Alert

by James Patterson

  They’d come out with Pringles, Combos, sodas, every variety of M&M’s known to man. Anything to keep them blissfully unaware of—what? Coming disaster? Apocalypse?

  “Unbe-shighting-lievable,” he mumbled as he stared out at the graying sky, then at the E on the gas gauge.

  “What was that?” said Seamus, sitting up.

  “Nothing, Father,” said Martin. “Go back to sleep. We’re good.”

  “Actually, Father…,” he added as he glanced out the window to his right.

  “What is it, son?” said Seamus, yawning.

  “Father, I was just thinking. We weren’t able to make it upstate, right?”

  “I’ll say,” Seamus said, looking around. “We didn’t even make it out of the Boogie Down.”

  “Well, look over there,” said Martin, pointing out the window at a stand of high-rises a couple of miles west on the horizon.

  “That’s Co-op City,” said Seamus. “What about it?”

  “Well, you know how in the tsunami videos from Indonesia a lot of people on the beach didn’t do so hot? But you can see plenty of folks on the roofs of the hotels and what have you doing seemingly okay. What do you say we head over there to those buildings and see if we can’t gain some higher ground?”

  “But I thought you said that we still had some gas,” Seamus said.

  “Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. The tank is dry, I’m sorry to report. We need to get off this bridge, at any rate. For all we know the wave could be heading toward us right now.”

  Seamus turned to the rear of the van.

  “Kids, kids! Wake up! Wake up now!”

  “What now?” said Eddie with his eyes still closed. “Is the van on fire?”

  “No,” said Seamus. “Grab your things. We’re all going for a walk.”

  “A walk on the highway?” said Brian.

  “In the Bronx?” Juliana joined in.

  “Rise and shine, Bennetts. One and all,” said Seamus. “It’s time to abandon ship!”

  Chapter 89

  But the world didn’t end.

  The world and the mountain held. We didn’t know how. All we knew was that the echoes of the blast finally dissipated and the shudder slowly subsided in the rock. Miraculously, the mountain and the molecules of our bodies all decided to stay happily together.

  “We got it!” came over the radio. “Coming out!”

  Twenty minutes after they had gone in, the EOD guys came out of the godforsaken cave in their green astronaut bomb suits. The last guy out was a tight-lipped bomb tech, a short and wiry Italian-looking fortysomething guy with dark, hooded eyes. His buddies helped him take off the tool smock hanging down the center of his chest and pull off his spaceman helmet. His sweat-soaked hair was plastered to his forehead as if he’d just gotten out of the shower.

  He put down the red-and-black portable X-ray machine they used to check for booby traps, then rolled onto his back in his eighty-pound suit like a dusty upended turtle. One of his buddies handed him something, and he began expertly rolling a cigarette with his oversize, muscular mechanic’s hands.

  His name was First Sergeant Matthew Battista of the 789th Explosive Ordnance Disposal Company. He taught at the EOD school at Eglin Air Force Base, near Destin, Florida, and was said to be the best and most technically proficient and experienced bomb tech in the army and perhaps the world.

  “Okay, Mattie, what’s the story? If we all weren’t currently having heart attacks, the suspense would be killing us,” Commander Nate said, handing him a baby wipe.

  Mattie wiped at his sweaty face as he lay against the rock, staring up at the cloudless sky. He smoked his cigarette in the corner of his mouth without touching it.

  “The blast was from a disposal failure,” he finally said. “We were pulling out pieces of detcord through the ring bolts next to cables in the walls, and something must have screwed up—probably a bad piece of deteriorated cable. It’s the same really old Soviet shit we saw in Iraq. Bad cable coupled with some friction burn is my guess. Only a small piece went off, though. About four feet. Thank God we cut it up beforehand.”

  “So you were able to defuse everything else?” said Emily. “Did you find the detonator? Was it on a cell-phone trigger? A mechanical timer?”

  “That’s what I can’t figure out,” he said, shaking his head. “It’s all wired up, ready to go. We found this.”

  He reached over and took two items out of his smock. He held up a small black box with some wires sticking out of it and a brown plastic device with three buttons on it.

  “Is that a garage door opener?” I said, looking at it.

  He nodded.

  “And the black box is a garage door receiver,” he said. “Seen them before. You press the opener, and it sends a signal to the receiver, just like a cell-phone trigger. The whole daisy chain in there was wired up to this receiver except for one crucial detail. The receiver also has to be wired up to a battery in order for it to set off the detcord. There was no battery. Also, there was no battery for the opener, either.”

  “So there was no way to set it off,” Emily said.

  Battista shook his head.

  “They left out the final piece. Makes sense in terms of safety. I wouldn’t want any juice within twenty square miles of this much explosive. Much safer to bring the final pieces together right when you want to blow it.”

  “So what do you think, Mike? Rezende had the batteries on him?” Emily said. “Remember how he insisted on hitting his house and throwing on his hiking boots before getting on the bird? The first thing we need to do is retrieve Rezende’s body and begin scouring his records. He didn’t do this by himself.”

  “No, that’s the second thing we do,” I said, taking out the satellite phone. “First we call New York City and cancel the evacuation.”

  Chapter 90

  Thirty-eight nautical miles due north of Árvore Preta, back at Amilcar Cabral International Airport on Sal, the first-class passengers on a flight from Munich had cleared customs and were entering the main terminal.

  The terminal was very modern—clean and bright, with white walls and polished glass and floors. The in-flight magazine had said its recent remodel was evidence of Cape Verde’s growing appeal to vacationing Europeans looking for an exotic tropical experience.

  As he walked, Mr. Beckett remembered what the place looked like in the early ’70s, when he arrived on his first field assignment during the rebellion. The Portuguese military helicopters behind sandbags out on the tarmac; the bullet holes in the barred windows; the nervous-looking troops and press. It had been an exotic experience then as well.

  “Gorgeous day. Truly breathtaking,” Mr. Joyce commented, staring at the shining squeaky-cleanness of the glass terminal.

  They were both dressed casually now, Eurosporty, with tailored sport coats over Adidas tops, expensive jeans, and Chanel aviator sunglasses.

  “Indeed,” said Mr. Beckett as he pulled his rolling Gucci suitcase around a group of Africans and Western travelers sleeping and reading magazines in a row of pleather airport seats. He gazed up at the beams of light spilling down from one of the many overhead skylights.

  “One might even call it a momentous day,” he said.

  They laughed together as they walked. Then Mr. Beckett yawned. He hadn’t been able to sleep on the flight. Then he smiled again as he took a deep breath.

  That was okay. He felt a second wind coming. One last sprint left for the final mile.

  “Where is Katarina?” Mr. Joyce said as they approached the airport exit. “I specifically told her to be waiting for us up ahead, at the car-for-hire. I don’t like this.”

  “Don’t be paranoid, Mr. Joyce,” said Mr. Beckett, grinning at his companion. “We’re here. It’s done. You need to enjoy it. In an hour, we call Armenio, who will rig the detonator. All we need to do now is go to the hotel and order Champagne. We dial the number and sit back on the seaside balcony and watch.”

  “Watch the fun?�
�� said Mr. Joyce.

  Mr. Beckett nodded vigorously.

  “Yes. There’ll be so much fun the entire world won’t know what to do.”

  “For Mikhail?” said Mr. Joyce, looking at his partner.

  Mr. Beckett agreed with a solemn nod. “All for poor Mikhail.”

  They were near the exit, and Mr. Beckett was turning his phone off airplane mode, when a plain, petite, dark-haired woman in chic business wear and heels burst through the terminal’s entrance and made a beeline for them.

  “Katarina! What is it? What’s wrong?” said Mr. Joyce.

  “Everything!” Katarina said, swallowing. “Everything is wrong!”

  Chapter 91

  “Slow down, Katarina, before you run us off the road,” said Mr. Beckett as they sped out of the airport in her tiny pale-green Fiat.

  “I’ve been calling you since this morning,” she cried. “It’s a disaster!”

  “Slowly, Katarina. What happened?”

  “What happened? I should be asking you that,” she said. “You said this would be discreet and that no one would ever know. Why did you contact the authorities? You never said anything about a ransom.”

  “A what?”

  “A ransom! Don’t give me that. Like you don’t know! It’s all over the news! The BBC! Where have you been?”

  “We’ve been out of contact on an airplane,” said Mr. Beckett. “What’s all over the news?”

  “You really don’t know? They’re evacuating New York!” she shrieked.

  Mr. Beckett and Mr. Joyce looked at each other in horror.

  “No,” Mr. Joyce groaned. “Not now. We’re so close.”

  “You said a ransom. What ransom?” said Mr. Beckett.

  “The BBC said the Americans said they were evacuating New York and the Eastern Seaboard because of a tsunami warning,” Katarina said as she screeched around a traffic circle, nearly on two wheels. “But the BBC said that was an unlikely story and that there were rumors about an impending terrorist attack and a ransom demand.”

  “We didn’t ask for a ransom,” Mr. Joyce said. “Who would do that if we didn’t?”

  “Two words. Dmitri Yevdokimov,” said Mr. Beckett after a long thirty seconds.

  “That son of a bitch we bought the aluminum dust and the pump trucks from?” said Mr. Joyce.

  “He’s the only one clever enough,” Mr. Beckett said, looking out at the passing island countryside. “Besides, he’s a computer expert. I knew I shouldn’t have given him my fucking e-mail. He must have hacked us—saw our plans and the video we were going to show after. He put two and two together, copied the video, and tried to pull a ransom deal.”

  “I’m going to handcuff him to a radiator and snip out his liver with a pair of kitchen scissors!” Mr. Joyce said, screaming, as he punched at the door of the car. “He ruined our entire plan!”

  “It gets worse!” Katarina yelled. “The fucking Americans are here! Armenio texted me two hours ago with this,” she said, handing Mr. Beckett her phone.

  American soldiers just arrived in the village. I will do my best to keep them away but I will set it off manually if I can’t. Whatever happens the deal is still on.

  “I keep trying to call him back, but he doesn’t respond. He must be under arrest by now. Or dead. It’s over. What are we going to do now? I’m all over Armenio’s phone. We need to get out of Cape Verde now.”

  “It doesn’t matter. Nothing matters,” said Mr. Joyce, starting to cry in the backseat.

  “Katarina, stop the car!” said Mr. Beckett, suddenly clutching his chest. “I’m not kidding. My chest. I’m having chest pains! I need my medication! In my bag in the trunk. Pull over! Please! Oh, it hurts!”

  Katarina pulled over on the side of the deserted two-lane country road beside a stubbled field with baby sheep and goats roaming over it. Mr. Beckett stumbled out onto the shoulder and went to the trunk.

  “Katarina! Help me—over here!” said Mr. Beckett a second later.

  When she arrived at the trunk, Mr. Beckett without preamble smashed Katarina in the face with a tire iron. Blood poured out between her fingers, clutched to her face, as she began immediately to backpedal.

  He hit her again in the back of the head as she turned, then she fell backwards into an irrigation ditch filled with muddy rainwater that ran parallel to the road.

  She was beginning to crawl back up onto her knees when Mr. Beckett arrived to finish up. Right there in broad daylight, with three more blows to the head, he beat her to death with the tire iron as the baby sheep looked on.

  A minute later, he was back on the road next to the car. He wiped the tire iron with a thin pink sweater that had been draped on the back of the driver’s seat before he chucked it back in the trunk, tossed the sweater in after it, and closed the lid. Crushing her cell phone under his heel, he found and pocketed its SIM card before he checked his watch. Then he got into the driver’s seat and made a U-turn back toward the airport.

  He wriggled his wet toes in his muddy shoes as he drove. He’d have to hit the gift shop for some socks.

  He hadn’t killed Katarina because she had disappointed him. On the contrary, she’d been loyal and competent to a fault in helping to set everything up. He’d even been good friends with her father back during the Cape Verdean revolution he’d helped bring about.

  He killed her simply because he always covered his tracks. That’s why he had been in business for so long. It was the secret of his success.

  In the backseat, Mr. Joyce was still sobbing.

  “I know it’s disappointing after all our hard work,” said Mr. Beckett. “All the money, all the planning. We got rooked—they were ahead of us by a few measly hours. It was the ambitiousness of the plan. The more people, the more moving parts, the easier for one to malfunction.”

  “But that city! That city deserves to be destroyed! What about Mikhail? What about Mikhail?!” sobbed Mr. Joyce.

  “This isn’t over. Not by a long shot,” Mr. Beckett said reassuringly. “We need to regroup and go to the backup plan. We’re still ahead of them. We’ll use the Dutch passports and be back in New York by tomorrow.”

  Mr. Beckett looked up at the narrow-bodied DC-9 airliner on takeoff that roared low over their car as they turned into the airport access road.

  “There is more than one way to skin a cat, my son,” he said.

  Chapter 92

  “I have to admit, Mike, the homebound leg of this trip is starting to grow on me a little,” Emily said, yawning, as she placed her seat in the way-back position on the other side of the maple-paneled cabin.

  “I’ll say,” I said, swirling the glass of Pinot Noir in my hand. “You think Yelp has a corporate jet section? I don’t know about you, but I’m giving this puppy five stars all the way.”

  Things were looking up, for a welcome change. The mayor was so pleased with our finding the explosives that she insisted on sending her personal aircraft to give Emily and me and the two geophysical experts a lift home.

  And what a plane. It was a sleek, brand-new eighty-million-dollar Bombardier Global 7000, with a custom interior that looked like a Park Avenue apartment. There were built-in flat screens everywhere, an Irish linen–covered dining table, Oriental rugs.

  I couldn’t tell which was softer or more soothing, the classical music playing on the overhead speaker, the heated leather seat, or the dimmed lights. I yawned, too, and wriggled my aching shoeless feet against the expensive carpet as I drained my glass.

  I’d actually buzzed back my own seat to catch a little sleep when my aggravating brain started bringing stuff up. Stuff like how though we’d finally put some points on the board, this wasn’t over. How it wouldn’t be over until the bombers were dead or behind bars. Mostly I couldn’t stop thinking how my kids, along with everyone else in New York, were still extremely vulnerable, and soon my finger found the seat switch and I was heading back into the upright position again.

  I asked the flight attendant for
some coffee and took out my laptop. A moment later, I had my e-mail open and for the tenth time started reading through the detailed brief that the excellent Cape Verde Judicial Police had put together about the island guide Armenio Rezende.

  Police divers had found Rezende dead in the surf on the southwest side of the volcanic island about three miles away from the cliff he’d jumped off, and what they recovered from his pocket chilled me every time I thought about it.

  Four twelve-volt garage door opener batteries.

  So our theory was actually true: Rezende had tried to set off the bombs. He’d been dead set on killing himself and all of us there.

  And only the Lord knew how many other innocent people would have died had the entire mountain shaken loose and crashed down into the sea.

  I thought about the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami that had killed 230,000 people. Five Yankee Stadiums of human beings, old and young, innocent after terrified innocent, suddenly caught in the flood. Schoolchildren washed out of their desks and drowned in their classrooms. Commuters on trains looking up from their papers to see the ocean coming in the window. Mothers made to watch as their babies were whisked away in the flood or crushed by debris.

  And someone wanted that? Rezende wanted that? I thought as I glanced out the dark circle of the plane’s window. He wanted countless homes and factories and churches and cities and towns destroyed? He wanted 230,000 last gulps of breath from people he didn’t even know? How? Was Rezende a space alien? A zombie from a crypt? Because it didn’t compute, that much hate. Not in human terms. How could a human be okay with a quarter million murders on his soul?

  Yet it was true. Rezende did want it. Had in fact died trying to make it happen. Rezende had wanted it, along with whoever else was involved.

  Because it was obvious that Rezende wasn’t the mastermind. We’d sat down with the Cape Verde cops before we left, and they told us Rezende didn’t even have a passport and that he had never been anywhere—let alone New York City.