Clawback (31 page)

She’d fought back, and died.

Clara.

Through the door I heard a noise—a thump, then a small groan.

I hit the door running, and it slammed against the wall inside the cinder block stairwell—the utility stairs, down the back of the building. Blood spots on the treads headed down. Another faint noise below.

No shots. I leaned enough to see down to the next level, not quite, and saw nothing. No movement.

I gripped the chisel, pointed it away from my body, and vaulted over the rail.

With my left hand on the bar, I twisted in midair, controlled my fall just enough, and came down hard a few steps above the landing. I swept the chisel forward, partly for balance, partly just hoping someone would be there, but no one was.

A loud
clack
echoed off the concrete walls, and the lights went out.

I immediately repeated my vault, one more level down.

If they knew where I was, they’d shoot me. If I kept moving, the darkness might help. In the red glow from emergency exit signs, I saw movement at the street-level door.

I’d have killed him, but he was lying on the floor, trying to push himself up, clearly wounded. I might get a question in.

It was Rondo, not one of the killers. Blood ran down his face, black in the reddish light.

“Rondo!” I lifted him to a sitting position, one handed—I wasn’t letting go of the chisel. “Where’s Clara?”

“They took off. Grabbed her.” His voice was hoarse and weak.

“Who?”

“Men with guns. I don’t know.”

“I thought you were staying in the apartment!”

“Clara felt cooped up. You know how she is. I tried, Silas.” He attempted to straighten, groaning. “I tried.”

A phone rang, loud in the dark, closed stairwell, and I started. Rondo raised his hand, the mobile folded inside his large fist. He must have called me on it, but been hit after the few words he’d managed to get out.

Now he was having trouble answering. I took it from him.

“What? Who’s this?”

Pause, then the voice at the other end said, “No. Who the fuck are you?”

I recognized him. “Lockerby? It’s Silas. I just got here.”

“What—”

“Rondo’s alive. Where are you?”

“On my bike. I’m following them. Shit!”

Silence. “Lockerby? Lockerby!” I was shouting.

He came back. “Sorry, hit a hole. I’m hurt, Silas. I’m hurt.”

“Where’s Clara?”

“In the van.” His voice strengthened, but only a little. He was breathing hard. I imagined him on his bicycle, bleeding, trying to ride and talk. “They took her, in the van, but I’m following.”

“
What
van?”

“White…”

Rondo was coming alert, pulling himself together. I tipped the phone out, so he could hear, too.

“Where are you? What street?”

After a moment of noise, Lockerby’s voice returned. “Seventh Avenue.”

Southbound, then. “Cross street?”

“Fourteenth, coming up. They’re fifty, sixty feet in front of me. Not speeding. Moving with traffic. No windows in the back. I can’t see anything.”

“Any turns?”

“What? No. Don’t think so. In the middle lane.”

“Seventh and 14th.” I looked at Rondo. “What’s—? Fuck, the Holland Tunnel!”

“
Jersey
?”

“If they get off Manhattan, we’ll never catch them. Bike can’t go through the tunnel, can it?”

Lockerby, listening in: “No.”

Out front, sirens, louder now. Police would be coming in, riot gear, shooting to kill. They’d take us down, all questions for later. We’d never explain fast enough to get them out after Clara.

“What do we do?” Rondo stood up, swaying slightly, but he’d gotten his shit together.

“Outside. How bad are you?”

We pushed through the exit door, me first. The alley behind the Thatcher was clean and paved with perfectly flat blacktop, dumpsters shiny and neat lined up along the building. Rain bucketed down, spattering broad puddles on the pavement. Just inside from the street, a silvery midsize was stopped crosswise, two doors hanging open.

“I’m not shot.” Rondo pulled a hand away from his skull, looked at the dark blood. “They had their hands full with Clara. One of them rammed me into the wall, I hit my head.”

“That has to be their car.”

“Hey.” Lockerby’s voice, tinny on the phone.

“Hang on.” I looked at Rondo. “I’m going after them. Sit on the ground, put your hands up, don’t make any sudden moves—then tell the cops everything.”

“No, I’m—”

“And be
convincing.
” I ran for the car.

But Rondo beat me there, sliding into the driver’s seat like a NASCAR pit crew.

Shit.

It was a Cadillac, engine still running—you never risk an ignition fail, not in a commitment situation. I glanced in, saw black metal glinting in the rear seat.

“You sure you can drive?” I said, but Rondo was already yanking it into gear. I scrambled into the back, barely in time. He didn’t pause a moment, just hit the accelerator, swung the wheel and let the jackrabbit acceleration swing both our doors shut.

I still had the phone. “Lockerby?”

“Yo.”

“We’re moving.”

“Right.”

A pain in my hand, and I realized I was still clutching the chisel—so tightly my fingers had gone white. I forced them open, dropped the tool, and covered the phone’s mouthpiece for a moment. “Hey, Rondo. He’s on a bicycle. How can he talk on the phone?”

“It’s a fixie. You know—fixed gear. No brakes.”

“He doesn’t have any
brakes
?”

Rondo cornered onto 19
th
so fast I tumbled across the seat. The Caddy scraped something—newspaper box, the curb, I couldn’t see—but he didn’t hesitate. Horns blared all around.

“Turn on the wipers!” I yelled.

“Oh yeah.” Like that the windshield was swept clear. He also found the seat adjustment and slid backward, giving him more legroom—all without lessening speed.

Into the phone: “We’re four, maybe five minutes away.”

“They might hit the tunnel by then. We’re already in the line.”

Outbound traffic, waiting to enter the Holland, queued up on Varick. It would slow them down, but Lockerby was right. Midday, it wouldn’t take long.

“We might not make it.”

“Yes, we will.” Rondo put the accelerator down. The ride went from dangerous to terrifying.

I hesitated, then pulled out one of my own cellphones, dialing one handed while I kept the other at my ear.

“Police emergency.” The woman sounded bored. “We are recording.”

“Listen closely.” I spoke loudly and slowly. “I have packed a vehicle with seventeen hundred pounds of explosive, arrayed for spherical penetration. It has just entered the Holland Tunnel portal. I expect to reach the middle of the tunnel in one minute. At that time I will stop. Exactly five minutes after that, I will detonate the explosives. Do you understand?”

“Sir? Where are you?”

“
Sit dakaek min el-janna, ya hayawanah!
” A little rude, that, but the dispatcher wouldn’t be insulted, only the Arabic translator presumably kept on call for situations like this.

“Sir? Sir! What—”

I clicked off.

Rondo had slowed slightly for a red light, then sped up again, swerving behind one taxi and just in front of another. Both of my feet hit the floor in an unthinking reaction, automatically seeking the brake pedal. Somehow we squeaked through, skidding on the wet street.

“That won’t stop them!” he yelled. “You didn’t even describe the van!”

“No.”

“But—”

“They’ll close the
tunnel.
They have to.”

He hesitated. “In time?”

“Yes.” It took 9/11 to bring them together, but the city’s feuding agencies—transportation, emergency services, police, even a token federal liaison—had implemented serious counterterror response plans. No-fucking-around plans. If they thought there was a weapon of mass destruction under the Hudson, the operations center would be in full screaming red-alert mode.

“Lockerby, you get that?”

“I heard you.” The connection was poor, his voice weaker. “They’re still in line. About two hundred yards to go.”

“Traffic moving?”

“Uh…not so much. Stopped, maybe.”

“Don’t go any closer! Wait for us.”

“Right.”

What I’d seen on the backseat was an unzipped, oversize nylon duffel filled with familiar armament. While Rondo pretended we were in the Monte Carlo Rally, I found three Glocks, extra magazines, a Mossberg 590 and a half-dozen M84 flashbangs, still in their plastic packaging.

“Whoa.” A bonus, underneath. “These motherfuckers are
serious
.”

“What?”

An M2—a Browning .50-caliber machine gun. “My new long gun.”

Rondo slammed the brakes. I looked up to see the intersection gridlocked, cars in all directions stuck. Honking. Swearing audible even through the now steady rain. The lights were red all the way around.

“How about that,” I said. “It worked.”

“We’re still ten blocks away.”

“Lockerby? What’s going on?”

Through the phone I thought I heard sirens, but maybe they were closer to us.

“Dead stop. Nothing’s moving. Red and blue lights flashing at the portal, I think. Wait…a police truck, coming into that little service lot on the north side. Motorcycle cops. Damn.”

“The van?”

“It’s sitting there, with everyone else.”

The breakneck pursuit had drawn to a complete halt. We were in the right lane. Cars all around us, and more stacking up everywhere. Smug pedestrians wove their way between vehicles on the street, carrying umbrellas. Rain hammered the roof of the Caddy.

“Decision time,” I said to Rondo. “Call 911 back and tell them about the van? Or handle it ourselves?”

He looked over the seat, seeing the cornucopia of weaponry for the first time. “Jesus Christ.”

“We stole the right car.”

“Only one thing matters,” he said. “Clara comes out alive.”

“Agreed.”

“And I don’t know if guns blazing is the best way to do that.”

“Yeah.” I was truly torn. “But a siege isn’t much better. SWAT teams tend to suck at anything that doesn’t involve mass casualties.”

We looked at each other, uncertain.

“Silas?” Lockerby’s voice, through increasing static.

“Yeah?”

“I think they’re moving.”

“Already?” I couldn’t believe they’d checked and cleared the tunnel that fast.

“The truck’s kind of shifting back and forth, trying to get out…fuck, he’s jumping the curb into the police lane.”

“Which way?”

“Back—moving fast now. One block. He turned onto Canal.”

“Can you follow them?”

“On my way.”

“Keep the phone on!”

Rondo was staring at me. “What? What?”

“The truck bailed. He’s headed south.”

“Downtown? There’s no way off the island that way.”

“The Battery Tunnel.”

“Shit!”

Long pause. The cars all around us were unmoving. Lights and signs glowed in the darkening rainfall.

“Silas? The truck’s on West Broadway now. Traffic’s lighter—the jam is mostly the other way.”

I looked at Rondo. “They’re getting away. Down West Broadway.”

He pounded the steering wheel in frustration. “Fuck! Fuck!”

“I know.”

For a moment I thought Rondo was going to jump out and start sprinting. Instead, he growled, then shoved the transmission into gear.

“Hey,” I said.

“We’re getting
out
of here.” He twisted to look behind us, backed up, then went forward, back once more. “They’re not giving me enough room.”

I could have waved one of the Glocks out the window, but I wasn’t sure what good it would have done. No one had anywhere to go.

Rondo swore once more, then hit the gas. We slammed backward into the car behind us, jolting and rocking in the crash. Without stopping he accelerated forward, smashing the bumper in front.

If Zeke were here, he would have been whooping. I covered my face with both arms.

Twice more and we were out—onto the sidewalk. The tires crunched going over the curb, all the way to the rims.

“Always
wanted
to do this,” Rondo muttered. I looked in the rearview mirror and saw him grinning like a mad bastard. He hit the gas and we shot down the sidewalk, scattering the few pedestrians in our way.

We struck a small tree, a sapling that had been planted by the
street. It splintered, disappearing under the car. Ten yards farther, a parking sign. It scraped down the side of the car and tore off the mirror. The corner loomed in front of us—

“
Cocksuckers!
”

The intersection was equally jammed, cars backed up in all directions. We couldn’t have gotten through with an MRAP armored truck.

Rondo yanked the wheel right, and we got around the corner, still on the sidewalk. It was a tight fit, and a mailbox did serious damage to the car’s side panels. But somehow Rondo kept us moving.

“If all the corners are full of vehicles,” I said, “we’re going to end up circling the block. All the way around on the sidewalk.”

“No.” Rondo’s jaw was set. “At the next one, we’re going through.” He sped up, and we banged past light poles, flattened a wire newspaper rack outside a convenience store, and knocked over a hydrant. By the time we hit the corner we must have been doing thirty or forty miles an hour.

Doesn’t sound like much, but
far
too fast for a sidewalk.

Fortunately, this cross street was more or less clear. Waiting cars hadn’t edged much past the zebra stripe, so Rondo was able to fly through. He even aimed the left wheels through the curb cut on the other side.

Every police officer in the city must have been headed for the Holland Tunnel. No one appeared interested in pursuing us.

“Are we going to drive all the way to Battery Park like this?” I asked.

“If necessary.”

Lockerby’s voice came over the phone, which I’d returned to my ear.

“Where are you?”

I glanced at a street sign as we knocked it over. “Lafayette and…White.”

“We’re almost at Barclay Street.”

“What’s down there?”