to detonate?”

Crenshaw looked surprised that Tyler would know about it.

“I don’t know what you mean,” Crenshaw said.

“The FBI found a lead hazmat suit at the warehouse you blew up. Half the building showed traces of radioactivity. That jog your memory?”

Crenshaw nodded slowly.

“Did you set it to go off?”

Crenshaw nodded again.

“When?”

Crenshaw held up his watch. It was counting down and just under the eight-minute mark. Even if the bomb squad were on-site now, that amount of time would be slicing it thin, but Tyler had no idea when they would get here. It would be up to him and Grant to secure the bomb.

Grant took the watch and put it on. “How do we disarm it?” he said, taking Crenshaw from Tyler and hauling him to his feet.

Crenshaw shook his head. “You can’t. I designed it so that no one could disable it once it was armed.”

“Where is it?” Tyler demanded.

“It’s in the center of the trailer, but I’m telling you we have to go.”

“Describe it. Now!”

Crenshaw hesitated until Grant increased the pressure of his grip. “Okay! Okay! It’s two separate parts, unconnected but both synchronized to identical timers. The black box is the lead shield for the strontium, and it’s packed with C4, so the shield gets blown apart one second before the main bomb explodes.”

“How big is the main bomb?” Grant asked.

“Five hundred pounds, plus three hundred gallons of gas to incinerate the sawdust.”

Holy God! Tyler thought. That was enough explosive to wipe out the entire block.

“How do we disarm it?” Grant said, shaking Crenshaw, who began to blubber.

“You can’t. No one can. I designed it with a collapsible circuit. Please! We need to leave.”

“I’ll get the Geiger counter,” Grant said, and dragged Crenshaw to the FBI vehicle so that Immel could keep an eye on him.

Tyler recognized Orr’s backpack lying on the ground. He unzipped it and saw that it still held Midas’s hand, the golden hand, and the Archimedes Codex. Tyler couldn’t let Orr get the Touch back, so he pulled the pack over his shoulders.

Armed with the Geiger counter, Grant was first up the trailer’s ladder, followed by Tyler. They trotted along the taut tarp stretched across the open trailer. Tyler sliced it open with his Leatherman. He and Grant pulled it back to reveal the pile of sawdust that filled the truck all the way up to the tarp. It had the consistency of mulch and supported their weight. Grant waved the Geiger counter over it until he found the strongest reading.

They dug, revealing a black metal box buried in the sawdust.

Tyler checked his watch. Seven minutes left.

“Which bomb do you want?” Grant asked. He was already on Tyler’s wavelength. They had to separate the bombs, or they’d have a radioactive cloud over the entire downtown area.

“You’re the better truck driver,” Tyler said. “Find someplace empty.”

Grant glared at him. “In Manhattan?”

“Just do your best. First, help me carry the strontium bomb. We’ll take it off the back of the truck.”

“And then what?”

Tyler remembered the new bank building and turned to look at it, but the bank renovation next to it caught his eye.

Wine and dine inside an actual turn-of-the-century bank vault.

“The old vault in the Safe Cracker restaurant,” Tyler said. “If I can put the bomb in there and close the door, it should contain the blast.” And he wouldn’t have to destroy the new bank’s vault in the process.

They heaved the black box up. Their combined strength was barely enough to lift the lead container. They got back onto the tarp and shuffled to the back of the truck, Tyler’s ribs howling all the way.

After they put the box down, Grant dropped over the side to open the rear doors. Tyler looked over the edge to see sawdust pour out, forming a pile on the asphalt.

“Okay!” Grant shouted.

Tyler sliced through the tarp and fell through the tear with the lead box next to him, guiding it as he slid down the avalanche of sawdust.

Grant met him at the bottom with a handcart.

“Courtesy of the delivery truck across the street,” he said.

They put the lead box on the cart.

“Go!” Tyler yelled as he dashed across the street with the cart.

By this time, four police cruisers had converged on the truck. Immel was directing them despite her injury. Running for the truck cab, Grant shouted at her.

“There’s a bomb in this truck and it’s about to go off! Where’s the bomb squad?”

“Jesus,” she said. “They’re five minutes out.”

“That’s too long. I need a police escort now!”

“All right, where do you need to go?”

Grant consulted his cell phone. “Albany Street. We’ve got five minutes.”

He started the truck and didn’t wait for the police cars to get out of the way. He gunned the engine and smashed two of them aside. The other two cruisers roared off in front of him.

“Agent Immel!” Tyler yelled before he went through the door where the Safe Cracker was being renovated. “This is the radioactive part of the bomb. Keep everyone out of here.”

“You got it.” She pointed at the two remaining officers. “You at the front entrance. You take the back entrance. Get everyone out, and make sure no one else goes in.”

As Tyler entered the old bank, he saw that the renovation was in its early stages. The floor had been stripped to the bare concrete, and the walls were prepped with white primer, ready for a coat of paint.

Many of the workers had already gone outside to see what the commotion was. One of the police officers ran past Tyler, herding the remaining workers out the back door at the far end of the building.

Tyler couldn’t miss the vault on the right. The immense circular door was ten feet in diameter and two feet thick. The bronze still held its luster after a hundred years of service, and the mechanism controlling the six-inch-diameter locking bolts was visible behind a new Plexiglas shield. The door’s massive weight would be more than enough to contain the blast of the bomb and shield the exterior from radioactive exposure.

He wheeled the handcart through the aperture and into a space far larger than he was anticipating. The twenty-foot-deep vault extended twenty-five feet in each direction to the right and left. Here the work was more complete. On the inside of the vault next to the door was a hostess stand. A bar extended half the length of the long wall where the safety-deposit boxes would have been, leaving enough room for twenty tables. On one end, lumber was piled up in anticipation for laying the hardwood floor.

Tyler pushed the handcart to a stop next to the stacked two-by-fours. A shame that the restaurant would never open now. No one would ever want to eat in a place that had been exposed to high-energy radiation.

Tyler heard the footsteps of someone outside the vault door coming toward him.

“You need to leave now!” Tyler yelled, thinking it was the police officer. He turned from the cart, and out of the shadows he saw the glint of a pistol aimed at his head.

Tyler ducked just as a gunshot blasted. The bullet whistled past his ear. He ran and dove behind the lumber, Orr’s pack digging into his shoulder blades. He drew Crenshaw’s pistol and looked around the side, but two more shots chewed bits out of the wood before he could see anything. He fired blindly around the corner and heard the thump of someone hitting the floor. He peeked out, but he didn’t see a body. A voice confirmed his misses.

“It’s simple, Tyler,” Jordan Orr said. “Either you toss the Midas hand over to me or in four minutes we both die.”

SIXTY-NINE

Orr must have come into the back of the old bank building and seen Tyler wheeling the bomb into the vault with the backpack on his shoulders. He was taking cover behind the other end of the bar. The lumber pile was large enough to shield Tyler, but they were in a stalemate. If Tyler made a break for the vault exit, Orr would cut him down.

Tyler was hoping the police had heard the shots, but nobody came running to his rescue. He shrugged off the backpack.

“It’s over, Orr,” he said. “I have the Midas Touch right here.”

“That’s why it isn’t over,” Orr said. “If you give it to me, I’ll go.”

“Where?” Tyler said. “Terrorism is a capital offense. The CIA will track you down wherever you go. You’ll be a wanted man the rest of your life, Orsini.”

Orr was silent at hearing the name.

“Did you know my father and Carol Benedict are alive, too?” Tyler asked.

He heard Orr rasp out “Crenshaw” like a curse word.

“I heard about your father, Orr,” Tyler said. “I know that’s why you’re here. Your big plan is a failure. Why don’t you give up?”

“For what?” Orr said. “To serve consecutive life terms in an eight-foot cell? Or get the death penalty?”

Tyler knew he was right. Orr now had nothing to lose, but Tyler had no intention of letting him get away with his crimes to live a life of luxury courtesy of King Midas. Not after seeing the appalling condition of his father this morning. Besides, even if he were thwarted this time, Orr wouldn’t give up on his vendetta, and with millions of dollars at his disposal he would eventually exact his revenge.

“You failed every way you could, Orr. Grant and I found you. Crenshaw’s in custody. Your men are dead, and your bomb won’t irradiate Manhattan. You’ve left a trail of destruction behind you, and for what?”

“You didn’t mention Stacy Benedict,” Orr said with delight. “She didn’t make it, did she? At least I got that right.”

Orr’s breezy taunt hit home. Tyler’s stomach had been churning all morning because he hadn’t yet heard from Italy whether Stacy had pulled through.

Something in Tyler snapped. With no time to think through his plan, he threw the backpack as hard as he could so that it landed behind the hostess stand.

“You want the Midas Touch so badly?” Tyler shouted. “There it is. Go get it.”

Even though his destination was only a half mile away, Grant worried that he wasn’t going to make it. Too many tight corners with this beast of a truck. It was already down to two minutes to go, and he was only turning onto Albany now.

Grant hadn’t told the police why he wanted to get to Albany Street, but it was the only thing he could think of, and he didn’t have time to listen to other opinions. If they’d known what he planned, they might not have paved a path for him.

He didn’t know New York well, but he’d checked the map on his smartphone when he got the idea for where to dump the truck. The closest option had been Albany. The entire route was just eleven blocks.

Now he was four blocks away, and he could make out the blue water of his destination from his perch high in the truck cab.

He was going to dump the trailer in the Hudson River.

As Tyler had hoped, Orr couldn’t resist the chance to get the Midas Touch back. Firing shots as he ran across the open space, Orr dove behind the hostess stand.

If Tyler went for the vault door now, he wouldn’t get within five feet of it before Orr shot him. Orr thought he was safe behind the thick wood of the hostess stand knowing that Tyler’s 9-mm bullets wouldn’t penetrate, but he’d missed one crucial detail Tyler had noticed. The stand wasn’t anchored to the floor, because the hardwood hadn’t been installed yet.

When he heard Orr unzip the pack to make sure the Midas hand was there, Tyler launched himself at the heavy-duty handcart and shoved it with all his strength toward the stand.

As Tyler released the handcart, it fell backward onto its handles, but loaded with the lead box it had more than enough momentum to continue rocketing toward the stand.

Orr heard the scraping of the cart’s handle and looked around the corner of the stand to fire, but the handcart smacked into the stand, knocking it backward into him. The pack went flying.

With Orr down but out of sight, Tyler made a run for it.

With less than a minute to go, Grant blasted down the street, the needle on the speedometer pushing fifty. He kept the pedal mashed to the floor. He needed as much velocity as he could get.

Albany was a narrow tree-lined street, and it dead-ended at a small circle. A courtyard separated the street from the Esplanade, a pedestrian path running along the river.

Grant blew through South End Avenue, the last intersection before the river. The street was free of cars from here on. He pulled on the truck’s air horn, hoping the cops got the message to get out of the way.

Then he saw the courtyard bordering the circle. In addition to a few small trees there were more formidable obstacles: seven brick pillars spanning the width of the courtyard. The police cars could go no farther and had stopped directly in front of them.

There was just enough room separating the last pillar and the apartment building on the left, so Grant aimed the truck between them and opened the driver’s door. The speedometer read thirty-five. He leaned on the horn again to scatter any pedestrians who might not be expecting a forty-ton semi to roar across the Esplanade.

Then he jumped.

Orr shook off his daze and heard Tyler’s running footsteps. Still lying on the floor, he looked past the stand and saw that Tyler was through the vault door.

Orr screamed in frustration at being duped.

“No!”

He fired the pistol until it clicked on an empty chamber, but Tyler was already pushing the massive door closed.

Orr got to his feet, picked up the backpack, and ran to the door. He was pushing against it, trying to prevent Tyler from getting it closed all the way, when he saw the lead container near his feet. The bomb was no more than an arm’s length away.

His eyes widened with terror when he realized that he’d lost track of the time. In disbelief he stared at his watch counting down.

Eight, seven, six …

Tyler strained against the door, but even though it was well oiled, moving its bulk took time.

He had heard Orr yell and then the sound of gunshots. Slowly, the door swung closed. When it was flush with the wall, Tyler spun the wheel until it hit its stops. Just as the lock fully engaged, he felt more than he heard the explosion through the door.

The interior of the vault was now bathed in intense radiation. It would stay sealed shut until a containment team arrived.

Tyler leaned against the door, but he didn’t expect to hear any pounding from inside. He wondered how he would feel if he did. He decided not to find out and walked outside, turning his thoughts toward the fate of Stacy and Grant rather than toward a criminal who’d made their lives hell for one week.

Whatever happened in there, Orr got what he deserved.

Grant got plenty of practice cushioning his falls during his wrestling days, but landing on the dirt trim bordering the Esplanade at thirty-five miles an hour was an entirely different experience. His left knee smacked hard as he tumbled, barely missing the trunk of a tree and collecting about a thousand nicks and cuts along the way. He rolled more times than he could count as the truck catapulted into the Hudson with a tremendous splash. He came to rest on the concrete Esplanade in time to see the truck flip over and begin to sink.

Grant waved for the police officers to get back, then saw two startled joggers, a man and a woman, stop and go to the edge of the Esplanade to watch the truck disappear into the water. He stood, but could put little weight on his leg. He hobbled toward the joggers, yelling, “Get down!”

They turned and saw Grant’s limping form and more police cars screeching to a stop behind him. They gawked in astonishment but didn’t move.

The truck was now underwater. Grant had no time to explain. He used his bulk to crash into them and throw them to the ground. Just as they hit the pavement and Grant covered them with his body, an earsplitting boom erupted from the river.

A wave of water surged over the embankment and drenched them, and parts of the truck pinged on the ground as debris rained down around them.

It took ten seconds for the water to subside, and the three of them were soaked through. After the last bit of truck landed, Grant rolled off the joggers and sat up.

Both of them gaped at Grant, who smiled back.

“Sorry about that, folks,” he said through gritted teeth. “Nice day for a run, eh?”

The lumber pile that had hidden Tyler provided the same protection for Orr when he instinctively dove behind it as the bomb went off.

Smoke permeated the room but didn’t overwhelm it. Orr, deaf from the blast, rose and saw chunks of lead embedded in the wood.

Orr knew what that meant. The air he was inhaling was suffused with radioactive dust. Even if he got out immediately, radiation poisoning was a death sentence. He’d seen the pictures of radiation victims. An agonizing end.

He didn’t want to go out that way. His life would soon be over, but at least he could end it himself, the way his father had. He raised the revolver to his head and pulled the trigger.

It clicked. He pulled the trigger again. Nothing. The cylinder was empty. He’d used all his rounds shooting at Tyler.

He dropped the gun and sagged to the floor. Orr opened the backpack, took out the container with the Midas hand, and wept bitter tears for all that had been taken from him.

Tyler was sitting in the back seat of Riegert’s FBI vehicle when a police car pulled up and Grant got out. With a distinct limp, his clothes sodden and torn, and dozens of scratches and bruises on his face and arms, he shuffled over to the car and plopped down.

“You okay?” Tyler said.

“Feels like a torn ligament,” Grant said, holding his knee. “Nothing a little arthroscopic surgery won’t take care of. How about you?”

“My side hurts like hell, but otherwise I’m fine. The bomb?”

“At the bottom of the Hudson. No one hurt. Except me, that is. And yours?”

“In the vault when it went off. The time lock won’t let us open it for twelve hours.”

“Did they catch Orr?”

Tyler looked back at the bank. “He’s in the vault, too.”

“Think he survived the blast?”

Tyler shrugged. He realized now that he just didn’t care. “Either way, we’ll get the whole story about his plan. Crenshaw’s already talking, hoping to cut a deal.”

“Any other news?” Grant asked gingerly.

Tyler knew that he meant Stacy. The last time they’d seen her, she was being wheeled away in critical condition. Tyler shook his head.

Ambulances had taken away the two cops Orr had injured getting into the vault, so they sat there in silence as they waited for another officer to arrive and take Grant to get his leg examined. After five minutes, Special Agent Riegert walked over, his phone in hand.

“You guys did good today,” Riegert said. Grant and Tyler both nodded a simple acknowledgment.

Riegert held the phone out for Tyler. “Got a call for you.”

“Who is it?” Tyler said, taking the phone.

“Carol Benedict from the hospital in Naples,” Riegert said, his face impassive. “She has something to tell you.”