Any Means Necessary: A Luke Stone Thriller (Book 1) (4 page)

They pushed through another set of double doors and into the main lobby of the hospital. The entire front face of the lobby was glass. Several security guards stood near the locked front doors.

Outside was a mob scene. A crowd of reporters pushed up against police barriers on the sidewalk. Photographers pressed against the windows, taking interior shots of the lobby. News trucks were parked ten deep on the street. As Luke watched, three different TV reporters filmed segments directly in front of the hospital.

“You were saying?”

5:10 a.m.

Inside a van

Eldrick was sick.

He sat in the rear passenger seat of the van, hugging his knees, wondering what he had gotten himself into. He had seen some bad shit in prison, but nothing like this.

In front of him, Ezatullah was on the phone, shouting something in Farsi. Ezatullah had been making calls for hours now. The words didn’t mean anything to Eldrick. It all sounded like gibberish. The real deal, Ezatullah had trained in London as a chemical engineer, but instead of getting a job, he had gone to war. In his early 30s, a wide scar across one cheek, to hear him tell it, he had waged jihad in half a dozen countries—and had come to America to do the same.

 He screamed into the phone again and again before he got through. When he finally reached someone, he launched into the first of several shouted arguments. After a few minutes, he settled down and listened. Then he hung up.

Eldrick’s face was flushed. He had a fever. He could feel it burning through his body. His heart was racing. He hadn’t thrown up, but he felt like he was going to. They had waited at the rendezvous point on the South Bronx waterfront for over two hours. It was supposed to be a simple thing. Steal the materials, drive the van ten minutes, meet the contacts and walk away. But the contacts never showed.

Now they were…somewhere. Eldrick didn’t know. He had passed out for a while. He was awake again, but everything seemed like a vague dream. They were on the highway. Momo was driving, so he must know where they were going. A technology expert, Momo, skinny with no muscle tone, looked the part. He was so young the smooth skin of his face didn’t have a single line. He looked like he couldn’t grow a beard if Allah himself depended on it.

“We have new instructions,” Ezatullah said.

Eldrick groaned, wishing he was dead. He didn’t know it was possible to feel this sick.

“I have to get out of this van,” Eldrick said.

“Shut up, Abdul!”

Eldrick had forgotten: his name was Abdul Malik now. It felt weird to hear himself being called Abdul, he, Eldrick, a proud black man, a proud American for most of his life. Feeling as sick as he did now, he wished he’d never changed it. Converting in prison was the dumbest thing he’d ever done.

All that shit was in the back. There was a lot of it, in all kinds of canisters and boxes. Some of it had leaked out, and now it was killing them. It had killed Bibi already. The dummy had opened a canister when they still were down in the vault. He was immensely strong and he wrenched the lid off. Why did he do that? Eldrick could picture him holding the canister up. “There’s nothing in here,” he’d said. Then he’d held it to his nose.

Within a minute, he started coughing. He just sort of sank down to his knees. Then he was on all fours, coughing. “I have something in my lungs,” he said. “I can’t get it out.” He started gasping for air. The sound was horrible.

Ezatullah walked up and shot him in the back of the head.

“Believe me, I did him a favor,” he’d said.

Now, the van was passing through a tunnel. The tunnel was long and narrow and dark, with orange lights zooming by overhead. The lights made Eldrick dizzy.

“I have to get out of this van!” he shouted. “I have to get out of this van! I have to…”

Ezatullah turned around. His gun was out. He pointed it at Eldrick’s head.

“Quiet! I’m on the phone.”

Ezatullah’s sliced up face was flushed red. He was sweating.

“You gonna kill me the way you did Bibi?”

“Ibrahim was my friend,” Ezatullah said. “I killed him out of mercy. I will kill you just to shut you up.” He pressed the muzzle of the gun against Eldrick’s forehead.

“Shoot me. I don’t care.” Eldrick closed his eyes.

When he opened them again, Ezatullah had turned back around. They were still in the tunnel. The lights were too much. A sudden wave of nausea passed through Eldrick, and a great up-rushing spasm gripped his body. His stomach clenched and he tasted acid in his throat. He bent over and threw up on the floor between his shoes.

A few seconds passed. The stench wafted up into his face, and he wretched again.

Oh God
, he begged silently.
Please let me die.

5:33 a.m.

East Harlem, Borough of Manhattan

Luke held his breath. Loud noises were not his favorite thing, and one hell of a loud noise was coming.

He stood completely still in the bleak light of a tenement building in Harlem. His gun was out, his back pressed to the wall. Behind him, Ed Newsam stood in almost the exact same pose as his. In front of them in the narrow hallway, half a dozen helmeted and flak-jacketed SWAT team members stood on either side of an apartment door.

The building was dead quiet. Dust motes hung in the air. Moments before, a small robot had slid a tiny camera scope beneath the door, looking for explosives attached to the other side. Negative. Now, the robot had retreated.

Two SWAT guys stepped up with a heavy battering ram. It was a swing-type, an officer holding the handle on each side. They didn’t make a sound. The SWAT team leader held up his fist. His index finger appeared.

That was one.

Middle finger. Two.

Ring finger…

The two men reared back and swung the ram. BAM!

The door exploded inward as the rammers ducked back. The four others swarmed in, suddenly shrieking, “Down! Down! Get DOWN!”

Somewhere down the hallway, a child started crying. Doors opened, heads peeped out, then ducked back in. It was one of those things around here. Sometimes the cops came and broke down a neighbor’s door.

Luke and Ed waited about thirty seconds until SWAT had secured the apartment. The body was on the floor in the living room, much as Luke suspected it might be. He barely looked at it.

“All clear?” he said to the SWAT leader. The guy glared at Luke just a little bit. There had been a brief argument when Luke commandeered this team. These guys were NYPD. They weren’t chess pieces for the feds to move around on a whim. That’s what they wanted Luke to know. Luke was fine with that, but a terrorist attack was hardly one man’s whim.

“All clear,” the team leader said. “That’s probably your subject right there.”

“Thank you,” Luke said.

The guy shrugged and looked away.

Ed kneeled by the body. He carried a fingerprint scanner with him. He took prints from three of the fingers.

“What do you think, Ed?”

He shrugged. “I preloaded Ken Bryant’s prints from the police database on here. We should know if we have a match in a few seconds. Meanwhile, you’ve got obvious ligature marks and swelling. The body is still somewhat warm. Rigor mortis has set in, but is not complete. The fingers are turning blue. I’d say he died the same way as the security guards at the hospital, of strangulation, roughly eight to twelve hours ago.”

He looked up at Luke. There was a glint in his eyes. “If you want to take his pants down for me, I can get a rectal temperature reading, and narrow the time a little better.”

Luke smiled and shook his head. “No thanks. Eight to twelve hours is fine. Just tell me: is it him?”

Ed glanced at his scanner. “Bryant? Yeah. It’s him.”

Luke pulled his phone and dialed Trudy. On the other end, her phone rang. Once, twice, three times. Luke glanced around at the dreary bleakness of the apartment. The living room furniture was old, with ripped upholstery, and stuffing coming out of the arms of the sofa. A threadbare rug was splayed on the floor, and empty takeout boxes and plastic utensils were strewn across the table. Heavy black curtains were tacked over the windows.

Trudy’s voice came on, alert, almost musical. “Luke,” she said. “What’s it been? Half an hour?”

“I want to talk about the missing janitor.”

“Ken Bryant,” she said.

“Right. He’s not missing anymore. Newsam and I are at his apartment. We have a positive ID on him. He died about eight to twelve hours ago. Strangled, like the guards.”

“Okay,” she said.

“I want you to access his bank accounts. He probably had direct deposit from his job at the hospital. Start with that one and work your way out from there.”

“Um, I’m going to need a warrant for that.”

Luke paused. He understood her hesitancy. Trudy was a good officer. She was also young and ambitious. Breaking the rules had derailed many a promising career. But not always. Sometimes breaking the rules led to fast-track promotions. It all depended on which rules you broke, and what happened as a result.

“You have Swann there with you?” he said.

“Yes.”

“Then you don’t need a warrant.”

She didn’t answer.

“Trudy?”

“I’m here.”

“We don’t have time to execute a warrant. There are lives at stake.”

“Is Bryant a suspect in this case?”

“He is a person of interest. Anyway, he’s dead. We are hardly violating his rights.”

“Am I right that this is an order from you, Luke?”

“This is a direct order,” he said. “This is my responsibility. If you want to take it that far, this is me telling you that your job depends on this. You do what I say, or I will initiate disciplinary proceedings. Is that understood?”

She sounded petulant, almost like a child. “Fine.”

“Good. When you access his account, look for anything out of the ordinary. Money that doesn’t belong there. Large deposits or large withdrawals. Wire transfers. If he has a savings account or investments linked, take a look at those. We’re talking about an ex-con with a custodial job. He shouldn’t have that much money. If he does, I want to know where it came from.”

“Okay, Luke.”

He hesitated. “How are we doing on license plates?”

“We are going as fast as we can,” she said. “We accessed overnight video footage from cameras at Fifth Avenue and 96
th
Street, as well as Fifth Avenue and 94
th
Street, and a few others around the neighborhood. We are tracking a 198 vehicles, 46 of which are high priority. I should have an initial report from headquarters in about fifteen minutes.”

Luke glanced at his watch. Time was getting tight. “Okay. Good work. We’ll be down there as soon as we can.”

“Luke?”

“Yes.”

“The story is all over the news. They have three live feeds on the big board here right now. They’re all leading with it.”

He nodded. “I figured.”

She went on. “The mayor has scheduled an announcement for 6a.m. It sounds like he’s going to tell everyone to stay home today.”

“Everyone?”

“He wants all nonessential personnel to stay out of Manhattan. All office workers. All cleaning workers and store clerks. All school children and teachers. He is going to suggest that five million people take the day off.”

Luke put his hand to his mouth. He took a breath. “That should do a lot for morale,” he said. “When everyone in New York stays home, the terrorists just might hit Philadelphia.”

5:45 a.m.

Baltimore, Maryland - South of the Fort McHenry Tunnel

Eldrick stood alone, about ten yards from the van. He had just thrown up again. It was mostly dry heaves and blood now. The blood disturbed him. He was still lightheaded, still feverish and flushed, but with nothing left in his stomach, the nausea was mostly gone. Best of all, he was finally out of the van.

Somewhere over the dirty horizon, the sky was just starting to brighten, a pale sickly yellow. Down here on the ground, it was still dark. They were parked in a desolate parking lot along a bleak waterfront. A highway overpass soared twenty stories above their heads. Nearby was an abandoned brick industrial building with twin smokestacks. Its windows were broken black holes like dead eyes. The building was surrounded by a barbed wire fence with signs posted every thirty feet: KEEP OUT. There was a visible hole in the fence. The area around the building was overgrown with bushes and tall grass.

He watched Ezatullah and Momo. Ezatullah peeled off one of the large magnetic decals that said Dun-Rite Laundry Services, carried it to the water’s edge, and hurled it over the side. Then he came back and peeled off the other side. It never occurred to Eldrick that the signs came off. Meanwhile, Momo kneeled at the front of the van with a screwdriver, removing the license plate and replacing it with a different one. A moment later, he had moved to the back, doing the same with the rear plate.

Ezatullah made a gesture toward the van. “Voilà!” he said. “Totally different vehicle. Catch me now, Uncle Sam.” Ezatullah’s face was bright red and sweaty. He seemed to be wheezing. His eyes were bloodshot.

Eldrick glanced at their surroundings. Ezatullah’s physical state had given him an idea. The idea flashed in his mind like lightning, here and gone in an instant. It was the safest way to think. People could read thoughts in your eyes.

“Where are we?” he said.

“Baltimore,” Ezatullah said. “Another of your great American cities. And a pleasant place to live, I imagine. Low crime, natural beauty, and the citizens are all healthy and wealthy, the envy of people everywhere.”

In the night, Eldrick had been delirious. He had passed out more than once. He had lost track of time, and of where they were. But he had no idea they had come this far.

“Baltimore? Why are we here?”

Ezatullah shrugged. “We are on our way to our new destination.”