Silent Assassin (27 page)

C
HAPTER
60

 

I
t was a beautiful clear day in the Northeast and New York City was all clad in green. People caroused on the streets, bringing the city to life. The atmosphere was electric, joyous. The parade would go down Fifth Avenue from Forty-fourth street all the way to the Metropolitan Museum. Somewhere along that line, Nikolai Novokoff would strike.

Morgan, Bishop, Spartan, and Diesel had each been outfitted with a Kawasaki Ninja—sleek black sports bikes, which were far better than cars for navigating the crowds around the parade. He was carrying his usual Walther with a combat knife hidden on his ankle. In his pocket was an FBI badge that would fool any police officer and even turn up as legitimate in a computer search, courtesy of well-placed Zeta Division contacts. Morgan rode slowly down Seventh Avenue, eyes peeled, waiting for anything on Novokoff.

“How’s your system working, Shepard?” Morgan asked.

“The concept is sound,” said Shepard.

“Yeah, well, let’s just see how it performs in its first field test.”

Morgan wove smoothly and slowly through traffic and the jaywalkers who filled the streets. He stopped at a light. He watched the people crossing the street, many of them in green, some with painted faces. Young and old, men and women.
So many people
. So many for Novokoff to hide among, and so many he could kill.

“Got anything?” Spartan asked into the comm.

“No sign of any disturbance,” said Bishop.

“All clear,” said Diesel.

“Nothing here,” said Morgan.

“Or here,” said Spartan.

Spartan and Bishop were on the other side of Fifth Avenue, with Diesel on the same side as Morgan. There was no way to cross Fifth Avenue with the parade happening, so they had to make sure that all points along it on both sides were accessible.

“We got one!” Shepard exclaimed. “Holy shit, we got a hit!”

“Where?” demanded Morgan.

“Sixth Avenue,” he said. “Between Forty-ninth and Fiftieth Streets.”

“That’s on my side,” said Morgan.

“All agents, converge on Sixth Avenue, between Forty-ninth and Fiftieth,” said Bishop. “Diesel, I want you on the corner of Forty-ninth and Sixth, and Cobra, on the corner of Fiftieth and Sixth. We are not going to let him slip through our fingers.”

“He’s wearing a long black overcoat,” said Shepard. “Looks like he’s got brown hair now, and his forehead is bandaged up, but that’s him all right.”

Morgan got to the corner of Fiftieth and Sixth and scanned the crowd. This was going to be hard. There were plenty of people in normal street clothes, and his Novokoff’s were about as common as you could get for New York City. He watched for the faces.

“I don’t see him,” he said.

“That’s a negative here too,” said Diesel.

“Doesn’t matter—I’ve got another hit,” said Shepard. “He’s on Rockefeller Plaza, moving towards the parade.”

“On it,” Morgan said. He had to ditch the bike—traffic was barred from getting any closer to the parade, and he wouldn’t be able to move very far anyway. He parked it illegally and ran off into the crowd before a police officer noticed.

“Okay,” said Morgan, “I see him.”

“Don’t let him see you,” said Bishop.

“Not planning on it,” said Morgan.

Morgan made his way through the crowd, going as fast as he could without knocking anybody down or drawing too much attention to himself. He drew near, and spotted Novokoff facing the parade among a throng of people. No possibility of a clean shot here.

Novokoff reached into his coat, and drew something out. Morgan saw that it was a detonator, a red button with a clear plastic cover with a thick black antenna on a black handle. There would be no time to think on this one. He had to take action.

Morgan drew his gun and fired two shots up into the air.

Immediately people around him screamed and began to back away in every direction, parents shielding their children and everyone moving as fast as possible away from him—and Novokoff. The Russian had only time to turn around and look at him wide-eyed before Morgan, now with a clear view and civilians out of the way, fired off a shot.

Novokoff’s hand gushed red, and the detonator went tumbling to the ground. Morgan aimed again, this time at Novokoff ’s leg. His knee buckled, and he fell kneeling to the ground. He tried to get up, yelled out in pain, and stumbled back down.

Several police officers had drawn their weapons and were ready to fire. Morgan drew his fake FBI badge and held it up, holding his gun by the muzzle and up where they all could see. “Counterterrorism!” he yelled. “This man has a bomb. I need you to form a perimeter around this area. Get people away from here.”

“You got it, sir,” said the policeman, and turned his attention to the crowd.

Morgan looked back at Novokoff. He was squirming in pain, trying to reach for the detonator, which was a few feet out of reach.

“You’d better stop,” said Morgan. “I can hit a fly in the air from this distance. Your brain will be splattered all over the pavement before you come within a foot of that thing.”

Novokoff turned to him and gave him a wide bloody smile. “Will that make you happy? To get your revenge? To see me destroyed?”

“I’m here to stop you from causing an epidemic in this city,” he said.

“Then I’m afraid you are out of luck,” he said, wincing in pain. This bomb will go off, Agent Cobra. I anticipated this possibility, and put the bomb on a timer. It will not be long now.”

Diesel came forward and crouched down over Novokoff while Morgan held his gun to his head. He pulled Novokoff’s jacket open carefully. Bombs were strapped to his torso in a tangle of wires. On the outside were at least five sizeable vials of a white powder—the fungus. Any detonation would send it flying into the air in every direction, and there was no telling how many people would be infected.

“Move and I can make this a lot more painful for you,” Morgan said. Then, to Diesel, “What can you do?”

“Not much,” he said. “There are a lot of decoys. Lots of ways that I can send us sky-high, including taking it off of him.”

“Shepard,” said Diesel. “I need something to contain him.”

“There’s not enough time,” said Novokoff. “Two minutes and you are all dead.”

“He’s right,” said Shepard. “I’ll route the bomb squad to you guys, but there isn’t enough time.”

“There has to be some way,” said Morgan.

There was only silence as Novokoff laughed gleefully. “You have me, and there is nothing you can do now.”

“We use the satellite,” said Shepard, voice rising with the epiphany.

“What?” said Morgan. “What satellite?”

“The Chinese defense satellite. We take control and aim the laser toward Earth. It can hit a ballistic missile going at ten thousand miles per hour. No reason we can’t target Novokoff on the surface. Anything in its path will burn at temperatures of a few thousand degrees. Even better, it won’t set off any plastic explosives.”

“No,” said Bloch. “Absolutely not, no!”

“We might not have any choice,” said Morgan.

“It’ll cause an international incident,” said Bloch. “It could expose Zeta Division. It would put us right in the sights of the Chinese.”

“And if we don’t, Novokoff might set loose an infection in New York City that could kill millions,” said Morgan. “
You don’t have a choice
, Bloch. You have to use it.”

“It’s too late, Cobra,” Novokoff screamed. “It doesn’t matter if you kill me! I’m already dead! But you won’t stop this bomb from going off! I’m taking all these people with me! I’m taking this whole goddamn city with me!”

“Shepard, we need you to do it now!”

From space, the hijacked Chinese satellite beamed down its laser.

The laser itself was completely invisible, so there was nothing to see, but Morgan could feel the heat that was emanating from that spot. It was like sitting in front of a fireplace at first, but in a few seconds it grew to the intensity of a blast furnace. People around yelled and gasped, and there was a scramble to get away from the spot that was suddenly and inexplicably hot.

But most shocking was Novokoff himself. Morgan wanted to look away, but couldn’t. Wild-eyed, the Russian had noticed that something was wrong, but by then the heat had become too intense, and it was too late for him. His hair went first, a bout of flame breaking out spontaneously from it. He began to scream at that point, and slap at his head to put the fire out. It was useless. The hair shriveled up and blackened instantly, sticking to his head. Some of it stuck to his hand, and the scalp came off with it.

Then Novokoff’s entire body went up in a torrent of flames, orange and thick as if it were some hellish fluid, turning into thick black smoke some ten feet above Novokoff’s head. The screams were drowned out by the sound of the flames, and then stopped altogether. All around him, the asphalt turned to pitch, a thick, viscous black substance. The fire slowly died as it ran out of material to consume, and slowly, the heat subsided.

When it was over, all that was left were his bones charred black, along with a few hunks of melted metal, half-embedded in hardening asphalt.

C
HAPTER
61

 

T
hat was the afternoon when the call came.

Buck Chapman sat in his living room, watching baby Ella as she slept soundly. Rose was out, and he thanked God for that. He didn’t think he could face her. Not now. He was sick to his stomach every time he remembered what he’d done. He wasn’t sorry. He had been right. The day had been saved. And there was no way of knowing what would have happened if he had left the government to take care of it.

But he had betrayed them. Schroeder. The task force. And ever since he did, he was convinced that it was only a matter of time before they found out.

So he sat there and stared at the most important person in his life. Ella. Tears came to his eyes. What would she think when she found out about it? What would it be like for her, growing up without her father? Would she be better off without him? He looked at the wall on his left, where he had two large pictures hung in lacquered wooden frames. One was of his wife, Rose, smiling like an angel, the year they got married. The other was of Ella as a newborn, mottled red with wispy black hair clinging to her knobby head. Tears came to his eyes and began streaming down his face.

Chapman took a deep breath.
Get a grip
, he told himself.
You did the right thing. You’re not dead yet.

That’s when he heard the creak of the wooden floor on the hall outside the den. He reached for the lower right drawer, where he kept a concealed handgun, and slowly pulled it open. He drew the gun as a man appeared in the doorway, but in a flash of recognition did not pull the trigger.

It was Smith.

“Polite guests use the doorbell,” said Chapman.

“I use the doorbell when it pleases me to use the doorbell,” said Smith.

“Supposing I shoot you,” he offered.

“You could try,” said Smith. “I frankly don’t think it would do much good.”

“I’m not so sure,” said Chapman. “Why are you here, Smith?”

Smith walked on light feet to the chair opposite Chapman and sat down. “I imagine you might be feeling a little . . .
guilty
at the moment. I thought you could use a friendly word.”

Chapman snorted wearily. “From you?”

“Yes,” said Smith unflappably. “I’d like to tell you that it’s normal to feel as you do. Like you have betrayed something. But your motives were pure and your perceptions correct.” His voice was steady and emotionless. “You did what was necessary to protect your country and your daughter. You were a necessary part in stopping a catastrophe. And for that you deserve applause.”

“Hooray for me,” he said hollowly. “Is now the time when you give me my thirty pieces of silver?”

“Don’t be dramatic,” said Smith. “You didn’t do this for the money. You did it because it was right. And if it comes to it again, you will help us again.”

“Do I get a choice?”

“You always have a choice,” said Smith, standing up. He walked to the door, then looked back at Chapman. “Welcome to the team.”

 

 

“A success, all in all,” said Bloch.

Smith looked at her pointedly.

“A success?” asked Smith.

Bloch was sitting in the passenger seat of Smith’s car, in the Government Center garage, staring at a concrete wall. It was a dreary place for a meet, but garages worked for their isolation and accessibility. She ran her eyes over cracks on the wall as she spoke.

“A qualified success,” she said. “Disaster was averted. The infectious agent was contained.”

“Novokoff was killed in the middle of a crowd, in a way that people are going to be talking about for a long, long time. There are pictures, too many to control. I’d call that by itself a disaster.”

“It was all we could do to stop him from spreading the fungus to the entire city of New York,” she said.

“And using the satellite like that tipped our hand to the Chinese. They naturally blamed the United States for what happened, which might have caused an international incident. The U.S. is going to pay for this diplomatically.”

“It was the only way.”

“So you keep saying,” said Smith sharply. “But operations seem to be getting sloppy. Loud. And it all seems to have something to do with Morgan.”

“Morgan is a valuable agent,” said Bloch. “He’s been instrumental to our operations.”

“He’s erratic and difficult to control,” said Smith.

“He’s also our best. Without him, we wouldn’t have gotten Novokoff. Or Edmund Charles, for that matter.”

“If you are speaking for Morgan, I would think that you would avoid mentioning the name of Edmund Charles,” Smith said testily.

“It’s true, though, isn’t it?” said Bloch. “He might cause a splash. But he gets results.”

Smith took a deep breath. “That he does. That he does.”

“By the way, what happened to the confiscated cocaine with the fungal spores?” Bloch asked.

“It was destroyed, of course,” said Smith. “Incinerated, along with all the records in the Montauk facility.”

“Good,” she said. “The world is better off without its existence.”

“That it is,” said Smith.

“So what now?” she asked.

“Now we move ahead with expansion,” he said. “Get the Zeta facility staffed. Two tactical teams of six and a full support staff of analysts and security experts.”

“Even after what you called a failure?” she said evenly.

“It is not my decision to make,” he said. Then he touched her on the shoulder and looked her in the eye. “But this is my personal advice: rein in your people, and get Zeta Division in order. The higher-ups will not go easy on you if you continue to act so publicly.”

“I . . . appreciate your perspective,” she said, in a tone that said she didn’t. “So, what now?”

“The world never stops,” said Smith. “There will be something else to deal with soon enough, and just the job of keeping watch takes up enough man power. Something will come up soon enough.”