Perlman looked at him.
“We’ve got seconds, not minutes,” he said. “Please.”
The officer handed him the weapon. Kealey threw off the safety, kept it pointed down. The contours of the Hudson shores were winding past, like separately undulating snakes. He saw the domes of the plant. The western bank curved in a way that did not allow him to see the site from the surveillance camera.
“Take us down,” Kealey said.
The chopper dived forward. Kealey put a hand on the door. The power plant was coming into view.
That also meant Hunt couldn’t see them, though he’d hear them approaching. Hopefully, he would be too focused on his target, on waiting for the go-ahead signal from the rocket launcher... .
“As soon as that boat comes into view, you’re going to have to hit the brakes and turn me toward it,” Kealey said.
“Don’t open the door till I do that,” Sagal said.
“Yeah.” If Kealey thought that by flying from the chopper, he could stop Hunt, he would gladly take the flier.
“He’s hot in ten ... nine ... eight ... ,” Perlman said.
They were about a half mile downriver and 1,000 feet too high.
“Push it!” Kealey shouted.
“Seven ... six ...”
Kealey felt the harness dig into his chest as the helicopter screamed forward. It didn’t matter if Hunt knew they were there. He couldn’t fire for another few seconds... .
“Five ... four ...”
The chopper came out of the half-parabolic dive, just skimming the Hudson.
“Brake, now!” Kealey yelled.
Kealey grabbed the door handle hard. The turn was so sharp that Kealey was thrown against the left side of the harness, but he retained his grip. As the chopper leveled, he yanked the handle, popped the harness, and put his foot to the door.
“Three ... two ...”
As he kicked open the door, he raised the 20mm and fired. He was short, raised it, peppered the canvas roof of the runabout.
“One!”
Kealey continued firing at the covering, turning the ivory-colored surface black with holes and smoldering fringe. Flaps fell away as he emptied the clip. He saw a man in the cockpit move toward the back; Kealey cut him down. A woman in the front seat had dropped to her knees with her hands raised.
Kealey was out of ammunition.
“Take us down,” he said and drew his handgun.
Sagal was on the loudspeaker system. “NYPD antiterror action. Stand down!” His voice rang across the river, and he repeated the announcement several times. That was for any security forces who might not notice the big NYPD on the side of the chopper and opened fire. Hourly security was like that.
The chopper lowered itself directly above the runabout. Kealey leaned out. Hunt was lying facedown, a mass of red splotches. The other man was on his back, with blood running from the top of his head. Kealey climbed onto the landing strut. The woman was looking out. He motioned toward the shore with his handgun. She nodded and made for the shore with her hands raised.
The black and white security boat was racing over.
“Put down your weapon!” someone shouted.
Sagal said, “You gettin’ off?”
Kealey grinned back and nodded. He glanced back at Perlman. “We’re gonna need bomb guys from the National Guard station.”
“Already called it in.”
Sagal turned the chopper around so Kealey was over the shore. He jumped from the chopper and landed near the train tracks that ran between the river and the road. The woman was standing there with her hands up.
“I said drop your weapon!” the voice from the boat repeated.
“I’ve got this,” Sagal said into the mike. He moved the chopper sideways and dropped it between the security boat and the runabout, a few yards above the water. The black-and-white had to make a hard turn to avoid a collision. “I said stand down,” he repeated.
The security boat stayed where it was.
Kealey told the woman to lie facedown on the track bed. She listened. He knew Perlman would be watching her, and he went to the runabout.
Hunt was dead. So was the other man. The nuke was active, alive. He didn’t want to read too much into that, but that had been the state of the world since Hiroshima: the players changed, died, and were replaced. The threat remained the same.
He called the update in to Andrews as he walked back to the train tracks.
There were cries of relief on the other end.
Kealey said he’d call when he was en route. Then he phoned Bishop.
“Ryan ... ?”
“We got him,” Kealey said.
“Jesus Christ.”
“With time to spare. What’s going on there?”
“Bomb squad shut down the nuke. I’m giving them a report.”
“Well, smoke ’em if you got ’em.”
“Can’t,” Bishop said. “Made someone a promise.”
Kealey understood. Good man, he thought. “Can you meet me at the Thirtieth Street helipad in an hour?”
“Probably. What’s up?”
“I’m going to get these boys to give us a lift to LaGuardia.”
“Debrief hell,” Bishop said.
“Yeah, but not yet.”
“What do you mean?”
“We have a stop to make first,” Kealey said. “I’ll tell you about it en route.” He clicked off, walked over to the woman. “Who are you?” Kealey asked.
“I will not answer your questions.”
Kealey went to the runabout, found her shoulder bag, retrieved her wallet. She was Dr. Ayesha Gillani. Affiliated with universities, hospitals, high-powered organizations.
He threw it back in the bag and looked back at her. Behind him, local police choppers and maritime units were converging. The NYPD chopper found a spot to set down.
Kealey was going to sit this one out, let them work out all the who did what and why.
A psychiatrist. A medical doctor. Obviously, World War II didn’t teach some members of the profession a damn thing about morality. Or maybe it was just a percentage of the general population itself that had corrupted data files in their head—Hunt and his dead companions included. Fortunately, there’s more of us than them, he thought. Unfortunately, all it took was five or six of them to let loose the dogs of destruction.
Well, at least there were fewer. And soon—very soon—there would be fewer still.
CHAPTER 34
ATLANTA, GEORGIA
“Mr. Trask,” said the voice from the intercom, “there are people to see you.”
He turned to the box mounted to the wall of the greenhouse. “Who are they?”
Before the voice could answer, the door behind him opened. Six FBI agents in SWAT gear entered, their weapons trained on the industrialist. The four agents on the outside held .45-caliber Springfields; the agents on the inside were holding M4 carbines.
The two men who entered after them were not holding weapons, nor were they wearing SWAT black.
“Jacob Trask,” said Reed Bishop, unbuttoning his blazer, “you’re under arrest.”
Trask placed the shears in the box of soil. He turned to face the men, his hands on the planter. “The charge?”
Bishop continued to walk toward him alone. “Accessory to murder.”
“Based on what evidence?”
“The testimony of your chauffeur, Elisabeth Kent,” he said. “She went to the Atlanta PD when she learned that the woman you sent to New York, Agent Jessica Muloni, had been murdered.”
Trask smiled. “That’s ridiculous.”
“Ms. Kent, the former sheriff, gave us security footage.” Bishop stopped less than a foot from Trask. There was a Glock tucked in the agent’s belt. “Ridiculous or not, the charges will give us the twenty-four hours we’ll need to get you on federal terrorism offenses.”
He held out his hands. “Your charges will have me back here, tending my tulips, before they require watering. As for the other—”
“I’m sorry, but I don’t know you or your daughter,” Trask said. There was no hostility in his voice, no emotion whatsoever. “But I do know that your accusation is harassment. That will get me back here even sooner.”
Bishop looked like a mannequin, his skin pale and blank. Kealey walked up behind him, pulled him back. “I’d like to be alone in here,” he told the team.
“We can’t do that, Mr. Kealey,” said one of the masked figures, the special agent in charge.
“You can search the premises. You have a warrant,” Kealey said. “Agent Bishop will take responsibility for the prisoner.”
The agent hesitated. Bishop looked back at him. The IA officer nodded once.
“All right,” the team leader said. “We will be back here for the prisoner in fifteen minutes.”
“Thank you,” Kealey said. “Close the door behind you.”
The agent hesitated again, then complied. Trask regarded Kealey.
“Former CIA agent Ryan Kealey,” Trask said. “I’ve seen your name in DoD reports—”
“Don’t,” Kealey said.
“You need to hear this,” Trask went on. “You understand what’s out there. You know how the enemy is inoculated, protected by political correctness, but free to portray us as racists, haters, Christian soldiers, imperialists. They run labels up the flagpole like amens at a prayer meeting. Their poison is to make us hate ourselves. It has to stop!”
“What I need to do—what we need to do—is arrest you,” Kealey said. “And not just for a day. Agent Bishop and I were the ones who took down your nukes. Your team. And before you deny it, Minotaur phones were recovered from Hunt and the Texas Highway Patrol. The Bureau labs have them now. I’m betting they’re going to show that there were calls to—and from—your home phone.” Kealey moved closer now. “You see, Mr. Trask, the bad guys can be brought down legally.”
Trask’s expression turned ugly; he grabbed the Glock from Bishop’s belt and threw all three safeties as he slid away along the planter.
Bishop moved between Trask and Kealey. “Go on,” he said. “You took everything else from me.”
“It wasn’t about you!” Trask said. “I’m sorry your daughter was collateral damage. Very, very sorry. But you understand why it had to be done—”
“I don’t!” Bishop yelled. “No way do I, you sick bastard! But you can explain it in open court and keep explaining it right up until they strap you to the gurney.”
“That won’t happen—”
“It will. You want to kill me? They’ll get you for murder, and it ends the same way. As long as it puts an end to you, it’s all good to me.”
Trask was shaking his head. “I am a patriot! It doesn’t end this way!”
“You’re a piece of shit, and you’re done,” Bishop said through his teeth.
“No. I can shoot you and leave by the garden door—”
“On foot?” Bishop said. “The grounds are surrounded. There’s only one play that gets you out of here without cuffs. The one I let you take.”
Kealey was trailing Bishop. He had picked up the industrialist’s shears and was holding them at his side, his eye on the Glock. Bishop had hidden the gun behind his buttoned blazer until his back was to the SWAT team. Kealey had not supported the agent’s plan, but he respected it.
Trask was shaking his head. “All the planning ... I gave Hunt and his team every advantage! I won’t be a failure!”
“You failed the day you stopped trusting the system,” Bishop said. “It always self-corrects. It was designed to do that!”
Trask reached the sweating glass wall of the greenhouse. He held the gun waist high.
“I accomplish more in a day than men like you achieve in a lifetime.”
“Not this day,” Bishop said, stepping up to the barrel.
“Yes, today,” Trask replied. “Today I leave the dying body of America to the dogs.”
His eyes burned into Bishop’s as he raised the gun to his own right temple and fired. Bishop didn’t flinch as the impact slapped Trask to his left, smearing the clean spray of blood even as it struck the glass. Trask landed on a row of empty pots, shattering them. The two men looked down at the ruin of an industrial titan.
“I told you I wouldn’t need the backup,” Bishop said.
“He could have killed you instead,” Kealey said.
“He already had,” Bishop replied. “He knew it, too. This was his only play.”
There was no sense of triumph in his voice. There was only sadness as he looked down at the crumpled shell that had caused so much suffering.
Kealey wiped the shears on his shirt, put them back on the planter’s soil. He didn’t want anyone finding his fingerprints, thinking he’d forced Trask to do this.
It took just seconds for the nearest of the SWAT team members to reach them. They ran in, stopped, pulled up their masks.
“He had a gun under the table,” Kealey said. He raised and lowered his shoulders. “Nothing we could do.”
The special agent in charge came over, squatted over the gun—which had fallen from Trask’s hand—and made a face. “Weapons maker had a Glock ... with no serial number?”
“Guy was a traitor, right down to his gun,” Bishop told him.
“So you say.”
Bishop and Kealey just stood there.
The team leader frowned but said nothing more as he ordered his team to secure the crime scene. He told one of the agents to escort Bishop and Kealey out. They walked down the corridor past the autographs and accompanying portraits of the signers of the Declaration of Independence.
Kealey laid a hand on Bishop’s shoulder. “You’re not dead, you know.”
“Yeah. I hurt too much to be deceased.”
“I meant that you still have a lot to do, a lot to offer.”
“Maybe.”
“You saved a couple of million lives. That’s not an end. It’s a beginning.”
Bishop grinned. Kealey smiled back. “I don’t mean you have to top that, Reed.”
“I know what you meant.” Bishop cocked his head noncommittally as he looked at the respectfully lit documents. “But I believe what I said back there about the system working.” He added quietly, “How do I justify what I did?”
Kealey stopped and faced him. The agent escorting them stopped several paces back, gave them space.
“Trask declared war on this nation, and you responded,” Kealey said quietly. “You gave him a choice as to how the end played out. That’s more than he gave anyone else. That, to me, is one of the things we’re about. Americans. It may not be in any document, but it’s here.” He touched a hand to his own chest.
Bishop held it together a moment longer, then put his face in his hand, sobbing. Kealey turned and joined the agent. There would be time enough for embraces and words of comfort. Bishop knew he wasn’t alone, and right now all Kealey wanted was to give the man his privacy.
He looked over at the wall, at a painting of Thomas Jefferson standing beside a pedestal with the Declaration scrolled over the side.
Help him find peace, Mr. President, Kealey thought. Some things are that black and white, aren’t they?
CHAPTER 35
SILVER SPRING, MARYLAND
The funeral for Laura Bishop was held at the Holy Sepulchre Cemetery. It was where her mother was buried. She would be laid to rest in a plot Bishop had bought for himself.
Bishop’s brother, his brother’s wife, and their children were there to support him. So was his mother. Harper, Andrews, Cluzot, and Carlson were in attendance, as were select members of both houses. Along with the funeral of FBI agent Jessica Muloni, this was one of the few services President Brenneman attended as a result of the so-called “16 Hour” attacks. That was the name the media had given the time span covered by the two days of terror. Even in the administration there had been some debate about how to r
efer to the two bloody days. No one wanted to refer to it by the dates; not even the most lurid elements of the media wanted to create the impression that attacks against the nation were an ongoing series.
The media were not invited to the service or the interment. The burial was beneath spotless blue skies, where the priest remembered Laura as a young girl who cared not only for her father’s health but also for the health of others, just like her mother had.
“Young Laura was always making healthy-eating posters for the church and for her school,” the clergyman recalled. “She once asked me about the fat content of the Communion wafers and whether the holy water was spring or tap. Her interest in people, in caregiving, was one of the reasons she was with her father among the nurses and doctors who held such a high place in her heart. We know she was happy then, and that is how we must remember her. For we also know that, reunited with her mother, they are both happy now.”
Kealey didn’t know if he embraced that idea, and he took no solace from it. He had seen enough evil and suffering to doubt the existence of God Himself. Yet it never failed that these reminiscences spoken to celebrate a life were invariably the most painful part of saying good-bye. Or maybe they were intended to do just the opposite—to prevent us from leaving everything behind, to help us to hold on to the soul of a loved one.
After paying their respects to Laura’s mother, the Bishop family went back to their limousines alone, the officials leaving in their cars. Harper lingered long enough to tell Kealey, Allison, and Andrews that Julie was conscious, though still in a fog.
“It’ll be a while before she’s anything close to being herself again,” he said. “But she’ll get there. Hell, she’ll probably turn it into a platform to talk about courage.”
“Healing isn’t just about the body,” Allison said. “What she’s been through will help many others.”
Harper excused himself, leaving the others under an old oak tree. Standing there, seeing the play of light, feeling the nearly imperceptible dampness, caused Kealey to flash to the runabout under its limb.
Healing the mind? he thought. They had been one second away from a nuclear holocaust. Kealey didn’t know if his brain would ever process how many lives, how many faces on the news, would have been scratched in his soul had they failed. He had been thinking about that since they left Trask’s mansion, about the words that Jefferson had chosen to conclude the Declaration: “... with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence ...”
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