The Evil That Men Do

by Robert Gleason

  “When I let my CIA case officer know about an impending attack,” Rashid said, “someone at the Agency tipped off the New United Islamist Front that I was a double agent. Raza and Marika told me about it while they were interrogating me. They were laughing about it. Marika even let it slip that the U.S. president, Putilov, his junta of billionaires and the New United Islamist Front were in on this operation. They were desperate to end all this offshore expropriation talk once and for all, and since all of their enemies will be gathered in a single location—namely, the UN—what better way to rid themselves of them than to nuke them all at once? They were trying to get me to identify my CIA handlers in Pakistan and to find out how much I’d told them about the plot when you arrived at the safe house.”

  “But if they nuke the UN,” McMahon asked, “wouldn’t they be nuking a lot of oligarchs too? They’re attending the conference.”

  “They won’t be at the UN,” Elena pointed out. “They’re staying at one of J. T.’s Tower of Power hotels. He’s reserved the entire building for them.”

  McMahon could only stare blankly at Rashid and shake his head. “This isn’t happening,” he said quietly.

  “Oh, but it is,” Rashid said. “A one-kiloton terrorist nuke is the perfect weapon for a UN decapitation strike.”

  “And Tower and Putilov have plenty of fall guys to blame the attack on,” Elena said, “an almost infinite assortment of Islamist terrorist groups.”

  “Also President Tower’s hold on power’s been slipping since that Wall Street crash last year,” Jamie said. “The Democrats have control of the Senate, and they’ve threatened impeachment as well as expropriation. After a nuclear attack, Tower’d be able to scare the voters into rallying around him. The terrorist strike would consolidate his hold on power for the next two years of his second term.”

  “Remember General Tommy Franks’s prophetic warning when he retired?” Elena said. “He believed one nuclear terrorist attack on the U.S. and Congress would very likely hand its power over to a military-backed dictator. Tower has close allies in both the FBI and CIA, so you can’t count on the Bureau or the Agency to oppose a presidential coup.”

  “Remember that the former FBI director, Jonathan Conley,” McMahon said, “joined forces with Putilov to hand Tower the election.”

  “After the nuclear attack,” Jamie said, “Tower could easily stage a coup—if he had the backing of the FBI, the Agency, the military and Putilov. He could take the country over in a heartbeat.”

  “If we can’t turn to the White House, the CIA, or the FBI,” McMahon asked, “what are we supposed to do?”

  “Somehow, Danny,” Elena said, “we have to intercept that nuke before these guys can detonate it at the UN.”

  7

  “I thought you cared for me. I thought we had something, that we felt something for each other. I thought there was … a connection!”

  —Adrienne Harmon

  Adrienne came out of the bathroom, screaming like a screech whistle, her hands, throat and torso covered with blood. Staring at Fahad, she pointed toward him with a fully extended right arm and an accusatory index finger, then started limping toward him painfully, haltingly.

  “Astaghfirullah,” Fahad muttered under his breath. Allah, help me. He’d garroted her a full two minutes before her breathing stopped and her bladder voided. He’d then checked both her wrist and throat pulse. What was she? A fucking zombie? He’d killed her deader than deep-fried goat shit.

  But the bitch had come back to life.

  Now she was stumbling toward him, her hands reaching out in front of her like Night of the Living Dead.

  Still he couldn’t let her distract him. He had to do first things first. He had to take out the Meredith woman.

  Raising the rifle, he sighted in on Jules, who was back behind the front door, and squeezed off three quick shots.

  Door glass was exploding all over the lobby, and then the two old codgers were throwing themselves on top of Meredith.

  Fuck it. Maybe he could fire into the mass of bodies and kill them all.

  But before he could get off another round, Adrienne was on him, wrapping her legs around his waist, hammering him with her fists, scratching, kicking, biting and shrieking. In fact, she was now throttling him, spitting repeatedly in his face, tearing at the AR-15 and gasping-rasping wildly:

  “I thought you cared for me,” she yelled. “I thought we had something, that we felt something for each other. I thought there was … a connection!”

  Shaking her loose, he grabbed a handful of hair along one side of her head. Rising to his feet, he pivoted and drove a forearm into her opposite temple, getting every ounce of his two hundred pounds into it. She collapsed like a rag doll with the stuffing ripped out.

  Lowering the AR-15, he placed it over her chest and put two silenced rounds into her sternum. Taking a deep breath, he gave her forehead a third insurance tap, just above her left eye.

  When he turned around, Meredith and the two old men were gone from the lobby, nowhere in sight, and sirens were wailing through New York’s Upper West Side loud enough to wake the damned.

  He took another long deep breath, paused to steady his nerves, and finally pulled himself together.

  Well you have other targets on that list. You can settle with the Meredith bitch later.

  He placed the AR-15 on the apartment floor, brushed himself off, and headed for the door.

  He had to get to the fire stairs and make it to the service exit. Then get back to his Bronx safe house uptown.

  PART XVII

  “Do you want me to miss the story of a lifetime?”

  —Jules Meredith

  1

  “Danny, can you get it through that reptilian brain of yours? You don’t need to do this. You’re paying tickets you don’t owe.”

  —Elena Moreno

  McMahon watched the team remove a diverse assortment of weapons from the three big duffle bags and spread them across the table. Elena’s Desert Eagle was already in front of her. Adara had just taken a Mosby tactical 12-gauge six-rounder—with a wire fold-out stock and sawed off at the pump—from the bag. He saw four MP7 submachine guns and a variety of nines, including four Glocks and a Sig Sauer. Trijicon night sights. Nylon holsters. Extended magazines.

  “What are the weapons for?” McMahon asked. “The Battle of the Apocalypse?”

  “Just about,” Elena said.

  “Speaking of which, do we have a plan?” Rashid asked.

  “Sure,” Adara said, “we battle house to house, ditch to ditch, to the last person standing and the final fucking cartridge. Then we go to knives, rocks, sticks, feet, teeth and fists.”

  “In short,” Rashid said, “we have no plan.”

  “I’m down anyway,” McMahon said with an unemotional shrug. “After what you guys did for me, after what you’ve told me, you’re the only people I trust.”

  “All due respect, Danny,” Adara said, “none of us have time to babysit you once the shit hits the fan.”

  “I can handle firearms,” McMahon said weakly.

  His remark was greeted with a chorus of harsh, mocking horselaughs.

  “I don’t think our boy here knows an AK from a bucket of ribs,” Jonesy said.

  “Maybe,” McMahon said, “but I am involved whether you like it or not, and I can contribute.”

  “How?” Elena asked.

  She had the grace not to smile, but Jonesy was openly scornful.

  “This ought to be good,” Jonesy said with a sarcastic laugh.

  “I have the biggest news-satire TV show worldwide, right?” McMahon asked.

  “So?” Adara asked.

  “I can be your embedded reporter,” McMahon said.

  “Now I am hallucinatin’,” Jonesy said.

  “Slow down, Jonesy,” Adara said. “Danny may have something. We’re on the verge of committing about nine thousand felonies against the richest, most powerful people on earth. If we survive this thing, they’re
going to come at us with a media firestorm, to say nothing of every law enforcement agency on the planet, to say nothing of the Russian and American armies. They’ll claim we were the terrorists and issue orders to shoot us on sight. They can’t say that about McMahon. He was captured and tortured by terrorists, and he’s a super-famous, global celebrity TV star. He’d also be in a great position to argue our case in the court of public opinion, when this cruel war is over. It’s not the worst idea in the world to have him with us.”

  “They’ll say we kidnapped and brainwashed him like Patty Hearst,” Jamie said.

  “And I’ll say bullshit,” McMahon said.

  “This is a joke, right?” Jonesy said, looking at the ceiling.

  “I’ll also get us the biggest, most lucrative book/TV/film deal in history,” McMahon said. “We’ll all split even.”

  “But it ain’t about money with you,” Jonesy said. “You already rich. You have one of them ‘hidden agendas.’”

  McMahon just stared at them, his eyes empty of expression, and shrugged.

  “I was there,” Rashid said, “and I know what you’re thinking, Danny. You feel you got something to prove after what they did to you in that safe house.”

  “Something did happen,” McMahon said, “something I can’t explain. All I know is I have to see this through.”

  Adara slapped him softly on the shoulder. “Danny, you’re all right.”

  “We’ll see,” Jamie said.

  “Oh, hell, why shouldn’t he come along?” Rashid asked. “I was with him. He stood up. I say his balls are as big as anyone’s here.”

  “You got to understand though,” Adara said to McMahon, “this isn’t any TV talk show or comic monologue.”

  “We lightin’ muthafuckas up,” Jonesy said.

  “Assuming they don’t light us up first,” Jamie said.

  “Assuming we don’t join Johnny D.,” Adara said.

  “And where’s Johnny D.?” McMahon asked.

  “Dead at the present time,” Jonesy said.

  “You have to understand,” Elena said, “you roll with us, you roll all the way.”

  “Way out to the edge,” Jonesy said.

  “Tell him why,” Elena said.

  “It’s the only place to win,” Adara said.

  “I’m in,” McMahon said.

  “Tell us what Raza’s like,” Jonesy asked, grinning.

  “Enquiring minds want to know,” Adara said, laughing.

  “What do you think she’s like?” McMahon asked.

  “Hard-hittin’ woman,” Jonesy said.

  “With dead worlds in her eyes,” Rashid said.

  “I think he misses her,” Adara said, smiling. “Danny, you want to see her again, don’t you?”

  “In a cold-zero target picture,” McMahon said.

  “Damn,” Jamie said, grinning, “you are down with guns.”

  “Danny,” Jonesy asked, “you still say you know firearms?” Jonesy ejected the magazine from Elena’s Desert Eagle, ejected a round from the chamber and handed it to him. “You want one of these?”

  “I’ve owned bowling balls lighter than this,” McMahon said, having to heft it with both hands. “What’s it for?”

  “In case Elena gotta shoot her way out of a Zombie Apocalypse,” Jonesy said.

  “Where’s my gun?” Danny asked.

  “Good question,” Adara said. “What’s Danny going to do, if we take him along?”

  “Talk,” Jamie said.

  “He talks real good,” Elena said, nodding.

  “But he don’t know shit about guns,” Jonesy said.

  “He wouldn’t know a Desert Eagle from a Big Mac,” Adara concurred.

  “Danny, can you get it through that reptilian brain of yours?” Elena asked. “You don’t need to do this. You’re paying tickets you don’t owe.”

  “But I do need to do this,” McMahon said.

  “Where we’re headed, it won’t be any comic monologue,” Adara said.

  “Where are we headed?” McMahon asked.

  “The Eat-Shit-and-Die Hotel,” Jonesy said.

  “It can’t be any worse than that safe house,” McMahon said.

  “He’s got a point,” Rashid said.

  “Got any ideas about transport?” Adara asked.

  “I think I can get us a news chopper,” Elena said. “I have a friend who can get one.”

  “You’re going to drag Jules into this?” McMahon asked, stunned.

  “To get around Manhattan,” Elena explained, “we’ll need a helicopter, and Jules can get a news chopper.”

  “I don’t want Jules coming either,” Adara said, “but I do want that chopper.”

  “A van won’t do it?” McMahon asked.

  “The streets around the UN will be impassable, hopelessly jammed up,” Elena said. “We’ll never find Fahad and his crew.”

  “So we get Jules to commandeer a chopper?” McMahon asked.

  “More or less,” Elena said.

  There was a long silence.

  “Sounds like we gonna stack it up,” Jonesy finally said to McMahon. “You sure you want in?”

  “It’s going to take balls,” Adara said, staring at McMahon.

  “Ride-it-into-the-wall balls,” Jonesy said.

  “Yeah, well, count me in,” McMahon said. “Stuff happened back in that safe house, stuff I can’t put behind me. I got to do this.”

  They stared at McMahon a long slow minute. Then Jonesy gave McMahon a wide, slow, surprisingly friendly grin. His smile gave the game away.

  “Ah, hell, then, Danny,” Jonesy said, extending his hand, “in that case, welcome the fuck aboard.”

  2

  What you do in the dark will come to light, the Bible said, and Jules Meredith had descended on Benjamin Jowett like the Wrath of an Avenging God, shining the harsh spotlight of public scrutiny on all of his wicked ways and devious dealings.

  Benjamin Jowett sat at his desk in the New World Trade Center and scowled. Here he was—fifty-eight years old, with a $3,500 haircut, a $50,000 dark blue, immaculately tailored Kiton K-5 suit, a $35,000 Hublot Big Bang Ferrari King Gold 45mm 18k Rose Gold Limited Edition watch. He was still handsome and still had all his hair, which was currently coiffed and colored a tasteful light blond. He still had perfectly capped teeth, which gave him a dazzlingly bright, movie-star smile. He was the proprietor of one of the largest privately owned hedge funds on earth, and yet despite all of his money, power, good looks and accoutrements, that muckraking bitch, Jules Meredith, could cut through his high-tech, anti-hacking security systems and his expensively produced, elaborately crafted gentlemanly façade like a chain saw screaming through steaming hot … shit. She could and was exposing all his most avaricious secrets to the mocking, sneering media, making him one of the most despised and derided billionaires in the world.

  One of his more lucrative sidelines, for instance, was his so-called Weather Derivative Funds. In effect, it placed bets on the weather, which any outsider would have previously viewed as harmless, until, that is, Jules C. Meredith got her arching, needle-sharp talons into the story. She proved that he had his complex of subcompanies, whose sole job was to systematically buy and sell grain commodities during periods of acute water shortage, and thereby drive up the prices during commodity-market bidding wars. Jowett, thus, elevated food costs to heights far above anything that any protracted dry spell could have accomplished, all the while making him billions in derivative grain profits. An unfortunate by-product of their “business” was to put a subsistence diet beyond the reach of those already starving on the margins in Sub-Saharan Africa, the Mideast, South Asia, India, China, and Southeast Asia.

  That Meredith bitch had described his financial instruments as “famine derivatives” and argued that Jowett was profiteering off the kinds of climate-change-inspired, famine-producing droughts that emaciated and murdered indigent peasants and Third World slum-dwellers by the hundreds of millions.

  Many on Wall S
treet believed that his artificially induced price inflation of basic grains—and the famines that inflation aggravated—had in 2012 driven millions of people in the Mideast into the streets in protest of the skyrocketing food prices. These demonstrations led to the infamous “Arab Spring,” a spate of revolutions that incited the overthrow of several authoritarian rulers. Most of these secular despots were replaced by fanatical Islamist tyrants who supported terrorism, fomented regional civil war, set the Mideast aflame and proved to be even more brutal and oppressive than their predecessors. Many economists held Jowett responsible for that Arab Spring and the pervasive anarchy that followed, a dubious achievement in which Benjamin privately took an almost narcissistic pride.

  Not that he bragged about it in public. His “famine derivatives” were a highly profitable but dirty little secret he attempted to keep under wraps. He’d lavished scores of millions of dollars on PR firms all over the world over the last twenty years in an attempt to conceal that enterprise. And all the obfuscation and subterfuge had worked. He’d kept his grain-price manipulations below the media radar screen and had, in fact, successfully branded himself as a philanthropist, a patron of the arts and a commodities markets guru. He’d gone to New York’s most celebrated charity balls, donated incalculable sums to Lincoln Center, PBS and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. For twenty years, he’d been there for every opening night at the Met opera and had been treated like a deity on the different financial networks, in newspaper and magazine interviews and on the national talk shows.

  No more.

  What you do in the dark will come to light, the Bible said, and Jules Meredith had descended on Benjamin Jowett like the Wrath of an Avenging God, shining the harsh spotlight of public scrutiny on all of his wicked ways and devious dealings.

  She had sullied his reputation forever. Instead of referring to him as “a philanthropist, a patron of the arts and a commodities markets guru” she had renamed him “the Planet’s Number One Famine Pimp” and “Our Preeminent Impresario of Global Malnuitrtion.”

  Then that madman, Danny McMahon, had taken to running news clips of his comings and goings, narrated by McMahon’s own scathing commentary, in which he quoted Meredith or made up vicious attacks himself, denouncing Jowett as “America’s Grand Panjandrum of Mass Famine” and “our Generalissimo of Genocidal, Baby-Murdering Greed,” accusing him of “killing people with food deprivation the way Hitler killed them with gas chambers and Stalin killed them with hunger and cold in the Siberian death camps.”