by Mack Maloney
The guy just shrugged. “Most immediate problem is a severe concussion,” he replied. “Long term — a quick saliva test says he’s got some kind of highly unusual toxin poisoning his blood stream. Has he been eating any weird foods lately, wild herbs or something? Was he having hallucinations, things like that? Before he passed out, we found him in the corner talking to someone who wasn’t there.”
Before Nolan could say anything, two more EMTs arrived and wheeled Batman away.
“What about the girl?” Nolan asked a cop nearby. The cop was already drinking a cup of coffee and eating a doughnut.
“The cute blonde?” the cop replied with a wry expression. “I heard she’s got a grade-three concussion.”
“Where is she?” Nolan asked him desperately.
The cop pointed to a room down the hallway. “Right down there,” he said. “But be sure you protect your private parts before going in.”
Nolan ran down the hallway, fighting his way through more cops and firefighters.
He arrived at the doorway expecting to see a gaggle of medical personnel surrounding Emma.
But what he saw instead was Emma, looking like she was in fine shape, sitting on a chair surrounded by a small army of what looked like Hollywood handlers and flunkies preening her. She was drinking a large glass of water — and Nolan noticed it had exactly five ice cubes floating around in it.
Before he could say anything, Emma spotted him and started yelling, “That’s him! That’s the guy! I want him arrested. Kidnapping. Holding a person against their will. Destruction of personal property. Arrest him! Now!”
And strangely enough, Nolan was arrested. But not by the NYPD and not for kidnapping. Rather two Federal agents had come up behind him and put him in handcuffs.
One said to him: “Philip Nolan, you’re under arrest on charges of violating a military court order barring you from entering the United States. You have to come with us. If you need a lawyer, one will be provided to you…”
Nolan was in shock. He was numb. He just couldn’t fathom what was going on around him.
But as he was being led away he managed one long look back at Emma. The flash of light? Did she hit her head again when she fell? What the hell happened?
He didn’t know — he was just heartbroken at the result.
She saw him staring at her and yelled at him: “Just keep walking, you one-eyed freak…”
* * *
After the flash, Twitch had fashioned a new prosthesis from materials given to him by the dockworkers. Then he, Murphy and Li found a taxi and headed off for 45 Park Place.
By the time they arrived, a huge crowd had gathered outside. Strangely, it was not because word had gotten around about a possible terrorist incident on the roof, but because people had heard that the missing superstar Emma Simms had miraculously appeared inside.
The three of them were just getting out of the cab when Emma herself emerged from the building, led by a flying squad of handlers. There would be no ambulance for her. A stretch limo had made its way down the street and was waiting to take her away.
Hundreds of cell phone cameras went off as she made her way through the crowd, shielding her face from them, her entourage setting up a phalanx in front of her.
But just as she was about to climb into the limo, she spotted Twitch, Murphy and Li standing in the crowd nearby.
She quickly sized up the beautiful Li, then said to her: “What are you looking at, bitch?”
Then she got in the limo and roared away.
30
Nolan was held in the federal lockup in Manhattan for the next three weeks.
In that time he recovered from his many physical wounds and was able to sleep and eat three meals a day.
He’d learned that he’d been arrested so quickly that day because, as one federal officer told him, his picture was on the wall of every FBI office in the country.
He was questioned a dozen times by the Bureau, then the Defense Department investigators, and then by people who never identified themselves, but who he knew were from the CIA.
He said nothing to the FBI or the DoD guys. To the spooks he said only the same two things over and over again: “Where’s our money?” and “And what happened to my team?”
Neither question ever got answered.
He was never given the attorney he’d been promised. He was kept in a cell, alone, twenty-four hours a day.
The only information anyone would tell him was that he would soon face another secret military court, similar to the one that had convicted him years before, and that he was facing a life sentence, and then deportation.
In that time, he wasn’t allowed any newspapers, was not allowed to watch any TV. He was given no information on what happened to the other people in Whiskey. He was not allowed visitors. He wasn’t even sure if anyone knew he was there.
* * *
On his twenty-second day in custody, he was told to pack up his meager belongings, and that he was being transferred to another, more secure facility upstate.
He was given some plain civilian clothes and then two faceless agents led him out to a black van by way of the lockup’s rear entrance.
He was put into the back of the van and driven to a small airport just outside New York City, in Rye, New York.
A small white business jet was waiting there.
The agents undid his handcuffs and turned him over to a pair of other faceless agents standing at the door of the plane.
Nolan climbed aboard, was led to a seat in the otherwise empty passenger cabin and left there alone.
The plane took off, but instead of turning north, toward upstate, it veered east, out over the Atlantic Ocean.
Only then did the cockpit door open and he found himself staring at three familiar faces.
Batman was flying the airplane. Twitch was sitting in the copilot’s seat.
Sitting behind them, smiling widely, was Bobby Murphy, the genius who’d just broken him out of federal custody.
“Sit back and enjoy the ride, Mister Nolan,” Murphy told him. “We’ll have to stop a couple times for fuel, but with any luck, we’ll be in Aden by tomorrow morning.”
Nolan was stunned. He couldn’t believe it. He had a million questions to ask. But the one that came out first was: “Did those bastards ever pay us our money?”
With that, a fourth person came out of the cockpit. Long blond hair, perfect shape, huge blue eyes and absolutely gorgeous face. It was Emma, wearing a very short, very tight 1960s-style-stewardess uniform.
She smiled at him, and then said: “How do you think we got the plane?”
FB2 document info
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