Witness to Death (42 page)

Maybe if the cops heard
bomb,
they’d hurry the hell up.

Christine shook her head. Callahan didn’t have time to say anything else. Christine got into a crouch and swept Callahan’s legs out from under him with a kick. He want down on his back. His ribs screamed. Christine straddled him.

Chrstine started to pummel him. A right, then a left, then a right, each connecting with his face. He tried to get his hands up, but couldn’t. The cops were still yelling. Why didn’t they just shoot her?

“Stop it!” one of the cops yelled. “Stop fighting or I’ll blow your brains out.”

Do it,
Callahan thought.

She continued hitting him. Callahan felt the world starting to cave in around him. The edges of his vision went black. His temples pounded. Finally getting his hands up, he was able to knock away two of her punches and then it stopped.

Behind them, police car lights flashed, a signal for everyone else to rubber neck. People honked. A few pedestrians on the sidewalk stopped to watch and record the movement on cell phones. If the bomb went off now, no one would be able to get out of the way. People in the parking lot standing around watching. Many of them were on their cell phones too.

Laughing.

Smiling.

Callahan forced his eyes to Christine and saw her reaching behind her back. In an instant, she pulled a knife from her waistband. It glinted against the sunlight as she raised it above her head, blade aimed directly at him. He saw her muscles tense and the knife arced downward.

There were two loud pops, and he felt Christine’s weight lifted off of him. She jerked backwards and landed on her back.

People started to scream and run. A few stood where they were, not putting the camera phones down. Callahan rolled to his stomach and looked at Christine. There were two holes in the center of her torso. She was wearing a Kevlar vest. She groaned, and tried to sit up, but went back down again.

Callahan got to his feet and looked for John.

Two blocks away, the SUV had parked in a parking lot near the
Intrepid.
The hood faced the water and the aircraft carrier. The driver’s side door to the SUV opened and John got out. He did it slowly, peering around as if to see what the hell the hubbub was. Probably wondering if he was about to get caught.

One of the cops stepped forward, reaching to his belt for his handcuffs.

Callahan broke into a full on run. His legs were throbbing, his ribs creaked but it didn’t matter. Ahead of him, the crowd in the parking lot watched him come toward them, their faces turning from laughter to fear in an instant. They didn’t know who he was. And they didn’t know the real threat was behind them.

As he ran, Callahan expected a gunshot, something to go off, someone to come after him, but it didn’t happen. He glanced over his shoulder and saw Christine standing over the crumpled bodies of the cops. She was hunched over, hugging her ribs. An instant later she straightened and then took off as well, disappearing among the panicking crowd.

Facing forward again, he locked eyes with the bomber. John looked terrified. He was just standing there, leaning against the truck.

Another ten seconds,
he thought.
I’ll be there in ten, John. Just hold on.

The crowd didn’t move, and one guy slammed his shoulder into Callahan. He bounced into another guy, but—despite the searing pain—didn’t go down. The second guy grabbed him by the shoulders, but Callahan twisted out of his grip and kept running. A woman screamed for the police.

Good Samaratins in New York.

Traffic was stopped in both directions. Every move Callahan made raised the possibility of even higher casualties.

Callahan sprinted. He hit the corner and stopped. John turned toward the water for an instant, as if looking for something, and then back to Callahan. Except for red cheeks, his face was pale. He frowned and his eyes were wide and watery. Callahan could see the timer counting down.

At that moment, a woman in a yellow ski jacket realized what was happening and started to scream. A man with an umbrella turned in their direction. He yelled for the police.

Callahan was three steps away from John.

He stopped running and looked at the vest. There was what looked to be rectangular boxes lined around his stomach. Inside the boxes appeared to be gray colored clay. C4. It wasn’t C4, however. When Callahan touched it, it didn’t feel like modeling clay. More like a hard plastic. Callahan didn’t know what it was. Something new. They’d have to go to someone like Ameritech to get it. Wires protruded from the explosive, leading up to the digital timer on his chest.

Three minutes to go.

“There’s a pressure switch, right?” Callahan asked.

“That’s what they told me,” John said. “Something like that.”

Callahan leaned in closer looking at the wires. If he pulled one, would the timer stop? It might, but what about the pressure switch? It wasn’t worth the risk. One wrong move and the bomb would explode. Callahan tried to clear his mind.

“When they put the vest on you, did you see the inside?”

John nodded.

“Were there wires on the inside too?”

“I’m sorry Frank. I just didn’t want her to die. If someone was going to do it . . . she’s been through so much. I wanted her to see that I was brave too. That I was strong.”

“Were there wires on the inside?”

John closed his eyes for a second. When they opened, he said, “Yes, they went up to the pressure switch.”

Callahan looked out toward the water. There was at least one hundred feet of room between the
Intrepid
and anything neighboring it. Behind him people were rushing around shouting, screaming. He heard the word “Police” over and over again.

No one approached them.

“We’ll take it off and throw it in the river. The river should muffle the blast. No one will get hurt.”

Callahan leaned in and reached for the zipper of the vest. John grabbed his hand, stopping him.

“What if we don’t move it quick enough?”

“We have to try. What else can we do?”

But John wasn’t listening anymore. He was looking over Callahan’s shoulder. His face had gone from wide eyes and open mouth to stiff. His lips were closed. His breathing regulated.

“You sure the river will muffle the blast?”

Callahan thought for a moment. The vest was weighted. It would sink.

“Yeah. Now let’s get it off you.”

The timer ticked to under a minute. Fifty five seconds.

John looked at Callahan and said, “Tell her I loved her.”

Callahan whirled to try and grab John by the shoulder, but he was already out of reach. Callahan looked to where John was running and saw what had caught John’s eye. Three blocks away, between the waves of people, he could see Tony Verderese was pulling Michelle from the backseat.

And from the position of his body, it looked like he had a gun in her back.

The ground was lined with bricks barely swept of snow. In the distance, John could see one of the ferries that led to Ellis Island pulling out. Normally there were vendors lined along the walk, but in the cold, the area was empty.

John could see a group of people—two men and a woman—leaning against the fence near the Hudson River. It struck him that this was near where it started.

Along the Hudson.

If he’d just gone out and gotten wasted like a normal guy, none of this would have happened.

Or, at the very least, it wouldn’t have happened to him.

John pumped his arms as he ran.

The timer on his chest beeped.

He could see Hannah, but not the image that haunted his dreams. It was Hannah laughing by the corner of the pool, jumping up and down. Her laugh was musical, an uncontrolled giggle that had a tempo. He hadn’t thought of it in years, but his mom always talked about it. That’s what she remembered about Hannah.

Her laugh.

John was closing ground now. Michelle’s was screaming. Verderese’s mouth was moving too, but John couldn’t hear the sound. The way his eyes widened, John thought, it was as if Tony just realized what was about to happen.

He could see Ashley wearing a black dress. It was when they went on vacation to Boston. They decided to go out for a fancy dinner. John wore a charcoal colored suit. The only suit he owned. When they got to the restaurant, they were told they needed to wait. They stood at the bar. Ashley got an apple martini. And she spilled it on John’s white shirt. He sat through the entire dinner with a wet green stain on the shirt. But on their way out, Ashley wrapped her arms around him in front of the stain. She covered him up.

John was less than a block away now. Tony had pushed Michelle away from him, and John could see the gun. Tony raised it at John.

John saw his classroom. Saw his kids raising their hands. Asking questions. Figuring out why it was okay for Johnny to die in
The Outsiders.
Why he had to die. He saw Shanene cry when Ponyboy read Johnny’s note.

It wasn’t far now. Two steps. Tony was still yelling.

John could hear the water slapping at the walls. Calling to him. He didn’t feel anything in his gut now. He could only feel the impact of his feet on the ground. The wind pulling at his hair like Michelle’s hands.

Michelle was on her knees, out of the way.

Tony may have been pulling the trigger.

But it was too later.

John dove forward and hit Tony in the stomach with his shoulder. As his face pressed into the flesh of Tony’s neck, he smelled thick cologne trying to mask the stale smell of sweat.

He felt momentum take hold of him, as Tony lost his balance, feet lifting off the ground.

Michelle screamed. He hoped it was Michelle. Maybe it was someone else.

Both men tumbled backwards and over the rail. John saw the water rushing at him.

He heard the timer beep.

Goodbye Michelle.

The water hit his face, cold and sharp, like the knife Christine had jammed in his shoulder. He held tight to Tony.

The timer beeped again.

The world went white.

The world went silent.