Lockdown (31 page)

‘OK, in your own time.’

Richard’s chair skittered across the floor. The beam snapped from Lock’s face and to his right. Where Khalid should have found Richard, there was only glass.

Lock made his move, launching himself across the room on the line Khalid had established a moment ago with the Mini-Mag. It was as existential a moment as stepping off a cliff.

Lock caught the butt of the M-16 with his stomach, but his momentum carried him forward, tipping Khalid from his chair. A starburst of light broke in front of him as he caught the butt again, this time on the face. He tried not to fall back, to stay as close as he could. He drew back his right hand and short-punched Khalid, glancing off a jut of bone and finding what he guessed from the sudden wheezing was windpipe. Then he did it again, and again, until the wheezing gave way entirely.

He rolled off Khalid’s limp body, and grabbed the Maglite. He used it to locate the M-16, which had spun away a short distance. He kept the light moving, finding Ty gun-facing him and Richard huddled into a ball in the corner of the room.

Richard peered out from between his fingers as the wave of a blast rolled through the room from outside. Mareta? Lock doubted it. You didn’t walk out of all the situations she
had just to go meekly to God when there was a chance of escape.

Lock crossed the room and helped Richard to his feet. He clapped him on the back. ‘You did good. Now, let’s get out of here.’

‘Wait.’ Richard crossed to where Lock was. ‘Give me that,’ he said, taking the flashlight. He shone it on Khalid, who was laid out on the floor. ‘Is he dead?’

‘I very much hope so,’ said Lock. ‘Now, let’s move.’

Too soon.
The words had clambered into his mind and refused to vacate. It wasn’t that he’d die alone. Or in agony. No, the worst thing about how this had turned out, the ultimate ignominy, was that he’d die a footnote.

Then, with a loud thump that shook the walls either side of him, he was given a sign that maybe all was not lost. The light went out. A puff of dust caught at the back of his throat, and he coughed. More powder sucked into his nostrils.

He lowered himself down on to the floor and crawled to where he thought the door might be as another explosion shook the concrete floor. His hand slid out from under him and he fell, face first.

He took a moment to right himself, then started to edge along again, using his fingertips to navigate. Cold metal. The door.

He felt his way to its edge. It was at an angle. He could get his hand round the side of it. More than his hand. His arm. Both arms.

He squeezed his way through and into the corridor. The dust had begun to settle back to ground level. The door at the far end was open, light seeping in.

Tentatively, he got to his feet. The door next to his cell had been damaged too, wrenched away from its frame. He pushed at it, and it fell in. He almost fell in after it.

He could make out a man lying on the bed. Stafford Van Straten stepped through and stared down at his father. Two deep cuts bisected the old man’s face in a bloody cross.

‘Stafford?’

His father reached out a hand, but Stafford chose not to see it.

‘The vaccine. You have to find the vaccine,’ he whispered.

‘And then what?’

Nicholas tried to raise his head, but the effort was too much. ‘If you don’t, you’ll die.’

‘Die in prison, don’t you mean?’

He watched as his father tried to wipe away the blood seeping down into his right eye. ‘Then get out of here.’

‘Like a coward?’ Stafford spat. ‘Prove once and for all what a screw-up I am?’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘You’ll never understand, will you? This isn’t about money. It was never about money.’ Stafford fell to his knees so that he was at eye level with his father. Outside, he could hear small-arms fire still echoing round the compound. ‘This is about history, and our family’s place in it.
My
place in it.’

Caffrey had just dug a plastic fork into his Holy Mol
burrito when he saw the woman struggling towards him, a crutch under one arm, a cooler in her other hand. ‘Shit.’

He stepped from his cruiser, drew his weapon, an old-school stainless-steel Smith and Wesson 64 revolver, and levelled it at the centre of her chest. ‘Stop right there.’

She kept coming.

He’d heard something at one of the briefings about a woman. He knew she was foreign. Someone had said something about her not speaking English. Or was it that she could speak it? Damn. He should have been paying more attention, instead of texting one of his patrol guys to swing by Burritoville.

‘Lady, stop right there.’

He looked around for back-up but everyone seemed to be pouring, like flies to shit, through the gates towards the buildings.

Still she kept coming. Utterly calm. No sign on her face that she even saw his gun.

A woman. Fresh off the boat. Who maybe didn’t understand what he was saying.

Then she stopped. Maybe ten feet from him. Maybe less. Never breaking eye contact. Never looking at his gun. Tuning it out.

‘OK, that’s good. Now, stay there and don’t move.’

But move she did, placing the cooler on the ground. One hand reaching across her chest.

‘I said, don’t move.’

She was wearing a padded man’s ski jacket, or at least that was what it looked like to Caffrey. Her hand wrenched at the zipper.

He’d have to wait to see a weapon. Couldn’t shoot someone for unzipping their jacket.

‘OK, that’s far enough.’

She kept going, yanking the zipper free at the bottom.

‘Lady, I don’t have time for games.’

‘Neither do we.’ A man stepped from the shadows. White. A young guy. Covered in a thin layer of grey dust that made him look like one of those human statue guys who hung out in Midtown making money from tourists. ‘Go ahead,’ he said. ‘Show him.’

Slowly, deliberately, the woman pulled the jacket to one side, and the hand holding Caffrey’s gun stopped working. The Smith and Wesson tumbled to the ground.

Twenty-four years of jumpers, jackers, slashers, stoners, rapists, recidivists, baby killers and crackheads. Twenty-four years of witnessing what was very often the lowest point in someone’s life. Over and over again. A never-ending loop of human failing, which occasionally seeped into evil. Caffrey was sure he had seen, smelled, tasted, heard, touched and, yeah, even sensed it all. But this, this went way further.

She held the jacket open with a stage magician’s flourish and Caffrey stood there, half expecting her to take a bow. But all that happened was that the guy who was standing behind her ran forward to retrieve Caffrey’s service revolver.

Still transfixed, Caffrey didn’t try to stop him.

‘You have a cell phone?’

‘What?’ said Caffrey.

The guy pointed the gun at Caffrey. Caffrey barely registered it.

‘Do you have a cell phone?’ the guy asked again.

‘In the car.’

‘Go get it,’ he instructed. ‘I need the number.’

Smoke rose from every building in the compound. In two, fires still burned, the foam pumped into them by fire crews wearing respirators and bio-suits seemingly doing little to dampen the flames. Between buildings, bodies lay scattered. The detainees had put in a good shift resisting the assault, taking with them at least half a dozen JTTF and other personnel.

In the Center for Disease Control trailer, Lock was losing patience as he waited for his test results. ‘How many times? Right now I might be one of the safest people in America.’

His pleas cut no ice. There was procedure, and it was going to be followed. Outside he could hear the chatter on the radios was accelerating rather than diminishing. Not a good sign after an assault. Then, as one of the CDC techs made her final checks, he heard Ty giving someone some serious shit right outside the door.

‘You lost her? You assholes!’

That was it. Lock was on his feet and out, brushing aside the thick-necked twat on the door with an open palm.

The guy followed him out, drawing his weapon. ‘Sir, step back inside.’

‘I’ve met meter maids that were more intimidating than you, bud, so put away the pistol while your hands still work.’

The confrontation was cut short by the CDC tech. ‘It’s OK, Brad, he’s clear.’

Lock joined Ty. ‘The Ghost done it again?’

‘Looking that way.’

Lock glanced back to the smouldering ruins as an NYPD Bomb Squad bulldozer trundled past them. ‘Hell, she’s probably halfway to South America with what’s left of the family fortune by now. What about everyone else?’

‘Richard’s safe, back with his boy. Hey, we did what we set out to. Just have to tie up the loose end.’

‘I’d say that crazy bitch rigged to two kilos of C4 is more than a loose end.’

‘She’s Chechen. Thought they had a beef with the Russians, not us.’

‘They didn’t, until now,’ said Frisk, coming up fast behind them. ‘And she’s not the only thing that’s unaccounted for.’

‘Care to elaborate?’

‘The entire stock of Ebola variant’s gone too.’

High above the Manhattan skyline, night-time and a set of rolling winter clouds rendered four Air Force F-15s invisible as they threw a wide loop around the island. Below, the skies were empty, save for the NYPD’s fleet of seven choppers which buzzed briskly around Midtown. All other commercial aircraft had been grounded, Kennedy closed; ditto La Guardia and Newark.

Beneath them, the chopper pilots could trace a red pulse of brake lights snaking along the full length of the Brooklyn, Manhattan and Williamsburg Bridges. Sitting next to the pilots, sharpshooters, ready to dispense retribution from on high, checked and re-cheked their weapons, waiting for the call.

The same red points could be glimpsed in the far distance on the Queensboro Bridge, and at the entrance to the Queens Midtown Tunnel. On the other side of the island the traffic waiting to enter the Lincoln Tunnel seemed to back up all the way to some distant New Jersey exit ramp even Springsteen hadn’t heard of.

From up in the gods, the city seemed to be enjoying a sudden spike in popularity at the very moment it had finally maxed out its
capacity to contain any more human beings. The sky, finally, appeared to have a limit.

Underground was a different reality. Four hundred passengers sat in the carriages of the A-Train, and didn’t move. Tense. Silent. Further down the track, people being ushered from the platforms and back out on to the street. Iron grilles being pulled across. The city’s veins snapping shut one by one.

It was the same story with the Holland Tunnel. Same story with every tunnel leading into the city. Car engines switched off. Angry drivers exchanging less than pleasantries with stony-faced cops.

‘I got my daughter to pick up from a party. She called an hour ago. She was crying.’

‘But my apartment’s flooded. The super called me. I’ve had to drive here all the way from Maine.’

‘What difference is it gonna make letting one car through, officer?’

Every plea, exhortation and bribe met with the same response. No dice. The city’s closed. No one’s getting in, and no one’s getting out.

Manhattan’s locked down.

‘So who d’you think’s gonna take the bragging rights?’ asked Ty as the chopper cut low and left across the East River towards Manhattan.

‘What the hell are you talking about? What bragging rights?’ Lock asked, struggling to be heard above the thud of the rotor blades.

‘Judgement Day, fool. The Jews think they’re the lost tribe, right? And then you got the Protestants. They’re the elect. Ditto the Catholics. Mormons think it’s them. Muslims. Damn, wouldn’t that be a kick in the nuts after all the shit they’ve pulled recently? Hindus? Can’t see it myself. Jehovah’s Witnesses? Hmm, done some hard lobbying. Gotta factor that in. Buddhists think they’re gonna be coming back as butterflies or some shit. But it stands to reason, they can’t all be right. Wanna know who my money’s on?’

‘Nation of Islam?’

‘Nah, the hell with them, never been the same since they lost Farrakhan. My money’s on the Irish.’

‘Being Irish isn’t a religion.’

‘You try telling them that. No, something big as Judgement Day
is gonna come down to dumb luck. And you don’t get any dumber or luckier than the Irish.’

Ty sat back, apparently content with having slammed the world’s main religions and the homeland of at least a tenth of the country’s population in one burst.

Frisk swivelled round in his seat. ‘Is he always like this?’ he shouted to Lock.

‘Unfortunately, yes. You get used to it.’

‘Don’t you think it’s just a little disrespectful?’

Ty looked hurt. ‘You think of a more appropriate time to ask this stuff, let me know. Oh, and before you get into any 9/11 guilt trip bullshit, I lost a brother in Tower Two.’

Ty’s brother had been in the Fire Department, one of the guys who was walking up when everyone else was walking down. He and Ty had been close. Ty had joined the Marines in response, judging action more productive than mourning. Now, in the back of a chopper, flying into a city where any sensible person would have been flying out, Lock hoped history wasn’t about to repeat itself.