"Jesus! Jesus!" the Punk screamed, terrified at dropping 55 stories to the concrete pavement below.
"Listen you fucker," the stranger said, his helmet's closed-tight visor weirdly muffling his voice. "I ain't got the time to fuck around with a little scum like you. Where's this guy Calypso?"
"I don't know no Calypso!" the Punk yelled, only to have the stranger push him even far over the edge.
"Don't bullshit me," the man said. "I'll drop you so hard they'll hear the splat all the way over in New Jerk."
"He'll kill me if I tell you!" Punk screamed.
"I'll kill you if you don't," the stranger said, his hands tightening around the Punk's throat.
"Okay! Okay!" Punk 78 gurgled. "I'll tell you!"
The stranger released his grip only slightly. "Where?" he asked.
"Down at the Twins," Punk said, tasting blood from the cracked vessels in his throat. "The WTC. The old World Trade Center. He lives down there. But you can't get at him."
"Why?" the stranger asked angrily.
"Because he's high up, man," Punk answered. "He's higher than anyone. He sees everything. And he's got enough firepower to knock out anything up to 14th Street. He's got big stuff on every floor and soldiers everywhere. Don't you understand? He's King of Lower Manhattan. We don't even go down there…"
The stranger let go of Punk's throat, then knocked him sideways with a slap aside the head. The Punk hit the roof hard only to see the unconscious body of Iron Man lying 20 feet away. Somehow the stranger had taken out his partner without Punk hearing a sound.
Punk sat up and watched as the man stuffed his pockets with .357 ammunition.
He took a good look at the man. "How the fuck did you get up here, man?" he asked.
The man quickly grabbed the soldier's throat again, brought his helmet visor to within an inch of the Punk's face and said: "I flew…"
The man they called Calypso sat on a leather couch in front of the huge window on the 110th floor of what once was the World Trade Center's easternmost building. Before him stretched the island of Manhattan. From Wall Street to 14th Street was his. A buffer zone of allies — the Combat Lawyers, the Asbadah Holy Militia and the Laser Razors — held parcels of territory right up to Madison Square Garden and the Empire State Building. The further away from those assholes uptown, the better, Calypso always said.
He was the most powerful man in New York City. So powerful that when the Mid-Aks came to Manhattan to shop for everything from small arms to .88 artillery pieces, they came to Calypso. When the air pirates wanted to buy a couple of tons of smack, they came to Calypso. Even the Russians brought him a present every time they passed through.
And now, The Circle had asked to pay their respects, at a party Calypso would host later that night. They wanted something from him — something they knew he had. Good, he thought, watching a battle off in the distance up near Rockefeller Plaza. Because The Circle had something Calypso wanted, too.
He clapped his hands and two young girls appeared. One carried a martini pitcher filled fresh to the brim with the champagne-cocaine mix that Calypso enjoyed so much, the other an extra large NEW YORK GIANTS glass, also one of Calypso's favorites. The shitty little wine glasses others used couldn't quench his thirst. He wondered if these girls could. They were barely sixteen and seventeen — a present of a Soviet general who stopped by a few months ago.
He motioned one to pour him a drink and the other to stand in front of him. He was getting old, he thought as he looked at the young girl. She was blonde, small, shy, dressed per his orders as a cheerleader. He was bald, graying on the sides and fat. And perverted.
"Strip…" he said to the cheerleader, taking an enormous swig of the drug-soaked bubbly. The girl immediately obeyed, lifting off her sweater, tugging at her socks, pulling down her skirt and revealing her pert, little breasts.
He turned the other girl and said: "You, too." The second girl, a brunette, was dressed as a schoolgirl. She slowly removed her nylon stockings and her dress and slip, then had her companion undo the snap on her bra.
"Come, sit with me," he said, taking the two naked girls on to the couch with him. "Drink, drink up, girls and get me in a good mood. I have a party to do tonight."
He was getting old, he thought, as he casually fondled the young girls' bodies. He was getting sick of this kid's stuff. His friends and "business associates," knowing his taste in "developing" women, were always dropping off two or three young ones, just to keep in his good graces. But although it was tough to admit it, he now realized he needed maturity in his playthings. He wanted something unattainable.
That's why he was especially looking forward to meeting Viktor…
The submarine surfaced just off Coney Island. From here, it would ride quietly on the dark surface of the water right through Lower Bay off Brooklyn, up The Narrows and into the Upper Bay off the southern tip of Manhattan. The trip would take less than a half hour; there would still be a good four hours of night left when it arrived at its destination near Liberty Island.
The five men crowded in the sub's conning tower all wore black combat fatigues. Their faces had been charcoaled, as were their hands. Each man carried a silencer-equipped M-14 rifle. The sub's captain managed to squeeze his way up through them and quickly went over their coordinates one last time.
Their pickup point would be Ellis Island, the rendezvous time exactly three hours and 10 minutes after the time they left the boat. Miss the time or the location, same thing 24 hours later. Miss it again, and they would be on their own.
The submarine was from Free Canada; four of the charcoaled soldiers were Free Canadian commandos. The other was an American — an intelligence agent from Mike Fitzgerald's Syracuse Aerodrome. The tiny group had planned and trained extensively for this mission for the past two weeks. Now that D-Day had come and the tides were finally running right for them, they were anxious to get on with it.
The sub slowed to a halt just off Liberty Island. The captain called down a warning to his steering crew that the massive severed head of the Liberty Statue sat in ten feet of dirty water right off the sub's bow. The sub obediently backed-up for 20 feet then steered around toward deeper water.
The captain wished the men good luck as they scrambled down the tower's ladder and into a large rubber raft they had inflated. The captain looked up at the full moon. Smoke from a fire way uptown was drifting in front of it, giving everything struck by moonbeams a dark orange tinge. It took five brave men to go into that city alone, the captain thought as, the men paddled away. He hoped they were being well-paid.
The Lincoln Continental gun wagon roared through the abandoned intersection of West 41st Street and Broadway. The noise of the relentless explosions coming from the CorpCats and MaxArmy Inc. battle six blocks back, drowned out the car's own, muffler-free racket. Inside the car sat five soldiers plus a tail gunner. The powerful beams of the six modified headlights provided a path of light through the darkened streets. The gunmen were from The House of David; every man wore gray camouflage fatigues, long shoulder-length hair and a beard. Their squad commander — a former Israeli Army lieutenant — sat behind the wheel, careening the big car through a routine patrol of the southern edge of their territory.
If there was a moderate force in New York City, it was the House of David.
They were into diamonds — buying them, selling them. Most of their members were former Israeli soldiers who headed for America after parts of the Middle East were obliterated during the war. Through their leadership, the House Army was tough, well-trained and very dangerous in a fight. Although the smallest of the big league groups, no one on the island wanted to tangle with the House if they could at all avoid it.