Shoot (36 page)

Moving quickly out the coffee shop and onto the pavement, Amy not far behind, I opened the car’s back door, leaned in and began to chat with the driver, Oscar; a thin bald guy with a Latino accent in a Hawaiian shirt. When I saw the dark van appear at the other end of the block again, I let them spot me and ducked into the car, sliding low in the back seat. As Oscar pulled away I distinctly heard one loud blast on an air horn. One, if by land. Amy was confirming my four hairy hunters were on me.

Then I clearly heard two more air horn blasts behind me, like a cold hand on my back. Two, if by air. Their fucking drone was also on my ass. It would have night vision—a real bummer for a plan that depended on darkness. The only question was did it have another brick of Semtex? I had to assume it did. I was boned.

Oscar was babbling about something up front, as he drove me just four blocks to a pier on the Hudson. I made one last call on my burner phone, using the anonymous voice-disguising app.

“Hello, police emergency? I would like to report four heavily armed men with beards at Pier 95 in Manhattan, at Forty-Seventh Street. Get some cops here. They’re pointing some kind of black tubes out over the river at a big boat. Yes, hello? I’m losing you.”

I removed the battery from the disposable phone and tossed it out the back window.

“Hey! What was that? Why you throw your phone away?” Oscar demanded. “Who you talking to?”

He began to slow down. I ignored his questions and told him not to stop at the brightly lit entertainment pier on our right. Behind the pier, moored in the dark river, a string of white lights atop the USS
John S. McCain
were visible, strung from stem to stern.

“The next one, please. Yes, the deserted pier.”

“Why you want a deserted pier?” he asked suspiciously.

“Meeting some friends. Thanks, man.”

I jumped out and dashed for the safety of the rusty old green metal structure.

“Hey, don’t do it!” the driver yelled after me.

Don’t do what? It was mostly open inside the pier, a lattice of ancient steel beams above a crumbling concrete surface. I had to move slowly around vertical I-beams, trying not to stumble over chunks of loose cement.

A screech of tires behind me, slamming doors.

The black van.

I couldn’t hear it but also behind me would be the all-seeing eye mounted on the explosive drone. Moving faster through the rubble toward the far right corner of the pier, I gambled I wouldn’t trip and fall. If I did, that would be it. I had to draw fire but, with the drone, they would find me and kill me much quicker than I had planned. I was almost there when flashlight beams began sweeping the dark behind me. Maglites attached to their shotguns. No more warnings. This time they were going to blow me away, one way or the other.

I moved faster. Barely visible, as I got closer to the edge, random holes appeared in the floor, a twenty-foot drop to the water below. It might have been helpful to check the tide tables. At the edge, I ducked behind a pillar and looked at the destroyer, its nose pointing to the right, north, upriver. There was a lot of activity on deck, people moving around. I heard a voice on a loudspeaker. Feeling around on the floor, I found a rusty bolt and a fist-sized chunk of stone. I lobbed the bolt to the other side of the platform, where it loudly connected with a steel beam.

They opened up, firing at the sound—four fifty-foot blasts of fireworks through the space and out over the water— right toward the giant warship. They stopped shooting and racked their slides, ready, moving closer for the kill.

Any second now, the drone would find me. Being deres’d by plastic explosive wasn’t a bad way to go. The blast bubble travelled at more than twenty-six thousand feet per second. Instantaneous. One second you were here and the next second you weren’t.

Out over the river, I heard a loud klaxon.

Time to go. I tossed my concrete chunk and the assholes fired again, very close this time, illuminating everything like monster flashbulbs, the musket balls ricocheting around like an open-air pinball machine.

Fuck it. It was either watch what was about to happen or stay alive. I couldn’t do both. Turning, I broad-jumped as far as possible out into the open air. I caught more flashing sparks and one lone male voice, drowned out—desperately yelling an unheeded warning.

I hit the water, shockingly cold for summer, and let myself sink deep into the cold, quiet darkness. Above me, the water lit up like someone had flicked a light switch but the brightness was mostly streaming from the other direction. The water around me throbbed with the tremendous blasting bellow of a giant beast, spitting a huge stream of dotted red fire over my head, into the pier above me. The steel girders rattled as thousands of twenty-millimeter depleted uranium slugs from the USS
John S. McCain
’s Phalanx guns ripped the pier apart. I tried swimming away underwater but I ran out of time. Mammoth chunks of metal and concrete pounded into the frothing water all around, a seaquake trying to crush me. I surfaced into a racket of shrieking metal and distant yelling. Again, I could watch—or live.

I swam for my life.

Later, I clawed my way up a rotting wooden bulkhead and collapsed in a dark parking lot. A stiff cool breeze off the river chilled me. I could hear sirens and helicopters to the south, lights on the river. I looked around. I was alone. Mission accomplished.

I hoped the drone went down. It was unlikely the Semtex was set off by the shooting but I hoped the bird was hit by rounds or crushed in the collapse. Objectively, it was a very dangerous thing to do, but damn, I was tingling with adrenaline from my toes to my fingertips, pulsing with life and death-cheating power. I howled up at the moon, even though there wasn’t one.

I felt blue and cold as Papa Smurf. I stripped off my shirt and wrung the water out of it before putting it back on. I took out my wad of cash. I squeezed the money and salty brine dripped out. A lot of water also came out of my bathing suit shorts and, finally, my gun gloves. I got re-dressed, smoothed my hair back, replaced the cash and gloves in my pockets and sat down to catch my breath. It felt good to be alive.

The New Minutemen would ride no longer. I didn’t take any orders and I didn’t fire a gun. Of course, I helped them provoke the dragon, or, at least, a Phalanx. The assholes who hurt Skippy were dead—because they brought shotguns to a Gatling gun fight.

Amy was surprised to see me alive, although a bit damp, but asked no questions. She handed me my keys and my iPhone, which was still connected to her cellphone, with unlimited voicemail.

I ended the call and told Amy I would see her in the morning. She left for home, to complete the loop of the lie and then reschedule her fake dope deal. It was a shame Jane would not see her in her get-up. I should have demanded a quick-draw demonstration from her bra holsters. Instead, I fed Skippy, took a shower and changed into dry clothes, including long pants. When I got out, Jane was home. She was tired but not surprised to see me. She asked questions and I lied shamelessly. We heated up some leftovers. I ate like a condemned man and had a few araks. Jane had some wine and I offered a toast.

“To the U.S. Navy—a global force for good. Cheers!”

We clinked glasses and drank. I turned on the TV. CNN was in a red-letter breaking-news frenzy over “TERROR ATTACK IN MANHATTAN?”

Ahh, the almighty question mark. Apparently a group of bearded men, possibly Islamist terrorists, had tried to sink a battleship in the Hudson River, possibly with rockets, sparking a wild firefight. Hmm. Jane and I watched with interest, as they aired videos of tongues of flame from the ship, tracer rounds zipping across the water and demolishing the pier. Cool.

I hoped it was too dark and all the video cameras were too distant to detect a lone guy jumping into the drink.

I dialed Izzy’s cellphone.

“What?” a harried Izzy answered, a lot of noise in the background.

“I’m watching CNN. What’s with this attack on the river?”

“That’s what we’re trying to nail down,” Izzy replied. “First there were internet threats—from your Tea Party pals the New Minutemen—vowing to destroy the symbol of Zionist-American aggression, the USS
John S. McCain
.”

“No shit? That’s crazy. Wow, I’d better get on this.”

“There was a lot of chatter over the last few hours. Our terror alerts, NYPD and the military’s, got ramped up. Also, we got a 911 call that four bearded men were pointing tubes at the destroyer from Pier 95 on the Hudson. Before we could respond, the ship detected and fired on what they say were multiple sources of heavy hostile fire from shore— directed at the vessel.”

“Incredible. So, is it the New Minutemen, my New Minutemen?”

“Looks that way,” Izzy said. “Whoever was stupid enough to attack a destroyer was shredded into thousands of pieces. The ME is trying to separate small body parts, weapon fragments, hair, blood, bone and leather but no IDs yet. This is going to be done slowly and carefully with DNA and a spoon.”

“Wow. Well, it couldn’t happen to nicer guys. Thanks, Izzy.”

“No problem.”

I called the paper and filed what I had just learned, plus a bit more from my own experience. Mel wasn’t there but the editor on the desk was very happy. I suggested a headline. It was out within the hour, added as a new top to my earlier story:

Izzy and Phil were at our door bright and early and refused Jane’s offer of coffee. We sat in the kitchen.

“Where were you last night?” Izzy demanded.

“When I spoke to you? Right here.”

“No, earlier.”

I gave them the sanitized version, saying I came home to Jane’s after I left the animal hospital—leaving out little details, such as the coffee shop, the car service, the pier and the calling down of hellfire onto evildoers.

“Funny thing,” Phil said, looking at his notebook. “Somebody anonymously posted online threats against the ship on behalf of the New Minutemen.”

“Yeah, Izzy told me.”

“It seemed valid—they had the authentication code.”

“Okay, Izzy didn’t mention that. So the New Minutemen made the threat, tried to carry it out and got wasted. Sounds like a happy ending to me.”

“Yeah,” Izzy agreed, “but here’s the thing. Late last night, the 911 operator got a call from some guy who claims he picked up a man in shorts and sandals and took him to the same pier just before this shitstorm blew in. He says the young man acted weird, called the cops, threw away his phone and ran—and that four guys with long beards and coats and hats showed up in a black van and ran after him.”

“Sounds like my guys, alright. What happened to the other guy?”

They were silent.

“We don’t know,” Izzy admitted. “The caller didn’t want to get involved. He said he left but called after he heard about the attack.”

“Too bad. Maybe he’ll call back? Who does the van’s plate go back to?”

“The van was gone and the man who called said he didn’t get a license plate. There may have been another guy in the van, a wheelman—who took off when the shit hit the fan.”

“But what about the guy the New Minutemen were meeting? The guy in shorts and sandals? Was he killed with them?”

“Who said that man was meeting them?” Phil asked. “The anonymous caller said he thought his passenger was going to jump in the river but when he saw the other guys run in, he thought maybe they were chasing him. He didn’t want any part of it. He may be shy because he’s an illegal.”

“So I should look for this car driver and maybe for the guy in shorts and sandals?”

“How do you walk with those nuts?” Phil asked. “Don’t they pinch?”

“What?” I asked, in mock shock.

Phil asked me if anybody could verify that I was at home from about nine thirty until ten thirty. I told them Jane found me at home about eleven and I spoke to Izzy around then but they said that was too late and asked what I was doing when I was home alone.

“Nothing,” I told them. “I spent most of the time on the phone, talking about the case with my boss, Amy.”

“That’s good,” Phil said. “Very good.”

“If anybody asks Amy, she’ll back you up? If some agency happens to look up the phone records and cell tower hits, will they show that?” Izzy asked.

“Absolutely. Why? Are you going to check?”

“Not us,” Izzy said. “But it’s comforting to know you’ve got a solid alibi.”

“And comforting to know we won’t go down with you,” Phil smirked.

“For what?” I asked. “You think
I
blew away the New Minutemen?”

“Not directly, a harmless pacifist like you,” Phil sneered. “But it is a serious crime to make terroristic threats. Also, I don’t like destroyers spraying cannon fire around my city. It’s a damn good thing innocent people didn’t get hurt.”

“Shepherd would never do that,” Jane scolded them.

“I agree,” I said. “It’s a good thing innocent people didn’t get hurt. And it’s also not a bad thing that guilty people got hurt.”

They didn’t argue.

“I hope it’s all over,” said Jane. “I worry about Shepherd.”

“Jane, trust me, don’t ever worry about Shepherd,” Izzy told her, with a smile. “
El Diablo se ocupa de su propia
.”

Jane laughed. “The Devil looks after his own.”

I hoped to hell it was true.

“He’s right, Jane,” Phil added. “The Force is strong with this one.”

“Okay, maybe I’ll keep him,” Jane giggled.

I suggested we all go out to dinner to celebrate.

“Later,” said Izzy. “In a day or so. We still have a lot of work to do. I’ll be thirsty when we’re done.”

I was worried that we still didn’t have any evidence against the management of the New Minutemen corporation, so I asked if any of the hotel shooters they had arrested, along with Bryce, were saying anything—like who the possible criminal mastermind was?

“Zilch,” Izzy said. “They denied everything and clammed up. I’m not even sure they know enough to tell us much more. There may not be some Mr. Big,” Izzy chuckled. “Most of them come from serious old WASP money but we can’t find any links to your Aryan Purity Nation, your four attackers. So, we have four dead enforcers, six hotel shooters in the jug—except for a possible van driver in the breeze, that may be the whole gang. Close enough for government work.”