by Mark Alpert
She felt no sympathy for Derek now. She could understand his desire to get back to normal, but he clearly didn’t care about anything else. He was cold-blooded and cruel and willing to hurt anyone who got in his way. Although Jenna had never liked Dr. Tung, she was still appalled. “Well, if you did your homework, you’d know that I don’t work for Rockefeller University anymore. And now that the FSU is after me, I can’t even get close to the place. Rockefeller has a whole team of security guards to protect the labs that do government work. They’d arrest me in a second.”
He kept glaring at her. “We’re not going to Rockefeller University. A few weeks after they fired you, they moved all the Palindrome labs to a new location. They’re on Rikers Island now.”
“Well, that’s even worse. It’s the FSU headquarters. That place is like a fortress.”
“You don’t have to worry about the FSU. Or getting into the lab. I’ll take care of all that.”
“Bullshit.” She glared right back at him. “I don’t care how much they altered your genes, you still can’t take on a whole army. And even if we managed to sneak inside the lab, do you realize how long it would take to extract tissue samples from you and sequence their DNA? And then figure out all the changes we need to reverse?”
“It doesn’t matter.” He swept his arm in a slicing arc, cutting her off. “Don’t you see how sick I’m getting? We gotta do this tonight. There’s no other option.”
“Of course there are other options! Just think about it for a second. What about going to The New York Times?” She reached into the pocket of her sweatpants and pulled out the iPhone that Keating had given her. “We already have the video that their reporter took, the footage of the massacre. And we can also tell them about Palindrome. The project is an atrocity, just as horrible as the experiments that the Nazis did. If we reveal everything to the newspaper, then maybe it’ll help you get the medical attention you need and—”
“Fuck that. The newspapers are useless. The government’s gonna shut them down any day now.” He pointed at her, and Jenna noticed that his arms weren’t trembling anymore. “You don’t get it. It’s too late to save the world. All we can do is try to save ourselves.”
“You’re wrong.” Jenna was seething. “We can still fight. I was a part of Palindrome, but now I’m gonna stop it. I’m gonna go to the Times and expose what the government is doing. And I’m gonna get my father and brother out of whatever fucking jail the FSU has sent them to.”
“You can’t. You’ll never see them again. The Feds are gonna make them disappear.”
It was too much. Jenna lost control. She no longer cared that Derek was a foot and a half taller than her and two hundred pounds heavier, or that he was a genetically enhanced killing machine. She let out a scream and charged at him, roaring across the stone room.
But she didn’t slam into him. Halfway there, she heard a shout from outside the mausoleum.
“HEY! What the fuck’s going on in there?”
Jenna stopped herself a couple of feet from Derek. Without a word, she stood next to him and peered through the gap between the mausoleum’s doors. At first she saw no change from before: the same yellowing lawn sloping downhill, the same marble monuments looming over the dead grass. But then she looked directly ahead, at the bronze statue of the Roman goddess, and saw the barrel of a shotgun resting on the statue’s shoulder.
Jenna looked a little closer at the monuments and saw that each one served as cover for a crouching gunman. Their pistols and rifles jutted from behind the marble blocks and pillars and obelisks, the muzzle of each gun pointed at the Higgins mausoleum. But the gunmen weren’t cops. She caught a glimpse of the shotgun-toting man behind the bronze statue and saw a black-and-gold bandanna wrapped around his head. He cupped a hand around his mouth and shouted at them again.
“You’re in our territory, amigos. You’re trespassing.”
TEN
Lieutenant Frazier was doing his patriotic duty. He stood guard at the only surviving wharf in storm-wrecked Brooklyn, herding dozens of illegals onto a Federal Service prison ship.
It was three o’clock on a warm, sunny afternoon. Superstorm Zelda had moved out to sea, and now the weather was perfect, not a cloud in the sky. There weren’t even any puddles on the concrete wharf where Frazier’s team had gathered the escapees from the South Brooklyn District. That’s because Frazier and his men were far inland, miles from the ocean. The wharf was on the Gowanus Canal, a waterway that snaked between Carroll Gardens and Park Slope, a pair of higher-elevation neighborhoods that hadn’t flooded.
The only problem was the stench. The canal’s waters were reddish-purple and smelled like a mix of rotten eggs and shit. The Gowanus was basically a liquid waste dump, a hundred-foot-wide trench brimming with sewage and chemical sludge. But a few years ago the government did something smart: it built a floodgate at the mouth of the canal, a barrier to stop storm surges from streaming up the waterway and spreading the toxic muck. And the day before Zelda hit New York City, the FSU docked its prison ships in the calm basins behind the barrier.
They didn’t look like prison ships, at least not from the outside. The one docked at the wharf looked like a Navy cargo boat, gray and plain. The illegals who boarded the ship had no idea that it was packed with detention cells until they went belowdecks. And Frazier had come up with a trick to speed up the process—he’d ordered his men to paint a big red cross on the hull and the words RESCUE/SUPPLY SHIP. His officers spread the news that a Red Cross ship was distributing free food and bottled water to the storm victims, and soon the scumbags came running from all over Brooklyn and crowded into the parking lot next to the wharf. They lined up on the gangway and shuffled onto the boat, dragging their feet, exhausted. Their clothes were wet and filthy. Half of them were barefoot.
Frazier smiled. His plan was working so well that he didn’t even have to point his rifle at the bastards. In thirty minutes his officers processed more than a hundred illegals, including dozens who’d fled the district through the Bay Parkway checkpoint the night before. As Frazier scanned their faces, he kept a special lookout for the Somali woman in the bikini top, the addict who’d abandoned her son. She’d escaped punishment so far—he’d checked all the dead ragheads he’d shot at the fence, and her body wasn’t there—but he planned to deliver his judgment on her very soon.
He was also planning a fitting punishment for Derek Powell. The FSU’s reconnaissance team had launched its surveillance drones after the storm cleared, and now the small quadcopters hovered over every part of the city, pointing their cameras at the streets and parks and rooftops. Colonel Grant had promised to alert him as soon as they found any sign of the traitor. Frazier’s Stryker vehicle idled in the corner of the parking lot, just a few yards from the wharf, ready to go at a moment’s notice.
Parked next to the Stryker was a big white truck that Frazier’s men were unloading. They were carrying boxes and pieces of machinery from the truck to the prison ship, which was going to cruise to Rikers Island once its detention cells were full. Apparently, the storm had flooded so many streets in Brooklyn that it was easier to send supplies to the FSU headquarters by boat. Frazier thought it was a little strange to put a team of law-enforcement officers on a resupply job, but when he’d asked Grant about it, the colonel had told him to shut his fucking mouth and follow orders.
Frazier suspected that the supplies were for Palindrome. Nothing else could make Grant so twitchy. The colonel seemed to be ramping up the project, maybe preparing a new kind of drug or recruiting a new group of volunteers. Whatever he was doing, it was agitating the hell out of him.
A pair of corporals stood inside the white truck, struggling to lift a bulky machine wrapped in sheets of protective plastic. It looked like an industrial-size fan, a massive thing with two-foot-long blades, big enough to blow a windstorm on a Hollywood movie set. Curious, Frazier marched toward the back of the truck. He was going to grab that huge fan and pick it up by himself and show those
corporals exactly how pathetic they were. But before he got there, a New York Police Department patrol car came down the street and turned in to the parking lot.
The car stopped in the middle of the lot, and two NYPD officers stepped out. The driver was just a patrolman, a skinny kid in a dark blue uniform, but the other cop was a police captain, a balding, ruddy, middle-aged guy with a huge potbelly ballooning his white uniform shirt. While the patrolman stood at ease next to the car, the captain smiled and came toward Frazier. A couple of gold fillings glinted inside his mouth.
“Good afternoon, soldier.” The guy looked him up and down, his eyes lingering for a moment on Frazier’s assault rifle. Then he stuck out his right hand. “I’m Captain Bill Adams, commander of the 76th Precinct. How you doin’ today? At least it’s not raining anymore, right?”
Frazier shook the captain’s hand but didn’t smile back at him. The guy’s behavior was suspicious. As a rule, the New York cops hated the FSU. They’d totally opposed the creation of the Federal Service Districts, and now there were constant turf battles between the NYPD and the Feds. So why was Captain Adams acting so friendly?
“I’m Lieutenant Rick Frazier, Federal Service. How can I help you?”
The captain glanced at the FSU ship and the dozens of slimeballs trying to get aboard. His eyes roved everywhere, taking it all in. “Listen, I was hoping you could do me a favor. The storm hit my precinct pretty hard. Everything south of the expressway is underwater, and I got two thousand people jammed into an emergency shelter in Carroll Gardens. We weren’t prepared for so many people, so we don’t have enough food for them all. And we can’t get any more supplies from the other precincts, because they’re in bad shape too.” He paused, glancing at the ship again. “So we could use a little charity, see? You think you could share some of your Red Cross packages with us?”
Frazier thought it over for a moment. He wasn’t sure how to respond. “Uh, Captain? I think we have a misunderstanding.”
“Look, I know you guys are overwhelmed too. But if I don’t get some food to that shelter real soon, I’m gonna have a riot on my hands. Those people are gonna run through the streets and break into every supermarket and bodega in the area.”
“But we don’t have any food for you.”
“Now come on, Lieutenant. You got a whole damn Red Cross ship here. You mean to tell me that you can’t spare anything?”
“It’s not real.” Frazier took a step toward Captain Adams and lowered his voice so that none of the illegals could overhear him. “My men painted that red cross on the ship. We have no supplies, no food, no bottled water. We’re just pretending to give it away so we can round up the scumbags.”
Adams stared at him for a few seconds, blinking rapidly. “What the fuck? You’re pretending?”
Frazier nodded. “Yeah, it’s a trick to get them on the boat. We’re doing everything we can to recapture the illegals who broke out of the district.”
“You’re kidding me, right?” The captain tilted his head. His face reddened. “Because this is such a shitty idea, I can’t fucking believe it. You’re trying to catch your fugitives by rounding up everyone who’s hungry?”
“We’ll process the detainees when we get them to Rikers. If some of them turn out to be citizens with clean records, we’ll release them.” Frazier edged closer to Adams and tried to give his voice a confidential, officer-to-officer tone. “We’re dealing with some bad hombres here, Captain. Just as bad as the fuckers who blew themselves up in Times Square last month. Yeah, we’re probably arresting some innocent people too, but there’s no avoiding it. The most important thing is catching the terrorists. That should be our top priority, don’t you think?”
It didn’t work. Adams scowled and stepped backward. He raised a flabby arm and pointed at the crowd of scumbags on the wharf. “You think they’re the terrorists?” He was shouting, furious. “You really think one of those poor bastards is a suicide bomber?”
The poor bastards turned their heads. They stopped shuffling up the gangway and stared at Adams. Frazier bounded toward the captain, stepping between him and the slimeballs, blocking their view of him. “Lower your voice, goddamn it!”
“Why should I? This is—”
“Because you’re interfering with an authorized federal operation!”
“Is that what you call it? An operation?” Adams sneered and shook his head. “No, it’s a fucking scam. And worse than that, it’s unconstitutional. Maybe you can get away with it in your Federal Service Districts, but not in my precinct. I’m stopping it right now.” He turned away from Frazier and pointed at the patrolman standing by the car. “Garcia! Come over here and help me disperse the crowd!”
Now Frazier was pissed. He followed Adams and Garcia toward the wharf, two steps behind the captain, staring with immense hatred at the back of his balding head. “You sack of shit! I’m warning you!”
Adams ignored him. He stopped at the foot of the gangway and addressed the scumbags and ragheads, raising his arms to get their attention. “Folks, I got some bad news. There’s no free food on this boat. If you’re looking for help, your best bet is to—”
Frazier launched his fist at the back of Adams’s head. His knuckles cracked the captain’s skull and rammed the splinters of fractured bone deep into his brain. The motherfucker fell forward, propelled by the momentum of the punch. But he was dead even before his face hit the concrete.
Officer Garcia stared at the captain’s body for a horrified moment. Then he looked at Frazier and reached for the semiautomatic in his belt holster. But before his fingers could touch the gun, Frazier smashed his bloody fist into the patrolman’s breastbone and crushed his heart. Garcia fell backward, sputtering and clawing at his chest.
Frazier watched the kid die. Then he raised his head and glared at the scumbags on the wharf. “Get on the fucking boat. Now!”
They ran up the gangway, shoving and elbowing each other.
But Frazier’s men just stood there, staring. They clutched their assault rifles and kept their distance, arranged on the wharf in a rough semicircle around him. Frazier stared back at them, feeling nothing but contempt. They were imbeciles. Each one probably thought Frazier was going to kill him next.
He pointed at two of his officers, choosing them randomly. “Put the bodies in the patrol car. Then push the car into the canal.”
The men rushed forward and started dragging the corpses toward the car. They might’ve been afraid of the repercussions from this act, but at the moment they were clearly more afraid of Frazier than anything else. In all, about sixty people had witnessed the killings, so it was a little unrealistic to hope that Colonel Grant would never hear of them. But Frazier wasn’t going to worry about it now.
Then his secure phone buzzed, and the call was from Grant himself. Frazier was astounded—How did the colonel find out so fast?—but when Grant came on the line, he started talking about something else.
“Lieutenant, our drones just picked up something unusual. Half an hour ago, they observed a group of about twenty civilians in Sunset Park. We ran the images through our facial-recognition program, and it identified most of them as members of the Latin Kings gang. They converged near the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, then moved east and climbed over the fence surrounding Green-Wood Cemetery.”
Frazier was confused. “Uh, yes sir, but what does this have to do with—”
“It looks like the Latin Kings are gearing up for a fight, but no other gangs are active in the area. So who are the Kings fighting? These guys are heavily armed, and not just with handguns. They’re carrying shotguns and TEC-9s too.”
“You think they’re planning to start a riot?”
“In a cemetery? No, I don’t think so. They’re just a few miles north of Bay Parkway, so I’m getting the feeling that this involves Powell somehow. How fast can you get to Green-Wood?”
Frazier was already running toward the Stryker.
“I’ll be there in ten minutes.”
“Listen up. I want to talk to the big black brother in there.”
The man with the black-and-gold bandanna was shouting at them. His voice came from behind the statue of the Roman goddess, whose shoulder he was using to steady his shotgun. Jenna craned her neck, trying to get a better look at him through the gap between the mausoleum’s doors, but all she could see below the bandanna were two black eyebrows. They arched like gull wings.
“I saw you at Bay Parkway, amigo. You’re a crazy motherfucker, you know that? How many of those FSU cops did you shoot?”
Derek narrowed his bloody eyes. He stood a couple of feet to Jenna’s left, squinting through the gap at the man with the bandanna and the other gunmen outside the mausoleum. His gaze flicked from left to right, resting briefly on all the monuments that the men crouched behind. Then he pulled his pistol out of the waistband of his jeans and leveled it.
Jenna knew he could easily take out the bandanna guy. Although the target was small—just the top of the guy’s head—Derek’s aim was exceptional. But he didn’t fire. He just pointed the gun outside, holding it steady, the muscles in his arm tense and bulging.
Bandanna Man poked his head a little higher above the statue’s shoulder. Now Jenna could see a pair of close-set eyes and a tattoo on the left side of his face. It was a crude drawing of a crown, with five sharp points on top.
“My muchachos have been watching you since last night. I told them to follow you and find out where you lived. Because you got some mad skills, brother. The Latin Kings could use a badass like you.”