“I know.”
They cruised along Dundas, turned south on Parliament.
“We need coffee.”
“Absolutely. There’s one down here farther. We’ll stop,” said Mario. He paused. “I got another letter from Max Rosen.”
“From Greenland?”
“Yup. Congratulated me on Tony’s birth and all that. The usual. Told me that Greenland was a nuclear-free zone. Did you know that?”
“I thought it was a warmth-free zone.”
“That, too, I guess.”
“And a culture-free zone.”
“You don’t like Greenland, do you?”
“I can’t understand anyone wanting to live there.”
“Max likes it.”
Mitch shrugged.
“How can Max like it?” Mario wondered.
Mitch shrugged again. “How can a beautiful, intelligent woman like Angela like you? There’s no accountin’ for taste.”
“My magnetic appeal to members of the opposite sex is a matter of record. And legend.”
“Greenland can make no such claim.”
“Seems to me that big cities are the exact opposite of where either of us should want to live—with kids and families and all.”
“Rural environments are overrated for their safety and happiness. You know that, don’t you? Statistics don’t bear out the myth of the rural idyll.”
“Statistics. I don’t believe that shit.”
Mitch was quiet.
“I mean, I got Tony to think about now.”
“I can’t see an Italian living in Greenland.”
“What about a Jew?”
“I admit it: I’m baffled.”
Mario slowed at a stoplight, stopped. “You know, on any given day, seventy-five kids don’t return home from school. Ten are killed.”
“I thought you didn’t believe statistics.”
Mario ignored him. “Angela and I went to a film at the local school, organized by the Block Parent group. It said before kids turn sixteen, one in three girls and one in eight boys will be sexually molested. Don’t you see what I’m getting at?”
“Yeah,” Mitch admitted, sighing. “I do.”
“It said that as many as two hundred million ‘street kids’ around the world are at risk of being drawn into kiddie porn, trafficking, and prostitution.”
“You’re going to drive yourself crazy, Mario.”
“Yeah.” He paused. “I guess so.”
“There are no guarantees, I grant that. But the odds are against anything happening to you personally. Or me, for that matter.”
“But you can up the odds by living in Greenland.”
“Fuck the odds. You could also die of boredom in Greenland. Or freeze your ass off.”
“You can do that here.”
“But you’d be running away. You can’t run away.”
Mario pondered it. “I’m not so sure.”
“Look,” said Mitch emphatically. “There’s a Honey Dip Donuts ahead. Do they have any of those in fucking Greenland? Eh?”
Mario smiled.
“Eh?”
Mario nodded. “Probably not.”
“Well, there you are.” Mitch spread his hands expansively. “That’s civilization—right there.” He was pointing now. “Open twenty-four hours. Civilized.”
“It’s your turn to go in.”
“Oh no, it’s not.”
“Sure it is. I went yesterday, on Gerrard.”
“Yeah, but I went three times in a row last week.”
“You did not.”
“I did.”
Mario was unsure. “Did you?”
“Sure. But just to show you how fair I am, we’ll flip for it. How’s that?”
“Why not? Big-hearted guy that I am.”
Mitch pulled a quarter out of his pocket, flipped it spinning into the air, caught it, then slapped it onto the back of his left hand. “Call it.”
“Heads,” Mario said.
Mitch lifted his hand partially, peering underneath. It was heads. “It’s tails,” he announced, slipping the quarter quickly off his hand and into his pocket.
“Hey! I didn’t ever see it!”
Mitch mimed innocence with his face and hands. “Would I lie to you?”
“Over something as important as this—yes!”
Mitch chuckled. “It was tails.”
“Right.”
Mario angled the car into the parking lot of the donut store, parked it about twenty meters from the door. “It’s cold out there, Helwig. Was it really tails?”
“Listen,” he said. “You can flip the coin next time I’m driving, and I’ll believe you. Okay?”
“You can bet on it.” But Mario smiled as he said it. The twinkle passed from his eye to Mitch’s, and Mitch smiled, too.
He got out of the car and walked across the lot.
It was the last time Mitch saw him alive.
37
At 2 a.m. Mitch and Karoulis stood on the roof of Station 52 on Dundas Street, their hands stuffed in their pockets, their shoulders hunched against the cold, gazing up at the prototype Sikorsky HH-90B BlackHawk that was hovering above them. Their hair fluttered uncontrollably under the turbulence of the copter’s rotors. Beside them, two men were attaching steel-centered nylon cables from the copter to the body of the skimmer.
Yet another man approached from the roof doorway, some thirty meters away. Mitch knew who he was: Berenson, the force’s mobile equipment manager. He had met him briefly downstairs.
Berenson’s teeth flashed in the darkness. “What do you think?” His words were shouted, but scarcely audible.
Mitch shrugged. He wasn’t sure what to think. But he smiled his satisfaction.
Berenson accepted this and began to catalog: “Damage-resistant, four-bladed main rotor system, an upgraded drive system; a high-thrust composite tail-rotor; back-up control system combines computer interfaces with electro-hydraulic control actuators; she’ll do forward at one-seventy-five knots, dive at one-ninety-five, go sideward or rearward at fifty-five. Pullouts at three g’s, pushovers at zero g, and sixty-degree banked turns that equate to about three g’s.”
Mitch shook his head, baffled.
“The pilot will have night-vision goggles, and the copter will use infrared, computer-linked central front beams to make the way seem like noon on the 401 for him.” Berenson then pointed to where the cables hooked onto the skimmer. “These clamps will be released with the push of a button by the pilot, as soon as you say so. Frequency’s been set inside the skimmer. And this,” he added, patting the skimmer affectionately, “is as good as she gets, too. Another prototype. Honda’s given us three to test. This is its first in-duty run.” He looked at Karoulis, then back at Mitch. “You’re a lucky man.”
Mitch raised one eyebrow. Karoulis glanced downward.
“I mean, to have this equipment,” he added.
“I guess,” Mitch acknowledged.
“Most air-cushion vehicles have an integrated lift/propulsion system in which a gas turbine drives both fan and propellor through gearing. Engine speed is adjusted to give the required lift, which is the critical factor, and the speed of propulsion is regulated by varying the pitch of the propellors.”
“How’s this one different?” asked Mitch. Except for a few surface modifications he had noted, it didn’t seem too different from the one he used on his solo night rounds.
“This one’s got two turbines, more sophisticated mesh-gearing, so that everything functions with greater synchronization. Stabilizers have been added to the corner thrusters, bleeding air from the plenum chamber. And in addition to the usual vertical tail fin, she’s got these small horizontal tail planes which move bodily. You get maximum speed, perfect idling, quiet as a dormouse—and this son-of-a-bitch can almost leap tall buildings in a single bound. Most flexible ground-effect vehicle on or off the market today.”
“It just may have to do that.”
“What?”<
br />
“Leap tall buildings in a single bound.”
Mitch lifted the skimmer’s door and placed the large duffle bag that had been beside him on the roof’s tarmac in the passenger seat. Having secured the skimmer to the BlackHawk, the two assistants in overalls backed away, awaiting liftoff.
“Anything else I should know?” Mitch asked.
“Lots, probably.” It was Berenson’s turn to shrug. “You know already about the continuous-wave CO2 laser in the hood. Be sure to wear night-goggles if you use it. Don’t want to burn out your retina at that close range. The RDX explosive charges you wanted are in that bag there.” He indicated a leather satchel behind the driver’s seat. “There’s a dozen—plus an extra—each one the size of a pound of butter, with digital timers built in. Pick your time, set them, then get the hell out of there. And I mean far.”
“Your man up above,” Mitch said, motioning to the copter pilot. “He knows what he’s doing?”
“He knows what he’s doing.” Berenson paused. “Do you?” He held out his hand.
Mitch met his eye, then took his hand, squeezing it firmly. “We’ll see.”
Turning, he met Karoulis’s eye. He, too, was holding out his hand. Mitch took it, clasping it solidly.
“Good luck,” said Karoulis.
“Thanks.”
Karoulis wanted to say something else. Sensing this, Berenson walked out of earshot. The captain continued to hold Mitch’s hand. “Mitch?”
“Yes, Captain?”
“I will recommend you for promotion. You can count on it.”
Nothing from the Barking Dog. Mitch’s face slackened.
“You can count on it,” he repeated.
Mitch dropped his eyes. The copter blades beat incessantly at the chill air about them. “Thanks,” he muttered, inaudibly.
But Karoulis saw the word on his lips, and felt glad. Maybe, he thought, we can make a difference. Maybe.
If we get through this.
Their hands broke apart, and Mitch swung himself into the driver’s seat, pulling the door down, sealing himself in. He gave the thumbs-up sign. Karoulis relayed it to the pilot above, then backed away.
Slowly, the cables linking the skimmer to the BlackHawk tightened, until finally they stood straight up like steel rods. For a moment, everything remained frozen; then there was an increase in the tempo of the rotors’ beat as the skimmer lifted off the roof. Like a spider dangling by gossamer threads from some nightmarish hummingbird, the skimmer, with Mitch Helwig encased inside, slid upward into the night sky, fading into the darkness.
Within minutes, even the sounds had disappeared.
Alone, Karoulis walked to the edge of the roof and gazed out across the lights of the city. He felt better than he had in months. Maybe years.
As the copter lost altitude, Mitch donned his night-goggles. Then he tripped the switch on the dashboard radio, opening the line to the copter above.
The pilot’s voice came out of the dashboard. “That’s it, straight ahead.”
Peering ahead and down into the rivers of lights, Mitch finally made it out.
The warehouse. Herrington Storage.
“Got it.”
It was big enough to provide the illusion of a small runway from the air. They dropped farther, staying well above the power lines, angling toward the long roof.
“I’ll let you know when,” said Mitch.
They dropped lower, still maintaining a steady forward motion. This must be, thought Mitch, what it’s like to try to land on an aircraft carrier.
“Just don’t signal for release if you figure you’re more than eight or ten meters above the rooftop. Too dangerous.”
“Right.”
They were flying low over residential Leaside, the houses dark.
Maintaining speed.
Lower.
Lower.
Laird Drive.
Now.
He fired the skimmer’s engines. They caught and idled.
“Release.”
Mitch felt the clamps open, felt himself drop, then glide downward. He pumped the corner thrusters, waiting for the familiar ground-effect sensation, and angled the horizontal tail planes for maximum brakage. There was a moment of remote cold as he thought that it wasn’t going to work—the instant between his adjustments and the tactile sensation of the skimmer’s action upon the surface of the roof below him.
For a moment, there was nothing.
He dropped.
Then he felt it, and relief flooded through him. It had taken hold. He was hovering.
He was down.
The Sikorsky HH-90B BlackHawk was already dwindling into the night, out across the Don Valley, before swinging around and heading back into the city. Mitch had to hope that any eyes on the ground, or within the warehouse, would have followed the copter’s noise. Since the whole operation had transpired without visible lights, the hope was that the skimmer had not even been seen. And why would anyone have been looking for it? The operation he had just taken part in had been a first. They hadn’t even been sure it would work.
But it had worked. And he was here—inside the security fence—having avoided detection. And hopefully, with a way out over the fence, once the job was done.
He cut the engines, and the skimmer settled onto the roof. Popping the door, he let it float upward.
And he listened.
He heard what he wanted to hear: silence.
Stepping out into the night, he listened again. Still nothing.
Bending, he brought out the leather satchel from the floor behind the driver’s seat, grasping it in his left hand. His right hand reached into his duffle bag on the passenger seat and withdrew the Bausch & Lomb. Crouching, he ran toward the nearest edge and peered down.
There was no activity. Nothing.
He pressed the light on his watch: 2:20 a.m. Reaching into the satchel, he withdrew the twelve RDX bombs and placed them carefully in a row on the roof in front of him, like a mason examining a dozen imported bricks. Each one had been preset for a ten-minute countdown, once activated. All Mitch had to do was press the buttons. After he’d told him what he needed to do, Berenson had assured him that these were what he wanted. RDX, Hexogen, T4, Cyclonite—it went, he had been told, by several names. Plastic explosive, four times more powerful than any dynamite. Then Mitch reached into the satchel and withdrew the dozen plastic propane gas cylinders—each one about fifteen centimeters in length, shaped like bloated Polish sausages. Gas-enhanced RDX, he thought. It had been used to assassinate the Israeli prime minister last year.
He extracted the roll of adhesive tape from the satchel next, and spent the next two minutes carefully bonding each “brick” to its own cylinder. This done, he sat back on his haunches and breathed deeply.
For maximum effect, he knew they all had to go off within seconds of one another.
He checked his watch again: 2:25 a.m.
It was time.
As rhythmically as a clock ticking off the seconds, Mitch pressed the starter button on each of the dozen bombs in sequence, so that at 2:25:12 a.m. he had nine minutes and forty-eight seconds until they began to erupt, just as rhythmically.
His hands felt sweaty.
The digits on each bomb blinked away, counting off the seconds.
Mitch left the first one where it was, but gathered the others carefully into the satchel, stood up, and scanned the vast rooftop.
Then he began to walk briskly, stopping and placing them in widely separated spots.
Six. Seven.
Another fifty meters. Eight. Nine.
Fifty more meters. Ten.
Then it happened.
The laser beam lit the night, slicing through the shoulder strap of the leather satchel, burning through his jacket, his shirt, stopping only upon encountering the Silent Guard. Mitch’s hand darted for the broken strap of the bag, catching it before it could hit the roof jarringly and send him unceremoniously into eternity.
> He made his decision at the same instant.
Lowering the satchel carefully to the roof, he clutched his shoulder as if he had been hit fully, and slumped forward in feigned death.
For a minute there was no sound—nothing. Then, through the night-goggles, he saw the torso of a man appear over the edge of the roof, hauling itself up via the rungs of a fixed metal ladder.
He waited until the man had stepped onto the roof before rolling quickly to one side and aiming his Bausch & Lomb. The needle of light flared to life, tracked onto the figure at the roof’s edge. There was a muffled oath of anger and shock. Then the man slumped forward heavily on his face.
Mitch breathed in ragged gasps, all his senses alert. There was no doubt in his mind that the man was dead. The only question was whether or not he was alone.
He lay perfectly still. Listening. Watching.
Beside him, the digitals ticked away relentlessly.
Satisfied that the man had been alone, Mitch sprang to a crouch and scuttled across the intervening space to see for himself. The man was lying face down. Mitch turned him over with a shove of his foot, bent, checked his pulse, then went to the ladder and peered down.
Empty.
A lone watchman, it seemed.
Then he checked his watch again: 2:31 a.m.
Christ.
Running back to the satchel, he carefully pulled out the remaining two bombs and hurried off to place them strategically.
He checked again: 2:32.
He broke into a run, heading back along the roof in the direction of the skimmer. The run took him the better part of a minute. Gasping, he swung himself into the driver’s seat and fired the engines. They hummed into life and the skimmer rose up on its air cushion. Now, thought Mitch, we’ll see whether this baby can leap tall buildings in a single bound. Because if she doesn’t...
He ran it down the length of the roof as if he were preparing for takeoff at an airport. The roof’s edge loomed rapidly closer.
Closer.
He pumped the corner thrusters and she leapt out into the void. He flipped the switches for full lighting. There could be no secrecy now. He had to know where the ground was. Had to.
He was coming down. About seven meters to go.
He angled the horizontals.
Yes...yes...there...
Barking Dogs - A Mitch Helwig Book Page 18