Early Warning

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Principessa Stanley awoke with a start. She didn’t remember much, but what she did remember wasn’t good. Where was she? Where had she been last night?

Let’s take them in reverse order, she decided. She had already noticed she couldn’t move her arms or her legs, but right now her arms were her primary concern, if only to wipe the dirt and the goo off her face, however it got there. But she couldn’t move her arms, and therefore her legs were the last of her worries at the moment.

The main worry was the plastic bag over her head and the rag in her mouth. Luckily, she could breathe, which was a duh because if she couldn’t have breathed, she would have been dead long ago. So whoever did this to her at least had enough of a heart to keep her alive, although for what, she’d rather not think…

Principessa Stanley was a good reporter. In fact, she was a better reporter than most of her rivals, including those on the newspapers. She had earned her job fairly, with a high degree from a good School of Communication, which was what all the former journalism schools were calling themselves these days. It was not her fault that she was pretty and had a killer body; those assets were only the deciding factors, the extras, whenever she had been up for a gig in the past. At her level now, every woman was either good-looking or unemployed. Such was the triumph of feminism.

So why was she here, buried up to her neck in a dirt grave behind the Metropolitan Museum of Art? Who had done this to her?

She tried not to panic. That was what she always heard. Panic would get you nowhere. Worse, panic would get you killed even faster. Take deep breaths…

She panicked. She struggled and writhed and tried to pretzel her way out of the shallow grave, but it was useless. She was planted in the backyard of the Met, like some kind of human vegetable like Farmer Brown’s victims in that ridiculous horror movie from the eighties, Motel Hell. Her assailant probably had seen the damn thing, which is what had given him the idea. Fucking hicks from flyover country were all the same: right-wing nuts who ought to be hunted down and exterminated. When Angela Hassett beat that horrid Jeb Tyler in the fall, things were going to change, but good. She could hardly wait, not that she would ever admit that on the air or anything. After all she was a neutral journalist.

She caught herself and stopped moving. Clearly, she wasn’t going to get out all at once. She was going to have to work her way out of this, wriggle out of it, like a worm or something, a quarter-inch at a time. Slow and steady wins the race.

She tried pushing down at whatever solid ground might be below her, but couldn’t get much of a purchase. The soil was soft and loamy, freshly dug; all she was managing to do was sink a little deeper, which obviously wasn’t the way to go. Once again she stopped, and this time she realized she was already out of breath. What a ripoff that gym membership had been. All that cardio exercise was supposed to help you in situations like this, wasn’t it?

Think.

Then she felt something move between her legs. If she could have jumped, she would have. Instead, she thought her heart was going to stop, right then and there.

What the hell was in the pit with her?

Her mind raced. She was starting to lose it.

A snake? Did they even have snakes in Central Park? There must be snakes in Central Park. There were coyotes in Central Park now, and she had to admit that she always felt a small thrill whenever another wild animal was sighted within the five boroughs. It was long past time that humans should move aside and start sharing the limited space on the planet with animals who, afterall, were just people without lawyers of their own species.

It moved again.

It didn’t feel like a snake. It didn’t feel like it was slithering, whatever slithering felt like. Snakes didn’t travel underground, did they? She remembered that time when she was a girl when she saw a sunning snake slither back into its lair, in a hole in the ground. So it could be a snake, after all.

But what if it was a gopher, or a groundhog, or a woodchuck, something with teeth? Would that be worse than a snake? Something that would start by nibbling on her extremities, get a tasty bite or two, and then set about making a meal out of her, so that when they finally found her, when the city wasn’t in lockdown anymore, they’d reach for her head and that would be all that was left of her, the rest having gone to nourish a colony of woodchucks the size of Staten Island.

There it went again. That same feeling. Whatever its source, it didn’t seem to be moving, just sitting there between her knees and her crotch, buzzing, tickling her, vibrating…in other context, she might even have enjoyed the experience. But not now.

She tried to push herself up again, which was a dumb idea, because she moved farther south, and she also felt whatever it was slide a little as it vibrated once more.

It was a cell phone. Her cell phone, which she had been looking at when that bastard assaulted her. If she could somehow slide her hand down and grab it…well, that was the first half of the plan. The second half would be to somehow get her arm out from underneath the dirt and bring the phone to her face, where she would somehow manage to get the damn thing to work, even if she had to press the talk button with her nose.

She reached. It was like fighting her way through molasses, but amazingly she could make a little progress. That was the upside of the loamy soil; her hand could actually move a little. Inch by inch. Keep it simple. Baby steps. Get to the goal eventually, even if it took forever.

Wait a minute-she didn’t have forever. She tried to recall what she read about people living without food and water. You could go without food for weeks-just look at those Irish hunger-strikers-but water, she was pretty sure, was a nonnegotiable commodity. Maybe a day or two, then madness set in, followed by death. What if the crisis wasn’t over by then? The way the cops fought these days, it might take them a week to round up the dudes for the fair trials. She couldn’t wait to cover the proceedings.

Her thoughts continued to run along these lines until she realized that she was already slipping into madness. Goddamnit, didn’t that bastard know who she was? He couldn’t treat her like this! The minute she got out of here, she was going to hunt his ass down, find him, and rat him out to the cops. She’d testify at the trial and hope to hell he’d get the death penalty. Normally, she was against the death penalty, but in this case she’d make an exception.

The buzzing again. Her hand moved closer. It brushed up against something. By God, she was closer to it all along than she had thought! Now we were getting somewhere.

Keep buzzing, you bastard, she thought. Come to mama.

She had it!

It was a cell phone!

But not her cell phone. She could tell by the feel. It was just a cheap piece of crap. WTF?

It was his. That dirty son of a bitch. She had him now. As soon as she got out of here, she could trace this sucker, ransack his phonebook. The little bastard would be sorry he was ever born after she turned the wrath of the Sinclair empire on his sorry ass. She started laughing. Revenge was going to be eaten hot and she was going to enjoy every bite.

Her arm was moving!

The dirt was falling away from her shoulder. All of that moving and shaking had loosened it just enough so that now, in her justifiable rage and anger and lust for vengeance, she could extract it.

Here it came-

Her shoulder popped out of the earth. She shrugged as hard as she could, just like she did in the gym with some light dumbbells in each hand, toning the traps, and raised her elbow. Pushing, pushing. Come on, do it. Remember the old bodybuilder’s motto: what can be conceived can be believed and achieved.

She did it! It was coming up through the ground, her hand along with it. Which meant she could snatch the stupid baggie off her head and in just a few minutes-

“Just what I was looking for.”

Somewhere in the back of her mind, the voice sounded familiar. One of the things that made her a good reporter was her ear. She had an ear for music and an ear for voices, and she rarely had to think twice before being able to attach a name not just to a face, which was easy, but to a voice, which was much harder.

This voice she knew.

No time to think about it now. The cell phone disappeared from her grip. Shit. There went her last hope. The bastard had come back for it, and now he was going to kill her.

“I was wondering how long it would take me to find you. Brave girl. Now, where is he?”

He had not taken the baggie off her head, and he was behind her. But he wasn’t fondling her or anything like that, so she had to assume he was one of the good guys. Still, he didn’t sound like a cop-

Hang on. Didn’t sound-sound-Say, she knew that voice…

“What was his name?” The voice was sterner now. Somewhere a clock was ticking. No time for games. She’d find out who it was later.

“He didn’t say.”

“Sure about that?”

Something about this guy’s voice said not to fuck with him. Think-there. “No, wait, he did say.”

“Thought so. You weren’t lying to me, were you?”

“No, why would I-”

“I can tell when you lie. I can tell when anybody lies. So be straight with me, collect yourself, and everybody will be happy.”

“Yeah.”

“That’s yes, sir.”

“Yes, sir.” No point in arguing.

“What did he say his name was? Some Arabic name?”

“No, American.”

“Go.”

“Raymond. Raymond something.”

“D.B. Do better.”

“Gimme a sec. Something German-sounding…wait…it’s coming.”

“So’s the Rapture. Hurry.”

Her mind raced again. It was doing a lot of that lately. It was on the tip of her tongue…news business…anchors…She had it!

“Cronkite, like Walter, I think. How could I forget something like that?”

“I believe you,” her rescuer said. So he wasn’t going to kill her; he wasn’t another sick fuck psycho. He was a kind of guardian angel.

“So? You’re going to get me out of here now, right?”

No answer. She could free herself after a while, but it sure would be easier with a little help.

“Right?”

“Listen, you cocksucker,” the man was saying intro the phone. “I’m coming for you. O my Brother, this will be the last dawn you will ever see.” Except that she couldn’t understand a word: to her, it all sounded like a variation of haLA-haLA-haLA-haLA. She really had to start studying languages, especially those funny foreign ones they spoke in the Middle East. “Because I am sending you to hell.” That part at least was in English.

She stayed silent and listened in case he spoke again…but could hear nothing. Either he was still here, or he was gone.

“Hello?”

No response.

“Mister?”

Ditto.

Fifteen minutes later, covered with dirt, Principessa Stanley tore the baggie off her head and took a deep breath. The back end of the Metropolitan Museum of Art had never looked so good to her. In vain, though, she looked around for the man who had saved her, the man whose voice she dimly recognized, and would now devote the rest of her life to discovering his identity. What a story that would be.

She looked in a 360-degree circle, then ran out onto Fifth Avenue.

But he, whoever he was, was gone.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

The Central Park Reservoir

The killing had begun again that morning. Raymond had never felt so liberated, so alive. Being a martyr was a wonderful thing.

Up to now, he had never understood the principle, of life-in-death and death-in-life. He had never understood the relationship between Eros and Thanatos, which he’d read about in a book once and never quite got. The yin and yang thing he’d thought he understood, especially if it came with those sex diagrams attached, but it was one thing to understand something intellectually and quite another to feel something viscerally.

But this was totally different. This was raw, exciting. This was what freedom felt like. Now he understood what those crazy suicide bombers felt like when they pulled the pin on their own grenades, secure in the knowledge that they were going to take bunch of the infidels with them, send them straight to hell, while they themselves would soon see paradise. He wasn’t quite sure if he believed all the blather about the seventy-two virgins, or raisins, or even if there was anything on the other side, but what the hell did it matter, because he was here, he was now and-

Blam! Got the bitch with one shot.

Blam! Another one.

Blam! Another one.

He could shoot them from the bushes. He liked the bushes. This was a nice park, much nicer than any he’d seen, even nicer than Golden Gate Park, where the Brothers had taken him once on an outing, although it didn’t have the same sweet smell of the eucalyptus trees, or the delicious salty taste of the fog in the late afternoons.

As usual, the chicken passersby started running in all directions, squawking. It was just as the Brother had said: no one would fight back against him. He was not only invincible, he was invulnerable. He was free to kill as he liked. He not only like God, he was God.

Devlin had already punched the name into the CSS database and gotten his readout: nothing. Raymond Crankeit or Kronkite or Krankheit or however you wanted to spell it, nothing. His worst nightmare: a punk with a rifle, a chip on his shoulder, and a limp noodle.

His secure PDA buzzed: MARTIN FERGUSON read the display.

“Eddie Bartlett,” as he’d been known on the last operation. Danny Impellatieri, his man main, his old buddy from Blackwater, now Xe, the country’s foremost PMC, or Private Military Company. There are dozens of them, and some very good ones, like Triple Canopy, but despite all the bad publicity Danny continued to work with and recruit from Xe-mostly ex-elite forces, like Danny, who knew what to do with a piece of equipment or a lethal weapon, and who also knew how to count money and keep their mouths shut.

Even though they’d never met, and operated together under strict rules, including a rotating series of aliases that, for laughs, were generated by random run-throughs of the movie database imdb.com, they trusted each other with their lives.

LOCATION?

STEWART. NEED CHOPPER

MILITARY? XE?

NG. CITY SEALED. OFFICIAL CHANNELS OUT.

ALL BUT ONE.

EXPLAIN

NYPD

NO CONTACTS

NO WORRIES.

WHAT KIND OF RIDE?

Danny had been one of the Army’s top helicopter pilots with the legendary 60th Special Operations Aviation Regiment (Airborne), 2nd Battalion, at Fort Campbell, Kentucky, known in the biz as the Night Stalkers. Danny, he knew, favored the MH-60/DAP (Direct Action Penetrator) Black Hawks, but the NYPD choppers were damn near as good.

STAND BY AND BE READY TO HOP

ROGER THAT.

He didn’t care what Danny needed the chopper for; he owed him. His next message was to Byrne:

HAVE POLICE CHOPPER STANDING BY ON MY ORDERS, WITH BARRETT. ANGEL

He had to make sure Kohanloo did not get off the island, and a chopper, which could sweep from one side of Manhattan to another in a couple of minutes, was the ideal way to ensure that. With everything closed, there was only one way off Melville’s Isle of the Manhattoes, and that was the way the original Dutchmen had come: by sea. Whatever other reason Danny might have for wanting a hawk, he was going to make damn sure Kohanloo stayed put, or died.

Kohanloo, if he was as smart as Devlin thought he was, would have had a boat ready, on a jetty, anything, most likely on the East River-the Hudson was too wide, he’d be a sitting duck, ripe for target practice-and would try to slip out under the cover of darkness.

Then, over the police scanner he was picking up with his PDA, he heard the reports of shots fired at the Reservoir. And he knew, he just knew, it was Raymond.

Byrne got the message. This was crazy, but crazy was all he had time for right about now. He didn’t like the tenor of his conversation with his brother-he never liked the tenor of their conversations-and he could tell the bastard was snooping around, planning something, plotting something, more likely. If it weren’t for their sainted mother, Irene, still alive and still living in the flat in Queens, although Frankie had been trying to coax her into a nursing home in the Bronx for years, a nice one, but she was convinced he meant the Hebrew Home for Aged and the very thought of that agitated the old Russian lady, who had retained her reflexive anti-Semitism all her life. Although, God knew, she had been through enough horror in her life, and the life of her family, for the world to cut a crazy old lady a little slack. Rufus even continued to keep watch over her, invisible and silent as ever, as he had for more than a decade. Rufus was a successful businessman in Jamaica, Queens, but he still cruised by the old neighborhood, looking for a random game of pickup hoops and always with the intent of checking in on Irene, just in case…

He ordered the police chopper on standby. He’d deal with his asshole brother later. As much later as he could.

Devlin moved slowly but deliberately, cautiously but not suspiciously. With the city still in lockdown, and the other shooters rounded up there would be cops rushing to the spot in minutes, converging on the Reservoir in full force. That’s what they were trained to do, and that’s the way he would have responded, too, were it not for one thing:

He knew, dead-solid-fucking-certain knew that Raymond whatever his name was, Mr. Disease, would not be there when they got there. Not because he was a genius. There was no chance a guy like him was a genius. He was in fact an idiot. But there were idiots and then there were idiots savants, and he’d long since pegged this last of the Mohicans as a savant.

Raymond would do nothing expected. He would do everything wrong. He was, in fact, like the enemy he served: technically inept, tactically amateurish, unable to grasp the basic concepts of warfare, except for the most important one: always keep your opponent guessing.

To get Raymond, he would have to think like Raymond. This was not like taking on Milverton. Milverton was good, great even, but Milverton and he had battled according to an unspoken set of precepts, like two chess grandmasters locked in mortal combat. This putz was the Paul Morphy of gunmen, probably mentally ill, but there was a brilliance in his illness, a genius in his madness.

Where would you go? What was motivating him?

Devlin’s mind raced as he neared the Reservoir. He thought back to Atwater ’s report: Love and Revenge.

There it was. Raymond was not a patch on Skorzeny and his crazy apocalypse, of which the attack on New York now obviously was just another piece of the overall mosaic, but just as ontology recapitulated phylogeny, Raymond was an adumbrator of the greater genius of his puppetmaster.

What did he know about the man? Nothing, or close to it. He didn’t turn up in any databases, and Devlin hadn’t seen enough of his MO to be able to properly formulate a-

Hang on.

The burial. The bushes. He didn’t suddenly dig that grave for Ms. Stanley, he had dug it for some purpose. To bury his weapons, perhaps. But there was another reason. Jesus, it was so obvious:

He felt comfortable underground.

That was where he had slept. That was where he would go. Underground. And nowhere in America was there a more hospitable underground-if such an adjective could be used in this context-than New York City. The city was burrowed under by miles of tunnels: subway tunnels, steam tunnels, water tunnels, electrical tunnels; there was almost as much civilization under Manhattan as there was above it. Cops hated going down there, workers hated it, maintenance men hated it, and even the sandhogs, the brotherhood of blacks and Irish who were digging-and had dug-the gigantic water tunnels that flowed down from Westchester and gave life to the city-hated it.

That’s where Raymond would go. He had to beat him to it.

And where was the nearest underground?

Under the reservoir. In the pump house.

Like its now-vanished cousins, the reservoir had once been the oasis of the city, not to the extent the old Collect Pond had been in the early days, which had fed the Five Points, both now buried under the concrete of the august courts of lower Manhattan. Nor was it a rival of the real reservoir that once had stood, in all its faux-Egyptian splendor, where the New York Public Library was today. Now that had been a reservoir. Still, the Central Park Reservoir could boast of something the others couldn’t, which was its survival.

He had to get to the pump house. And then he had to deal with Arash Kohanloo.

He glanced at his watch. Maryam should have checked in with him long ago. Well, she was a big girl and could take care of herself. No time to worry about something he couldn’t control. To think otherwise would not only be unprofessional, it would make him crazy.

Arash Kohanloo tried to stay calm. Everything was in readiness. The boat was going to leave from a private slip down the slope from River House. He was in River House, in the apartment of a fellow Iranian, who lived in the kind of splendor that he himself, for all his success, still aspired to. All he had to do was stay calm.

Calm.

The people who lived in River House were extremely rich, but while Manhattan’s newspapers may articulate the glories of philanthropy and the coerced public good of tax dollars, the bitter truth was that many of them had inherited their money, not earned it in any meaningful sense, and so could make a great show of working for a dollar a year, or donating their salaries to charity, or demanding that wage slaves pay up, secure in the knowledge that their capital was not only untouched, but always growing. After all, it was called an “income” tax, not a “capital” tax.

From the earliest days of River House, there had been a private egress down the shore, which not even the construction of the FDR Highway had disturbed. Once upon a time, the East River had been awash with vessels plying the waters around Manhattan, including steamboats, pleasure cruisers and even, in the early 19th century, a brisk trade in river piracy. The ill-fated General Slocum had passed this way, back in 1904, aflame and doomed, rushed toward her destiny on North Brother Island, just to the north, off the Bronx shoreline, but Arash Kohanloo neither knew nor cared about that now; all he could think of was getting off the island as quickly as possible and slipping out to sea.

He made his way down the dank stone stairs, slippery with age and shaking, in the damp and the chill, with his fear of this Malak al-Maut, this specter who had emerged out of the night to read his every thought, to know his every intimate wish and desire. Him he must flee; what would happen after that, after he got down to the rendezvous point in Red Hook, only Allah knew.

The boat was there, where it was supposed to be. On board were flares and firearms, maps and guidance systems, plus a communications device. He would have to run both silent and fast, but with the craft’s markings, he felt certain that no one would stop him. If anyone stopped him, he was on a mission of mercy, running medical supplies downtown. After all, he was on a Red Cross boat.

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

Central Park

The Reservoir-the Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis Reservoir, to give it its full name-had not been actively connected to the city’s water supply system since the opening of a massive new water tunnel in 1991, but that didn’t mean the infrastructure wasn’t still there. As one of the main storehouses for the water that kept lower Manhattan alive, the reservoir collected the water brought down from Westchester and in turn sent it farther south, to where the people were. The area under the Park was one vast canal, much of it still in use, but some of it now abandoned. That’s where he would be.

There would be cops crawling all around the reservoir, so Devlin went in the same way the city’s rats headed wherever they wished to go, via the New York City sewer system.

People who were dazzled by Manhattan and who never ventured belowground, got only half the picture. True, the city’s skyscrapers, from the Woolworth Building to the late World Trade Center, had long been objects of wonder and envy. But underground, where the water tunnels, the subway tunnels, the steam tunnels, the electrical tunnels, the service tunnels and everything else all jostled for position, was a miracle of subterranean organization. Animals lived down there, and people too-the cops called them the “skells,” either in colonies or as lonely, wayward, and usually crazed souls, who had nothing to connect them to the world above.

He knew exactly how they felt.

Which was why he was chasing this boy now. From his observations of the scene with the woman buried behind the Met, he had already developed a profile in his mind. This boy had kept her, not killed her, which meant either he had other plans for her, or had felt a stab of something-love? compassion?-that prevented him from acting on his natural impulses, which had otherwise been given free rein.

The shooter was not a Muslim, of that he was certain. Muslim fighters may kill women, but it is an unmanly thing to do. There was no glory in killing women, even infidel women, and however poor their combat skills were otherwise-and aside from the occasional rush of crazy bravery, they were very poor indeed-their reverent contempt for women in general had no place for their murder, unless on moral grounds. So most likely he was an American, one of these poor lost skells who had not yet found the way to his place below and beneath the earth. But now, if Devlin had guessed right, he was about to embrace his destiny.

The Angel had left most of his tools behind him. He knew enough never to underestimate any adversary, but this job did not require the LMT, or the Glocks. Instead, he brought the Judge and a KA-BAR knife. That would be enough.

When Byrne got the message, he acted on it immediately. Luckily, there were no department channels to screw around with; in his world, he was the absolute boss, and what he said, went. If necessary, he could call Matt White directly and that would be that, but he needed to have a long conversation with the Chief later, when this thing was settled, and until then he had to play out the hand and win at all costs. His invisible ally, whoever he was, was on his side, and when he said he needed the best police chopper in the fleet on standby, on the roof of the old Pan Am building, fully loaded with a Barrett, Byrne didn’t hesitate.

There was just one detail that puzzled him: there was no need to bother about a pilot, because one was on his way…

Danny Impellatieri stood on the roof of the MetLife Building and looked around. He’d been to New York plenty of times, of course, but he’d never seen it like this, in several senses of the word. Not from the roof of this centrally located building, right around Grand Central Terminal, for one. And certainly not with a blown-out hollow just a few long blocks to the west, the old Times Square. The fires had been quenched, but the rubble was still smoldering; it was awe-inspiring to think of the damage a few determined gunners and a powerful plastic explosive could do. God forbid that these maniacs ever get their hands on something more lethal…

But all that had had to wait until he made the phone call. He got her on the first ring.

“Danny? Danny? Is that you?” Hope had said, even before he spoke, and he could tell by the tone of her voice that those were not simply questions, but profound expressions.

He tried to stay calm. “It’s me, Hope. All you all right? Are the kids all right?”

“Oh, Danny, it was-it was horrible. We were up on the roof and then you found the way down and then…”

“And we found that cop,” he could hear Rory saying in the background.

“And then we got down just before the whole building collapsed and there was this wounded cop, just about as dazed and fucked up-pardon my French-as we were and he helped us and they got us over to the hospital to make sure everything was okay and it was, and we’re all fine and when can you get-”

“Hope,” said Danny, “wherever you are right now, I want you to stay there. If it’s safe, don’t move. I’ll come for you.”

He could feel the disappointment over the line. “But why can’t you-”

“There’s something I have to do first. Something really important.”

She got it. Good Girl. She got it. “Is it dangerous?”

He decided to laugh. “If it wasn’t dangerous, why would they ask me to do it? Any schmuck could do it.”

“Schmuck,” she repeated. “Is this a word I’m going to have to know and use?”

“Three times in a sentence, and then it’s yours,” he replied. He liked a woman with a sense of humor. No, check that, he needed a woman with a sense of humor. After that, everything else was negotiable. And from what he could tell of Hope Gardner, there wasn’t going to be much else to negotiate. Just the date of the wedding. Which he’d do right after he got back from this job.

“See ya in a few. Kiss the kids for me.”

Flying a helicopter over the East River was not as easy as it looked, but that was the gig. Unknown whether there would be incoming. Unknown at what altitude. There would be buildings to thread and bridges to dodge, no matter what.

He knew what it was before he heard it. Not one of the old Bells, the kind they used to use, or even one of the new 412 EPs, but an Augusta A-119 Koala-not just any old off-the-shelf model, either, but a souped-up jalopy that could fly at night with no lights.

He smiled. Okay, maybe this was going to be fun after all.

Devlin passed around, over and through things he didn’t want to think about. He couldn’t wait to take a bath after all this was over. He needed to take out his man and then get aboveground as quickly as possible, for after he dispatched this boy, Mr. Kohanloo was next. And then make contact with Maryam. That he hadn’t heard from her for a while was not worrying in itself, because op-sec was everything, but…He had to admit it: for the first time in his life, he cared.

There, up ahead: the connecting tunnel. Plenty of visitors, runners mostly, used the bathrooms provided above, and that effluent had to be flushed somewhere. If he’d read the plans correctly, he could go up via that passageway, break through to a utility closet, and be right where he needed to be.

If he couldn’t kill his man, he could stink him to death.

There-he was out of the sewer and into the utility room, which was larger than he had expected. At some point it must have been expanded a bit, probably during one of the Park’s many renovations and upgrades. There was a wash-basin and a toilet even down here, and he permitted himself a small chuckle as the thought occurred to him that this wasn’t much different from his office back at The Building, its entry-way, anyway.

The chuckle was on his lips and the thought on his mind when suddenly he was struck from behind by a tremendous blow to the head.

Arash Kohanloo set the Red Cross boat into the waters, heading south. Occasionally, furtively, he scanned the skies above for the drone, half-convinced it would come back after him. That Malak al-Maut knew his every move. But the skies were clear.

The waterways, too. A few boats moved on them, but the lockdown had affected all aspects of traffic in and around Manhattan. There would be cops about, of course, but to his relief he saw that there were other emergency craft churning the waters. He would glide in among them and use them for cover. His papers were all in good order. The thought had crossed his mind that perhaps they should have disguised the boat with Red Crescent markings instead-the politically correct authorities would be overjoyed to see America’s Muslim brothers helping out, and should anyone raise a fuss, the New York Times would be there to take their side-but it was too late for that now. Besides, many Middle Easterners were Christians, not just in Lebanon, but across ancient Assyria and into Iran itself, so he could certainly fake it and hope the cops had other and better things to do.

For the first time since the appearance of the Angel of Death, he began to breathe a little easier…

Danny climbed into the chopper and took a look around. A-OK. The baby was fully loaded, and there was a nasty-looking Barrett sniper rifle all greased up and ready to go.

Two men approached him as he revved ’er up: both cops. They made a beeline for him and hopped right in.

“I’m Capt. Byrne, this is detective Aslan Saleh,” said Byrne, pronouncing the name pretty well for a white guy, and reaching for the rifle. Saleh was obviously an Arab, and Danny let the question cross his mind that maybe NYPD had been infected by the PC-virus, then caught himself. Far more likely that NYPD had done what the useless CIA should have done in the days after 9/11, if not long before: start recruiting from the streets of South Side Chicago and the tougher parts of Brooklyn, instead of among the poet-asters of Kenyon College and the University of California at Berkeley. Good Lord, when was the Langley Home for Lost Boys going to learn how to fight?

“Martin Ferguson,” he said. “Welcome aboard.”

The chopper rose…

Devlin wasn’t sure what had hit him; some kind of stanchion, probably, something the kid had found in the room. Whatever it was, it hurt like hell. He was good, but he wasn’t Superman. He was tough, but he still bled. And he was bleeding now.

The blow to the head was followed by a power punch to the nose, which sent sparks shooting into his head. Either of the blows, had he known what he was doing, could have been killers; nobody had taught this punk, but he had the instincts of a pro. And Devlin hadn’t even seen his face yet. There was no worry that his opponent should see his, because no one had ever escaped from an encounter with the Angel.

Except, of course, Emanuel Skorzeny. And that mistake would someday soon be rectified.

Devlin rolled, confidently expecting to miss the next blow, but instead got a kick that just narrowly missed the point of his chin. Good God, who was this guy?

He lashed out, but again his man wasn’t where he expected him to be. The only thing he’d gotten right about this guy was his hidey-hole, and now he was beginning to think that that was on purpose.

Crash! A rusty old tool kit collided with the wall behind him, sending a shower of old, disused tools to the floor. At last, thought Devlin, he’s made a mistake. And then he realized that was exactly what the kid wanted to do. He knew Devlin would be armed; now he had an array of weapons to choose from, including screwdrivers, hammers, lug wrenches, and a couple of small saws with nasty, rusted-out teeth.

No more mistakes: the kid would be on him in a flash. And a kid he was, too, from the looks at him he could get. He had to end this and in a hurry.

“This is fun!” came the voice and a handful of nails hit him in the face, just missing his eyes.

A hammer hit him square on the back, missing the vertebrae.

Stop fighting like a pro, he thought to himself. Forget everything you know for about five seconds, just long enough to meet him in his own battlespace. Because right now you are getting the crap kicked out of you. Think; what did this punk want?

A sharp stab of pain as the point of a Phillips screwdriver slashed his pants and tore the flesh on his calf. Great, thought Devlin: I have enough toxic shit on me to poison the city, and now it’s heading for my bloodstream. Finish this. What did this punk want?

He had it: love and revenge. Just like everybody else.

“You’re good, Raymond” he said, dodging another thrust with the screwdriver. “Real good. I could train you.”

“Shit,” sneered Raymond. “From the looks of you, you old dog, you can’t even keep shit out of your ears.

Just a little pause in the assault. That was all he needed. A little more-

“I bet back home in Wahoo everybody thought you were a dork, didn’t they?” The kid threw a box cutter at him, with a wicked aim that creased the top of his hair. “Especially the girls. Am I right?”

Raymond’s eyes widened.

“And the girls probably made fun of you when you showed them that little dick, didn’t they? You need help, boy.”

“I don’t need no help to kick the shit out of you, buddy,” said Raymond, and he was on him again. This time, though, Devlin was ready. His head was still ringing, and there was blood somewhere and the clock was ticking and he had to finish his man and get the hell out of here, because Danny would be ready by now and-

“How could you help me? What could you teach me?”

That was all the opening he needed. Just that pause.

“How about this?”

Devlin lashed out with a perfect kick to the man’s throat, which sent him tottering backward, but didn’t knock him down. The kid was tough, he had to give him that. “Ow!” he exclaimed, and Devlin realized he was dealing with somebody who was maybe eighteen years old. Then he saw it, and any doubts he might have harbored about having the wrong man were gone. As Raymond tumbled, the woman’s hair fell from his belt, where it had been hanging. In a flash, Devlin scooped it up and held it aloft.

“She’s mine now, Raymond. I’m going to be the one who fucks her tonight, not you. So you’re going to have to listen to me and take my offer if you want to tap that ass.”

They were circling each other now, wary. Raymond was having a hard time breathing, and he was gulping like a fish on the bottom of a boat; the sort of blow he’d just received did that to you.

“Can you teach me?” Raymond croaked. “The Brothers taught me, but I bet you could teach me more. They didn’t let me near no pussy on account of the faith, but they knew I wanted some and they promised me I could get me some if I…” He coughed.

“If you became a martyr, is that right?”

Raymond nodded, lowering his head.

Because of its heavy handle, the KA-BAR wasn’t thought of as a great throwing knife. You could dig a trench with it, generally fuck somebody up pretty good with it at close range. But you could also conk them with it.

Devlin heard the skull crack as the handle of the Marine Corps knife came down on Raymond’s head; the blade cut his hand as he grasped it, but no matter. This would be over soon now. He just had to keep Raymond alive a little while longer. But first he had to teach him the lessons he so desperately wanted to learn.

Devlin sprang behind and caught him in a choke hold. He put the point of the knife under his chin, then releasing the hold, caught him with a hard left to the kidney. The boy whimpered but stiffened, and kicked backward. But now the fight was on Devlin’s terms. As Raymond turned, under the illusion he had escaped the deadly hold, Devlin thrust a thumb into his eye socket and popped the eyeball loose. It stayed in his head, dangling from its stalk.

“I thought you were going to teach me!” he shouted.

“I am teaching you,” Devlin replied calmly. “It’s just that you have to use what you’ve learned in the next life, because you sure as hell aren’t going to use it in this one.”

“That’s what you think, old man.”

He must have pulled the gun out of his ass or something because the next thing Devlin knew the room was being spray-painted with bullets and all he could do was react. He dove behind some old paint barrels and boxes, not thinking that they would block the shots, but that with only one eye Raymond’s aim would be off, that he’d be firing by instinct and that, once again, all he needed was a little time.

He must be slowing down. He’d never needed time like this, time like a dropped fighter needs when he’s taking a standing eight count. He should have listened to his own good sense last year, and gotten out when he could. He could still punch his ticket, take Maryam and go live somewhere far away from all this-Argentina, maybe, or New Zealand or Mongolia, for that matter. It didn’t matter. The whole world was the same damned fucking place to him, and he’d hated it since that day in Rome.

The firing stopped.

Devlin rose, the KA-BAR in his hand, grasping it by the handle this time. The Judge was still with him, but he wanted to impart one last lesson.

The heavy knife got Raymond right below the breast-bone. “Mama!” he cried.

A pro would know to lie down. A pro would know it was time to die, the way Milverton had done when he’d bested him. A pro would show some respect.

All these things young Raymond Crankheit still had to learn, and never would.

Devlin was hardly surprised when the kid, with four of the KA-BAR’s six inches stuck inside him, tried to pull it out. He was not surprised when the kid tried to bite him as he approached. Nothing this punk did would surprise him now.

“Last lesson, Raymond,” he said, pulling out the Judge. “When you shoot at somebody, make sure you don’t miss.”

Raymond’s face was a bloody, grotesque mask as he spotted Devlin, looking down at him. Whether he saw the gun was hard to say, but he surely knew what was coming. “Give it back to me,” he hissed.

“What?”

“The hair. My girlfriend’s hair. She’ll be mad at me if it gets lost.”

“I’ll make sure she gets it back, kid,” said Devlin. He thought a moment for an appropriate valedictory. “They say there but for the grace of God, and you know what-they’re right, if you don’t take the God part too seriously. But when I look at you, Raymond, I don’t see just another misspent youth, a life that went nowhere. I see something else. I see a kid that’s going to be saved, not cursed. You’ve got talent. You’ve got moves. You’ve got heart.”

“Thanks, pop,” Raymond said. “I wish you were my dad.”

“That’s why I’m not going to let you grow up, so that you can be like me. So they can make you into another version-maybe a better version-of me. Look at me, Raymond. Look at me.”

The boy turned what was left of his face to Devlin’s.

“Here, but for the grace of God, might have gone you.”

He fired two.45 rounds in Raymond’s heart. That got that part of the pain over with. He’d never feel another pang of love or lust or anger or hatred again.

Devlin looked down at the mess that had been Raymond Crankheit. Some woman bore this creature, some man had fathered him, whipped him, beaten him, turned him into the sniveling wreck he’d become, a pit bull that cringed in front of its master but attacked the neighbors. Somewhere there were the two people who were Raymond’s parents, and whether they still loved him or despised him, or whether they were even still alive, since Raymond might have killed them first, Devlin saw no point in having their son’s final, horrific misdeeds come back to haunt them. If he could not grant absolution to the son, then let him do it for the parents.

The third round in the Judge’s chamber was a shotgun shell. He pointed the gun at Raymond’s head, and blew it off, in the hopes that someday, someone might do the same for him.

The quickest way to the river was back the way he came. There he could wash off both the shit and the stench of Raymond’s martyrdom, cleansing himself of all the sins and getting ready for one more kill.

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

The East River

Kohanloo’s boat slipped in and out of the traffic. He kept radio silence, which was something he didn’t intend to break until the last possible second, to locate his contact in Red Hook.

All things considered, the operation had been a success. They had struck a mighty blow at the Great Satan. Certain financial investments he had placed both for himself and for the mullahs would now pay off handsomely. There was the matter of the score he had to settle with Skorzeny, but that could wait until after the hero’s welcome he was undoubtedly going to get when he got back to Tehran.

He looked at the radio. It didn’t look like much, but he had to assume that it was state of the art, that it would do its job, that it would make the contact as promised and planned. He almost lifted the receiver and cranked it, just to see if it was working, but decided against it. Patience was one of the great virtues, and curious, sinful man had such a hard time understanding that.

He was lost in these thoughts for a moment until he gradually became aware of the thwack thwack thwack of an approaching helicopter, the beats growing louder. He did his best not to panic immediately. New York was filled with helicopters-police helicopters, private helicopters, news helicopters, sightseeing helicopters, now even military helicopters. Perhaps all the Brothers had been killed; perhaps the city was being reopened.

He glanced skyward. No visual, but the sound was growing louder. It was also growing lower…

“What a fucking moron,” said Lannie Saleh. “I mean, come on, it’s not like he’s obvious or anything.” He finished assembling the Barrett and got ready to hand it to Byrne.

“First rule of police work, Lannie,” said Byrne, moving into position. “If criminals weren’t stupid, the cops would never solve any crime.” He shouted over at “Martin Ferguson”-“Can you take us down a little lower? I want to get a visual on him if possible.”

“We’ll spook him.”

“I don’t know what area of law enforcement you’re in, pal, but I’m a New York City cop, with a real live NYPD badge in my pocket and a formerly regulation.38 sidearm. I shoot some civilian and even under a state of emergency my career is meat and I’m lucky to be pulling down half-pension on Fire Island. Lannie?”

Lannie angled the computer toward Byrne’s field of vision. They’d downloaded all known pictures of Kohanloo, and their mysterious benefactor had sent them a ton of surveillance photos as well, and had kept them coming until the transmission had suddenly gone dead a few hours ago. No matter, with enhancements, they knew every inch of his face the way his mother would. With other software, they could calculate his body mass, his weight, his height, then do a full-scale mockup of what he would look like in various positions, measured against objects they all knew. There was no chance, zero, that in person he would turn out to be shorter than they thought, or fatter. They’d know him in a dark alley. All they needed was one good visual and…pow! He’d be sleeping with the fishes.

They had taken off from the Pan Am Building-everybody still called it that-and circled across the river, wheeling over Queens to come around over Randall’s Island, with the whole sweep of the river heading south before them. They were over a place where the ocean tides and the waters of the Long Island Sound collided with and the estuarial waters of the Hudson River and its effluent, the Harlem River. Sailors had long hated this part of the riverway, with its treacherous eddies and rocky outcroppings. No wonder it was called Hell Gate.

“Take us down,” ordered Byrne.

“Over or under?” asked Danny.

“The bridges, you mean?”

Danny nodded. “Under is better. You want to see his face, I can let you shake his hand.”

“That’s what the scope is for,” said Byrne, patting it.

“You’re the boss.”

The chopper rose almost straight up in the air as it neared the Queensboro Bridge and both Byrne and Lannie almost lost their lunches. “Under’s better. A little trickier, but leave that to me.”

Kohanloo saw the chopper suddenly peel off and shoot into the air as he approached the Queensboro Bridge. He breathed a little easier when he shot beneath it and didn’t see the damn thing. So it was a false alarm after all. Good. At the speed he was doing, Red Hook was less than 45 minutes away. He was going to make it.

Danny rocked the chopper hard to the left as he ascended, then leveled off and headed straight across the river for Manhattan and the buildings of the East Side.

“What the hell are you doing?” shouted Byrne. “I would have had him.”

“Not under these bullshit RoEs,” shouted Danny. “You want a face-to-face shot, I’ll give it to you. But you boys are going to have to get used to riding with the pro from Dover, and that means no barfing, even if it is your chopper.”

“Hold me down, Lannie,” shouted Byrne, elbowing his way forward to get the barrel of the Barrett into position. He had no intention of dying by falling out of a helicopter over the East River, but he also had to make his shots count. The first one would go through the engine block-at a relatively short distance the Barrett could blow right through it. It would be as if the boat had had a heart attack. The next round would go through the radio, if he could locate it quickly enough, and the third, once they had a positive ID on the scanner, would go through Mr. Kohanloo.

It would have been possible, in fact, for him to have hooked up the sight with the computer and wirelessly relayed the images he saw for immediate ID, but in the rush no one had thought of that. Byrne was still old school, and trusted his eyes a lot more than pixels. Still, it was a blunder, so he’d better make the shots count and hope nobody asked about it later.

Ferguson ’s skills were amazing. He keep the chopper low as they barreled down Second Avenue, darting in and out of the side streets in order to catch a glimpse of the river, and of the bogus Red Cross boat they were chasing, but without letting their man get the wind up.

Byrne knew just where he wanted to take him now: between the Manhattan and Brooklyn bridges. They’d let him come out from under the Williamsburg Bridge, dodge the old Navy Yard and then trap him between the bridges, where they could dispatch him.

“You’re sure you can put this crate under the bridges, no sweat?” yelled Byrne.

“Ask me something difficult,” smiled Ferguson.

Byrne thought for a moment. “Okay, where’s the best place to eat in Bayonne?”

Over his shoulder, Ferguson flipped him the bird. The truth was, Byrne didn’t know. His old partner, Vinnie Mancuso, would have known, but Vinnie was sunning himself down at Rehoboth, ogling the pretty Delaware girls in their bathing suits, and thinking about getting fat and happy in early retirement.

The chopper dove, and this time Byrne really did barf.

You could mark your passage by the bridges, thought Kohanloo, and here was the Williamsburg, which would be followed in quick succession by the two more famous structures, the Manhattan and the Brooklyn bridges. How pleasing it would be in Allah’s sight some day to see them all collapse into the river, never to be rebuilt, their destruction, like that of the rest of the city, to be celebrated for centuries in the tales of the people, in the lore of the ummah. Truth to tell, Kohanloo was tiring of all this Western decadence. It made him feel sinful and dirty; it meant accepting the world on their terms, with their disgusting food and their whorish women. When he got back to Iran, he would repent, whip himself bloody on the feast of Ashura, and make everything in readiness for the coming of the Twelfth Imam.

What a surprise they would get, no matter what happened to him. The fools may have been able to take down a handful of Brothers, but not unless Allah had cursed him and his work would they ever think to look for, much less find, the little parting gift he had left them, the thing that required the blinding of the cursed CTU computers for just long enough to bring it ashore and take it to the last place where they would ever think to look for it-in one of their beloved hospitals, where its low-level radioactivity would never be detected by routine flyover surveillance and where it would stay, asleep, like the Holy Imam himself in the well at Qom, until such time as the Day of Reckoning was decreed, and then it would come alive and go off in a roar and a rain of holy fire.

And to think it had been delivered to River House by this very craft, slipped into a van and deposited for safekeeping at the Jew hospital, Mt. Sinai, where they were so lax they openly allowed the Brothers to work as doctors, technicians, and orderlies. The Brotherhood of Man meant much to both cultures, but with a very different meaning of brotherhood for the Faithful, as the Chosen would soon find out. No matter what happened to him, whether he lived, Allah willing, or died a martyr, that in the end was why he had chosen to come. He had to see it, this miracle, this proof of the might and power of Allah and his divine wrath.

“Showtime, boss.”

Byrne moved into position. “Sit on my legs,” he said.

They had circled round and were coming back up from the south. Since the East River was not really a river but an estuary, buffeted by the Sound and the waters of New York Harbor, there really was no up or down in the traditional sense, just as the waters of the Hudson sometimes ran north when the tide was high, the salt water engaging with the fresh water coming down from Albany. New York City had always been a swirl of misdirection.

They were south of the Brooklyn Bridge, and high in the air when they saw the Red Cross boat emerge from beneath the Williamsburg. “Hang on, boys,” shouted Danny, and then the chopper dropped straight down, in a controlled dive that knocked the wind from Byrne’s lungs. Inside his coat, he could feel his father’s.38 slipping from the unbuttoned holster and start to slide. He made a mental note never to go up in a helicopter again, not if he could help it.

Down they plunged until, at what seemed like the last possible second, Danny leveled her off and then, still heading lower but this time at a proper diagonal, darted under the Brooklyn Bridge.

With his newfound piety, Arash Kohanloo decided he didn’t much care what happened. It would, however, be good to know whether his radio actually did work, whether there was as compatriot waiting for him in Red Hook. He took the receiver off the hook and cranked the ancient set-and he was, he had to admit, not terribly surprised when nothing at all happened. He was on a suicide mission after all.

He cursed himself for not having shaved his body, as the law prescribed, for not making the proper ablutions a holy warrior should make, but there was nothing to be done about it now. Perhaps he could ditch the craft on the Brooklyn shore and make a run for it. There were plenty of Brothers in Brooklyn, and not just along Atlantic Avenue anymore, but everywhere; since 9/11 the city’s population of Arabs and Muslims had increased and grown more visible, in quiet celebration of the achievements of Atta and his men, and also in the anticipation of the glory that was surely to come when the crescent flew over City Hall, as someday fly it must.

There was the Manhattan Bridge. He’d land there. He steered the boat sharply to port and made for the shore. He prayed to Allah, prayed for a sign that his decision was the right one.

“What the fuck? Where is he?” In the gloom beneath the great bridge, they had lost the boat. “Lannie, find me this fucker, now.”

Lannie was still hanging on to Byrne. “What do you want me to do, boss?”

“Track him on GPS, radio, whatever. He must be emitting some kind of signal. Just find the bastard.”

Lannie hesitated. “Okay, but I have to let go of you a little, boss.”

Byrne braced himself against one of the seats as best he could. “Make it quick, find the cocksucker and then let’s get him.”

Still trying to hold on to Byrne with one hand while operating the computer with the other, Lannie punched some keys. His eyes rotated as he tried to anticipate the charts, the signals, the points on the graphs, anything. There-

“I got him, boss. He’s making for the Brooklyn shore.”

Danny heard that and throttled forward, the chopper responding to the master’s touch. But he also turned sharply to the right; Lannie lost his grip on Byrne, who slid forward. His gun fell out of his suit pocket, toward the open door.

Byrne had a choice: the shot or his father’s pistol. For years he had carried that gun around with him like a cross, as a way of honoring his dad, but now he realized that the gun was just an inanimate object, something that long ago lost any and all meaning for his father, something in fact that had failed him in his moment of need. All these years Byrne had carried it in his memory, even used it in his memory, had shot his own half-brother with it.

There was the boat. There was the man. Ferguson, or whoever the hell he was, needed to make another turn and get them head-on at the target. And then he would take him out. “Get me a clean shot!” he yelled.

Lannie saw what was going to happen, but there was nothing he could do. He dropped the computer and grabbed both of Byrne’s legs. If the gun went, the gun went; the Boss would just have to get used to the 9 mm.

Danny threw her into a hard turn, spun once as he gained full control of the aircraft, then dropped her down practically to the water itself. Damn, the man was as good as he said he was. Not that it was up to him to be as good as he said he was.

The miracle appeared before him, floating like an angry, evil dragonfly above the surface of the choppy waters. Allah be praised! He would now show himself worthy of this great honor that had been granted him.

Arash Kohanloo reached for an AK-47 and begin firing it at the approaching helicopter.

The windscreen was bulletproof, but Francis Byrne was not. He had to make his shot. No need for ID now. Just take him out. Byrne squeezed the trigger, aiming for the hull.

The 50-caliber round punched through the boat as if it wasn’t there, tearing through the hull and exiting out the back. But he had missed the engine block itself, and so the distance between them was closing rapidly.

The shot had also given away Byrne’s position within the craft. He could feel the bullet whizzing by his head as the man trained his fire upon him. “Don’t you people ever give up?” he groused to no one in particular, then realized what he’d said. No time for apologies. He heard Lannie’s answer as he fired-

“No, Boss-do the Irish?”

This time, the shot hit the engine block square and the boat suddenly went dead in the water. Not motionless, though: its forward moment kept propelling it toward the chopper.

“Want me to pull out, Captain?” shouted Danny. The man was fearless, Byrne would give him that. “You can get a clean shot from any angle.”

Byrne shook his head. “Evasive action, but keep me lined up.”

Danny didn’t bother to shout that evasive action was going to be sickening action, as he would be swinging the craft from side to side, moving her up and down like one of those low-riders the Mexican gangbangers back in L.A. used to cruise and bruise. “Hold on.”

The Koala hopped. Kohanloo fired another burst. Byrne squeezed the trigger.

Arash Kohanloo felt the bullet tear off his right arm. Not go through it, but tear it completely off. The AK-47, still on full auto, fell into the river. The pain made him delirious, the blood made him happy. He smiled and cheered and yelled at the man with the rifle. “Shoot me again! Shoot again, you dog! You coward! You cannot kill me, for I am a Brother. I go to immortality!”

Lannie fed him another round. This one was greasy, slippery, and as Byrne looked down at his hand, he noticed it was bloody. “What the hell?”

Lannie held up a small vial of viscous fluid. “Pig’s blood. I want you to send this bastard to hell for what he does to me and my people and my faith. I want him cursed for all eternity, the Shi’a swine.”

Byrne tossed the round back to Aslan. “Save it for somebody who really needs it,” he shouted. “I’m going to send him to hell the good old-fashioned Irish way. With one in the brain.”

“Allahu Akbar!” shouted Kohanloo.

“Fuck you,” muttered Byrne, and he fired the third shot.

The recoil knocked his father’s sidearm to the lip of the door…

For less than a tenth of a second the world moved in slow motion for Arash Kohanloo, as Allah himself slowed it to a crawl. Gone was the pain, and in its place came the certainty of knowing that heaven was his, that all he had to do was reach out and embrace it, embrace his fate, embrace his destiny.

The round entered Kohanloo’s open mouth, blew out the back of his head and then, on its downward trajectory, punched a hole through the bottom of the boat. Quickly, it filled with water and began to sink.

…and as Danny throttled forward to fly over the wrecked boat, the gun toppled out the door and into the East River.

Byrne looked at Lannie: “Get down there, right now. Hurry.”

Lannie hesitated. “You mean, retrieve the gun?’ He would if ordered. From this moment on he would do anything his captain asked him to do.

“No, you dumb raghead. Get on that boat before the fucker sinks and grab what you can. Martin, can you put us-”

Already done. They were right over the sinking craft. Lannie threw out the rope ladder and went over the side-

“Get papers, equipment, whatever. Forget the gun. And him,” he said, indicating the corpse, “you leave for the fishes.”