140914383X

by Raymond Khoury

  Obviously the drug still had some potency, though exactly what it would do to me next was anyone’s guess. I was bargaining on the compound’s deeper hallucinatory aspects not kicking in first, giving me a window in which I could put the drug’s physiological effect to good use.

  I gasped involuntarily from a vicious pain in the back of my throat, a sensation like multiple bee stings. Swallowing hard, I felt like I was finally winning the battle against my stomach’s attempt to empty itself.

  My extremities had started to perspire. I could feel my palms becoming clammy and beads of sweat starting to pop on my forehead. My temperature was definitely on the rise, even if I was keeping my bile down for now.

  The table came up to meet my chest as I doubled over in agony, my abdomen feeling like it had just been slammed by a Lee Mazzilli bat swing.

  I couldn’t help but yelp from the pain. My throat was burning now, my mouth dry. I felt like I was going to pass out.

  If it was going to happen, it needed to happen now.

  I started pulling against my cuffs, rattling the chain against the table while forcing my entire body back against the chair.

  Staring directly at a camera I filled my lungs then shouted as loudly as I could, “Hey! Hey! I need some help in here!”

  The gamble that I’d already absorbed enough of the drug to screw up my metabolism would hopefully pay off, because it was time to eject the contents of my stomach, with maximum choking for full effect.

  I relaxed my entire body, focusing everything on the roiling in my stomach and the nausea at the front of my head.

  Bile shot out of my mouth as my stomach tried to expel the foreign matter that had only landed there a few minutes earlier.

  I balled up my fists and smashed them down against the top of the table. Then again. And a third time.

  “Hey! Help me! Anyone!”

  My stomach sent a geyser of bile up through my throat and out of my mouth.

  I thrashed against the chair, no longer knowing how much of my behavior was natural and how much was for show. I was close to losing the ability to control the situation and that would render the entire plan useless.

  From the corner of my eye, I glimpsed the doors slide open and Lendowski run in, closely followed by Deutsch. The rapidly receding part of me that could still think straight noted that this was in my favor.

  “What the hell?” Lendowski grabbed my shoulders and pulled me up off the table, ensuring that my airway was clear. I wasn’t even aware that I’d slumped forward, but my lungs burnt as I gasped for air. I’d clearly been well on the way to asphyxiation.

  “Nice try, buddy, but I’d expect more from you than the old two-fingers.”

  I gulped down some more air before trying to speak. “I’m not! I’m burning up, Len.”

  Deutsch stepped toward me, grabbed my face and peered into my eyes. “His pupils are blown and he’s running a serious fever.”

  I fought the intense nausea so I could watch Lendowski’s reaction.

  “Bullshit. He’s fine. Aren’t you, Reilly?”

  I tried to speak, but all that came out was a loud moan.

  “He’s made himself barf, that’s all it is. It’s what all those beanpole models do in the john at restaurants.”

  Deutsch stood to face her partner. “He needs medical attention. Now.”

  I retched again. Nothing came up this time, but my insides felt like they were being ripped apart.

  I tried to stagger to my feet, but there wasn’t enough give in the cuffs and I crashed back down into the chair.

  Deutsch was shouting now, “We need to call 911.”

  “Forget it.”

  “Len, listen to me. He’s in really bad shape and he needs help right now.”

  I could see Lendowski fuming inside. “Fuck this!”

  “It’ll be faster to take him ourselves. Presbyterian is less than two miles away. Come on!”

  Deutsch uncuffed me, then lifted me upright and grabbed my waist with her right arm, flipping my left arm up and around her shoulders. She was deceptively strong for her size. She glared at Lendowski. “Help me lift him.”

  They dragged me toward the door, then Lendowski stopped to wipe some vomit from his jacket.

  Deutsch turned back, wondering what the hell was going on. “Move!”

  Lendowski walked over to the exit and keyed in the code. The doors slid open. I could hear him speed-dialing Gallo. It would take the ADIC at least forty minutes to make it back to Manhattan, so at least I’d be spared his gloating if I failed.

  Taking my other arm, Lendowski helped Deutsch march me down the corridor toward the elevator.

  Lendowski was finally starting to show some concern. “Jesus, he’s shaking like he swallowed a jackhammer.”

  Deutsch leaned in toward me. “Just breathe, Sean. Breathe.”

  My whole body was flip-flopping between a lightness that felt like my skin was filled with helium and heaviness so extreme that I was convinced I would literally sink through the floor and ooze from the ceiling of the floor underneath.

  I could feel myself starting to drift out of consciousness. The last thought to crawl across my mind as it shut down was simply this:

  This isn’t going to work.

  24

  I came to with a jolt as Lendowski shoved me into the back seat of his Explorer. Deutsch followed me inside, pushing me upright so I wouldn’t choke to death.

  It must have been only a couple of minutes, but it felt like hours.

  Somehow my head felt absolutely clear—like on those rare occasions when your body is allowed to wake up when it’s ready, rather than when your smartphone demands it. But it was much more than that. A lucidity I’d never experienced, as though I were at once inside the moment and outside it, looking in.

  Maybe this is going to work after all.

  Multiple signals hit me at the same time:

  My wrists weren’t cuffed. Deutsch was right-handed, but she was sitting to my left, directly behind Lendowski. I smelled like a bum. I was about to make things ten times worse than they already were.

  Deutsch was thrown backward as the Explorer lurched into drive. She muttered a curse under her breath and fastened her seat belt.

  I allowed my head to loll forward.

  My left wrist felt Deutsch’s forefingers as she tried to find my radial artery.

  “His pulse rate is too damn slow. Hurry!”

  The vehicle bumped up the ramp and screeched out onto Broadway.

  I focused on my breathing, ensuring it was as shallow as I could make it without becoming light-headed.

  My temperature had dropped, but I was so soaked in sweat there was no way Deutsch could know this.

  I gave thanks that Lendowski had decided not to use the siren. Traffic was sparse on the snow-dusted streets and the icy sidewalks were empty. All a sound-and-light show would have done was attract attention.

  We sped south past City Hall Park, my left hand slowly edging its way toward Deutsch’s sidearm.

  When I looked up to check she hadn’t noticed, it wasn’t Deutsch I was staring at, but a skinned corpse with pale blue eyes. Its limbs abnormally elongated. Gills either side of its chest and what looked like a long boney fin pressing into the seat from its flayed back. Brackish water seeped from the gill slits.

  What the—?

  I scrunched my eyes shut till my eyeballs ached. When I opened them, I was looking at Deutsch again.

  The drug was supposed to make you relive scenes from your past lives. Supposed to—because the only one who had told me they’d experienced it firsthand was the cartel boss El Brujo, admittedly not the most reliable of attestants given how warped his brain had to be after a lifetime’s kaleidoscope of drugs. If it actually worked, I’d been hoping for something more along the lines of finding myself in Renaissance Italy or maybe even a romp as a Templar during the Crusades.

  This was . . . different. It seemed to be taking me much farther back, maybe to some kind
of primordial state of existence—or it was just mining the deepest, dormant trenches of my imagination.

  I went through my options, hoping the crazy-ass visions would abate for a few minutes. I could point a gun at Deutsch, but there was a sizeable chance Lendowski would simply call my bluff, which would do me no good at all as I had zero intention of seriously harming either of them.

  Aim at Lendowski first and Deutsch was liable to attempt to reclaim her gun, which could get very messy indeed.

  I needed the vehicle roadworthy, but I quickly realized I had no option but to crash it.

  Something was tugging at my ankle. I looked down into the footwell. A mess of disgusting super-sized leech-like creatures—only leech-like because they appeared to be covered in thick fur—were crawling over each other in a mad rush to attach themselves to my legs.

  The urge to stamp down on the sickening aberrations was so strong that I actually felt my right leg lift off the floor, before I wrested control back from my reptilian brain and returned my foot firmly to the Explorer’s carpet, from where the leeches had retreated.

  This was going to get worse before it was going to get better. Plus we were closing in on the hospital. It wouldn’t be long before we got there.

  Screw it.

  It was time to make my move.

  As Lendowski swung the vehicle left off Park Row into Spruce Street, I balled my right hand and drove it hard into Deutsch’s stomach, simultaneously grabbing her regulation-issue Glock 23 with my left and, in one continuous motion, swinging it full force against Lendowski’s head, knocking him out cold.

  He slumped forward. The Explorer bounced up onto the sidewalk between a couple of trees and slammed into the side of the Pace University building.

  Deutsch was almost upright again, but I already had her cuffs—which she wore cop-style—off her belt.

  “Hands. Now,” I ordered.

  “What are you—?”

  “Now, Annie.”

  Her eyes burned into me. “You’re making a big mistake. Sean, listen to me—”

  I cut her off. “I’ve got no choice.”

  For a moment, her pride got the better of her. I could see it in her eyes—fight was getting the better of flight—but her expression quickly changed to one of reluctant acceptance as she held out both hands. I clamped one of the cuffs on her right wrist and kept firm hold of the other end.

  “Out.”

  She exited the vehicle and I followed her out the same side.

  “Help me with him.”

  I took Lendowski’s handgun out of its holster and tucked it into my trousers, then we dragged him from the driver’s seat and propped him against one of the trees.

  From the corner of one eye I glimpsed a wild-eyed ape sitting in the tree, dark blood oozing from its mouth as it chewed on the lump of torn flesh it was holding in one hand.

  Although I was still just about able to distinguish between reality and my increasingly disturbing visions, with each passing minute I could feel more of my awareness pulled toward the world of the drug and away from the here and now.

  I shook my head violently as I clamped the open end of Deutsch’s cuffs to Lendowski’s left wrist, grabbed his phone, his badge holder and his wallet, then turned to Deutsch. “Your cell.”

  She handed it to me as I returned Lendowski’s wallet to him minus the bills. I kept his FBI creds, figuring they might come in handy since I didn’t have mine any more.

  “Sean, don’t do this.”

  “I don’t have a choice.”

  “Of course you do.

  “I didn’t kill him, Annie.”

  “Then let us find the guy who did. Like Nick said, we’ve got to have each other’s backs.”

  “The people I’ve pissed off, maybe they killed Nick. And they’d go through all of you to get to me. I can’t risk that.”

  I saw surprise light up her face regarding what I said about Nick’s death as I said it. “It’s our job, Sean.”

  “It’s my fight.”

  I turned away from her, amazed that she was still willing to engage with me after what I’d just done.

  Although there was little chance she’d be able to drag Lendowski more than a few feet, I went back to the Explorer and retrieved the cuffs from the glove compartment where I knew Lendowski kept them.

  I cuffed Deutsch’s left wrist to Lendowski’s right so that the two of them encircled the tree, then removed his tie, balled it up and stuffed it into her mouth.

  “Sorry about the punch—and about this.”

  She shook her head in resignation.

  I climbed into the Explorer, hoping it still drove.

  There was a crunching, shearing sound as I reversed away from the concrete wall, down off the sidewalk and back onto Spruce, then a wet squeal of tires as I sped away.

  25

  I guessed I had minutes before the shit hit the fan. I had no idea how long my current state would last, and no clue whether the next phase would be a hundred times worse. My body appeared to be following my commands even though it felt like I was moving in slow motion. If I was indeed moving as slowly as it appeared, I’d be back in custody before dawn.

  That was the worst case scenario. What I was hoping for was that I threatened both the FBI and the CIA with such monumental embarrassment that they’d try to keep a lid on my escape, at least till morning, when everyone had been interviewed and a decision had been made about who to blame. I also bargained on Corrigan staying out of the way—at least till it looked like they weren’t going to find me on their own. I had a whole lot to do before then.

  I stripped the batteries from both phones and dropped the pieces out of the window as I turned right onto Gold, passing Lower Manhattan hospital, our original destination, then turned right onto Fulton. I could see 1 WTC up ahead, its shimmer brilliant in the darkness.

  The Explorer skidded in the snow as I turned into a blind alley. I killed the engine, climbed out and checked the back, looking for anything I could use to cover my vomit-stained clothes. I was grateful for the cold weather as I laid eyes on his winter parka, along with a spare suit he kept in there and a holdall for his gym stuff. I also saw his flashlight in there and grabbed it too.

  Parka on, hood up, suit, flashlight and both FBI-issued Glocks stuffed in Lendowski’s holdall, I started to walk back down Fulton Street. I knew there was a twenty-four-hour parking garage about five hundred yards south of Gold Street and I was hoping that I’d be able to hotwire at least one of the cars left there overnight.

  I jogged up the ramp of the multi-level building, scanning to the left and right for a car old enough not to be controlled by a computer. As I moved my head, everything started to warp and buckle—like my field of vision was spread across a sheet blowing in the wind. Leeches were squirming under the cars. I heard a pounding sound behind me. I turned to see the feral ape from the tree. It was bouncing something off the bonnet of a Toyota Corolla. I moved closer, edging around the vehicle, and saw my father’s severed head, its blood-matted hair gripped in the ape’s hand. His eyes—still open—looked exactly as they had when I found him sitting at his desk with his brains blown out.

  My instinct was to continue on, but somewhere from deep within came the urge to take the head from the ape—to stop it inflicting any more pain. I felt myself moving toward the Corolla as the ape continued to smash the head against the bodywork, its movements growing ever more manic. I was less than five yards out—close enough to see the individual hairs on the ape’s skin—when instinct won. I turned and dragged myself away, heading for the up ramp.

  By the third level, I was again gasping for breath. After a couple of minutes spent doubled over, the visions again receding, I straightened up and saw what looked like an early nineties Caprice over in a far corner. If it was indeed a Caprice, then it was likely it could be trusted. It wasn’t by random choice that so many police departments chose the vehicle before it was usurped by the Ford Crown Victoria.

  As I dragged
myself toward the car, a searing light flashed behind my eyes. I felt like I was plummeting down a bottomless well. I tried to shake my head clear but my vision was blurred. I forced myself to keep walking toward the car.

  My eyes cleared and I found myself standing directly in front of the Caprice. I smashed the rear right-hand window, opened the door, and eased myself inside.

  The steering column cover came off easily and I started to fish for the ignition wires.

  A shooting pain ran up my spine as I leant into the steering wheel, but my fingers had already found the right ones.

  The engine sprung into life.

  My pupils felt like they were the size of pinheads. My field of vision had been narrowed to about twenty degrees, but I managed to steer the car down the ramp, crashing through the barrier and out onto Fulton. I took a left on Pearl and got onto the FDR, my autopilot following the route I usually took back to Mamaroneck. Traffic was sparse, but steady and I kept my speed down and tried to drive as though I didn’t have a psychoactive drug doing cartwheels in my veins, but I quickly discovered I needed to pull over. I managed to get off the FDR at Houston and wormed my way through a couple of deserted streets before pulling into a free spot and killing the engine.

  I needed new ID and a change of appearance.

  I needed to get hold of Tess without putting her in jeopardy.

  But first, I needed to sleep off the primordial demons running amok inside my head.

  SATURDAY

  26

  Federal Plaza, Lower Manhattan

  Nat “Len” Lendowski was having a lousy day.

  Actually, lousy might be just a touch off the mark.

  He was so pissed off he was looking to rip someone’s head off. Ideally, Reilly’s.

  His bruised head was still hurting from where the agent had cold-cocked him with Deutsch’s gun. To add insult to injury—literally—Reilly had taken his gun and his badge, cleaned his wallet out of almost a hundred bucks and taken a spare suit he kept in the back of his car before leaving him out on his ass in the street, handcuffed to Deutsch, their arms daisy-chained around a tree. Then came the final affront: sitting in the twenty-third floor conference room at seven in the morning, on a Saturday, and getting reamed out by Gallo in front of the whole office and a couple of stone-faced CIA douches for letting Reilly escape.