She didn’t see the knife as she went to hold him and rest her head on his shoulder. The sharp shooting pain in her stomach followed the punch that forced the breath out of her. Then searing pain as Number 1 pulled the knife up through her sternum, cutting her open like a filleted fish. She fell away with an expression of fear and seeming disappointment. In a few seconds, she stopped breathing. He stood there, looking at her, zipping his fly. It had to be done. She would have threatened the whole operation.
He returned to the kitchen and threw the bloody knife down on the counter. “Clean it up” was all he said. He left the kitchen now filled with the new respect he had gained from among those he would lead into death.
The next night, Number 5 waited until the deli was empty and entered the store. He approached the Pakistani immigrant who scrapped together enough money to purchase the store from the old Jewish couple who ran it since the ‘30s. Number 5 grabbed a newspaper and threw a dollar on the counter, “Did a girl come here asking about the Store & Lock?”
“Um yes, a few days ago. She was asking about that other guy.”
Number 5 looked around and, seeing no one near, raised a street-silenced .22 gun and shot the owner once in the forehead. The owner crumpled behind the counter. Number 5 then banged on the register and pulled all the cash out of the opened drawer. On the way out, he turned the “open” sign to “closed” and walked in a direction away from the Store & Lock. A block later, he removed the hooded shirt and his big white sneakers, tossing them into a trash barrel. He threw the .22 caliber pistol with the 3 chambered, ghetto silencer on the end, made from plastic water bottles, into the next dumpster. Making it easy for the police, who would certainly view the deli’s security tape, and find only the evidence of one of the local black or Hispanic gang’s guilt.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
It was a problem of circular logic. Owing to Bill’s national security position, the ride from LaGuardia for Janice and him was a mini-motorcade. Two Secret Service cars sandwiched an armor-plated Chevy Tahoe with flashing lights and two armed-to-the-teeth agents in the front. A New York City police car led the way. Bill pondered whether this was better than Janice and him just getting a cab and melting in with the thousands of others headed to the Big Apple. Didn’t the flashing lights and sirens say “Aim here!” to any would-be bad guy?
Turning to Janice, he suddenly realized that all this security made her feel safer and therefore the argument in his head stopped. He placed his hand on her protruding belly as she sat in the half-rotated crescent moon curve a pregnant woman assumes when sitting. When he thought how the lights and agents also proclaimed “Stay away from my wife and kid,” he took a deeper breath, relaxed a little, and watched the skyline of New York loom larger as the convoy raced through the unusually light early morning traffic of the Grand Central Parkway.
On the other side of the limo, Citi Field passed by, quiet in the morning light. The only barely noticeable activity was the small smattering of people and trucks along with a helicopter lashed down in the parking field.
Number 1 watched from the grip truck as the small cadre of cars with their flashing lights sped by. His walkie-talkie crackled. It was Number 4.
“Insurance has arrived.”
Number 1 looked down at his copy of Chemical Engineering Today and the headline, “Hiccock to Address National Meeting in New York City.” Beneath was the yellow-highlighted paragraph ending with “catch a show while we are there.”
He turned and saw Number 8 checking the hydraulic line under the rear cowling of the craft. In the camera truck, the camera department was loading magazines. In a few hours, the Caliphate would begin. This one act would serve as a signal to all the cells, all the groups, all the freedom fighters to attack, overwhelm, and start the beginning of the end of the West’s stranglehold on an entire culture. On a personal level, his brother’s incarceration at the hands of the Infidels would be avenged. As he threw the magazine down on the table, a Time magazine from months before, with Bill on the cover, was right under it.
The Waldorf Astoria is an historic, world-class hotel on New York’s Park Avenue. Kings, queens, and presidents have stayed in its opulent suites. To Bill’s dad, the impressive part was that their room was one floor below the famed ballroom where Guy Lombardo ushered in every New Year for decades.
“It just wasn’t New Year’s until Guy Lombardo played ‘Auld Lang Syne’ at midnight,” the elder Hiccock explained.
“Gee that’s great, Pop, I’ve got my meeting now. You and Mom going to be okay here?”
“Very,” he said as he poked at the overstuffed welcome basket, eyeing the chocolate goodies amidst the fruits, nuts, and jellybeans.
Janice was unpacking her dress for this afternoon and smoothing it out as Bill sat at his laptop and reviewed the top 50 e-mails forwarded by his staff. He quickly perused the headings and decided to go right to the SCIAD network. Only three messages in his in-box were from the Element ring.
One caught his eye with the heading, “Remo calculator — Q.E.D.” What he found when he opened it was a program that was based on the data that Peter Remo’s original “smuggled” Harmonic Epsilon manuscript furnished. It was the combined work of two nuclear physicists, three mathematicians, and two astronomers, who collaborated over the SCIAD network. Using GPS positioning and celestial charts, it calculated the nuclear cusps on the face of the Earth using the calculations and the formulas in the text of a book that purportedly got many people killed to protect its contents. The notation that accompanied this new software proudly boasted, “In 1968, the celestial and global data available was accurate to only eight decimal points. Today, thanks to shuttle flights, geosynchronous satellites, and the Hubble space telescope, we’re able to reach out 24 places beyond the decimal point.”
Just then, Cheryl knocked on his door. “Bill, your 10 o’clock is here.”
Bill looked at his watch and pulled out his iPad. He synced the e-mails to it while he adjusted his tie. He then took the twenty steps into the meeting in the adjoining suite and toward the rest of his day, which would end up at the Brooks Atkinson Theater with his wife and parents tonight.
“They will be dispatched by myself and Number 9,” Number 1 said to Number 8, referring to the two movie cops who just pulled up in their police cruiser.
Originally part of the TPF, the elite weapons and tactical patrol force of the old NYPD, today’s movie cops are more like New York City’s ambassadors to the film industry. In a good year, $3 billion dollars could be dropped into the city’s economy by movie and TV production. The NYPD Movie Unit was the key interface between a massive operating city bureaucracy and the day-to-day running of the multi-billion dollar film business. Most of the time, they stopped traffic or helped control crowds, usually acting as the shepherds of the private security people the movie companies hired. Many of those hires were ex-cops or moonlighting cops. In fact, in many cop shows and cop films, retired and moonlighting cops made a bundle as extras or tech advisors. It was safe to say that in the relatively small group of movie artisans and craftsmen, everybody knew or heard of everyone else. That made it odd that out of this whole crew, the only person these two cops knew was the catering truck guy, Sammy.