Vigilante (27 page)

“Ease off, Arjay,” said Branford. “Nolan’s a soldier, and that’s what he does. We all know this stopped being about anything but Vasko the day Alice died. But I need to know,” he said, turning to Nolan, “I need to know that this is still happening for the right reasons.”

“Yes,” echoed Arjay. “Exactly! Thank you!”

“What do you care?” Nolan shot back at the general. “You’ve always said this was never your crusade. You don’t share my beliefs, so why do you care what tactics I use?”

Branford faltered briefly—one of the only times Nolan had witnessed his friend at a loss for words—and Nolan immediately regretted his outburst. “My concern always,” said Branford, speaking slowly and deliberately, “from minute one, is for
you
.”

Nolan sighed and found his eyes scanning the floor for nothing.

“The paper insinuates that you’re responsible for half a dozen losses on Vasko’s part over the last two weeks,” Branford continued. “God knows
I
think he’s got it coming. If he died tomorrow, I’d lead a parade. But considering . . . your past . . . I worry about where all this could take you. Didn’t you start this thing so you could
help
the people of New York?”

“I
am
helping them!” shouted Nolan, unable to stop himself. “The only way New York will ever be safe again is when Yuri Vasko is out of business.”

“And that’s all you’re looking to put an end to?” asked Arjay. “His business?”

“This is a lot bigger than just Vasko,” said Branford. “ ‘If people won’t change, I’ll
make
them change.’ That’s what you said.”

Nolan tried hard to calm his anger, but it was impossible now. A rage he didn’t fully understand built up within him as he looked back and forth between his friends. “If you were so worried about my motives after Alice died, then
why did you stay
?!”

Branford’s reply was even and measured. “We were
more
afraid of what you might do if we
weren’t
around.”

N
olan’s shoulders sank. Did his friends really think so little of him?

He sighed.
I can’t pull off the moral high ground. It’s not like they were wrong.
 . . .

“
Dispatch?
” squawked a voice on the police band radio. The small machine was nothing special—an over-the-counter device that they used to listen in on police chatter throughout the city. In the old days, there would have been constant radio activity with beat cops and detectives receiving orders from HQ and reporting back on their findings around the clock. These days, the NYPD was so understaffed that most precincts never had anyone on hand to work the radio.

Nolan continued to stare down his friends as the voice on the radio continued.

“
Dispatch, I got a pair of ten-forty-ones over in the Bowery. One vehicle and what looks like a night club. Going in closer to investigate, but I’m going to need a ten-fourteen.
”

Nolan knew what this call was about but said nothing. Branford grabbed a tiny book and thumbed through the pages. “Ten-fourteen is a standard fire engine. Ten-forty-one is a suspicious fire.”

Arjay’s ears perked up at this, and leveled his gaze on Nolan again. “How suspicious?”

“Suspicious as in probably not an accident,” Branford said, closing his book and tossing it on his bunk before staring daggers into Nolan.

“It was a sex club, okay?” Nolan explained. “Those places do nothing but feed the worst—”

“Owned by Vasko, though, right?” asked Branford.

Nolan frowned. “Yeah. It was.”

“Dispatch,”
called out the officer on the radio.
“Dispatch, I think I’ve got a body inside this night club; moving in for a closer look.”

Suddenly Nolan heard nothing but the pumping of his own blood like a hammer in his ears. He must’ve heard wrong. Or the cop was wrong. Vinson was always the last one out before he locked up for the night. There was no way there could have been anyone still in there. . . .

Branford’s eyes had grown large while Arjay looked like he was going to pass out. Nolan couldn’t blame him, feeling suddenly unsteady himself.

“
That’s affirmative on that body, Dispatch,
” said the cop over the radio. “
Female, early twenties, although positive ID is going to be hard. She’s burned pretty bad.
”

“What have you done?” whispered Arjay, who plopped down onto the bunk opposite Branford. The young man buried his face in his hands and shook his head over and over and over.

Nolan and the general exchanged a look, and carried an entire conversation within it. Both men were in shock over the girl’s death. He knew they were both wondering how Nolan could have made such an error when Nolan
never
made those kinds of mistakes. He knew they were considering the logistics of whatever rudimentary investigation the police would conduct; it wouldn’t be much, with their manpower so depleted, and whatever they mustered would never be traceable back to The Hand.

Nolan knew there had been no security cameras that caught him on tape outside the club talking to Nico Vinson before he blew the place to smithereens. And he wondered who this girl had been. Was she a dancer? Was she Vinson’s girlfriend? Could she have already been dead before Nolan detonated the building? Did she really and truly qualify as “innocent” if she worked at a strip club? Particularly one owned by Yuri Vasko?

These questions were doing nothing to ease Nolan’s conscience. Because of him, a woman had lost her life tonight. And not because of some passive action or inaction on his part. He’d rigged that building himself to explode and then burn to the ground. He
meant
it. There was no part of it that was an accident.

Nolan had killed people before. He was one of the best killers the United States had ever trained. But until today, he’d never killed an innocent.

No. He couldn’t go there. It was an accident, and he needed to put it aside. It was the only way he would be able to carry on.

But how could he possibly put
this
aside? Wouldn’t that make him a terrible person, if he didn’t let himself feel the remorse, the pain, the unbearable guilt?

“
Mayday! Mayday! Dispatch?
”

Nolan looked up in the direction of their small dining booth, something nagging him about these words. Everything was so blurry right now, every thought obscured by fog. . . . He couldn’t quite figure out why this transmission had tickled something in his mind.

Branford and Arjay followed him to the booth without a word. Without making contact of any kind.

Nolan turned up the volume on the radio.

“
Mayday! This is OCI Agent Lively, requesting immediate backup!
”

Nolan blinked. “Hey, that’s her,” he said. His words sounded muffled to his ears for some reason, like he was hearing them through a wall of molasses. Blood was still rushing past his eardrums, and he could barely hear anything else.

“Her
who?” asked Arjay.

Nolan merely shook his head. There was no time to explain now.

“
Repeat,
” said the voice on the radio, “
this is OCI special task force requesting immediate assistance from any New York City officers of the law who can hear this transmission! We are pinned down inside City Hall! We have suffered heavy casualties and cannot hold this position! Does anyone read me?!
”

Nolan would have answered her, but it was a one-way radio. Instead, he blew past his two friends. “Get out of my way.”

He jumped behind the RV’s wheel and forced the engine to life.

Y
uri Vasko stood alone in his office on the top floor of his glass tower, watching the first hints of daybreak on the horizon. Below, a dusting of snow covered Times Square. The streets and sidewalks were just starting to show signs of activity, signs that in an hour’s time would give way to cabs, buses, bicycles, and pedestrians, all trying to navigate around one another as they hustled to work.

The world was just waking up, but Vasko had been up all night, right there in his office. He rarely felt the need for sleep anymore. Sleep was a refuge, a safe place to retreat to for rejuvenation. He had no need to retreat, and no one to share his bed with.

Bored, he used his good hand to hit the power button on the small flat-screen TV adorning one corner of his desk. Local morning show host Jackie Turner was on, showing off that dazzling white smile of hers and her incessantly chipper demeanor. He found the woman grating, but paused when she cut away to a square-jawed man who began announcing the morning’s top headlines.

Had word gotten out about the OCI’s disastrous defeat at City Hall? Well, it wasn’t officially a defeat yet, as his soldiers were still engaging what remained of the OCI raiding party at City Hall. But he understood it was all but wrapped up, and even if the OCI were to make a miraculous turnaround at this point, they’d already suffered too many losses for this to ever be considered a victory. Besides, Vasko knew they’d come to City Hall hoping to find evidence revealing Mayor McCord to be in Vasko’s pocket.

And Vasko was far too clever to leave evidence like that where anyone could find it.

Tonight had been the crowning achievement of his perfect plan. The same plan that had demoralized Nolan Gray to the point of irrelevancy. He knew now that Nolan was still out there, and that he’d declared war on Vasko’s operation. But Vasko alone knew of the pain Nolan carried, the pain that was Vasko’s own, which he had shared with this man. So much better than killing him was letting him live in grief, a faded glimmer of his former glory.

Nolan was special that way. Others—crime lords and enforcers—who stood in his way were simply handled. Vasko filled their gullets with concrete and tossed them into the ocean. No lingering torment. He didn’t need them to suffer forever, the way The Hand had to. He simply needed them out of his way. And every time he took out a potential opponent, the message went out loud and clear to New York City’s underworld: no one crosses Yuri Vasko and lives.

Now the endgame was in sight. With The Hand suffering unbearable pain and his criminal foes defeated, Vasko had only one target left.

The Organized Crime Intelligence.

He imagined President Thornton Hastings and the terrible news he would be receiving sometime this morning, about their risky raid on City Hall. The lives Hastings had lost would go a long way toward advancing Vasko’s cause. He needn’t kill every single member of the OCI to demoralize them, after all. All he needed was for them to lose their confidence, their sense of purpose.

A haggard-looking man’s face filled the TV screen, and he turned up the volume to listen in. It appeared to be a random “man on the street” interview, where the camera focused on the interviewee while the reporter tossed questions at the man from off-camera. The man being interviewed, who showed a few days’ worth of gray stubble growth, had sunken eyes and creases on his forehead and around his mouth that made him look older than Vasko believed him to be. The bright lights of the camera, which had shot this video sometime after dark, illuminated every blemish on the man’s face, adding to the aging effect.

“How are you and your family surviving?” asked the female reporter from somewhere behind the camera.

The man shook his head, his skin drawn with a gloom and melancholy that seemed to have been permanently carved into his face. “We’re not,” the man replied. “We can’t leave the house. My little girl—we’re scared to send her to school. Work is so hard to find, we’re scraping by on bread crumbs.”

Pools collected under the man’s eyes, and he looked away from the camera for a moment to pull himself together.

The interviewer pulled him back with another question. “If there was anything you might hope for, about the future, what would that be?”

The man’s response was immediate, and his disposition hardened. “I can’t afford to hope. Not anymore. My family couldn’t survive disappointment a second time.”

Vasko’s cell phone vibrated, and he turned the television off. The name Oscar Pavlov was on the phone’s display; Pavlov was one of his top operatives, and tonight he was commanding Vasko’s men in the fight against the OCI at City Hall.

Pavlov was calling to report their success. Had to be.

“Yes?” Vasko said into the phone.

“Twenty-one of them have fallen, sir,” said Pavlov. “The five remaining agents are in my custody. Do you have any use for prisoners?”

Vasko didn’t even have to think. “No. No prisoners. And no survivors.”

T
he northwest corner of the Potter Building on Park Row provided an unencumbered view over the trees of City Hall Park, which surrounded City Hall itself, straight into the mayor’s office. That was where Coral Lively said she and several others were pinned down.

City Hall was a tall white building that looked like it belonged in D.C., with Roman columns beyond the front steps, symmetrical, arch top windows, and a huge cupola at its pinnacle.

What the OCI was doing there Nolan and his two friends found it easy to guess. The mayor was morally bankrupt, and as much a criminal as Yuri Vasko himself. Of course he’d made all the right promises and speeches to get into office three years ago, but it was sometime that first year that rumors started to spread about him taking bribes from the local crime cartels, and eventually those bribes turned into membership.

Nolan’s goggles were in a pocket of his tattered jacket. Tonight, he stared down the scope of a Barrett M82 sniper rifle, taking a solid look around the spacious room. The mayor’s office had two windows, but the curtains were drawn on the one on the right. The left window, however, provided a decent view of Coral’s team. Nolan thought he recognized her burly partner among the five survivors being held at gunpoint, though he couldn’t recall the man’s name. Coral and her people were kneeling on the floor, stripped of all weaponry, hands laced behind their heads.

A raid on City Hall was unprecedented and reeked of desperation on Hastings’ part. The president knew he wasn’t just
losing
the war—it was all but
lost
. A successful recovery of evidence from the mayor’s office might enable Hastings to depose McCord. That had to count as a victory, even if just a minor one.