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Authors: Jon Land

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BOOK: Dead Simple
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The gunman backpedaled in the rear bay, exchanging a fresh clip for a spent one. A metallic scraping sound made him swing to the right, where he saw that Blaine had managed to crack open the other bay door and lean his upper body inside the hold.
McCracken fired before the gunman could get his weapon resteadied. His bullets punched the gunman backwards through the open door on the opposite side, and he dropped downward, to crash spread-eagled atop the roof of a bus.
The pilot pulled the chopper into a climb, angling to catch a glimpse of Blaine. Turning forward once again, he barely avoided the Helmsley building. He straightened the chopper out and, still searching for McCracken, flew over the strip that separates Park Avenue into two distinct halves. Heading south, he climbed when the huge black shape of the Grand Hyatt Hotel rose before him.
The pilot tried to swing from its path, but it was too late. The chopper crashed through a pair of windows twenty stories up from the ground, lodging there, half in and half out of the hotel over Forty-second Street.
Clinging tightly to one of the pods, Blaine had begun considering his options, when he felt the chopper yaw, ready to tumble. There was only one choice:
The bungee cord!
It had become his lifeline now, and without hesitation, he let go of the pod and dropped into the air, straightening his body into a divelike posture, pretending water was beneath him instead of concrete. The bungee cord stretched taut, then slung him back up before letting him settle fifteen feet off the ground.
Just as Blaine was figuring he would have scored a perfect ten had the judges been around, the chopper jerked downward. Its crackling descent through the glass panes forming the Grand Hyatt’s side dropped Blaine before he could unfasten the cord from his ankle. He crunched against the pavement and felt his breath leave him in a rush, as the chopper fell ever faster directly above him. Blaine rolled desperately and thrust himself to one side just before it slammed into the street, scattering debris and breaking up huge slabs of concrete a mere few feet from him.
The chopper caught fire almost instantly and coughed out papers from its corpse. Blaine watched them flutter, the touch of the flames leaving them blackened at the edges. He scampered across the pavement on all fours and managed to snare a single page before the fuel tank blew in a gush of heat that slammed into him and pitched him backwards.
 
“
W
hat do you mean, you can’t reach the chopper?” Jack Tyrell demanded of Marbles.
“I don’t know. Interference, a bad signal. Give me a little more time.”
In the command center, an additional four television monitors had been switched on and tuned to what CNN was calling “Manhattan Held Hostage.” All four screens broadcast scenes of panic and chaos, hordes of people trying to flee the city of New York, only to realize there was no way to get off the island.
The disabled subways remained packed with people making their way out slowly through the darkness.
The streets had become parking lots.
The sidewalks were jammed with people moving futilely this way and that, because nobody was going anywhere.
Tyrell’s favorite shots were aerial views of the city. He reveled in that sight the way an artist would upon recognizing the creation of his finest masterpiece. It was an even more wondrous picture than he had let himself imagine, one that almost brought tears to his eyes.
“If the media had been this cooperative in the sixties,” he said aloud to no one in particular, “we just mighta won this war back then.”
While he was still crowing, one of the screens cut to the scene of a fiery helicopter crash. There was a disclaimer warning that unedited footage captured by a camcorder was about to air. And there it was.
The collision with the building, the chopper falling, a man dropping ahead of it. The camera’s perspective shifted wildly while its amateur operator must have backed away to safety. Then the lens steadied once more to come in for a close-up of the man who had dropped to the pavement and just managed to lurch away before the explosion ended the shot.
It was a face Jack Tyrell was coming to know all too well. It should have upset him, he knew, pissed him off royally. Instead he smiled in utter admiration.
“Whatever you’re on, I wish I had some.” He looked over at Marbles and Othell Vance. “I want to know who he is, and I want to know now.”
 
G
us Sabella reached his construction site, only to see the machines abandoned in the middle of their tasks, stilled in various work-related postures. He had been hauling a truckload of pipes to the site when the world shook and New York City ended up isolated from the rest of civilization. With traffic at an absolute standstill, Gus pulled his truck into a convenient loading zone and hoofed it back to the site in a slow trot that left him dripping with sweat. Even that had been a difficult task, what with the entire daytime population of Manhattan spilling into the streets and cluttering the sidewalks. Mobs had poured out of buildings and were gathered around car radios and electronics store windows to follow the unfolding crisis, which seemed almost unreal to them, even though they were caught in the middle of it.
Gus rushed past the abandoned machines toward his trailer, swearing up a storm and cussing out his damn workers, who had apparently fled at the first opportunity. Entering the trailer, though, he found all of them gathered around his thirteen-inch television, watching the first, nearly accurate reports on what was transpiring across the city.
“What the fuck? Who gave you boys the day off?”
The men turned to him.
“Somebody’s blowing up the city,” one of them said, gesturing toward the screen.
“I know. That’s why I came back without any pipes, goddamn it. But it doesn’t mean we’re gonna let it set us further behind.”
“You want us to work through
this
?” another man asked, disbelievingly.
“Why not? No way you’re gonna be going home anytime soon anyway.”
 
J
ohnny rode alone on one of the black horses, leading the way. Liz was on the second horse with Sal Belamo, the boy wedged between them.
“Jeez,” Sal kept muttering.
“You’ve never been on a horse before,” Liz realized as they neared the Manhattan side of the George Washington Bridge.
“You noticed.”
The going became easier the farther they rode from the cluttered mess of traffic near the center of the bridge. Their progress was still challenging, the gaps between vehicles sometimes impossibly narrow or virtually nonexistent. But Johnny always found them a way through, pace held to a walk to keep from jarring the wounded boy too badly.
They reached the off-ramp and clip-clopped down it, weaving their way through gridlocked traffic toward Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center a dozen blocks away, as the first rescue vehicles crawled toward the scene.
I
want you to give Mayor Corrente a message for me. Tell Her Honor that I have taken all the people in this city hostage, and all five million will die when I destroy the city unless my terms are met.
…”
Mayor Lucille Corrente leaned across the conference table and pressed the Stop button on the tape recorder. “As I’m sure you all know,” she said to those gathered before her, “that tape was made from the Imus program earlier this morning. We haven’t heard from the speaker directly yet, but I expect we will be hearing from him soon.”
It was ten-thirty before the department heads primarily responsible for the welfare of New York City finally gathered in Mayor Lucille Corrente’s conference room. As they settled into their chairs, the shattered bay window formed the perfect backdrop, a constant reminder of what they were facing. Against the far wall adjacent to that window, a number of men with FBI photo IDs hanging from their necks were busy laying cords and wires attached to additional telephones, computers, and fax machines.
“Mr. Kirkland, we’re ready to get started.”
Sam Kirkland picked up his suit jacket and pulled his bulky arms uncomfortably into the sleeves as he headed back to the conference table.
Mayor Corrente, elegantly dressed and coiffed as always, adjusted the
speakerphone in front of her. “Can you hear me, Governor?” she said to the state’s chief executive in Albany.
“Loud and clear, Lucille. Are you on-line with Washington?”
Corrente looked at the members of Kirkland’s team still stringing wires and running extension cords from the sockets spaced at regular intervals along the walls.
“Momentarily,” she said.
“I’m patched in here with the state police, the national guard, and Fort Dix in New Jersey.”
“What can we expect from them in the way of assistance?”
“The first deployment of troops from Fort Dix should be airborne in a matter of minutes. MPs, logistical support, and combat engineers, if I’m reading this memo correctly. They’ll need a landing zone, by the way.”
“Already taken care of, sir,” said Kirkland, finally settling into his chair. “This is Assistant Director Sam Kirkland of the FBI. We’ve cleared a stretch of land in Central Park. I’ve been in touch with Fort Dix’s people to relay the proper coordinates.”
“That’s a good start.”
“Now,” Kirkland continued, “if you’ll open the folders I distributed, you’ll find the dossier on the man our information suggests is responsible. Governor, I faxed it to you en route.”
“I have it right before me,” the governor said over the speakerphone.
Kirkland stood up again and rested his knuckles on the table. “Jack Tyrell, alias Jackie Terror, a founding member of the radical Weatherman movement of the 1960s, who later broke off to establish an even more radical and violent group called Midnight Run, responsible for a series of bombings and other terrorist actions in the early 1970s.”
“Number one on the FBI’s Most Wanted List for five years running,” noted New York City Police Chief Daniel Logan, without reading ahead. “I was walking a beat when the Mercantile Bank blew, twenty-five years ago.”
“I’m confused, Mr. Kirkland,” said Mayor Corrente. “How were you able to identify Tyrell so quickly?”
Kirkland sighed. “I received information last night that placed him in the city and strongly indicated a possible threat.”
“And you did nothing about it?” asked Public Safety Commissioner Corrothers.
“The information was impossible to confirm.”
“And the source?” wondered Corrente.
“An ex—intelligence operative.”
“Ex?” echoed Logan.
“Yes.”
“And do we have his file here as well?”
“No.”
“You’re being evasive, Mr. Kirkland,” the mayor said critically.
Kirkland looked at Corrente, then at the department heads gathered around the table. “This city is facing a crisis of unprecedented proportions, which promises to get worse before it gets better. Telling you everything I might suspect right now would only pose an unnecessary distraction. Let’s stick to what we know.”
“Does that include the type of explosive Tyrell used to shut off this city from the outside world?” challenged Chief Logan. “My people tell me there’s no evidence at any of the blast sites of a standard bomb or incendiary device.”
“Beyond that,” added the city’s chief fire official, Hideo Takamura, “my own experience indicates it would take an explosive device the size of a two-ton truck to blast through a bridge, and even then the results wouldn’t be as catastrophic as we’ve seen.”
“The explosive Tyrell used is an experimental one,” Kirkland offered noncommittally.
“Not anymore it’s not,” Lucille Corrente chastised.
“It’s called Devil’s Brew, developed under a tight seal at Brookhaven Labs,” Kirkland said, repeating the information Blaine McCracken had given him.
“Apparently not tight enough to keep it out of the hands of a terrorist,” countered city Department of Transportation Director Les Carney. Carney’s right arm beat the air dramatically as he spoke, while his left, a cosmetic prosthesis, rested motionless on the table.
Chief Logan was shaking his head. “If it was stolen, why weren’t local law enforcement agencies notified?”
“I wasn’t notified, either.”
“Then how can you be sure your information is correct?”
“Same source.”
“This one ex—intelligence agent?”
“Yes.”
“We should get one of Brookhaven’s experts on the line to explain exactly what it is we’re dealing with,” suggested Mayor Corrente.
“I already tried. Nobody there will confirm the existence of the explosive, never mind elaborate on its capabilities.”
Corrente’s features flared, the look many said exemplified the nononsense, draw-the-line campaign that had brought her to office. “Is that what you call a tight seal, Mr. Kirkland?”
“It was done for safety, ma’am, to keep anyone on the outside from learning of Devil’s Brew’s existence.”
“I think it’s safe to say that strategy has backfired,” noted the mayor. “And for the time being we’ve got more pressing concerns. Bottom line:
Now that we know who we’re dealing with and what he has in his possession, how can we catch him before he makes good on the threat he issued over the radio?”
Again Kirkland took the floor, relieved to have the subject changed. It was as difficult explaining McCracken’s role in this as to explain why Kirkland hadn’t acted preemptively. Not that he could have done anything, short of closing down the city or trying to evacuate it altogether. In fact, there had been no time to do either, even if he had wanted to.
“We’ve confirmed that the call Tyrell made to the radio station came in via cellular phone operating on a digital channel. We are now on-line with a tracking satellite that will enable us to pin down his precise location when he makes contact again.”
“And then?” from Corrente.
Kirkland sounded more confident now, back in his element. “I’ve got six strike teams standing by in jets no more than one hour from any locale in the country.”
A lone black telephone on the table rang.
“Goddamn it, he’s early!” Chief Logan protested.
“No,” Kirkland reminded. “He said ‘by’ eleven on the radio, not ‘at’ eleven!” He swung toward his technicians, who’d barely finished setting up shop against the far wall. “Talk to me!”
The men were studying the data readouts flying across their monitor screens.
“It’s definitely cellular!” concluded one.
“And digital!” another added. “We’ve got him!”
“We’re on-line here!” the governor said through the other phone.
Kirkland waited until Lucille Corrente nodded before reaching out and touching the Speaker button on the black phone.
“Hello, Mr. Tyrell,” the mayor greeted.
The top officials of the city of New York heard a brief laugh before a voice resounded through the speakerphone. “My, my, my, I guess I don’t have to introduce myself.”
“Why are you doing this?” Corrente demanded, trying to stay on the offensive.
“Long story. Goes back a whole lotta years.”
“You’ve made your point.”
A chuckle. “Lucy, I’m just getting started. Now you got a choice to make: either you go down as the mayor who saved her city or the mayor who lost it.”
“How much do you want? You said you’d tell us.”
“Everything have to have a monetary value?”
“Usually, when hostages are involved.”
“Well, I got plenty of them. That means we’re talking lots of monetary
value. Say, fifteen billion dollars delivered before three o’clock this afternoon, or your city is toast, Lucy.”
The entire conference room seemed to quiver.
“Did you say fifteen
billion
?”
“I did, I did. You got maybe five million people trapped in Manhattan right now, which puts the price at maybe three hundred bucks a head—a bargain when you look at it that way.”
“Five million and one,” said Blaine McCracken from the doorway.
 
M
cCracken’s clothes were shredded and smudged. He advanced grimacing, clearly in considerable pain. The first New York City policeman to arrive on the scene of the helicopter crash on Park Avenue had become his reluctant chauffeur to City Hall on an excruciatingly long drive through the gridlocked streets. The personnel standing around the conference table did a collective double take, watching him.
“I know that voice,” Jack Tyrell droned through the black phone’s speaker.
“We were never formally introduced, Tyrell.”
“Pleased to meet you. Glad you guessed my name.” Then, after a pause, “You fucked up my operation at the Monument, killed one of my men in Pennsylvania, and now you cost me a helicopter, asshole.”
“I’m going to cost you a whole lot more than that before this day is over.”
“This day ends at three o’clock.”
“We’ll see about that.”
“Hey, Lucy, I’ll call you back with the details. How I want the money broken up, where to deliver it—that sort of shit.”
Click.
Kirkland swung from the conference table toward his team of technicians. “Talk to me!”
“We got it!” a man wearing a headset announced.
Kirkland grabbed the receiver of the phone set before his chair at the table. “Get strike teams ready to roll!”
“Damn!” said his technician, working the keyboard.
“What is it?”
“This guy’s good … .”
“Where is he?”
The technician spoke while still punching keys. “Birmingham, Alabama. But it’s the signal, not the call. He’s got direct linkup with a satellite. No way we can get him.”
“Can’t you—”
“Wait a minute, I’ve got something here. Just an echo, but if it’s right …”
“Talk!” Kirkland ordered.
The technician spun his chair around. “He’s here. He’s calling from somewhere in New York City.”
“Like I told you last night,” McCracken reminded.
That was enough for the mayor to put everything together. “This is your
source
?” she asked Kirkland, eyeing the disheveled Blaine disparagingly.
Kirkland shrugged, nodded. “Meet Blaine McCracken.”
“The man from the George Washington Bridge,” Corrente realized, recalling Tyrell’s mention of a helicopter.
“I happened to be in the neighborhood.”
“Just like he happened to be in the neighborhood of the Washington Monument when Tyrell seized that six months ago,” Kirkland said by way of explanation.
“You seem to be the resident expert on this man, Mr. McCracken,” noted Mayor Corrente. “We’d like to hear what you know.”
“He’s going to blow up this city.”
“That much we’re already aware of,” Chief Logan said snidely.
“No, what I mean is he’s going to blow up the city at three o’clock whether you pay him or not.”
“Well, then,” began Mayor Corrente, only half sarcastically, “if you could save the Monument, we better hope you can save New York.”
“I’ll see what I can do,” Blaine said, producing the charred piece of paper he had salvaged from the helicopter.
 
“
H
ere’s our boy,” Marbles called to Jack Tyrell. “His name is Blaine McCracken. His file’s got more seals on it than I can penetrate, but this is good enough.”
“One tough fucking son of a bitch, I’d say,” Tyrell said, reading over his shoulder.
BOOK: Dead Simple
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