The Edge of Armageddon (11 page)

Hayden stood before a bank of TV monitors, Kinimaka at her side. Their thoughts about breaking Ramses had temporarily been put on hold by the chase across Central Park and then the madness at Grand Central. As they watched, Moore approached them and began to comment on each monitor, the camera views labelled and able to zoom in to pick out a human hair on a freckled arm. The coverage wasn’t as blanket as it should have been, but improved as Drake and his team approached the famous train station. Another monitor showed Ramses and Price in their cells, the first pacing impatiently as if he had places to be, the second sitting despondently as if all he really wanted was the offer of a noose.

Moore’s team worked hard around them, calling in sightings, hunches and asking cops and agents on the street to attend certain areas. Attacks were foiled even as Hayden watched, even as Drake and Beau defused the Grand Central bombs. Moore’s only way of making absolutely sure that midtown was being taken care of was to practically empty out the entire precinct.

“I don’t care if it’s a deaf old granny who’s just lost her cat,” he said. “At the very least reassure them.”

“How could the cells get bombs through the metal detectors at Grand Central?” Kinimaka asked.

“Plastic explosive?” Moore ventured.

“Don’t you have other measures in place for that?” Hayden asked.

“Of course, but look around you. Ninety percent of our people are looking for the goddamn nuke. I’ve never seen this precinct so empty.”

Hayden wondered how long Marsh had been planning this. And Ramses? The terrorist prince had about five cells in New York, perhaps more, and some of those were sleeper cells. Explosives of any kind could be smuggled in at any time and just buried, concealed in the woods or in a basement for years if necessary. Look at the Russians and the verified story of their missing suitcase nukes—it was an American who hypothesized the number missing was the exact amount required to annihilate the United States. It was a Russian defector who verified they were already in America.

She took a step back, trying to encompass the whole picture. Hayden had been a law enforcement figure for most of her adult life; she felt she had witnessed every situation imaginable. But now . . . this was unprecedented. Drake had already raced from Times Square to Grand Central, saving lives by the minute and then losing two. Dahl was taking apart Ramses’ cells at every turn. But it was the utter, terrifying scope of this thing that astounded her.

And the world was getting worse. She knew people who didn’t bother watching the news anymore, people who had deleted the apps from their phones, because everything they saw was sickening and they felt there was nothing they could do. Decisions that were clear and obvious from the beginning, particularly with the emergence of IS, never happened, clouded by politics, gain and greed, and discounting the depth of human suffering. What the public now wanted was honesty, a figure they could trust, someone who came with as much transparency as was safely manageable.

Hayden took it all in. Her feeling of helplessness was akin to the emotions she’d been subjected to by Tyler Webb of late. The sense of being so cleverly stalked and powerless to do anything about it. She experienced the same emotions now as she watched Drake and Dahl try to bring New York and the rest of the world back from the edge.

“I will kill Ramses for this,” she said.

Kinimaka laid an enormous paw on her shoulders. “Let me. I’m much less pretty than you and would fare better in prison.”

Moore gestured at a particular screen. “Look there, guys. They’ve disarmed the bomb.”

Elation shot through Hayden as she watched Matt Drake emerge from the café with a relieved and victorious look on his face. The assembled team cheered and then suddenly paused as events began to spiral out of control.

On many monitors, Hayden saw bins exploding, cars swerving to avoid erupting manhole covers. She saw motorcyclists veering through traffic and throwing brick shaped objects at buildings and windows. Seconds later another explosion occurred. She saw a car raise several feet off the floor as a bomb detonated underneath, smoke and flames billowing out from the sides. All around Grand Central, amid the fleeing commuters, trashcans burst into flame. The purpose was terror, not casualties. Fires burned on two bridges, causing tailbacks so profuse even motorcycles couldn’t thread a path through.

Moore stared, face slackening for just a second before he began to bark out orders. Hayden fought to keep her tough perspective and felt Mano’s shoulder brushing against her own.

We will go on.

Activity continued in the ops center, emergency services dispatched and law enforcement rerouted to the worst hit areas. The Fire Department and Bomb Squad were stretched beyond all limits. Moore ordered the use of choppers to help patrol the streets. When the Macy’s department store was hit by another small device Hayden could watch no more.

She turned away, searching through all her experience for any kind of clue as to what to do next, remembering Hawaii and Washington DC in recent years, focusing . . . but then a terrible sound, a horrendous drawn-out noise, drew her attention back to the screens.

“No!”

Hayden barged through the people around her and burst out of the room. Almost growling with anger she descended the stairs, fists compressed into hard lumps of flesh and bone. Kinimaka shouted a warning but Hayden ignored it. She would do this and the world would be a better, safer place.

Surging down the corridor that stretched under the precinct she finally came to Ramses’ cell. The bastard was still laughing, the noise nothing short of a monster’s terrible snarl. Somehow he knew what was happening. The pre-planning was obvious, but the utter contempt for human welfare was not something she could deal with lightly.

Hayden flung open the door to his room. The guard jumped and then shot outside in response to her order. Hayden stalked right up to the iron bars.

“Tell me what is happening. Tell me now and I’ll go easy on you.”

Ramses guffawed. “What is happening?” He faked an American accent. “Is that you people are being brought to your knees. And you will stay there,” The large man bent low so that he could stare right into Hayden’s eyes from a few millimeters distant. “With your tongue hanging out. Doing everything I tell you to do.”

Hayden unlocked the cell door. Ramses didn’t waste a moment, rushing her and trying to knock her to the floor. The man’s hands were cuffed but that didn’t stop him from using his enormous bulk. Hayden sidestepped smartly and rolled him into one of the vertical iron bars, head first, the impact snapping his neck backward. Then she punched hard to the kidneys and the spine, making him flinch and groan.

No more insane laughter.

Hayden used him as a punch bag, moving around his frame and battering different areas. When Ramses roared and spun, she made the first three punches count—bleeding nose, bruised jaw and throat. Ramses began to choke. Hayden didn’t let up, even as Kinimaka reached her side and urged a little caution.

“Stop fucking bleating, Mano,” Hayden snapped at him. “There’re people dying out there.”

Ramses tried to laugh, but the pain in his larynx stopped him. Hayden added to it with a swift rabbit punch. “Laugh now.”

Kinimaka dragged her away. Hayden turned on him, but then the seemingly damaged Ramses charged them both. He was a big man, even taller than Kinimaka, their muscle mass evenly matched, but the Hawaiian outmatched the terrorist in one crucial area.

Battle experience.

Ramses collided with Kinimaka and then rebounded badly, staggering away and back into his cell. “What the hell are you made of?” he muttered.

“Harder stuff than you,” Kinimaka said, rubbing the impact area.

“We want to know what’s next,” Hayden pressed, following Ramses back into his cell. “We want to know about the nuke. Where is it? Who has control? What are their orders? And for God’s sake, what are your true intentions?”

Ramses fought hard to remain upright, clearly not wanting to fall to his knees. The strain stood out in every sinew. When he did raise himself up though, his head hung. Hayden remained as wary as she would be of an injured snake.

“There is nothing you can do. Ask your man, Price. He already knows this. He knows everything. New York will burn, lady, and my people will dance our victory jig amidst the smoldering ashes.”

Price? Hayden saw treachery at every turn. Someone was lying and that made her anger seethe even more. Not falling for the poison that dripped from this man’s lips she held a hand out to Mano.

“Go get me a Taser.”

“Hayden—”

“Just do it!” She turned, fury radiating from every pore. “Fetch me a Taser and man the fuck up.”

In her past, Hayden destroyed those relationships where she considered her partner too weak. Most notably the one she shared with Ben Blake, who died at the hands of the Blood King’s men only months later. Ben, she had thought, was too young, inexperienced, somewhat immature, but even with Kinimaka she now started to adjust her perspective. She saw him as weak, lacking and certainly in need of readjustment.

“Do not fight me, Mano. Just do it.”

A whisper but it reached the Hawaiian’s ears just fine. The big man trotted off, hiding his face and his emotions from her. Hayden swung her gaze back to Ramses.

“You are like me now,” he said. “I have made one more disciple.”

“Ya think?” Hayden buried her knee into the other’s abdomen, her elbow then slamming down without mercy into the back of his neck. “Would a disciple beat the crap out of you?”

“If my hands were free . . .”

“Really?” Hayden was blind with rage. “Let’s see what you can do shall we?”

As she reached around for Ramses’ cuffs, Kinimaka returned, a Taser looking like a cigar in his clasped fist. He saw her intentions and stood back.

“What?” she cried.

“You do what you have to do.”

Hayden cursed the man, and then cursed even more loudly into Ramses’ face, the feeling of frustration high at not being able to break him.

A low, calm voice broke through her rage:
Still, maybe he did give you a clue
.

Maybe.

Hayden pushed Ramses until he fell onto his bunk, a new idea springing to mind. Yes, there might be a way. Glaring at Kinimaka she exited the cell, locked it, and then walked toward the outer door.

“Anything new happening up top?”

“More trashcan bombs, but fewer now. One more motorcyclist but they grabbed him.”

Hayden’s thought process grew clearer. She stepped out into the corridor and then approached the other door. Without stopping she pushed through, confident Robert Price would have heard the commotion coming from Ramses’ cell. The look in his eyes told her that he had.

“I don’t know anything,” he blustered. “Please, believe me. If he told you I knew something, anything, about the nuke then he is lying.”

Hayden reached for the Taser. “Who to believe? The terrorist madman or the treasonous politician. Actually, let’s see what the Taser tells us.”

“No!” Price threw up both hands.

Hayden aimed. “You may not know what’s happening in New York, Robert, so I’ll lay it all out for you. Just once. Terror cells are in control of a nuclear weapon which we believe they have the capability to detonate at any moment. Now, also, a bonkers Pythian thinks he is actually in control. Small explosions are occurring across Manhattan. Bombs were planted at Grand Central. And, Robert, it isn’t over yet.”

The ex-Secretary gawped, quite unable to form words. In her newfound clarity Hayden was almost convinced he was telling the truth. But that one shred of doubt remained, nagging at her repeatedly like a small child.

The man was a successful politician.

She fired the Taser. It shot off and away, missing the man by an inch. Price shook in his boots.

“The next one will go below the belt,” Hayden promised.

Then, as Price teared up, as Mano grunted and she remembered Ramses’ demonic laughter, as she thought about all the terror coursing through Manhattan right now and her colleagues out there in the thick of it, at the very heart of jeopardy, it was Hayden Jaye who broke.

No more. I will not take this for one more minute.

Grabbing Price, she threw him against a wall, the force of the impact sending him to his knees. Kinimaka hauled him up, throwing her a questioning glance.

“Just get out of my way.”

Again, she threw Price, this time at the outer door. He bounced off, whimpering, falling, and then she had hold of him again, steering him out into the corridor and towards Ramses’ cell. When Price saw the terrorist locked in his cell he started to whine, to grovel. Hayden forced him forward.

“Please, please you can’t do this.”

“Actually,” Kinimaka said. “This is something we can do.”

“Nooo!”

Hayden threw Price against the bars and unlocked the cell. Ramses didn’t move, still seated on his bunk and reviewing proceedings under hooded eyes. Kinimaka took out his Glock and covered both men as Hayden unlocked their bonds.

“One chance,” she said. “One prison cell. Two men. The first to call me for a chat gets it easy. Do you understand?”

Price bleated like a poorly calf. Ramses still hadn’t moved. To Hayden the sight of him was unnerving. The sudden change in him was ludicrous. She walked away and locked the cell, leaving both men together as her phone squawked and Agent Moore’s voice came over the line.

“Come up here, Jaye. You have to see this.”

“What is it?” She ran with Kinimaka, chasing their shadows out of the cellblocks and back up the stairs.

“More bombs,” he said despondently. “I’ve sent everyone to deal with the mess. And this latest demand ain’t what we expected it to be. Oh, and your man Dahl has a lead on the fourth cell. He’s chasing it down right now.”

“On our way!” Hayden sped toward the precinct floor.