by Jon Land
Gus peered around the rear of the stacker and was chased back by a burst of automatic fire. He had caught enough of a glimpse to recognize the tall, rail-thin gunman with milk-white skin advancing purposefully toward him. Recognized the bastard as the man who had driven the tanker into the tunnels that morning. Take away the machine gun, and Gus figured he could break him in two over his knee. He took a deep breath and spun away from the stacker, ready to launch into a desperation charge, when out of nowhere a wrecking ball swooped into his line of vision. It slammed into the albino with a bone-crunching thud and hurled him ef fortlessly through the air.
Gus looked toward the wrecking ball’s control cab and saw Sal Belamo flashing him the thumbs-up sign.
“Little Sally B!” Gus yelled, finally recalling where he’d seen this man before. Tough little fighter with bad technique who’d been decked twice by Carlos Monzon. Gus remembered his nose got mashed to pulp both times.
Good thing for me he works a wrecking ball better than he fights, Gus thought to himself, as the first of the police cars screamed onto the scene.
Jack Tyrell had made sure their exit route through the mazelike construction of sewer tunnels was clearly marked. He led his remaining fifteen men in their DOT uniforms along the route himself, stopping at a ladder and beckoning them to go up ahead of him.
They climbed rapidly to ground level and reached a floodlit construction site enclosed by walls of hastily erected plywood that was surrounded by plastic flapping in the wind. The jeeps, cars, and trucks the members of Midnight Run had used to get here were parked everywhere, but they didn’t plan to use them now. Instead they clustered around a single large truck colored royal blue, with raised white letters reading: NEW YORK CITY EMERGENCY SERVICES.
It was their ticket out of Manhattan, guaranteed to assure them passage across the temporarily repaired upper deck of the George Washington Bridge. The city planners had cooperated brilliantly by responding exactly as Tyrell had expected they would, right down to the minute.
“Let’s rock and roll,” he announced.
Tyrell heard a beeper going off as he moved up to the truck’s cab, and he swung to see Marbles lifting the device from his belt.
“Shit,” Marbles muttered.
“What’s wrong?”
“The tanker …”
“You gonna tell me what you’re talking about?”
“It’s moving.”
“I feel like you after one of your fights,” a banged-up Gus Sabella said, as Sal Belamo helped him toward the rescue vehicles that had just thumped down into the construction pit.
“I had some good nights.”
“Not when I bet on you.”
They looked up to see Blaine McCracken charging down the access ramp ahead of a horde of well-armed police officers. McCracken surveyed the surroundings, assessing in an instant what had happened here.
“You’ve been busy,” he said to Sal Belamo.
“Me and my friend here,” Sal corrected. “He remembers me from my fighting days.”
“Any sign of Liz and Johnny?”
Blaine had barely finished the question when a deep-throated rumble shook one of the nearby tunnels. He peered into the darkness just as the black tanker appeared, snorting and bellowing, Johnny Wareagle behind the wheel, with Liz Halprin seated beside him.
Blaine turned toward Belamo. “You up for a drive, Sal?”
FIFTY-EIGHT
“Maybe you didn’t hear me,” Blaine said to Liz Halprin.
She looked up from her inspection of the shotgun Chief Logan had just passed up through the window. “It’s not a Mossberg, but it’ll do.”
He threw open the door. “Climb down. You can keep it as a souvenir.”
Liz didn’t budge. “If my father were here now, what would you say to him?”
“Welcome aboard.”
“Well, I’m the next-best thing.”
Blaine shrugged and leaned out the window toward Logan. “We’re gonna need another set of guns, Chief.”
Jack Tyrell’s remaining men doubled up in a number of the vehicles that had originally brought them here, nine in all including Tyrell’s own truck, with Tremble behind the wheel. The escape plan utilizing the Emergency Services truck had been abandoned once the tanker was found to be on the move. Tyrell knew that whoever was behind the wheel would have to drive it out through the same construction tunnel Earl Yost had driven it in, just four blocks away.
Not that he had much doubt who that person was.
A set of camouflaged doors leading in and out of the bogus construction site were yanked open, revealing a ramp that bridged the short distance to the street. The vehicles rolled along it in convoy fashion toward daylight, past Jack Tyrell, who waved them on before climbing into the passenger seat of the truck Tremble was driving, Othell Vance squeezed between the two of them.
Blaine leaned out the open cab door toward Logan, while Liz and Johnny inspected the weapons the chief had requisitioned for them from the trunks of four squad cars.
“Let me get this straight,” Logan said, puzzled. “You don’t want an escort.”
“You have to use every man you’ve got to evacuate as much of the West Side as possible, in case we don’t make it. The whole city may no longer be in jeopardy, but we still could be looking at lots of damage, blocks and blocks of it.”
“Okay, what else can I do for you?”
“Clear the West Side Highway all the way to the George Washington Bridge. And make sure it happens before three o’clock, so we can dump this rig in the Hudson before the rest of the Devil’s Brew blows.”
Logan froze. “Did you say ‘dump’?”
“Yes.”
“Er, we’ve got a problem there … .”
On the upper deck of the George Washington Bridge, the cell phone trembled in Warren Muldoon’s hand.
“You want me to do what?” he posed in total disbelief.
“Mayor’s orders,” Logan told him.
Muldoon gazed out over the final stages of the deck plate’s being fastened to the I-beams that spanned the chasm.
“She told me to get the damn thing open!”
“And now,” said Logan, “she’s ordering you to close it down again.”
Muldoon considered the prospects. “It may not be that easy … .”
Snowplows that had already done yeomen’s work throughout the day swung onto the West Side Highway from various through streets, lining up in staggered groups of three. At least two lanes had been cleared almost the whole way to the GWB, and now the plows had to finish the arduous task of widening the remaining stretches to that same width.
But the improvement was not without costs, as cars, some only slightly damaged or unmarred, were crashed from the plows’ path, shoved aside to create twin jagged barriers of twisted steel.
Blaine and Liz huddled in the rear of the truck’s cab, while Johnny Wareagle rode in the front passenger seat, next to Sal Belamo.
“Handles like a dream,” offered Sal, picking up speed on West Twenty-third Street. “You wanna go over the plan again, boss?”
“Simple. We get to the GWB and drop this baby in the drink before three o’clock.”
Sal checked the dashboard clock:
2:40
“That’ll be cutting things close.”
“I don’t think we’ll hit much traffic.”
As Blaine spoke, he spotted a number of vehicles on the various cross streets, angling to cut the tanker off before it reached the West Side Highway.
“Tyrell,” he muttered.
A four-by-four tried blocking the tanker at the intersection of Ninth Avenue, but Sal slammed right through it, the occupants of the cab barely receiving a jolt for the effort. They looked back to see the four-by-four smashed against a light pole.
“You think that’s a good idea?” Liz wondered.
“This baby’s got three extra inches of titanium around it,” Blaine told her. “That makes it a fine idea.”
; The tanker continued speeding across Twenty-third, with four of Tyrell’s vehicles closing and another three curling onto the street to join the pursuit. In his own truck, Tyrell himself was holding his head out the window, letting the wind whip past him.
“Had a German shepherd once,” he said to Othell Vance. “Now I know why he enjoyed this so much.”
“I’m no soldier, Jackie,” Vance said to him.
“What? I can’t hear you, Othell!”
Vance leaned a little closer to the open window. “I said I’m no soldier! I was hoping you could just drop me off!”
Jack Tyrell pulled himself back inside the cab. “Absolutely, Othell, whatever you want. Next time we stop.”
Sal Belamo screeched in a right turn off Twenty-third onto the West Side Highway, directly across from the Chelsea Piers. Just one lane was open for a brief stretch here, but up ahead he could see that the snowplows had cleared all lanes along the twisting route past the Thirtieth Street Heliport to the Javits Center. They had squeezed a line of wrecks against both sides, creating the effect of a tunnel the tanker roared through, with Tyrell’s vehicles gaining ground quickly.
“Smile, boss. I think we’re on television,” Sal remarked as a news chopper hovered overhead.
What he didn’t know was that the feed was being picked up by CNN, enabling the entire country to follow the chase live. In greater New York City this meant in bars, through electronics store windows, even on the huge Sony screen in Times Square, where it looked like New Year’s Eve, except for the very visible presence of patrolling army MP squads, who had arrived from Fort Dix by helicopter earlier in the day.
Gus Sabella’s entire crew, exhilarated by their recent battle, had squeezed into his trailer to watch the proceedings on his small television, listening in frustration as a newscaster attempted to explain what was going on.
“I’m turning the sound off,” Gus said, and nobody argued with him.
On the West Side Highway, a pair of Jeeps carrying Tyrell’s men accelerated, drawing up along either side of the tanker as it reached the awesome sight of the Intrepid Museum, built on the water around the aircraft carrier of the same name. Blaine leaned out the cab window on one side with a shotgun, Liz on the other with a submachine gun. Both heard the high-pitched wail of the wind whistling past the rows of car wrecks as they opened fire before the gunmen inside the Jeeps had gotten off a shot. The windshield of the Jeep on Blaine’s side exploded, sending the vehicle careening into the smashed cars, which it rode in a shower of sparks before lodging amidst the wreckage. The second Jeep skidded out of control, forcing Tyrell’s remaining vehicles into evasive maneuvers just to avoid it, as the tanker curled past the assembly of concrete piers lining the Hudson River.
Three pickup trucks whirled around the Jeep and took up pursuit of the tanker abreast of each other, just to its rear. A pair of gunmen opened fire from the rear cargo beds, while a third man fired from behind the wheel of the center truck. Their bullets clanged off the tanker but managed to shatter the outside mirror on the rig’s driver’s side.
“Shit!” yelled Sal Belamo, his view of the battle gone.
Blaine and Liz exchanged a flurry of gunfire with their pursuers, then popped back inside to reload, while Johnny Wareagle took their place leaning out the window. Johnny was wielding both a shotgun and a submachine gun, the latter just to hold the gunmen at bay while he fired off low rounds from the shotgun.
The middle pickup’s front tire exploded, and the vehicle swerved violently from left to right, forcing one companion truck and then the other against the line of wrecks on either side. Showers of sparks sprayed outward on both sides of the road, the trucks’ drivers unable to extricate themselves from the steel while still, incredibly, offering pursuit as the vehicles shredded themselves apart.
The two pickups had run up the length of the tanker, almost even with the cab, when Sal Belamo twisted the wheel hard to the left, ramming the one on that side into the line of wrecks, where it embedded itself. Impact slowed the rig enough for the truck on the right to draw even with its cab, pouring such a nonstop fusillade through the windows that Blaine, Johnny, and Liz were prevented from returning the fire.
“Son of a bitch!” Sal wailed, his face bleeding from flying glass, as the tanker roared past the Seventy-ninth Street Boat Basin, where the West Side Highway had become the Henry Hudson Parkway. “Now I’m fucking pissed!”
And he worked the brake just enough to let the pickup shoot ahead of the tanker. Before the driver could respond, Sal clutched and shifted, accelerating again straight for the truck. The tanker rammed its back end and sent it spinning across the road.
“Hold on,” Sal warned, tensing as he gave the rig still more gas, slamming into the truck broadside and hurling it into the air and over the guardrail, to the other side of the highway. It spun onto its side on impact and skidded wildly across the road.
In the construction trailer, the flames and smoke rising from the wreckage drew hoots and hollers from Gus Sabella and all his men, while in the mayor’s office Lucille Corrente shot a fist into the air with a triumphant “Yes!”
“I wouldn’t celebrate yet,” Sam Kirkland warned grimly, eyeing the clock resting on the conference table:
2:48
As he passed the flaming remnants of the truck, Jack Tyrell pressed a walkie-talkie against his lips.
“Fly Boy, you out there?”
“Read you, loud and clear.”
“Fuck reading me, just listen. Where are you?”
“Waiting for evac at the rendezvous point.”
“There’s been a change in plans,” Tyrell told him.
Only three vehicles were trailing the rig as Sal picked up speed past Riverside Park. They kept a cautious distance, reluctant to face odds that had now shifted against them. The gunmen inside continued to shoot from a distance, their bullets clanging off the cab as Blaine, Johnny, and Liz alternated returning the fire.
“Sal, how far from the bridge are we?”
“You can see it from here, boss,” Belamo said.
Blaine took a quick glance at the George Washington Bridge, looming in the distance.
“I’m thinking seven minutes,” Sal advanced, as the trees and grass of Riverside Park gave way to an assemblage of softball fields, tennis and basketball courts.
Blaine lifted the radio Logan had given him. “You there, Chief?”
“Read you.”
“We’re ap—”
“I know where you are. This whole thing is on television.”
“Don’t tell anyone Sal had his license suspended.”
“What charge?”
“Driving to endanger. How are things going on the bridge?”
From his police helicopter, Logan took a long look at the welders burning through the seals that affixed the I-beams and deck plate to the bridge. Warren Muldoon was frantically supervising the effort to reattach the hovering chopper’s heavy steel cables and lift off the entire assembly as a single unit. Logan wasn’t sure one chopper could manage that task, even if Muldoon’s crew managed to get all the cables locked down.
“You just get that rig here,” Chief Logan told Blaine. “We’ll take care of the rest.”
Blaine returned the microphone to its stand as they continued past Riverbank State Park, where a throng of skateboarders in shapeless shirts and jeans stood at the fence of their skating court with boards in hand, cheering them on.
“Company, Blainey,” Johnny warned, snapping Blaine alert again.
Before he could ask where from, he heard the familiar wop-wop-wop. A helicopter, a heavy transport, was angling on a direct course for them, flying over the Department of Sanitation’s primary storage facility on the other side of the parkway. The chopper banked, tilting slightly on what looked like a thinly disguised attack run.
At least one and maybe two gunmen opened up with heavy machine-gun fire from inside the chopper as it soared overhead. The bullets, thankfully off the mark, left poc
kmark-like dings in the thick steel skin of the tanker itself and lodged in the vehicle carcasses lining the highway. Beyond them, meanwhile, the chopper spun around for another pass, at the same time the rig reached a part of the highway to which the snowplows had never paid a return visit. Just a single wide lane weaved amidst the wrecks on both sides.
Sal Belamo did his best to negotiate what had become an obstacle course. But the maneuvering forced him to ease back on the accelerator, making them an even easier target for the chopper as it surged forward again.
“Keep to the left!” Blaine said, needing space so he and Johnny could offer return fire from the rig’s right side. Liz, on the left, handled the reloading chores.
“Easy for you to say …”
Blaine leaned out the window, close enough to touch the cars alongside him, and pumped shell after shell at the chopper from the shotgun.
“Indian!” he signaled when his ammo was gone.
Wareagle followed with an equally futile barrage of submachine-gun fire, drawing sparks from contact against the chopper’s frame and nothing more. The pilot knew combat, that much was obvious. He had chosen the perfect attack angle, meant to minimize the target his craft offered in return.
Johnny lurched back inside just before the next round of fire splintered the cab. One of the bullets drew a gasp from Liz, as the chopper overflew them with another burst, which stitched a jagged design across the rig’s hood.
“Liz!” Blaine screamed, and slid across the seat to her.
The right side of Liz’s back was leaking blood through her jacket. Impossible to tell the severity of the wound now, never mind dress it in these conditions. After easing her gently back against the seat and clipping the shoulder harness in place to keep her restrained, Blaine turned to Johnny Wareagle.
“Cover me.”