Ben Shapiro - True Allegiance

Then he hung on for dear life as the subway station faded into the darkness.

Brett emerged at the Prospect Park station. He turned up the collar of his coat as he walked—the weather had chilled. His breath misted as he walked, rubbing his bloodied knuckles. It had been a long night.

He made a right at Parkside Avenue, then a left onto Flatbush Avenue, then a right onto Winthrop. Then he looked down at the address. He was here. Mohammed’s apartment was located in an old-fashioned brick building, water-stained, its stoop guarded by an iron fence. He tested the gate—it opened with a creak. The door to the building, however, was locked. He buzzed two apartment occupants before the third let him into the building just to get the buzzing to stop so late at night. He slipped inside the dim corridor.

Apartment 3A.

He had almost no chance of avoiding detection if Mohammed was listening, he knew—the complex just wasn’t big enough, heavily trafficked enough. Sure enough, a woman from 2B opened her door a crack to get a look at him. He glared at her, and he heard her shut the door and lock it. His hand felt in his pocket for a weapon he didn’t have. Instead, he clenched his fists and made his way up the stairs. He tried to quiet his steps, but the stairs were too old, too noisy for that. Mohammed would almost certainly hear him coming.

But the hallway remained totally silent, except for his footsteps. Click. Click. Click.

He felt sick to his stomach when he saw the door to 3A: it was already open a crack. The light shone from beneath it. He edged toward the door, placing his back against the wall. When he reached it, he nudged it open with his foot. It swung fully open without resistance.

There, on the couch, lay Mohammed. His throat had been cut. Blood pooled under his body, dripping onto the hardwood floor. His open mouth gasped for air that would never reach his lungs. Brett rushed to the body.

It was still warm.

Brett knew: the apartment wasn’t empty. The door would have been closed had the killer had time to leave. They wouldn’t want the body discovered too quickly—that would give away too much information. Brett quickly turned toward the bedroom—as he did, he saw a large, black-masked figure out of the corner of his eye. He didn’t see the blade of the knife. It cut into his arm deeply as he moved to block it, slicing it nearly to the bone. He gasped in pain, then kicked out with his boot, directing his strike at the knee of the intruder. The big man screamed as the knee cracked, fell to his other knee, pushed forward toward Brett, knife poised in the air, ready to come down.

Brett only spotted the second man now—but he wasn’t moving to help the burly assailant. He held a bag in his hand, and he was struggling to sprint for the doorway. Brett leapt to his feet, tried to tackle the man from behind… but all he got was the ski mask. He pulled it loose, had enough time to get a snapshot of the man’s face—in particular, an ugly burn scar near his ear.

Then the burly man’s knife was falling toward him again. Brett rolled out of the way; then, lying on his side, he kicked him full in the face. The man grunted as his head snapped back; he dropped the knife. He reached out and grabbed Brett by the throat, beginning to squeeze.

Brett rotated his body, stretching his neck out of the hold. Then he grabbed the left wrist with his left hand, holding it steady, then snapped his left elbow into the man’s face. He could feel facial bones smash against his arm. The burly man collapsed, breathing bloody bubbles through his mouth and nose. Brett pushed himself to his feet, stepped on the man’s wrist. Then he took off the man’s ski mask.

“Mahmoud,” Brett said. “Fancy meeting you here. Now”—he placed the knife against Mahmoud’s throat—“let’s chat, just you and me.”

A few minutes later, after subduing Mahmoud, Brett dialed Ellen. “Honey,” he said, “don’t come to New York… I can’t say for certain yet. Just don’t come to New York . Something bad is going down.”

BRETT HAD BEEN MISSING FOR more than twenty-four hours.

Nobody knew where he was. Meanwhile, she waited in her hotel for an audience with the president of the United States, who was said to be busy planning a major public address to announce his major new initiative. And so she stewed.

The call from Brett had sent her into a panic. If she headed to New York, she knew, she’d be headed into danger—Brett wouldn’t have called otherwise. But if she refused, she endangered any possible détente between Governor Davis and Prescott. Prescott didn’t take being blown off lightly, and he certainly wouldn’t take it lightly in the middle of the largest border crisis in decades. In the end, she decided that the summons of the president trumped the wishes of her husband. After all , she thought, a bit maliciously, if Brett can go halfway around the world for the bastard, I can go to New York .

But what she found in New York wasn’t the chaos she’d expected. Instead, the military had done a brilliant job of cleaning up the city. Businesses had opened up again. Traffic clogged the main arteries. The dredging of the Hudson had just about come to its conclusion, although the Coast Guard still patrolled the waters in heavy numbers. Military men and women seemed to throng throughout the city, occupying every coffee house, every restaurant. This , she thought, must have been what World War II felt like .

The effect was oddly calming. With armed men and women everywhere, she didn’t feel nervous—she felt reassured. No terrorist would be shooting up a restaurant anywhere near here. And she had to admit she felt safer in midtown Manhattan than she felt in El Paso, Texas.

Still, Brett was missing.

She’d tried his cell phone over and over. She hadn’t gotten an answer—it went straight to voice mail. That meant it was either dead, or he’d broken it. Either way, it put him out of reach. She didn’t feel too worried, not yet—she’d been through far longer without hearing from him, with him in far more violent places than New York City. But his absence did disquiet her. And his words rang in her ears: “ Don’t come to New York .”

Ellen was no detective. That had never been her specialty, never been her job. That’s why she called Bill Collier. Collier told her that they’d lost contact with Brett almost as soon as he hit New York; he’d been using his personal cell phone, and while the NSA had access to the metadata, the White House had cracked down hard on Brett. Any attempt to end-around the system would be met with severe repercussions.

Ellen, on the other hand, was Brett’s wife. And, Ellen thought, after the Dianna Kelly incident, any jealousy she evidenced would be seen as reasonable. Brett was a hot item again. Hot copy. She didn’t have much to go on in the way of gumshoe abilities, but that’s what journalists were for.

She picked up the phone and called Jack Blatch.

The thickly built, mussed-hair little man from the New York Daily News with the Coke-bottle glasses grinned at Ellen across the table. “Are you sure you don’t want a sandwich?” he asked, his face shiny with sweat. “The roast beef here is delicious.”

“I’m sure it is,” Ellen said.

“What brings you to New York again?”

“I’m here to see my husband.”

“I didn’t even know he was here.”

“Neither did I.”

Blatch whistled softly, a smile creeping across his face. “And now you, the good little wife, want me to bust him for you.”