Armageddon Conspiracy (16 page)

He jerked out his wallet as he drove and counted sixty-two dollars. That was all he had because his credit or ATM cards would be like drawing arrows for the police.

On the other side of the Hudson, he followed signs for the New Jersey Turnpike. He saw a police car parked on one side of the turnpike ticket booths, but fortunately the cop never spared him a glance.

He was thinking only about his Uncle Fred now, remembering what he’d said—how he’d help out when no one else would. He had to get to Morristown, but he was so sleepy. Twice he felt the tires thump on the warning strip before his eyes snapped open. Come on! he told himself. Just a little further! He focused his thoughts on the two guys who’d just tried to kill him. They’d knifed an innocent garage attendant and maybe shot Dr. Faisal. Slowly, his rage began to boil again. He used it to keep going.

He looked over at the passenger seat where Harry sat, his face smeared with soot, his clothes smoking from recent flames.
Hang in there, bro. Don’t let those bastards get away with this.

Brent grunted and set the cruise control. His vision was blurring, but
he
was on fire now and held the wheel in a death grip.

Forty minutes later, he was on the quiet back streets of Morristown, nearing his uncle’s neighborhood. His movements had become sluggish. It was hard as hell just to stay on the road, but he’d almost reached safety.

With two blocks to go he suddenly slammed on the brakes. The FBI and police would have figured out that he was running, and they’d have his uncle’s house staked out for sure! Why hadn’t he thought of it before? He let his forehead bang the steering wheel, finally overcome with hopelessness. It occurred to him that maybe he ought to just go there and surrender.

Then what?
Harry’s voice came to him.
How you gonna get proof from jail? You want to end up a scapegoat for whoever killed your client and stole his money?

“I’ve got sixty-two dollars,” Brent said. He glanced down at his
bloody stomach. “I need a doctor.”

Only one other place to go, Little Bro.

Brent scowled, but he turned around in the next driveway.

Maggie’s lights were off, but the sight of her house brought a strange combination of hope and futility. She was a cop, sworn to uphold the law, but maybe she still cared about him enough to listen to his story. Maybe she didn’t—but he was too near blacking out to make another choice. He drove into her driveway, turned off the engine, staggered to her back door, and rang the bell. After another minute he rang again, but nothing stirred inside.

The garage door squeaked on its hinges as he raised it and saw that Maggie’s car was gone. He backed the Volvo into her garage, lowered the door, and sat behind the wheel, unable to fight his exhaustion. His eyes closed, he felt himself drift. Numb with pain and worry, with no more strength to resist or run, he knew he’d tried his best, but tomorrow he’d be in custody.

Strangely, the only thing he could still focus on was a lingering sadness about Maggie, about how he’d let the two of them grow so distant when he still loved her. As he fell into oblivion he thought about Harry charging up the fire stairs, loving his job and his mission, probably smiling even at the end. Harry wouldn’t have backed away from Maggie. Harry always embraced everything in his life to the best of his ability. His last thought was that he felt oddly jealous of his dead brother. It was strange how his own life had been so full of promise and opportunity, yet he’d wasted it, never seeing the things that mattered until it was too late.

NAIF KEPT ONE HAND PRESSED
to his forehead to staunch the bleeding as he turned to glare at this soft American who was the reason he had failed. He felt a hot rage rip at his stomach.

“I should kill you,” he hissed.

“It wasn’t my fault,” the fat Christian said, even as the sour smell of fear oozed from his pores.

Naif shifted position to try and ease the pain that wracked his body. He had bruised ribs, a bleeding elbow, and broken nose, but worst was the knowledge that he’d so badly underestimated his prey.

Now a new problem loomed. They had driven up and down streets, scanning unlit doorways and the spaces between parked cars. Lucas was wounded. Naif knew a man with a wounded gut couldn’t go far. Still, they hadn’t found him.

They were parked at the curb a block from the garage, where they
could keep watch in both directions. When Lucas appeared, they would go after him. Naif took his bloody knife from his pocket and placed it on the minister’s knee. “When we find him, you finish it.”

The minister’s eyes widened, and he shook his head. “No!” he exclaimed.

Naif reached into the pocket of his coat and brought out his pistol. He put the silenced muzzle against the minister’s chest. “Kill him,” he said, speaking very slowly. “Or die.”

The minister made whimpering sound and seemed about to refuse, but before he could speak, Naif’s cell phone rang. It was Abu Sayeed.

“Status?” he demanded.

“There have been complications,” Naif said.

“He is alive?”

Naif sighed, “Yes.”

There was a heavy silence. “We have a change of plans. Go to the following address.”

Naif took a pen and notebook from a rubber band on the visor and wrote it down. Afterward, he programmed the address into his portable GPS. He read the directions then turned to the minister. “Go to the Triborough Bridge.”

A SLIVER OF LIGHT SHOWED
on the eastern horizon as Maggie pulled her Toyota Corolla into her driveway. She climbed out, stretched, and shivered at the cool dampness of the night air. High in an oak tree an unseen bird began to sing. The sound reminded her of how little time she’d have to sleep and brought a twinge of sadness as she thought about promises she’d made to herself—that someday she’d learn the songs of all the local birds and have a vegetable garden and a great big backyard and some kids to tear it up. So many things seemed to be sliding further and further away.

Now, even those simple desires seemed self-indulgent, perhaps ultimately impossible to achieve given what she’d heard the previous evening. She could still picture Ann Jenkins as she laid out her response to rumors of eight Russian air-to-ground missiles and several pounds of spent nuclear fuel.

As the impact of Jenkins’ Condition Red began to spread, things in New York would soon be a complete mess. Tankers would back up in the Atlantic as they waited to unload, and local business owners would be screaming as their goods accumulated and food rotted and the shelves of New York’s stores grew bare. Then, in the absence of quick irrefutable proof, politicians would slam Project Seahawk for unrealistic, heavy-handed tactics. Maggie had to admire the woman’s guts.

However, as if Jenkins’ announcement wasn’t troubling enough, it wasn’t even the worst thing. Brent’s name had come over the law enforcement network at around eleven thirty, a flicker on her computer screen, one more green line of print among thousands of others, but her eyes had gone straight to it. He was the subject of a detain-for-questioning order regarding the disappearance of client funds and possible violations of RICO and anti-money-laundering statutes.

She’d been stunned because the idea of Brent stealing anything was preposterous, but she also remembered his phone call, the troubling undercurrents in his voice, his need to meet with her. Had he been reaching out for help?

Her teeth chattered in the morning air, but she ignored the chill and stepped through her backyard gate in the hope that movement would diminish her anxiety. The eastern sky was growing paler, and the outline of her flowerbeds began to emerge. There were roses along one side and at the rear a perennial bed with a thick phalanx of iris stalks, their blooms already past. Overhead, more birds were starting to sing, and the scent of fresh dew rose from the grass.

As soon as she’d seen his name on the wire she’d called Brent’s cell phone, letting the number ring until she got his recording. Around one a.m. Brent’s name had come across her screen a second time. His
client, a Dr. Khaled Faisal, had been found murdered along with two other people in a Manhattan townhouse, and the detain-for-questioning order had been upgraded to an arrest warrant. According to the report, police had found the bodies after a butler’s wife alerted them that her husband hadn’t returned from work. This time the bulletin had included Brent’s picture.

At three a.m. a third bulletin said Brent’s car had been located in a Manhattan garage, along with the body of a slain garage attendant. Until then, all of it might have been a terrible mistake, but now she knew it was much more than coincidence or mistaken identity. By four a.m. she could no longer keep even the simplest thoughts in her head, and she made an excuse that she was ill and went home.

In spite of the hour, she’d almost stopped to see Brent’s Uncle Fred on her way home. She knew Fred couldn’t be sleeping. First losing Harry and now this—he had to be beside himself. Nothing about the accusations made sense to her, yet she hadn’t stopped. Emotionally, she was in complete denial, but as a cop she’d seen people, even wonderful people, sometimes go over the edge. It seemed incomprehensible that Brent could have become homicidal, but regardless of her emotions, she needed to admit to the possibility.

Now, on a sudden whim she kicked off her shoes, hiked up the skirt of her navy blue pin striped suit, and pulled off her panty hose. The grass was long and needed mowing, and the wet blades licked the tender skin between her toes with shocking coolness. She closed her eyes, thinking it felt good to be here, so peaceful. For a few moments she wished she could be a little girl again, back in that perfect age of innocence where the dew could wash away her worries and make all the bad things disappear.

She crossed her arms and looked overhead at the last pale wash of the night’s stars. Where are you, Brent? Maggie wondered. Where would you run? She sighed and started toward her back door, thinking she’d go inside and try his cell phone once more before she tried to sleep. Maybe he was already in custody. If he wasn’t, even if she managed to talk to him, what could she say? Give yourself up? She shook her head. Not him.

She was so tired that the squeak of her garage door hinges barely registered, but in another instant her training took over. In one motion, she unsnapped her holster, pulled her Glock, spun, and crouched. She thumbed off the safety, and in less than a half second held a rock steady aim on the dim outline framed in the blackness of her now open garage door.

“Police!” she barked. “Raise your hands and come forward! Move slow!”

A man took several slow steps forward. “Maggie?”

She knew the voice. “Keep moving!” she commanded then watched him stumble and go to his knees.

“Lie face down on the driveway with your hands out to your sides. Now!”

“Maggie,” the voice said again. “It’s Brent.”

“I know who it is!” she said, only now her hands were shaking, her breath coming short. She kept the gun aimed but clicked the safety back on because she no longer trusted her control.

“What the hell have you done?” she demanded.

He wasn’t lying down. He stayed on his knees with his hands over his stomach. “I didn’t do it,” he mumbled.

She took two steps closer. “On your face, Brent! Now!”

He looked up at her and shook his head, and that was when she saw the blood. His shirt was dark with it where his suit coat came apart.

“Jesus,” she said, coming closer but staying out of reach. “How bad are you hurt?”

“Not as bad as I could be,” Brent said. “A guy tried to kill me in a parking garage.”

Maggie felt sick. “The attendant?”

“No, another guy.”

“Who?”

Brent shook his head. “I never saw him before.”

She looked at him hard. She saw no sign of lunacy, not on the surface at least; instead she saw fear and vulnerability and isolation. Her instincts told her this was Brent, the man she’d loved and trusted, but her training made her question his innocence. She pushed it back and came another step closer. She could see him clearly now in the gray light, exhausted and haggard, like he’d aged ten years.

“I’m sorry I came here,” he said, his voice little more than a whisper. “I’m not going to involve you in this.”

“I have to arrest you, Brent. I don’t have a choice.”

He looked at her, and something like Brent’s old determination emerged. “Yeah, I know,” he said. He winced then struggled uncertainly to his feet. He turned and lurched back toward the garage.

“Stop!”

He shook his head and kept going.

“Stop!” she cried a second time. She felt tears well in her eyes, but she thumbed off the safety.

“Shoot me or let me go,” he said over his shoulder.

“Why are you doing this?”

He turned halfway around. “Cause I’m innocent.”

“So give yourself up!”

He shook his head. “Got no proof.” He stumbled and put his hands on his knees. “They did too good a job,” he said, and then crumpled to the ground.

Thirty minutes later, Maggie was slumped on one of the chairs at her kitchen table with her head on her folded arms. Brent lay asleep on the couch in her small den, where he’d half walked and she’d half dragged him. She’d pulled off his shirt and pants, washed and disinfected his wound, and then used all the butterfly bandages in her police-issue first-aid kit to close the cut. She knew the wound probably called for stitches, but the butterflies would do for now.

She hadn’t made the call to turn him in, but it had to be done. There was no rush. Brent wasn’t going anywhere. He’d been barely coherent when she bandaged him, babbling names she’d never heard and something about being set up.

After several minutes she raised her head, glanced around her kitchen, and gave up any pretense of sleeping. She stood, loaded the coffee maker, took eggs from the refrigerator, and then pulled bacon and English muffins from the freezer.