by Eric Bernt
The cabbie, who dealt with this and every other New York City traffic challenge on a daily basis, knew exactly how to circumnavigate it. He forced his way through three lanes of traffic and veered west on Fifty-Seventh. He would take Eighth Avenue to Columbus Circle, and his passengers would never know the difference.
As their cab waited at a red light on Fifty-Seventh Street, Eddie suddenly saw something out his side window. It caused him to momentarily forget about everything else in the world. Seeing the thing from a distance through the dirty window of a cab was not enough. He had to see it clearly for himself. And, more importantly, he had to hear it for himself.
Without warning, Eddie opened the left rear cab door and jumped out into traffic before Skylar realized what was going on. She tried to grab his arm, but it was too late. Eddie was already running into oncoming traffic. Right in front of a town car. It was horrifying.
The SCREECH of the approaching tires completely drowned out Skylar’s attempt at a scream. “Eddie!”
The black sedan missed him by less than a foot. Probably closer to six inches. The side-view mirror practically grazed his left cheek. The sedan’s driver angrily blared his horn at Eddie throughout the next block.
Eddie never noticed him or his sedan. In fact, he never even flinched. He remained transfixed, a junkie chasing the ultimate high, and continued running through traffic, away from the cab, with his laptop and echo box in hand.
“Eddie, stop! Stop!” But he kept right on going. In a panic, Skylar scrambled after him into traffic, leaving the driver enraged.
She, too, was nearly killed in an instant. A delivery truck narrowly avoided her as it sped on by. Drivers, it seemed, just weren’t prepared for random pedestrians running in front of their vehicles without any warning whatsoever. The bigger problem with this oversized vehicle, for Skylar, was that it completely obstructed her view of Eddie. Which would have been okay, except that it was followed by another truck. And another one. “Eddie!”
By the time the small convoy ended, Eddie was nowhere to be seen. She bolted across the remaining three lanes of traffic, looking everywhere. “Eddie!” It was only pure luck that kept her from being run over. Reaching the other side of the street, she didn’t understand where Eddie could have gone. Or why he would have bolted away. She was spinning in circles, beginning to panic, when something dawned on her. She realized why Eddie had bolted from the cab.
She turned around to face one of the most revered American buildings ever constructed.
CHAPTER 59
Carnegie Hall, New York City, May 27, 5:21 p.m.
Eddie’s expression was one of pure wonder as he walked through the lobby of the hallowed confines. Not unlike children driving up to Disneyland, or adults looking out an airplane window and seeing the Las Vegas Strip for the first time, it was something people never forgot. He had imagined this location more times than he could remember. He was already looking forward to regaling anyone who would listen with every detail of his visit to Carnegie Hall. In the foyer, the Florentine Renaissance decor and the tinged marble floor—gently worn from the millions of footsteps that had crossed over it through the years—were just as he had pictured them. So were the round-headed archways of white plaster and gray stone. And the Corinthian pilasters. And the vaulted ceilings hanging over the gold-and-white interior.
On one side of the lobby was the box office, where a line of twenty people hoped to buy tickets to an upcoming event. Alas, each of them was being told by the two salespeople behind bulletproof Plexiglas that every show was sold out.
On the other side of the lobby, a German tourist group was setting out on their guided journey into the main hall, the Isaac Stern Auditorium. As their guide opened the door to the hall, utterly lustrous MUSIC wafted through the opening. Conductor Charles Dutoit was rehearsing the Philadelphia Orchestra as they readied for their performance of Hector Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique later that evening. The sounds were some of the most beautiful Eddie had ever heard, but they only lasted a few seconds, because the doors then closed. There was no question in his mind. He simply had to hear more. Eddie quickly caught up with the tour group and remained in the middle of them, just as Detective McHenry had suggested. He apparently looked sufficiently German, because none of the tourists even glanced twice at him. The lone security guard on duty at the entrance didn’t, either, so Eddie was allowed to move with the group into the auditorium.
Inside the hall, Eddie immediately stopped moving. Even momentarily stopped breathing. He closed his eyes as the most blissful smile crept over his face. He bathed in the thunderous music flooding over him. Everything he’d read about this place was true. The acoustics were simply astonishing. Architect William Tuthill did, indeed, have a golden ear.
The rest of the tour group continued quietly through the hall, but without Eddie. He sat down at the rear of the auditorium, slowly rotating his head from side to side as he listened to the sumptuous SOUNDS. His level of bliss was one few would ever know. He hoped he could stay there for days.
Unfortunately, his visit was about to be cut short.
Out of breath, Skylar raced into the lobby, frantically scanning every face for the one she was looking for. “Eddie!” Nobody paid much attention to her. This was, after all, New York. She rushed to the front of the ticket line, pressing her face to the protective partition. “Excuse me—”
The salesperson never bothered to look up and spoke in a monotone. “You’ll have to wait in line like everybody else.”
Skylar put her mouth right next to the slots of the circular opening. “I’m a doctor. I’m looking for my patient.”
Now the clerk glanced at her. “Why would your patient be here?”
“Because I think he ran in here.”
“Is he dangerous?”
“No, he’s not. But he’s lost. I need to find him.”
“If you don’t see him, then I haven’t seen him, either.” She turned back to her computer screen.
Skylar surveyed the others in the lobby, moving toward the entrance to the main hall. The security guard approached her. “Ma’am, you cannot go into the auditorium without an escort.”
“Will you escort me?”
“Next tour starts in an hour. You can wait over there.” He pointed to an area off to the side.
“I can’t wait.” She continued through the doors without stopping as the orchestra rehearsed. The guard quickly caught up with her as she surveyed the thousands of auditorium seats. She knew Eddie had to be here somewhere.
The guard got right in her face and whispered intensely, “Leave now, or I will call the police.”
“Good. Do it. Ask for Detective Butler McHenry.”
The security guard hadn’t expected this. “What is this about?” There was more than a hint of concern in his voice.
She answered tersely. “I’m a doctor looking for a patient who has escaped from a mental institution.” She kept scanning the empty seats, wondering where the hell Eddie could be.
The guard’s eyebrows raised. “A mental patient?”
She nodded for emphasis, allowing the guard’s fears to run rampant. “He’s about five foot ten, Caucasian, with brown hair. He’s carrying a blue nylon backpack. Have you seen him?”
“What’s in the backpack?” The guard was clearly concerned about the possibility of weapons—or worse—in the possession of a mental patient inside the building.
“Electronic equipment. Nothing that could hurt anyone, if that’s what you’re worried about.”
He breathed a sigh of relief. “Why would an escaped mental patient be here?”
They were apparently talking too loudly. At the conductor’s direction, the musicians stopped playing, and the auditorium fell silent. The maestro turned to glare across the expanse of the hall at the source of the distraction. “Do you mind?”
The guard blushed. He held up his hand as if to say, Sorry, won’t happen again. He pointed toward the door. “Let’s continue this outsi
de.”
Skylar took one last look around the auditorium before leaving. Where the hell could Eddie have gone?
At that moment, Eddie was being escorted out of the building by another guard, who had been dispatched the moment Eddie had taken a seat in the great hall. The act was strictly forbidden. Upon entering the building, his every movement had been followed through a well-concealed security system, because of the way he had been carrying his backpack. It clearly contained something of weight, and could very well be an explosive device.
The guard had approached Eddie quietly, hoping not to disturb the rehearsal, and asked if he had a guest pass, which would have allowed him to attend the rehearsal. When Eddie replied that he did not know what a guest pass was, the guard asked Eddie to follow him.
As they exited through the nearest doorway at the rear of the hall, Eddie asked if the guard was taking him to get a guest pass. The guard replied no, he was going to get him an exit pass. The statement was not technically a lie, so Eddie didn’t recognize it as such. He said that he had never heard of an exit pass before.
The guard said that exit passes were very special and that only very special people ever got them. Eddie told the man that he lived in Harmony House, which was a special place for special people. With an unsympathetic smirk, the guard said that everything must be right with the universe, and he led Eddie out of the building onto the sidewalk along Seventh Avenue.
When Eddie asked where the exit pass was, the guard said he just gave it to him. Eddie looked confused, because the statement rang true—which in the guard’s mind, it was—but Eddie was also certain that the statement was not true. The man had not given him anything, at least that Eddie was aware of.
He looked even more confused as the man quickly retreated back inside the building and locked the door. Eddie moved to the door, knocking politely. There was no answer. There was no door handle, either. He tried knocking again, but to no avail. Wondering if he might have misplaced his exit pass, he checked his pockets, as well as the ground he stood on, in case he had dropped it. He hadn’t. There was no sign of a pass anywhere.
Eddie looked up from the sidewalk at the city around him, which suddenly seemed very large. And loud. And scary. It only now dawned on him that Skylar was nowhere in sight. He was alone in New York City.
“Skylar?”
CHAPTER 60
Main Lobby, Carnegie Hall, May 27, 5:28 p.m.
Skylar and the security guard had been joined in the lobby by the guard’s superior, the director of Carnegie Hall security. Skylar wasn’t quite screaming at the top of her lungs, but she was close. The security director did his best to maintain his composure. “Ma’am, would you mind lowering your voice?”
“I want help finding my patient!”
“Doctor, if you would stop yelling, we will be glad to assist you.”
She paused to collect herself, and nodded. No more yelling.
The director of security appeared satisfied. “One of my guards just escorted someone who fits your patient’s description out of the building.”
“Why was he escorted out?” Skylar’s concern grew.
“He had gained unauthorized access to the hall during a closed rehearsal.”
Skylar took charge. “Show me where he was escorted out.”
They were joined on the sidewalk by the guard who had led Eddie out of Carnegie Hall. The guard looked repeatedly to his boss, wondering what he had done wrong.
Skylar scanned around them in every direction, but Eddie was nowhere in sight. She turned to the guard who’d led Eddie out. “How long ago was he here?”
The guard shrugged. “About four or five minutes.”
Skylar resumed searching around them, wondering which way he would have gone. She looked for markers—anything that might have attracted Eddie’s attention. There was nothing. Until she saw the trees four blocks away. Central Park. Compared with the rest of New York City, the park was quiet. And trees meant birds. There was no question which way he was headed.
Skylar took off running.
CHAPTER 61
New York Office, Department of Homeland Security, May 27, 5:31 p.m.
Max Garber followed the GPS blip on his screen as it moved through the Lincoln Tunnel heading for New Jersey. Garber was impressed that they could get such a clear signal through forty feet of water that was practically radioactive. The sad fact was the Hudson River was so polluted it had been declared a Superfund site after General Electric was found guilty of having dumped more than one million pounds of polychlorinated biphenyls into it over the previous thirty years.
In the fifteen minutes it had taken to get approval from the Homeland higher-ups for tapping Detective Butler McHenry’s phone, Max Garber had brought himself up to speed with the day’s events. He glanced at Agent Raines’s location; he was now moving westbound on Desbrosses Street in his search for the doctor and patient who were believed to be in possession of stolen classified technology. Garber sent Raines a message: Det. heading to NJ. Lincoln Tunnel.
Raines responded immediately: Keep me posted. Want to hear calls.
Garber typed: Done.
CHAPTER 62
Hudson Street, New York City, May 27, 5:34 p.m.
Agent Raines rode shotgun in a blacked-out Suburban, scanning pedestrians when he wasn’t working his phone. There were three other vehicles cruising the area around the Sixth Precinct, and they were soon to be joined by more. The search for Dr. Skylar Drummond and Edward Parks was rapidly becoming an all-out manhunt.
The agent behind the wheel got a message over his radio headset, which he immediately related to Raines. The NYPD had just received word from the head of security at Carnegie Hall that there had been some kind of disturbance involving a doctor and an escaped mental patient.
The Suburban was stuck in gridlock, so the driver screeched a U-turn into the middle of oncoming traffic. New Yorkers didn’t care that the vehicle had bubble lights flashing through the grille or sirens wailing. They only knew that some asshole cut them off, and they were going to express their feelings about the matter. At least a dozen cars started honking.
The Suburban immediately came upon more gridlocked traffic. The driver didn’t hesitate to veer up onto the sidewalk. Within half a block the traffic was moving again; the Suburban hopped off the sidewalk curb and back onto the street, running through red light after red light.
What Agent Raines didn’t realize was that he, too, was being pursued. After Lutz’s brief encounter with Raines in front of the Sixth Precinct, Michael Barnes had instructed his men to place a transmitter in the wheel well of the Homeland vehicle. Barnes knew he didn’t have the manpower to locate Skylar and Eddie before the government agents did. But he had the manpower and know-how to take the doctor and her patient from them once the fugitives were in Homeland’s custody. It was a dangerous game, but it wouldn’t be the first time Barnes had played it. Sometimes, you just needed to show people how many dangerous threats there were out in the big, bad world.
Somebody was using Homeland for their own agenda, so Barnes decided he would, too. He only planned to briefly detain Skylar and Eddie before he and his men would then “rescue” them. Barnes would come off as a hero, the duo humiliated at the sports bar would have the last laugh, and Dr. Fenton would be able to take the credit he deserved for the echo box before riding off into the sunset. After all, the device was the man’s swan song. The grand finale on a long and illustrious career. Barnes wanted his boss to go out on a high note—both because he deserved it, and because the revelation that an unknown faction had temporarily kidnapped his staff doctor and her patient from federal custody would guarantee increased funding for Harmony House security for years to come.
That, and Barnes simply wanted to show whoever these bastards were not to mess with him.
Hirsch and Lutz followed Raines’s blacked-out Suburban from a safe distance of several blocks. They would not make the mistake of moving in too soon; there was no margin for er
ror. They had already suffered one failure. They could not afford another. They would wait until Dr. Drummond, Edward Parks, and the echo box were securely in Homeland’s possession. Then, with sudden swiftness, they would strike with brutal efficiency.
For now, they would wait.
CHAPTER 63
Harmony House, Woodbury, New Jersey, May 27, 5:39 p.m.
Inside his basement office, Barnes had just finished giving instructions for another mission to Able and Baker, his other two-man team. Able was Conrad Strunk, the smallest of Michael Barnes’s team, and also the meanest. Alaskan trailer trash. Strunk had absolutely no problem with dirty work, which was the nature of this mission. He saw the world as a battlefield, and terrible things happened in battle. It was that simple. Baker, his partner, whose proper name was Joe Dobson, knew that only too well. The man had survived an eight-week kidnapping ordeal in Baghdad that left him with only one testicle and permanent emotional detachment, as a result of torture methods that could accurately be described as medieval.
Barnes told Strunk and Dobson exactly how it should go down. Barnes wanted it done later that night. The deed was not only intended to stop the leak; it was also designed to send a message to Nurse Gloria’s handlers. Whoever she was working for needed to know the gloves were off. The stakes had been raised. Barnes wanted these bastards to know he would be looking for them, and their next recruit, every second of every hour he remained head of security at Harmony House. Michael Barnes did not like to be played, and he was going to make damn sure the offending party knew it.
He was going to make the nurse suffer.
Fenton passed Strunk and Dobson as they exited Barnes’s office. The senior doctor barely acknowledged them. Normally, he didn’t like being down in this basement, and liked becoming directly involved in facility security matters even less, but today wasn’t normal. Very far from it, in fact. He entered his security director’s office without knocking, something he’d never done before. “Delineate our options.”