Timothy Zahn - The Green And The Gray

"Aleksander could have worked with him before the yacht left the city."

"Too risky," Caroline said. "I know Sylvia well enough to know she would have insisted on having a Persuader on board in case of last-minute changes."

"So there's a Persuader aboard," Nikolos conceded. "But as you've already pointed out, we have over a hundred men and women here. Why me?"

"Because of something you said to me back in the library," Caroline said. "Do you remember? You must understand that what I do, I do for the best. Even then it struck me as the kind of stylized phrasing we'd heard from the children at Vasilis and Iolanthe's homestead. The kind of formal phrasing Greens really seem to like."

"And what exactly did you conclude it meant?"

"I don't know if it means anything more than what it actually says," Caroline told him. "What's important is that it's the same phrase Cyril used when he spoke into my mind outside our apartment Friday morning, when he was ordering me to bring Melantha to him."

This time the silence stretched uncomfortably out into the night. Caroline stood beside the rail, listening to the stutter of the engines and the hissing of the yacht's wake, wondering uneasily if she'd gone too far. How dangerous to him was this secret he'd held for the last three-quarters of a century, and what lengths would he go to to protect it? Below her, the water of the Upper Bay churned and roiled with the boat's passage. A single heave, perhaps preceded by a thrust through her ribs from his trassk to make doubly sure...

"A very clever Human indeed," he murmured at last. "Fortunately, no one who matters would ever take your word against mine, let alone your word against mine and Sylvia's."

He straightened up. "Besides, by dawn tomorrow, it will be irrelevant," he added. "The Grays will be gone, and no one will care who or what I am. Enjoy the rest of the cruise, Caroline Human Whittier.

The rising sun will shine on a brighter day for us all." Turning his back on her, he headed across the gently rolling deck.

With a trembling sigh, Caroline returned her gaze to the towering buildings of Manhattan rising from the dark water ahead of her. No, she thought distantly, the rising sun wouldn't shine on happiness. It would shine on a very dark day indeed.

Unless someone did something. Unless she did something.

Getting a fresh grip on the railing, she gazed across the water at the lights of her home ahead, and tried desperately to think.

"We have a confirmation on that ten-count off the boat at Gowanus Bay," the soft voice came over the S.W.A.T. van radio. "Headed south in loose formation toward Fourth Avenue. Observers moving to shadow."

"Acknowledged," Messerling said, leaning over the radio operator's shoulder toward the microphone. "Make damn sure you stay out of sight. Any luck getting a reading on the number still aboard?"

"Nothing firm," the voice said. "They weren't there long enough for an IR analysis before they were on the move again and out of range of the more sensitive gear. But what we did get is consistent with the eighty to a hundred that Gavin's readings gave us."

Messerling glanced back over his shoulder at Powell and Cerreta, and Powell suppressed a grimace.

He'd been hoping that Fierenzo's estimate of their opponents' troop strength had been pessimistically high. Instead, if anything, it might have been a shade low. "Understood," the S.W.A.T. commander said, turning back to the mike. "What's their current heading?"

"Looks like they're making for Manhattan," the officer reported. "We got a short sound bite on the telescope mike just before they pulled away that indicated they were heading home."

"Acknowledged," Messerling said coolly. "We're ready for them."

"One other thing," the voice said. "We got a positive on Whittier on deck as they were offloading, and we've got an eighty percent confirmation that they had Galen in the wheelhouse."

Powell felt his jaw tighten. Of all the unpleasant situations he'd had to face in his career as a cop, hostage standoffs were the ones he hated the most. Especially standoffs where he actually knew one of the hostages.

"Acknowledged," Messerling said. "Stay sharp, and out of sight. And don't lose them."

He gestured, and the operator cut the connection. "Well, gentlemen," Messerling said, turning back again to Cerreta and Powell. "Let's go join the party."

"Here they come," Messerling murmured, his head lifted just high enough to put his binoculars over the low stone edging of the balcony he and the others were lying on.

Cautiously, feeling cold and awkward and more than a little scared, Powell arched his back and eased his own head up over the stone. Beyond the tree-lined esplanade to the south, he could see the lights of the Galen's Tenth puttering its way northward along the Hudson River, headed for the boat basin directly below them.

The boat basin. Powell lifted his head another inch, shifting his gaze downward over the balcony to look across the wide stone walkways and manicured grass and neatly trimmed trees of the World Financial Center Plaza to the dark water and gently bobbing floating docks. At any given time, he knew, there were at least a couple of yachts tied up there, as well as a tour boat or one of the city's fleet of water taxis. But at the moment the basin was empty, all other ships moved out at Messerling's orders.

The plaza itself looked just as empty. The normal daytime pedestrian traffic of financiers and clients was long gone, the evening's collection of youthful cyclists and skateboarders had retired to homework or TV, and the throngs of commuters waiting for ferries to Hoboken or Fulton or Port Imperial were already home.

But here, unlike the boat basin itself, the emptiness was an illusion. Crouching behind the hedges or lying prone behind low walls or stretched out behind balcony walls like the one he and Messerling were on were over forty armed and armored S.W.A.T. cops. Another twenty skulked around the buildings and park areas to the north and south, backup forces for a three-sided box that would theoretically trap the incoming gang soldiers against the Hudson with no way to escape.

Theoretically.

Turning his head, Powell looked to his right at the majestic glass walls and arched roof of the Winter Palace nestled between the taller but far less spectacular Buildings Two and Three of the World Financial Center. The Winter Palace was the WFC's showpiece, a glittering multilevel expanse of marble and brass and sixteen live palm trees that served as a haven of calm and stability amid the more frantic chasing after money that took place in the buildings around it all day.

It was also the site of public performances and exhibits, as well as a myriad of private functions for the city's wealthy and powerful throughout the year, and the owners had not been at all happy at the possibility of a full-bore firefight taking place on its doorstep. Messerling's insistence that this was the only way had fallen on deaf ears, as had his assurances that even rabid gang fighters were surely rational enough to surrender once they saw the firepower arrayed against them. It was only when the Police Commissioner himself had intervened that they'd finally been able to get some grudging cooperation. If any of those impressive windows got shot out, Powell mused, the gang would be the least of their worries.

"All units, stand ready," Messerling murmured into his helmet mike.

Powell shifted his attention back to the river. The yacht had reached the entrance to the harbor and was making its way inside, moving with the ease and confidence of a pilot who'd performed this maneuver dozens of times and knew exactly what he was doing. "Anyone have a view of the civilians?" he asked. "Spotters?"