Quake (25 page)

Mendoza watched as the lone figure on the edge of the overlook prepared to throw two hand grenades into the spent fuel pool. He looked up and started to fervently vocalize Arabic incantations.

Mendoza's handheld radio crackled with Sam's urgent voice. “This pool cannot handle any more stress! One concussion from an explosive and either the new plumbing configuration we just set up for the cooling water will be destroyed, or the pool itself will crack, or both!”

“I think I can line up a shot,” Mendoza said, moving his head back and forth from behind his cover as he looked at the terrorist from either side of a steel support beam.

“No shot from down here,” Jasper reported. “He's way too far away with all kinds of stuff in the way.”

Mendoza's radio made a
beep
when the transmissions ended and apparently Alivi's man heard these, for he stopped his chanting and turned his head in Mendoza's direction, the incendiary devices still gripped tightly in his hands.

Mendoza saw the man's eyes go wide as he spotted him. He honestly didn't know if he could take him out from here. Maybe. But it wasn't a sure shot, he knew that. He was reminded of the most tense moment of his FBI career thus far, nine years ago, when he had responded to a domestic hostage standoff in a Walmart parking lot after a man had transported his kid across state lines following a custody battle. He was holding one of those exotic looking but cheaply made “collector's” knives, with fake jewels embedded into the handle and a winged dragon wrapped around the hilt, to the throat of his young son, the ex-wife screaming hysterically nearby.

The negotiating took a turn for the worse when the guy declared that everything was unacceptable. “Un-fucking-acceptable,” he'd shout after anything the FBI hostage negotiator said through his megaphone.
Take your time to think about what you need. There's no hurry here.... Un-fucking-acceptable!
When they saw blood start to trickle down the boy's neck, Mendoza had taken the shot that killed the man (
Un-fucking—).
Acceptable. And it was. He'd shot him exactly between the eyes from about this same distance, dropping him instantly so that he released the boy without harm. Every now and then he still had dreams where he saw that neat, red circle on the bridge of the guy's nose.

Mendoza took a deep breath as he relived the memory. But that had been using a high-powered rifle, in full daylight, with a lot of support personnel backing him up. Now all he had was his pistol with only two rounds in near darkness against a guy brandishing two grenades, either one of which he could decide to throw at Mendoza at any moment. He might have other weapons at his disposal, too. Worst of all, his hostage wasn't a boy, it was a nuclear facility on the brink of total destruction.

Now the terror monger was bellowing the word
Allah
a lot, becoming more agitated, moving more erratically, jumping from side to side, looking all around.

“
Don't
let him toss one of those grenades into the pool,” Sam warned again. “Take him out. It's either him or the entire city of New York, including us.”

That was all Mendoza needed to hear.

But apparently Alivi's disciple had come to a decision as well, for he turned toward Mendoza and issued one of the grenades with a surprisingly quick underhanded toss, reminiscent of the motion women's professional softball pitchers used. The result was a clattering explosive skip-hopping its way across the concrete floor at some scary foot-per-second rate right toward Mendoza. This thing was coming at him and coming at him fast, taking erratic bounces along the way.

He dove headlong to the right, away from the edge, making sure he covered his head with his arms as he landed. He couldn't see it, but the grenade exploded in mid-air not five feet from where Mendoza's head had been. He sure felt it though, a deafening burst of quick-released energy that made his eardrums feel like they had been damaged. But he knew the Quran-obsessed sicko had one grenade left to go, so Mendoza shot to his feet, feeling a trickle of warm blood ooze out of his left ear. He whirled around back toward the edge of the overlook.

“Frank, you okay?” Sam's voice was calling, but Mendoza blocked it out. The terror man's arm was wound up, more like a major league pitcher now, preparing to hurl his remaining grenade into the spent fuel pool below. Sam and Jasper were both shouting into the radio now, but Mendoza let the radio unit drop while he gave all of his attention to his Glock and its two precious rounds.

He lined up a shot to the jihadist's head in his sights, but didn't like how he had to keep correcting for the guy's motion and a little voice told him,
No!

He adjusted his aim for a chest shot, held his breath . . .
. . . and squeezed the trigger.

The terrorist was jerked out of his smooth throwing motion as the slug impacted his sternum, and the grenade slipped from his hand, dropping to the floor and rolling a couple of feet away. From the way the man scrambled for it so madly, Mendoza guessed correctly that the pin had already been pulled. Alivi's man swept his hand at the grenade, no doubt intent on sweeping it over the edge into the spent fuel pool. He barely missed, already wriggling on the floor to try again, and Mendoza lined up another shot.

His last.

Don't miss this. If you only make one shot for the rest of your life, let this be it. Don't miss, don't miss . . .

Mendoza held his breath.

Lined up his shot. Head shot this time because of the way the guy was oriented toward him, prostrate on the floor.

He pulled the trigger.

Nick had to stifle his urge to call out Lauren's name. Alivi could be within earshot. He just wanted to find his daughter—alive—and carry her out of this hellhole to wherever they could be safe and together. He scrabbled over a pile of loose concrete and was about to jump over an overturned stack when he cautioned himself that Lauren could be beneath any one of these heavy objects. He didn't need to be adding his weight to them. So even though it took a bit more time, he worked his way around the stack without shifting it.

When he got to the other side of it, he traced along its long edge until it was high enough from the floor to stick his head under. He thrust his flashlight into the space and had a look. Just bare floor beneath this one, but there were many more to check in this area.

He did so, carefully positioning himself so that he could look beneath the stacks, but without moving them in case she (or anyone who by some miracle was still alive) was trapped beneath. After checking each stack, he would pause to monitor the area carefully for signs of Alivi. He wished a rescue crew would get here already, but knew that with the unprecedented degree of devastation the city had suffered that no cavalry would be forthcoming until after dawn at the earliest. Although he did hear the occasional emergency vehicle siren far off in the distance, he listened to far more of them on any given city night. This mega-disaster was so crippling that Nick knew the rescue agencies themselves were in trouble. The night air was downright quiet, which in itself was unsettling for any long-time New Yorker.

Some time passed—time filled with painstaking exertion—and frustration was beginning to set in. By now he'd checked all of the stacks nearest the edge by the snapped iron railing where Ray had fallen. In the area he'd identified as being the one where she would most likely be if Ray had been correct about the series of events, the only thing remaining to check was a jumble of stacks set a few yards back from the edge. He'd assumed she'd be close to the edge since Ray said they could hear each other and he had fallen off the edge, but then again, Nick thought, he always did manage to pick the longest line at the checkout counters.

But that's okay. Just let her be in this group of bookcases here.

He flipped his light on and quickly estimated there to be ten or twelve stacks crisscrossed atop one another, a few sliding off at a diagonal. Thousands of hardcover books also littered the floor, oozing out from the stacks like the guts of some well-read monster. He stalked around the pileup, studying it, trying to determine if any part of it was highly unstable and about to fall over. He looked under a couple of the units, but then the slowness of it got to him and he could take no more.

He began to call out his child's name. Softly, not yelling, so as not to alert Alivi, but with enough volume and projection that if she was awake and anywhere in this immediate area, she'd hear him.

“Lauren!”

He cycled around the mess of stacks, calling out her name. He had just resigned himself to the fact that he was going to have to start digging into every accessible crevice when he heard a response.

A response that ignited a homing response in him like none other could.

“Daddy!”

Nick heard it again.

“Daddy!”

“Lauren! I'm here, baby. I'm coming!”

Alivi be damned, there was no way in hell he could restrain himself from answering that voice. He turned on his flashlight and started moving toward the source of the cry.

She's alive! Lauren is alive!
His spirits soared as he rolled over a small hill of books and looked up into an overhang created by a protruding stack.

“Hold tight, Lauren!”

No response came and he grew worried. How bad off was she? Had she already lapsed into unconsciousness, or even worse?

“Say something, Lauren?”

He still wasn't sure where exactly she was in the ungainly conglomeration of stacks.

“Here.”

The brevity and weakness of her responses were not encouraging. He had to get to her now. But even the single word had given him some directional input to key in on.

Nick eyed the stack pile and guessed that she was near the bottom of it, maybe ten feet farther up. He went to that spot but found it to be impenetrable from all sides. He retraced his steps to the overhang he'd seen earlier and eyed the upper reaches of Stack Mountain.

Christ.
He was going to have to climb again.

He didn't waste any time lamenting the circumstances, but set to work straight away. Although it appeared daunting, once he got started he saw that it was more like climbing stairs; much easier than the vertical catwalk ascent he'd had to get up here. At the top, he stooped under the overhang and took a better look at the opening.

It was pitch-dark in there without the flashlight. He shuddered to think of his Lauren down there all this time, wondering when—if—someone would come to get her; where her father was. He called down into the stack cave.

“Lauren, hold tight, I'm coming down for you.”

Nick spent a few seconds eyeballing a downward route into the dark recesses, like a rock climber studying a difficult route before committing himself. Satisfied he'd located the easiest possible course, he swung a leg in and started down. The climb wasn't all that difficult but he was distracted by knowing he was in such close proximity to Lauren, and when a stack shifted under his weight he tumbled halfway down, knocking his head on the edge of a furniture piece as he hit bottom.

He felt warm blood sluicing down his cheek, but he didn't see stars or feel dizzy. He slowly got to a kneeling position and shined his torch around inside the artificial cavern. Looking behind him, he could see there were rough alcoves extending beyond his line of sight, as well as a longer, crooked passage leading off ahead.

“Lauren?”

“Here, Daddy!”

Nick whipped his head around toward the crooked passage.

That way!

He had to crawl to make progress, but he would go for miles on his hands and knees to reach Lauren if that's what it took. He experienced a moment of exasperation upon reaching a large enough opening into the cavern that he had somehow missed during his walk around from the outside.
Could have just crawled in right here without the climb. Whatever, I'm here now. . . .

“Lauren!”

There she was! His little girl, the daughter of his dead wife, everything he had left that represented real meaning in this world. Lying curled in the fetal position—the same position in which he first laid eyes on her in that life-changing ultrasound seventeen years ago.
Lauren
.

He stood as high as the cramped space would allow and waded through books until he reached her.

“Baby, it's me, Daddy. I'm right here.”

He knelt and softly put a hand on her arm while playing his light across her body, assessing her condition. Some blood, soaking through her clothes in multiple places, but he couldn't identify any major wounds and nothing seemed to still be flowing. He was grateful that the angle of her neck seemed natural. The side of her face he could see had some dried blood streaks on it but no deep lacerations. He examined her head, looking for skull fractures, not seeing anything obvious.

She might have just made it through this....
Nick was about to allow himself a faint ray of hope when he saw the object.

His heart stopped. What was that?

Not three inches from her head lay a roundish metal object.

Is that a . . .
He brought the flashlight's beam to bear on the thing and recoiled in abject horror.

. . . grenade? Oh, Jesus.

Alivi!

He told himself to stay calm. Maybe it wasn't real. It could be some novelty gag gift for a costume party. Halloween wasn't that far away, right? College kids did wacky stuff all the time....
There you go again, ostrich man. Bury your head in the sand.

Maybe Lauren knew what it was. But if she didn't, then he did not want to frighten her in such a weakened condition. He'd heard that paramedics were trained never to let a victim hear them say things like, “This guy's in really bad shape,” or, “I don't think we're going to be able to get her out of this one. She's in a real pickle, yessireebob. . . .” But he needed to know if this thing was real.

“Lauren. Darling. Can you hear me?”

“Yes.”

Do you know anything about a grenade? Is that a grenade next to your pretty head?

He just couldn't think of a good way to ask without spooking her, but then, faster than a New York minute, it all became a moot point.

He saw the grenade wobble ever so slightly and then discerned a glint of light from an almost invisible monofilament fishing line. Nick sucked in his breath sharply as he realized the line was tied to a pin on one end of the explosive device, and that the mini-bomb was nested in a circle of books such that it would stay in place while the pin was pulled by the line. The circle of heavier books was arranged much too carefully to have been the result of random placement during a series of earthquakes.

And then suddenly he heard the sound of a single person clapping.