Two blocks away, she rolled up to the roadblocks she had ordered. She got out, flashing her ID. “Burrell. I am the agent in charge. Did a Ford Taurus come this way?”
“Someone started to come down this street but when they saw us they made a left. We called it in, but there’s a lot of commotion right now . . .”
Brooke ran back to the detective’s car she’d “borrowed” and jammed it into reverse and did a spinning U-turn, like in the movies.
“Shit, that girl can drive . . .” the roadblock cop said to his partner.
Chapter 46
Needle in the Haystack
Brooke drove the entire four square block area within the lock down zone. There were hundreds of police holding the perimeter. They had one order: no one gets in or out. With a cop every ten feet, Paul couldn’t have slipped through the net. Her office was distributing the airport picture of Paul to every cop’s PDA and cell phone.
She returned to the Ravenswood and saw Bridge helping with the litters and walking wounded. The scene was crawling with cops, FBI, Homeland Security, and soldiers. There were body parts and blood everywhere. She approached Bridge. “Anybody look at that face? Have you looked at your face?” she asked as she brushed away a small chunk of concrete that was embedded in his cheek.
“Haven’t looked in a mirror all day. We lost a lot of good people today.”
“But we didn’t lose a city. Bridge, if these bastards had succeeded the death toll would have been in the millions. Every home, apartment, office, business, and utility pole would have been an incendiary bomb. And had they knocked out both water tunnels instead of one, there would have been twenty minutes worth of water to fight a million fires with, and that’s only if all the fire houses didn’t burn down before they got the rigs out.”
“Was there any damage?”
“I’m hearing dribs and drabs but a few older buildings and the like did catch fire. There’s no death toll yet. Something about a transformer on Thirty-Fourth Street, but no one’s talking any big numbers so far.”
“Did you get the scumbag?”
“No, he’s in this lock-down zone somewhere. I got an APB out. I just know he’s too smart to get caught; he’s got to have a plan.”
“Maybe he’s in the pile of dead terrorists over there,” Bridge said, hitching his thumb over his shoulder.
“No, I saw him pull away in the Ford I called in.”
“Well, he can’t be far.”
Brooke was distracted.
Bridge looked over at what she was looking at. “What?”
“Hold on.” She called Kronos. “Kronos, can you send me a surveillance camera feed that shows the Vernon Boulevard entrance to the plant right before the attack? Well, convert it then. I need to see it on my phone ASAP!”
A major walked up. “Director Burrell-Morton?”
“Yes, Major.”
“Ma’am, I have orders to get you to Washington for a debriefing.”
“Who cut those orders, Major?”
“Ma’am, this is a direct order from the commander in chief.”
“I am too busy to leave.”
“I am not supposed to take no for an answer.”
Brooke let out an exasperated groan. “Can’t you un-find me for a while?”
“’Scuse me?”
“Hold on.” She redialed her cell phone. “Jim, Brooke. Look, I got a major here trying to take me to see you. I’m still really busy here. There’s a giant loose end I need to tie up. I’m fine. We got a lot of dead people, but the city is safe . . . for today. Thanks for trusting us and giving us this day.”
The major’s eyes were wider than saucers as he looked at Bridge. “She called the pres—”
“They’re having an affair,” Bridge cut him off.
That earned Bridge a sharp elbow jab in the side from Brooke.
“Yes, a full report. I . . . yes, but . . . I had to be here. It’s my job and my duty. Besides, I’ve never been so much the office type when this kind of action is going down, Jim, but thanks for your concern. Okay. Will do.” She handed the phone to the major. “Here, he wants to speak to you.”
The major froze. He gingerly grabbed the phone and hesitantly spoke into it. “Hel . . . Hello?”
Bridge was enjoying this.
“Sir, yes sir. Of course, sir. Not a problem. Yes, sir. I will. Goodbye Mr. President, sir.”
“By the way, Bridge, the boss wanted me to tell you, ‘Good work.’”
“That was the president!” the major said.
“Yeah, I know,” Brooke said. She took back her phone as it beeped; Kronos’s download was coming in as an attachment to email.
“Major, since you’re here for a while, can you help me with my after-action inspection?” Bridge asked.
The major followed Bridge into the facility.
Brooke watched the short video clip on her phone of the moments before the assault began. It showed the street right outside the plant. She looked at the screen, then the street. As she was flying in to the fight by chopper, she’d noticed an ambulance right outside and to the left of the gate. She hadn’t thought about it until she saw it a few minutes ago and it was still there. Yet, it had been there well before any municipal units could’ve responded or arrived.
Brooke heard the report on the radio that the Taurus had been found a block away from where she was standing. No sign of the driver. She checked her sidearm and walked towards the blue-and-white Hatzolah ambulance. There was one EMT tending to a wounded Con Ed employee on a gurney inside.
Brooke stood at the open back doors. “How you doing?”
“My leg, it is killing me,” the man said with a groan.
“I need to ask you a few questions. Are you up for it?”
“I need to move him to the ER,” the med-tech said.
“You working alone?”
“My partner helped get two others out and jumped in the other company ambulance. He’ll be at the ER.”
Brooke turned her attention back to the man on the stretcher. “Where were you when all this started?”
“I was in the pump room, just coming out for some coffee, when all the shooting started. I didn’t get two feet and I was on the ground. I didn’t know I was hit. It hurts like a bitch.”
“I know, been there myself.” Brooke turned to the EMT. “Can’t you give him something?”
“Better to do that at the ER. We really have to go.”
“You always wear a mask?” Brooke asked.
“Nowadays, you can catch anything from blood, sweat, or other bodily fluids,” the EMT said as he threw a sheet over the man to keep him warm.
“Why haven’t you elevated the leg?”
“I was going to do that . . .”
“But you were leaving.”
“Look, lady, it’s been a tough day. Don’t come over here and tell me how to do my job.”
“Okay . . . sorry, Paul.”
The EMT was startled. He grabbed for a pair of scissors and lunged out the back of the ambulance at Brooke. She turned into him and caught his arm as he went to plunge the scissor into her chest. She threw him over her hip and onto the ground with a Judo throw. She had her gun out in a flash. “Freeze!”
Paul looked up at her, then right and left. With all the commotion, everyone was looking at the still-smoldering façade of the building and all the activity with the wounded. Paul put his right hand up in front of him as he turned his head away. “Look, I got ten million coming to me. We can split it. You let me go and five million is yours.”
“Where you getting this money from, Paul?”
“It’s my fee for helping them.”
“Helping them?”
“Yeah, the money is already in my account.”
“Okay, stand up.”
Paul
stood up.
“Turn around.”
“What?”
“Turn around and put your hands behind your back.”
“But we had a deal.”
“No, you just told me what I needed to know, that’s all. Now we have a professional relationship. I’m a cop and you are a murderer. And you are going to burn for Nigel, the nineteen people on my staff, Cynthia, and however many more you killed just to help these guys.”
Brooke reached around back for one of the zip tie hand restraints coiled off the back of her vest when suddenly she was knocked to the ground. The man on the gurney fired his gun right through the sheet, hitting her center mass.
Paul sprang up and slammed the backdoors closed then jumped in the driver’s side. He hit the lights and siren and pulled away.
Brooke couldn’t catch her breath for a few seconds. By the time she was able to breathe someone noticed her on the ground.
“Lady, you okay?”
“I’m okay.” She touched the middle of her bulletproof vest, where the slug had embedded in the Kevlar webbing. “Maybe a busted rib . . .” she said exhaling from the sharp pain when she probed the area. Get me my radio over there.” She pointed to the radio that had flown off her vest as she’d spun down to the ground.
“This is Stiletto. All units, stop and detain a blue-and-white Hatzolah ambulance. Driver and patient armed and extremely dangerous. Repeat, approach with caution . . . Stiletto . . . over and out.”
She put her head back down as EMTs rushed over. She took a deep breath and began to sit up, but she got a radiating pain from her rib cage. She rolled on to her side and picked herself up with somewhat less discomfort.
“Whoa, not so fast lady,” the arriving medic said.
“I’m okay, just a little bruised . . . I think.”
“Let me be the judge of that.”
“Sorry, no time. Gotta go.”
“Lady . . .”
Brooke was back in the detective’s car and speeding off. She blew through the roadblock as the cops just managed to get the two police cars out of her way. She grabbed the radio mic. Stiletto to central, K.”
“What’s Stiletto . . . identify yourself, K.”
“Director in charge of all RDFs today, Burrell-Morton. Get me a patch to commander RDF forces, code sign Bird Dog, and also patch me into aviation, on the double. K.”
“Central to Stiletto, hold for liaison officer. K.”
Brooke drove south towards the Midtown tunnel. She was blowing through lights as the siren and dash light helped clear the way.
The radio finally came back on with a different voice. “Central to Stiletto, Gladiator.”
Brooke hesitated. If she broadcasted the answer to her challenge code, it would be public. “Stiletto to Central, this is the last authorized use of this challenge code, Transistor. K.”
“Roger that. What else do you need, Director Burrell?”
“I am in pursuit of a blue-and-white Hatzolah ambulance last seen heading south on Vernon Blvd. Occupants armed and extremely dangerous . . .”
Brooke had to swerve away from a garbage truck that entered the intersection ahead of her. She noticed the driver had earphones on and was jerking his head up and down to music. He slammed on the brakes when he saw her dash light in the corner of his eye. “Asshole . . .” she yelled as she passed.
“Repeat that?”
“No, not you. Report location of ambulance immediately. Set up rendezvous with my FBI chopper somewhere along the route.”
Brooke put down the mic then remembered. She picked it up again. “K.” The car hit a bump and she caught her breath as she felt a sting on her right side.
.G.
Practically every first responder in the five boroughs was either at the Ravenswood generating station or at the various fires that had started around the city. One of the worst was a transformer in an under the street vault right outside Macy’s, which went up in flames that reached through the metal grating on the sidewalk and immolated three Thirty-Fourth Street shoppers alive. There weren’t too many assets available to help Brooke interdict Paul, if he hadn’t ditched the ambulance by now.
.G.
NewsChopper 880 had just gotten clearance to fly again from New York Air Traffic Control after they had ordered a ground stop during the operation. Tom took off from the Wall Street helipad where he had put down when the order from ATC came through. On the ground, he had been listening to the police scanners, which normally advised him of traffic accidents, and heard the all-points bulletin on the Hatzolah ambulance. They’re using a Jewish ambulance? He thought as the irony struck him.
He swung his bird north and over the BQE. Just above Humboldt Street he saw the blue-and-white box shape with all lights going, as traffic moved out of the way. Tom’s immediate thought was that there had to be at least twenty of these rigs working out of their Brooklyn base. Still, he called it in on his NYPD emergency frequency. “This is N880 to Central, K.”
“Central to N880, comeback, K.”
“Possible suspect ambulance heading south BQE just above Cadman Plaza.”
.G.
“Central to Stiletto, be advised ambulance matching description seen on BQE, Cadman Plaza. K.”
“Patch me through to whoever has eyes on it. K.”
“Ten-four. K.”
Brooke was ripping down Flushing Avenue a half-mile above the Plaza when Tom came over the radio. “This is N880 to Stiletto? K.”
“Tell me you’ve got eyes on the ambulance? . . . K”
“Yes. He’s turning off the BQE. Looks like he’s headed for the Manhattan Bridge. K.”
“Stay on him. Heading there now. K.”
Brooke hung a hard, fishtailing right off of Nassau Street onto the Flatbush Avenue approach of the Manhattan Bridge.
The ambulance had come down the ramp off the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway only thirty seconds before. Due to the traffic volume it had had to wade through, it was only one hundred yards ahead of her.
Up ahead, mid-span of the bridge, Brooke saw the lights of the ambulance as it was trying to nudge through traffic. She was stuck in the same slowly moving bridge traffic as well. Then she had an idea. “Stiletto to N880, K.”
Chapter 47
Catching a Train
The fact that most traffic copter pilots, in fact most chopper pilots period, were hotdogs was in little dispute. The boredom of sitting high up in their perches every day, reporting the same traffic snarls and routine fender-benders eventually got to these guys, most of whom had seen action in the military. So Tom eagerly took the challenge from whoever this woman was on the radio that seemed to be in charge. He knew the company would probably fire him, and the FAA might revoke his license, but the whole city was in a panic and under attack so he figured it was a good reason to get written up.
.G.
Drivers on the Manhattan side of the bridge watched in amazement as the news helicopter hovered right above the traffic at the Manhattan end of the bridge at Canal Street. Slowly, as the chopper descended, the traffic came to a halt. Traffic cops on Canal Street ran towards the odd spectacle. Tom got out and was trying to stop some of the intrepid New York drivers who were actually trying to get around his machine. “Whoa, hold it, buddy. Where do you think you’re going?”
The cops arrived. “What the hell is this?”
“I got orders from the feds to block this bridge. Help me. They got some ambulance stuck up there and they don’t want it to move.”
“Hold, wait, they are trying to stop an ambulance from getting to the hospital?”
“I think it’s stolen; got some really bad honchos in it . . .” He was distracted from the cops. “Hey, cowboy, where you going . . . ?” Tom yelled to a guy in a van that almost took out his tail rotor.
“We’ll take it from here,”
the cop said as his partner got the confirmation of Tom’s story over the radio and nodded.
“Great. Hey, do me a favor, get everybody away from my aircraft. I’m going back up.
.G.
Brooke was out of the car and running through the now-stuck vehicles, although very painfully as her bruised ribs complained with almost every foot fall. She saw the ambulance about two hundred feet ahead in the left lane. She crouched low and approached from the rightmost lane.
.G.
Paul was frustrated with the traffic. But then he heard something that made him rethink his plan to get to his second exit point, the Wall Street heliport. There, he had a helicopter waiting to take him to Teterboro and his chartered jet to Turks and Cacaos. From that “not too finicky about passports and papers” island nation, he would go on to the South Seas and the ten million. But what he heard on the ambulance’s police scanner froze him.
“All units, the federal authorities have closed the Manhattan Bridge in pursuit of an ambulance believed to have suspects fleeing the attack on Big Allis. All non-assigned units converge on the bridge.”
Paul looked around. So far no cops were charging the ambulance but he knew that wouldn’t last long. He looked in the back at Girbram, a member of his cell that had also gotten a job at Ravenswood with Yusuf. He had taken a slug in the leg. He would only slow Paul down.
“What are we going to do?” Girbram asked.
“We?” Paul said as he put the barrel of his gun on the sheet over Girbram’s heart and fired.
Paul went out the driver’s side of the rig and looked for a way off the bridge.
.G.
Brooke saw him get out. She was hidden from his view by the back of the ambulance. She stepped lightly with her gun pointed straight up. People in the cars around her ducked and some were mesmerized. Some idiot beeped his horn.
Give Us This Day Page 43