Both cars hurtled toward the Mercedes and truck. The young man was half out of the truck's cab when he saw the van and the taxi speeding toward them. He reached into his jacket pocket for his pistol.
Blancanales raised the M-16.
"Don't kill him!" Lyons shouted. "Smith, sideways!" But Smith had anticipated the command, was veering to the side, giving Blancanales a clear line of fire through the open side window. His shot hit the young man in the foot, slamming him against the truck. Then he fell backward to the asphalt.
Davis gaped at his son falling, and lost his chance to escape as the cab screeched to a stop in front of the Mercedes and Taximan leaped out, his pistol pointed at Davis' face. The older man raised his hands. A second later, Lyons and Blancanales jumped from the van, pointing pistols down at the stunned young man.
The .223 had torn away the heel of his fashionable shoe. He held his foot in both hands, rolling on the asphalt, his face twisted in pain.
"Good shot." Lyons grinned at Blancanales. Then he took a card from his wallet, chanted aloud: "You are under arrest. You have the right to remain silent. You may..."
New York's columns of lights wheeled around them as the helicopter banked. Lyons saw the helipad's rectangle of red landing lights in the window in defiance of gravity. Then the lights sank and the sawtooth horizon of skyscrapers and night returned. The helicopter dropped straight down for landing. Lyons continued the interrogation of Davis and his son, whose Colombian driver's license identified him as Roberto Alcantara.
"We have photos of you together." Lyons told them. "We have photos of you..." he pointed at Alcantara "...with the pistol in your hand as you killed that man. The New York courts can send you away for life. But if you cooperate, we will not surrender you to North Carolina, where you killed two people last night. In that state, murder and conspiracy to commit murder are punishable by death. Do you understand? You have the choice between life or death."
Davis sneered, his gray aristocratic face becoming ugly, cunning. "We would like to speak to my lawyers immediately, if you don't mind. And there are several calls I'd like to make."
The helicopter bumped down. Agents on the roof threw the side doors open. Lyons grinned at Davis. "Oh, but I do mind."
Agents jerked the handcuffed Davis from his seat, quick-marched him across the roof to an open door. Lyons turned to Alcantara.
"You get special, extra-special personal attention." Lyons shoved Alcantara from the helicopter. Blancanales followed one step behind them. Agents half-dragged the limping Alcantara to the doorway and hustled him to the elevator. Before the doors closed, Lyons looked into the cold, sneering face of Alcantara. The man's face was a replica of his father's: younger, darker, but his hair certainly the same, and with the same ice-blue eyes, the same expression.
"If you want to live," Lyons told him, "you will cooperate with us."
"My father's lawyers will speak to you of this entirely unjustified arrest. You will soon learn that there are some men the police cannot touch."
Lyons grinned, looked at Blancanales. "Who said we're police?"
He saw Alcantara's sneer fail for an instant.
Speaking through an electronically secured telephone line to Washington, D.C., Lyons briefed his commander. "His son's name is Roberto Alcantara. The mother met Davis when he was working in Colombia twenty-five years ago. There was no room in Davis' career for a scandal and divorce, so he bought the woman off. Then he paid for the best schools, the best university for the boy. Along the way, Alcantara picked up some very red political ideas. He only saw eye to eye with his father when they decided to put their heads together and buy a country."
"Buy?" said Brognoia.
"Yeah. Seems so. Either buy one, or buy into one. It apparently irritated Davis that his son couldn't inherit WorldFiCor. So they worked out a scheme. Alcantara got the weapons and explosives, recruited the crazies. Davis got the money to pay for it all through a variety of international embezzlements, the latest involving a disgruntled Hungarian ex-Communist. Davis would have been the king, and his son the prince. But judging from how Alcantara operates, Davis would have died fast, and Alcantara would have been the number one man."
"This is great background," Brognola told him. "But listen now — how is this information going to get the terrorists out of the Tower?"
"There's more," Lyons said. "First of all, there's no way we can get in from the ground. Period. They have this psycho named Zuniga who spent months preparing for this. The garage and first floor are crisscrossed with booby-traps. No bomb squad or anti-terrorist team could get through in less than a day or two. Second, the Tower is wired with explosives and incendiaries. Alcantara intended to blow away the Tower with his crazies inside. That would have eliminated both the crazies and the WorldFiCor records.
"But something went wrong. Alcantara pushed the button and nothing happened.
"If Zuniga doesn't know the radio-detonator has failed, great. No problem. But if he does, there's no way he'll leave the Tower without a way to detonate the charges. Could be a fuse, a timer, something improvised. One wrong step and it's all over.
"Third, we're up against complete psychos. They won't be taken prisoner. When we rush them, if we give them time to think, they'll blow the whole show away. No doubt about it. So those are the three strikes against us."
"You're saying we can't break them?" Brognola asked.
"Not me. I'm just telling you what we're up against. On the positive side, the crazies have set their evacuation in motion. You heard that they finally asked for a helicopter?"
"Right. Three minutes ago."
"Alcantara had told them to demand a helicopter to take them from the Tower helipad to a secret location upstate. Then he'd get them out of the country. Of course, that was all make-believe. Alcantara intended them to be blown sky high. But because that didn't happen, they've followed orders and demanded the chopper."
"So how does the helicopter figure in your plans? You want to be in it when we send it, come down on the terrorists? That's exactly what they'll expect."
"No, I've got a trick they won't expect. One of those crazies in the Tower, Zuniga, knows who their leader is. He's the only one who's seen and talked with Alcantara. I want two helicopters in the air, one from the City of New York to take the terrorists away, as negotiated, and the second a big tourist chopper, with Alcantara on it. He'll come down, go straight to Zuniga, tell him it's a last-minute change of plan to confuse the feds. And in the time it takes to explain the change to Zuniga and the other psychos, we'll come up behind them and put them down. It's the only way I can figure to create confusion.
"And we can get Alcantara to do it. He's a complete coward. It's one thing for him to tell his crazies to terrorize and murder and maim people, but when we put a blow-torch up near his face, he told us everything. That poor little rich boy will do anything we tell him."
"And how does that defuse the bomb down below?"
"I'll have Alcantara ask Zuniga for the trigger unit to radio-detonate the building — so he can have the honor, et cetera. If Zuniga gives it to him, great. If not, Alcantara will ask for an explanation. We'll have Alcantara wired for sound, of course. As soon as Zuniga tells him how the charges are fused, we hit them. Then we defuse the charges."
"You said when they go up on the roof, you'll come up behind them. How will you get into the Tower?"
"That's the easiest part. There's some people trapped on the fifty-third floor. Zuniga's crew doesn't know they're up there — yet. We'll shoot a cable through the window, slide in."