The bright point that was Nicole, or rather her hard disk, slowed and turned into the industrial area around the docks. “Now where the hell?—”
“Sam.” Mike put a hand on Sam’s shoulder. “I just called dispatch. They couldn’t contact the two officers, so they’re assuming it’s an officer down situation. A patrol car is on its way to Nicole’s house, be there in five, but it doesn’t look good. I think they’ve been eliminated and I think this McInerney has Nicole’s dad. She’s heading straight for him.”
Sam stood, mind churning. He was known for thinking fast in the field but right now horror froze him. He never went into battle afraid. You couldn’t go into battle afraid, it was like signing your own death sentence. Warriors make their peace with death right from the start, and go into battle with a free mind.
Terror gripped him, made him clumsy and slow. McInerney had been to SERE school, too. It was meant to train soldiers to withstand torture, but it was run by sadists who loved their work just a little too much. And though soldiers were taught to resist, they were also taught how to beat information out of anyone, even the strongest man.
Sam knew the methods and he simply couldn’t bear the thought of them being applied to Nicole. To that soft, gentle, beautiful woman. Or—God—to her father. A sick, dying man. If this Sean had hired himself out as a contract killer, there wasn’t going to be anything stopping him, no moral line he wouldn’t cross.
Maybe the fuckhead might even enjoy it. Enjoy inflicting pain. Enjoy listening to Nicole scream…
Sam closed his eyes, sweat rolling down his face. He simply couldn’t deal with it.
He was a good strategic thinker, but right now he had the strategic IQ of a rock. His head was filled with clamoring noise, with visions of Nicole laid out on a table, being flayed alive.
Attached to electrodes. Being waterboarded. Fingernails pulled out one by one. Violently raped…
Sam turned swiftly and vomited into a trash can, emptying his stomach of its contents, but not his mind of its nightmares.
Mike frowned. “It’s bad, yeah. You really shouldn’t have sent the two special agents away. You could have had the resources of the FBI on your side and you just let them go.”
Sam wiped his mouth and picked up his body armor, the one without the Kevlar core to keep the weight down. He had no idea if he’d have to climb or maneuver. It was always a trade-off—weight against agility. Right now, being able to move easily trumped having a bullet penetrate the armor.
He started pulling it on. “Okay, so the Feds have enormous resources, but what’s their top priority? What’s the one thing they want?”
“Got it.” Mike’s jaw worked. “Sean McInerney.”
“Who’s ex Special Forces. He’s not going down without a fight. However much the Feds will try to make it go down without collateral damage, their number-one goal is McInerney. If we give them Nicole’s location, they’re going to go in with a full tactical team, no holds barred. Do the math. Maybe twenty men, one hundred rounds each, that’s two thousand rounds that might be fired in the space of a few minutes. There’s going to be a firefight, with Nicole and her dad caught in the crossfire. If it’s just me, I know what my priority is, and it’s getting Nicole and her dad out alive—” He stopped for a second and looked Mike and Harry in the eyes. “And offing this guy. I want him dead. I don’t want him to testify or to stand trial. I want him gone.” Sam turned to Harry. “Don’t take your eyes off that monitor. Where are they now?”
Harry leaned over and checked the monitor. “Still heading south.” Harry leaned over and touched the screen. “You can intercept them here if you hurry. Take the SUV.”
Hold on Nicole, Sam thought, moving out, moving fast.I’m coming for you.
New York
He lookedout his thirty-fifth floor window, at the sweep of Manhattan at his feet. Night had fallen, the skyscrapers were lit up like a false dawn. Cars and taxis made their way through the streets like a restless, irritable, illuminated worm. Something was holding up traffic uptown and the northbound lanes were stalled. At street level, Muhammed knew, horns would be blasting, drivers and cabbies would be sticking their heads out the windows and screaming obscenities. Time was money and lost time was felt as keenly as the pickpocket’s nimble fingers filching your wallet.
The energy and the power of the city was like a strong wind. It could blow you away like a mote of dust if you didn’t know how to resist its lures.
Muhammed could. Easily. There was nothing here that didn’t fill him with hatred and disgust.
The women, in particular. Wall Street was full of them now, with their mannish ways and full-out aggression.
He had grown up in a culture where women dropped their eyes, never looking a man full in the face. He remembered vividly when he had turned from a boy to a man. How the street women who had yelled at him, cuffed his ears, suddenly avoided him, spoke to him softly, if at all.
The women in Manhattan would eat a man alive, if you let them. They were casual mothers and wives, discarding husbands and children like unwanted clothes, but deadly serious about money.
Monsters, not women. And Allah, through his servant Muhammed, was about to punish them.
His view took in the entire harbor, the Statue of Liberty, Ellis Island and in the far-off distance, the slow swells of the Atlantic Ocean. The direction from which vengeance was coming, at sixty knots.
Each day was a gift from Allah, and it was a sin to wish a gift away, but Muhammed ached for the day after tomorrow. Only the sternest self-discipline kept his face placid with the bankers, hedge fund managers, CEOs he dealt with daily. Inside, he was exulting. He could see an empty, desolate Manhattan so clearly—smashed windows, grass growing up through cracks in the sidewalks, loose newspapers fluttering through the streets—it confused him that there was still traffic clogging the streets, people walking on the sidewalks, office buildings lit up with workers making deals far into the night.
Soon, so soon, it would all be over, the heart of the Great Satan punched out.
And he—Muhammed Wahed—would have done this. For his people and for his God.
FOURTEEN
