Robert Tanenbaum - Counterplay

One of the terrorists, who’d moved up the aisle to shoot Marlene, suddenly found himself on the receiving end of a left hook thrown by Karp, who’d appeared to be groggily out of action and leaning against the pew when the shooting started. The gunman went down hard, his head striking the floor with a sickening thud, like a watermelon dropped on a sidewalk. Karp jumped on the man and hammered him in the face with two more punches.

“Mr. Karp, watch out!” Ned yelled behind him.

Karp looked up and saw another terrorist on the other end of the pew aiming for him. He rolled off to the side just as the gun cracked, the bullet finding its mark in the man he’d been punching. He landed next to the handgun that had flown out of the hand of the gunman he’d knocked out. He tossed it to Ned, who put two bullets in the terrorist at the end of the pew, then turned and killed a man who was charging from the back of the cathedral.

Meanwhile, up on the dais, Marlene closed the distance to Azzam, who fumbled for her pistol only to have it kicked out of her hand by the crazy nun. “Blow them up,” Azzam screamed to her man at the electronic panel that was wired to the bombs. He did as ordered but nothing happened. A moment later, he was dead with a hole the size of an orange through his chest from Chalk’s.50 caliber.

“I know you,” Azzam said to Marlene as she pulled her knife. “You were at the beach.”

“Damn straight, sister,” Marlene said. “And we have a little unfinished business.”

Azzam feinted with her knife and kicked for Marlene’s leg. But her target had moved and instead landed a kick of her own to the terrorist’s jaw, spinning her around.

Marlene moved in with another kick, but had taken her opponent too lightly and felt the burning as Azzam’s knife cut a small gash in her thigh.

Seeing her opportunity, Azzam leaped for Marlene. But again Marlene was fast and ducked beneath the flashing blade and delivered an upper cut that staggered her back toward the Pope. At the same time, a large-caliber bullet whizzed by her head and slammed into the pipe organ.

Azzam realized that her moment of ultimate glory had passed. The bombs had not gone off, the cathedral was still standing, and she was a moment away from her own death without having accomplished anything that would be remembered. I can still kill the Pope, she thought and whirled to cross the few steps to the pontiff and sink her blade into his heart.

Instead, in the last moment of her life, Azzam was surprised to see an ancient weapon, half-battle ax, half spear whizzing toward her. She didn’t feel the halberd blade pass through her neck, there was no time for pain as her head fell from her shoulders and rolled down the stairs.

Marlene looked up in surprise at Alejandro, who stood looking at the headless body of Samira Azzam with the bloody halberd still in his hands. “Take that, you fucking bitch,” he said. “You fucked around in the wrong city this time.”

Suddenly realizing who was sitting in the chair behind him, Alejandro grimaced at Marlene and turned. “Sorry, Holy Father,” he said. “I got a little carried away.”

The Pope, looking a little pale, waved off the apology. “All things considered,” he said, “I think you deserve a little grace. One Hail Mary, and all’s forgiven.”

Two sets of ears had been listening from the storm sewer beneath the street at Fiftieth and Fifth when Giancarlo explained to the FBI agent the message his sister had sent from inside the cathedral.

What else did she say?

It didn’t make a lot of sense. She just kept signing the same thing. “Lucy hostage. Annoy Satan. Baker. Field.” That’s it, but I bet it’s a clue on where she was being taken.

From his vantage point on the ladder, David Grale could see the feet of those speaking but not much else. But he could hear fine. He motioned with his hand to his accomplice below him on the ladder and they both climbed down.

Grale was troubled, indecisive. An hour earlier, he and the man with him had been preparing to check out a rumor of unusual activity by foreign strangers on the north end of the island near Columbia University’s Baker Field when the news arrived that terrorists were holding the Pope and two thousand others hostage in St. Patrick’s.

It was Dirty Warren who’d brought the tidings. Kane… fucker…is leading them with that woman…shit, bitch, he’d stuttered after making his way to Grale’s lair among the Mole People beneath Grand Central Station. Karp and Lucy…aaahhh piss…are in there…. Marlene, Tran, and someone else-tall, patch over his eye-is too, son of a whore. But they’re in disguise so they must have known…holy crap, holy crap…something was up.

Grale and his partner had immediately grabbed their weapons and the long, loose cloaks they favored to keep out the moisture of life underground and departed for the cathedral. Grale cursed himself as they moved through the labyrinth of sewer tunnels for allowing himself to be lulled to sleep by the news that Kane had died in Aspen. He’d never really believed it…or, more accurately, he’d never felt that Kane was gone. Not in his soul, which told him that the man’s evil presence was still alive and well…and had returned to New York City.

Grale arrived at the cathedral-actually almost directly below where law enforcement officials had established their headquarters-as twilight fell over the city. He chafed at the idea, but he was going to have to wait until dark to try to slip with the other man past the police and enter the cathedral through a secret door and passage that he’d used a year before to surprise the child killer priest Hans Lichner.

He’d felt some relief when Lucy Karp was brought out of the cathedral and apparently unharmed though unconscious. But his instincts told him something was wrong. Something about what the agent who brought her out said, or maybe it was just a gut feeling again. But his concerns about Lucy and her rescuer he put aside when Giancarlo raced up with his information.

“I think Giancarlo’s right,” Grale said. “I think Lucy’s still a hostage…and now maybe Clay Fulton, too, if he’s not dead.”

“Which means there’s something wrong with that guy who brought her out…and he’s a federal agent,” said his partner. “But the rest is still a riddle to me. Annoy Satan? Baker? Field?…And do we try to find Lucy and Fulton before something bad happens to them, or do we stick with the plan?”

John Jojola was suddenly filled with regret. His sister-not in blood, but in soul-Marlene Ciampi was in the cathedral, which was rigged to blow up and in the control of al Qaeda. If it blew up, he would have missed his chance to explain to her the subterfuge he’d planned after the terrorist attack in Taos.

He thought back to the night when he’d been listening on the other side of the courtyard wall to Tran and Marlene talking. His had been the first coyote howl to join the sounds of the ceremony his people were performing-not for his sham funeral, but to cleanse the land of evil spirits.

When Marlene expressed her grief for him, he’d almost had a change of heart and let her in on the plan. But like Tran had told her, Kane had eyes and ears all over Taos County, as well as spies in the various police agencies. It wasn’t that he didn’t trust her, but he needed her grief and reactions to his “death” to be real, so that anyone watching would “know” that he was indeed dead.

He’d come up with the plan after the last of the would-be assassins had died with the fear on his face still from Lucy’s curse. Even then, it wasn’t so much to fool Marlene so she could fool Kane, but so that Jojola could fly beneath Kane’s radar. The psychopath wanted him dead, so he’d be dead and thus no longer a threat. They’d considered having Ned “die” too, but somebody had to have killed the last of the terrorists, and he was the likely choice. Besides, Ned had been reluctant to abandon his post as Lucy’s bodyguard.