Michael Walsh: Early Warning

“What the hell are you doing?” shouted Byrne. “I would have had him.”

“Not under these bullshit RoEs,” shouted Danny. “You want a face-to-face shot, I’ll give it to you. But you boys are going to have to get used to riding with the pro from Dover, and that means no barfing, even if it is your chopper.”

“Hold me down, Lannie,” shouted Byrne, elbowing his way forward to get the barrel of the Barrett into position. He had no intention of dying by falling out of a helicopter over the East River, but he also had to make his shots count. The first one would go through the engine block-at a relatively short distance the Barrett could blow right through it. It would be as if the boat had had a heart attack. The next round would go through the radio, if he could locate it quickly enough, and the third, once they had a positive ID on the scanner, would go through Mr. Kohanloo.

It would have been possible, in fact, for him to have hooked up the sight with the computer and wirelessly relayed the images he saw for immediate ID, but in the rush no one had thought of that. Byrne was still old school, and trusted his eyes a lot more than pixels. Still, it was a blunder, so he’d better make the shots count and hope nobody asked about it later.

Ferguson ’s skills were amazing. He keep the chopper low as they barreled down Second Avenue, darting in and out of the side streets in order to catch a glimpse of the river, and of the bogus Red Cross boat they were chasing, but without letting their man get the wind up.

Byrne knew just where he wanted to take him now: between the Manhattan and Brooklyn bridges. They’d let him come out from under the Williamsburg Bridge, dodge the old Navy Yard and then trap him between the bridges, where they could dispatch him.

“You’re sure you can put this crate under the bridges, no sweat?” yelled Byrne.

“Ask me something difficult,” smiled Ferguson.

Byrne thought for a moment. “Okay, where’s the best place to eat in Bayonne?”

Over his shoulder, Ferguson flipped him the bird. The truth was, Byrne didn’t know. His old partner, Vinnie Mancuso, would have known, but Vinnie was sunning himself down at Rehoboth, ogling the pretty Delaware girls in their bathing suits, and thinking about getting fat and happy in early retirement.

The chopper dove, and this time Byrne really did barf.

You could mark your passage by the bridges, thought Kohanloo, and here was the Williamsburg, which would be followed in quick succession by the two more famous structures, the Manhattan and the Brooklyn bridges. How pleasing it would be in Allah’s sight some day to see them all collapse into the river, never to be rebuilt, their destruction, like that of the rest of the city, to be celebrated for centuries in the tales of the people, in the lore of the ummah. Truth to tell, Kohanloo was tiring of all this Western decadence. It made him feel sinful and dirty; it meant accepting the world on their terms, with their disgusting food and their whorish women. When he got back to Iran, he would repent, whip himself bloody on the feast of Ashura, and make everything in readiness for the coming of the Twelfth Imam.

What a surprise they would get, no matter what happened to him. The fools may have been able to take down a handful of Brothers, but not unless Allah had cursed him and his work would they ever think to look for, much less find, the little parting gift he had left them, the thing that required the blinding of the cursed CTU computers for just long enough to bring it ashore and take it to the last place where they would ever think to look for it-in one of their beloved hospitals, where its low-level radioactivity would never be detected by routine flyover surveillance and where it would stay, asleep, like the Holy Imam himself in the well at Qom, until such time as the Day of Reckoning was decreed, and then it would come alive and go off in a roar and a rain of holy fire.

And to think it had been delivered to River House by this very craft, slipped into a van and deposited for safekeeping at the Jew hospital, Mt. Sinai, where they were so lax they openly allowed the Brothers to work as doctors, technicians, and orderlies. The Brotherhood of Man meant much to both cultures, but with a very different meaning of brotherhood for the Faithful, as the Chosen would soon find out. No matter what happened to him, whether he lived, Allah willing, or died a martyr, that in the end was why he had chosen to come. He had to see it, this miracle, this proof of the might and power of Allah and his divine wrath.

“Showtime, boss.”

Byrne moved into position. “Sit on my legs,” he said.

They had circled round and were coming back up from the south. Since the East River was not really a river but an estuary, buffeted by the Sound and the waters of New York Harbor, there really was no up or down in the traditional sense, just as the waters of the Hudson sometimes ran north when the tide was high, the salt water engaging with the fresh water coming down from Albany. New York City had always been a swirl of misdirection.

They were south of the Brooklyn Bridge, and high in the air when they saw the Red Cross boat emerge from beneath the Williamsburg. “Hang on, boys,” shouted Danny, and then the chopper dropped straight down, in a controlled dive that knocked the wind from Byrne’s lungs. Inside his coat, he could feel his father’s.38 slipping from the unbuttoned holster and start to slide. He made a mental note never to go up in a helicopter again, not if he could help it.

Down they plunged until, at what seemed like the last possible second, Danny leveled her off and then, still heading lower but this time at a proper diagonal, darted under the Brooklyn Bridge.

With his newfound piety, Arash Kohanloo decided he didn’t much care what happened. It would, however, be good to know whether his radio actually did work, whether there was as compatriot waiting for him in Red Hook. He took the receiver off the hook and cranked the ancient set-and he was, he had to admit, not terribly surprised when nothing at all happened. He was on a suicide mission after all.

He cursed himself for not having shaved his body, as the law prescribed, for not making the proper ablutions a holy warrior should make, but there was nothing to be done about it now. Perhaps he could ditch the craft on the Brooklyn shore and make a run for it. There were plenty of Brothers in Brooklyn, and not just along Atlantic Avenue anymore, but everywhere; since 9/11 the city’s population of Arabs and Muslims had increased and grown more visible, in quiet celebration of the achievements of Atta and his men, and also in the anticipation of the glory that was surely to come when the crescent flew over City Hall, as someday fly it must.

There was the Manhattan Bridge. He’d land there. He steered the boat sharply to port and made for the shore. He prayed to Allah, prayed for a sign that his decision was the right one.

“What the fuck? Where is he?” In the gloom beneath the great bridge, they had lost the boat. “Lannie, find me this fucker, now.”

Lannie was still hanging on to Byrne. “What do you want me to do, boss?”

“Track him on GPS, radio, whatever. He must be emitting some kind of signal. Just find the bastard.”

Lannie hesitated. “Okay, but I have to let go of you a little, boss.”

Byrne braced himself against one of the seats as best he could. “Make it quick, find the cocksucker and then let’s get him.”

Still trying to hold on to Byrne with one hand while operating the computer with the other, Lannie punched some keys. His eyes rotated as he tried to anticipate the charts, the signals, the points on the graphs, anything. There-

“I got him, boss. He’s making for the Brooklyn shore.”