Independence Day (45 page)
When Malnikov told him to create the most lethal helicopter he could, Stihl had spent a week in Marseille, testing what Eurocopter had to offer. He spared no expense outfitting the machine with every technological feature available—and some that weren’t, including flight envelope protection, as well as navigation and weapons systems that could be managed by Stihl through helmet-based optics and exoskeletal motion sensors.
He let the nav system take him to the coordinates Malnikov had provided. A thermal module in the helmet illuminated the building from a mile out. As he swooped in close, a red apparition of heat appeared atop the roof. His passenger.
He hit a button on the controls, bringing up commo. A few moments later, Malnikov’s cell started ringing. As Stihl descended out of the sky toward the roof of the building, he listened to the phone ring half a dozen times. Malnikov didn’t answer.
Stihl brought up more controls, visible inside his helmet shield. He ordered the chopper’s nav to locate the cell by GPS. A second later, he saw the words flicker in green digital letters:
: MOSCOW RUS:
: EVOLUTION TOWER:
* * *
A faint electric whine, then the shifting of wind and rain, startled Dewey from his thoughts. He stood up, searching the sky, seeing nothing.
Dewey listened, sensed a change in the wind, then spun around, just as the thunder of the Eurocopter’s rotors exploded behind him, ripping the air. As sudden as a lightning flash, the chopper surged down at Dewey, dropping from the cloaking wall of clouds and water, nearly landing directly on top of him before punching back up a few feet and then settling next to him atop the concrete roof.
Dewey opened the back door and climbed inside the chopper, nodding to the pilot, then slid the door shut. The chopper shot up from the roof, cut left, and then tore away from Elektrostal.
Dewey looked quickly around the cabin. It was bare-bones, stripped down, without any sort of creature comforts. Everything inside the cabin was single function, designed for assault. There was no seating, just open space. The doors on the opposite side looked custom—they could be slid open for maximum assault flexibility.
From the ceiling, steel hooks with polymer cables dangled like coat hangers, there to be attached to body harnesses. The doors on both sides of the cabin could be opened wide. The combination of the harness locks and the doors enabled gunmen in the chopper to engage enemy from the air, at all angles, without fear of falling from the sky, especially useful if the pilot was forced to take sudden, hard-angled evasive measures.
The floor was like sandpaper, good for grip, but could also, with the press of a button, drop out like a trapdoor for low-hover jumps. The back wall was chain-link fence in front of a rack of advanced firearms and other weaponry, lined up on vertical shelves. Dewey scanned and saw all manner of firearms, including RPGs and MANPADs.
He pulled out a drawer underneath. Inside was enough ammunition to start a small war.
The chopper bounced violently in the undulating rain and wind.
Dewey stepped to the cockpit. The pilot’s face was invisible behind a black-visored helmet. There were no lights on the controls.
The pilot’s head turned. He handed Dewey a set of wireless earphones.
“I’m Stihl,” he said in a hard Russian accent. “Hold on, it’s going to be choppy.”
“Where are we going?”
“Alexei is in a building downtown,” said Stihl. “We’ll be there in three minutes.”
“Can you raise Alexei on commo?”
“I’ll try,” said Stihl as the chopper abruptly lurched left, buffeted by a crosswind.
Dewey heard the phone ring, then Malnikov’s voice.
“Where are you?” asked Malnikov.
“We’re in the air,” said Dewey. “What’s the situation?”
“He’s wounded. He escaped into Evolution Tower. I’m in the elevator on my way to find him.”
“Should I land on the roof?”
“There is no roof,” said Malnikov. “It’s half built.”
“You need to wait at the base,” said Stihl. “I’ll be able to pick up his thermal from the air once we get there, then you can move in.”
“It’s too late for that,” said Malnikov. “I’m already there.”
GOULSTON & STORRS
BOSTON
Erika Highland, a third-year associate at Goulston & Storrs, was biting into an apple as she read the purchase agreement. One of Goulston’s clients, a real estate developer, was buying a building in downtown Los Angeles.
Her eyes were drawn to the harbor. As usual on a summer Friday evening, it was crowded with boats. It was especially true tonight, July 3, the beginning of a long holiday weekend. But something was going on. She counted six separate flashing police lights.
Highland reached for her binoculars. A large Coast Guard cutter was speeding across the harbor and boats were swiftly moving toward the deeper ocean, away from the harbor, as if being asked to leave.
Her binoculars shot to the open ocean, out beyond Revere. She saw a large gray military boat—an Aegis destroyer—moving in.
“Donna,” she yelled.
Highland’s assistant came running into the office, her eyes moving to where Highland was looking. She stared at the scene.
“What the fuck?” she asked.
“Who’s that guy you know over at WBZ?”
“Hagen?”
“Yeah. You should call him.”
* * *
Eight minutes later—one minute before CNN, two before NBC, and five before Fox News and ABC—CBS cut into its regularly scheduled programming. The words
CBS NEWS SPECIAL REPORT
blazed across millions of American TV screens:
“
Ladies and gentlemen, this is a special report from CBS Evening News. I’m Bob Schieffer, coming to you live from CBS News headquarters in New York City with breaking news. The footage you’re seeing is live aerial coverage from Boston, Massachusetts, where Boston harbor is swarming with federal and state law enforcement, including two United States Navy Aegis destroyers. According to CBS sources, a suspected terror plot is, and I quote, being investigated.
“
We now go live to Hagen Ward at our local CBS affiliate in Boston…”
H & M AGGREGATES
REVERE, MASSACHUSETTS
McLaughlin moved along the last pier at Revere Marina, a handheld portable Geiger counter in his left hand. He was one of forty FBI agents now moving along the Revere waterfront, searching boat by boat for signs of nuclear material.
Standing on a pier, he keyed his mike, which was clipped to the collar of his dark blue windbreaker.
“Marina’s clear,” said McLaughlin, reporting back to the central Boston command post being run from a U.S. Navy Aegis destroyer.
“Move to the industrial docks.”
McLaughlin looked past the marina and down the rocky spit of land between the marina and the industrial docks. The first dock at the facility was at least a hundred yards away.
It would be easier to go back to the marina and drive, but it also would take more time.
He hiked quickly along the rocky coast, just above the water, which slapped calmly at his feet. In a few minutes, he arrived at a rusty chain-link fence. He scaled it, then dropped onto an ancient wood-and-steel pier. Moored alongside the pier was a barge. It was piled high with road salt. He swept the Geiger along the barge. Suddenly, the low static of the Geiger picked up. McLaughlin moved toward the front of the long boat. With each step, the static grew more frenzied.
Then he saw a tarp. He slowed, holding the Geiger counter in front of him. The small device went from frenzied to sharp monotone. He pulled the top of the tarp aside, revealing a long steel cylinder. At its end was a square device with a flashing blue light.
He keyed his mike.
“This is McLaughlin,” he said. “I found the bomb.”
CHERRY HILL ROAD
GLOUCESTER, MASSACHUSETTS
“Hey, Scooter. How do you like your hot dog?”
Saxby Ruggierio, in a blue-and-white apron, was standing on the back terrace, over the barbecue. The backyard of Ruggierio’s home was crowded with friends, family, and most of his employees from the marina.
“Medium rare,” said Ruggierio’s neighbor.
Ruggierio laughed, took a swig of beer, then walked back inside to the kitchen. His son, Billy, was seated at the table with a girl from down the street, both eating cheeseburgers and watching the Red Sox game.
“Who’s winning?” asked Ruggierio.
“I don’t know,” said Billy. “They cut into the game.”
Ruggierio glanced at the TV. On the screen was a special report from Boston harbor.
“Turn it up,” he said as he stepped closer to the TV. An aerial view of the harbor showed a swarm of law enforcement boats, their red and blue lights bright.
“…
while it’s difficult to see, the area they seem to be focusing in on is Revere, just across the water from the city of Boston. Again, a terror plot is apparently being investigated on this, the evening before the July Fourth weekend…”
“Holy shit,” he muttered.
Ruggierio reached for the phone and dialed 911.
EVOLUTION TOWER
MOSCOW
The elevator came suddenly into the open air, more than thirty floors in the sky. The wind ripped across the steel heights, stinging Malnikov with driving horizontal rain. The cage groaned loudly as it climbed.
Malnikov looked down through the yellow grate. Moscow was a different city, a darker city, dense with whole pockets of black, and lights diffused by rain.
Malnikov registered a puddle of crimson at the edge of the cage. Blood from Cloud, now washing away as rain hit it from above.
The sound of gunshot cut through the air, joined by the loud clang of the slug striking steel near his head. Malnikov ducked just as another bullet was fired, then felt his shoulder being kicked hard and back. He let himself fall to the floor as more bullets hit the rising cage.
A floor above, the elevator came to a loud stop.
Malnikov looked at his shoulder. Blood oozed through a hole in his jacket.
He crawled to the edge of the cage, trying to peer down to the floor below. But just as his head came to the edge, another shot rang out. It hit the steel of the elevator floor. A small dent appeared just beneath his chin.
“Did that hurt, Alexei?” yelled Cloud.
Malnikov lay on his back, staring up at the black and gray clouds. His breathing was becoming difficult, as if he’d just run sprints. He unzipped his coat and pulled it away from his shoulder. Blood was everywhere. His first impression—that the bullet was in his shoulder—was wrong. A black hole sat just a few inches above his nipple. With every labored breath, a fresh wave of blood gushed out.
“I need the elevator,” said Cloud. “Do you mind bleeding to death somewhere else?”
Still on his back, Malnikov reached up and lowered the latch to the cage door. He kicked the door open. Slowly, with a painful moan, he turned over onto his side and climbed to his knees against the back wall of the cage. He got into a crouching position, then stuck the muzzle of the gun to the edge of the cage and aimed down at where the shots had come from. Malnikov fired as fast as his finger could flex, then charged through the open door of the cage.
* * *
Dewey moved back to the cabin, cutting to the weapons rack. He took out a pair of night optics and pulled them down over his eyes, then flipped them on. He put on a weapons vest, then grabbed a body harness and quickly put it on. He scanned the row of firearms, choosing a Desert Eagle .50AE and sticking it in the vest holster atop his left chest. Then he grabbed a KSVK 12.7 anti-materi
é
l sniper rifle.
Another gust of wind slammed the chopper, kicking it left and down.
Stihl turned from the cockpit.
“We’re coming in hot,” he said. “Strap in.”
Dewey hooked himself to the harness rail in the middle of the cabin.
He stepped to the cockpit, the cord automatically releasing line as he moved. He looked out the front window. In the distance, Evolution Tower looked like a pair of steel ribbons spiking into the sky. The unfinished floors made the top appear as if it were disintegrating.
“Give me a perimeter,” said Dewey. “Let’s see what we can see before we get in there. It’d be nice if we could surprise that little bastard.”
Calmly, Stihl reached to the right side of his helmet, feeling blindly for a small button, then pressing it as, directly in front of him, through the rain-splattered helicopter windshield, the unfinished, wildly curving steel spires of Evolution Tower arose through the mist in sporadic halogen yellow.
After the button was pressed, a black, specially designed glass visor slid down from the top of his helmet and covered his eyes. The visual became like a video game; the building snapped into a three-dimensional digital grid. Isobars of green, red, and yellow against black, in geometric patterns, filled the screen.
Stihl reached to his left, grabbing what looked like a glove. He pulled it on, then repeated the gesture with his other hand. The gloves suddenly went from being black to white, completely lit up, as if his hands were covered in some sort of glow-in-the-dark material. Stihl then began what looked like he was gesturing to himself, as the controls of the chopper became part of an advanced exoskeletal driving and weapons computer controlled by his hand movements, and the chopper responded, cutting abruptly left into the chasm between the unfinished skyscraper and a neighboring seventy-three-story office tower.
Stihl saw glimmers of heat on a high floor. He made an almost imperceptible movement with his left pinkie. The digital camera zoomed close, enlarging the green holographs. Another image flashed in the upper right part of Stihl’s visor. Two floors were visible, the separating concrete slashing horizontal. On the higher floor, a man was crouched inside the elevator cage. On the lower floor, another man was limping toward a set of stairs near the side of the building. He was clutching a weapon, trained at the floor above as he climbed the stairs.
Stihl then saw red flashes of gunfire coming from the elevator, aimed at the floor below.