by Ben Coes
As he came around a corner, he saw a figure. He was too far away for an easy shot but he set the gun to full auto. A man was walking across the silent floor of dead bodies and broken glass, clutching a submachine gun. Mansour recognized him.
After everything, after the failure in Georgetown, he couldn’t believe how easy it would be to kill this man. It felt almost anticlimactic—though now that he thought about it, that was how he felt about the entire day. It had been hard, and yet so easy. Dewey Andreas.
Mansour stepped forward into Andreas’s blind spot as Andreas searched for Dellenbaugh. Then the American turned.
By the time Dewey noticed him, Mansour was less than ten feet away and Dewey’s MP7 was aimed in the wrong direction and both men knew it.
Andreas’s eyes met Mansour’s as Mansour marked him in the crosshairs of the SMG. Dewey remained still.
“Where is he?” said Dewey.
Mansour was quiet as he trained the gun on Dewey. As he held Dewey tight in the aim of the PS90, Mansour nodded toward the hallway.
“If you put your gun down onto the floor, I will take you to him,” said Mansour.
“Why not just kill me?” said Dewey, still clutching the MP7.
“Because I want you to see him die,” said Mansour.
105
10:09 A.M.
THE CARLYLE
MADISON AVENUE
NEW YORK CITY
Igor looked at his watch, a gold Rolex Daytona with a bright green bezel. He calculated the time it would take him to get to 1135 Sixth Avenue, the Interchem building.
He had a gun in his closet, but he’d never used it and didn’t know if it even worked, or if he would be able to find bullets. Not to mention how he would get there.
Igor wanted to do more. He felt helpless.
He cut out of one of the screens and found a GPS tracking tool, remembering that in addition to Singerman, both Dewey and Tacoma were in New York.
A map shot wide on the screen and two flashing green circles showed where they were. Dewey was at the UN—but Tacoma was on Forty-fourth Street, moving in the direction of the UN.
Igor tapped his ear.
“CENCOM,” came a female voice.
“I need to be patched in to Rob Tacoma.”
“Identify.”
“I don’t have an identification. He is a NOC and I need to speak to him.”
“Why?”
“To prevent a catastrophe.”
106
10:10 A.M.
FLOOR 18
UNITED NATIONS SECRETARIAT BUILDING
FIRST AVENUE AND FORTY-SECOND STREET
NEW YORK CITY
Slowly, Dewey put the submachine gun down on the floor.
“Now the pistol,” said Mansour. “Slowly.”
Dewey began to lift the .45 from beneath his armpit as Mansour took a step back, creating an impossible angle for Dewey. Mansour kept his finger hard on the trigger of the SMG. Slowly, Dewey placed the Colt M1911A1 on the ground.
“Hands over your head,” said Mansour. “Lock fingers.”
Dewey did as he was told.
“Now start walking,” said Mansour, nodding down the hall.
With Mansour a few feet behind him, Dewey went down the hallway, took a left down another hallway, and entered a quiet suite of offices. In one of the offices, someone was holding a phone and taking video. For the first time, Dewey saw Dellenbaugh, tied up to a chair, blood trickling from his nose and mouth, his eyes closed and his head tilting listlessly to the side.
“Wake him up,” said Mansour to the other Iranian.
He slapped Dellenbaugh across the face. Dellenbaugh’s head shot sideways, like a broken toy. The man slapped him again, harder this time, hard enough to draw blood from Dellenbaugh’s lip.
Dellenbaugh looked up, semi-lucid.
“Dewey.”
The president was barely conscious. His stomach was bleeding badly. He coughed, and watched Dewey with blank eyes.
“Go,” said Mansour, aiming the gun at Dewey. “Sit down on the ground next to him.”
107
10:14 A.M.
UNITED STATES FEDERAL RESERVE
1135 SIXTH AVENUE
NEW YORK CITY
Tacoma’s earbud chimed and he tapped his ear.
“Rob, this is CENCOM, I have ‘Igor’ for you,” said the operator.
“Put him through,” said Tacoma, holding up on Forty-fourth Street.
There were a few beeps, then Igor came on the line:
“Rob,” said Igor in his thick Russian voice. “I don’t have time to explain. I need you to go to a building on Sixth Avenue.”
“What’s the address?” said Tacoma.
“1135 Sixth Avenue,” said Igor, “between Forty-third and Forty-fourth.”
Tacoma turned and ran back west on Forty-fourth Street and cut down at Sixth Avenue. He saw the skyscraper. Though simple in its appearance, its black steel rectangular structure loomed—walls of reflective blue glass hovering above the street below.
“Why?” said Tacoma.
“That’s the location of the Federal Reserve,” said Igor. “They’re inside and are attempting to wipe out the Fed.”
Tacoma crossed and came at the entrance from the side of the building. He held a suppressed AR-15. He paused at the corner of the building and glanced inside the lobby. There wasn’t any movement. He made out three or four bodies on the floor of the lobby. The lobby area was hard to delineate through a window. It was filled with walls of interior windows and mirrors, intended to obfuscate the view from outside.
He watched for almost a minute and saw no movement.
“Where am I going?” said Tacoma.
“Floor twenty-five,” said Igor.
A shadow crossed in a reflection somewhere on the far side of the lobby. He moved the fire selector on the AR-15 to full auto.
Tacoma walked stiffly down the street as if just a lost pedestrian. At the entrance to the building, he came to a set of double doors. He pulled back on the left door with his left hand as his right arm swung the AR-15 into the door opening. But there was no one.
He found a dead security guard and took his ID. He went to the elevators and inserted the ID into a slot, then hit “25.” The doors shut. Tacoma changed out mags on the rifle, then removed his P226 from the holster at his waist. He ejected the mag on the P226 and slammed a fresh one in, yanking back, loading the chamber. He holstered it just as the doors opened on the twenty-fifth floor.
It was a strange setting, austere, lit in an iridescent warm white glow, the strangest, eeriest thing he’d ever seen. In one direction was a wall. In the other direction was a field of light. He stepped closer. Behind the wall of light was a windowless tunnel. The tunnel was bathed in a strobe-like yellow light. At the end of the tunnel, fifty feet away, he could see a room. Though somewhat obscured by the field of light, he could see a man seated at a table.
Four waist-high digital screens stood at the opening to the tunnel. Tacoma began his sprint into the tunnel, eyeing the door at the end of the corridor.
“STOP! For the love of God, stop!”
He heard Igor’s voice just as he started into the tunnel, then pulled up. As Tacoma got close, the tunnel light gradually brightened, with blue fluorescent spotlights illuminating the inside of the fifty-foot-long tunnel from a hundred different pinpoints. Another series of light streams shot out in follicles of orange, brightening the space even more. The two sprays of color streams, one orange, the other blue, glowed in a precise pattern across the tunnel, interwoven, like a hand intersecting with another hand, the fingers intertwined.
Tacoma stopped at the last moment, finding one of the screens with his free arm to keep him from going forward.
“What the hell is it?” said Tacoma.
“A security perimeter,” said Igor. “You touch it and you’re dead. This is America’s last defense. It is virtually impenetrable, unless you have the thumbprints and the eyeballs of the fou
r governors.”
“Well, Igor, I don’t have them,” said Tacoma.
He turned to move back away from the tunnel but unintentionally swept the suppressor of the rifle and the barrel out into the tunnel entrance. The metal and steel were suddenly incinerated, just inches from where Tacoma stood, with barely a noise.
“Jesus,” said Tacoma. “What is it?” he asked Igor.
“It’s called an iodine sheet field,” said Igor.
“A what?” said Tacoma.
“A force field,” said Igor. “Four thousand degrees. You shouldn’t try and go across. It’s hot enough to incinerate a missile. Imagine going to the sun for a few seconds.”
Tacoma gulped.
“Got it,” Tacoma said.
Tacoma looked at the ruined weapon. He hurled it into the tunnel, where it made just a brief burst of orange crackling light and disappeared.
“Wow,” said Tacoma, eyeing the iridescent corridor. “So, any thoughts?”
“Yes,” said Igor. “How fast are you, Rob?”
108
10:18 A.M.
FLOOR 18
UNITED NATIONS SECRETARIAT BUILDING
FIRST AVENUE AND FORTY-SECOND STREET
NEW YORK CITY
Dewey sat down next to Dellenbaugh, looking him in the eyes. Dellenbaugh looked as if he was about to die. He was fighting just to hang on. Dewey spied the black-and-white Hezbollah flag on the wall behind them. It would be the backdrop for their video. Hezbollah would kill Dellenbaugh and Dewey and show it to the world.
Dewey sat down on the carpet. The floor was bloodstained from Dellenbaugh’s seeping wound. He crossed his legs at the same time removing a blade from his left ankle, in line, in silence, and quickly tucking it in his right hand back up against his wrist and forearm, blade out. He felt the teeth of the upper serrated edge of the knife against his skin.
He looked up at Dellenbaugh, whose head was askew and limp. His eyes were open. He was flex-cuffed to a chair so that even if he wanted to fall over he couldn’t. His head was tilted atop his right shoulder and away from Dewey. He wanted to make eye contact to try to tell Dellenbaugh to hold on, but it wasn’t possible.
In front of them were two men, each holding a gun aimed at Dewey. The closer one also held a cell phone. He put on the light, getting ready to video the killings.
“You are about to be famous,” said the gunman in back.
“Is that a threat?” said Dewey.
The gunman said nothing, then started laughing.
“That was funny,” he said. “It took me a while.”
“Abu Paria would’ve laughed too,” said Dewey. “Unfortunately he’s dead.”
The gunman’s grin went cold. He took a few steps forward and put the muzzle of the PS90 in front of Dewey’s head.
The other Hezbollah seethed: “Zakaria! This is going to be live! Don’t kill him yet!”
Dewey looked up at the muzzle of the submachine gun.
“Looks like you’re a pretty good aim, Zakaria,” said Dewey.
“Shut the fuck up,” said Mansour, aiming the gun at Dewey.
“I bet you can’t hit me, Zakaria,” said Dewey.
Mansour looked down at Dewey. Dewey had a shit-eating grin, taunting him.
“I’ll tell you what, if you hit me, you win,” said Dewey. “If you miss, you can try again. Winner take all.”
Mansour inadvertently laughed again.
Buying time.
Mansour realized it and stepped back.
“Get the camera ready,” said Mansour in sharp Persian to the other man as he stared at Dewey.
* * *
Ten minutes before, Dewey didn’t think he would live to see even this moment in time. When he encountered the terrorist for the first time, Dewey saw in the man what he’d seen in Abu Paria. He knew that the man was QUDS, that he knew who Dewey was, wanted to kill him, and could kill him. That he was an experienced operator, highly trained, and most important that any unnatural action would result in a slug to Dewey’s skull.
He never questioned his instincts, but as he saw the camera light come on, as he found the man who’d taken him, standing a few feet back, with a PS90 aimed at Dellenbaugh, he wondered if perhaps he should’ve taken the chance? He would’ve died out there, he knew, but maybe that would be better than what they were about to do? He would’ve died trying to fight.
Still, he felt the knife handle in his hands. Dewey watched as the man with the phone framed the picture of Dellenbaugh and him in front of the Hezbollah flag.
Then the Iranian with the phone nodded.
“You’re live,” he said.
“Today, we have found guilty enemies of mankind,” said Mansour in heavily accented English. He stepped into the frame of the video, his face covered in a black balaclava. “Today, we declare guilty two Americans, guilty of crimes against the Republic of Iran and the world.”
Mansour aimed the gun at Dellenbaugh. Dewey averted his eyes, then heard the gunshot … followed by a horrendous, guttural cry.…
Dewey looked up as Mansour’s face contorted and he clutched at his neck.
A black hole at the larynx spilled blood and he fell forward, tumbling down onto the floor.
Dewey looked to the doorway and saw Murphy. He was standing in the doorway, long blond hair, glasses, two hands on the gun he’d just fired, visibly shaking.
The other terrorist was stunned, motionless, watching Mansour clutching at his throat as he bled out. Before he could react, Dewey lurched across the short distance separating himself and Dellenbaugh from the cameraman. He thrust the blade as he dived at him, stabbing it into the man’s chest, then pulled it back out. The man’s eyes rolled back up into his head and he dropped dead on the carpet.
Mansour was on his back, writhing in pain, drowning in the blood now choking his airways.
Dewey stood up, sheathing the knife. He picked up Mansour’s submachine gun.
He looked at the Iranian as he inspected the PS90.
“Nice gun,” said Dewey. “Do you mind if I borrow it?”
Mansour had his hands against the bullet hole in his throat, trying to stop the bleeding. He squirmed. Dewey shot him in the shoulder. He moaned as he was slammed sideways by the slug.
“Wow,” said Dewey. “It’s really easy to use. Does it come in any other colors?”
“We’ll get you,” Mansour coughed.
Dewey aimed the gun at Mansour’s head. Dewey’s face became stone, his eyes a shade of hard blue. He waited for the Iranian to look up one last time.
“No matter who you send, we will beat you,” said Dewey.
He pumped the trigger. The bullet hit Mansour’s right eye. The back of his skull was blown across the ground beneath him.
Dewey picked up the cell phones of both terrorists, pocketing them. He looked at Dellenbaugh. The president was alive, but he needed serious medical attention. He needed a trauma surgeon and he needed him now.
He tapped his ear. There was no response.
He looked at Murphy, who was still standing in the doorway, frozen, holding his gun.
“Lower the gun, Mike,” said Dewey. “Bring me your cell.”
109
10:19 A.M.
SS DORSET
NEW YORK HARBOR
Jenna paced back and forth inside her father’s office at the stern of the Dorset.
She’d been monitoring the effort to rescue President Dellenbaugh but her data feed was abruptly shut off. Her computer screen went bright green and a black rectangular digital box appeared. White lettering crossed the black rectangle:
I N D I G O S T A T U S: A C C E S S D E N I E D
She’d been shut off from the feed, some sort of elevated security classification she didn’t even know existed. Britain had a similar access level, called Claremont, to which she’d been privy. It was a communications platform at the highest echelon of government, induced at times of crisis—not simply war or a terrorist attack, more like apocalypse.
She considered calling Calibrisi or Polk, but didn’t want to bother them if something worse was indeed happening, which it evidently was.
Jenna stood up and walked to a window. It showed the smoky skyline and she felt her very heart ache as she watched. It didn’t matter that it was not her home country. Instead, it was just a feeling of sadness, wondering why, in a world so filled with beauty and joy, such pain and suffering could exist at the same time. This day would change everything. She was surprised at how much love she had for her new country. Jenna had thought she would spend a year or two in the U.S. and then return to London. Now she didn’t want to leave. As much as she fought against it, she could only think of Dewey as she stared out the window.
When her cell beeped, she picked it up immediately.
“Hi,” said Dewey.
“Where are you?” said Jenna.
“In the tower. I have him but he’s almost flatline,” said Dewey. “I need a helicopter.”
“We just happen to have one right here. I’ll be right there,” said Jenna. “How long until you’re on the roof?”
“Five minutes,” said Dewey.
* * *
Jenna went to the deck and found her father.
“I need the helicopter, Dad,” said Jenna.
Farragut stared at her for several moments.
“I read Barnes’s dossier,” said Jenna. “He was a pilot in 902 Expeditionary Air Wing for five years. It will be up to him, of course.”
“I don’t care about the helicopter, but I do care about you, and I care about Barnes,” said Farragut. “I’m worried about you, sweetheart.”
“I know, Daddy. I’ll be okay,” she said. “This is my country now and I intend to help.”
Jenna tapped her ear.
“CENCOM, this is Jenna Hartford. I’ve heard from Dewey Andreas—he has the president. He’s alive but badly injured. I’m retrieving them in five minutes, by air. I need directions to a hospital with a helipad, and a trauma team on standby.”