Blood and Ashes (38 page)

‘I’ve still got something to do up here first.’

‘What about the radiation?’

Rink had a point. There was no way of knowing if I’d been drenched in the poisonous stuff, but it was highly likely in this confined space.

My silence said it all. If the plutonium had got me, coming down wouldn’t help. Fatalism struck. If it wasn’t going to kill me immediately, I might as well make good use of the time left.

If Gant was in full charge of his senses he would expect me to flee downwards. So I went up. And I went at speed, dodging pools of flaming fuel, leaping over others. I clanged up the last few steps and on to a platform. Off to the left was the hollow tube forming the upraised arm of Lady Liberty. Burning petrol spilled from above, a mini-cascade that made the tube an unreachable escape route. I spun to the right, feeling heat scorch my features. If I hadn’t already been wet then my hair would have spontaneously combusted. The heat forced me to move back a pace. Just as I did a writhing shape burst out of the smoke in front of me.

His clothing smoking, Gant came at me like a maniac, teeth bared in a rictus snarl. He fired the machine pistol, and I had to lunge away, almost going over the railing. I fired from the hip, and the bullets struck Gant in the body. The man staggered at the impact, but it didn’t stop him. I rebounded from the railing and launched myself at the skinhead’s gun hand. Gant tried to swing it on me, but I knocked it aside with a forearm, smacked Gant under the chin with the butt of the SIG. We went chest to chest, grappling each other’s gun hand. We were so close I could see the eight-eight pattern on the other man’s face: one of them as a bullseye for my forehead.

The blow stunned Gant, and I used the moment to turn him. I arched him over the rail, my knee jamming between his thighs. Gant exhaled sour breath in my face.

‘You fucker!’ I snarled at him.

‘Traitor,’ Gant snapped back.

‘I’m a traitor? You’ve just blown a bomb in the fucking Statue of Liberty!’

‘Liberty? This is a symbol of everything that’s gone wrong with this country.’

There wasn’t time for argument, this was all about fighting. We wrestled and jostled and Gant managed to knee my injured thigh. I ignored the pain and rammed my own knee into Gant’s groin. We both fell to the platform, and ended up perilously close to the edge. Gant kicked with both legs, and I had to snatch at his feet to avoid going over.

Gant brought round his gun. It was do or die, and I wasn’t ready to breathe my last. I fired the SIG, uncaring where the target was, only that it deflected Gant’s aim. The bullet struck the man’s left shoulder. Gant yelled in agony and tried to scramble away. I got a hold on one of his boots, but it was loose and slipped off, and almost spilled me off the platform to a sure death. I clutched at one of the supports, but my legs went over the edge. A drip of molten heat seared the back of my neck.

Gant came up to his feet. ‘I got a look at your friend down there. The Nip. You’re consorting with the fucking enemy, you asshole.’

‘Rink’s an American,’ I grunted as I swung my legs back on to the platform. ‘He’s a hero who has fought all his life for his country. You? You’re just a piece of white trash who wants to sit on your lazy arse and have everything handed to you.’

Gant flicked the lever on his gun to fully automatic. He laughed, jerked his head upwards. ‘Does that look the work of a lazy man?’

‘It looks like the work of a crazy man.’

‘No. No. No. I’m not crazy. I know exactly what I’m doing.’

‘Do you?’ I laughed. I’d wondered what Kwon had meant when he’d said, ‘You don’t understand.’ Well, now I’d an idea why the Korean had been so sure of himself. He’d demanded to talk with the CIA . . . was that because he knew there was nothing tangible they could hold against him? ‘Your bomb up there? If you’d cared to check you’d have found that the flasks didn’t contain plutonium-isotope. It was just heavy water. Enough radiation to set off a Geiger counter, but anyone who knows about these things would have realised it was a very low yield. Your fire will have vaporised it in the initial explosion.’

‘Bullshit.’

‘Carswell Hicks bought nothing more dangerous than dishwater.’

‘You’re lying.’

‘Why would I?’

‘Because you’re an agent of a lying government.’

‘No.’ I stared up at the man’s gun, challenging him. ‘I’m not.’

Gant’s face shadowed as my hastily formulated theory struck. Everything he’d done was for nothing? The flames, though intense for now, had no fuel, and the splash of petroleum would do little more than singe the inside of the statue. A quick clean up and the Statue of Liberty would be open for business as usual.

‘Ain’t life a bitch?’ he asked sarcastically. Then he swung his gun at my face. ‘But don’t worry; you don’t have to suffer it any longer.’

Engaging Gant in conversation wasn’t an effort to explain the skinhead’s failings, it was to give me an opportunity to fight back. Hanging precariously over the edge of the platform I had no hope, so I’d taken the opportunity to squirm up on to the deck, keeping my gun out of view. Gant thought I was at his mercy, but I didn’t expect mercy. From a prone position I fired along the deck, and the bullet struck Gant’s unguarded ankle. Gant shrieked, his gun exploding into life, but his arms had also reacted to the agony in his shattered foot and his bullets spanged along the platform in front of me. Ricochets whizzed everywhere, as hot as the falling rain. Something scorched my scalp, whether it was dripping petrol or a fragment of a bullet I didn’t know or care.

Gant couldn’t take his own weight on his shattered ankle. He began to buckle.

Swarming up, I caught the tattooed man’s gut with a shoulder. Like a prop on a rugby field, I drove with my feet, then at the last second thrust out with both hands and propelled Gant back and into the opening to Lady Liberty’s upraised arm. The skinhead disappeared into the darkness on the far side of the molten fluid that still sheeted down the wall.

Gant’s shrieks were horrendous. It was no clean death for him, but the intense agony of immolation. I stepped away from the sickening sounds of thrashing limbs and crackling flame.

I was still standing in the same place a few seconds later when something erupted back through the flames.
Something
: that was the only way my mind could describe Gant now because very little of him was left that was recognisable.

When trained in Point Shooting, you’ve achieved mastery when your gun becomes an extension of the hand. No conscious effort is necessary to target and discharge your weapon. I lifted, squeezed and fired three rounds directly into the central mass of the
thing
approaching.

Maybe Gant was wearing a bulletproof vest like he had been back in the Alleghenies, because like before the rounds didn’t stop him. He came on, and he still had the machine-pistol in his hand. I almost fired again. But I allowed the gun barrel to drop.

Gant was sheathed in flames, his clothing burning, disintegrating and adhering to his body, his skin blistering, his gun fused to the flesh of his right hand. He had to be insane with agony. He came to a stumbling halt, opened his mouth in a silent scream. I fancied that there were even flames in his throat. Then Gant dropped to his knees, flopping back so he sat propped on his heels. He continued to burn. His entire face was turning the same blue, black and scarlet as the tattoo that decorated him. One eye was swollen shut, a blister filled with fluid threatening to pop, but the other was wide open and staring at me. The eye gleamed with hatred.

I lifted my gun and shot him through the skull.

Not out of anger or even a sense of justice, but in an act of mercy I’d never have offered the man before now.

He flopped down, arms twisting up towards his chest. I thought of Brook; if this bastard was the one responsible for burning her then he’d got everything he deserved. I turned away, unable to look at him any longer.

Gant was dead, and if I didn’t get out quick I would probably join him. I thundered down the stairs with the fire alarm whooping, as though urging me on. Molten drops still pattered around me, and a few times I slapped at my skin where they struck. It was as if I ran through a descent into hell, but every step I took was in the right direction. Above the flames still crackled and hissed and poisonous fumes collected in the head of the statue.

Coming to the lowest level, I found where the spilled fuel had gathered on the surface of pools of rusty water. Some of it had burned down now to a thick, oily smudge on the floor, but in the main it was still alight. I leaped the flames without stopping, experienced a split-second of intense heat, but then was through it and felt Rink dragging me down on to blessedly cold tiles. Rink rolled me, patted with his open hands and I was only then aware that my hair was smouldering and that patches of my shirt had ignited.

‘Holy Christ, brother,’ Rink panted. ‘If I knew there was gonna be a bonfire I’d’ve brought marshmallows.’

I pulled up on to my feet, smarting at the raw spots on my arms and face. There was a particularly raw spot on the back of my neck too. ‘Through here, quick.’

We pushed through a door and down into the observation gallery of the pedestal, the klaxon shriek lessened now that we were out of the reverberating statue. Apparently the fire-fighting system worked on separate units depending upon the individual floors. We thought about going out into the rain, but the deluge had chosen now to lessen. Something else was needed. I scanned the ceiling, saw what I was looking for and took aim with the SIG. There was more to this shot than those I’d put into Gant upstairs: this one was designed to save lives. I’d convinced Gant with my theory that Kwon had double-crossed Hicks, but I couldn’t be sure.

The bullet struck the sprinkler-head in the ceiling and water gushed out. An automatic override flicked into action and all along the hall and throughout the remainder of the building the fire-fighting system kicked into play and water blasted down on us. Klaxons here now joined the wail from above. I pulled off my clothing, stood there in the altogether and allowed the showering water to cleanse me of any of the plutonium particles that might have found a way on to my flesh. When I looked around, Rink was scrubbing his naked body similarly.

The beating water didn’t go on for ever. Soon it turned to a trickle and we forged a way down a staircase flowing with rusty-coloured streams. I wondered what kind of spectacle we’d make when we staggered outside, both as naked as newborn babies, our only possessions the guns in our hands.

There were too many other worries on my mind than if we’d raise a chuckle or two from the cops descending on the place, but I felt that stripped naked like this we were vulnerable to more than embarrassment. On the ground floor of the fort, I led Rink round the plinth displaying the original torch and towards rooms at the back. We went through one door marked
private
and found a locker room. Inside we took some of the beige uniforms the staff had been wearing. We searched through various items, and pulled on trousers and shirts. I was easily kitted out, but Rink had broader shoulders and thicker arms than most and the shirt he pulled on was stretched across the chest and back. He had to leave the buttons undone, but he didn’t mind. He just grinned, puffed out his pectorals, and said, ‘What do you think? Poster boy for the National Park Service?’

I laughed along with him as we made our way back through the foyer. We were still laughing when we were greeted by gun-toting FBI troopers who disarmed us and led us off, giving way to the fire crews that had arrived. Others had arrived too, mysterious figures wearing hazmat suits, ready to clean up the fallout.

As we were marched across the sward, I looked back up at Lady Liberty. I’d like to say that she winked in approval, but it was probably just the play of flames and smoke behind her eyes.

Chapter 49

I made the drive to Bedford Well in a rental car paid for by the bogus Danny Fisher credit card. I felt I’d earned the right, seeing as it had been supplied as expenses to help bring down Carswell Hicks’ outfit. I enjoyed the drive this time. The rain was a memory, and now the hills were backed by a clear sky and hazy sunshine. I drove with the windows open, taking pleasure in the breeze ruffling my hair and snapping at my jacket collar. It was good to be outside again.

It was a full week since the events at the Statue of Liberty, but it felt more like months. Both Rink and I had spent time in cells, then in interview rooms where we were interrogated about our part in the horror that had struck Manhattan. We told our tale over and over again, but neither of us mentioned Arrowsake or its inclusion. Not through loyalty, but through necessity. In a cell we were sitting ducks for an assassin. We would deal with that problem ourselves. Another time, I promised. Special Agent Vincent was conspicuous by his absence. I wondered if Arrowsake had already deemed the young hothead a liability and had him terminated. There was always that possibility, but I doubted it: Vince had the instincts and the ability to disappear if he wished. I thought the young man might just make a reappearance somewhere down the line. A quote came to mind. A seventeenth-century author called François de la Rochefoucauld once wrote: ‘Absence diminishes little passions and increases great ones, as wind extinguishes candles and fans a fire.’ The author’s words could be true of Vince’s disappearing act, meaning when he showed again it would reignite a firestorm. Let him come, I decided, just not while we’re penned in a jail cell.