58 Minutes

by Walter Wager

  And what the hell were those things jutting out halfway up the sides of the smokestack?

  Now the helicopter flashed past the target and the needle spun full circle again. With his eyes swiveling left and right, Saldana scanned the sides of the escape route and pulled back the control to regain altitude.

  There was the damn microwave tower two hundred yards ahead, seven or eight seconds at this speed. Saldana swiftly turned the H-65 sharply to the left and missed the tower by fifty feet. Ignoring the oath that exploded from his copilot's lips, the aircraft commander brought the helicopter up to seven hundred feet in a steady climb.

  As the H-65 leveled off, Saldana turned on the radio to find out whether he might now report to the Coast Guard base. All he heard was Ito's man-made static. The frequency was still jammed.

  "Now what do we do?" Babbitt asked.

  Saldana unzipped a pocket in his flying suit, reached in and pulled out a twenty-five-cent coin. He knew, though, that the call would be free.

  "What do you say?" Ernesto Saldana asked.

  It was a startling idea, and a dangerous one.

  But the risk didn't seem that important to Vincent Babbitt now. Something had changed in him when the direction finder began to function. He had suddenly realized that it was possible. Despite the short time and long odds they faced, they could win. A boyish and naive American sense of coming from behind, a sentimental and preposterous conviction that Good would triumph, an irrational belief that he could survive any hazard and blind faith that nothing would defeat this helicopter crew tonight had obsessed him since the radio locator needle "miraculously" came to life.

  "Let's go for it!" Babbitt replied.

  Then the aircraft commander told Aviation Survivalman Luther King, who was manning the winch behind them, what he was about to attempt.

  "No shit, Lieutenant?" King blurted.

  "No shit. Keep your eyes open."

  Saldana swung the helicopter in a circle and took it down to four hundred feet once more. The searchlight helped as they studied the buildings and streets below. It was only fifty seconds before Saldana pointed down and adjusted the rotors so the H-65 shifted from "forward" to "hover."

  "Here we go," he announced.

  Then, quite carefully, he prepared to land the helicopter in a parking and loading area behind a small factory. The open space was only sixty by ninety feet and a large metal trash bin occupied some of that. There was a strong wind to fight, too. As he struggled to hover the craft over the center of the small safe area, jarring gusts pushed and bumped him off course.

  The winds stopped.

  Saldana immediately seized the opportunity. Maneuvering as carefully as a surgeon, he managed to guide the H-65 to the middle of the "landing zone" and started to descend. The big machine would stay on the ground here until the storm ended, he thought. He wasn't stupid enough to defy the odds any further tonight.

  Three hundred feet . . . two hundred . . . one hundred ... fifty.

  He reduced power steadily as he prepared to land.

  A powerful gust of wind jolted the helicopter and another followed immediately before Saldana could compensate in his steering. The H-65 lurched. Then Ernesto Saldana heard a sound like a rifle shot, and he felt something.

  With no time to think about it, he guided the Coast Guard craft back to the middle of the open space and held his breath as he eased the machine down.

  "I do believe we hit something, Lieutenant," King said from his seat near the winch.

  "That building, I imagine," Saldana replied and pointed at the factory a dozen yards away.

  As soon as he turned off the engines, he asked Babbitt and King what they had seen on the roof of the target. They hadn't noticed anything more than he had. They didn't know what was protruding from the high chimney either. Saldana opened the hatch, climbed down from the helicopter and looked at it through the tumbling snow.

  All of the eleven small blades of the tail rotor were intact.

  One of the main rotor's four big blades—each eighteen feet long and made of very strong Kevlar plastic—was not. When the wind had slammed it against the factory wall, a three-and-a-half-foot piece had been snapped off by the impact.

  That was what he had heard and felt.

  The aircraft commander, who normally detested clichés, found himself recalling Murphy's Law: Anything that can go wrong, will. Well, just about everything had and he was still alive. He hoped his luck would hold a bit longer.

  It did.

  Running through the swirling storm, he only stumbled once before he found a telephone booth two and a half blocks away. Since there weren't many people in this industrial section of Queens, thieves hadn't ravaged the instrument yet. It still worked. Delighted by the dial tone, Saldana dialed 911. A woman answered.

  "Police Operator Seven," she said crisply. "What is the emergency?"

  30

  "HE WASN'T ROBBED," Hamilton announced as he reentered The Cab. "Your guys found $191 in his wallet— and an airline ticket back to Portland."

  "Oregon?" Malone asked automatically.

  "Oregon," the handsome ebony policeman confirmed. "Father Patrick O'Connor of Saint Agnes there, aged forty-one—according to the ID he was carrying."

  "What else was he carrying?"

  "No weapon, no drugs—just the regular stuff a regular priest would have."

  Frank Malone frowned and shook his head.

  "Why would anyone kill a regular priest?" he wondered.

  "And stash the body in a locked cubicle in the toilet," Hamilton added.

  "To buy time by delaying discovery of the corpse," Ma-lone calculated.

  "So the creep who did this could be miles from here."

  "Maybe, but we still don't have a motive. I don't think this was a planned hit," Malone reasoned. "You don't plan to kill somebody in a public toilet. Even the Mafia doesn't work like that anymore."

  Now Hamilton looked uncomfortable.

  "I suppose . . . well, you know who sometimes hang out in public toilets. It might be a sex thing," he said. "This could get very messy."

  "It already is," Malone answered. "This priest? He wasn't the one we talked to downstairs, was he?"

  "No."

  Hamilton saw the detective's glance swing to the telephone—the instrument on which Number One called.

  "Yes, I expect to hear from him any minute," Malone said in reply to the unspoken question. He has to maintain the pressure to keep us intimidated. That's a standard tactic in this kind of war, and . . ."

  The antiterrorist professional didn't finish the sentence. Malone had been about to say "he's good at it." That would have been a serious mistake. He shouldn't utter a word to suggest that he knew anything about Number One. Annoyed that he had almost made such a naive error, Frank Malone avoided Hamilton's eyes by looking back at the phone.

  It did not ring.

  But the teletype began to clatter.

  Annie Green scanned the incoming message for fifteen seconds before she gestured to Malone to come to the machine. He read the succinct message from the Coast Guard air base swiftly.

  They had found the transmitter.

  Some lieutenant named Saldana was at a phone booth a few blocks from the building. Malone recognized the address where the Coast Guard officer was waiting. It was about six and a half miles from Kennedy.

  Now Malone thought about the assault—and Willi Staub. The son of a bitch would have the building entrances rigged with alarms. There would be heavily armed terrorists inside to protect the jammer for as long as possible before they fled. It was all in Venom's file. A wily professional, he always planned some clever escape route so his fighters could slip away to do battle another day.

  But those defending the building didn't matter.

  Time, not their machine guns, was Willi Staub's deadliest weapon now.

  Minutes, not bullets, would determine whether the legion of people on TWA 22 Heavy and the other airliners lived or perished.


  Anything like a normal police siege would destroy them as well as the terrorists. Recognizing this, Frank Malone chose his strategy. It was a gamble, but the others were sure to bring disaster.

  "Let's go downstairs," he said to Hamilton.

  "But what if Number One phones, Frank?" Annie Green asked.

  "Tell him his seven friends will be here very soon and their plane's ready," the detective answered.

  Then he led Hamilton from The Cab. Malone didn't ask the question until they strode off the snows wept bridge into the International Arrivals Building.

  "Is your armored car here?"

  Hamilton nodded.

  "Is there some back way we can get to it without going through that mob in the lobby downstairs?"

  The Port Authority Police lieutenant nodded again and led him to the service stairway. The armored car was parked by the side of the terminal, just out of sight of those inside.

  "You found the bastards, didn't you?" Hamilton said.

  "Some of them."

  "I'm coming with you."

  "Go inside and grab the commander of the Emergency Services Unit team," Malone said. "Tell him to load twenty of his men—full assault gear—into vehicles and meet me in the armored car up the service road a bit. I'll lead them from there."

  "That it?"

  Malone shook his head.

  "You're not coming," he announced. "They need you here, and you know it."

  Hamilton glared at him, angry because Malone was right. Barely controlling his wrath, he pounded on the armored car turret.

  "This is Captain Malone," he told the driver. "He's in command."

  Then Hamilton hurried back into the building. In a few minutes, the armored car was leading the ESU truck and three police cars toward the airport exit. They were almost there when Frank Malone realized what was wrong with Staub's list.

  There was one name that didn't fit.

  And there had to be a reason it was on the list.

  There was something special about the person. Suddenly the detective realized what this operation was really about, and who had to be behind it.

  And who had to pay for tonight. No matter what happened in the next hour, Malone thought grimly, that person would pay. It was more than a decision. It was a commitment.

  Malone leaned forward to tell the driver to speed up now. The man at the wheel looked ahead through the slit in the armor, saw the ice-glazed road and blowing snow, thought about the danger and obeyed. By the time the armored car reached the highway, it was moving at fifty miles an hour.

  31

  ON THE GRAND CENTRAL PARKWAY, Mitchell Hoffman guided his new Mercedes 420 SEL sedan east through the gusting snow. The storm didn't bother him at all. He felt absolutely wonderful.

  It wasn't just the "high" of the five glasses of twelve-year-old Chivas and the four lines of top-quality cocaine that he'd had at the corporate Christmas party earlier.

  It wasn't the ego rush effect of the $310,000 bonus that he had received two days ago either.

  It was a lot of things.

  He'd had an enormously successful year. The chairman had said that intense, quick-witted Mitchell Hoffman was "one of the shrewdest traders" the Wall Street firm had. It had taken an effort not to correct the chairman. Mitch Hoffman knew, beyond any doubt, that he was the shrewdest and the most brilliant. He was the most skillful, the most insightful, the toughest—the best.

  He was nearly twenty-nine, and he'd have his first million before thirty.

  No, two million.

  He was on a roll. Nothing could stop him—in business, on the squash court, anywhere. Mitch Hoffman would have it all. He was heading straight for the top. He thought about his glamorous blond wife, and grinned. He'd be on top of her in about half an hour, and he'd make fantastic love to her until she screamed in ecstasy. Not just once. Masterful Mitch Hoffman would have her shrieking and moaning all night.

  He looked at the speedometer and scowled.

  This was ridiculous.

  Maybe thirty goddam miles an hour was all right for the uneasy mediocrities behind the wheels of the other vehicles, but a superb driver such as Mitch Hoffman didn't have to creep along with them.

  He didn't have the time to waste with these nervous nonentities. He had a terrific car, complete control of it and no fear of the snow or anything else.

  He began to accelerate.

  The maroon Mercedes glided past the other cars easily.

  No problem at all.

  Then he saw the fork in the multilane highway directly ahead.

  He was almost upon it. This was where he had to veer right to get onto the Van Wyck Expressway that ran past Kennedy out toward Cedarhurst. His wife was waiting for him—hungrily—in his big waterfront house in Cedarhurst.

  Dammit, a cluster of cars was crawling along, all bunched together. They were blocking his way. He wasn't going to put up with that stupidity. Hoffman stepped on the gas contemptuously, speeding to sweep past the FBI convoy.

  He was flashing by the fourth sedan when he hit a patch of icy slush. The heavy Mercedes slid, swerved and bucked as he struggled for control. Then it spun and crashed into the left rear of the car carrying Arnold Lloyd.

  The impact at fifty miles an hour knocked the FBI sedan out of the tight security formation. The government car lurched off to the right, careening at an angle before it rolled over onto its roof and slid forward. Sparks flew as the metal top scraped along the highway.

  It was the FBI sedan behind it that smashed into the rear of the Mercedes. The drivers of the other six federal cars were slamming on their brakes, and the agents beside them were shouting into their radios.

  "Wagon Train! Wagon Train!" the convoy commander called out immediately.

  That was the code phrase for an ambush. Kincaid thought they were under premeditated attack by some heavily armed and fanatical force. He didn't have any idea as to who or how many of the raiders there were, but he knew that the bastards weren't going to take any of his prisoners.

  "Wagon Train! Wagon Train!" he repeated.

  While the drivers of civilian vehicles swung wide into the left lane to avoid ramming the suddenly stopped group of unmarked government cars, determined FBI agents poured from their sedans with their pistols and submachine guns at the ready. They swiftly took up defensive positions behind their cars, prepared to do battle.

  Hoffman was not aware of this. His three-week-old Mercedes had whipsawed off the highway into a large boulder. Aglow with whiskey and cocaine confidence when he'd entered his car thirty-nine minutes earlier, the almost but not quite perfect stock trader had made one error. He had not bothered to fasten his seat belt. As a result, part of his face was smeared across the inside of the expensive West German windshield and all of him was dead.

  Arnold Lloyd was alive. Everyone else in the turned-over car was either unconscious or badly injured. Lloyd had a broken left shoulder and was bleeding profusely from a two- inch face cut, but he wasn't hurt nearly as seriously as the government agents beside him.

  The pain didn't affect Lloyd's mind one bit.

  He was totally alert.

  For a moment he wondered whether someone had staged this to break him loose. He immediately decided that it didn't matter. This was his one opportunity to defeat them all.

  He took it.

  The broken shoulder hurt terribly as he forced open a door and wriggled from the ruined car. Lloyd didn't cry out though. As a veteran professional, he realized that he could not afford to do anything to draw the attention—or the fire— of the other FBI agents nearby. Forcing himself to stifle any normal sound of pain, he crouched low as he circled the smashed sedan.

  They didn't see him.

  He had to get away from here—at once.

  Maybe the billowing snow would shield him. The FBI men would probably be watching this side of the divided multilane highway. He'd make a run for the other side and the cars heading back to the city.

  Not exactly a run. He was too b
attered for that. He jogged and staggered and stumbled toward the divider, dodging civilian vehicles as he lurched toward escape. He was panting from the shock and the agony. It felt as if something inside him might be broken, too.

  He was struggling over the divider when one of the FBI men saw him. The agent pointed at him, and swung up his submachine gun.

  "Don't shoot!" Kincaid shouted. "Get him!"

  Four special agents ran out into the flow of traffic. They were young, strong, bold. They hadn't been in an auto smash-up, and they were in much better physical condition than Lloyd was after his months of incarceration. They were at the divider in seconds.

  They were about to vault the low barrier when it happened.

  Lloyd was almost across the other side of the highway when the wood-paneled station wagon hit him. It really wasn't the fault of the woman behind the wheel. Visibility was awful, and no one would expect somebody to dash out onto a highway a mile from any exit.

  She saw him at the last moment, and twisted her wheel sharply in a frantic effort to avoid him. She almost succeeded. She shrieked as she felt the impact. The sound of that thump of human meeting metal was terrible. His body flew through the air like some discarded toy, hurtling forty feet before it dropped onto the side of the road.

  She stepped on the brake and began to shudder. She was still shaking a minute later when a group of men carrying guns suddenly appeared.

  "I'm sorry," she managed to say. "Oh, my God. I'm so sorry. I didn't see him. I'm sorry."

  Then she began to cry.

  "It wasn't your fault," Kincaid assured her. "We know that."

  He saw that she was staring at the pistol in his hand. He slid it into his shoulder holster and took out his official identity card. He held it open for her to examine.

  "We're the FBI," he said. "I'm Inspector Barry Kincaid. The man who ran in front of your car was a federal prisoner trying to escape."

  She was still shuddering.

  "Nobody's going to blame you," he told her as he put away his ID folder. "You couldn't have seen him in time, not in this weather.

  Nobody could. It was an unavoidable accident."