Red Dawn Rising (Red Returning Trilogy) (38 page)

A flurry of movement at the seawall caught Evgeny’s attention, and he watched as the spectators dashed toward the BMW. Though he couldn’t see clearly, he heard doors open and close. Then four bobbing heads, three men and the woman, moved quickly to the chopper and climbed in. In moments, the rotors began their preamble to flight.

Evgeny looked back at the boat, at the Soviet flag waving defiantly, at the man darting from the wheelhouse to the tarpaulin across the bow, gun in hand. Evgeny thought he heard the man squeeze off one round before his body arched violently and crumpled to the deck. It had taken only a couple of well-placed shots from the forward chopper to drop him.

But the boat remained on course, heading for one of the neo-Gothic towers of the Brooklyn Bridge. Evgeny watched two men drop from the aft helicopter onto the tug. One charged the wheelhouse while the other rushed for the tarpaulin. Even before the officer jerked away the cover, Evgeny knew what lay beneath and why those aboard the other chopper hadn’t risked a hail of bullets to take down the tug captain.

About the time Evgeny heard the tug’s engines reverse, another sound erupted. The piercing whine of the Bell 429 snatched his attention from the drama unfolding on the river. He watched the chopper slowly rise from the deck, then he reached into his pocket.

So you came to watch the show
, Evgeny called silently,
and then fly off to gloat
.

The chopper lifted into the wind and pointed its glassy snout toward the harbor. It was well over the river and gaining distance when it exploded into an enormous fireball, spilling its remains to the deep.

Evgeny slipped the remote back into his pocket and returned to the camper. He was finished with it all.

He waited long enough to watch the BMW escape the heliport, tires squealing through the exit gate. There was no need to give chase.
Let the driver go
, Evgeny decided.
He just watched his boss and all the others die. And now we both must run to ground
.

Chapter 45

M
elanie Thompson was irritated that her husband wasn’t answering his phone. She wanted him to start dinner before she got home. It was after five, and she still had to pick up Rudy from his music lesson at school.

She’d left the office a little early. A memo had crossed her desk that morning about the temporary closing of one of the gates to the power plant. A small inconvenience to most, a critical delay for her escape from the task that lay before her. She had spent the last hour cruising the facility, speaking to guards she knew well, eyeing the makeshift barriers that would facilitate construction of new guardhouses.
Progress
, she thought with only slight regret. Improvements to a doomed plant.

But when? She and Pete had been ready for some time and grew restless with each passing hour. They’d reviewed every orchestrated detail of their departure, even practicing evasive actions should that be necessary. They could vacate their rented house overnight and be on the next flight to Moscow. Then they finally would be home, though there was much work to be done there also, groundwork for the emergence of a new and indomitable Russia. She and her friends at the university had dreamed of such a revolution, ached to see their convalescing nation rise from its post-Soviet stupor and take its rightful place in the hierarchy of world power. At the top.

She pulled into the circular drive and parked in front of the school. Rudy’s music teacher, Mr. Palmer, taught private lessons after school and had taken particular interest in her son’s perfect pitch. Though Melanie had encouraged Rudy to choose a stringed instrument, which would afford greater access to a Russian orchestra one day, she supposed the French horn he’d chosen would suffice.

She was surprised to see no one milling about the front office, wrapping up the usual administrative duties of the day. A few familiar cars were still parked outside. She guessed there was a staff meeting going on somewhere.

The hallway to the music room was clad almost floor to ceiling with student art. She paused before a gregarious purple ape wearing a ball cap and holding a baseball bat. It was signed
Rudy Thompson
. Melanie was sorry her son would miss baseball season but confident he’d take to ice hockey with as much enthusiasm.

The music room was at the end of a long hall of classrooms. Melanie noticed that all the doors to those rooms, which usually remained open, were closed. She stopped in the hall and looked back toward the front desk. Still no one there. Just then, though, she heard a few notes from a French horn and continued on down the hall, her steps lighter now. Mr. Palmer always asked Rudy to perform for her, to play something he’d learned that day. She looked forward to that.

But when she entered the long room with the choir risers stretched across one wall, Rudy wasn’t there. Mr. Palmer sat alone near the piano, the horn stilled in his hands. Something was wrong. He seemed uncertain what to do with his mouth. The pasted-on smile went flat too soon.

“Where’s Rudy?” she asked, her mind beginning to hurtle toward full alert.

He didn’t answer. Just then, his eyes shifted to a point behind her, and as soon as she turned, two uniformed officers stepped forward.

“Melanie Thompson?” one of them asked.

She knew. No one at the desk. The doors to the hall closed. A nervous music teacher. They’d been waiting for her. There was a scurry of hard-falling footsteps in the hall, and quickly her escape route filled with more uniforms.

How did this happen?

Chapter 46

T
ravis, I’m sorry for what took place on the river yesterday.” Shelton Myers stood before President Noland’s desk. “That was a horrible death for them all. But if Hans Kluen hadn’t alerted us, think how many on that bridge would have died. Still, I should offer condolences to you for the death of Ivan Volynski.”

The president sat back in his chair and sighed. “For all I know, I’m the next of kin.”

“Now there’s a bit of intelligence worth keeping to yourself. That’s my advice, Travis. The man’s dead. You never knew him, not really. Let him lie.” Shelton thought a moment. “It was fortunate closure that the heliport guard watched him board that chopper.”

Shelton moved to a chair and sat down. “Odd, don’t you think, that Volynski never exposed your kinship to the media?”

“Oh, it was coming,” Noland said, getting up from his desk and taking a seat near his friend. “I always knew it was Ivan who smeared scandal all over my father. I suppose he was waiting for just the right moment to pick me off, too, probably in the aftermath of his attacks on us, when all the country was hollering for vengeance. At the right time, he would have claimed responsibility for the devastation and then dropped one more bomb—‘And, oh yes, your president is my brother.’”

Noland shifted uneasily in his chair, unable to shake the needling
thing
inside him, growing louder, more insistent. A burning prompt. He must evade it for now and refocus. “Shelton, I wish everyone could have witnessed what local law enforcement all over this nation did last night. How they scrambled to find and arrest every terrorist listed on that flash drive, including our Secret Service traitor. I don’t know how nick-of-time we were in each case. Only Ivan knew the signal hour. But his people were ready and waiting. Police apprehended one woman at her child’s school. And the guy who would have blown a hole in the Lake Jenowak Dam was plucked right out of his chicken coop. The local cops who nabbed him said he’d always been a loner who preferred chickens to people. But he was a top-notch engineer. Unlike our Ellis Island bomber. They found him roaring drunk in a pub on City Island. When they started questioning him, he asked if they’d like to see his new coat. Turns out it was stuffed with C4 and a detonator.”

“How many did you catch?” Shelton asked.

“Seven. The others were aiming for the New York Stock Exchange, Naval Station Norfolk, the Federal Reserve, a few more national monuments. I’m not sure what else.”

“And Liesl Bower.”

“Yes, Liesl.” The president hung his head. “And then there’s Ben Hafner.” Noland sat still for a moment, then looked up. “Shelton, thank you for your advice and your loyalty.”

“You’re welcome, Travis. But one more question. Is the FBI any closer to an arrest for the Charleston attempt on Liesl?”

“The postman? No.” He fastened on his friend’s face. “Shelton, that flash drive was incomplete. There are others still out there.”

Chapter 47

P
ulling up at the hospital in midtown Manhattan, Mark Delaney avoided the crush of reporters near the entrance and parked in a restricted zone behind the hospital. Though accompanied by two uniformed officers, he had to present his badge when he and Liesl reached the NYPD security shield hurriedly installed around the hospital.

Ava met them inside and showed them to the elevators. She had just summoned Liesl to the hospital with little time for explanations.

Wasting not a second, Liesl reached past one of the officers inside the elevator and punched the floor number for ICU. When the doors opened, she darted out, leaving Ava, Delaney, and the two officers in her wake. “Liesl, wait!” Ava called. But Liesl slowed only to hit the wall button that activated the double stainless-steel doors. When they opened, ICU looked more like an NYPD precinct. Officers guarded the main entrance and lined the walls on either side of a glass-front room directly ahead.

She glanced back at Ava and the perennially irritated Delaney, who stiffly nodded approval for her to keep going. When she approached the two sentries at the ICU entrance, she expected them to question her, but what she heard was, “Go ahead, ma’am. They’re expecting you.”

A young nurse came alongside her. “This way, Miss Bower.”

The door to the glassed-in room was open, but the curtains around
the
bed were drawn. Liesl heard an unfamiliar voice behind them. The nurse motioned for her to wait. Just when Liesl didn’t think she could do that any longer, a white-coated doctor parted the curtains wide, and Ben Hafner’s eyes fluttered open.

Liesl stood transfixed by his ashen face, by the ponderous bandaging across one side of his neck and over his chest. Too many emotions battled for dominance. Chief among them was an anger that wouldn’t let go of her. She felt the sting of tears rise behind her eyes and a throbbing knot swell in her throat. She couldn’t move forward, not until Ben lifted a limp hand and motioned her closer. That’s when she stepped to the bed and bent over him. Her tears finally burst through and ran down her face. “You big idiot!” she sobbed. “Why did you do it?”

He reached for her hand and held it weakly. His words poured thin and ragged, as if strained through a sieve at the back of his throat. “Nobody messes with my girls.” He swallowed with pained effort. “Not my family. Not you.”

Liesl nudged a clump of brown hair off his forehead and kissed it lightly. This was the brother-friend she’d loved for so long. Now, he lay here gravely wounded. If not for the bulletproof vest he’d worn, the first rifle shot would have torn away most of his chest. But the vest only slowed the bullet’s entrance into his body. The second shot had nicked an artery in his neck. He would have bled out if FBI agents hadn’t been on him instantly and summoned the medevac on standby a short distance away.

“Ava just told me what you did, but not before I saw you at that house on City Island.” She swiped at more tears. “Do you know what I thought?”

He nodded, his brows bunching with regret.

“But she understands now, Ben,” Ava said, approaching the bed. “That you jeopardized your life and career to infiltrate Ivan Volynski’s network.”

“Why you, Ben?” Liesl persisted. “You’re no secret agent.”

“But they invited me,” he teased, his words labored.

Ava filled in the rest for Liesl. “They tried to recruit him over a year ago, at the same time they were hunting you and the code. Ben reported it to Noland and the FBI, who asked him to accept should Ivan’s people make any more overtures. The CIA had picked up too much chatter on
a
rogue Russian threat to the U.S., but nothing solid. They had to get inside.”

Ben lifted a couple of fingers. “But it was the girl from Broadway and her stepfather who really stopped that tugboat … and the other attacks.”

Liesl considered the young woman whose plight had entwined itself with hers. She hoped they would draw closer to each other, both survivors. Then she thought of something else. “Who killed Ivan Volynski?” she asked Ava.

“We can’t be sure at this time,” Ava said flatly.

“That sounds like official talk.”

“That’s exactly what that is,” Ava said, then turned to Ben. “When do Anna and the kids arrive?”

“They’re not coming,” he whispered, trying to reposition himself in the bed, then giving up the struggle. “I won’t let them. Anna’s endured enough.”

Ava looked at Liesl. “We had a wire on Ben. While he was still on the ground, he talked to Anna. He thought they were his last words. We thought so too, so we immediately transmitted them to her in Israel.”

Liesl felt new tears spring to her eyes, imagining the moment Anna heard his dying voice. She looked up at Ben with pleading. “Let her come, Ben. She needs to see you.”

Ava moved closer to Ben. “Do you think they’re still in danger?”