Black Ghosts (7 page)

Then two more men moving in unison stood out from the bridge's metalwork, aiming Soviet-made rocket-propelled antitank grenade launchers—known in the trade as RPGs—that they carried on their shoulders. The men drew their sights and fired.

From each of the launchers, a rocket hissed through the air, and all the black-clad figures stepped back into the shelter of the steel girders. There was a moment of silence as the RPGs sought their targets. Then they struck. One hit the lead Secret Service car in the front passenger door. The second hit the car following the general's limousine, entering the vehicle through the front windshield. Each car exploded in a ball of fire, blowing off the roof, hood, trunk, and doors, leaving only a burning shell with grotesque smoldering bodies twisted and melted into the hot metal.

The gas escaping from the ruptured tank of the second Secret Service car engulfed the car behind it, which also blew up in flames. The blast sent the two motorcyclists who followed flying backward, one landing with his Harley on the windshield of the first patrol car. Not that the driver minded. As the black hole in his forehead testified, he would never mind anything again.

By this time Yazarinsky's men had stepped out again, firing at anything that still moved, sending a spray of cartridge cases flying upward and rattling against the bridge.

On its way in from Queens, a Volkswagen minibus, filled with bleary-eyed tourists eager for their first sight of New York City, chanced to cross the bridge on the westbound lane. When they saw the flames and the men in their black protective clothing, the astonished passengers thought at first that a movie was being made—until the bullets tore through the side of the bus and ripped into their flesh. The driver died immediately, and the vehicle crashed at full speed into the railing, sending up sparks that ignited its damaged gas tank—a warm New York welcome for the few surviving passengers.

McPhee, still outside the line of fire, hidden by the flaming car ahead of him and the black smoke from the burning tires, had seen enough. He yelled at his driver, “Back it up! Off the fucking bridge! Back, back, back!” The driver slammed the car into reverse and it screeched backward, hardly moving at first, as a hail of bullets bounced and rattled around it. The front windshield shattered into a million tiny bits of glass. From under the dashboard, McPhee looked up at his driver. The man's head was tilted back at an unnatural angle, and McPhee realized he was looking at a dead man. The car was still moving furiously in reverse. Without hesitating, McPhee shouldered the corpse against the driver's-side door, kicked the lifeless foot away from the pedal, reached across to grab the wheel, and struggled to regain control of the vehicle. At the end of the bridge he stopped, picked up the radio mike, and yelled into it.

“Eagle One! Eagle One! What the fuck is this shit! Eagle One! Get me some fucking support! I need backup now!”

Eagle One was approaching the bridge, hovering over the Hudson River on the Queens side.

“Eagle Two! This is Eagle One! What's happening?” The two choppers could not understand McPhee's garbled message.

“This is Eagle Two! I'm going in! Calling for backup!” The helicopter moved forward from its position above the 59th Street interchange to try to make sense of the confusion below.

Like a beached whale, the limo was trapped between the burning shells of the Secret Service cars. Five men from the assault team rushed toward it. They attached a small detonation device to the door and stood aside. Seconds later the blast ripped the door off its hinges, tossing it onto the pavement. Instantly two of the five were facing the limo, firing into the opening. If anyone was still alive by the time the first of the men got inside the vehicle, that life was extinguished immediately. The men worked quickly: They knew what they had to do.

“Eagle One! Eagle One!” The two helicopters were trying to establish communication, their radios screeching. Moving toward the midpoint of the bridge from either end, they drew close to the scene of battle.

“Eagle Two, this is Eagle One. Can you see anything? Over.”

“Negative, Eagle One, too much smoke.”

“I'm going in closer. Did you get through to McPhee? Over.”

“Negative.”

Facing away from the bridge, two more of Yazarinsky's men emerged from the shadows, each carrying on his shoulder a sleek, dark green cylinder containing a deadly Stinger surface-to-air missile. There was a thud and a cloud of smoke as each was fired, and a gray streak pointed skyward.

“Look out! Something's coming at you!” squawked the helicopter radio. But it was too late. The infrared heat-seeking missiles locked onto the choppers' exhaust pipes, both Stingers found their marks, and simultaneously the helicopters were blown out of the sky in a flash and a thunder, leaving only a shower of debris.

“Move! Move! Move!” Yazarinsky shouted to his men in the limo. The five ran back, two carrying a metal container, the kind used to house cameras or other delicate equipment.

Down toward the mouth of the bridge, McPhee rolled out of the car and onto the pavement, gun in hand. He took cover between two of the bridge's girders. The gunfire had stopped and it was ominously quiet, except for the occasional pop of exploding ammunition in the burning cars. He peeked out. The carnage was gruesome. There was no movement other than the flicker of flames and the black smoke billowing from the burning hulks of metal. None of the burnt and mangled bodies littering the bridge was moving. A stench of burnt flesh and rubber stood in the air.

“Where are they?” he said to himself, peeking out from his cover on the other side, along the sidewalk that stretched between the girders and the railing, beyond which was nothing but the East River three hundred feet below. The big man was shaking: For the first time in his life, he knew what fear really was. His movements were frantic—he expected them behind him, blowing him to kingdom come at any second.

He couldn't believe his eyes. Amid the smoke and fire he saw them, all in black, standing on the railing, facing out. And then, as if by a prearranged signal, they all jumped off the bridge and into the black frigid air.

Was this some bizarre kamikaze ritual? Without the benefit of a protective mask, McPhee's eyes stung and watered from the smoke and dust. Nevertheless, he wasn't blind. He knew what he had seen. He moved quickly across the sidewalk, leaving the cover of the steel girders, and leaned over the railing. It was then that he saw the long strands of the bungee cords, stretching down from the railings and disappearing into the darkness.

At the other end of those cords, Yazarinsky and his men floated gently down toward the glimmering black surface of the river. When each man reached the lowest stretch of the cord, a couple of feet from the water's surface, he released the catch on his belt and was left to slide easily into the waves as the bungee snapped back upward, twisting and writhing.

Underneath the bridge, five motor launches were waiting. As soon as the men hit the water, the outboard motors roared into life, and their gray rubber noses edged forward to the heads bobbing in the waves. Soon the men were hauled into the launches, five men to a boat. Special care was taken for the two men who between them bore the metal container, now wrapped in a flotation device. Once Yazarinsky was satisfied, he gave the word and the launches sped downriver.

On the bridge, McPhee was tearing his hair in frustration. He had run back to the car and was trying to raise some backup on the radio.

“They're on the water!” he screamed, not realizing his radio antenna had been blown off in the blast. “In boats! Get after them, you fuckheads!”

Even if he had been heard, it would have made very little difference. No one had expected any of this. They were used to dealing with emergencies on land, and even now a posse of squad cars was assembling at either end of the bridge. Ambulance sirens wailed, although there would be little for the ambulances to do other than put the bodies in bags and take them to the morgue.

McPhee tried to console himself. Nobody could have dreamed of an attack in midair, halfway across a bridge, and an escape across the water far below. He had been attacked by a circus, he thought. It was a goddamn circus.

“Get me the fucking Coast Guard!” McPhee yelled into his dead radio. “Where are those assholes when you need them! I want those boats stopped!”

He ran back to the railing, leaned over the bridge, and emptied the magazine of his pistol into the black water in a futile gesture of fury. “Don't they know bungeeing off a bridge is illegal in New York!” he shouted into the night.

 

The antibiotics began to take effect on his friend two days after Edward had found him unconscious in a pool of blood. Still delirious and running a fever, he kept calling out for Natalie and mumbling something or other about the microcircuit. Then his words would trail off into delirium and he'd pass out again.

By the end of the third day, Larry's fever had finally broken. Although still very weak, he was lucid. Edward was coming up from the bistro when he heard voices in the bedroom.

“Are you okay?” Larry's voice trembled.

“Thank God you're awake,” said Natalie. “I'm fine, how are you feeling?”

“Like I was hit by a freight train. Where are we?”

“In my castle,” Edward said as he entered the room with a smile to greet his old friend back from the edge.

“Hey, buddy!” Larry was glad to see him. “How long have I been here?”

“This is your third day,” said Natalie.

Larry's face hardened as if he had just remembered something. “Did you get the microcircuit?”

She nodded, her eyes fixed on him as though afraid he would fall back into a coma if she let him out of her sight.

“Good girl.”

“I'm not a girl.”

Larry and Edward looked at each other: Neither man could be sure whether she was joking or not. She got up and walked over to the dresser, opened her duffel bag, and pulled out a small package in dark blue bubble wrap. As if it were of no significance, she walked back to the bed and put it casually on the night table.

“Who shot you? And why?” Edward asked, impatient with the small talk.

Larry stared silently at him for several seconds. “Sorry, I'm just trying to figure it out myself. I called for backup and they came, then they shot me.”

“I know that part. Natalie told me. Who did you call?”

“I called for backup,” Larry said again. He was starting to fade away. His eyes closed and his head rested deeper in the large white pillow.

“I have to take care of some business downstairs,” Edward said. “Meantime, we should let him rest.”

“Not that we have much of a choice.” She arched her brows.

“It waited three days. It can wait a little longer,” he said and went downstairs.

Kelly asked him to sign the paychecks, handing him the time sheets and the filled-out checks. He took them into his office, where he pretended to go over them—another of his rituals, this one intended to make his staff think he knew what was going on. The truth was that he had no idea. If Kelly ever wanted to take advantage of him, she would find it extremely easy. He knew that and suspected she knew it too. Yet he was lucky when it came to the people he had working for him, always had been, even in the service. It was the people he worked for who gave him the trouble.

When he returned some hours later, Larry was awake again, his eyes were clearer, and there was color in his cheeks. Edward had no doubt this had something to do with the bowl of chicken soup Natalie had brought him from the kitchen.

“I stink,” Larry griped. “How can you stand sitting in the same room with me?”

“It ain't easy,” Edward teased.

Larry chuckled, then started to cough. “Don't make me laugh. It hurts when I do. Who patched me up? Frankenstein?”

“We did our best.” Edward jokingly threw his hands in the air. “You got the best medical attention a restaurant can offer.” His face turned serious. “Now for God's sake tell me, what is this all about?”

Larry began to talk slowly, his voice so low that Edward had to lean closer to the bed.

It had started the previous year. During an economic summit in Paris, the American president was told privately by one of the European leaders that a clandestine organization—a remnant from the Cold War—was active in the United States.

“A remnant of what?” Edward pressed.

“At the height of the Cold War,” Larry explained, “NATO chiefs were convinced the Soviets would invade western Europe at any moment. Acting on that assumption, they formed special paramilitary teams in every European country that was a member of the alliance. These units were dubbed ‘Patriots' in the Netherlands, or ‘Gladiators' in Italy, or simply ‘Left-behinds' as was the case in Norway. As the latter name indicates, they were conceived to be a ready-made underground which would stay in occupied Europe and carry out terrorist activity as well as tactical and strategic intelligence gathering. The idea for the ‘Patriots' came, in fact, from a shred of intelligence information—never confirmed, mind you—that the Soviets were preparing what amounted to a shadow army, with the intention of activating it behind enemy lines should the Soviet Union or parts of it ever fall under occupation.

“The Patriots were dismantled on a presidential order, with the approval of the entire NATO command some ten years ago. It appeared, however, from the information handed over to the president, that some units remained in place.

“More precisely, the president was told that these units had been activated by some ex-intelligence officers and members of the military-industrial complex, who were offering the services of the Patriots as executors of “dirty work,” such as assassinations and other such operations, for the Western intelligence communities whose hands were tied with endless rules and regulatory red tape.