Silent Assassin (24 page)

“Where’s the cage?”

“At the bottom with me.”

“Safety?”

“Not really my number one concern right now.”

“Okay,” said Shepard. “You’re going to want to release the brakes. This model only has emergency brakes on free fall, so once you do that, the counterweight should take you all the way up. There should be a lever next to the motor. Pull that first, all the way. That’ll allow the cables to move freely, independent of the motor.”

Morgan found it, outside the cage next to the tower structure, and pulled it. The steel cable tensed audibly. “Done.”

“All right. Now, get inside the cage. There’s another lever there, should be at ground level, along the edge.”

Morgan moved inside the cage. He saw the policemen rounding the corner carefully, guns drawn. He closed the door to the cage.

“Drop your weapon, and get on the ground!” one yelled.

“I need to get moving, Shepard!”

“You just have to pull the lever. Remember to keep hands and feet inside the vehicle at all times, and hold on to your—”

Morgan didn’t hear the rest. The elevator jerked so violently that the upward force kept Morgan pinned to the floor. Mere seconds went by until the counterweight hit the ground with a deafening
clang
that reverberated upwards along the structure of the hoist, shaking it so violently that Morgan barely noticed for a second or two that he felt no gravity. The cage stopped abruptly at the top of the tower. Morgan’s back collided painfully with the ceiling of the cage, and then he hit the floor again as the emergency brakes kicked in.

“—organ, Morgan, come in. Are you okay?”

There was no time to answer. He pulled open the doors to the cage. The brakes had arrested its ascent some ten feet above the highest floor.
Well, no time to think about how much this is going to hurt.
He pushed off the edge, and there was no ground beneath his feet.

He rolled as he fell on hard concrete. He immediately ran for cover behind a pillar. He heard a buzz as the sniper’s bullets flew past him, and two hit the concrete pillar, making dull
thwips
. He looked at his watch. Its face had shattered in the elevator, and his wrist was red and swollen, although he couldn’t feel any pain. He checked his pocket for the detonator. It seemed to be in one piece. He felt his other pocket for his knife. It might save his life again that day.

“Shepard, I need that sniper taken out
now
!” Two more shots whizzed by. “How much time do I have?”

“Just over two and a half minutes! Stay put, they’re almost at his room!”

Morgan counted the seconds off in his head, and they were the longest of his life. He looked at the ledge, and saw the crane that was hanging off the building. Jenny was there. She needed him.

He counted almost thirty agonizing seconds until Shepard’s voice came in his ear. “Okay, Cobra, you’re clear. They’ve taken out the sniper.”

Morgan took off running, and asked, “Novokoff?”

“Not there,” said Shepard. “They had some kind of camera setup for him, apparently.”

An icy wind blew behind Morgan as he ran across the unfinished floor. He reached the ledge and looked down. Jenny was hanging from the tower crane by its double steel cable, three floors down.

“Morgan, what are you going to do?”

“Morgan, this is Bloch. I’m sorry, but it’s time to think about detonating that vest. You can’t save her either way, but this way at least you can save—”

“Not going to happen,” he said. “Now shut up and let me do my job.”

He looked at the ground and did some quick mental math.

“Jenny!” he yelled into the wind.

“Dan?” came the response, sounding so far away.

“Jenny, I’m coming!”

He walked five steps backward, and took a deep breath. He took off his jacket and rolled it up as tight as he could.
Goddamn it,
he thought,
I
hate
heights
.

He ran at full tilt, clutching his jacket, and catapulted off the ledge. It was as if the world went silent for a split second. The rush of wind was nothing, and Morgan felt as tall as the skyscrapers around him. Then it came back, the rush of air in his ears, wind propelling him forward. He hit the twin cables hard, and swung the jacket around them. Holding tight to the thick fabric, he wrapped his thighs around one of the cables and rappelled down. The friction burned his skin even through the fabric. A few seconds later, his feet touched down on the hook. Jenny was bound and hanging under him.

“Jenny.”

“Dan? Is that really you?”

“I’m here, honey. It’s going to be okay.”

Now came the hard part. He looked down, the ground a vertiginous distance below. He could see more than a dozen policemen now, keeping the growing crowd back.
Damn it
, he thought. He had to get rid of the explosives somehow, and they weren’t going to make it any easier.

He braced for this next step. He wrapped his jacket around one of the steel cables, then around his left wrist, so that he had a firm grasp. One more deep breath, then he swung out, letting himself fall one body length. His left knee screamed in pain from the impact of his full weight. He bit his lip. This was no time for pain.

He looked at Jenny, almost face to face with her. Her eyes were covered with a mask, which he pulled off. He had a split second to register the mixture of surprise, terror and relief on her face before he kissed her for longer than he should have allowed.

“God, Dan,” she said, “I knew you’d come.”

“I’m here, honey,” he said, in a comforting tone. “It’s going to be okay.”
Either that, or we die together.

The bomb could not have more than thirty seconds left on its timer. He examined Jenny closely now. She was strapped to a harness that held her to the hook above, but her hands were tied above her head as well. On top of that, she was wearing a vest with the explosives, just as Novokoff had described: the vials with a white powder, sticks of C4, and pouches of what he surmised was the incendiary. He looked at the detonator. Too complex. No time to defuse it, not with one hand, hanging one hundred feet off the ground.

He drew his knife and began to saw through the shoulders of her vest.

“Dan,” said Jenny. “If we die today, I just want you to know that I love you!”

“We’re not going to die today!” he yelled. He sawed through one shoulder, but it was slow, too slow. He began work on the other.

Once he had cut the shoulder halfway through, Morgan put the knife in his mouth, biting down tight, and took the detonator out of his pocket. He put it in Jenny’s hand, which was tied above her head, and opened the safety cover. He took the knife out of his mouth and said, “I’m want you to press that button when I say now. Got it?”

“Got it!”

He had to get this timing just right, or everyone on the ground would die, and possibly a lot more as well.

“Twenty seconds to go, Morgan!” cried Shepard.

“Shepard, I’m going to need you to disable the jammer when I say so.”

Morgan pulled at the straps around her waist, just enough so that they would fit around her hips, and, with his one free hand, pulled down the vest.

“Shep, do it!” He gave the vest one last tug. It slid down Jenny’s legs, and slipped free of her feet, falling into empty space. He gave it two seconds of free fall, then said, “
Now
, Jenny!”

There was an uprush of scalding hot air that burned Morgan’s eyes. Squinting, he saw the orange glow of the flames of the incendiary device all around him.

Morgan breathed a sigh of relief. “Is it over?” Jenny asked. In response, he held her close, putting his free arm around her waist, and kissed her passionately. As he did, he heard the tramping of the policemen’s boots, coming up the stairs to get them down and arrest him.

C
HAPTER
53

 

“S
o let me get this straight—this guy took a civilian hostage, fired at our boys, caused a bomb to blow up in downtown Boston, and you still think he’s the good guy?”

Detective Rick Mooney looked at the suspect, this Daniel Morgan—not too tall, but strong as a bull, wide-shouldered and muscled—through the two-way mirror of the interrogation room, then stared at Detective Silvia Padilla, his partner of three years.

“I think there’s a chance he’s telling the truth,” said Padilla. “After all, he did manage to save his wife without anyone else getting hurt. She seemed totally convinced.”

“And still, she wouldn’t tell us anything useful about how she ended up there, with a suicide vest strapped on her,” said Mooney. “Something’s definitely rotten here.”

“Well, maybe he’ll talk, and shed some light on all this,” said Padilla, shrugging.

“All right, I’m going in,” said Mooney.

“Break a leg,” said Padilla.

“Thanks.” Mooney walked around and unlocked the door to the interrogation room. “Mr. Morgan, is that it?” he said as he entered. “Daniel Morgan?”

The man looked at him blankly, making no response.

“I get it,” said Mooney. “You’ve got nothing to say, right? You’re going to exercise your right to remain silent? Sure, that’s fine. You took a hostage, buddy. You shot at cops in the plain view of about three dozen witnesses. We don’t
need
you to talk in order to lock you up. But it can only help your case if we understand what you did.”

“I saved you all,” the man growled.

“Sure, sure,” said Mooney. “And your wife. It was very impressive, I’m told. And still. It seems you had a detonator the whole time. Say, how did you come by that exactly?”

Morgan didn’t respond to that, so he tried a different approach.

“Sure. All right. Listen. You got a lot of people’s attention out there. Now, we’re all very shaken by the stuff that’s been happening. All these terrorist attacks. Maybe you were trying to make a statement about that. Am I getting warmer?”

“You don’t know what the hell you’re talking about,” Morgan said.

“Why don’t you tell me then?”

At that moment, the door to the interrogation room opened and in walked a professional-looking woman, fortyish, slim, brown haired with striking blue eyes, escorted by a hulk of a man, tall, black, and muscular, with a military bearing. “What the hell is this?” asked Mooney.

“Sarah Peters,” she said. “FBI. I’m here to take Daniel Morgan into custody.”

“You gotta be kidding me,” said Mooney.

“Do I look like I’m kidding?” She didn’t. In fact, she didn’t seem like the type who’d ever kid about anything.

“You can’t just cut me out of this investigation.”

“I already did,” said Peters. “This is no longer in your jurisdiction. This case and all the details pertaining to it are now classified. I’ll need his personal effects, if you please.”

“Listen, that’s not how things work,” Mooney said. “We don’t just turn over suspects to the FBI. We got a liaison with you feds. We do things through him.”

“You may,” she said. “I don’t care who he is and what authority he’s got. I’m leaving here with that prisoner, and I’m doing it now.”

Mooney sneered at her. “You’re not the type that hears no very often, are you?”

“Not from the likes of you, no. But call your liaison if you need him to spell it out for you. This goes over his head,” she said. “It’s frankly above his pay grade. And yours too. Now, are you going to comply, or do I have to get the commissioner down here?”

“Shit,” said Mooney, and he walked out of the interrogation room. “Hey, Padilla!” he called out. “Would you call up Foreman and find out what the hell’s going on?”

“You got it,” said Padilla.

“He’s just going to tell you what I’ve already explained,” said the woman.

“Well, I gotta check, don’t I? Can’t let you out of here with just your word on the matter.”

“Very well,” she said. “Check, and make it fast. He’s going to tell you to do as I say.”

“Looks like she’s right, Mooney,” Padilla called out from his desk. “Foreman said he doesn’t know what’s going on, but the order came from higher up. Prisoner’s supposed to be released into this fed’s custody.”

Mooney cursed silently. “Draw up the paperwork,” he told Padilla. Then he went to pick up the envelope containing the prisoner’s things and brought it back to the FBI agent. “I’m gonna find out what the hell this is all about.”

“I sincerely doubt that you will,” she said. “Come along, Mr. Morgan. We have a prisoner transport van waiting for you.”

C
HAPTER
54

 

M
organ was escorted wordlessly by Diana Bloch and Bishop, posing as FBI agents, out into the yellow pool of the streetlights, where an actual light brown prisoner transport van was parked, with Diesel sitting at the wheel waiting for them. A gust of wind blew stray snowflakes in his face as he was led to the back of the van. They’d taken his coat, but he wasn’t cold, just numb. Bishop led him up into the van and made a show of chaining his wrists and ankles down. Bloch sat across from him in the back, and Bishop closed the two of them in. The wall between the back and the front seats was metal, and there were no openings to the outside, so that left only the interior fluorescent light to illuminate the inside. As soon as they heard the muffled sound of Bishop closing the passenger door up front, Bloch tossed Morgan the keys. He silently undid his cuffs as the van started moving, and let them fall to the floor.

“Took you all long enough,” he said, chuckling.

“You’re lucky we got you out at all, you bastard,” said Bishop over some kind of PA system. “After that stunt you pulled, I wouldn’t be surprised if they shipped you off to Gitmo. That was a hell of a thing you did back there.”

Bloch, who had sported her usual unyielding scowl, broke out in a smile. “You could have done a lot worse.”

“What about Jenny?” Morgan asked her.

“At home, and no worse for wear despite the shock,” said Bloch. “I made some calls and put a heavy protective detail on your house. They won’t be hitting you there again. We still haven’t located your daughter. . . .”

“She’s safe,” said Morgan. “I took care of it.”

“Good. I’ll let Shepard know. He’s looking into any potential new leads from this attack. If you could come to headquarters in the late morning, we can go over . . .”

“If it’s all right,” said Morgan, clutching his left arm, which was aching and bruised from the ordeal, “I’m going to go home.”

“Oh,” said Bloch. “Of course. Take the time that you need.”

“You do what you can,” said Morgan. “I just want to get home and be with my family.”