Vigilante (24 page)

N
olan just wanted to hit something, or someone.

This whole town had gone mad, and more than anything, he wanted to pummel something with his bare hands.

He’d landed in the middle of a showdown between a pair of police officers and a trio of mob hit men, taking place in broad daylight, smack dab in the center of a residential street in SoHo. Guns had been drawn and ammo exhausted as each side hid behind their respective vehicles—a standard black-and-white police car and a nondescript black van.

Nolan had no idea what the mob guys had done to draw an attack by the NYPD, but there was no shortage of possibilities. The last of the fall leaves were being swept up and around the two sides, while Nolan could see no one else up or down the street. His thoughts were consumed with the policemen, who were both kneeling on the ground trying to stem their own bleeding. One tried hopelessly to stop a pulsing wound in his leg, while the other had a hand to his side, where his uniform was red and wet.

Both groups seemed to be debating what to do next when Nolan dropped down behind Vasko’s men from a rooftop above.

The hit men seemed to recoil slightly at his appearance, and then recognition washed over them. As one, they lunged in his direction, but he was ready. Staff extending as they reached him, he flipped sideways and head over heels, his feet hitting one of the men, and the staff catching the other two. When he landed on his own feet, the three mob men were on the ground.

“Pull ’em!” shouted one of the men, and all of them produced hand grenades from inside their coats. The pins were still in the grenades, but the men were all too ready to yank them out.

Nolan froze, waiting for them to make a move.

Slowly, the three of them rose to their feet.

“Hey, hero,” said one of them—the tallest and burliest of the group. “What do you want more? To help the good guys . . . or stop the bad guys?”

Right on cue, the three men pulled out the pins and lobbed their grenades in the direction of the two cops. One of the grenades went up and over the van and the police car, and two were rolled under the vehicles.

No!

His first thought was to get to the policemen and try to shield them with his bulletproof fatigues, but during the millisecond he was considering this, one of the mob men slid in behind him and grabbed him in a stranglehold from behind.

The man had a remarkably solid arm and Nolan felt his air and blood flow cut off immediately. Reacting on instinct, he dropped to the ground and threw his attacker over his shoulder. But the man clung to his neck with an iron grip and returned the favor, flipping Nolan over as well.

The grenades went off with a powerful explosion that shook the neighborhood and blew Nolan and his three adversaries back away from the van by a good ten feet or more. Oxygen rushed back into his system when his back hit the sidewalk, and then he was in motion, powering himself on rage alone.

The staff had fallen from his hands during the scuffle, so he activated the electromagnet to draw it instantly back to him. With a vicious twist, he brought it around hard and fast against one of the men’s heads, knocking him out while opening a brutal gash across his forehead. A second man was already rushing him for a tackle, but Nolan brought one of his steel-hard fists around and bashed the guy in the ear.

Before he could regroup to see where the third man was, the guy tackled him. Nolan hit the ground even harder than before, the back of his head smacking on the concrete sidewalk. The guy laid into him hard, pounding his face with both fists, his expression full of unbridled malice.

A shotgun round was fired, and the man flew backward from the shot. The second man reappeared and attempted one last attack, a flurry of blows against Nolan’s abdomen.

But Nolan’s face was hot, his body nearly convulsing from the wrath and contempt that raced through him. With a snarl of rage, he backhanded the man so hard the assailant’s body spun along the ground before collapsing in a heap.

Nolan jumped up from the ground with a single thought: who had fired the shotgun?

The answer waited partway down the block on his left, standing there with a large shotgun still raised and ready to fire.

Coral Lively approached slowly.

Together they stared at the wreckage the grenades had torn through the police car and the officers. Nolan, unable to control himself, screamed at the sky.

This wasn’t how it was supposed to work. Everything was so much harder than before. The truth was, he’d been back on the job for over two weeks, but no matter how hard he tried to do something big enough to announce his return, nobody in New York was watching.

“
Why didn’t they call for backup?!
” cried Nolan, angry at himself and the whole world.

“There isn’t any,” Coral slowly replied, watching him. “NYPD is spread so thin they can’t even respond to 9-1-1 calls. The OCI is doing what we can to help, but . . .”

Her voice trailed off as he turned to acknowledge her for the first time. He was glad his hood was covering most of his face. But hers looked much the way he remembered it. Her customary ponytail was in place, and she wore standard black riot gear, complete with bulletproof armor. The letters
OCI
were emblazoned in white across her uniform’s torso.

“You all right?” she asked, sizing him up. He knew the question was not directed at his emotional state.

“They couldn’t have taken me,” he said, stating this as fact without a hint of ego.

“Of course not,” Coral said, her voice sounding guarded but sincere.

There wasn’t anything more he could do here. Coral worked with the OCI; she would inform NYPD of the men whose lives had been lost. The men whose lives had been
taken
by a group of hired guns on the payroll of Yuri Vasko.

He needed to check in with Branford and let him know he was alive. But he didn’t want to talk on the radio in front of Coral Lively. She already knew too much about him as it was.

Nolan walked back around to the three unconscious mobsters on the ground and searched the pockets of the nearest one.

While searching, he noticed for the first time that Coral had crossed her arms and seemed to be waiting. She watched him patiently.

“What?” he finally asked.

“Are you kidding?!” she shouted over the sound of the burning vehicles. “You were the only source of light this city had to look to, but you disappeared for more than two months while New York turned into hell. And you’re really not going to at least tell me what happened after Battery Park? What happened to your one-man revolution?
Where have you been?!
”

Nolan was certain that steam must be pouring off of his skin in this cold morning air. He didn’t want to answer her; he didn’t owe her or anyone else an explanation. Still, there was something to be said for the fact that she worked for the OCI yet had never ratted him out to her co-workers. And she was one of the few people in this world to ever have helped him while expecting nothing in return.

“I was in a hell all my own,” he said quietly. “It took me this long to get out.”

“If you needed help—”

“I didn’t,” he said, cutting her off.

She frowned. “I was going to say you should have contacted the president. He offered to help you in any way he could. Said it on live television. And if the president of the United States can’t do anything to help you, no one can.”

Nolan faltered for a moment. “I don’t want his help.”

Her face posed the unspoken question.

“It’s complicated, okay?” He sighed and tried a different tack. “Look, it’s a big city. If you want to play vigilante during your off hours, I can’t stop you. There’s more than enough messed up stuff to deal with for the both of us.”

She seemed to deflate a bit. “All right.”

Noticing her disappointment, Nolan’s shoulders drooped and he rolled his eyes. “Thank you. For your help,” he said grudgingly. “Just . . . don’t ever follow me again.”

I
t was early evening by the time Nolan rendezvoused with Branford and Arjay.

After grappling up to a peaked rooftop five stories high, he ran across the center beam of this and several other buildings toward the pickup point they’d prearranged in Chelsea.

Today he’d saved a small family from an apartment fire that the NYFD couldn’t get to until nothing but cinders remained, stopped a desperate man from robbing a small grocer, and most dangerous of all, he’d intervened when Vasko’s enforcers tried to execute the owner of a local hardware store who refused to accept their “protection.” It was the most eventful day he’d had yet since returning to the field.

No, don’t call it that
, he thought.
She wanted me to stop talking about things in military terms. . . .

The chilly city streets were all but silent. The whole world seemed to be holed up inside, behind locked doors, where it was safer and warmer. At any moment, a fight between the mob and the cops or the OCI could erupt almost anywhere, even in a neighborhood as mild-mannered as Chelsea.

But for now at least, all was hushed. He slowed his progress and took a moment to savor the quiet. These simple respites gave him a chance to think, pray, and keep focused.

His wounds and broken bones had healed, though it had been a punishing recovery. And not just for him; both of his friends had suffered plenty of breaks and bruises, but the worst of it was the permanent damage. Branford was down a spleen and moved much slower than he used to, while Arjay was still trying to adjust to life with nine fingers instead of ten. At least the two of them still officially existed, so they had no trouble procuring treatment at a local hospital, though they’d had to fib about how they received their injuries. Nolan’s recovery had taken place almost entirely under his own ministrations, inside the trio’s new home.

“Home” was a stupid word for it. It felt no more like a home than a place of confinement. And Nolan certainly knew the difference.

Returning to the here and now, he grappled quickly down the side of the last structure on his route—an ancient parking deck—to meet his waiting friends. With senses always attuned to his surroundings, he was satisfied no one was watching. He turned the key that rested on a simple chain around his neck and ducked through the narrow door.

The old Class A motor home Arjay had rescued from an impound lot didn’t so much drive through New York as
lurch
. It was a beat-up relic of another era, but a week after the events at Battery Park, this beast had been Arjay’s solution to their need for a new home. Its greatest asset was that it allowed them to stay mobile. It was also an effective disguise; it may have been a significant downgrade from their old digs, but it was the last place anyone would expect The Hand to call home.

And besides, it was all they could muster. Once their injuries mended enough to regroup, the three of them had worked for weeks to retrofit the RV, turning thirty-six feet into a livable, workable solution to their needs that maximized space in every way. They had outfitted it to serve as both a home and a base of operations with what remaining supplies they had. Most of their funds and all of their resources had been tied up in the subway station, and although Arjay had managed to salvage a few pieces of his equipment and a few computers with burn marks on their cases, Nolan and his friends all saw this vehicle as a pale shadow of what once was.

For Nolan, it was a means to an end. The RV would have to do. The city still needed him, and he would soldier on. Soldiering was what he did best.

Inside, he removed his hooded jacket and hung it on a hook by the door. His uniform was no longer the pristine garment it had once been—the result of his efforts in the South Street Viaduct and his frantic trip across the city’s rooftops to save his friends. It was frayed at most of its edges and even had a couple of small holes, and there were patches of crusty amber blood that refused to come out. As Arjay had predicted, the material was incredibly sturdy, but not indestructible. His personal gear had fared better; every piece remained intact. Even the grappler had held together despite the punishment he put it through that day. It whined a bit when he retracted it, but that was its only sign of damage.

The interior of the RV had two narrow beds on either side, which flipped to double as workstation tables. Branford was seated at one of these, puttering on a laptop, when Nolan entered. Arjay typically sat at the other, repairing and maintaining Nolan’s equipment or assisting Branford however he could. Tonight, Arjay was up front at the wheel. No more than two of them ever slept at a time, so two beds were all they required. A pair of railed curtains could be pulled around to cover both bunks, allowing a degree of privacy. There was a modest bathroom at the vehicle’s rear, but it had a full shower. A tiny kitchenette and dining table were behind the driver’s seat.

The most notable change for all three of them graced the driver’s-side wall. It was covered by an enormous hand-drawn map of Yuri Vasko’s organization that displayed the names and statistics of the man’s operatives, supply lines, known storage facilities, and other important data, along with straight lines indicating how each piece of this infrastructure was connected. Every person who worked for Vasko, every piece of real estate he owned, every business owner who’d been coerced into working for him against his will. This project had consumed Nolan’s time during his physical recovery.

Vasko had forced them to completely alter their operating focus and methods. When not out helping the people of New York, Nolan meant to take down Vasko’s entire syndicate, regardless of how long it took. If he had to, he would tear it apart one piece at a time.

At least they didn’t have to worry about the NYPD pursuing them anymore. The president himself had called off the attack dogs after Battery Park, and the police department had its hands full with other matters these days anyway.

When he shut the door behind him, Branford and Arjay were ready to assault him with questions about his day. They still had audio communications—tuned to a rotating frequency algorithm that Arjay had designed and implemented to keep unwanted ears from listening in—but the big visual displays of the Cube were a thing of the past. Branford’s laptop let him use readily available Internet maps and floor plans and other public resources to help with Nolan’s work on the ground. They could do little more.

As Nolan filled them in on his day’s events, he worked hard to ignore the fleeting glances that Branford and Arjay sent each other when they thought he wasn’t looking. Their ongoing concern for his mental health and overall well-being was cute, but the delicate treatment was wearing very thin.

“I, uh . . .” faltered Branford when Nolan had finished talking, “I have some news. You won’t like it.” He punctuated this with a quick look at Arjay.

He tapped a key on his laptop and spun it so Nolan could see. On the screen was a headline from the
Times
’ website, declaring that three men involved in a “small altercation” with the police had been released on bail, just a couple of hours ago. The article included three of the tiniest mug shots Nolan had ever seen, but it was enough. He recognized them as the men who’d killed the two cops in SoHo that morning.