Brilliance (16 page)

Cooper slammed the door and began to push through the crowd. 1:57.

The ceremony won’t start on time. These things never do. And John Smith likes theater. He’ll wait until every camera is watching.

But then he
will
blow it. Unless you stop him.

He ran, trying to move between the bodies that mobbed the street. Cooper hated crowds, felt assaulted by them. All those intentions crossing and crisscrossing, it was like trying to listen to a thousand conversations at once. But where his mind would turn the noise of a thousand conversations into gray noise he could ignore, he couldn’t tune out body language and physical cues. They came at him all at once and from every direction. All he could do was try to focus, to put his attention on the woman right in front of him and the angle of her shoulder that meant she was about to shift her bag. To the man about to speak to his friend. To the little girl who looked a lot like Kate—
no, push that away, no time now to think about Kate
—reaching up for her mother’s hand.

When he couldn’t find a hole, he made one, barreling through with one elbow up like the prow of a ship. Yells rose behind him, and curses. Someone shoved at his shoulder.

“Cooper.” Quinn’s voice in his ear. “Peters is trying to reach the officer in charge on the scene, but it’s madness right now.”

“No kidding.” He surged past a cluster of schoolgirls. “What about my bomb squad?”

“Scrambling now. ETA fifteen minutes.”

Fifteen minutes. Damn, damn, damn. There was a bank on the corner, and he raced through the revolving door. The lobby was sweet relief. Velvet ropes, bland colors, stale air, a manageable number of people. He sprinted across. A manager rose from his desk. The security guard yelled something. Cooper ignored it all, focused on making it to the opposite door.

And then he was on the corner of Wall and Broad, where history was about to be made, and the whole world was noise and howling chaos.

People were packed shoulder to shoulder. He winced at the tangled skein of vectors in front of him, at the collective motion of the crowd, the herd, something he could never read or understand, his talents all aimed at the individual, the person, the pattern.

Focus. There’s no time.

To the south was the magnificent façade that had once belonged to the NYSE, with its six massive columns supporting an intricate sculpture above. Beneath was a stage and podium, dignitaries milling nearby, security orbiting them like planets around a star.

He started pushing south, gently where he could, roughly where he couldn’t. Somehow he had to get to the Broad Street entrance. In a door off the lobby he would find a janitor’s hallway and a freight elevator that would take him to the basement, where he could access the wiring tunnels where Dusty Evans had placed his bombs.

Sure, Coop. Just get through the crowd, past the security, through the lobby, down to the basement, into the tunnels, and then all you have to do is figure out how to disarm five separate bombs placed at strategic structural locations.

1:59.

Body odor and thrown elbows, hairspray and curses. He pushed forward one agonizing step at a time. Everyone seemed to be yelling, even when their mouths were closed. A wave of frustration washed over him, and he fought the urge to pull his gun, fire into the air. This was pointless. It would take too long to get to the front, and even if he made it, security would be too tight. He needed a better plan. Cooper pushed over to a newspaper dispenser—quick flash of Bryan Vasquez disintegrating—and climbed up on top of it.

The Broad Street entrance was too tight. But maybe back on Wall Street? There must be side entrances. They’d be guarded too, but security would be lighter, and if his rank didn’t get him in fast enough, then he’d find another way. He scanned the crowd, planning his move, eyes falling across businesspeople in business suits, parents with cameras and weary expressions, locals here for the free theater, a homeless man shaking a Dunkin’ Donuts cup, a group of protesters holding signs, a very, very pretty girl heading west—

Holy shit.

He leaped off the dispenser, tumbling into a burly dude holding a giant soda. Man and drink flew in opposite directions. Cooper kept the inertia going, went through the hole the falling man had made, heading away from the ceremony. “Bobby, I’ve got our bomber in sight, the woman in the photograph. She’s on Wall Street heading west.”

“Roger. I’ll alert the police—”

“Negative. Say again, negative. If she spots someone coming after her, she’ll blow the bombs.”

“Cooper—”

“
Negative.
” He pushed forward, forcing himself not to sprint. It was just like John Smith to have her on scene, gauging the exact moment to trigger the bomb. Timing it for maximum damage.

But that planning was going to work against Smith this time. Bombs Cooper knew nothing about, but a bomb
er
he could handle.

He shoved through the crowd, throwing elbows and stomping on feet. He found her, lost her, found her again. The farther he went from the podium, the more things opened up, until he was able to read individual body language again. He went as fast as he dared, and yet though she was walking at a calm pace, she seemed to be getting farther ahead of him with every step. Somehow people seemed to be always moving out of her way. Two singing drunks in soccer jerseys swayed into a crowd of people, clearing a hole just in front of her. A father hoisted his son onto his shoulders, and she slid behind them. Two cops pushed through the crowd, opening a lane she followed for half the length of a building. It was like watching Barry Adams strut across a football field untouched by an entire defensive line. As if she was looking at things not as they were, but as they would be when she reached them.

She’s an abnorm.

No surprise, really; most of Smith’s top operatives would be. But it explained how she’d beaten them so handily in DC. If she had a gift for patterning anything like Barry Adams’s, then the whole world would be moving vectors to her. Walking through the security perimeter would simple. She’d probably even pegged Cooper as the leader. Blowing the bomb while standing ten feet from him was her way of giving the bird.

That made his belly burn, and he quickened his pace. He was twenty yards behind her and moving fast. She hadn’t looked back, not once. Concentrating on the terrain in front of her. Which suggested that she was near her goal. He looked ahead and saw it. A side entrance to the Exchange.

Two cops stood nearby, their postures relaxed. She walked past them, overshot the entrance by a few steps, and then paused to look at her watch. One of the cops hitched up his belt and said something that made the other laugh, and she pivoted lightly and slid around behind them. Cooper couldn’t believe it. If she’d raised one slender arm she could have tapped the cops on the shoulder, and yet they were completely unaware of her. It was the strangest thing, a virtuoso display of ability that practically rendered her invisible, and it would have been gorgeous to watch—except that she pushed open the door of the Exchange and slipped inside.

“Shit. She made it into the building. I’m going after her.”

“Do you want—”

“Hold on.” Cooper walked toward the police. The girl had somehow been able to slip right through their blind spot, but he didn’t know how to do that.
Sorry, fellas.
“Excuse me, Officer, do you know where the stage is?”

“Round the corner, buddy.” The cop pointed. “Follow the—”

Cooper bobbed down and hammered a left hook into the man’s exposed kidney, placing it in the fabric portion of the bulletproof vest. The cop gasped and staggered. As he did, Cooper grabbed the front of his shirt and shoved him at his partner as hard as he could. The two collided and went down in a tangle. Cooper followed them, driving his knee into the solar plexus of the second cop, then scrambled to his feet and through the door.

A marble entrance, broad and bright. Sunlight poured in the windows. People milled about, holding champagne glasses and chatting. A string quartet played in the corner, the notes bouncing off marble and glass. Stepping out of the crowd was like surfacing for air. He glanced around, saw the woman vanish around a corner to the right, and hurried after her. Figure thirty seconds, tops, before the cops had caught their breath, radioed in, and come after him.

Ten steps took him to the corner. He rounded it, blood singing in his veins. The woman stood halfway down the corridor, in front of a painted metal door. In one hand she held a ring of keys. In the other, a cell phone.

No.

Cooper abandoned all attempts at subtlety for a headlong sprint. Time drew out like a blade. His eyes caught details: the smell of fresh paint, the buzz of the lights. At the sound of his footfalls, the woman looked up. Her eyes, already huge with mascara, widened further. She dropped the keys but raised the phone. Cooper pushed as hard as he could. Everything came down to his hurtling progress, that against-the-wall feeling that he simply could not go any faster, his mind replaying yesterday and the explosion in DC, the slow-motion spill of fire, the way Bryan Vasquez had melted into a red mist; she was doing it again, only this time it wasn’t one man she was executing, it was hundreds of people on national television, and the phone had reached her face and her eyes locked on him and her lips parted to speak just as Cooper’s arm lashed out in a forehand slap that knocked the cell phone from her fingers. The device hit the floor and broke on the bounce, plastic pieces skittering across the marble.

She said, “Wait, you don’t—” and then his fist slammed into her belly and doubled her over. He didn’t like punching women, but damned if he was going to take a chance with this one.

“I got her,” he said. “Target in custody.” Bobby Quinn hooted in the earpiece.

A wave of relief washed over Cooper. Jesus, but that had been close. He spun the woman around, pulled one arm behind her back, and dug for his cuffs with the other.

“Listen,” she said, gasping between the words. “You have…to let…me go.”

He ignored her, snapped the cuff on one wrist, reached for the other. Spoke for his partner’s benefit. “Bobby, I had to take out a couple of cops on the way in. Can you reach out to NYPD and calm them down real fast? I don’t want to—”

But before he could finish the sentence there was a crack of planets colliding, and the ground vanished beneath him, he was flying, his arms out and twisting, and everything—

The noise came first. An overlapping mishmash of sound. Cries of pain. Urgent, indecipherable yells. Rasping, scraping. Solemn voices counting. Sirens farthercloserfarther.

He wasn’t aware of it, really. It was the water he floated through.

Then, slowly, the formless syllables began to shape themselves into words. The words had taste and heft. Hemorrhaging. Amputate. Crushed. Concussed.

The scraping became the wooden legs of a chair or table dragged across concrete.

The men counting backward punctuated the arrival of zero with an exhalation of effort, as though they were heaving something.

The sirens stayed the same. He just came to realize how many he was hearing, some moving, some still, some nearby, some a good distance away.

Cooper opened his eyes.

Canvas stretched above him. The pattern was indistinct, and the colors moved and swirled. For a moment he faulted his vision, then realized it was active camo; smart fabric that chameleoned to match the environment. Military issue. He blinked eyes dry and swollen. The noises around him took no notice, just kept insistently on, each cutting across the other.

“…need more O over here…”

“…breathe, just breathe…”

“…my husband, where is…”

“…it hurts, God, it
hurts
…”

Cooper took a deep inhale, felt tings and stabs of pain as his chest swelled. Nothing too bad. He raised his right hand and gingerly patted the back of his head. The flesh was hot and swollen and sore, the hair sticky. He must have hit it. How?

Slowly, he rolled onto one side, then swung his legs off the edge of the cot. Also military, he noticed. This was an army triage tent. For a moment the world swam. He clamped down on the edge of the cot with both hands. The pain came now, a whirling thumping, dull and looming.

“Go slow.”

Cooper raised his head and opened his eyes. A trim man in scrubs spattered with blood stood beside him. Where had he come from?

“How did I get here?”

“Someone must have brought you. What hurts?”

“My—” He coughed. His throat was full of dust. “My head.”

“Look at this?” The doctor had a penlight out. Cooper obediently stared into it, followed as the man moved it back and forth. A triage center, he was in a triage center of some sort. But how? He remembered fighting through the crowd, the surging, roiling chaos of all those people. Stalked by two o’clock when…the bombs. He had been trying to stop bombs from going off. He had seen—

“
Where is she?
” Cooper whipped his head around, felt the pain as a promissory note, ignored it for now. He was in a large field tent packed with rows of cots, the beds nearly touching. Men and women in scrubs pushed across the rows, speaking insistently to one another as they tended the wounded. Maybe twenty racks in here, he couldn’t see all of them, she could be in one.

“Hey.” The doctor’s voice was firm. “Look at me.”

The pain paid what it owed, a crushing feeling like there was a vise in the middle of his skull. Cooper groaned, looked back at the doctor. “Where is she?”

“I don’t know who you’re talking about,” the man said, fitting a stethoscope to his ears, “but I’m sure she’s fine. Right now I need you to relax so I can see how badly hurt you are.”

It all clicked together, finally, the scattered pieces coalescing into a whole. He had been chasing John Smith’s agent, the woman who could walk through walls, the cell phone bomber with the big eyes. He had caught up with her inside the Exchange. But not in time.

“How bad is it?” Cooper felt like something was falling through his chest.