Pandora's Temple (23 page)

He watched as the tech started the tape again, another camera picking up the trio reaching a dark green SUV. One of the men eased Katie DeMarco ahead of him into the backseat while the other climbed into the front.

The tech froze the screen there. “This was thirteen minutes ago according to the time stamp,” he reported. “She’s long gone by now.”

McCracken swung toward Folsom. “How far does Homeland’s surveillance reach extend into New Orleans?”

“Far enough.”

Wareagle jerked a second chair out from beneath the monitoring station.

“Prove it, Hank,” said McCracken.

Folsom sat down and wheeled the chair back into place. He copied a still shot of the dark green SUV, then logged into an ultrasecure Homeland Security site that required multiple access codes and passwords to enter.

“Can you move any faster?” McCracken prodded.

“You ever hear of procedure?” Folsom shot back at him.

“Sure and it’s mostly good for getting people killed.”

Folsom’s fingers started typing quicker as he plugged in the police station street address in one box and pasted the picture of the SUV into another, then hit Enter.

“Talk to me, Hank, and talk fast.”

“Every camera in a fifteen-mile radius is now looking for the vehicle,” he explained. “That means every ATM, traffic cam, security camera, every drive-through window—all are sending visual data toward that purpose. Their feeds will all be compiled and extrapolated in real time by one of our supercomputers, and if we’re halfway lucky we’ll have a hit in minutes.”

“Keep extrapolating,” McCracken told him, already backing up for the door with Johnny Wareagle. “The Indian and I will get ready to hit the road.”

“Wait,” Folsom said, reaching into his pocket, “take this.”

He handed McCracken what looked like a high-tech version of the standard Bluetooth earpiece.

“Long-range transmitter?”

Folsom looked as if he had to stop himself from shaking his head. “Not what we call it, but close enough. Operates on a dedicated bandwidth and frequency with direct satellite feed. So we can stay in touch.”

McCracken fit the earpiece into place. “Aren’t I lucky?”

He and Wareagle had just reached an unmarked sedan with a big block V-8 provided them courtesy of the NOPD when Folsom’s voice chimed hollowly in his ear.

“Okay, McCracken, I’ve got our vehicle heading southeast on Martin Luther King Junior Boulevard and making a U-turn at Oretha C. Haley Boulevard and then taking a right onto South Claiborne Avenue eight minutes ago now.”

McCracken climbed behind the wheel and gunned the car’s powerful engine.

“Next shot I’ve got is two minutes later in traffic approaching the ramp to the I-10, west for Baton Rouge.”

Wareagle fastened his shoulder harness as McCracken screeched off, following the SUV’s identical path.

“I’ve got them on US-90 for a half mile before merging onto I-10 heading west.”

McCracken picked up speed, weaving in and out of traffic and honking his horn instead of using the big car’s siren. “How long ago?”

“Six minutes,” Folsom reported. “Wait, I’ve got them taking the Causeway Boulevard North exit and proceeding onto North Causeway less than one minute ago. Christ . . .”

“What?”

“They must be headed across Lake Pontchartrain. Where are you?”

“Merging on I-10 now. How far does that put me behind them?”

No response.

“Folsom?”

“Yeah, sorry. I’ve got them passing onto the Lake Pontchartrain Causeway just now in real time. That puts you exactly five-point-one miles behind them.”

“So you can see me too?”

“On a separate screen. Why?”

“Because I just gave you the finger, Hank.”

“We don’t have nearly the camera coverage on the other side of the causeway, McCracken. We stand to lose them if you can’t intercept prior.”

“Expecting a miracle?”

“Just like Mexico.”

“I lost one in Mexico, Folsom. Don’t intend for that to happen today.”

“Then you better step on it,” McCracken heard Folsom say in his ear loud enough to cause a flutter in his skull.

“Wait,” McCracken said, realizing something. “Check the long view of the causeway. I believe you’ll find the bascule drawbridge at about the center of the span.”

“Holy shit, you’re right.”

“Then work your magic and order it opened.”

The drawbridge was actually located at the sixteen-mile marker of the Causeway Bridge, activated under normal conditions with only substantial notice and never during peak daytime travel hours.

“You read me, McCracken?” Folsom’s voice blared in his ear.

“Loud and clear, Hank.”

“Traffic has been stopped and the drawbridge will be raised in three minutes’ time.”

McCracken realized the easy flow of cars on the causeway was slowing, a sea of brake lights flashing ahead. “Where’s the SUV?”

“About a mile ahead of you and one mile in front of the drawbridge.”

“How long does that give Johnny and me to reach it?”

“Six minutes to raise, six minutes to lower, and, say, another five to approximate a ship passing through. So figure twenty before traffic flow resumes. Is that enough?”

“Guess it’ll have to be, won’t it?”

“You don’t sound thrilled by the prospects.”

“A gunfight in the open with whoever nabbed Katie DeMarco’s going to do lots of collateral damage. Not a lot of places for bystanders to go other than over the side.”

“This coming from the legendary McCrackenballs?”

“The bad guys these days seem to operate with entirely new rules of engagement. Shoot fast and often and hit whatever you can.”

“Then I guess you’ll have to shoot better.”

“First we’ll have to get close enough. Any ideas, Folsom?”

“Well,” the man from Homeland Security started, “you’re about to hit the snarl so whatever you do, it’ll have to be on foot.”

“Thanks for the tip.”

Ahead, McCracken could see a number of men holding hand-scrawled cardboard signs up for those now stalled in place to see. The signs were pretty much uniform in message, held in cracked, soiled hands by those claiming to be homeless, jobless, or both. And, judging by their appearance, McCracken disputed none of that. There was even an older man advertising himself as a Vietnam vet rolling about the snarl in a wheelchair.

“Indian?” he raised, aware Johnny Wareagle’s gaze had tilted in the same direction.

“My thoughts exactly, Blainey.”

“Then let’s get to work.”

“If you’ll come with us, Ms. DeMarco.”

Katie had sensed something amiss as soon as Detective Hurst ushered the two men into the conference room and closed the door behind them. Something was wrong about their demeanor, their eyes too furtive and intense. She could try to pass it off as the paranoia expected under the circumstances, but there seemed to be no inquisitiveness in their gazes or their intentions, their mind-set entirely wrong for the task.

“I’d like to use the bathroom first, if that’s okay,” Katie had said, hoping to create the opportunity to separate herself from these men, while unsure about what exactly she’d do once she managed that.

“Certainly,” one of the men said. “On our way out.”

Instead, though, they’d made straight for the parking garage with her request to visit the bathroom ignored. The two men walked with her always in the middle, one or both of them with a firm grasp on her elbows or arms. And, as soon as they reached the garage, she felt the barrel of a gun pressed low against her back.

“Keep moving,” the man holding it said. “Don’t stop, don’t cry out, don’t look at anyone passing by.”

Katie heard the static-riddled cackle of a soft voice providing instructions in the other man’s nearly invisible earpiece.

“I think I’m going to be sick,” she said amid the garage’s dark confines smelling of oil, concrete, and lingering exhaust fumes.

The men kept leading her on, the gun pressing against her harder.

“Just keep walking,” one of them said quite calmly, brushing off her lame attempt at escape with what looked like a smirk.

It was the last thing either of them had said, through the drive that took them across the Lake Pontchartrain Causeway where they suddenly became mired in traffic in view of a rising drawbridge. That respite gave Katie fresh opportunity to consider her options for flight. These men didn’t care what she knew, any more than the men who’d followed her into K-Paul’s yesterday did.

Or the men who’d killed Todd Lipton and his team in Greenland. And Twist last night.

Katie watched the driver touch his barely visible earpiece, the soft garble of static reaching her again.

“New orders,” he said, his gaze cocked back toward the man on her right.

Katie felt his free hand take her by the hair and jerk her downward. She glimpsed the silenced pistol steadying on her skull, and was about to to close her eyes when someone rapped on the window.

McCracken had approached the white-haired man in the wheelchair with Wareagle looming just behind him, dropping a ten-dollar bill into the cup held on the man’s seat between his two legs.

“What unit were you with, soldier?”

“Twenty-Fifth Infantry Division. Tropic Lightning,” he said proudly.

“Saw plenty of action in the Tet and more, then. First Brigade or Second?”

“First.”

“Bet you were pleased as punch to get back home to Schofield in ’71. May, wasn’t it?”

“It was. Remember it like it was yesterday.”

“Except,” McCracken said, “you’re remembering it wrong. First Brigade of Tropic Lightning was gone by the previous December. And those gloves you’re wearing are plenty worn, but not in the spots from wheeling that chair around. Tell me I’m wrong and I’ll throw you over the side.”

The man looked up at McCracken, his expression that of someone who’d just swallowed something sour. “You want your ten dollars back?”

“Nope. Consider it a rental fee.”

“For what?”

“Get up.”

McCracken eased the wheelchair with Johnny Wareagle resting in the seat the final stretch to the green SUV parked in clear view of the raised drawbridge.

“Remind me next time it’s your turn to do the pushing, Indian,” he said between labored breaths. “Man, HALO drops from five miles were easy compared to this.”

Of course, Johnny Wareagle’s vast bulk made him stand out under any circumstances, but less so in a seated position that allowed him to hunch his shoulders and crane his body to hide his true size. McCracken eased the pistol Folsom had procured for him into easier drawing range when they drew to within three vehicles of the SUV.

“Just in case, Indian.”

Wareagle grinned slightly. “Just in case,” he repeated.

Her captor’s hold slackened enough to allow Katie to peer upward. The man rapping his knuckles on the window had his hair clubbed back into a ponytail that was rimmed with gray strands where it pulled back from the temples. His eyes looked like liquid pools of darkness. Katie had just registered how big his chest and shoulders were, easily wider than the breadth of the wheelchair, when her captor in the backseat lowered the window to shoo the beggar away.

Go for his gun!

But the man’s gaze was back on her too fast. Still, an open window, a distracted captor, the driver’s attention divided between the stalled traffic and the opportune appearance by the panhandler.

Go for the other door now . . .

But Katie felt too heavy to move, her legs like lead weights. She was aware of her rapid breathing and nothing else.

Until a sudden blur of motion wiped out the rest of her thoughts, so fast as to seem impossible for anyone to manage, much less a man the size of the disabled beggar. In one blink he was seated and in the next he was out of the wheelchair and through the window, seemingly with no space or time in between.

Before the window had fully lowered, the giant’s left hand had swallowed the throat of the man seated next to Katie and slammed his head against the car’s roof, the pistol gone from his grasp and clamoring to the floor. Then, just as the glass sank all the way into the sill, the giant launched his entire torso up and forward, gliding smoothly and agilely into the car itself. Katie thought she smelled something like incense, as the giant’s right hand clamped onto the throat of the driver whose attempt to draw his pistol was left suspended between intention and action.

Katie watched the giant bring the heads of her two captors together with a force that resulted in a mashing sound that reminded her of ice crunching under a boot in winter. They looked like rag dolls in the giant’s huge hands, discarded to the sides with an effortlessness that appeared almost superhuman.

The door on the other side jerked open and Katie spotted her second rescuer for the first time, a stubble-faced man with gray-tinged thick hair and a gun palmed like an extension of his hand.

Wait
, Katie thought,
I know these men. . . .

Her rescuers from the K-Paul’s in the French Quarter yesterday!

“The name’s McCracken,” the bearded man said behind fierce eyes that seemed to burn right through her. “Nice to see you again.”

Back at Homeland Security regional headquarters in New Orleans’s City Hall, McCracken led Katie DeMarco into an office Folsom had emptied for him on the eighth floor, the middle of the three Homeland occupied in the building. He closed the door behind her and watched the young woman collapse into a high-backed leather chair behind the desk.

“I froze back there on the causeway,” she said, seeming to melt into the leather. “They were going to kill me and there was nothing I could do.”

McCracken sat down on the edge of the desk directly before her. “Ever had a gun pointed at you before?”

“No,” she said, almost shyly.

“It tends to have that effect on people.”

“Nothing new for you and that big friend of yours, I guess.”

“You guess right.”