Blood Covenent, page 19
The twins turned towards the latest intrusion. They no longer carried a bulky case and spun with the agility of ones trained to handle the automatic weapons they brandished.
Harper judged the distance between himself and the twins to be less than thirty-five feet. His feet came to a sudden halt, and he assumed a classic Weaver stance.
Mahmood struggled to bring his rifle up. He never had the chance.
Harper found the Tritium front site. In the dimmer light, the greenish-white ball glowed slightly and settled on Mahmood’s chest. At this distance, Harper could not miss a man-size target. The weekly practice rituals took over and twenty years of gun handling snapped the muscle memory as required. The pad of his right index finger found the Glock’s safety trigger as his weight shifted and he breathed out slowly.
His entire attention focused in those split seconds on the boy’s beating heart. The trigger broke crisply. The sites jumped up and to the right. The room thundered as the 115 grain Winchester Silvertip went from zero to eleven hundred feet per second virtually instantly. The sites snapped back to their target. A follow shot completed the double tap. Both shots occurred within four tenths of a second.
Mahmood’s heart exploded with the second round. The first had punctured his left lung and nicked his spinal cord. His legs seemed to fold up beneath his torso and his head sagged sideways into his brother, knocking Ahmad off balance. It saved Harper’s life. Ahmad’s H&K fired and hit the glass doors behind Harper, punching nasty holes into the inch-thick glass.
Harper threw himself sideways into the less-than-certain shelter of the elevator door.They are kids! His heart screamed at him to stop. His brain told him, he dared not hesitate. Bile from an interrupted lunch threatened to explode.Kids!
Ahmad wrestled away from his brother’s body. He tried desperately to bring the H&K’s muzzle up. He was off balance, splattered by his brother’s blood, and his ears were ringing from the thunderous noise of a gunfight inside a steel and brick room.
Harper shouted for him to stop. The words were garbled and unintelligible. The scene took on the surreal nature of slow motion photography. Harper tightened his finger on the trigger. The distance was less than twenty feet now. They were almost across from each other in the narrow width of the elevator lobby.
Ahmad caught his balance, still pulling the H&K upwards. He was turning his body to square up with Harper in order to fire the rifle. Adrenaline surged through his body and his final breaths were more like gasps. From the corner of his eye, he could see his brother’s prone form. Vengeance! It was all that mattered.
The Glock roared a third and fourth time. The angle was more oblique and the outcome less certain. The bullets hit the body, but Ahmad, drunk on the body’s natural speed, continued to raise the rifle. Harper needed to end this horror now!
God, forgive me! He prayed.
The three-dot site found Ahmad’s head, and the angryflash bang of two more Silvertips dropped Ahmad. His ear and cheekbone dissolved into a jagged, crushed mass. The H&K paused in its upward motion. The hatred in the eyes dimmed, then died. The boy pitched forward.
He stepped forward, kicking the rifle away. Deftly he rolled Ahmad over, keeping the Glock trained on his body. He found the Smith & Wesson tucked in the boy’s belt. Harper pulled that away and slid it across the floor. Ahmad’s dead eyes sought him out.Two more ghosts to haunt his dreams.
Harper gagged and vomited.
He could see Mahmood was gone as well. Death is a motionless state, and Mahmood’s stillness told Harper everything he needed to know. He moved across the lobby and turned Mahmood over. The same eyes stared up at him.
First, he asked,Why?
Then, he asked,Who?
Tears rolled down his cheeks. Today, the chase became personal. He would find Louis Edwards’ mystery man, and payment would be due.
* * * *
Michael Rehazi walked down the JFK concourse to theDelta shuttle bound for Boston. He carried a New Jersey driver license, several thousand dollars in cash, and a bogus set of credit cards. A Compaq laptop swung freely from his shoulder. He appeared as any number of business travelers grabbing the afternoon shuttle. The E-ticket he retrieved from theDelta desk produced no alarms, nor should it. The name he traveled under had never been used before today and it would never be used again. Simply an identity he would discard in the next twenty-four hours.
It was time to scout locations for the Boston weapon and arrange for a drop point. It was important to maintain a distance from the weapons until they were employed. He already planned the method he would use to transport the rest of the weapons to their final destinations. By the end of next week, millions would be dead, and America would experience a shock unlike anything she had experienced since Pearl Harbor. His masters would be pleased, and he could slip away—forever.
Rehazi never noticed the half-moon black-bubble camera pod embedded in the ceiling. There were so many of them snapping pictures no one would ever look at. Intelligence required analysis. There simply were not enough people to watch everything.
The camera acquired a full body image, and it dutifully transmitted the image across a fiber optic cable to a waiting VCR recorder. Sometime later that afternoon, the tape would be transmitted with a batch of other security tapes, and Janet Henry’s machines would mindlessly sift through each image.
CHAPTER 19
New York City
Thursday, July 8, 1999
4:30 P.M. EDT
Harper examined the plain-clothes detective. The cop mind focused on the two dead bodies in the lobby. Harper simply stared at them for the first hour, indicating his hearing was gone. The ringing in his ears from successive gunshots inside an enclosed area left him temporarily deaf. He spent the next two hours answering stupid questions about a horror. Who are you?Shrug. What is special squad?If you don’t know, I’m not telling you. Did you know it is illegal to carry a weapon in New York?That’s a dumb idea. Where’s the weapon?Are you really this stupid? Do you wish to speak to a lawyer?Sneer. Was lethal force really necessary?Gee, one handgun against two rifles, what would you do?
His Glock remained firmly holstered in the small of his back. The only difference being, he had replaced the spent magazine with a fresh one, and the half-empty one stuck out of his rear denim pocket. An army of photographers, forensic experts, and evidence-gathering technicians descended on the elevator lobby. They carefully stepped around the bodies and reconstructed the crime.
Darby Hayes ran interference each time another self-important official found Harper. He flashed them his Army Intelligence ID. They tended to stare, grunt, and shrug. He explained they were a special squad detachment, and to check with their superiors before they did something they might regret. They would then see Darby’s Beretta and start running through the same litany. As for Harper, they reached an uneasy peace as Harper and Hayes waited for someone who could straighten the matter out. After all, deep inside their cop brains, these two cowboys kept one officer from bleeding to death and took down some bad guys. Using cop calculus, it counted for a temporary truce. Harper and Hayes found a spot away from the elevators complete with two uniformed guards. Harper chose to cooperate—for the moment.
Jonas Benjamin walked through the bullet-scarred entryway. One-inch glass has a way of slowing down the most determined rounds. The fresh-faced kid was looking older these days. The worrisome toll exacted from those who kept track of the world’s more troublesome nightmares was beginning to etch stress lines instead of laugh wrinkles. He found the detective in charge and presented his credentials. They were far more official looking than the ones Harper refused to carry.
Jonas nodded over to Harper and Hayes. The detective shook his head, motioning vaguely at all the bullet holes. This was a crime scene and guns were involved. Exasperated, Jonas pulled out his cell phone, punched in a code, and handed it to the detective. The conversation was short and pointed. Chagrinned, the detective handed the phone back to Jonas and walked towards Harper and Hayes.
“I don’t know who you guys are, but thanks.” He stuck out a hand.
Harper shook the proffered hand, measuring the policeman. In the calm imposed by two uniformed cops, Darby Hayes, and the wait for Jonas, he began to wonder what happened to the case carried by the twins. He said nothing to the cops. An inner sense cautioned that explanations would only entail a greater bureaucratic morass. His eyes continued to wander across the lobby to the dead boys.
He saw the resemblance between the boys. As he sat in the lobby waiting for the inevitable rush of people, he studied their features. It became obvious they were twins—brothers of the same womb, now dead. He considered what had transpired, the two wounded officers outside, and the panicked woman running through the brass and glass doors. Their weapons remained on the floor marked by white lines, and a technician was measuring each bullet’s line of flight. Someone asked him how many shots he had fired; Harper could only stare in wonder.Enough was his answer.
His choices were limited the moment he entered the lobby. Two Heckler & Koch rifles tended to narrow his options. Somehow when he got up this morning, he never expected to be in a kill-or-be-killed situation. Each spent piece of brass was marked and bagged—the location carefully noted. What difference did it make? Two boys were dead on a cold marble floor in the middle of Manhattan. Two police officers were injured outside, and if he understood correctly, two other people were dead three blocks away.
Where was the case?
The twins thought the case was important enough to run down an alley with it held between them. They fired their weapons without thought into a crowded sidewalk restaurant. Two dead boys—what a waste; it reminded him of something Carlos Hathcock once said.
Carlos Hathcock, the legendary Marine sniper from Vietnam; the Viet Cong called himLong Tra’ng, The White Feather. During his two tours in Vietnam, Hathcock had ninety-three confirmed kills including one from twenty-five-hundred yards—the longest kill on record. He was a sniper who meticulously hunted other men and coldly engaged them one shot at a time.
Hathcock was terribly burned in 1969, when he pulled seven Marines out of a burning, armored personnel carrier. Gasoline spewed into the air, and Hathcock, with his uniform burning first and next his skin, ran back to find more.Greater love has no man than he lay down his life for another. He suffered second and third degree burns over forty percent of his body. His career as a sniper ended that day. Not until 1996 did someone award him the Silver Star for heroism.Why did it take twenty-seven years to recognize a hero?
It was his attitude that Harper remembered best. Carlos explained, “Anybody would be crazy to like to go out and kill folks… I never did enjoy killing anybody. It’s my job. If I don’t get those bastards, then they’re going to kill a lot of these kids. That’s the way I look at it.” Harper stared at his hands. Hehated killing. The most frightening aspect was that those boys stood before the King of Heaven and they arrived unprepared for the meeting.God have mercy on their eternal souls.
Where was the case?
Jonas had been speaking for a couple of minutes. Harper came back from his musings to study the over-serious face, and said quietly, “You have pictures of the bomb case?”
Jonas settled down in one of the overstuffed lobby chairs no one ever used and asked, “Have you been listening to anything I said?”
Harper shook his head. He nodded towards the dead boys and replied softly, “I was thinking about them, Jonas. Sorry, I know you’ve got stuff to do. I’m back now, just had to arrange the ghosts.”
Jonas scowled. He opened his briefcase and rustled through some envelopes before extracting the one Harper requested. He handed it across. The older man opened the flap and spilled the photographs onto the small glass table between the three of them. He tapped the center one and looked up at Hayes, “Sergeant, think this is the one?”
Hayes flipped the photo around. His finger traced the shape of the case. “It looks about the same.”
“You saw this?” asked Jonas excitedly.
Harper shrugged again. “I think I saw it. I was dodging bullets, and it was a long way off. We were concentrating on some other things at the time.”
“Like dropping out of the line of fire,” added Hayes.
Jonas spun the picture back around. “So where is it?”
“Not far,” answered Hayes. “They couldn’t have been out of sight for more than five, six minutes.”
Harper eyed the stairwell. The twins met him in the lobby. They were not coming off the elevators. “Those shots we heard.”
Hayes nodded quickly, “Second or third floor.”
Harper was already up and moving. There would be evidence—bullet holes, brass casings, and maybe another body. He prayed he was wrong about the last. He had forgotten about the shots. His attention consumed by death and near death. His rage, adrenaline, and anger focused on two kids. Beyond the twins though, he asked the other question:Who? These kids did not acquire the hardware by themselves. Something evil was flitting through the shadows, and Harper could not quite see it yet.
They headed up the stairwell, a small train of three men.
* * * *
Harvey Randall walked through the door. He had to flash his identification three times maneuvering the police line, yellow tape, and stone-faced uniforms. No one believed that the Stetson and cowboy boots were standard FBI garb for an overweight agent. He hung his shield around his neck on a cord. Clutched in his hand was a file folder of faces.
He shuffled into the center of the lobby. The big Smith & Wesson Model 1006 10mm autoloader swinging carelessly and bouncing back against the light Banana Republic jacket. He sniffed the air tentatively. Something was familiar here, something from a time before. He crouched over Ahmad, but the face was beginning to bloat. The close-quarter gunfire had torn nasty rivets of flesh and bone from the side of his face. He paused, uncertain.
Harvey turned to the other twin lying not far away. He picked his way through the scattered casings whose flight was carefully marked by evidence technicians. He wrinkled his nose at the dried vomit. He knelt next to the other shooter—the face untouched except for the bluish shade brought on by death’s grip. The dead face seemed surprised at the outcome. He noted the weapons and wondered how many men it had taken to put these two down.
He laid the file folder down next to the one shooter and opened it. There were several gray-scaled and black-and-white shots, some blown up, others having a grainy quality brought on by the transition from surveillance cameras, to digital media, to a computer screen, and finally resolved by an old 300 dpi printer.
It did not take long for him to associate Mahmood’s face with one of photographs from Trump Tower. The knowledge left him cold. The cancer was still alive in the world. Mahmood was framed with two shooters. They were later draped with body bags and dragged out of the Tower. There were some that had escaped the SWAT team dragnet. So where were the additional bombs?
He turned back to Ahmad. From the distance, his profile looked familiar, and Harvey realized he was looking at two sides of the same coin.Brothers!
* * * *
Two powdery holes marked the twins’ movements. They were on the second floor. People had run from the two gunmen. Leaving their desks, their computer terminals, and cold coffee cups. Evidently, not everyone had disappeared. But why were they on the second floor?
Hayes walked around the wall finding the larger exit holes. Both rounds found a computer terminal. The screen was blown out across a keyboard and desk chair. The terminal shell was knocked sideways, but the energy was spent and the rounds were rattling harmlessly around in a dead iMac. Darby traced the line of the bullets and walked back into the corridor. Darby had no idea where the last bullet went.
Harper was standing next to three empty brass casings. Hayes was walking towards him from direction of the bullet impact. “They were standing here,” muttered Harper.
The universal symbol for the men’s restroom was hung on the wall next to a door. The spent casings were scattered next to the door.
“You think they were in there?” asked Jonas.
“It’s close to the stairwell,” suggested Harper. “I met them in the lobby, but they weren’t coming off the elevator.”
Hayes came to a halt in the middle of the corridor.
“They took out a computer screen,” explained Hayes jerking a thumb behind him.
“Shadows.”
“How’s that?” asked Jonas.
He waved a hand at the two bullet holes. “A computer monitor might cast shadows, or present the semblance of movement. They were charged up. They had just taken down two more cops outside. They were also tired, winded, and in a foreign place. I wonder if they even understood the language.”
“We’ll know soon enough,” declared Jonas.
Harper sighed. “I doubt these two arrived in the normal manner.”
“So they ran into the can?” asked Hayes.
Harper tapped the symbol on the wall. “Wherever you go these days we have all these international symbols hanging on the walls. It makes sense. They would know what the symbol meant, and it’s a place to hide and figure out what to do next.”
“You holding out on us, Jonas?” asked Hayes. He was developing a healthy distrust for his new employers. Listening to Harper for the last couple of days did nothing to assuage those concerns.
“These two nailed a cop and a taxi driver three blocks from here. The FBI descended on their abandoned van. Looks like they clipped the back end of the taxi, then panicked,” explained Jonas.
“So what was in the van?” asked Harper.
“A big empty space where a case could have been kept.”
“Not many places to run in a couple of minutes,” suggested Hayes.
Jonas pushed his way into the restroom. It was a small one with two urinals and one closet-style stall. Two wash basins and matching soap dispensers hung beneath a long mirror. The lighting was subdued, the small inch-square brown and green tiles formed a scattered patterned floor. They checked under the stall panels and saw nothing unusual.
