Rivers of Gold (30 page)

“This is true,” McKeutchen muttered. He was watching the kid with sadness in his eyes. Leaning one meaty paw on the table next to him, McKeutchen whispered, “Don't worry, son. It's almost over.”

“
What
is?” Santiago snarled, making the kid twitch. “Don't tell me that crazy motherfucker sold you on this.”

“Indeed he did.”

“Are you fuckin'
kidding
me? He can't
do
this! Everything about it is—”

“Kid,” McKeutchen growled, laboriously turning his bulk to face Santiago, “I don't like this shit any more than you do, but we're stuck with it for now. This isn't about Varna, it's about who's
behind
Varna. Whoever More's handlers are, they've been after this guy for years. Right now, while we roll up Varna's network here, there's guys from DC working signal intercepts, Reale's guys from Treasury are going through bank transfers, SAC Totentantz scrambled a priority watch on bridges, tunnels, airports, train and bus stations, and the ports. They're coordinating with Interpol and Europol, who've been working on the routes for the dope and whatever else Varna brought over here. This is big, kid, bigger than me, bigger than you. This one here—” McKeutchen nodded at the kid, who had mucus running from his nose to his chin—“is somebody Varna might just want badly enough to pop up for. I know you wanted to roll with Liesl and Turse on this, but More figures that's an empty nest. Varna's probably in the wind by now, but if he's not, if he sticks his head out for anything, it'll be to get this kid in order to cover his tracks. You don't wanna do it, fine. But something like this doesn't just come along once a week, or once a year, or even once a lifetime. You want OCID, this is your ticket.”

McKeutchen put a hand on Santiago's shoulder.

“I know you can protect him,” he said quietly, “and I know More will protect you.”

Santiago glanced at the kid—beaten, broken, maybe even insane—and thought, This is how I make my big plan work. Use this fucked-up kid as bait to flush a bunch of Russian gangsters, or whatever Varna's crew is, so that More can fucking snipe or bomb their asses. And I get to dangle the bait.

Swell.

More said he lived out on the edge of Flushing near Kissena Boulevard, not far from where Victor used to take Santiago and his siblings to baseball games at Shea, before it was sold and torn down to make room for a development project long since gone bankrupt. His apartment was in a crumbling three-story building that stood alone on one corner of a block that had been bulldozed and graded for development, then abandoned when the money ran out. The nearest inhabited building was nearly a hundred yards away. The bottom floor looked like a crash pad for any derelict who—

“No,” More blatted, “I sealed all points of entry and egress. Don't touch anything. The window frames are wired, the stairs are booby-trapped. Bring the weapons.”

“Wha-wha-what the fuck?
Booby-trapped
? You mean IEDs and shit?”

“Don't touch anything,” More repeated in his crystal-clear voice, and Santiago wished the guns he was carrying were loaded. He struggled awkwardly up two flights of groaning stairs, peeling paint, and gouged-up carpeting. The place smelled of dust, old linoleum, and time gone by. Not unlike the inside of their Crown Vic.

“Careful there.”

Trip wires on the third flight.
Coño
, Santiago thought, I should be getting paid in gold for this shit. “What, ain't you got a homing beacon for smart bombs someplace?”

“Here,” More said, opening four deadbolts on the third-floor door in a slow, deliberate sequence.

“That was a joke,” Santiago reminded him.

“No, it's not,” replied More.

The apartment was nearly empty. The western wall had most of the furnishings, if you could call them that. A workbench took up the majority of the lateral space, with two vise grips set into the edge. Some pegboard had been tacked up, and a variety of tools hung from it, most of which even Santiago the machinist's son did not immediately recognize. On the far end was a laptop computer, encased in the same heavy-duty plastic as More's cell phone, surrounded by what appeared to be language software modules. There was a green box with a thick antenna and brightly colored buttons on the floor next to this. Next to that was an afterthought of an open kitchen with a hotplate and an ancient refrigerator. On the opposite wall was a closet secured with another four shiny new deadbolts. There was a bedroll laid out in the center of the floor.

Aside from that, the only other things in the apartment were the maps.

Street maps. Tunnel maps. Sewer maps. County maps. Maps of all the waterways in the Tri-State Area (complete with data on depth and currents). Maps of all international, domestic, and commuter airports, heliports, airplane hangars, and flight schools. Maps of ports, docks, and dockside warehouses, marked with notes on offloading capacity, types of cranes, and locations of the railway terminus closest to each. Maps of bridges (large red X's drawn on the caissons and stanchions, which Santiago figured indicated where explosive charges were to be placed; fucking More). Maps of power stations and electrical grids. Maps of subway and bus routes and traffic signals, with handwritten notes on duration and times of peak volume. Maps of all NYPD precinct houses and surveillance camera locations. Maps of MTA and DSNY motor pools. Maps of IRT railyards, Amtrak, LIRR, and Metro-North routes. Maps of all courthouses, City Hall, federal buildings, and post offices. Maps of hospitals (Santiago noticed a red circle around Mount Sinai, and, to his horror, Esperanza's name and NTU extension jotted neatly in black beside it). Maps of TV and radio stations, cell phone towers, fiber-optic cable hubs, and wireless dead zones. Maps of every retail branch and corporate office of Urbank. Maps with locations of taxi garages.

“Motherfucker,” Santiago whispered, “you really
are
going to invade New York.”

“Maybe next year,” said More in a voice that could sell swimsuits in Alaska. “Put the weapons over there.” He pointed to the bench. While Santiago laid them out, he heard More unlocking the closet behind him. More appeared next to him with a hard plastic case with the letters JSCS stenciled on one side in white. Santiago found the speed and ease with which More stripped the Benelli to a handful of parts disturbing, so he turned toward the computer to calm himself.

“I love what you've done with the place,” he quipped, trying to sound more at ease than he felt. “You should hang out with McKeutchen, watch HGTV together, pick up some decorating tips.” A thought struck him. “No speakers. How you play your tunes?”

“No music,” More croaked.

A high-pitched keening, very faint, sounded in Santiago's ears. “You don't listen to music?”

“No.”

Santiago moved a bit farther down the bench. Farther away from More. Coming around the side of the computer, he noticed the only evidence of any human occupant in this spooky fucking place.

It was a photo, color, of what Santiago guessed to be More's unit in Afghanistan. Santiago counted twenty faces. The men were posed on and around a foreign six-wheeled jeep with—he double-checked to make sure—a motorcycle mounted on the back. The jeep bristled with machine guns, rocket launchers, and jerricans. There were some other vehicles in the background, jeeps that looked like Land Rovers, more motorbikes, some four- and six-wheeled ATVs, and some weird-ass dune buggy things with machine guns mounted on the front. Not a Humvee in sight. The men wore a motley collection of desert fatigues, scarves, do-rags, turbans, leather jackets, sunglasses, boots, and sneakers. Santiago counted at least one Yankees hat and one Raiders T-shirt. The men in the photo did not look like highly trained elite military personnel. They looked like extras from
The Road Warrior
. They looked like dirtbags. And they looked happy.

In the photo, More was kneeling, front row center. He was not smiling, but he wasn't wearing his Fish Face either. He looked … content, or something like it. Santiago wondered how old the photo was.

“Nice picture,” he said breezily, trying for levity. “When was it taken?”

“Right before we were ambushed,” More mumbled. “Ninety minutes after that photo was taken, four men in it were dead. Three others were wounded, including me.”

Santiago felt about four years old. So much for levity. Absently he scuffed his left foot, which made contact with the green box on the floor.

“
Don't touch that
,” hissed the Fish Face. Santiago jumped back from the box as though it were radioactive.

“Sorry, sorry, Jesus, man, what the fuck is it?”

“PLGR.”

“In English?”

“Precision Lightweight GPS Receiver.”

“And it does … what?”

More was reassembling the Benelli. “Gives coordinates. We use it for calling in airstrikes.”

“So,” Santiago said jauntily, trying hard to tamp down the anxiety rising in his throat, “you're ready to call in an airstrike, how nice. What coordinates do you plan to blow away?”

“Here,” More checked the action on the Benelli, then reached into the ballistic case and pulled out a box with the number
12
stenciled on it.

In this environment devoid of music, the theme from
Deliverance
had been playing through Santiago's head. Now it changed to the theme from
The Exorcist
. “You have an airstrike ready to go on your own house?”

“Yeah.” More took a handful of shells from the box and started filling the Benelli's sidesaddle. Santiago had never seen shells like these before.

“May I ask why you did that?”

“If my position is overrun, I can't leave anything behind,” More grunted. He loaded five shells into the magazine, checked the safety, and reached into the case for a tactical light, which he affixed to the barrel beneath the muzzle.

Santiago's inner soundtrack now switched to the theme from
The Twilight Zone
. “And how do you intend to do this? You have a code word that I hope I don't accidentally say?”

“No,” gurgled More, slipping a tactical nylon shoulder harness on the Benelli, “I just change the batteries every so often. The receiver resets to default coordinates. Itself.”

Santiago watched More put down the modified Benelli and set to work breaking down the M4, feeling as though his head were filling up with Xylocaine. I must be dreaming, he thought, counting the seconds it took for More to break down the carbine. This isn't really happening. More went to the gun closet and came back with another plastic case with white stenciling. Santiago's eyes registered
socom
and
sopmod
before he squeezed them shut in terror and frustration.

He forced himself to watch as More stripped down the M4, tossed the receiver aside, and began reassembling the weapon with completely different components. A long ported barrel. A carbon-fiber hand guard. A thick sound suppressor. A vertical forward grip and bipod. A skeletonized stock. Along the flat top of the new receiver More attached a series of chunky objects Santiago could only assume were sighting devices that would probably allow More to draw a bead on the target in the dark, or maybe, he wondered (gorge rising), even through walls.

“What … is … that?” Santiago managed.

More reached into the case and pulled out a pair of box magazines. Flashing his lunatic grin, More tossed one to Santiago, who caught it one-handed and nearly sprained his wrist in the process. Santiago had handled .223 magazines before.
This
magazine felt like a fucking cinder block. He tossed—heaved, actually—the box back to More.

With the modified rifle assembled and loaded, More replaced the plastic cases (together with the original parts removed from the police M4) in the closet. He pulled out something that looked and smelled like an old fishing net. This he slipped over his head, struggling a moment to get his arms aligned. With the thing on, More looked like a walking brush pile. From the closet of terrors More produced the most elaborate piece of bondage headgear Santiago had ever seen, to which was attached some kind of monocular device that projected from More's face like some horrific insectine proboscis. Next came a three-tiered backpack from which two thick, ribbed hoses extended. The pack went on the back, the proboscis stuck out from the Fish Face, and the hoses went round and round the brush pile.

More hefted his modified rifle, which to Santiago looked less like a firearm and more like George Lucas's take on a cattle prod. More no longer looked like a bum or an NYU student. In fact, Santiago realized, he looked no longer human at all. More had successfully transformed himself into a monster from a science fiction horror film.

“Season's open,” said the monster.

Santiago was horrified. He would admit this to no man.

Santa Maria, madre de Dios
, he silently prayed to himself. Please deliver me from this crazy fuck More.