Gideon drew a deep breath. Then he sank the cutter into the flesh and drew a long line; retracted the scalpel; drew another parallel line a centimeter away; then another. The wire was just beneath the surface, but the leg was so mangled, so rotten, and so full of debris from the accident that it was hard to identify the correct place to cut.
“Hurry!” Mindy screamed.
He could hear the roar of the backhoe approaching, the deep vibration in the ground.
Another long cut, this one at a ninety-degree angle.
“Oh my God!” She was firing almost continuously. The roar was almost on top of them.
The scalpel was deflected by something. Gideon reached in with his fingers, grasped it, drew it out: a heavy piece of wire, bent in a U shape, about a centimeter long.
“Got it!” He shoved it in his pocket.
But the roar was now on top of them. An enormous pile of dirt, mingled with bones, crashed down on them like a tidal wave, knocking Gideon to the ground and burying Mindy. Her scream was abruptly cut off as blackness rose to meet him…
Gideon swam back into consciousness buried almost up to his chest, pinned in a mess of muck and water. He could feel his broken ribs grinding against each other. He shook the dirt away from his head, sucked in air, tried to pull himself out.
A heavy boot came down slowly on his neck, pressing him into the mud. “Not so fast, my friend,” came the cool, accentless voice. “Give me the wire.”
Gideon lay there, breathing hard. “Help her. She’s buried—”
The boot jammed his neck and the voice said, “Don’t worry about her. Worry about yourself.”
“She’s suffocating!”
Nodding Crane dangled the tag from Wu’s leg in front of him. “I know you have the wire. Give it to me.” A hand searched his shirt pocket, pushing away dirt. Feeling through the dirt, the hand located the Beretta and the Taurus. The box cutter came next.
“Let me up, for God’s sake!”
The boot came off his neck and Nodding Crane stepped back, night-vision goggles swinging around his neck. “Get yourself out. Slowly.”
Gideon tried to crawl out from under the dirt. “The shovel,” he gasped.
Nodding Crane picked up Gideon’s shovel and tossed it over.
Frantically, Gideon shoveled away the dirt, wincing with pain. Finally he got enough of the weight from his lower body to allow himself the use of his legs. He shook off the dirt and dragged himself free. Rising to his feet, he took a shuddering breath, then immediately attacked the slide of dirt that had buried Mindy.
“The wire,” Nodding Crane said, jamming his gun—a TEC-9—against Gideon’s head.
“For God’s sake, we’ve got to dig her out!”
“You’re a fool.” Nodding Crane struck him a lashing blow across the head with the butt of his gun, wrenched the shovel from his hand, and screwed the barrel of the TEC-9 into his ear. “The wire.”
“Fuck you.”
“I will take it from your dead body, then.” He gave the warm muzzle of the pistol another screw into Gideon’s ear and whispered, “Good-bye.”
67
Manuel Garza, dressed in a frayed Department of Sanitation uniform he’d appropriated from the vast wardrobes of EES, walked along the bicycle path that circled the north end of Meadow Lake. In the distance, he could hear the hum of the Van Wyck Expressway. It was past eleven; the joggers, bikers, and mothers with strollers had gone home hours ago, and the sloops on the lake were tied in their berths.
With the retractable trash spear he held in one hand, he jabbed at a stray piece of rubbish and stuck it into the plastic bag hanging from his utility belt. Cover like this had been much easier back in the 1980s, when New York had been a filthy place. These days, with the city squeaky-clean, park sanitation crews weren’t nearly as invisible as they had once been. He considered that EES should brainstorm some new covers: commuters, maybe, or homeless persons, or marathon trainers.
He speared another piece of trash, his expression darkening. The thought of EES brought Eli Glinn back to his mind. No matter how long he worked for the guy, Garza had never understood him. Every time Garza thought that age had mellowed the man, or a particularly onerous op had reformed him, Eli Glinn went and proved him wrong. You could just never predict what he’d do — or wouldn’t do. Like that time in Lithuania, when he’d threatened to detonate the nuclear device because the client refused to make final payment. He hadn’t been kidding, either, he’d actually started the arming sequence before the client capitulated. Or that fateful expedition in Tierra del Fuego, when they were under pursuit and Glinn had blown up an iceberg to…
He shook that particular memory from his mind and turned away from the lake, heading back to the electric Parks Department cart that sat nearby. Just this morning, after the encounter on the subway train, Glinn had refused Garza’s request that they assign several teams to shadow Crew during the final stage of his mission. Glinn listened carefully, then simply shook his head. “We’re not doing that,” he’d said.
We’re not doing that.Garza rolled his eyes. A typical Glinn answer, containing no reasons, no explanation. Just fiat.
He eased himself into the cart, put the trash spear away, and unlocked a metal equipment locker bolted into one wall of the vehicle. He made a quick visual inventory of the contents: nine-millimeter Glock with silencer, sawed-off shotgun, taser, police radio, night-vision goggles, emergency paramedic kit, half a dozen federal, state, and local ID badges in assorted sizes. Satisfied, he closed the locker, then eased the cart north, toward the Queens Museum of Art.
Glinn had nixed assigning teams to Gideon Crew. So Garza had come here on his own initiative. This was a critical mission, a world-altering mission. There was no way Garza was going to let Crew go it alone — especially when somebody as dangerous as Nodding Crane was involved.
The Unisphere, Crew had said. Garza could see it ahead in the distance: a huge, gleaming silver globe, fringed at its base by fountains, on the far side of the Long Island Expressway. The problem was, Crew hadn’t said whether they were meeting right atthe Unisphere, or just somewhere in the general vicinity. The fact that the damn thing was located smack in the middle of Flushing Meadows Corona Park—the second largest park in New York City—didn’t make Garza’s job any easier. If it had been up to him, he’d have had police, real and imitation; EMS workers, public and private; snipers, fire-suppression teams, hijacking specialists, getaway drivers, journalist interdictors, and a partridge and a pear tree, all fanned out through the park in carefully assigned locations. As it was, he was alone and had his work cut out for him.
It had made absolutely no sense right from the get-go. Why assign such an important mission to someone like Crew: untested, unproven? Glinn could have selected any number of operatives who had proven themselves under fire. It just wasn’t right to pick a screwup like Crew, someone who hadn’t made his bones, who hadn’t started small, worked his way up through the ranks — the way that, say, Garza himself had. Gideon Crew was impulsive; he operated on anger and adrenaline more than steely-eyed caution. Garza was a pretty levelheaded guy, but the very thought made irritation bubble up in him like so much acid.
He glanced at his watch again: eleven thirty. Ahead, the Unisphere glowed against the night sky like a streaking meteor. Not much time — he’d do one last reconnoiter, then pick the optimal spot from which to monitor the unfolding situation. He pointed the cart toward the vast globe and pushed down hard on the accelerator.
68
Gideon knew he was going to die but felt absolutely nothing. At least this way would be quicker and less painful.
There was a sudden yell and a fusillade of shots. Turning toward the sound, Gideon saw a monstrous apparition—a form covered in mud—erupting from the slide of dirt, firing and screaming like a banshee. Nodding Crane was punched violently back by the bullets. He sprayed return fire wildly as he went down.