Tower of Terror (12 page)

"He took off, going north, in a white Mercedes sports model. I'm at the head of the ramp. Let's go!"

When the van reached him, Lyons got in the back and immediately checked the camera and light-intensifying lens. He switched on the lens power, glanced at the film-load indicator. Smith followed the Mercedes toward Central Park. Lyons aimed the lens through the van's side windows. He scanned the park's quiet darkness. He saw lovers on the lawns, late evening bicyclists, and a few kids. He saw it as if the night were day.

Focusing on a young girl riding a bicycle, he clicked off two frames to test the camera. Then he braced the lens between the front bucket seats and searched the traffic ahead for the Mercedes.

"Ready to go," Lyons told the other men. "Where's Taximan?"

"Up ahead of Davis. He said Davis tipped him a dollar..."

The Mercedes followed the curving drive through Central Park. It rejoined heavy traffic near the Dakota apartment building. Jaywalking tourists were slowing traffic somewhat. They saw Davis searching the sidewalks, looking for someone.

"This is it," Smith said. "Looks like he's looking for his man."

Lyons scanned the passersby with the lens. Hundreds of faces flashed through the viewfinder. Blancanales grabbed his shoulder and pointed.

"There, that guy. He saw the Mercedes. He's..."

Lyons caught a young man in the viewfinder. He followed the youth as he ran out to the Mercedes, snapping frame after frame. But it was when the young man paused at the side of the Mercedes, and put a lighter's flame to a cigarette that Lyons identified him.

Only the night before, in the North Carolina swamps, Lyons had seen that man light a cigarette as he unloaded high-powered explosives. Lyons now watched as the guy entered the Mercedes. Davis put an arm around the young man, hugged him. In the viewfinder, Lyons saw the two faces very clearly. The younger man had dark Latin skin; but his hair, remarkably, was sandy blond.

"They're hugging each other!" Smith said. "What are they, lovers?"

"No," Lyons corrected. "Father and son."

"It would be utterly beyond our authority!" Agent Tate's voice carried a touch of panic through the secure phone. "There'd be repercussions that you can't imagine. Mr. Davis is a personal friend of the President of the United States. And you're talking about grabbing him off the street like some kind of punk?"

"I don't care whose friend he is..." Lyons yelled down the phone at the agent. As he spoke he glanced through the windshield at the Mercedes, two cars ahead of the van. The van, the Mercedes, and the agent's taxicab moved among the hundreds of other cabs on the George Washington Bridge. The lights of New Jersey spread on the horizon ahead.

Inside the Mercedes, Davis and his son talked as they had for the previous several miles, Davis glancing to the young man, gesturing with one hand, the son waving his hands as he spoke, emphasizing his words with a clenched fist.

"...and I don't need to explain it to you. The President of the United States gave us the authority to break these crazies. And Davis is up in front of us talking business with one of them."

"What do you mean, talking business?" Tate asked him. "From what you've told me, you've got no proof the other man is a terrorist. Now you're asking..."

"Hey! Listen to me, Mr. Federal Agent. You were assigned to support my mission against the crazies. I asked you for assistance, and you have refused. This is it! Talk to you later."

Lyons hung up, leaned forward to Blancanales. "Tate told me Davis is a friend of the President. Said he wouldn't move against him. So we don't have any backup."

"You and me, huh?"

"What about me and Taximan?" Smith asked. "We got our instructions straight from Mr. Brognola. He told us to do what is necessary. So you can count on us."

"Yeah." Lyons smiled. He keyed the secure phone. "Taxi, you ready to help us take those two in the Mercedes?"

"Anytime. Give me the signal."

"Davis is a personal friend of the President. Right or wrong, there will be heavy, heavy flak."

"Like I said, give me the signal."

"There's one other man we're looking for, maybe they're on their way to talk to him. So hold on. Over."

"What's the plan?" Blancanales asked.

"We got two of them," Lyons said, thinking out loud. "But there's at least one more man, who might be back there in the city someplace. The go-between we saw in the photos. Or he might be inside the Tower. But I doubt it. I figure that anybody who's talked face to face with Davis wouldn't have been sent into the Tower. In case they were captured and interrogated."

"That makes sense," Blancanales agreed. "You think these two will meet up with him?"

"This little drive around town could just be a conference. If they meet the other man, we'll take all three. If not, we'll take Davis and his son before they split up. Chances are they're talking about the big bang problem."

They followed the Mercedes into New Jersey, turning off into quiet, modest residential neighborhoods. Davis made no effort to evade surveillance. They did not slow until they entered an industrial area.

Only one or two of the one-story corrugated metal factories had weekend night shifts. The parking lots of other factories and assembly plants were wastelands of asphalt and broken glass. The Mercedes turned from the boulevard, sped through a parking lot. At the far side of the lot, there was a line of parked semis and trailers. All but one of the trucks were blue and red with a merchandising company's insignia. The last truck was blue. It had no insignia.

When the Mercedes crossed the parking lot, the truck flashed its lights.

"This must be it."

Even as Lyons spoke, Smith whipped the van into an alley opposite the parking lot. The alley's darkness swallowed the van. Lyons keyed the secure phone.

"Taxi! Stay back! He's meeting..."

"I'm half a block back, with my lights off. Waiting for instructions."

Lyons put down the hand-set. Blancanales watched the parking lot in the van's side mirror.

"What're they doing?" Lyons asked.

"He's stopped the car. His son's getting out."

"You take the rifle, I'll put the camera on them." Lyons beamed the camera through the van's back window, got the Mercedes and semi in focus. Behind him, Blancanales took the M-16 from its case and chambered a round.

"Locked and loaded."

"The son's getting into the semi." Lyons watched as the young man went around the semi and climbed in on the passenger side. The electronics of the lens revealed another man behind the wheel of the truck.

"The go-between's in the truck," Lyons told the others. "Let's see what they do now."

Lyons clicked off a photo of the two men side by side in the cab of the truck. Then he zoomed back to include the Mercedes — with Davis waiting inside — in the photo. The lens brought out the features of the three men. Lyons clicked again.

The camera's electric motor advanced the film automatically. Lyons touched the focus. He wanted a perfect photo linking Davis to the other man.

As his fingertip came down on the shutter button, Lyons saw the son raise a pistol to the head of the go-between, and fire. Lyons snapped the photo at the same instant that the impact of the slug threw the man sideways, the bullet continuing through his head to shatter the tempered glass of the door's window, bits of sparkling glass raining like diamonds onto the Mercedes.

"The crazy just put a bullet through the driver's head." Lyons' voice was calm, slow. "I've got a picture of it. With Davis in it."

"Jesus!" Blancanales' usual calm had snapped.

"Wait till you see it. We have a real-for-live court case against them. I think I'll even read them their rights." Lyons keyed the secure phone. "Move it, Taxi. He just killed a man. Be careful, play it by ear. We don't have any backup."

As soon as Lyons spoke to the cabbie, Smith slammed the van into reverse. It shot backwards from its hiding place behind a factory wall, and continued across the boulevard, Smith whipping the wheel around, accelerating and burning rubber. The taxi was only an instant behind them.

Both cars hurtled toward the Mercedes and truck. The young man was half out of the truck's cab when he saw the van and the taxi speeding toward them. He reached into his jacket pocket for his pistol.

Blancanales raised the M-16.

"Don't kill him!" Lyons shouted. "Smith, sideways!" But Smith had anticipated the command, was veering to the side, giving Blancanales a clear line of fire through the open side window. His shot hit the young man in the foot, slamming him against the truck. Then he fell backward to the asphalt.

Davis gaped at his son falling, and lost his chance to escape as the cab screeched to a stop in front of the Mercedes and Taximan leaped out, his pistol pointed at Davis' face. The older man raised his hands. A second later, Lyons and Blancanales jumped from the van, pointing pistols down at the stunned young man.

The .223 had torn away the heel of his fashionable shoe. He held his foot in both hands, rolling on the asphalt, his face twisted in pain.

"Good shot." Lyons grinned at Blancanales. Then he took a card from his wallet, chanted aloud: "You are under arrest. You have the right to remain silent. You may..."

New York's columns of lights wheeled around them as the helicopter banked. Lyons saw the helipad's rectangle of red landing lights in the window in defiance of gravity. Then the lights sank and the sawtooth horizon of skyscrapers and night returned. The helicopter dropped straight down for landing. Lyons continued the interrogation of Davis and his son, whose Colombian driver's license identified him as Roberto Alcantara.

"We have photos of you together." Lyons told them. "We have photos of you..." he pointed at Alcantara "...with the pistol in your hand as you killed that man. The New York courts can send you away for life. But if you cooperate, we will not surrender you to North Carolina, where you killed two people last night. In that state, murder and conspiracy to commit murder are punishable by death. Do you understand? You have the choice between life or death."

Davis sneered, his gray aristocratic face becoming ugly, cunning. "We would like to speak to my lawyers immediately, if you don't mind. And there are several calls I'd like to make."

The helicopter bumped down. Agents on the roof threw the side doors open. Lyons grinned at Davis. "Oh, but I do mind."

Agents jerked the handcuffed Davis from his seat, quick-marched him across the roof to an open door. Lyons turned to Alcantara.

"You get special, extra-special personal attention." Lyons shoved Alcantara from the helicopter. Blancanales followed one step behind them. Agents half-dragged the limping Alcantara to the doorway and hustled him to the elevator. Before the doors closed, Lyons looked into the cold, sneering face of Alcantara. The man's face was a replica of his father's: younger, darker, but his hair certainly the same, and with the same ice-blue eyes, the same expression.

"If you want to live," Lyons told him, "you will cooperate with us."

"My father's lawyers will speak to you of this entirely unjustified arrest. You will soon learn that there are some men the police cannot touch."

Lyons grinned, looked at Blancanales. "Who said we're police?"

He saw Alcantara's sneer fail for an instant.

Speaking through an electronically secured telephone line to Washington, D.C., Lyons briefed his commander. "His son's name is Roberto Alcantara. The mother met Davis when he was working in Colombia twenty-five years ago. There was no room in Davis' career for a scandal and divorce, so he bought the woman off. Then he paid for the best schools, the best university for the boy. Along the way, Alcantara picked up some very red political ideas. He only saw eye to eye with his father when they decided to put their heads together and buy a country."

"Buy?" said Brognoia.

"Yeah. Seems so. Either buy one, or buy into one. It apparently irritated Davis that his son couldn't inherit WorldFiCor. So they worked out a scheme. Alcantara got the weapons and explosives, recruited the crazies. Davis got the money to pay for it all through a variety of international embezzlements, the latest involving a disgruntled Hungarian ex-Communist. Davis would have been the king, and his son the prince. But judging from how Alcantara operates, Davis would have died fast, and Alcantara would have been the number one man."

"This is great background," Brognola told him. "But listen now — how is this information going to get the terrorists out of the Tower?"

"There's more," Lyons said. "First of all, there's no way we can get in from the ground. Period. They have this psycho named Zuniga who spent months preparing for this. The garage and first floor are crisscrossed with booby-traps. No bomb squad or anti-terrorist team could get through in less than a day or two. Second, the Tower is wired with explosives and incendiaries. Alcantara intended to blow away the Tower with his crazies inside. That would have eliminated both the crazies and the WorldFiCor records.

"But something went wrong. Alcantara pushed the button and nothing happened.

"If Zuniga doesn't know the radio-detonator has failed, great. No problem. But if he does, there's no way he'll leave the Tower without a way to detonate the charges. Could be a fuse, a timer, something improvised. One wrong step and it's all over.

"Third, we're up against complete psychos. They won't be taken prisoner. When we rush them, if we give them time to think, they'll blow the whole show away. No doubt about it. So those are the three strikes against us."

"You're saying we can't break them?" Brognola asked.

"Not me. I'm just telling you what we're up against. On the positive side, the crazies have set their evacuation in motion. You heard that they finally asked for a helicopter?"

"Right. Three minutes ago."

"Alcantara had told them to demand a helicopter to take them from the Tower helipad to a secret location upstate. Then he'd get them out of the country. Of course, that was all make-believe. Alcantara intended them to be blown sky high. But because that didn't happen, they've followed orders and demanded the chopper."

"So how does the helicopter figure in your plans? You want to be in it when we send it, come down on the terrorists? That's exactly what they'll expect."

"No, I've got a trick they won't expect. One of those crazies in the Tower, Zuniga, knows who their leader is. He's the only one who's seen and talked with Alcantara. I want two helicopters in the air, one from the City of New York to take the terrorists away, as negotiated, and the second a big tourist chopper, with Alcantara on it. He'll come down, go straight to Zuniga, tell him it's a last-minute change of plan to confuse the feds. And in the time it takes to explain the change to Zuniga and the other psychos, we'll come up behind them and put them down. It's the only way I can figure to create confusion.

"And we can get Alcantara to do it. He's a complete coward. It's one thing for him to tell his crazies to terrorize and murder and maim people, but when we put a blow-torch up near his face, he told us everything. That poor little rich boy will do anything we tell him."

"And how does that defuse the bomb down below?"

"I'll have Alcantara ask Zuniga for the trigger unit to radio-detonate the building — so he can have the honor, et cetera. If Zuniga gives it to him, great. If not, Alcantara will ask for an explanation. We'll have Alcantara wired for sound, of course. As soon as Zuniga tells him how the charges are fused, we hit them. Then we defuse the charges."

"You said when they go up on the roof, you'll come up behind them. How will you get into the Tower?"

"That's the easiest part. There's some people trapped on the fifty-third floor. Zuniga's crew doesn't know they're up there — yet. We'll shoot a cable through the window, slide in."

"I don't like it, Lyons. You'll be taking some long chances."

"Sir, the crazies want the helicopter there in fifty-five minutes. They said they'll kill a hostage for every minute of delay. Quite simply, I can't come up with a better plan. It's the only chance they have, those thirty or forty people in there..."