Blackmail Earth (38 page)

“You’re right,” Dafoe said.

“You wait till everybody goes to the polls, and then you launch,” Jenna added. She pulled out her phone and called Nicci, catching her on the second ring. In a voice as bright and casual as cotton candy, Jenna asked Nicci to meet her at the Shaughn Hotel at five the next morning.

“The Shaughn? Really?” Nicci said.

“I can’t go back to my apartment.”

“What’s up?”

“Can you trust me till then?” Jenna asked.

“You know I can.”

“See you. I’ll be registered under Dafoe’s last name, Tillian.”

Jenna looked at Dafoe’s rifle and pistol. “Are these all the guns you have?”

“That’s it. Up till now, all I’ve been fighting are coyotes.”

“Let’s grab whatever ammunition you’ve got and hope for the best, because I’ve got a nasty feeling that we’re going to be fighting animals a lot more dangerous and devious than coyotes.”

“Are you going to tell everyone?” Sang-mi asked.

“If I can get on the air, I’ll say plenty. But that’s a big ‘if’ because I’ve been suspended.”

“We may have bigger problems than that,” Dafoe said with a telling glance at the dark world outside.

Jenna nodded and grabbed the pistol. “Let’s head down to the city. We’re sure not spending the night here.”

CHAPTER 23

Jenna sat in the front passenger seat of Forensia’s rattly, rusty Subaru wagon with the rifle held tightly in her hands. Forensia had gladly surrendered the driving duties to Dafoe; his truck, with a single bench seat, could never have held the four of them. Riding shotgun, Jenna constantly searched their surroundings as Dafoe drove cautiously down a series of country roads before merging onto the New York State Thruway.

Forensia and Sang-mi huddled in the backseat and kept their heads down. They might not have been sure whether the drive south was safer than trying to hide in town, but they’d cast their lot with Jenna and Dafoe, and there was no looking back—except to check if they were being followed.

Dry lightning cleaved the night sky to the west, an atmospheric sideshow that did little to ease the tension in the car, though the threat paled compared to the real danger of a highway shootout. But the trip was unavoidable if they were to get Jenna to the set of
The Morning Show
early on election day. She held the rifle firmly and her finger never strayed far from the trigger.

Every pair of headlights that overtook the old Subaru felt like a mortal threat, and when a large vehicle raced onto the highway behind them just after they passed a rest area, Jenna could feel everyone stiffen with dread. Dafoe used the mirrors to track the car’s rapid approach. Forensia turned around, gasping, “It’s a big black SUV,” repeating the very words she’d used to describe the black Expedition that she’d first spotted idling by Dafoe’s driveway.

But this three-ton behemoth sprinted by so fast that it almost blew their doors off. It had to be doing a hundred and twenty, hardly the low-key profile of a vehicle packed with foreign assassins scouring the thruway for three Americans and the daughter of a North Korean defector.

“Would it bother you if I put on some news?” Jenna asked Dafoe.

“That’s fine. Go for it.”

“I’m hoping to hear a bulletin that a car full of Asians has just been apprehended.”

No such news, but it didn’t take long before they heard a headline about the tanker takeover, followed by a reporter’s breathless warning about how a world catastrophe could be unleashed “at any second” in the Maldives.

From breathy to boozy—Rick Birk’s voice filled the car: “Live from the heart of the hoth-stidge taking over on the than-ker
Dick Cheney.
”

Birk sounded drunk to Jenna, though she could hardly imagine that he’d scrounged cocktails from gun-wielding jihadists. Maybe he was exhausted, or frightened half to death. Still, he was definitely slurring his words: “Ther-ists demanding fast, fast action. You hear me? Ther-ists want it fast.” Then she heard a loud
bang,
like he’d pounded a table for emphasis.

Christ, he sounds belligerent. Maybe he is wasted.

“How well do you know that guy?” Dafoe asked, keeping his eyes on the road, the rearview, and everywhere else at once, it seemed.

“Not very. He chewed me out the only time I ever talked to him. It was so offensive that I hung up on him. Then he tried to apologize, but I never took his calls. After that, he got taken ‘hoth-stidge.’” She giggled, couldn’t help herself. “I shouldn’t be joking about an old guy who’s had three fingers chopped off,” although it did feel good, amid all the worry, to experience a few seconds of relief, “but he’s a real creep. I haven’t met anyone who likes him.”

Dafoe listened closely to the radio. “Maybe he’s drinking himself to death. He sounds really plastered. If he’s found some booze, he’ll be lucky if they don’t chop off his head next.”

*   *   *

Birk could sniff out a purebred teetotaler in less time than it took him to knock back a Manhattan and suck down the damn cherry, and Suicide Sam hadn’t
ever
had a drink.
I want his liver,
Birk thought,
when the time comes.

Raggedy Ass had nodded off, so Birk had tried several times to get Suicide Sam to wrap some tape around the captain’s mouth to shut … him … the … fuck … up, but this jihadist either didn’t understand English or didn’t care.

For chrissakes, that weasel’s still whining. It’s only three fucking fingers, pussy.
I
should be the one whining, putting up with your bullshit. Your goddamn fingers stink like gefilte fish, and I’m the one stuck with them on my shirt? I’ll never get these goddamn stains out. We get out of this jam and you’re getting the cleaning bill, buddy.

Birk felt that he had serious grounds to feel so aggrieved. Weasel mouth had tried to bite him—that’s right,
bite
him—when Birk stepped over his head on the way to the facilities. That did it. Birk whipped out the old avenger and tried to pee on him—give the sourpuss a serious dose of humiliation—before Raggedy Ass pushed him toward the head.

“Fucker needs a muzzle,” Birk said to the cracker jihadist after he’d drained the lizard.

“Tha’s lack the pot callin’ the ol’ kettle black,” Raggedy Ass drawled, treating Birk to more of his twisted Southern tongue.

Ye gods, get me away from these people.
Birk hadn’t been able to stomach crackers in the States—
Why should I, of all people, have to suffer fools gladly?—
and he’d seen no evidence that transplanting them to Muhammad’s sacred soil had done anything to improve the bizarre species festering on the murky side of the Mason-Dixon Line.

Birk eyed the captain, knowing that he should be grateful that the fucker hadn’t bled to death. Dying, Birk had seen, did nasty things to fingers—curled them up like croissants. Made them goddamn near as crusty, too.
You learn all kinds of shit as a reporter.
That could get Raggedy Ass searching for a new supplier of fingers. Even seeing double, Birk couldn’t come up with any potential donors but Suicide Sam and himself. And Sam over there, with his fucking bomb, had a little more clout—in every sense of the word—than Birk.

Speaking of Sam, the bottle of Johnnie Walker was damn near empty, so Birk waved it around to give him a heads-up that the talent needed a new one. But he did it off camera. Least he was pretty sure he’d done it off camera. Maybe not.
Who gives a flying turd? Look at me.
Birk waved the bottle at Sam again and mouthed,
“Go get a goddamn refill, asshole.”

Sam wasn’t moving. Birk stared into the tiny computer camera, glanced at Raggedy Ass snoring contentedly on the other side of the wheelhouse, and covered the lens with his bandaged hand.

“Get me another one,” he growled at Suicide Sam,
“now.”

Birk swallowed the last of Johnnie Walker’s best and threw the bottle at Sam, underhanded. Easy catch, but instead of grabbing the goddamn thing and doing what he was told, Sam jumped aside like it was a bomb. The bottle crashed to the deck and shattered. When the jihadist looked up from the broken glass, Birk made the “hurry-hurry” motion with his unbandaged hand, palm up, fingers waving. A little impatient, perhaps, but given the Job-like challenges Birk was facing, he felt that he’d offered the cretin a pretty forgiving gesture. But goddamn, the “hurry-hurry” didn’t move Sam a wee bit, so Birk flipped him off. And when that didn’t do the trick, he gave him one more universally understood hand signal: He slid his index finger across his throat.

It never occurred to Birk that threatening to murder a suicide bomber was among the world’s most ill-advised acts. And now Raggedy Ass was arising, no doubt shaken from his slumber by the bottle breaking. He glared at Birk.

But Suicide Sam didn’t spare the aged eminence so much as a glance, returning his eyes to the Shopping Channel and a particularly alluring pair of zirconium earrings.

*   *   *

It was almost 5:00
A.M.
and still dark when the dilapidated Subaru rattled up to the elegant entrance of the Shaughn Hotel on the city’s West Side, which felt marginally safer to Jenna than returning to her apartment. Seeing the dilapidated car, the hotel’s doorman started to wave them on—then recognized Jenna climbing out of the front seat. He hurried to open her door. She left the rifle behind.

“We’re keeping the keys and leaving the car right there where you can keep an eye on it,” Jenna said to the doorman. Nicci would be showing up in an hour and there wasn’t a moment to spare.

He shook his head. “Maybe for a few minutes, but no longer. The owner”—real estate magnate Daniel Straub, who was reputed to have pretensions so grand that they trumped Trump’s—“is not going to want this thing out here at all.”

Jenna strode past him, stuffing a Benjamin into his neatly pressed navy blue jacket. “Take care of that car, and I’ll take care of you again on my way out.”

After checking into a well-appointed suite, Dafoe went to work on his laptop. She’d never seen him in hacker mode. His fingers flew over the keyboard so fast that he looked like a maestro on a baby grand, and she realized that he must have had a ton of RAM because she’d never seen a laptop with that much speed.

Jenna rushed into the bathroom, spending the next forty-five minutes showering and trying to make herself look professional enough that network security wouldn’t bar her from the building.

When she stepped back into the main room, she saw Nicci arriving. Dafoe corralled the weather producer to review a long list of instructions he’d prepared for her. Jenna’s phone rang, but she ignored it; let voice mail pick up. She sat next to Sang-mi on the couch.

After carefully going over the list, Dafoe told Nicci, “If you don’t hear from us after
The Morning Show
has been on for fifteen minutes,
or
you don’t see Jenna on the air talking about those rockets, then do everything on this page just the way you see it. This is critical.”

“Don’t worry about her,” Jenna said, “she’ll have us covered.”

“What am I going to be hacking into?” Nicci asked.

“Let’s just say that it’s a widely viewed venue,” Dafoe said. “But none of this will be traceable to you. And remember, this is a backup plan. You should do it only if Jenna doesn’t make it onto the show.”

“Right,” Nicci said. “I understand. Now who
might
I be hacking?”

“Tell her,” Jenna said. “She has a right to know.”

“The White House Web site,” Dafoe said.

“Whoa.” Nicci smiled. “We’re really making history here.”

“I wish we didn’t have to do this,” Dafoe gave his computer a nod, “but if we do, you’re right, this one’s going to get remembered.”

Minutes later, Jenna and Dafoe stepped onto the sidewalk. The Subaru was missing. “Where is it?” she asked the doorman.

“I couldn’t stop the tow company. They’ve got a contract to tow away anything that looks ‘unfit.’ I tried to tell you. I even called up there but all I got was the message center. Here, this is their card. This is where they’re taking it.”

Jenna grabbed the business card and swore. Their weapons were on the way to a locked car compound in the Bronx.

“I’m really sorry,” the doorman said.

“Jesus Christ, Dafoe. Look.” Jenna glanced pointedly down the street. At a well-lit intersection three blocks away, a big black SUV loomed from behind a shiny silver Smart car.

“Cab?” Jenna cried out.

The doorman bolted to the street and blew his whistle loudly, as if to redeem himself.

A yellow cab, waiting at a nearby taxi stand, raced right up. Jenna and Dafoe piled in. She shouted out the address of
The Morning Show
’s studio, looked back, and saw the SUV a half block behind them, close enough to see that it had a dented grill.

She shoved a one hundred dollar bill into the tiny money tray in the Plexiglas shield that separated them from the driver, and shouted, “There’s two more of those if you don’t stop for anything.”

“I take you,” he said in deeply accented English, roaring away so fast that Jenna was slammed back into her seat.

“They’re almost on top of us,” Dafoe said.

Not quite: The Expedition was boxed in by the Smart car and an ancient, pale green Volkswagen Beetle. The SUV looked like Goliath as it rode the bumper of the Smart car. The Bug’s bleary-eyed driver appeared oblivious to the aggressive tactics in the lane just to his left.

The cabbie, Korfa Waabberi Samatar, according to his prominently displayed license, raced down the streets like he’d been born in the Big Apple and knew its every rut and pothole, putting some distance between his vehicle and the boxed-in Expedition.

“Where are you from?” Jenna yelled.

“Mogadishu.” Somalia. That explained his composure when, in the next few seconds, the Expedition grew wildly reckless.

First, the SUV’s horn sounded a long, continuous blast. Then the big, black beast edged up against the Beetle, visibly startling the sleepy driver before ramming his fragile-looking car. The old Bug—a notoriously unstable model under the best of circumstances—flipped and rolled twice, narrowly missed by another hard-charging taxi two lanes over.