by Jack Mars
The image of the Prowler spinning into the water ran through him again, and his fury warmed him.
He raised the Glock and fired it, once, twice, four times, seven.
The windshield stopped the bullets. They did not ricochet, but stuck in the glass as if it were made of ballistics gel.
The European shook his head, and then showed Zero the pistol he held in his other hand, the one not hovering over the controls. If Zero tried to get around the side for a clean shot, he’d be in a straight shootout with the European and would have to hope he was faster. If he stood here, he was at an impasse.
He had to try. He gripped the Glock tightly, knowing he had only a few rounds left, and took the first step. The European cocked his pistol casually.
But then the man frowned. Zero did too; there was a sound, even above the ship’s engines. A roar in the distance.
A plane?
The European looked skyward.
Zero dared to as well, but saw nothing.
“Incoming!” one of the men behind the windshield shouted.
A rocket-propelled streak fell out of the sky, something long and white and trailing orange that collided with the surface of the ocean not two hundred feet from the ship.
The Tomahawk missile exploded, its sensitivity set to detonate on any impact. An orange fireball plumed on the water as black smoke rolled into the sky. The boat raced onward, leaving the blast behind quickly—when another missile struck at their ten o’clock, closer this time.
The ship lurched with the sudden wave. Zero fell to the deck. The Glock slipped from his grip but he opted to grab a rope instead of the gun; the optimal choice, it seemed, since the boat was rocked again by another too-close impact and rocked sharply the other way. Zero bounced, clinging to the rope.
The Glock skittered over the side and into the ocean.
A missile strike. The US had only a vague idea of where the ship was; they were firing blindly, carpet-bombing the ocean in the hopes of hitting it and nearly had. Missiles struck further out, up to a mile away, exploding on the water in front of them and behind them.
It was only then that Zero realized the boat had slowed. They were still moving forward, but coasting along, their speed falling rapidly.
He yanked the small, silver Ruger LC9 from his ankle holster and got to his feet, keeping his knees bent and his stance wide to accommodate the still-rocking motion of the ship.
Behind the windshield, the three men who had been at the controls were sprawled. The European’s eyes were closed and his forehead was bleeding; it looked as if his head had bounced off the console when the missile struck. One of the Iranians was staggering to his feet, putting out a hand to help the other up.
No. This boat would go no further.
Zero rounded the windshield and fired once into the standing commando.
For Alan.
The man on the deck put out both hands. “Wait,” he said in Arabic.
Zero fired once, through his forehead.
For Maria.
And then there was one. The European. As much as Zero wanted to shoot the man outright, he couldn’t help but wonder who he was and why he was working with the Iranians…
Zero paused. He’d been thinking of them as Iranians because of the supposition he’d made earlier. But they were speaking Arabic. The chief language of Iran was Farsi; only about two percent of the population spoke Arabic, and it was highly unlikely that an entire crew of Iranian commandos would be speaking a relatively rare language for their part of the world.
“Not Iranians,” he murmured. He knelt beside one of the dead men to look for some identification or insignia, but found none.
“No. Not Iranians.”
Zero whirled around with the Ruger—but not fast enough. The European caught his arm, twisting it into a lock and pinching a nerve in the hand. The gun fell from his grip. A knee slammed him in the abdomen, doubling him. Then an elbow swept upward, catching his chin.
Stars exploded in Zero’s vision as his head rocked back and his body followed. He hit the deck but barely felt it, as if he’d sunk into the ocean instead.
The man was fast, too fast, and Zero was hurting and slow.
“You are brave,” the man said as he stooped and picked up the LC9. His accent was definitely German by the sound of it. “I will give you that. All you’ve done to get here was quite admirable. But I am afraid you have failed.” Another Tomahawk exploded over the water, a quarter mile from them, and he winced slightly.
Zero staggered to his hands and knees, struggling to clear his double vision. “I’ve killed your people. This boat… it’s not going anywhere.”
“Maybe not,” said the German. “But you see, mein friend, we are already in range.”
“Of what?” Zero demanded. He tried to stand, but the German kicked him squarely in the chest with the flat of his boot and he sprawled again, the air knocked from his lungs.
The German chuckled. “Of what? Of America. Of your coast. You believe there is only one target? You believe we would steal such a magnificent weapon for a single goal?”
He flicked up a plastic shield covering a wide red button.
No…
Before Zero could react, the German’s hand mashed down on it and the railgun whirred to life.
CHAPTER THIRTY THREE
Officer Warren Mills had been on the NYPD’s Emergency Response Team for eight years. In that time, he had been a part of an evacuation response at the United Nations Secretariat Building, on the waterfront at 405 East 42nd Street, on three occasions.
“Let’s move in an orderly fashion, please!” his deep voice boomed as he ushered employees and visitors alike out of the UN building and back behind a row of sawhorses set fifty yards across the courtyard. “Keep moving, quickly now, thank you!”
The first occasion had been his first year with ERT, a bomb threat that had turned out to be fruitless. The second time was just a couple of years ago, when terrorists managed to get submersible drones carrying heavy payloads into the East River.
The third time, of course, was today.
“Hey, you!” Mills barked at a young man in black eyeglasses who was scurrying back toward the entrance of the building. “Hey!”
“I’m sorry,” the young man called back nervously, even as he bumped roughly against a woman exiting the building hastily. “I just need to retrieve my laptop—”
“This is an evacuation! Back behind the sawhorses!” Mills commanded.
But the young man ignored him and disappeared into the building.
“Son of a…” Mills muttered. He considered going in after the guy and physically dragging him out, but there were still plenty of people to get out of there. “You believe that? Like they don’t have a care in the world.”
“Hey, you gotta admit,” said Chalmers, his partner, “ninety-nine times out of a hundred, these threats don’t pan out.”
“Yeah,” said Mills lowly. “And that one other time could be 9/11. We don’t mess around with stuff like this, you got that?” Chalmers was young, only twenty-four, a rookie who had gotten a spot on ERT through some sort of nepotistic means, an uncle high up in the hierarchy or something.
“Right. ’Course not,” Chalmers muttered.
Mills sighed, hoping that whatever this threat was wasn’t going to eat his whole day. Tomorrow was Valentine’s Day and he (in a totally boneheaded move) had signed up for rapid intervention renewal. To make up for it, he’d booked a table for tonight at Yvette’s favorite date-night restaurant, a midtown sushi joint that looked like it was straight out of Tokyo.
Sushi wasn’t so bad, he thought. He liked his steak rare, so why not his fish too?
“Mills.” The radio clipped to his shoulder squawked. “How’s the eastern entrance?”
“Coming along,” he replied. “Key personnel are out; we got some stragglers though. Just had a guy run back in for personal belongings. Unreal, you know?”
“I want you on sweep team,” hi
s lieutenant told him. “Bring Chalmers along, he needs to see how it’s done.”
“Ten-four.” Mills rolled his eyes. Sweep team meant going floor to floor, room to room after the evacuation to ensure everyone was out. If the threat was a bomb, they had to put on bulky EOD suits to do it.
Is this a bomb threat? he wondered. They hadn’t told him.
“Mills,” his radio squawked again, this time with the voice of Earnhardt, one of the officers covering the western-facing exits. “You got eyes on the Iranian attaché?”
Mills sucked in a breath. “Sorry, what?”
“Three members of the Ayatollah’s attaché are unaccounted for,” Earnhardt told him. “We may need to send some people in.”
He knew that the leader of Iran had been scheduled to arrive at the UN that morning—his buddy Ray had been part of the NYPD motorcade that had escorted the Iranian diplomats from JFK earlier that morning, ahead of the foreign leader’s personal plane. But to hear that they were unaccounted for meant that someone on the inside had dropped the ball big time and left them behind.
“Shit,” he muttered. Into the radio he said, “All right, we’re on it. Send a couple more guys our way.” To his partner he said, “Yo, Chalmers, looks like we’re going to have to—”
Mills winced instinctively. It was purely reflexive, his body’s natural reaction to the sudden blue flash in the sky, not only because his brain couldn’t comprehend what he was seeing, but equally because it happened quickly, in an instant, so fast he wouldn’t have been sure he had seen anything at all if in the same instant, the UN building hadn’t exploded.
The impact struck the eastern sea-facing side of the building, a massive and sudden explosion at the structure’s center mass that took out several floors in one blast. Windows exploded outward, raining glass and chunks of concrete down as people ran, screaming, covering their heads.
“Bomb!” Chalmers hollered. He sounded far away; Mills hadn’t even realized that his own legs were moving, propelling him forward, grabbing the arm of a woman who had fallen, bleeding from her forehead. He pulled her to her feet and they ran as the building burned and rained fiery debris.
There are still people inside.
Steel groaned high overhead as floors above the impact site collapsed and the upper third of the building threatened to topple.
“Get clear!” Mills bellowed, waving his arms at people gathered behind the sawhorses. “Move back, go!”
“It was a bomb!” Chalmers was still shouting, this time into his radio. “We need… we need emergency… everything! Just send everything!”
That was no bomb. Mills couldn’t be sure what it was. But he had seen something, that blue flash that streaked across the sky in the instant before the explosion. It wasn’t a bomb, and it wasn’t a missile. He had no idea what it was, and that was what scared him the most.
*
The young man in the thick black eyeglasses entered the building on the eastern side; there had only been two officers there guarding the entrance, and while their attention was elsewhere he dashed for the door.
“Hey, you!” An NYPD officer with a square jaw and angry eyes shouted at him. “Hey!”
“I’m sorry,” Leonard Stark called back, even as a woman bumped against his shoulder roughly as she rushed out of the building in heels. “I just need to retrieve my laptop…”
It was a lame excuse, he knew, but he couldn’t stop to explain to the officer how important it was.
“This is an evacuation!” the cop had shouted back, but Leonard didn’t hear the rest of it because he was already ducking inside, darting left and right to navigate the thin trickle of still-evacuating UN employees.
Leonard was just an intern—that was a phrase his mother used when she was passive-aggressively chastising the career choices that had led him down this path at age twenty-six, “just an intern”—but by virtue of years of contract editing and extensive knowledge of legalese, he had made it onto the small team doing the final review on the peace treaty between the US and Iran.
If this truly was a legitimate bomb threat, the physical treaty was in danger. Removing it without authorization, even in a crisis, could be considered a federal crime, but he had a digital copy on the secured laptop in the ambassador’s office.
This was not at all about heroics. This was not about ensuring peace (though he very much hoped it would be construed as such later). No, this was about his career not ending here, about elevating himself above “just an intern” to a well-paid aide to the US ambassador to Iran.
The eastern entrance of the UN building opened on the lobby to the visitors’ center, which he practically sprinted across as he sidestepped oncoming foot traffic and vaulted up the stairs. The ambassador’s office was on the third floor and Leonard, despite his wiry frame, was in pretty good shape.
He reached the third floor in less than forty-five seconds, ran down the hall, then left, into the office, there was the laptop, he grabbed it, turning back—
There was suddenly an immense pressure in his head, accompanied by a thunderous sound, the combination of which seemed to disrupt all of his senses at once in an instant. He was vaguely aware of being off the ground. The lights overhead blinked out.
The bomb. The thought came to him dimly, like something far away that was just out of his reach. There really was a bomb.
And then he struck the carpeted floor, having been thrown clear through the office doorway and into the corridor. The impact was painful enough to jar him back to his senses. His shoulder burned with pain and his legs felt like jelly.
The building was trembling beneath him. Wherever the bomb had gone off, he was not exactly at ground zero but couldn’t have been far. Was it above him? At ground level?
Metal groaned. Somewhere nearby, something collapsed, bringing with it a new cacophony of unknown debris cascading down.
Above me. The bomb went off above me. So his only choice was to go down, and quickly, before more of the building came tumbling down around him. Somehow Leonard managed to get his feet under him and moving, one leg at a time, moving fast but certainly not sure-footed.
He heard a groan and stopped dead in his tracks.
“Hello?” he called out. “Is someone there?”
“Here.” The voice came weakly, a male voice, accented slightly even on just the lone syllable.
Leonard followed the sound. “Say something, please!”
“In… here.”
He rounded the corner where he’d made the left and skidded to a harrowing stop. What used to be a conference room was now a disaster of rubble, broken pieces of furniture, entire chunks of floor and walls.
The ceiling of the conference room had collapsed. Leonard glanced upward, through the gaping hole, and saw that the floor above had been a victim of the one above it, and through that—he could see sky, sunlight filtering through the thick dust. There was heat, too; fire above him.
He frowned, for a moment forgetting why he was standing there. That doesn’t look like the work of a bomb. It looked like the building had been hit by something, struck from the exterior…
“Here,” said the voice again, straining.
Leonard snapped back to it, coughing on the excessive dust as he carefully climbed over broken tables and overturned chairs, jagged exposed beams that had fallen at odd angles.
The first man he found was not the one who had been calling out. Leonard leapt back in horror as he realized the man was dead, his wide-eyed face a mask of his final moment of utter shock.
He tore his gaze from the body and picked his way to the other side of the former conference room. The man who had been calling to him lifted an arm slightly. It was the only limb exposed; the other three, and most of his body, were pinned beneath a large section of the floor that had fallen in from above. His face was visible, a cut below one eye bleeding copiously and his face streaked with brown dust.
“Are you hurt?” Leonard asked quickly. “I mean, can you move?”
The man squeezed his eyes shut and rattled off something rapidly in another language.
“I’m sorry, I only speak English…” Leonard told him.
“I… think I can move.” The man definitely had an accent, Middle Eastern by the sound of it. “But I am not strong enough to lift this.”
“Okay. I… I might not be either,” Leonard admitted. He only now realized that he was still carrying the laptop, and set it down so he could help.
Overhead, metal groaned in warning. They had to move quickly.
“Together, on three. Ready? One… two… three!” Leonard hefted with all his might. The section of floor moved slightly, just a couple of inches—enough for the man to move his limbs, to get some leverage under it. He pushed with both legs, his face contorting as they both strained.
After a several-second struggle, the floor slid away and off of him. Leonard sucked in a breath; he could see that the man was bleeding from several places and could only hope that adrenaline would get him out.
“Come on, we have to get out of here.” The frame of the building groaned again, louder this time. Leonard helped the man to his feet and put one arm over his own shoulders, grabbing up the laptop in his other hand.
The man grimaced in pain as they staggered out of the conference room and back to the dust-filled corridor. His leg buckled, yanking on Leonard’s neck.
“You can do this,” he told himself as much as the man. “Come on now, we have to go.” His throat felt dry, the dust threatening to clog his throat, but still he opted to try to distract them both from the pain and precariousness as they made their escape. “Where are you from?”
“I am… I am from Iran,” he said breathlessly.
That’s right. He’d nearly forgotten that the Ayatollah’s attaché had arrived separately, before the leader, who was due for a visit to the UN that very morning…
“Oh my god,” Leonard exclaimed suddenly. “The Ayatollah… he wasn’t… was he?”
The man shook his head. “No. He was—he was rerouted. Direct to Washington.”