Authors: Jon Land
Dead Simple (27 page)
“
Y
ou see what I’m talking about?”
Y
ou see what I’m talking about?”
Gus Sabella kept his hands on his hips, turning beet red as he continued to gaze at the sign affixed to the construction fence.
When he’d left the job site yesterday it had read: REBUILDING NEW YORK CITY ONE BRICK AT A TIME.
But overnight somebody had painted over the B in “brick” and replaced it with a P.
“We call the cops and get squat from them,” Gus moaned to his shift supervisor. “Every night it’s something different. It’s getting so I’m gonna start sleeping in the trailer with my shotgun. Blow the balls off any punk who messes with this site. Starting tonight.”
“We make a deal with the union,” said Lou Marinelli, shifting his cigar from one side of his mouth to the other, “this stops today.”
“You sound like the enforcers they keep sending down. Makes me wonder whose side you’re on.”
“The side that wants us to come in on time and on budget. This vandalism keeps up, we’ll never accomplish either. Means we can kiss any future city contracts goodbye.”
“We should give up, then … .”
“More like in. Play the game, like I been saying.”
Marinelli was big, but Gus, taking a lumbering step forward, seemed ready to swallow him. Sabella was a huge man, with a gut that sagged over
his belt. He had dark skin and had managed to keep all his hair, which fell in a wild tangle whenever he took off his hard hat.
his belt. He had dark skin and had managed to keep all his hair, which fell in a wild tangle whenever he took off his hard hat.
Marinelli flinched when Gus yanked something from under his jacket.
It was a can of spray paint.
“Nobody scares me off,” said Gus, who kept a pair of cans ready like six-guns in his trailer. As Marinelli looked on, Gus sprayed over the vandalized portion of the sign in white. Wait a while for it to dry, then do his best to trace out a fresh B in red to match the other letters.
Below in the construction pit on West Twenty-third Street, where a parking lot had been just a few months before, the monumental task of rebuilding a main junction of the city’s sewer system was under way. Payloaders, bulldozers, backhoes, and cranes worked in unison to tear up old piping and install new. Huge, hangar-size entryways had been opened up to access a trio of sewer lines and storm drains, which formed part of the miles and miles of swirling tunnels that ran beneath New York City.
Gus Sabella’s crew was responsible for reconstructing this main junction, which had simply collapsed over time, a job that meant first digging up and clearing the earth to remove the old pipes and conduits, and then replacing them. The company Gus was a partner in had managed to win the bid by undercutting the competition in both price and time: price by being nonunion, time by digging up one section while replacing another. That accounted for the clutter of heavy machines, which sometimes seemed to need a traffic cop to keep them from smashing each other apart. The upshot was frantic, frenzied days that didn’t bother Gus nearly as much as arriving every morning wondering what had been messed with the night before.
“Hey, boss,” said Marinelli, as Sabella checked if the paint was dry. “Take a look at this.”
Sabella turned to see a huge black tanker truck rolling toward the ramp that led down into the block-size construction pit. Thing looked like something out of
Star Wars
. Gus had never seen anything that even remotely resembled it. The driver brought the tanker to a halt and leaned out his window toward Gus.
Star Wars
. Gus had never seen anything that even remotely resembled it. The driver brought the tanker to a halt and leaned out his window toward Gus.
“What the hell you call this?”
“State-of-the-art shit removal,” the driver said, producing a crumpled work order. “Got a major backup I’m supposed to pump out in tunnel 73-A.”
Gus looked into the cab and gave the driver a second look. Guy had skin the color of unbaked angel cake and pink eyes that didn’t seem to blink.
Gus took the work order and checked it over. “Something break?”
“Won’t know until I get there.”
“My reason for asking, see, if the rupture’s our fault, we get docked.”
The driver refolded his work order. “I go into the tunnel, find the problem, and drain it. The rest of this stuff, you’re talking to the wrong guy.”
Gus backed off so he had a clear route down the ramp. “Know where you’re going?”
“I’ll just follow the smell.”
The milk-faced driver shifted and eased the tanker onto the ramp.
“
Y
ou look nervous, Othell,” said Jack Tyrell.
Y
ou look nervous, Othell,” said Jack Tyrell.
“It’s a technical thing.”
“Why don’t you tell me about it?”
Othell Vance seemed reluctant to speak. “I followed the parameters. I think I did everything right. It’s just that not a lot is known about how Devil’s Brew performs in battlefield conditions.”
“That what you call this?”
“Am I wrong?”
Tyrell tapped him tenderly on the shoulder. “We know it blows shit up, Othell. That’s good enough for me,” he said, and turned his gaze on the latest addition Marbles had made to their command center: an electronic wall map that featured bright-red lines designating every bridge and tunnel that provided access to New York City, seventeen in all.
The night before, he and Othell had divided them up between two four-man groups disguised as DPW workers. The apparent nature of the crews’ work was line striping, and in fact a pair of men in each group did precisely that to explain the lanes’ being closed off. While that pair painted, though, either Othell Vance or Jack Tyrell sprayed a wide strip of Devil’s Brew aerosol across the width of the targeted sites. It foamed up like shaving cream, making a slight crackling sound before sinking through the surface into the beds and superstructures, expanding to fill as many gaps and cracks as it encountered. The final man in each group was responsible for
setting and tuning a tiny receiver and capacitor. A nearby safety rail provided the sites for the bridges, while in the tunnels the equipment was mounted low on a wall and a wire antenna strung upward.
setting and tuning a tiny receiver and capacitor. A nearby safety rail provided the sites for the bridges, while in the tunnels the equipment was mounted low on a wall and a wire antenna strung upward.
Both teams had finished just before dawn. They had ditched their trucks, equipment, and uniforms and rendezvoused here in the lair Marbles had found to serve as their command center. Jack Tyrell had doughnuts waiting for them, purchased for half price since they had been left over from the previous day. For his part, Marbles hadn’t stopped working yet, even now stringing coaxial cable from the dozen television monitors into the computer console. He wore a tool belt as comfortably as a gunfighter’s holster, its contents equally deadly.
Of the other two dozen men in the command center, half had specific tasks to keep them busy through the day. The remaining twelve kept their distance from the machines but stayed close to the weapons, on the outside chance they would be needed. Since he was planning for the long term, Tyrell had put together as large a contingent as possible. Men who would follow him to the next target when this was over and done. None of them could be classified as young in terms of age, but the way Tyrell looked at it, the last twenty-five years hadn’t been any better for them than for him. They were fugitives from the underground and ex-cons who had never made it that far. Men who had lived the best of their lives with him once before and looked forward to doing so again.
Vance still looked fidgety, so Tyrell slapped him on the shoulder and steered him toward the wall of television monitors Marbles had up and running.
“Come on, Othell, let’s watch a little TV,” he said, a sophisticated remote control in hand. “Maybe find a soap or one of those daytime talk shows, today’s topic ‘Lesbian Daughters of Women Suing Fertility Clinics.’”
Tyrell pushed a button, and one of the sets lit up with a picture of the George Washington Bridge.
“Now what have we here … ?”
He touched another button on the remote, and a second screen burst alive, with the scene inside the Lincoln Tunnel, traffic crawling along at the usual clip, the screen not much more than a blur of headlights and taillights.
Jackie Terror held the remote like a baton, conducting his return to the life he belonged in. He felt elated, alive again. He clicked the remote, and a shot of the Brooklyn Bridge filled screen number three.
Click, and a traffic jam inside the Holland Tunnel came alive on a fourth screen. Then the Manhattan Bridge, the Queens Midtown Tunnel, the Queensboro Bridge, the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel, the Triborough Bridge … His heart was hammering against his chest so hard he was beginning to wonder seriously if he could wait until nine o’clock.
Suddenly Marbles waved to get his attention, other hand pressed against his transistorized headset.
“The tanker’s in place,” he reported.
Tyrell turned his attention to the red LED readout on a wall-mounted clock:
8:45
“
I
hate fucking traffic,” Sal Belamo moaned as the car inched its way across the upper deck of the George Washington Bridge. He looked over at Blaine in the passenger seat.”I told you we should have taken the Lincoln Tunnel.”
I
hate fucking traffic,” Sal Belamo moaned as the car inched its way across the upper deck of the George Washington Bridge. He looked over at Blaine in the passenger seat.”I told you we should have taken the Lincoln Tunnel.”
“And then you told me you hated driving through the damn things.”
“All that water … You ever think about that?”
“No.”
Sal shrugged. Moving Buck Torrey in his condition from the hospital the night before had been deemed impossible, so he had arranged the next-best thing: a half-dozen fully armed Special Forces veterans guarding Buck at all times. Sal and Liz had waited until the first group arrived before leaving to rendezvous with Blaine and Johnny.
The news when they were finally all together wasn’t good. Hank Belgrade, along with Will Thatch, had utterly vanished, and with Hank went any chance of dealing with this crisis through normal channels. The only man Blaine could reach who stood a chance of helping them was the FBI assistant director in charge of counterterrorism, Sam Kirkland, who had been point man at the Washington Monument seven months before.
“This better be good,” Kirkland had greeted groggily just after midnight.
“What would you say to a city about to be under siege?” Blaine queried over the phone.
“I’d say keep talking.”
Kirkland listened without comment, the scratching sound Blaine heard on the other end of the line indicative of his listener’s taking copious notes. But everything went silent when he mentioned the name Jack Tyrell.
“He was the one at the Monument,” Blaine said. “In disguise, but it was Tyrell who got away.” When Kirkland didn’t respond, McCracken continued, “You fall back asleep on me, Mr. Director?”
“I only wish. Then I could be dreaming.”
“Sounds like Jack Tyrell’s no stranger to you, either.”
“Hardly. We’ve met before.” Kirkland took a deep breath. “I was the undercover FBI agent who infiltrated Midnight Run twenty-five years ago.”
“Wait until you hear what he’s been up to since … .”
“
W
here are you?” Kirkland had asked when Blaine was finished.
W
here are you?” Kirkland had asked when Blaine was finished.
“It’s better if you don’t know. For obvious reasons.”
“I’m the goddamn FBI!”
“If Black Flag can get to Hank Belgrade, they can get to anyone.”
“Jesus Christ, what a mess …”
“I’ll give you a cell phone number where you can reach me as soon as you’ve got something.”
“Be patient. This is gonna take me some time to check out.”
“If Tyrell’s already in New York with the Devil’s Brew, there might not be much time left.”
“We can’t close off the city.”
“Why not?”
“Be serious. Look, I’ve got a nine A.M. meeting at New York headquarters tomorrow. I’ll spend the rest of the night on the phone, if that’s what it takes to get some answers.”
Obviously, though, the rest of the night had not been enough; it was just past eight forty-five in the morning now, Kirkland still hadn’t called back, and all of Blaine’s subsequent attempts to reach him had failed. He was beginning to fear that Kirkland had gone the way of Hank Belgrade and was immensely relieved when the cell phone rang.
Blaine snatched up the phone, as Sal continued to edge the car through heavy traffic across the George Washington Bridge. “It’s about time.”
“Everything you gave me is a dead end,” Kirkland started.
“I warned you.”
“First of all, nobody my meager level of clearance could reach ever heard of this Devil’s Brew, from the Pentagon to Brookhaven itself.”
“The man running the project wanted it that way.”
“To keep it from falling into the wrong hands.”
“Yes.”
“And then he decided to dump the whole supply and erase all evidence it ever existed.”
“That’s right, which brings us to your old friend Jack Tyrell.”
“Same story, unfortunately. I can’t find any record of this Black Flag project or of Tyrell spending a stretch of years in forced service to his country.”
“Black Flag didn’t leave records, Kirkland; that was the point.”
“It’s tough to sell government officials on conspiracies and shadow cadres before they’ve had their morning coffee. You’ve got to give me something more concrete.”
“What about Tyrell’s son? Like I told you last night, all this is happening because he was killed a month ago. In New York City.”
“The problem is the man who was killed at that elementary school has since been identified as Alejandro Ortiz, a Colombian national with a long list of drug busts. His mother died in Medellín two years ago. His father is a farmer who speaks no English.”
That news hit Blaine square in the gut. He thought he had everything about Jack Tyrell figured out, but obviously he didn’t. At the National Zoo the night before, the man from Black Flag had confirmed that they had lost control of Tyrell after his son’s death in the shootout. So what was he missing here?
“I hear traffic,” Kirkland said. “Where are you?”
“Middle of the GWB.”
“Couldn’t stay away, could you?”
“You know me: I like to be where the action is.”
“Then why don’t you head toward headquarters here at Federal Plaza, so we can run this by the numbers?”
“I’ve never done too well working within the system.”
“Make an exception.”
Blaine accepted that there was no other choice open to them for now. “At the rate we’re moving, don’t expect us until lunch.”
Behind the wheel, Sal Belamo passed by a school bus just after reaching the center of the span, and Blaine saw the source of the traffic jam: a pair of bungee jumpers who had rigged their equipment into the bridge’s safety rail between the guy wires were involved in a heated exchange with a pair of cops who had just handcuffed them.
“You ask me,” said Sal, “cops should just throw them off without their cords for holding up the traffic.”
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