The Green And The Gray

43

"There!" Officer Alfonse Keely said, pointing at the row of white vans speeding toward them down the Thruway. "Ross?"

"That's them," his partner confirmed, half his face covered by the massive binoculars gripped in his hands. "Tags one... two... yeah, that's them." He lowered the binoculars, frowning. "I thought Dispatch said there were five of them."

"Yeah, I count eight, too," Keely said grimly, picking up the mike. "Dispatch; Bravo-two-seven. Got a hit on eight, repeat eight, white Dodge vans: tags confirmed on five of them. Heading southbound, just passing Arden."

"Dispatch, copy," a crisp female voice replied. "Pursue and observe only."

"Roger that," Keely said, setting down the mike and starting the engine. Letting the vans pass, he pulled out onto the highway behind them.

He still didn't know what exactly this alert was all about. Dispatch was being very hush-hush, and even the usual departmental grapevine hadn't been any help.

But whatever this bug was that Manhattan had up its butt, it was apparently a big and hairy one.

Before they'd gone two miles a half-dozen terse positioning orders came over the radio as an unknown number of cars were zeroed in on the convoy. Over the next ten miles, Keely noticed an ever-increasing number of squad cars drifting casually into view in front of or behind the vans. The orders tapered off, and for another couple of miles Keely wondered if maybe someone had decided to forget the whole thing—

"Units four and six: close off," the radio crackled suddenly. "All units: move in to assist. Use extreme caution—driver and passengers armed and dangerous."

And with that, red lights exploded into view all around them, not just from the marked cars but from a half-dozen unmarked ones as well. "Holy Mother," Ross muttered as he flipped on their own light bar. "What the hell is this?"

"With this much firepower on tap?" Keely countered. "Ten to one it's terrorists."

"Terrific," Ross grunted, popping their shotgun from its rack. Chambering a round, he held it ready between his knees.

Two of the squad cars were directly in front of the vans now, with three more pacing them. The drivers took the hint, maneuvering carefully through the rest of the startled traffic flow to the righthand lane. For another minute they kept going, as if trying to decide just how serious the cops really were. Keely gripped the wheel hard, hoping they wouldn't be stupid enough to make a run for it.

He'd seen the aftermath of a high-speed gun battle once, and it hadn't been pretty.

The pacing patrol cars moved closer, solidly boxing them in. The vans held their speed another few seconds, then finally bowed to the inevitable and pulled off the road, rolling to a stop beside a cluster of tall maple trees. The cops pulled off with them, positioning themselves fore and aft to block off any chance of escape, with a couple more parking half on the road alongside them to make double sure. Keely found himself a slot five cars back, and a moment later he and Ross were hurrying forward toward the line of vans along with a dozen other cops. The ones who'd made it to the vans first were already shouting orders and pulling open doors, their weapons at the ready.

And because Keely happened to be looking at the faces of the cops at the rear van, he caught the abrupt change in their expressions. "What've we got?" he called as he jogged up beside them.

Silently, one of them gestured into the van with his shotgun. Frowning, Keely eased to the door and looked inside.

The driver was sitting motionlessly, his hands in plain sight on the steering wheel, his face composed and unconcerned as he stared straight ahead through the windshield.

The rest of the van was empty.

"What do you mean, empty?" Powell demanded, staring at Messerling in disbelief. "They can't be empty."

"Well, they are," the other insisted, pressing the phone a little harder to his ear. "Drivers only. No passengers, no weapons, no explosives, no contraband. Not even jumper cables. Nothing."

"What about the drivers?" Cerreta asked. "How do they seem?"

Messerling relayed the question. "Pretty damn calm," he reported. "No panic; apparently not even any surprise."

"With how many cops on the scene?"

"About thirty."

Cerreta looked at Powell. "Your average Joe Citizen would be having a stroke about now," he said.

"These guys were expecting this."

"Only they were expecting it far enough in advance to offload their people before we got there,"

Powell agreed sourly.

"Looks that way," Cerreta agreed.

"Lieutenant, have those vehicles checked, top to bottom," Messerling ordered into the phone. "And bring in the drivers."

He waited for an acknowledgment, then hung up. "They'll be here in an hour," he reported.

"Good," Cerreta said. "Let's just hope we can get something out of them."

"Don't worry," Messerling said tightly. "We will."

They had the drivers lined up beside the vans and had frisked them for weapons; and the cops were just readying their handcuffs when all eight men suddenly bolted.

It was, Keely would realize afterward, an exquisitely coordinated move. All he saw in the heat of the moment, though, was the sudden flurry of activity as each driver shrugged off the hands holding him, gut-punched anyone standing too close, and made a mad and clearly futile dash for the clump of trees beside the road.

"Hold your fire!" the lieutenant in charge shouted from the far end of the line. "Grab them!"

The cops were already on the move, surging after them like Coney Island breakers heading for the beach. Keely joined the rush, a small corner of his mind recognizing that the would-be escapees would be run to ground long before he could reach the party, but caught up nevertheless in the mass excitement.

"Where the hell do they think they're going?" Ross huffed from beside him.

"Who knows?" Keely said, wondering if the whole bunch had gone simultaneously insane. There couldn't be more than a couple dozen trees there—he could see straight through the clump to the snow fence and the rocky field behind it, for Pete's sake. Where did they think they were going to hide?

The drivers reached the first line of trees maybe five paces ahead of their pursuers, ducking and veering around the thick trunks like tight ends punching through a swarm of defenders. One of them ducked down, scooped up an armful of dead leaves, and half-turned to hurl them into the air behind him.

Reflexively, Keely winced back, his eyes flicking to the fluttering leaves just long enough to confirm there wasn't anything solid like a grenade or satchel charge flying through the air with them, then turned his attention back downward.

The drivers were gone.

He caught his breath, his feet still thudding across the loose dirt, his brain refusing to acknowledge what his eyes were telling him. In that single instant of inattention, without any fuss, bother, smoke, or mirrors, all eight men had vanished as if swallowed up by the earth itself.

The pack of cops in front of him obviously didn't believe it, either. They charged straight through into the miniature forest, guns ready, heads wagging this way and that as they searched for their quarry. Five seconds later, they ran out the other side, jogging to a confused halt. "What are you waiting for?" the lieutenant shouted, sounding as bewildered as everyone else looked. "Come on, they're there somewhere. Find them. Damn it all, find them!"

Fierenzo held the phone to his ear, the taste of stomach acid in his mouth. "All of them?" he asked.

"All of them," Powell gritted, his voice as angry and troubled and just plain scared as Fierenzo had ever heard it. "Eight grown men, vanished in a clump of trees a rabbit shouldn't have been able to hide in."

"What about the vans?"

"To hell with the vans," Powell snarled. "Up to now I've been willing to play along with this without anything stronger than your personal say-so. But this has gone way beyond partner loyalty."

Fierenzo winced. "Should you be saying this sort of—?"

"Don't worry, I'm in the stairwell," Powell growled. "But I'm serious. You going to tell me what's going on, or do I have to bail?"

Fierenzo gripped the phone tightly, his eyes darting to where Roger sat very still across the coffee shop table. "I can't," he said, keeping his voice steady. "Not yet. I gave my word."

"Something's about to happen to this city, Tommy," Powell reminded him tightly. "If you know anything—anything—you have a sworn duty to report it."

"I've reported as much as I can, Jon," Fierenzo said. "I'm still working on it at my end, just as you are at yours. Trust me a little longer, will you?"

He heard Powell take a deep breath. "We are both going to burn in hell," the other said at last. "All right, a little longer. But that's all. Those soldiers of yours are on their way, and we have no idea when or where or how they're going to hit the city."

"We'll find them," Fierenzo promised, wishing he had even a shred of hope that he could actually do so.

"We'd better," Powell said. "I'll talk to you later."

Fierenzo punched off the phone. "They got away?" Roger asked.

"Of course they got away," Fierenzo bit out. "The idiots let them park their vans right beside a clump of trees."

Roger made a face. "There wasn't anything you could have done."

"Of course there was," Fierenzo snapped back. "I knew what Greens can do. I could have warned them."

"You think they would have believed you?"

"That's irrelevant."

"Hardly," Roger said scornfully. "Lot of good you'd do anyone locked in the psych ward at Bellevue."

"Lot of good I'm doing right now," Fierenzo muttered.

"Melantha's alive and free," Roger reminded him. "That's a pretty fair amount of good right there."

"I suppose," Fierenzo conceded, mentally shaking away the cobwebs. Time to stop feeling sorry for himself and attack this thing logically. "Okay. They've switched vehicles, so we can't shadow them.

If they keep quiet even other Greens can't detect them, so putting Melantha's parents out as spotters won't help. What else have we got?"

"I don't know," Roger said, fiddling with a coffee stirrer. "You suppose the Grays have a way of spotting them at a distance?"

"I doubt it," Fierenzo said. "If they could, they should have nailed Melantha a lot sooner."

"It still wouldn't hurt to run it past Jonah," Roger pointed out, glancing surreptitiously around the coffee shop and lifting his left hand.

"Okay, but just ask him about Green detectors," Fierenzo warned. "Don't tell him why we need to know. Or what was in Caroline's message."

Roger frowned. "You're not going to tell them?"

"Not yet," Fierenzo said. "I don't want anyone else in the picture until we have a plan." But—

"No argument," Fierenzo said, glaring across the table. "I'm not in the mood."

Roger glared back, but nodded. "Fine," he said. Twitching his little finger, he lifted his hand to his cheek.

This was, Smith groused silently to himself as he drove slowly through the streets of Stony Hollow, turning out to be a truly rotten day.

He'd alerted Powell and Cerreta to the existence of the white vans, only to have the drivers of those vans somehow elude thirty cops and escape. He'd located Caroline Whittier, only to get run off the road and lose her. He'd called in the description of the red Ford pickup, including its plate number, only to be told that it hadn't been spotted since it disappeared from Smith's own sight over that hill.

On the other hand, he hadn't officially clocked in for work today down at the Two-Four, and even though Powell had assured him he would take care of it, he suspected his partner Hill would be claiming a big chunk of his hide when he did show his face at the station house again.

And now here he was, driving around in a slightly banged-up car through the modest towns scattered along the highway, looking for God only knew what. It would have been so much handier if the men in the vans had abandoned them somewhere near where they'd picked up their new rides; say, beside a car-rental agency or bus station. But they'd been smart enough not to leave behind any such obvious pointers.

But Caroline Whittier and the old woman she'd been riding with might not have been so clever. If they'd ditched their pickup somewhere around here, and if he could find it, maybe he could figure out what the whole bunch of them were now driving.

It was a faint hope, he knew. But at the moment it was the only game in town. At least it was better than going back to Manhattan and facing Officer Hill.

Ahead, an increased speed-limit sign marked the edge of this particular town. Speeding up, keeping his eyes peeled, he headed for the next.

Cerreta didn't quite slam the phone down as he hung up, but he wasn't all that far from it. "No, I take it?" Powell asked, cupping his palm over the mouthpiece of his own phone.

"Even less than no," the lieutenant confirmed with a scowl. "He said he might just refuse my next warrant request, too, just to make up for interrupting his morning with this one."

"It didn't matter to him that a cop is missing?" Powell asked, feeling a fresh twinge of guilt over the lie.

"Sure it did," Cerreta said sourly. "He said that if we can prove Tommy's disappearance is connected with these people, he'll be happy to entertain our request for a warrant. Only we can't prove that." He lifted his eyebrows. "Or can we?" he added, his eyes suddenly very steady on Powell's face.

It took Powell two tries to get the word out. "No."

"Because I'd hate for something to happen to him if someone else could have prevented it," Cerreta went on, that half-suspicious look still on his face.

"Yes, sir," Powell said. "So would I."

Cerreta held his gaze a moment longer, then gave a microscopic nod. "Anything new with Messerling?"

Powell lifted his phone slightly. "He's activating S.W.A.T. units all over the city," he said, relieved to be on firmer ground. "I've got Hill and Grosvenor checking with DMV for any other vehicles registered to those restaurants."

"While we're at it, we'd better put someone on the restaurants themselves," Cerreta decided, picking up his phone again. "Outside and in. No law against a cop having a cup of coffee in the restaurant of his choice."

There was a click in Powell's ear. "I've got a preliminary deployment schedule now," Messerling's voice said. "You want to take this down?"

Powell scooped up a pen and pad. "Go ahead."

"No soap," Roger said, lowering his hand. "Jonah says they don't have any way to distinguish Greens from humans, at least not at any distance. Our infrared signatures are similar, we look pretty much the same on a sonic pattern readout, and entropic metabolism detectors are no good beyond about five feet."

"What the hell's an entropic metabolism detector?" Fierenzo lifted a hand. "Never mind—it doesn't matter. What about those metal brooch things?"

"The trassks?" Roger shook his head. "He said they're not going to show up as anything other than ordinary metal. It's the Green psychic manipulation ability that makes them work. We could still watch for people wearing them, I suppose."

"Assuming they're stupid enough to leave them out in the open instead of in their pockets."

"There's that," Roger conceded. "What do you think they're planning?"

"Well, the basics seem obvious," Fierenzo said. "They're assuming you've relayed Caroline's disinformation to Torvald, which means they expect Grays to gather at the north end of the island to wait for the phantom Damian and his Warrior escort to show up. That gives Nikolos the choice of coming up right behind them—say, over the George or the Triborough—and slaughtering them while they're facing the wrong direction, or else coming up into Lower Manhattan to take out the women and children who've been left behind in supposed safety."

Roger shuddered. "Or head directly into Brooklyn and Queens, where the bulk of the Grays still live."

"Point," Fierenzo said, grimacing. All they needed was for Nikolos to expand this to the other four boroughs. "The question is whether Nikolos would prefer a straight-on attack against fellow fighters, man to man, or would he'd prefer the terrorist route of targeting civilians so as to throw the fighters into disarray."

"So what do we do?"

Fierenzo turned and stared out the window at the cars and people passing by. That was a damn good question. He had some ideas, but they all depended on at least partial knowledge of the Green strategy. "We go to the hotel and wait for Jonah and the others," he decided. "Maybe when we put our heads together we'll come up with something."

"Don't you think it's about time to alert Torvald and the other Grays?"

"Let's talk to Jonah first," Fierenzo said, giving his mouth a final dab with his napkin and standing up. "Whatever Nikolos has planned, I doubt he'll move until it's dark."

"You willing to bet all our lives on that?"

Fierenzo looked out the window again at the people of his city. "I don't think I've really got a choice," he said. "Come on, let's get out of here."