Blackmail Earth

by Bill Evans

  “Tha’s lack the pot callin’ the ol’ kettle black,” Raggedy Ass drawled, treating Birk to more of his twisted Southern tongue.

  Ye gods, get me away from these people. Birk hadn’t been able to stomach crackers in the States—Why should I, of all people, have to suffer fools gladly?—and he’d seen no evidence that transplanting them to Muhammad’s sacred soil had done anything to improve the bizarre species festering on the murky side of the Mason-Dixon Line.

  Birk eyed the captain, knowing that he should be grateful that the fucker hadn’t bled to death. Dying, Birk had seen, did nasty things to fingers—curled them up like croissants. Made them goddamn near as crusty, too. You learn all kinds of shit as a reporter. That could get Raggedy Ass searching for a new supplier of fingers. Even seeing double, Birk couldn’t come up with any potential donors but Suicide Sam and himself. And Sam over there, with his fucking bomb, had a little more clout—in every sense of the word—than Birk.

  Speaking of Sam, the bottle of Johnnie Walker was damn near empty, so Birk waved it around to give him a heads-up that the talent needed a new one. But he did it off camera. Least he was pretty sure he’d done it off camera. Maybe not. Who gives a flying turd? Look at me. Birk waved the bottle at Sam again and mouthed, “Go get a goddamn refill, asshole.”

  Sam wasn’t moving. Birk stared into the tiny computer camera, glanced at Raggedy Ass snoring contentedly on the other side of the wheelhouse, and covered the lens with his bandaged hand.

  “Get me another one,” he growled at Suicide Sam, “now.”

  Birk swallowed the last of Johnnie Walker’s best and threw the bottle at Sam, underhanded. Easy catch, but instead of grabbing the goddamn thing and doing what he was told, Sam jumped aside like it was a bomb. The bottle crashed to the deck and shattered. When the jihadist looked up from the broken glass, Birk made the “hurry-hurry” motion with his unbandaged hand, palm up, fingers waving. A little impatient, perhaps, but given the Job-like challenges Birk was facing, he felt that he’d offered the cretin a pretty forgiving gesture. But goddamn, the “hurry-hurry” didn’t move Sam a wee bit, so Birk flipped him off. And when that didn’t do the trick, he gave him one more universally understood hand signal: He slid his index finger across his throat.

  It never occurred to Birk that threatening to murder a suicide bomber was among the world’s most ill-advised acts. And now Raggedy Ass was arising, no doubt shaken from his slumber by the bottle breaking. He glared at Birk.

  But Suicide Sam didn’t spare the aged eminence so much as a glance, returning his eyes to the Shopping Channel and a particularly alluring pair of zirconium earrings.

  * * *

  It was almost 5:00 A.M. and still dark when the dilapidated Subaru rattled up to the elegant entrance of the Shaughn Hotel on the city’s West Side, which felt marginally safer to Jenna than returning to her apartment. Seeing the dilapidated car, the hotel’s doorman started to wave them on—then recognized Jenna climbing out of the front seat. He hurried to open her door. She left the rifle behind.

  “We’re keeping the keys and leaving the car right there where you can keep an eye on it,” Jenna said to the doorman. Nicci would be showing up in an hour and there wasn’t a moment to spare.

  He shook his head. “Maybe for a few minutes, but no longer. The owner”—real estate magnate Daniel Straub, who was reputed to have pretensions so grand that they trumped Trump’s—“is not going to want this thing out here at all.”

  Jenna strode past him, stuffing a Benjamin into his neatly pressed navy blue jacket. “Take care of that car, and I’ll take care of you again on my way out.”

  After checking into a well-appointed suite, Dafoe went to work on his laptop. She’d never seen him in hacker mode. His fingers flew over the keyboard so fast that he looked like a maestro on a baby grand, and she realized that he must have had a ton of RAM because she’d never seen a laptop with that much speed.

  Jenna rushed into the bathroom, spending the next forty-five minutes showering and trying to make herself look professional enough that network security wouldn’t bar her from the building.

  When she stepped back into the main room, she saw Nicci arriving. Dafoe corralled the weather producer to review a long list of instructions he’d prepared for her. Jenna’s phone rang, but she ignored it; let voice mail pick up. She sat next to Sang-mi on the couch.

  After carefully going over the list, Dafoe told Nicci, “If you don’t hear from us after The Morning Show has been on for fifteen minutes, or you don’t see Jenna on the air talking about those rockets, then do everything on this page just the way you see it. This is critical.”

  “Don’t worry about her,” Jenna said, “she’ll have us covered.”

  “What am I going to be hacking into?” Nicci asked.

  “Let’s just say that it’s a widely viewed venue,” Dafoe said. “But none of this will be traceable to you. And remember, this is a backup plan. You should do it only if Jenna doesn’t make it onto the show.”

  “Right,” Nicci said. “I understand. Now who might I be hacking?”

  “Tell her,” Jenna said. “She has a right to know.”

  “The White House Web site,” Dafoe said.

  “Whoa.” Nicci smiled. “We’re really making history here.”

  “I wish we didn’t have to do this,” Dafoe gave his computer a nod, “but if we do, you’re right, this one’s going to get remembered.”

  Minutes later, Jenna and Dafoe stepped onto the sidewalk. The Subaru was missing. “Where is it?” she asked the doorman.

  “I couldn’t stop the tow company. They’ve got a contract to tow away anything that looks ‘unfit.’ I tried to tell you. I even called up there but all I got was the message center. Here, this is their card. This is where they’re taking it.”

  Jenna grabbed the business card and swore. Their weapons were on the way to a locked car compound in the Bronx.

  “I’m really sorry,” the doorman said.

  “Jesus Christ, Dafoe. Look.” Jenna glanced pointedly down the street. At a well-lit intersection three blocks away, a big black SUV loomed from behind a shiny silver Smart car.

  “Cab?” Jenna cried out.

  The doorman bolted to the street and blew his whistle loudly, as if to redeem himself.

  A yellow cab, waiting at a nearby taxi stand, raced right up. Jenna and Dafoe piled in. She shouted out the address of The Morning Show’s studio, looked back, and saw the SUV a half block behind them, close enough to see that it had a dented grill.

  She shoved a one hundred dollar bill into the tiny money tray in the Plexiglas shield that separated them from the driver, and shouted, “There’s two more of those if you don’t stop for anything.”

  “I take you,” he said in deeply accented English, roaring away so fast that Jenna was slammed back into her seat.

  “They’re almost on top of us,” Dafoe said.

  Not quite: The Expedition was boxed in by the Smart car and an ancient, pale green Volkswagen Beetle. The SUV looked like Goliath as it rode the bumper of the Smart car. The Bug’s bleary-eyed driver appeared oblivious to the aggressive tactics in the lane just to his left.

  The cabbie, Korfa Waabberi Samatar, according to his prominently displayed license, raced down the streets like he’d been born in the Big Apple and knew its every rut and pothole, putting some distance between his vehicle and the boxed-in Expedition.

  “Where are you from?” Jenna yelled.

  “Mogadishu.” Somalia. That explained his composure when, in the next few seconds, the Expedition grew wildly reckless.

  First, the SUV’s horn sounded a long, continuous blast. Then the big, black beast edged up against the Beetle, visibly startling the sleepy driver before ramming his fragile-looking car. The old Bug—a notoriously unstable model under the best of circumstances—flipped and rolled twice, narrowly missed by another hard-charging taxi two lanes over.

  “Holy shit,” Jenna whispered. She was beginning to feel like
she’d landed in the middle of her own Black Hawk Down.

  Seconds later, as the Expedition raced out from behind the diminutive Smart car, the beret-wearing sport at the wheel changed lanes. Perhaps Monsieur Smart car thought he was doing the tailgater a favor, but in a swift and cruel demonstration that no act of kindness goes unpunished, the Expedition plowed right into him without slowing. The Smart car tumbled like a die from the hand of a crazed gambler. Then a Nissan Stanza plowed into the roof of the Smart car, and both of those battered vehicles were smashed by other early morning drivers, resulting in an eleven-car pileup.

  Jenna watched, stunned by the unraveling mayhem.

  When the SUV was two car lengths back, a bullet shattered the taxi’s rear window and glanced off the Plexiglas behind Korfa’s gleaming bald head. Jenna and Dafoe dove below the firing line, though bullets ricocheting off the security glass could find them easily.

  Jenna inched up, saw the Expedition gaining on them in the left lane.

  “They’re trying to kill us,” she shouted to Korfa.

  “No shit,” he yelled back.

  “Faster,” she screamed.

  Korfa shocked her by darting into the left lane. The SUV braked and smacked into a series of parked cars on the driver’s side. A metallic screech filled the air. Jenna looked back to see the SUV rocking wildly on its wheels. The taxi was racing away at eighty-five miles an hour. Nice move, Korfa.

  But the Expedition regained its legs quickly and accelerated powerfully. Jenna pulled out her cell. Dafoe stopped her, saying, “If you’re calling 911, there are sirens all around us.”

  Squealing sirens—but no cop cars in sight yet. Their assailants were still roaring toward them. It looked like the Expedition was about to ram the cab. Korfa pressed the pedal to the metal and gained half a car length.

  Jenna, fingers flying over the phone’s keypad, yelled to Dafoe, “The police should know they’re chasing a bunch of North Korean assassins.” They’ll kill themselves to kill you. Wasn’t that what Sang-mi said?

  “Turn left on Forty-ninth,” Jenna shouted to Korfa. “There’s an entrance halfway down on your right.”

  The cab slid sideways as the driver braked, whip tailed as he came out of the sudden turn, then shuddered, straightened, and sped down the street. Jenna finished yelling at the 911 operator and peeked out the passenger side window. She saw that Korfa was about to rip past the studio’s entrance. “Stop,” she bellowed.

  He slammed on the brakes so hard that her face smacked into the Plexiglas. In her adrenaline rush, Jenna barely felt the impact. She jammed two more Benjamins into the tiny tray.

  Dafoe dragged her out of the cab and the two of them sprinted toward the entrance. The cab peeled out as the SUV slid sideways to a stop, smashing its mangled grill into the side of a Town Car. An outraged chauffeur jumped out and started shouting at the men pouring out of the Expedition. They shot him twice in the head.

  Jenna screamed, “Gunmen! Trying to kill us!” as she raced past the two stunned security guards who patrolled the entrance.

  A second later, she heard another round of gunfire. A lot of it, and much closer. Gulping air, she and Dafoe burst through the metal door and careered off the lobby desk where Joe Santoro and Joe English screened all the building’s visitors from behind bulletproof glass. She shouted “Killers!” at them, but with gunshots now flying at them from fifty feet away, Jenna’s warning proved unnecessary.

  The two Joes stepped to the side of the Plexiglas and fired at the darkly clothed men pouring into the lobby.

  Jenna heard someone shout and turned to see that Dafoe had been hit in the back. He lay on his side with the wound blooming red.

  “Go,” he screamed in agony. “Get out of here.”

  Joe Santoro took a bullet to his shoulder that whipped him around so fast that he might have been dropped into a blender. He smashed into the white marble wall next to him and slid down it, leaving behind a long crimson smear. Dafoe rolled onto his back and his muscles went slack.

  “Don’t die. Don’t,” Jenna cried.

  “Run,” Joe English shouted. Then he ducked, and she caught a glimpse of the assassins gunning him down before she threw open a fire exit door and started lunging up the stairs.

  Three flights. They rose like Everest before her. Her first steps were scorched by the certainty that she would be murdered any moment. As she made it to the second floor, the door below banged open, and she heard the sound of at least three, maybe four assassins racing up the stairs.

  Gunshots crackled and bullets glanced off the concrete stairwell walls. Using the handrails, Jenna hauled herself up the steps as stony chips exploded inches from her head, almost blinding her with edges hard and sharp as shrapnel. She felt wetness on her face; when she swiped her hand across her cheek, it came away pink, and Jenna knew she was bleeding.

  She dragged herself up the last flight of stairs. She wanted to get out of the stairwell, but she didn’t dare use the second-floor exit. There was only minimal security on that level. One flight up—if she could make it—The Morning Show had armed guards. On her way to the city, Jenna had worried that the security detail for the set would keep her away from the cameras; now she hoped those guys would keep her from getting killed.

  Her body felt brittle; her arms trembled from the strain of pulling herself up the final flight of stairs. The hours of fear and the long trip were all starting to take their toll. She heard the assassins gaining on her, heavy footfalls that shadowed Jenna with the darkest possibilities. If they gained a few more inches, they’d have a clear shot at her.

  She jerked open the door for the third floor, racing through the opening as a shot zinged past her hip with a sizzling sound that fried her nerves. She could tell from her clouded vision that tears were washing down her cheeks, mixing with the streaks of blood from the concrete chips. She bolted directly through another metal door and down the long hallway that was lined with the photographs of network news stars. Gasping, frightened almost senseless, she ran as hard as she could and threw her shoulder into the door on the left that opened to the studio. As she plowed toward the set, she was dimly aware that the theme music for the show had started to play.

  Andrea Hanson, who suddenly seemed far more pregnant than Jenna remembered, sat before one of the six precisely positioned studio cameras. She was beaming even more brightly than the lights that lit up her supremely radiant face.

  In front of televisions all across the United States, viewers became aware of what was happening at the same moment Andrea did. The commotion drew her attention first, and she turned toward the noise. Viewers saw the shock on the anchor’s face as Jenna Withers burst onto the set. What they didn’t see were the makeup artists and hair stylists, the stage hands, the lighting and audio techs—more than two dozen people in all—gaping at Jenna’s blood-streaked face.

  Jenna stumbled in front of the camera that had been trained on Andrea. The startled operator had time to mumble only an incredulous “What?” before the first gunshots tore through the studio and sent everyone scrambling for shelter. The staff of the show had trained for an attack on the set—a dismal sign of the times—but procedures were forgotten in the rocketing terror unleashed by the gun blasts.

  Andrea froze. Jenna grabbed her and pushed her toward a hallway. “Get out of here,” Jenna shouted above the boiling madness.

  Andrea fled, and Jenna turned back as the security team started firing at the North Koreans. She spotted at least four men in black clothes, and realized that with a full-fledged gun battle underway, she had no hope of getting on the air—and maybe even less chance of surviving if she didn’t get out of there.

  She backed away as fast as she could until she bumped into Marv, who was standing by the side of the set. It looked like he’d rushed down to see what was going on and, having found the horrifying answer, had stepped into a freeze frame. She grabbed her boss and pulled him down before he got himself shot.

  “You’re going to g
et killed,” she said. “Leave.” Which was what she intended to do post haste. But as she started crawling toward the hallway, a fusillade chewed up the floor no more than two feet ahead of her.

  Rolling hard and fast back toward the set, she ducked behind the giant, paper-thin flat screen that the weather “map” appeared on. The screen extended from the top of the set to about two feet off the floor.

  Jenna hunkered behind the corner where the tranquil climes of Southern California often appeared. Marv slipped under the bottom of the screen seconds later and pressed against her. “Get me out of here,” he sputtered. “Get me out of here.”

  “Shush,” she whispered.

  Their flimsy refuge couldn’t possibly save them; their feet protruded below the map, and Jenna guessed that no one, especially a single-minded assassin, could miss them. But the North Koreans were not the first to discover their hiding place—Geoff Parks was. Kato’s handler was gunned down and fell to the floor not five feet from where Jenna and Marv hid. She spotted horrendous wounds to his arm and leg; blood flowed freely from his thigh, like an artery had been severed. He looked tortured by pain, jaw clenched so hard his teeth had to be cracking. Even so, he caught Jenna’s eye and valiantly tried to push his gun toward her, though he was unable to move it more than an inch.

  Where’s Kato? Jenna wondered.

  Parks tried to raise himself up with no greater success, then collapsed to the floor with a thud that Jenna heard over the crackling gunfire. She wondered how long the shooting had been going on, but had no idea. Thirty seconds? Three minutes? It seemed an eternity, more so when she saw another security guard taken down from behind by a knife-wielding Korean. Jenna closed her eyes, but not before she saw the blade slice into the man’s throat.

  She felt like she was awaiting her own execution, and Marv was still whining next to her. “Shut up,” she hissed furiously. Then she realized that she could not remain unarmed in a studio rife with murder. She leaped toward Parks’s gun and grabbed the semiautomatic, hoping the magazine was full.