Michael Walsh - Early Warning

“Just what I was looking for.”

Somewhere in the back of her mind, the voice sounded familiar. One of the things that made her a good reporter was her ear. She had an ear for music and an ear for voices, and she rarely had to think twice before being able to attach a name not just to a face, which was easy, but to a voice, which was much harder.

This voice she knew.

No time to think about it now. The cell phone disappeared from her grip. Shit. There went her last hope. The bastard had come back for it, and now he was going to kill her.

“I was wondering how long it would take me to find you. Brave girl. Now, where is he?”

He had not taken the baggie off her head, and he was behind her. But he wasn’t fondling her or anything like that, so she had to assume he was one of the good guys. Still, he didn’t sound like a cop-

Hang on. Didn’t sound-sound-Say, she knew that voice…

“What was his name?” The voice was sterner now. Somewhere a clock was ticking. No time for games. She’d find out who it was later.

“He didn’t say.”

“Sure about that?”

Something about this guy’s voice said not to fuck with him. Think-there. “No, wait, he did say.”

“Thought so. You weren’t lying to me, were you?”

“No, why would I-”

“I can tell when you lie. I can tell when anybody lies. So be straight with me, collect yourself, and everybody will be happy.”

“Yeah.”

“That’s yes, sir.”

“Yes, sir.” No point in arguing.

“What did he say his name was? Some Arabic name?”

“No, American.”

“Go.”

“Raymond. Raymond something.”

“D.B. Do better.”

“Gimme a sec. Something German-sounding…wait…it’s coming.”

“So’s the Rapture. Hurry.”

Her mind raced again. It was doing a lot of that lately. It was on the tip of her tongue…news business…anchors…She had it!

“Cronkite, like Walter, I think. How could I forget something like that?”

“I believe you,” her rescuer said. So he wasn’t going to kill her; he wasn’t another sick fuck psycho. He was a kind of guardian angel.

“So? You’re going to get me out of here now, right?”

No answer. She could free herself after a while, but it sure would be easier with a little help.

“Right?”

“Listen, you cocksucker,” the man was saying intro the phone. “I’m coming for you. O my Brother, this will be the last dawn you will ever see.” Except that she couldn’t understand a word: to her, it all sounded like a variation of haLA-haLA-haLA-haLA. She really had to start studying languages, especially those funny foreign ones they spoke in the Middle East. “Because I am sending you to hell.” That part at least was in English.

She stayed silent and listened in case he spoke again…but could hear nothing. Either he was still here, or he was gone.

“Hello?”

No response.

“Mister?”

Ditto.

Fifteen minutes later, covered with dirt, Principessa Stanley tore the baggie off her head and took a deep breath. The back end of the Metropolitan Museum of Art had never looked so good to her. In vain, though, she looked around for the man who had saved her, the man whose voice she dimly recognized, and would now devote the rest of her life to discovering his identity. What a story that would be.

She looked in a 360-degree circle, then ran out onto Fifth Avenue.

But he, whoever he was, was gone.

The Central Park Reservoir

The killing had begun again that morning. Raymond had never felt so liberated, so alive. Being a martyr was a wonderful thing.

Up to now, he had never understood the principle, of life-in-death and death-in-life. He had never understood the relationship between Eros and Thanatos, which he’d read about in a book once and never quite got. The yin and yang thing he’d thought he understood, especially if it came with those sex diagrams attached, but it was one thing to understand something intellectually and quite another to feel something viscerally.

But this was totally different. This was raw, exciting. This was what freedom felt like. Now he understood what those crazy suicide bombers felt like when they pulled the pin on their own grenades, secure in the knowledge that they were going to take bunch of the infidels with them, send them straight to hell, while they themselves would soon see paradise. He wasn’t quite sure if he believed all the blather about the seventy-two virgins, or raisins, or even if there was anything on the other side, but what the hell did it matter, because he was here, he was now and-

Blam! Got the bitch with one shot.

Blam! Another one.

Blam! Another one.

He could shoot them from the bushes. He liked the bushes. This was a nice park, much nicer than any he’d seen, even nicer than Golden Gate Park, where the Brothers had taken him once on an outing, although it didn’t have the same sweet smell of the eucalyptus trees, or the delicious salty taste of the fog in the late afternoons.

As usual, the chicken passersby started running in all directions, squawking. It was just as the Brother had said: no one would fight back against him. He was not only invincible, he was invulnerable. He was free to kill as he liked. He not only like God, he was God.

Devlin had already punched the name into the CSS database and gotten his readout: nothing. Raymond Crankeit or Kronkite or Krankheit or however you wanted to spell it, nothing. His worst nightmare: a punk with a rifle, a chip on his shoulder, and a limp noodle.

His secure PDA buzzed: MARTIN FERGUSON read the display.

“Eddie Bartlett,” as he’d been known on the last operation. Danny Impellatieri, his man main, his old buddy from Blackwater, now Xe, the country’s foremost PMC, or Private Military Company. There are dozens of them, and some very good ones, like Triple Canopy, but despite all the bad publicity Danny continued to work with and recruit from Xe-mostly ex-elite forces, like Danny, who knew what to do with a piece of equipment or a lethal weapon, and who also knew how to count money and keep their mouths shut.

Even though they’d never met, and operated together under strict rules, including a rotating series of aliases that, for laughs, were generated by random run-throughs of the movie database imdb.com, they trusted each other with their lives.

LOCATION?

STEWART. NEED CHOPPER

MILITARY? XE?

NG. CITY SEALED. OFFICIAL CHANNELS OUT.

ALL BUT ONE.

EXPLAIN

NYPD

NO CONTACTS

NO WORRIES.

WHAT KIND OF RIDE?

Danny had been one of the Army’s top helicopter pilots with the legendary 60th Special Operations Aviation Regiment (Airborne), 2nd Battalion, at Fort Campbell, Kentucky, known in the biz as the Night Stalkers. Danny, he knew, favored the MH-60/DAP (Direct Action Penetrator) Black Hawks, but the NYPD choppers were damn near as good.

STAND BY AND BE READY TO HOP

ROGER THAT.

He didn’t care what Danny needed the chopper for; he owed him. His next message was to Byrne:

HAVE POLICE CHOPPER STANDING BY ON MY ORDERS, WITH BARRETT. ANGEL

He had to make sure Kohanloo did not get off the island, and a chopper, which could sweep from one side of Manhattan to another in a couple of minutes, was the ideal way to ensure that. With everything closed, there was only one way off Melville’s Isle of the Manhattoes, and that was the way the original Dutchmen had come: by sea. Whatever other reason Danny might have for wanting a hawk, he was going to make damn sure Kohanloo stayed put, or died.

Kohanloo, if he was as smart as Devlin thought he was, would have had a boat ready, on a jetty, anything, most likely on the East River-the Hudson was too wide, he’d be a sitting duck, ripe for target practice-and would try to slip out under the cover of darkness.