Outlaw, page 36
‘They changed vehicles,’ she muttered. ‘Ah, hell.’
If they’d known about Saito’s last-gasp warning message, they had used it to their own advantage.
‘Here we go,’ said the scarred man, pitching up his voice. ‘Get ready. Remember your route. We don’t want anyone wandering off.’
The other gunmen produced slim plastic tubes – chem-lights – and cracked them in the middle, shaking up the contents until they began to glow.
Lucy looked back at the monitor in time to see the truck vanish in a ball of white fire.
The hairs on her arms stood up and she tasted ozone. A split second later, the monitor died and so did the electric lights. The comms bead in her ear let out a nasty buzz and she flinched, reflexively jerking her head. She barely registered anything else before the rumble of the explosion rolled down into the basement.
A pallid green glow lit the faces of the gunmen, as each put their chemical lights on lanyards around their neck. Scar-face had sticks for the four captives, and clipped the tubes to their jackets before securing their wrists in front of them with cable ties.
‘You try anything smart, and we’ll smoke you right here.’ He made the threat to all of them, but he stared into Lucy’s eyes as he said it. ‘Start walking.’
They marched them past another curtain of heavy tarps, and the last shafts of daylight filtering down through the construction site vanished. Lucy felt the ground beneath her feet change from concrete slab to broken rubble to aging brick. The damp reek of the sewer system engulfed her and she swallowed a retch.
As they passed into the full, cloying blackness beneath the city streets, she thought she heard something from up on ground level – the faint echo of people shouting and screaming.
*
Marc could only make a rough estimate as to how far they walked – half a dozen blocks at least. The tunnels had few markers, and with the weak glow of the chem-light on his collar, he could not see far. Sluggish water shimmered at the edge of his vision, and glimpsed movements along the brick courses had to be the biggest rats he’d ever seen.
Walking in silence, he concentrated on putting one foot in front of another, dimly aware of Lucy walking ahead of him and Malte a few paces behind. The gunmen were either vague shadows or bobbing blobs of pale green light, but they moved surely through the underground tunnel, finding turnings and changing direction without recourse to maps. That meant that they had committed this path to memory, which also discouraged Marc from the idea of ducking away at the first convenient opportunity. It wasn’t the first time he’d been stuck in underground tunnels – there’d been those incidents in Paris and Naples – but he had no illusions of the dangers lurking in such places for the unprepared.
Breathing through his mouth, he tasted more than he smelled the change in atmosphere as they progressed. It grew colder and a dank, oily breeze forced its way along the tunnel and into their path.
The narrow walkway alongside the river of effluent became steeper, and Marc leaned forward, planting his feet carefully to avoid slipping on the wet bricks.
‘Look sharp,’ came a whisper from ahead of him, and Lucy’s chem-light bobbed as she briefly turned her head towards Marc.
He passed it on, whispering in Malte’s direction but unable to know if the Finn had even heard him.
The walkway continued to take them up towards ground level, and then ahead Marc saw the twinkle of distant stars, framed inside a ragged circle of grey light. He had the sudden mental image of being inside a black hole and staring out into space, trapped in a place from which light could not escape.
He blinked and reframed the sight. They were approaching the mouth of a wide tunnel, the cast-iron security grid across it already cut down and removed for easy egress. Out beyond the tunnel entrance, a wall of grey haze hung over dark, rain-lashed water. The stars that pierced the grey were the lights of buildings on a distant shore, the silhouettes of towers and apartment blocks lost in the downpour.
The gunmen led them back into the open air, and Marc’s sense of direction reorientated itself, snapping into focus. The tunnels had taken the group away from Wall Street, down to the shore of the East River, bringing them to the surface beneath an industrial pier close to the ferry terminal.
The rain leading the storm up the coast beat hard across the pier’s wooden planks, and it soaked through Marc’s jacket in moments. He raised a hand to wipe water off his face as the wind pulled at them, and something instinctive made him turn back to look at the city. What he saw stopped him dead.
New York was lightless and silent.
Black slabs of obsidian had replaced every towering block as far as he could see, to Battery Park at the southern tip of Manhattan. A fire burned on the upper floors of a nearby building, flames spewing from the middle of an impact crater punched through the glass facade some twelve storeys off the ground. Marc remembered that the building was close to the Downtown heliport, and he pictured some luckless pilot racing to put down their aircraft before the bad weather hit, only to suffer systems failure from the EMP and go spiralling into the side of the tower.
To the north, the Brooklyn Bridge was a skeletal thing vanishing into the rain, the spans lit by sporadic points of light, likely from the few vehicles trapped there that had wiring old enough to have survived the invisible shock of the electromagnetic pulse. Any vehicle with a microchip in its ignition system would be nothing but dead metal.
Beyond that, Marc saw the darkness had smothered the Lower East Side. As far as he could make out, everything south of the Empire State Building was without power.
He heard Lucy curse under her breath and found her with her hand to her mouth, her eyes wide.
‘This is bad,’ she murmured.
There were more fires visible down along the canyons between the towers. Backlit pillars of thick smoke filled the width of Wall Street, spreading from the point where the device had detonated.
The weapon – the so-called ‘equipment’ they had tracked from Russia – had performed its role perfectly. The undetectable binary chemicals in its explosive trigger had combined into a lethal mix, which in turn detonated through a complex framework known as a flux compression generator. Essentially a large aluminium tube shrouded in a helix of copper wire, with a charge at one end and a power source at the other, the device transformed the explosive force into electromagnetic energy several orders of magnitude greater. Destroying itself in the process, it produced terawatts of EM radiation to fry anything electronic while leaving nearby structures relatively undamaged.
As Marc had predicted, the pulse had not only crashed through the computer systems of the financial district, but also brought down the power grid. One or two generator failures might have been enough for the city’s infrastructure to manage, but a series of them in a single great cluster had overwhelmed it.
Keystone systems would collapse. Thousands of people would be trapped in stalled subway trains and darkened buildings. Hospitals, firefighters and police would struggle to cope – and with the storm bearing down, chaos was coming.
Discarding his disguise, the man with the Uzi threw his hard hat and vest aside and jabbed with his weapon.
‘You ain’t here to sightsee, move your asses!’
‘All right,’ said Marc, pulling Lucy away from the grim sight of the darkened skyline.
She took a shaky breath and met his eyes.
‘Just like you said,’ she whispered. ‘What the hell do we do now?’
‘Play it out,’ he told her, conscious of the man with the gun listening to every word they said. ‘We can still survive this.’
‘Yeah, that’s the ticket,’ mocked the gunman. ‘Think positive.’
With his free hand, he gave Marc a shove towards the end of the pier.
A rigid inflatable boat awaited them, outboard motor chugging as they scrambled aboard. A few of the armed men remained on the dock as the securing line was set loose and the boat cut away into the heavy swell.
Aware of the weapons trained on them, Marc and the others crouched in the bow, shivering as waves slopped over the sides and the heavy rain bore down.
‘Where are you taking us?’
He looked around as they sped away from Manhattan and into the throat of the river. None of the gunmen ventured a reply.
‘Not to Brooklyn, that’s for damn sure,’ Lucy noted.
The RIB turned from the far shore, where the EMP’s effect had not reached, and turned towards the seething mass of slate-coloured cloud advancing from the south.
Marc tried to pick out Governor’s Island or Liberty Island, but both were lost behind the curtains of rain that raced out of the storm and over the boat. Then, after an eternity of buffeting, juddering motion, he caught sight of a shape out on the water. A vessel, ghost-white against the grey.
The larger craft took on definition as the boat turned towards it. A billionaire’s megayacht, its knife-like bow rose out of the water, shining like glazed porcelain. The running lights were doused and the only illumination came from subsurface glows along the vessel’s underside.
Marc estimated it was sixty metres long, with shrouded decks stacked four high above the waterline, and the shape of a slim helicopter lashed to a landing pad over the midline. He had the impression of figures moving on the deck in shiny rain slickers, but in the gloom it was hard to tell how many.
The RIB pulled close to the starboard side beneath a retractable rig hanging over the water, and the gunmen connected it to dangling cables. Motors whined, hauling the boat off the river, before swinging it into a docking frame.
The men on the yacht were armed with the same weapons as Marc’s captors, and they were equally curt with their commands. He followed Malte, Grace and Lucy down to the wet deck, but refused to be cowed by the count of the guns.
The yacht rose and fell evenly despite the choppy waters. He sensed a low vibration coming up through the soles of his trainers. The vessel held station, keeping steady through the use of side-thrusters beneath the waterline.
Scar-face and his gruff friend marched them down to the stern, past smoked-glass windows looking in on a gaudy drinkers’ lounge and an on-board swimming pool lined with faux-Grecian statuary.
Marc’s lip curled. Money clearly couldn’t buy good taste.
‘How come this tub has power?’ Lucy moved close by, glancing at him.
‘Waited out of range of the pulse,’ guessed Marc. ‘Either that or it’s seriously hardened. Which would mean the owner is rich or paranoid.’
‘Perhaps both,’ added Malte, a few steps behind.
Marc shot Grace a look, but the woman said nothing. She’d been uncharacteristically quiet since the ambush at the van.
The group came around the rear of the vessel to what would have been the sun deck on a fine day, a sunken space looking over the stern in the direction of the stricken city. Before them, a hooded veranda led into the main deck and a dining room beyond. Sheltering there from the rain was an older man in a navy-style pea coat. He sat in an ornate chair that had clearly been brought out for his use, a thick cigar between his teeth.
Connaught Cassidy III was no less unattractive in real life than he had been in the surveillance files the Rubicon team had assembled on the American. His face was florid and his piggish eyes were narrowed. Adjusting the coat’s collar, he gave a nod and the gunmen forced the four captives down on to their knees, separating the men and women into pairs. Marc resisted, and received a kick in the belly for his troubles.
‘What in the name of all the saints is that smell?’ The American’s nose wrinkled. ‘Something stinks.’
‘We . . . uh . . . had to go through the sewers on our way out—’ began the scarred man, but Cassidy spoke over him.
‘I’ve always said, this city smells like stale piss. First time I came here, back when I was a boy, came off the bus at the Port Authority and the reek of it hit me. All the fancy tall buildings in the world don’t stop city folk from being garbage.’ He snorted at his own words, and sucked wetly on the cigar, blowing out grey-blue smoke. ‘And lookit, see what trash I got here.’
Lucy faked a yawn. ‘You gonna shoot us, get it over with, boomer.’
‘Your woman don’t know her place, that’s the problem with her kind.’ Cassidy addressed his reply towards Marc and Malte. ‘I ain’t ever been rushed into anything my whole life.’
He shifted in the chair, leaning forward as if he was waiting for a reply. Marc blinked away the rain soaking his hair and down his beard, giving the man nothing.
‘You don’t talk but you’re telling me something I already know.’ Cassidy drew on the cigar again. ‘That Russki heathen pissed away how much money trying to rub out you and yours, and for what? Shit, he shoulda let me do it.’ The American chuckled, the sound like cracking eggshells. ‘I’ll show him. That’ll be a fine day, yes sir. The look on his face, I can’t wait to see it. It’ll stick in his craw, knowing I grabbed you and he didn’t. And all it took was the right bait in the trap.’
A low thud carried to them from over the water – perhaps an explosion, it was hard to be sure. Back in Manhattan, the fallout from the power outage was worsening.
Cassidy raised an eyebrow. ‘I gotta know. Which one of you killed the I-talian? You?’ He pointed the red ember at the tip of the cigar at Marc. ‘You?’ Then towards Malte.
‘Guess that answers that question,’ said Lucy, from the side of her mouth.
‘First we’ve heard of it, mate,’ said Marc, not entirely truthfully. ‘But good riddance to bad rubbish.’
‘Marc Dane.’ Cassidy sounded out his name, centring his attention on the Englishman. ‘I know about you. You reckon you’re a smart guy. Don’t look so smart on your knees, you limey pussy.’
‘I’m clever enough to know who topped Da Silvio.’ Marc played out a shrug. ‘I mean, you can’t be so thick that you don’t see Glovkonin’s fingerprints all over it, yeah? Or am I giving you too much credit?’
The American’s expression hardened. ‘I can handle him.’
‘I’m sure you believe that. I bet Da Silvio did, too.’
Cassidy let out another crackling chuckle, then spat on the deck.
‘I never liked that wop punk anyhow. A damned degenerate and a liability. If the Ivan did him in, all the better. Saved my boys a bullet.’ The American glanced at the man with the scar. ‘Speaking of which . . . Mr Weldon, you did take out Glovkonin’s trash, did you not?’
The gunman nodded. ‘Yes, sir. We lost Creel in the exchange, he took a bad hit. But the Jap bought it. When this is over, the Feds are gonna find what’s left of Saito in that smoking crater on Wall Street.’
‘Ah, Mr Creel talked too much, anyhow.’ Cassidy indicated the man with the sub-machine gun. ‘You and Mr Bragg can find a replacement who can keep his mouth shut when we’re done here.’ The American puffed on the cigar again and glanced at Marc. ‘Y’see, that’s how I deal with rats in the house. You people don’t got the hang of that yet.’
Lucy stared at the deck, and she said what they were all thinking.
‘Someone gave us up.’ She looked into Marc’s eyes. ‘Kara cut us loose back there. She could have—’
Cassidy started talking again. ‘You play this game long enough, you figure out that there’s two kinds of spies, darlin’. There’s the ones whose throats you slit first chance you get, and the ones you keep on a leash.’ He nodded towards another of his men, the one standing behind Lucy and Grace. ‘Speaking of which . . .’
The man pulled a black anodised combat knife and stepped forward. For one horrible second, Marc thought he was going to put it to Lucy’s throat, but he moved to Grace instead. The man with the blade bent down, and cut away the plastic ties holding the pale woman’s hands together.
‘About goddamn time,’ she snapped, getting to her feet and rubbing her wrists.
‘You . . .’ Malte glared up at Grace with open loathing. ‘You betrayed us.’
‘Of course I did, idiot.’ She shook her head incredulously, and grinned at Lucy. ‘I’m the scorpion, remember? And you’re the frogs, stung to death and drowning.’ She rubbed the rain out of her hair and moved to the cover of the veranda, ignoring the American’s annoyance at her presumption. Grace turned that icy, sociopathic smile of hers on Cassidy. ‘Honestly, what took Glovkonin so damn long to reach out to me? I was starting to think I’d have to send a valentine!’
‘You nasty little bitch.’ Lucy’s face twisted into an angry grimace. ‘You don’t know anything else, do you? You sold us out because that’s all you’re good at.’
Grace tossed off a glib shrug that made Marc want to throw her in the river.
‘When you’re under pressure, you go with what you know best, right? This way, I walk and you don’t. It’s all upside for me, sis.’
‘Fuck off and die,’ retorted Lucy.
But Grace wasn’t done. She wanted to twist the knife.
‘I can’t believe you actually blamed that hacker chick – I mean, how dumb are you? Kitty-cat Kara has too many regrets to turn on her little gang here.’
‘On that point, where is the other one?’ said Cassidy.
‘The girl in the van escaped,’ said the man with the scar. ‘I left a team back there to hunt her down. Won’t take long.’
‘She’ll have gone to the police by now,’ Marc broke in. ‘Talked to our contact in the FBI. If I were you, I’d be more concerned about your situation than ours.’
‘Cops and Feds?’ Cassidy snorted in derision. ‘With no power and no phones? How’s that gonna happen? Face it, you’re the losers here.’ He looked Grace up and down, his expression becoming predatory. ‘This one, she’s everything her file says she is.’ He ran a thick thumb over his neck. ‘Shoulda done her in. That’d be the smart play.’
Lucy pulled at the ties securing her hands, flexing her fingers to keep the blood pumping.
‘You read my dossier, Mr Cassidy?’ Grace was saying, and she made a cooing noise. ‘I’m flattered, I do declare.’
