by James Phelan
Walker had to find out. He aimed the Sig, which was chambered for the powerful .357 round; fifteen-round-capacity mag; ten rounds left. Through the window he aimed straight ahead and up to the ceiling with a two-handed grip, his right hand on the trigger, left hand over it, pulling slightly in, forming an A-frame to support the fire and combat the muzzle climb.
BOOM! BOOM!
The sprinklers started up—first from the shattered waterhead that he’d just shot out, then one by one, a chain reaction radiating out, in the office and now down the hall. The fire alarms followed, clanging metal bells amplified through the building, then the whoop-whoop of the electronic evacuation siren.
Walker adjusted his grip on the Sig. Eight rounds left.
He crawled across the hallway, below the window level, hidden by the solid partition, his back to the wall. He looked around the corner of the hallway; the two cops were still taking cover. Good tactics. Hold position, let another force flush from the other side—
BANG! BANG!
Two 9-millimeter holes punched through the sheet-rock to Walker’s left, a foot between them. They were shoulder height; holes the size of silver dollars.
Walker dropped low to the floor to his right.
BANG! BANG! BANG!
Walker fell face down to the carpet as a 9-millimeter round tore through his right forearm.
The Sig hit the floor. He picked it up left-handed and rolled onto his left side, then loosed three rounds back through the sheet-rock, on the same trajectory as those that had just come through.
Walker moved fast. His right arm diagonal across his chest, his hand holding onto his left shoulder, he crouched and ran to the office doorway. He could feel the sticky blood pooling inside his shirt and suit at the elbow, the pain so far all heat and numbness.
At the doorway he saw an open-plan office.
A figure ran across his view.
Bellamy.
•
The office was a big space, housing forty or so workstations in waist-high cubicles, four wide and at least ten long. The sprinklers poured rain over it all. Walker ran into the room and then crouched behind a cubicle wall.
The pain was coming on; throbbing, stabbing in his forearm.
“Give it up, Dan!” Walker yelled to the room.
BANG! BANG!
The Glock 29; a capacity of fifteen 9-millimeter rounds. Bellamy had six left.
The shots had come from the far side of the room, near a doorway that led out to the other side of the corridor, behind the two cops taking cover.
Walker made his way to the middle of the room, his body low, pain beginning to tear at him. “You’re not getting out of here!” he called.
Walker waited. A second. Five. Nothing but the falling water and clanging alarm and electronic wail. He stole a glance over the top of the cubicles. He watched and waited, his vision blurred, a combination of the torrential downpour and the pain of the gunshot wound.
“Give it up, Bellamy!”
Silence.
Walker moved.
Where Bellamy had been there was blood. Not much; a smear against the cubicle wall, and some drops leading around the corner, as if Bellamy were trying to circle around Walker and get back toward the bathroom.
Walker followed the drop pattern to the doorway to the corridor where he’d entered.
The alarms droned. Water fell.
9:35.
Bellamy was gone.
•
Walker was in the corridor, his blood dripping into the water that still rushed from the sprinklers.
He put down the Sig and pulled off his suit jacket. With his foot on the body of the jacket and a sleeve in his tight left fist, he tore off the sleeve. Watching to his left and right, wary, he tied the fabric tightly around his forearm. It was a through-and-through shot, tearing through muscle and possibly grazing bone. He kept the arm close to his chest, his right hand elevated to his left shoulder.
He picked up the Sig. For all his training Walker had never much practiced firing a pistol left-handed. The Sig was a good gun, though, the weight and balance and recoil all well designed. If anything, it was a little small in his grip.
A few paces down the corridor he spotted blood in the water; not his own.
Walker switched sides, his back against the other wall, his gun hand leading the way. He stopped at an open doorway. In the reflection of the wet glass opposite he could see that the room held a lot of televisions, most of them playing the same thing: the feed from the trading floor of the New York Stock Exchange.
Looking down, Walker saw that the room held something else: a blood trail, small, already washing away.
Walker inched closer to the doorway and peered around the doorjamb.
A grid of screens lined a wall. This was some sort of control room; perhaps a media-monitoring room. No water fell in here, but everything was covered in a fine white chemical powder. But there was still blood in the water by his feet as it flooded the floor through the doorway.
He heard Bellamy’s voice, a low murmur.
Walker stepped inside, the Sig still leading the way. Left-handed, losing blood, he couldn’t keep it elevated forever. He lowered the pistol.
Some of the screens showed television channels: the news crews feeding live shots from outside the New York Stock Exchange; cops everywhere; the Secret Service agents largely gone. Walker knew they would stay on scene until they got their man. They would be quarterbacking this; ordering the NYPD’s SWAT guys to be sure that there was no way out of the building before they stormed the place. Easily done, Walker could see, since the outside windows and doors had automatically shuttered with heavy-duty steel screens in response to the attack.
Walker moved closer to the screens. Bellamy’s voice emanated from behind them, in an adjoining room.
Walker moved around the screens. He saw a final shot of the Vice President being half-carried with Bronson and the other agent into an armored Suburban and whisked from the scene. Blood was smeared down the Vice President’s neck, and the cameras froze on that, zoomed in. A disturbing picture. The ticker was already screaming out the assassination attempt.
Walker edged toward the open doorway to the adjoining room. The wet soles of his shoes mixed with the residue of the dry-chem extinguishers, sticky, claggy, a wet dough that sucked at his feet.
Bellamy’s voice grew louder as Walker stood to his right side and looked in, his left arm raised straight, sighting Bellamy’s center mass down the iron sights of the Sig.
“Put the phone down,” Walker said.
Bellamy turned.
Walker kept the Sig leveled at the traitor’s heart.
Bellamy said another few words, too low to make out, then put the phone down in the cradle.
Two men. The end of the line for one.
Walker saw blood on the floor at Bellamy’s feet. Not a lot; perhaps a leg wound, a shard of shrapnel from a close encounter with one of the .357 rounds. Not enough to be life threatening, but it would slow him down. Then Walker became aware of something else, something in Bellamy’s demeanor. Confidence. The kind of confidence that came from knowing that everything is all right. From knowing that he had the upper hand.
Then, movement behind Bellamy.
Another man.
77
“Walker’s still in there,” said Bill McCorkell.
He looked around the FBI room—and stopped, seeing that the two agents had Clara cuffed and subdued. “What happened?”
Somerville looked at Clara, said, “She’d turned. Working with Bellamy. His back-up plan.”
McCorkell said, “Clara—a double for Bellamy?”
“Triple, quadruple, I’m losing count,” Somerville said. “Either way let’s just worry about Walker.”
Fiona Somerville listened through headphones to the progress of the Hostage Rescue Team. “We’ve got audio from inside,” she said. “Listen.”
She pulled the earphone jack out of the speakers so that all in the
FBI control room could hear.
•
Walker looked from the man back to Bellamy, who now held a Glock pistol aimed at him.
A stand-off: 9-millimeter versus .357. Both men wounded. Each with everything to lose.
“The ultimate insider trading,” Bellamy said. “This is Barry, my guy. He works here. Works for me. He’s made a lot of money doing it for, what, four years now, Barry?”
Walker looked to the man named Barry.
Barry was silent. Barry was sweating. Barry looked like a scared boy.
“Barry?” Bellamy said.
Silence. Sweat. Strain.
“Barry!”
“Yes?” Barry said. “Yes!” His wide eyes looked from Bellamy to Walker.
“That’s a boy,” Bellamy said. He took a pace from the phone and the desk, the Glock still leveled at Walker. The 9×19-millimeter Parabellum was the most popular caliber for American law-enforcement agencies. It probably contained Hydrashock rounds, 124 grain. Five meters between them. No chance he’d miss.
Walker wouldn’t miss either. He watched and waited.
“See, Barry here did a little job for me, didn’t you, Barry?” Bellamy said. “Barry . . .”
“Yes, sir,” Barry replied. He looked ill, as though he only now realized the price that came with doing whatever that job was. “I did it.”
“See, Barry works in IT here, and he placed these new hard drives like the one he’s holding all around the place.”
Walker looked at the black box in Barry’s hands. It was small but it looked heavy; a quarter the size of a shoebox; maybe ten times the mass of the cell phone Bellamy had handed the Vice President.
“As of nine-thirty this morning they’ve all been activated,” Bellamy said. “And they have a sound activation. Want to know what that is, Walker?”
Walker remained silent.
“Of course you do,” Bellamy said. He looked around at the screens, smiling when he saw the news images flash up: the Vice President being rushed out, Walker being tackled to the ground—and then the explosion. “I’m not a betting man, Walker. I cover all bases. Sometimes I’ve got to steal a base. See?”
Walker watched in silence. Barry continued to sweat as he held the black box. Ten times the mass of the cell-phone bomb. At least. ONC explosive. Practically untraceable and undetectable. It would vaporize them all. According to Bellamy the building was full of them. But how’d that get through security . . .
“You see, Walker,” Bellamy said, taking a step back, his left hand feeling for the desk next to him, his right steady with the Glock. “I’m everything you are and more.”
“Why like this?” Walker finally spoke.
“Why?” Bellamy said. “Why not?”
Walker did not reply; he merely watched as Bellamy’s eyes shone. The sales pitch was coming.
“It’s our system,” Bellamy said. “The government had grown too bloated. It’s full of waste and needs to be cut down to size. It needs to better serve its purpose. And I’m just another guy in a long line of guys with a solution.”
“A delusion,” Walker countered. “They’d never hand over the intelligence services to a private company.”
“Your head’s in the clouds, Walker,” Bellamy said. “Maybe you’ve been dead too long. Private companies are the intelligence community. They’re the military. Who do you think makes everything? Who develops the software to eavesdrop? Who owns the phone lines that we tap into? Who runs the databases that we mine? Who staffs it all?”
“What, so you want to make INTFOR the new CIA?”
“It worked for the military and the private contractors,” Bellamy said. “Without the latter? We would have lost a hell of a lot more lives in the mid-east.”
Walker shook his head.
“The government tries to control us,” Bellamy said. “But we won’t just stand and take it. I won’t watch my country become everything that is loathsome. So, you ask why? It’s written in our history, that’s why. The second amendment gives us the right to bear arms, but the government wants to take that from us. No. Not today, not tomorrow, not while I’m around. I’m taking up arms to do what has to be done. It’s my right—my duty—to do this, for all of us. I’m protecting us.”
Walker wanted to tell Bellamy he was crazy, but he didn’t. One thing he had learned a long time ago: never laugh at a man who has a gun pointed at you. And close behind that was: never insult a crazy man who has a gun pointed at you.
“Then why not just wait?” Walker said evenly. “The Vice President would have pushed your company along. It would have grown, would have proven itself over time.”
Bellamy shook his head. “He’s part of this. Part of big government. They move too slowly. We’re losing the war, Walker, don’t you see? Losing it here as well as out there.”
“Where?”
“The front line. Our nation is the last superpower on earth and we’re a joke. No one respects us. We’re stuck in a holding pattern. Locked in a bloated, obese state of denial. You think China is dragging its feet like we are?”
“So, you’re doing this for the country—what, before it’s too late?”
Bellamy smiled. “Something like that.”
Walker looked to the phone on the desk. “Who were you talking to?”
“My daughter,” Bellamy replied.
Walker knew it was a lie. “Try again,” he said.
Bellamy smiled. “A friend.”
•
“Who’d he call?” McCorkell asked, listening in to the conversation playing out between Bellamy and Walker.
“We’re working on it,” Somerville said. “We only picked up the number.”
“And?”
“Bellamy’s office. Press-release stuff. Selling himself as a hero, telling the world that he’s in there, talking down the perpetrator, Walker.”
“Where’s this audio from?”
“Hacked a desktop computer’s microphone.”
“You’re recording all this, right?”
“Right.”
“Then we’ve got enough,” McCorkell said. “Heard enough. Send your boys in.”
“They’re already in there,” Somerville replied.
•
“Asad,” Walker stated rather than asked. “You were talking to Asad.”
Bellamy chuckled. “No. He has his instructions already. Perhaps if you watch the screens, you’ll see. You’ll certainly hear it. Feel it, perhaps.”
Walker looked to the screens and saw his own face. It was his graduation photo from the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs. He looked young, fresh faced, tanned, fit, full of fight.
The ticker underneath said, “JED WALKER, FORMER AIR FORCE OFFICER, ATTEMPTED TO ASSASSINATE THE VICE PRESIDENT THIS MORNING AT THE NEW YORK STOCK EXCHANGE. WALKER IS CURRENTLY HOLDING AN UNKNOWN NUMBER OF HOSTAGES INSIDE THE NYSE, INCLUDING THE VICE PRESIDENT’S CLOSE FRIEND, DAN BELLAMY, HEAD OF INTFOR . . .”
“See,” Bellamy said, watching Walker’s reaction. “That’s the system I believe in, working as it should. Now, put your gun down. On the floor.”
“That’s not going to happen.”
Walker could see Bellamy’s finger tighten on the trigger. No doubt he’d get off a round as Walker did. Maybe they’d get off two shots each.
“Put the gun down,” Bellamy said, “or the consequences will be severe. And I’m not talking about you.”
•
The HRT operators moved in three groups of four. Two teams headed up fire ladders to the roof; the third moved to the front doors, where security disengaged the heavy steel blast door. The news cameras outside broadcast it all, the big tech vans with their antennas and satellite dishes beaming footage live from the scene.
•
“Here comes your big government at work,” Walker said.
Bellamy glanced at the screen, and smiled.
Now the only sound was Barry panting. All three men knew that Barry didn’t belong in this world; he belonged i
n a world of numbers and computer screens and derivatives and put options and IT equipment.
“The gun, Walker, or a lot of lives will be lost.”
Walker looked at the box in Barry’s hands, and realized his mistake. It couldn’t be ONC; the place had been swept for bombs for weeks, and the sniffer dogs were very, very good. There was no way an explosive device could have been hidden in here before the Vice President’s arrival.
“What do the boxes do?” Walker asked, looking to Bellamy.
Again came silence—the silence of having the upper hand. Bellamy had a contingency plan.
Walker put his Sig down on the floor and kicked it forward, halfway between him and Bellamy. Two and a half meters.
•
“What boxes?” McCorkell said to the room. “What’s he talking about?”
No one knew. They had ears in the room but no eyes.
“Video coming up!” a tech agent said. “Got a webcam activated . . . hard to be certain, but it looks like Bellamy has a wireless hard drive.”
“A hard drive?” Somerville said.
“Wireless . . .” McCorkell said.
“It’s a receiver,” the tech replied. “For data storage.”
“A receiver . . . and a transceiver?” McCorkell added, thinking back to Walker’s head-case chip. He looked to Somerville. They each came to the same conclusion at about the same time. “Jam all signals, all frequencies—now!”
•
“You put the kill order on me in Yemen,” Walker said.
“You were unraveling a project that I’d put my life into,” Bellamy said. His elbow rested against his hip, his arm at a ninety-degree angle and the Glock steady in his hand, as if he could stand like that all day.
Walker felt dizzy. Blood dripped from his gunshot wound to the floor. Much more than Bellamy’s. Gotta make a move . . .
“You knew that Louis Assif was a double, that he was DGSE,” Walker continued. “But you needed to know more. You needed more, so you had someone work him. You had me assigned to State to look into him, to get close.”
Bellamy nodded.