Burn pushed his gun against Ivy’s head with so much force that her chin hit her chest. “And there can easily be one less of you.”
Ivy said, “Don’t try anything stupid, Michael. Just do what they say. The FBI is on the way.”
“Yeah, sure,” Burn said with a chuckle. “The FBI, the cavalry—they’re all rushing right over here.”
“I’m not lying,” said Ivy.
“There’s not a person here that you haven’t lied to,” said Burn.
“What if she’s telling the truth?” Wald asked nervously. “What if the FBI is coming?”
“No chance,” said Burn. “Michael played a voice mail from Agent Henning right before you arrived. It was on speaker. Henning would have said they were on the way, if, in fact, they were.”
McVee smiled at me. “I knew you didn’t go to the FBI.” He turned to his nephew and said, “Give me your gun.”
“Why?”
“Because it wasn’t your son who was killed.”
Wald didn’t like it, but he removed the safety and, with a push-pull of the slide, loaded a round into the chamber.
“You’re ready to go,” he said, handing it over.
McVee pointed the gun at Eric. “All right, Volke. You first. Get on the helicopter.”
“Me? Why me? You don’t believe all that bullshit, do you?”
“Get on the helicopter,” said McVee, his eyes narrowing.
Eric stared right back. There was no way to win this argument, but he dug in his heels anyway. “Kiss my ass, Kyle. I’m not getting in that helicopter.”
“Then I’ll shoot you right now, damn it.”
“That beats burning alive.”
“You son of a bitch,” he said, aiming at Eric’s groin. “I’ll shoot you right in the—”
A loud pop suddenly filled the hangar as a window in the sliding door exploded. My focus had been on McVee’s showdown with Eric, but the strange sensation of a bullet whizzing past my ear shifted my attention right away.
Those next few moments were a blur, and even though many different things transpired simultaneously, they registered in my mind sequentially. A series of sounds and snapshots nearly overloading my ability to comprehend anything. Tiny bits of the shattered window glistening beneath the lights and falling to the floor. Burn’s head jerking to one side, his black beanie flying through the air. The sound of Ivy’s scream as the hot crimson spray showered her neck and shoulders.
Both Ivy and Burn tumbled away from the helicopter, and it was all too confusing to know if I had heard a second shot. Ivy hit the concrete first, and Burn landed on top of her. Somewhere in that moment—before or after Ivy’s fall, it was impossible to know which—I heard the clack of Burn’s weapon on the floor. The top of Burn’s skull was missing, a ghastly wound marking his certain death. His body was still moving, but not on its own power. Ivy was pushing out from under his dead weight.
As if on a sheet of ice, she pivoted on her hip bone, spun her legs around clockwise, and kicked Burn’s weapon in my direction.
“Michael!” she shouted, as it slid across the concrete.
I dived to the floor and grasped it.
And then the lights went out.
67
THE EMERGENCY-EXIT LIGHT GLOWED OVER THE DOOR, CASTING A surreal orange-red pall over the chaos. It was hard to know exactly what was going on, if the shooting was over, or if more rounds were coming. Obviously, whoever had fired the sniper shot from outside the building had also cut the power. I had no idea if Ivy had been bluffing about the FBI’s being on its way, but if she wasn’t, a SWAT team should have been busting down the door right about now.
No one came.
“Run!” said Ivy.
I looked up and saw Ivy and her mother racing toward the door beneath the exit light, Ivy’s hands still clasped behind her back. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Eric running in the other direction, toward the office. Wald was in pursuit. And I saw McVee raising his weapon and taking aim at Ivy.
The last time I’d fired a gun I was a fourteen-year-old hell-raiser trying to shoot the NO out of a NO HUNTING sign posted along our dirt-road neighborhood in Loon Lake. My best friend had dared me and loaned me his shotgun. I couldn’t even hit the damn sign. I prayed for better aim with a pistol, squeezing off two quick shots in McVee’s direction. I missed, but it sent McVee diving for cover. Ivy and her mother also dived to the floor at the sound of gunfire.
“Keep running!” I shouted as I sprinted after them.
I turned and, just for cover, fired another quick shot back at McVee. Ivy and her mother were at least ten steps ahead of me. Olivia hit the door first and pushed it open. She made it out, and Ivy was right behind her. Through the open doorway, I could actually see stars in the night sky. Then I heard one more crack of gunfire.
I dropped like a stone. The pain in the back of my thigh was somewhere between getting whacked with a hammer and stabbed with a red-hot screwdriver.
“Michael!” screamed Ivy.
She was halfway out the door when she stopped. I could see that she was about to turn and come back to get me, though what good she could have done with her hands bound behind her back wasn’t clear. Another shot rang out, and I heard the bullet slam into the wall of painted cinder block behind me.
“Go!” I shouted, rolling toward the door.
Two more shots followed, the second skimming off the metal door, missing Ivy by inches. My leg was getting hotter and wetter, and then I saw the blood. Less than I would have expected—clearly no major artery involved. This was a survivable wound, I was sure of it. But I was equally certain that another bullet would finish the job if I didn’t keep moving. The pain and loss of blood was making me light-headed, but I drew on my reserves and kept rolling across the floor in Ivy’s direction.
Ivy was outside the hangar now, crouched low, hiding behind the door and holding it partly open for me. Bullets continued to skid across the floor, ricocheting off the concrete. I lost track of the number of rounds McVee had fired so far. At most seven, and even with my limited knowledge about firearms, I knew there were plenty of pistols with magazines bigger than that.
I continued moving toward the door, but my momentum was slowing. My leg was starting to feel numb, and my head clouded up with congestion in places I had never felt congested, as if my entire brain were turning into cotton. Losing consciousness was an immediate possibility.
Another bullet whizzed past my ear. McVee continued to fire in my direction, but I couldn’t see him. I, on the other hand, was a sitting duck, and as my thoughts became less and less coherent, I had a memory flash of Papa telling me the story of the LST—“large stationary target”—that had transported him and some other very unlucky souls onto the beach at Normandy. I fought off the mind fog, giving it my all, but it felt as though I were moving at a turtle’s pace. Had McVee been a better shot, I would have been dead already. But I couldn’t remain out in the open, an easy target—LST—just waiting for him to finally hit the bull’s-eye. I suddenly recalled Burn’s warning about the fuel. I reached inside for one last burst of energy and sprang toward the open doorway. In midair I reached back and aimed in the direction of the fuel cans Wald had dropped to the floor. I squeezed off a shot as I rolled out the doorway.
68
“WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON?” SHOUTED AGENT ANDIE HENNING.
Andie was three hundred yards from the heliport, inside an FBI mobile command unit that was parked on the entrance road. A full hostage negotiation team was with her.
Minutes earlier, FBI tech agents had just completed an infrared-camera scan of the hangar, which picked up a fourth hostage inside the helicopter. A recent corpse could give off enough body heat to be picked up by a scan, but the possibility of a fourth hostage tipped the already shaky balance away from an all-out SWAT assault. A peaceful resolution also seemed highly achievable once Kyle McVee had entered the building, a powerful businessman whose entire life was about cutting deals. The negotiators
were just thirty seconds away from initiating contact by loudspeaker when the shooting started. Andie raced out of the command unit and couldn’t believe what she was hearing in her headset. WhiteSands Hangar No. 3 sounded like a war zone.
Andie was immediately on the bone microphone with the FBI sniper, who was on the rooftop of WhiteSands Hangar No. 2, directly across the heliport from Hangar No. 3.
“The order was to hold your fire!” she shouted.
“Roger that,” came the reply. “No shot from here.”
She switched over to the SWAT unit commander. Agent Kowalski and his team had taken various strategic positions, completely surrounding Hangar No. 3, invisible even to Andie, ready to move in the event that the planned negotiations broke down.
“Are you green on breach?” asked Andie.
The breach was forced entry—showtime in SWAT-speak. Green was the assault—the moment of life and death, literally—after yellow, the final position of cover and concealment.
“Negative,” said Kowalski, his voice crackling with radio squelch. “Hot environment, no element of surprise. Holding at yellow.”
From the sound of things in Andie’s headset, Kowalksi was positioned right outside the building.
“Who went green?”
“Local SWAT.”
“Repeat that, please.”
“Local SWAT sniper did not copy the order to hold fire.”
Andie had been in a similar situation before. It seemed that everyone right down to neighborhood crime-watch volunteers had a SWAT unit these days. Usually the SWAT leaders were able to agree and coordinate efforts. Usually.
An unmarked car squealed around the corner, and it screeched to a halt so quickly that its front bumper nearly kissed the pavement. Supervisory Agent Malcolm Spear jumped out and hurried toward Andie at the mobile command center.
“What the hell happened?” he shouted.
Andie looked toward the flaming building just as it exploded.
69
IT MAY HAVE BEEN A DIRECT HIT, OR PERHAPS MY SHOT RICOCHETED off the floor, skipped up, and punctured the fuel can. Regardless, the explosion threw me out the door and at least another ten yards toward the helipad, which was a good thing. The hangar was engulfed in flames.
And then I blacked out—but only for a moment. When my eyes blinked open, I was looking up at Ivy. Olivia was beside her.
“Michael, can you hear me?” Ivy asked.
It was a feeling I’d never had before—knowing my name only because she was calling me “Michael.”
“Yeah, I can hear you,” I said. I tried to sit up, but Olivia gently pushed me back onto the pavement.
“Be still,” said Ivy. The expression on her face was somewhere between fright and concern; her tone was beyond urgent. “Do you have pain anywhere besides your leg?”
Olivia’s coat was tied around my thigh to stop the bleeding, and before the question, the pain had oddly gone away. But suddenly my leg was throbbing again.
“Just in the hamstrings,” I said.
There was another explosion from inside the hangar, and I felt the blast of heat on my face. Fortunately, we were far enough away to be out of danger. Sirens sounded from somewhere down the road. Olivia jumped up and darted off into the darkness. I could no longer see her, but I heard her shouting for help.
“Over here!”
“You’re going to be okay,” said Ivy.
“This way!” someone else shouted.
A moment later I was looking up at another woman. It gave me a moment of confusion—What the hell is Mallory’s friend doing here?—but then my thoughts cleared, and I remembered that she was an FBI agent. She had paramedics with her, and right behind them was the FBI SWAT unit dressed in full tactical armor. A fire truck rumbled right past us and the firefighters jumped off and went immediately into action. The SWAT guy cut Ivy’s hands free from the plastic cuffs with a serrated knife. As the paramedics checked me out and lifted me up onto the gurney, I heard Andie screaming at two men, one from FBI SWAT and the other wearing a black flak jacket that said SHERIFF in white letters. Both men were shouting back at her. As best I could tell, the plan had been for SWAT to hold its fire until negotiations failed, but there had been a miscommunication. It was hard for me to comprehend a blunder like that, but it would soon mesh perfectly with everything I would read about law enforcement activities directed toward Wall Street.
The paramedics lifted me into the ambulance, and Ivy started to climb inside with me.
“Sorry, miss,” said the paramedic. “You can’t ride in here.”
“You can’t stop me,” she said.
He grabbed her arm. “Who are you?”
“I’m his wife,” she said.
“And I’m her husband,” I said, just feeling a need to say it.
The paramedic was too rushed to argue.
“Hurry up then,” he said.
Ivy climbed inside, and it felt good as she took my hand and laced her fingers with mine. Through the open ambulance doors, we glanced back at the firefighters battling the inferno, knowing that there was no way McVee had survived. Ivy’s reason to run was no more.
The ambulance doors closed, and I looked up at her face. She leaned forward and kissed me on the forehead.
“You feeling okay?” she asked.
“Yeah.”
“You sure?”
“Yup,” I said, feeling a little foggy again, another one of those memory flashes to Papa coming on. “Just another beautiful day in paradise.”
Epilogue
I SPENT A COUPLE DAYS IN BED AFTER THE EXPLOSION. NANA WAS a retired nurse, so my grandparents stayed in New York to drive me crazy—I mean care for me. I couldn’t stand watching the television, so Papa brought me a book from the library. An old book—ancient, you might say.
When I was a young boy, Nana worked nights at the hospital, so it was my grandfather who used to bathe me before bed, put me in my Spiderman pajamas, and read to me from Aesop’s Fables as he rocked me to sleep. His personal favorite was “The Ant and the Grasshopper.” As the fable goes, the ant was the disciplined one, storing up food for hard times. The grasshopper was the singing and chirping party animal—er, insect—who blew through summer as if life were one red-hot streak at a blackjack table. And then winter came.
Papa was an ant, a Depression-era immigrant raised on an honest wage for an honest day’s work. We never talked about stocks. The first I’d heard of the Dow Jones Industrials was in fifth-grade social studies class, and I still find it unbelievable that when I was ten the Dow was at 802. That was just fine for ants, but the grasshoppers of the 1980s dreamed of riding in limousines. In the 1990s, it was stretch limousines. Then, in the insanity of the twenty-first century, it had to be a stretch Hummer limousine with a hot tub, a posse, and at least one B-list celebrity with no panties. But ants had no use for any of this. They knew winter would come.
Never had I dreamed that I would be a grasshopper. That all my friends would be grasshoppers. That the entire world would be one big swarming, borrowing, and spending orgy of grasshoppers—a world in which anything worth doing was naturally worth overdoing.
Like I said before: There was a time when people all but worshipped guys like me. Now, of course, they’ve come to hate us. It was understandable; the man I’d worshipped deserved no forgiveness.
Eric Volke was one of Bernard Madoff’s feeders.
I’d had no way of knowing that on the night everything blew up—literally—in WhiteSands’ Hangar No. 3. It came out much later, after Madoff pleaded guilty to the largest investment fraud in Wall Street history and became federal prison inmate No. 61727–054 for the rest of his life.
Only then did I learn the chief purpose of Agent Andie Henning’s undercover investigation at Saxton Silvers. After 9/11, the FBI’s focus shifted to homeland security, and the number of agents investigating financial crimes was cut by more than 75 percent. But Agent Henning presented a simple mathematical formula to her supervisors,
showing that Madoff’s track record—10 percent returns or better for almost two decades—was the statistical equivalent of a major-league baseball player batting .960 for the season. She got approval to investigate. Her mission was to expose one of the biggest players to steer investors in Madoff’s direction, and hopefully get him to cut a deal with prosecutors and testify against Madoff.
Virtually none of Madoff’s feeders had conducted any due diligence before dropping to their knees and kissing the ground he walked on. The ones who had were even worse; they knew or at least suspected that he was a fraud and still fed him clients. But a very select few—Eric Volke among them—had known the truth from the very beginning. Over the years, Eric’s “fund of funds” at WhiteSands channeled billions of dollars from charities, pension funds, universities, and others into Madoff’s hands. The payoff for these feeders was enormous, and the warm turquoise waters surrounding a 160-foot yacht at the private island of Mustique could wash away a lot of sins. But the fact remained, Volke and people like him made Madoff’s scam into a colossal catastrophe, a giant Ponzi scheme.
Marcus McVee had figured out that Volke was dirty long before anyone else did. All it took was a call to the Chicago Board of Options Exchange to confirm that the total S&P 100 options that Eric’s WhiteSands option fund claimed to have acquired through Madoff exceeded the total open interest in S&P 100 contracts at that strike price. In Papa’s terms, that meant Eric claimed he was buying veal parmigiana when the only thing on the menu was spaghetti and meatballs. But Marcus’ decision to confront Eric rather than go to the FBI had cost him his life. Eric rode with him to the waterfront in the Hamptons, where he forced him to drink a bottle of tequila at gunpoint. I doubt that Marcus knew that Eric had dissolved a lethal dose of Vicodin into the tequila.
Eric Volke died in the hangar explosion at WhiteSands. So did Kyle McVee. Ironically, Ian Burn was dead before the fire even started. Ivy would never have to worry about them coming after her.
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