Reapers (46 page)

"Your dad would have thought this was pretty funny," Ellie said. "He was a Mets fan."

"He never quit talking about the Subway Series. He was so excited when he heard they were going to tear this place down."

Ellie laughed, then cut through the park, using the trees for cover. She stopped behind a wrinkled trunk and gazed down the street. A man with a rifle slung across his chest patrolled the pavement in front of the stadium gates. The off-white walls of the grandstands soared eighty feet or higher, but the top of the outfield bleachers were perhaps half that high, topped by scalloped white arches.

Footsteps scuffled through the snow. Ellie shrunk against the corner of an apartment block. Down the street, another group of refugees marched up to the gates.

Dee waited for them to pass inside before speaking. "What's the plan?"

"We can't be seen. Not unless we want to wind up in chains. If we find a back door, think you can pull your hairpin trick again?"

"I've only tried handcuffs," Dee said. "But how much harder can it be?"

As she waited for darkness to fall, Ellie circled around the back of the stadium, keeping her distance. The few doors set into the back and sides were plain metal. As the sun set, the guards pulled metal grilles across the front gates, sealing the stadium tight.

With darkness settling over the city, Ellie returned to the back walls to get to work. As they crossed the desolate streets, a cough sounded from inside the stadium. Ellie froze, gazing up at the concrete walls, then hurried to stand beneath them.

Their plan hit a wall every bit as solid. The doors were blank. No handles or locks; opened from the inside. Ellie swore and continued around the building.

"Here we go." Dee had found one with a lock. She got her towel from her pack, set it on the snow in front of the door, and knelt. The pin scribbled inside the lock. Dee probed, twisted. A tiny metal snap pinged on the wintry air. Dee went as pale as the snow. "Oh shit."

"Did it break?" Ellie said.

Dee bent the remaining portion of the pin back into shape and poked around in the lock. "I should have used a bigger pin. It's stuck."

"Keep working at it. Unless you want to shoot your way in the front gates, this is our only way in."

"Mom, it's not even moving."

Ellie curled her gloved hand into a fist, fighting to keep the annoyance from her voice. "Should we go find better tools? We've got all night if we need it."

Dee jerked to her feet and threw the broken pin into the snow. She sighed up at the high walls. Her expression went calm. "Who says we have to use a door?"

"Right, we'll just wait for them to open one of those windows they don't have," Ellie said. She looked up sharply. "Oh no."

"Why not? It's not
that
high."

"Broken necks, that's why. Or good old fashioned broken legs. If one of us snaps an ankle, the search is over."

Dee shrugged. "We've climbed stuff almost as steep as this in the mountains at the lake."

"With the aid of truckloads of climbing gear."

Ellie backed up for a better view of the wall. Most of it was blank, forty-plus feet and fenced with the scalloped frieze they may or may not have been able to climb under. But a small tower hugged the upper decks. A bank of windows striped each floor, recessed enough to provide toeholds. And there was a gap between it and the walls above the outfield bleachers. In that narrow space, the top of the wall was no more than 25 feet above the street.

Dee's was a young person's idea. Deeply stupid—but only if it failed.

Ellie made a face between a grin and a grimace. "If we waste all night on this, we may not get another chance."

"Then we'd better get moving."

They retreated into the brown apartment blocks. Ellie wasn't looking for much—she wasn't expecting to find crampons—but rooting through the stores and apartments, it proved impossible even to find a rope. Which made sense. Unless you were the rigger for a pirate ship, you wouldn't have much call for rope in the old days. With that thought, she considered heading to the river and trying to find a sloop to strip, but when she asked Dee, neither had recalled seeing boats on the way in.

Inside a hardware store, she settled on a garden hose. After testing its weight by slinging it over the sales counter and bracing it while Dee pulled herself up from the floor, Ellie unscrewed the head of a rake and knotted it to the end of the hose. While she worked on that, Dee scraped around with something in the darkness. She emerged dragging an aluminum ladder behind her.

"Why didn't I think of that?" Ellie said.

"You were so into MacGyvering that grappling hook that I didn't want to say anything."

It was still something like 9 PM. A little early to besiege the castle of Yankee Stadium. They ate dinner. Dee napped while Ellie watched the street from the front window. She shook Dee awake around midnight. Ellie coiled the hose over her shoulder and helped carry the ladder back to the outfield wall. At River Avenue, she looked north and south, crossed beneath the shadow of the elevated rails, and set the ladder against the wall.

It wasn't nearly tall enough. About twelve feet short, and the snow beneath its legs left it wobbly. Dee spotted it while Ellie climbed up. It shivered under her weight, threatening to spill her onto snow that wasn't deep enough to save her. She got down and the two of them mounded up snow around the base in case she dropped. Finished, Ellie got back on the ladder. She stopped at the second rung from the top, crouched down, and slung the rake-head over the wall.

It landed with a clank that sounded terribly loud. Ellie waited, motionless. A minute later, with no further noise from inside the wall, she reeled in the hose inch by inch, rake scraping against the other side. Without warning, it snagged tight. She tugged and it held firm. She took a deep breath and swung free from the ladder.

She hit the wall with a soft thump. Heart thudding, she climbed hand after hand, shoes scrabbling the concrete face. She looked down and shouldn't have. Dee's upturned face looked very far away.

Ellie steeled herself and reached for the top of the roof. She'd taken off her gloves for better traction and her fingers scraped painfully over the gritty stone. She found a hold, hauled herself up, and straddled the lip. Seats lined the stands five feet below her.

She beckoned to Dee, who climbed the ladder, grabbed hold of the hose, and monkeyed her way up the wall. They lowered themselves to the seats below.

Crop-stubble poked from the snow carpeting the field. Ellie laughed soundlessly. They'd converted it into a farm. The bleachers had been ripped out and terraced with soil. Thin smoke trickled from each dugout, which had been closed in. Starlight glittered on the snowy grandstands that rose from the park like the Rockies.

Muffled footsteps moved above them. Ellie pulled Dee down beside her. In the tower overlooking the gap they'd climbed through, a silhouette moved to the fifth-story window and stared out at the silent grounds.

Ellie waited, motionless, until the figure left the window.

"It's too cold out here," she whispered. "They'll have them inside. You ready?"

Dee checked her pistol. "Let's go get our boys."

They rose together and descended into the darkness of Yankee Stadium.

29

Lucy learned that when you kill a president, just about everyone gets mad.

His guards yelped and went for their guns. The Kono went for theirs. A man in sunglasses pulled his pistol on her. Lucy blasted him with the umbrella's second round, then flung herself under the dead president's table. There, Ash's hand scrabbled for the gun on his hip. The president slumped over the padded booth, blood dribbling down the seat.

Guns went off, one after another. Men screamed. Bullets tore into her table, showering her with splinters. Ash's legs thrashed to get him away from the killing. He fired his pistol empty. The thunder in the room was so loud Lucy thought her ears would jerk themselves inside her head like a groundhog that's seen its shadow.

The gunshots stopped cold. A hairy arm reached under the table and grabbed her ankle. She tried to yank free, but it clamped harder, dragging her out. She curled toward it and bit down. The man swore, baritone, and rolled her out into the open. The president's bodyguards sprawled across the bar floor, blood soaking their sharp black suits.

Ash breathed hard, hair askew. "What the
fuck
was that?"

Lucy's shirt had twisted as the Kono goon hauled her from under the table. She tugged the hem into place. "I was negotiating."

"By murdering the President of Manhattan? Do you know how many federal soldiers are about to swarm this place?"

"None."

Ash ejected his magazine onto the floor with a thump. He slammed a new one home and whipped the pistol's slide closed. "Know what, I think you're right. Bill! Get me a platter. A silver one."

Hesitantly, a man rose from behind the bar. "Is this for real?"

"If we send the Feds this girl's head, there's a small chance they won't burn us out of the city."

"If that's how you want to play it," Lucy shrugged. "Or you could convince them to burn out Distro instead."

The violence in Ash's eyes went guarded. "You got three seconds to convince me you're not crazy. Then I take a very close and violent look at the exact shape of the madness in your head."

"That old dead bastard told us he was going to see Distro next. Seems to me he ought to complete his itinerary."

"We bring him downtown." Ash started slow, then the words piled out of him. "Dump him in their territory and set them up to take the fall."

"The Feds will be hot for blood," Lucy said. "Maybe you'd just brokered a deal with the prez there. You're just as outraged by his death as they are. Seems to you the Kono would offer your services to participate in a joint raid."

He swept his hair back from his forehead. "I've got a mole in City Hall. He'll feed them the right story."

"You'll need to move fast. Get the bodies in place and your story in the Fed's ear before Distro knows what's happening. I can tell you where they put their rooftop scouts. You could kill them and scatter the bodies around the Feds' to make it more convincing."

"You're crazy." Ash shook his head and laughed long and loud. "Completely out of control. And you know what? I like that a lot more than the President's bullshit deal." He gestured to the man with Lucy's toothprints in his forearm. "Lock her up."

"Huh?" Lucy said. "I thought we had a deal!"

"And until this little dream of ours comes true, I'm keeping you around as a last-ditch bargaining chip." Ash clapped his hands. "Let's move!"

The big man who'd grabbed Lucy motioned to the stairs. She sighed and climbed up to her room. Inside, the man set a chair six feet from hers and held his pistol in his lap. A woman came up to get the location of Distro's scouts from Lucy. She complied agreeably.

The woman left. Downstairs, people thumped around like the proverbial elephants. Minutes later, the limo engine gunned to life and grumbled down the street.

"What's your name?" Lucy said.

The big man had kept his eyes on her the whole time. "Why?"

"First off, I'm sorry I bit you. That's playground stuff. Second, if you wind up executing me, I want to know how to find you in Hell."

The man chuckled low. "Roger White. Do you really expect this to work?"

"The frame job?" Lucy scrunched up her nose. "I dunno. But I bet the federal crimelab is just a guy and some rubber gloves. If they find their commander-in-chief shot to shit surrounded by dead Distro, you think they're gonna wait to build a DNA tester before they get their vengeance?"

Roger shrugged. "Guess we'll see."

She guessed they would. She sat around a while, then stood. Quick as a jumping spider, Roger pointed his pistol at her head.

"Is it a capital crime to want something to read?" she said.

"I'm guessing this isn't in your nature, but try asking first." He set down his gun.

She grabbed the book about the man who got betrayed by his buddies and imprisoned but came back to stomp all over their asses. She probably ought to be worried, or scheming what to do if Ash failed the frame-up and came for her head, but she couldn't muster up the concern. The dice were thrown.

A couple hours later, a crowd of people thumped around the bar some more. Lucy continued reading. Hours later, with the overcast sky going dark, a tremendous cheer erupted from downstairs.

Lucy grinned. "Sounds like I've been pardoned."

Rhythmic steps climbed the stairs. The door cracked open. A delicate hand emerged and crooked a finger.

"Come on out," Ash said. "I owe you a drink."

Downstairs, Ash explained over his trademark shots of tequila. They'd driven the limo down to 34th, exterminated the nearby Distro lookouts, and tossed the bodies around the car, planting a shotgun on one. After dragging the President and one of his guards out to the pavement, they'd torched the limo, just to confuse things further, installed a couple soldiers in nearby apartments to keep an eye out for unwanted witnesses, and ran off.

According to Ash's mole, word of gunfire had gotten to the Feds within minutes of the frame job. The Feds didn't normally bother to check up on every single instance of gunplay, but given the time and the President's route, they'd dispatched soldiers on the spot.

"I meet with the Veep tomorrow," Ash grinned. "I think our mutual friends are about to get an eviction notice."

"I want in on the fight."

"You've really got it in for Nerve, don't you? If I ever shoot you, remind me to put two in your head."

Before retiring to bed, she asked Bill the bartender for a snack of bread and butter. Upstairs, she wrapped the bread and stuck the butter in some Tupperware and packed it into her bag.

In the morning, Ash had already left to meet with the Feds. Lucy hung around downstairs, ears sharp for news. Plenty of Kono had witnessed the truth—hell, they'd
participated
in it—but Ash had sworn them to secrecy on pain of death. Those who hadn't been there largely seemed to believe the circulating story: Distro, under the belief the Feds were behind the raids on their coastal supply depot, had ambushed and assassinated the President. Now, they holed up in their tower, confident the government would be as impotent as it always was.