“Lucas!” Biddle cried, his voice rising to a high pitch.
Brent raised the corner of the spread just enough to glance back. Biddle’s hands were free, and he was trying to pull the machine gun sling over the dead terrorist’s head. The woman Simone or whoever she really was had her arms wrapped around Biddle’s legs.
Brent jerked open the door and plunged blindly down the passage, following the wall with his left hand, desperate to reach the stairs. Ahead, the orange glow of flames glimmered, and steam already rose off the thin fabric, which felt hot enough to ignite.
Don’t let the stairs be burning, he prayed. When he finally gripped the banister in his left hand, it nearly blistered his flesh. He ignored the pain and stumbled upward, feeling the steps shudder, saying to himself, someone in this family has to make it out. His foot hit the top step. He somehow found the strength to keep going, up the next set of stairs to the bridge and then out the door into the open air of the flybridge, where he fell to his knees.
From the decks below, over the roaring of the flames, a sudden scream rose and fell away. He’d never know what happened, but he knew no one could have made it up the stairs behind them.
He rolled Maggie gently from his shoulder, and they rested side by side on their hands and knees, pulling the night air into their seared lungs. After a moment, he raised his head and looked around. The fog had lifted slightly, and he could see the Whaler about fifty yards off the stern. He got to his knees and waved and saw the boat start forward. With the fire spreading, they couldn’t risk going down the stairs and through the salon to the aft deck. It meant they had to go down the aft ladder to reach the stern, where the Whaler could pick them up.
“Come on!” he said as he pulled Maggie to her feet and led her to the stern. Her eyes kept closing as if she was unable to stay awake. “I’m going down first, then you come. I’ll catch you if you fall.” He shouted the words as if volume would help keep her awake. “Can you do it?”
She nodded, and he started down the ladder. The descent seemed to take forever, the pain in his arm making it nearly impossible to grip the rungs. Maggie followed, each movement precarious. Brent knew he could never hold her if she fell.
As he reached the bottom, he heard a sound and turned, thinking the woman FBI agent or one of the helicopter pilots had come to help. Instead, he saw Biddle stagger from the burning salon at least he thought it was Biddle. His face was soot black, one side distorted by raw blistered skin. He was weaving, smoking like a piece of overdone meat, but he held the machine gun in his hands. He opened his mouth, and some garbled words came out.
Brent glanced up. Maggie was still on the ladder, halfway down, struggling to stay conscious. Biddle swung the gun in Brent’s direction. “Messiah bringer,” he croaked this time, his voice no longer human. He was probably ten feet away, too far to charge with any hope of success. Brent felt the hard shape of the railing at his back. He could throw himself over the side and live, but he stayed rooted in place. He wasn’t leaving Maggie.
He gathered what was left of his strength and prepared to launch himself at Biddle. He knew what it meant. Harry’s voice came to him. Been there, done that.
He bent his knees to charge when the first shots came.yFortunately, he felt nothing. It was a good way to die, he thought.
After what seemed like forever, his muscles began to relax, and he turned his head to see the red-haired woman in a shooter’s crouch at the stop of the port staircase. Biddle had disappeared, blown backward into the flaming salon by her gunshots. The agent came over, moved Brent aside, and helped Maggie. Together they hobbled down the stern steps to the Whaler.
The yacht was drifting sideways on the current. Up ahead a line of flashing lights charged toward them. It came from what looked like an entire fleet of boats.
Brent could see Coast Guard boats and police boats and helicopters in the air. There would be doctors for Maggie. Most of all, there would be firemen on fireboats, Brent thought. God, how he wanted to see the firemen.
SEVENTY-THREE
EAST RIVER, JULY 2
AN HOUR LATER, BRENT SAT in the back of an ambulance with an oxygen mask pressed to his face. Every few seconds another question came, and he would pull the mask away to give a hoarse reply. All around a myriad of lights flashed on ambulances, fire engines, S.W.A.T., and FBI vehicles. Nearby, at an old industrial pier, Biddle’s yacht still belched smoke into the clearing sky, and every few moments a jet would roar past on its descent into LaGuardia.
The ambulance attendants wanted to take Brent directly to the hospital, but the red-haired FBI agent he’d pulled from the river insisted on questioning him first. Now, he was giving her his story for the second time.
An ambulance had already taken Maggie away Brent had insisted on that before he’d say a word. The attendants said she appeared to have a concussion, hopefully nothing more. Brent had also learned that Steve Kosinsky’s wound was apparently serious but not life threatening. He would be back at work in a month or two.
Now, as hard as he tried to answer the agent’s questions, he had to admit that much of what happened remained a blur. The two moments that existed with clarity were personal and mattered to him alone. They had come when he’d stood at the top of the stairs, staring down into the smoke, and when he prepared to charge Biddle’s machine gun. Both times he’d known he was going to die. As much as he’d wanted to live, there had been no regrets, and he’d realized suddenly how it had been for Harry and his father and Fred… and even for his mother. It was his choice, and for all of his family, it had always been just that a choice.
EPILOGUE
MORRISTOWN, NJ, SEPTEMBER 6
BRENT WAS BENT OVER, HANDS on his knees, sweat pouring from his scalp and down the sides of his face as the August sun pounded his back and scorched the baked grass. Spread before him, some kneeling, others squatting, two even prone on the ground, a squad of thirty-six young men sucked the burning late afternoon air into oxygen-starved lungs. Brent had run the wind sprints right along with them, and now he waited several seconds before he finally relented and blew his whistle to end practice.
Today was the last of the pr-season two-a-days, and Morris County Prep’s varsity football team was going to have a pretty good season if physical conditioning had anything to do with it. Brent had come close to breaking half the members of his squad over the past few weeks, but he could already see a tremendous difference. His boys were going to be able to hit and keep on hitting right through the final seconds of the game.
His boys, the thought made him smile. As he watched them trudge off the practice field toward the locker room, he heard a familiar voice behind him. “How are your pansies today?”
He turned to see Fred in a ragged pair of khaki shorts and the Morris County Prep tee shirt Brent had given him. “They’re going to beat up all the other pansies,” Brent replied.
“Some pansies have to be the toughest,” his uncle said. “Might as well be yours.”
Brent smiled. Fred had been appalled when Brent accepted the job. “A private school?” he’d screamed when Brent told him. “You want me to go down to the firehouse and tell the guys you’re coaching at a private school?”
In spite of his apparent horror, Fred hadn’t missed a day of practice, often bringing jugs of cold water and even giving whispered words of encouragement when a kid was down from exhaustion and didn’t want to get up.
Brent couldn’t have cared less that it was a private school. He only cared that he’d be teaching math and had a head-coaching job and that the whole package seemed tailor-made. From the day the news hit the papers that Prescott Biddle had helped terrorists plot the assassination of the President, the money had flowed out of Genesis Advisors like oil from a ruptured tanker. The remaining partners had been delighted to buy Brent out of his contract in return for a promise that he wouldn’t sue them.