• • •
EIGHT HUNDRED MILES EAST, Sean Burke was in motion. But that was all he knew. He didn’t know what kind of vehicle he was in or how many men were in the vehicle with him. He sure as hell didn’t know where he was going or how long it would take to get there—because there was a blindfold wrapped around his head like he was some kind of goddamned Guantánamo Bay terrorist.
Maybe forty-five minutes later, the vehicle stopped. A wide radius from Rikers Island, even with traffic. Burke heard a door slide open, then he felt two pairs of hands take him by the arms and guide him roughly out the door.
His hands were cuffed behind his back, but he wasn’t wearing leg-irons. As he stepped down, he didn’t know how high he was and he nearly lost his balance when the ground surprised him.
“Take it easy there,” he heard a man say with a sharp edge in his voice. “Wouldn’t want our little friend to get hurt.”
Burke felt cold air on his face, heard the distant hum of traffic. He was led across a concrete surface, felt himself kicking leaves as he walked. A breeze picked up, stirring the leaves and sending a chill down his back.
I’m someplace away from the main roads, he said to himself. Someplace still in the city, or close to it. I wonder if they’ve brought me here to kill me …
Burke believed these guards to be capable of anything. Put a bullet in his head right here, tell their supervisors that he tried to escape. He didn’t panic because panic wasn’t useful. He needed to play this out, see where it led. Keep his senses wide open.
He was led across more concrete, took one step onto grass, then back onto concrete. He was on a path. Maybe a park? Not Central Park—there’d be sounds of other people around.
Another hundred yards maybe, until a hand touched his chest and stopped him. He heard a key going into a lock. A door opening. He was pushed forward again and felt the air change as he was taken inside. It had a stale antiseptic smell that took him back to someplace from long ago. A school? A museum?
He heard an elevator door slide open, listened to the footsteps, and counted two other men joining him.
“You try anything,” the man to his left said, “you’ll be tased.”
Burke smiled, imagined himself taking the Taser from the man and putting it right up his ass. Does this qualify as trying something?
He sensed the elevator moving down. He was going underground. When the elevator opened, he was taken forward, stopped for a moment while another door opened, and Burke felt the vacuum of the air being pulled into an enclosed space. He heard voices. Maybe half a dozen men.
“This is him?” he heard one man say. “You gotta be shitting me.”
He was walked forward onto a hard tile floor until he was finally stopped again, and this time the blindfold was taken off his face.
“Do not move,” someone said to him. “Do not turn around.”
Burke blinked in the harsh artificial light. He was facing a metal cell door, with the standard slot for meals and handcuffs. The door was opened and he was pushed inside. There was a bed with a thin pad, a steel sink-and-toilet unit. A small ventilation grate high on the concrete wall. No windows.
He’d seen worse. A lot worse.
The door was slammed shut and he heard the bolt being slid across it. When the slot in the door was opened, they didn’t have to tell him to back up to it and extend his hands behind him so they could uncuff him.
“Welcome to the bunker,” the man said. Then the little access door slid closed and Burke was alone.
• • •
AS MASON WAITED OUTSIDE the United terminal at LaGuardia Airport, he saw the rusted-out Subaru idling in the pick-up line. Mason didn’t move, so the vehicle pulled up and stopped in front of him. The man behind the wheel was maybe fifty years old, with thinning hair in a bad comb-over. His face was red from weather, age, alcohol, God knows what else. He was wearing a tan raincoat and staring straight ahead until he reached over and pushed the front passenger’s-side door open.
“You waiting for an invitation?”
Mason looked in the backseat and saw the suitcase there. He closed the front door, pulled open the back door instead, and got in.
“I’m a goddamed chauffeur now?” But as soon as Mason closed the door, the driver put the car in gear and pulled away without another word.
The car smelled of cigarette smoke. Mason studied the man from behind as he kept driving without turning his head.
He’s a deputy marshal, Quintero had told him. Thirty-two years on the job. Just got transferred out of WITSEC, wants to retire, but certain habits have made that impossible. He’s motivated to help us.
Mason didn’t want to know what the habits were. Or how he was motivated. While the man drove, Mason turned his attention to the suitcase. There were two combination locks, one on each side. After he’d keyed in the right numbers, he hit the buttons and the two locks flipped open. He lifted the top of the suitcase.
“Holy shit,” he said out loud as he looked down at a fully automatic M4A1 carbine with three high-capacity magazines and a black tactical vest with six attached grenades—three round fragmentation grenades on one side, three cylinder-shaped concussion grenades on the other.
For the last assignment, he’d been given a sniper rifle with a scope. A weapon of skill and accuracy.
This time, he was being given the tools to become a one-man army.
“Where are you taking me?” Mason said as he closed the suitcase.
“You’re going underground,” the man said, turning his head to sneak a look at the contents of the suitcase. He shook his head. “One way or the other.”
• • •
BURKE LISTENED CAREFULLY to the sounds outside the door. He’d separated the voices, counted five or six of them in total. He added that information to the map he’d already constructed in his head—he’d taken approximately ten steps from the elevator to the inner door, another thirty steps to the cell door with a left turn roughly in the middle.
About three hours after his arrival, the slot in the door opened and a tray of food was pushed through. A Subway turkey sub, a bag of chips, and a Coke. Not prison food at all, which told Burke there weren’t many other prisoners here. In fact, he might even be the only one. Which just added to the mystery of why he’d been brought to this place.
He picked the onions off his sub and couldn’t help thinking that as long as they were going out to buy him food, they could have brought him a Guinness instead of a watered-down Coke. But by far the most interesting part of the meal was the tray it came on. He had never seen a tray like this in a regular prison. It was metal, first of all, and as he put pressure on one edge, he felt it starting to bend.
This will do quite nicely.
When the access door was opened a few minutes later, Burke slid the tray back through and then got down on one knee to look through the opening. He saw the belt of the man taking the tray and, behind him, a wall of lockers and a wooden bench.
Burke still had no idea where he was. But an hour later, the access door slid open again and he was told to back up for his handcuffs. He complied, but instead of taking him out of the cell, they told him to stand against the far wall with his back to the door. The door opened and he heard someone step inside.
“You can turn around now.” It was a voice he hadn’t heard before.
When Burke turned, he saw a middle-aged man wearing a dark windbreaker with the U.S. Marshals’ seal on the chest. He’d brought in a folding chair with him, had to hold it with his left hand because his right arm was in a sling. There was a white bandage taped to his forehead above his left eye.
“I’m going to take your cuffs off,” the man said, showing him the key in his left hand, “so we can talk like two men.”
Burke turned around and let him unlock the cuffs. It took an extra moment with one arm in a sling, but he’d obviously done it before.
“Please sit down,” the man said, putting the cuffs and the key in his pocket.
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Burke sat on his bed and watched the man unfold the chair and sit down facing him, about three feet away.
“I’m Marshal Bruce Harper,” he said. “I’m in charge of the WITSEC Program. Do you know what that is?”
“Witness protection.”
Harper nodded. “Technically, I only handle clients out of the prison system. A case like yours, that falls under the Federal Bureau of Prisons.”
“Where am I?”
He watched Harper consider his response. “You’re in a Protective Custody Unit,” he said. “In fact, the most secure PCU ever built. You’re the very first man to come here.”
“Should I be honored?”
“I understand you killed five men at Rikers.”
“It was them or me.”
“I also understand you once worked for Darius Cole.”
Burke just looked at him. The name burned in his mind, had been burning ever since the inmates had tried to kill him in the elevator.
“Cole’s retrial is scheduled for two days from now,” Harper said.
The information hit Burke harder than any guard’s Taser. “He’s getting a retrial?”
“Why else would you be here?”
“I’ll wager you’re about to tell me.”
“I don’t know if you’re aware of this,” Harper continued, “but the U.S. Attorney’s office was actually thinking about asking you to be a witness at the original trial.”
An even bigger surprise. “Nobody ever said anything to me about that. If they’da asked me, I would have said no.”
“They can be persuasive about these things.”
“I’m not a rat.”
“Well, apparently Cole isn’t so sure.”
“You know the two worst things you can call an Irishman?” Burke asked. “The first is an Englishman. The second is an informer.”
“How did you end your relationship with Cole? I’m guessing there was no retirement party? No gold watch?”
He sent a half dozen men to find me, Burke thought. I killed them all.
But I still wouldn’t have testified. My father would have crawled out of the grave and slit my throat if I had.
“I want to ask you something,” Harper said. “Because the two men who did testify against him … They’re both dead now.”
The picture was getting clearer. Burke leaned forward, listening to the man across from him. Absorbing every word.
“The second hit was last night,” Harper said. “I was there.”
Burke smiled as he nodded at the sling holding Harper’s right arm.
“Do you know a man named Nick Mason?”
Burke’s smile faded as he ran the name through his head. He had a feeling this name would be important to this man and he didn’t like the fact that he was a stranger. “No,” he said, “I don’t know that name.”
“But you know the kind of man Cole would hire to do this.”
“He doesn’t ‘hire’ people,” Burke said. “He acquires them. Owns them. Forever. Or at least, that’s how he sees it.”
“Is it fair to say this man effectively took your place as Cole’s personal assassin?”
“I’m not sure anyone could take my place,” Burke said. “But it sounds like this Nick Mason is doing his best.”
Harper looked at him with a level of discomfort he hadn’t shown since entering the cell.
He may be having second thoughts about taking the cuffs off me, Burke thought.
“Don’t mind my boasting,” Burke said. “Those days are behind me.”
“They weren’t behind you at Rikers,” Harper said, “but what I want to know about is this new man, Nick Mason, and what you think he’ll do next.”
“That’s easy. If I’m the next name on his list—”
“He can’t touch you here.”
“You probably thought the same thing about the other two.”
“I don’t think you understand where you are right now,” Harper said. “Nobody can find this place. Nobody. And even if they did find it, they can’t get down here. And even if they did get down here, there are six armed men outside this door.”
Six armed men, Burke thought. Thanks for the information.
“When Napoleon was exiled to Saint Helena,” Harper said, “he spent the rest of his life on this little island in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, a five-day sail from Africa, with five hundred British troops watching him. Which made him probably the most well-guarded prisoner in the history of the world.”
Harper leaned back in his chair.
“Until now.”
Burke waited for the rest of it. He knew there was something else coming.
“So now I want to ask you,” Harper said, “now that you know you’re safe … What are you going to do about Cole?”
Burke didn’t answer.
“You testify at the retrial, we keep you safe. Forever.”
“What,” Burke said, nodding to the concrete walls around him, “you’re going to keep me here?”
“Once we’ve put Cole away for good, you’ll be moved into another Protective Custody Unit. Someplace a lot nicer than this. And a hell of a lot nicer than Gen Pop at Southport.”
“But I’m still in prison for the rest of my life.”
“That’s better than being dead.”
“You’ve never been in prison,” Burke said. “I need some time to think about it.”
“Not too long,” Harper said as he stood up. “Remember, the retrial’s in two days. And they’ll need some time to prepare you.”
As Burke stood up, he waited to see Harper’s reaction. Any Corrections officer would keep Burke seated until the door was closed. But Harper wasn’t a Corrections officer.
“I’ll be here for the rest of the day,” Harper said. “Let the guards know when you’re ready to finish this conversation.”
Burke watched Harper go to the door and knock three times. Watched the door open and this time he caught a better glimpse of the room outside the cell. More of the lockers. And what looked to be the edge of a case mounted on the wall.
A gun case.
I don’t know where I am, Burke said to himself, but when they built this place, they were obviously thinking about one thing: how to keep someone out.
Not how to keep someone in.
• • •
TWO HOURS LATER, Burke had it all worked out in his head, based on two rock-solid facts.
Fact number one: Whoever this Nick Mason was, he was coming after him. It didn’t matter if he was on a submarine at the bottom of the ocean, Mason was coming.
Fact number two: Burke was not going to sit around and wait for it to happen.
When the dinner tray came, Burke quickly ate the food. He had no hunger at that point, but once things were in motion, he had no idea when he’d be able to eat again, so better to take in the calories while he could for stamina and mental clarity. When he was done, he stood on one edge of the tray, pressing it flat. Then he worked the edge of the tray against the concrete wall, careful to use the outside wall to minimize any sound that might carry to the rest of the bunker.
Then he knocked on the door. He couldn’t wait for them to ask for the tray back. He needed this to happen now.
“Get me Marshal Harper,” he said when the slot was opened. “I want to make a deal.”
He was happy not to hear the guard tell him to turn around for cuffing. Harper must have laid down a new law out there, which probably pissed off the guards. But for Burke it was just one less obstacle.
Burke heard the footsteps, heard the door opening.
It was time.
15
As Mason studied the blueprints of the underground bunker, he went through a hundred different details, trying to force them into something other than an outright suicide mission.
The car was parked at the old fairgrounds in Flushing Meadows, in an empty lot facing the giant Unisphere. It rose over a hundred feet in the air, hollow and gray and surrounded by the drained
bed of its fountain. Beyond that was the abandoned pavilion, looking like New York’s answer to the ruins of Rome’s Colosseum, and next to that the two towers—which stood together as if holding each other up, the highest rising two hundred and fifty feet in the air. On the top of each was a round viewing platform that looked like a giant flying saucer, stalled out and fallen into disrepair.
Mason went over the blueprints one more time, then focused on the mug shot of Sean Burke. The man was pale and lean—it was hard to imagine him as a killing machine. But then Mason, of all people, knew that the talent for killing could be found in the most surprising places.
This was the man who once did my job, Mason thought. Somehow, he got away alive. Too bad I won’t get the chance to ask him how he did it.
Mason put Burke’s file together and returned it to the suitcase. He looked at the blueprints one more time, tracing the route of the air vent—it rose from the opposite side of the bunker, fifty feet from the entrance, but there was no denotation for the size of the opening. That was something he’d have to figure out on the fly.
He put on his black gloves and the balaclava, rolled up into a skullcap. Then he took the tactical vest from the suitcase and slipped it on. A new and discomforting sensation to have grenades hanging from his body—like he was a suicide bomber approaching an enemy’s checkpoint.
Though maybe that’s exactly what he was.
He slid a magazine into the M4, put two extra magazines in the vest’s pockets, one on each side. The marshal sat in the driver’s seat, silently smoking a cigarette and looking out at the leaves blowing across the empty parking lot.
“How many men?” Mason asked him.
“Hell if I know.”
“What do you know?”
“The location of this place, you prick.”
Mason tried to stare down the marshal, but the man wouldn’t look him in the eye.
“Used to be a bomb shelter,” he relented. “Now it’s a top secret Protective Custody Unit. Only a few people in the Federal Bureau of Prisons know about it. And even fewer marshals.”
He took a bitter drag off his cigarette.
Exit Strategy Page 15