James Patterson - Black Market

Monserrat's smile dimmed immediately. “Let's get down to business. I believe we can complete our transaction quickly. Look at what he's brought, Marcel. Rapidement! ”

A man in a dark suit stepped inside the room at Monserrat's command. He was perhaps sixty and had the pallid complexion, the weak eyesight, of someone who spent much of his life looking through microscopes and magnifying glasses. He bent low to examine the securities Colonel David Hudson had brought with him.

Hudson watched closely as he rubbed the individual trading bonds carefully, testing their texture between his thumb and forefinger. He smelled selected bonds, testing for fresh ink, for any unusually pungent odors, anything that would suggest recent printing. He worked extremely fast.

Nevertheless, each minute passed with excruciating slowness.

“For the most part, the bonds are authentic,” he finally said to Monserrat, looking up.

“Any problems at all?”

“I have a slight question about the Morgan Guaranty, perhaps about the smaller Lehman Brothers lot. I think there are possibly some counterfeit papers in those stacks. As you know, there are always some counterfeits,” he added. “Everything else is quite in order.”

François Monserrat nodded curtly. He seemed uneasy now. The terrorist picked up the plain black telephone on the table. He dialed a telephone company business office, gave a four-digit number, then spoke to someone who was clearly an overseas operator. Seconds later the terrorist was speaking directly to someone obviously known at a bank in Geneva.

“My account is Number four-eleven/FA. Make the agreed-upon deposit into the account…” A few minutes later Monserrat hung up.

Then the phone rang, and Colonel Hudson received a confirmation that the money had indeed been successfully transferred in Europe. More than two hundred million dollars had gone out of the Soviet accounts into special accounts opened by the Vets in London, Paris, Amsterdam, and Madrid. Vets 28, Thomas O'Neil, the Customs chief of Dublin International Airport, had come through once again. The Green Band plan was perfect.

“Colonel, I believe our business is concluded. You seem to have won each round. This time, anyway.” Monserrat executed a cold deferential bow.

As Colonel David Hudson stood up from the table, he felt that a terrible weight had finally been lifted. He was free of an obsession he'd carried with him for almost fifteen years.

At that precise moment, he was silently counting down to zero.

Green Band was almost at an end.

Almost, but not quite. Just one more twist, one final element of surprise.

Deception, at its best.

A game in which Hudson alone knew the rules. An amazing game called Green Band.

Less than forty seconds remained… Two pistols were drawn in the room…

Concentrate. David Hudson eased himself toward a controlled calmness.

Talk to them. Keep talking to Monserrat.

“I have one question before I leave. May I? May I ask one troubling question?”

Monserrat nodded. “What harm? You may ask anything. Then perhaps I have a question.”

Colonel Hudson watched Monserrat's eyes as he spoke. He saw nothing, no emotion there. No affect. The two of them were close in so many ways. Killing machines.

“How long have you been with the Russians? How long have you been one of their moles?”

“I was always with the Russians, Colonel. I am Russian. My parents were stationed in middle America. They were among the hundreds of agents who came here in the late 1940s. I was taught to assimilate myself-to be American. There are many others like me. Many others. They're all over the United States right now. Waiting, Colonel. We want to destroy this country financially, and in every other way.”

Fourteen seconds. Twelve seconds. Ten seconds. Colonel David Hudson kept counting in his head, kept talking in a monotone to François Monserrat. His heartbeat remained low. He was still in complete control.

“Harry Stemkowsky… Do you remember a man named Stemkowsky? A poor crippled sergeant? One of my men?”

“One of the casualties of war. Your war. Your war, Colonel, not ours. He wouldn't betray you under any circumstances.”

As he reached three in his countdown, Colonel David Hudson took two fast, unexpected steps to his left. Both Russian terrorists awkwardly swung up their pistols. They were too late.

Hudson tucked his chin down hard against his chest and dove headfirst through a glass window, crashing into the factory section of the building.

At that precise moment, the entire building shook with the first savage round from the M-60s, which completely pulverized the tenement's fourth floor.

Flash fires broke out simultaneously in three separate areas of the factory. Bright orange-and-crimson flames strained to reach the stained yellow ceiling. Huge panes of glass buckled, then burst from their casements and crashed to the cement below. Everywhere, the old struts and supports of the building were beginning to sag, warped by the rising heat, the hungry reaches of the licking flames.

M-16 rifles coughed and rattled everywhere.

The Vets attack force was under way.

David Hudson waited in a combat crouch behind heavy factory machines. The thick smoke from the fire was friend and enemy at the same time. The billowing smoke and flames made it impossible for Monserrat and his men to locate Hudson, but it also made him vulnerable, exposed to sudden attack from any side.

Colonel Hudson heard the sound he'd been waiting for. The whirring of the helicopter rotors was unmistakably loud and clear.

The Cobra had arrived on the rooftop exactly as they'd planned it. Everything was perfect, right to the final escape.

Colonel David Hudson allowed himself a trace of a smile. Just a trace.

“Get the fuck out of my way! Move it! Move it! Move, move, move! ”

A roaring, unbelievable firefight had erupted. Arch Carroll saw rows of flat rooftops shooting flames as he pushed and elbowed his way through the crowd gathered on Halsey Street. Ghouls, he thought. The worst kinds of ambulance chasers.

He winced. His left arm was numb, and something was wrong with his lower back; contact with the pavement sent jarring pains up his spine.

None of the neighborhood people-leather-jacketed teenagers, sullen young women, small grinning children-seemed to realize that this violent spectacle was real.

“Get back! Damn it, get back!” Carroll yelled hoarsely as he ran. “Get inside with those kids! Get back inside your houses.”

Expectant, wide-eyed faces were crowded into every available apartment window. Farther down Halsey Street, hundreds of neighborhood people filed out into the cold, rainy afternoon. They were staring toward the explosions, enthralled by the blazing fire, the sudden jolting volleys of M-16 rifle and pistol shots.

Carroll continued to run in his clumsy crouch, moving in closer to the gunshot-riddled building.

A police bullhorn suddenly boomed out. It thundered over the cacophony of gunblasts and piercing human shouts. “You there! You, running! Stop right there!”

Carroll ignored all the voices. He kept charging forward. His steps weaved as he struggled with pains that attacked his body. As he reached the fiery building he heard an even more familiar and terrifying sound. A Cobra was hovering over the factory roof. The same helicopter that had shot him down was back. Green Band was here.

Arch Carroll vaulted the building's stone steps. He took the stairs three at a time, and with each leap he thought he could hear the rattle of his own loose bones flying about in his body.

A heavyset man suddenly burst out of the open doorway directly in front of Carroll. The man looked Spanish or maybe Cuban. He was holding an 870 riot gun.