The End Game (3 page)

3

PAWN TO C4

M
ike pulled in across from the Dominion Bar on Broadway in Bayonne, not five minutes from Mr. Hodges's house.

Nicholas checked out the cozy-looking neighborhood bar, heard no wild yells, no blaring music. “Maybe they have food. A pizza would be good. I'm ready to chew off my arm at the elbow.”

“If they don't, there's a pizza place next door that's still got its lights on. We can get a slice.”

“A slice? You're talking like a girl. I want a whole pie all to myself. I'll bet you could eat a whole pie, too.”

He was right about that. “Bartender first, then stomachs.”

Inside, the Dominion Bar was all dark wood, dim lights, and a long varnished copper bar with wine bottles lined up on shelves along the mirrored wall. There were twenty stools and six booths. It was a place for local couples on dates, or people stopping in after work before heading home, or for widowed men to feel comfortable to have human contact, and Nicholas wondered: Did the drunk live in the neighborhood?

Mike read his mind. “Mr. Hodges said he'd seen the guy before, which means he's a regular. Since this place isn't a dive, I can't
imagine he's a low-on-the-food-chain roughneck. Probably he's at least a supervisor at Bayway, otherwise he wouldn't fit in here.”

They walked through the large room, checking out the few remaining Monday-night customers. Mike checked everyone out. “I don't see any guy here who remotely fits Mr. Hodges's description. Or the guy's friend.”

Mike showed her creds to the Dominion bartender, the owner, Mr. Hodges had told them, a tiny woman who looked like a middle-aged Peter Pan. She was wiping down the bar, humming an old Elton John tune under her breath. Over a healthy right breast was a nametag: May Anne.

Mike introduced both herself and Nicholas.

They saw instant alarm. “What's the matter? I didn't do anything, I promise. I own this place and I've never had any health violations, ever, and—”

“No,” Mike said over her. “We simply need information. Do you know a Mr. Richard Hodges?”

“Dicker? Well, yes, of course I do. He comes in most every night. He always has the house merlot, tells me how his day went, asks me how I'm doing, and then goes home to bacon sandwiches. It's a shame about his wife; she was such a nice lady. Listen, I know Dicker wouldn't have done anything, really—”

Nicholas lightly laid his hand on her arm. “No, Mr. Hodges is fine, he's in no trouble. He was here earlier tonight?”

“Yes, he was. Is he okay? Has something happened to him?”

“No, no, he's fine, May Anne. We need your help. Now, we need to know if you remember a man who was sitting right behind Mr. Hodges, in a booth, a very drunk man. Tall, on the thin side, grayish hair, middle-aged—”

“Oh, yeah, that's our local idiot, Larry Reeves.” May Anne rolled
her eyes. “God sent him to punish me, I know it. He doesn't even live in the neighborhood, but he comes here maybe twice, three times a week. He's always pushing the limits on the weekends, drives me nuts. I was about to cut him off tonight when his friend took him out to drive him to Bayway; that's where he works. It was odd, though, because I've never known Larry to get that drunk before his shift, and here he is a night supervisor. Why? What's the fool done?”

Nicholas's heart revved. “You said he was going on shift?”

“Yes, he's third shift, a supervisor, like I told you. But you know, I think his friend had to take him home first, to shower and sober up. No way he could show up in that condition.”

Mike leaned over the bar. “Do you know his friend's name?”

“Can't say I do, he's fairly new to the bar. Does he live in the neighborhood? I can ask Clem, he's back cleaning up in the kitchen. He knows everything about everybody.” May Anne turned and called out, “Clem, please come out a minute. I need you!”

The floor started to shake, rippling in waves, like an earthquake, and a muffled roar filled the bar. Nicholas's mind registered
explosion
before he hit the floor, pulling Mike beneath him. He yelled, “Everyone get down!”

Bottles shimmied and dropped, glasses and bottles skidded off tables and crashed to the floor to shatter, spewing glass everywhere. The windows flexed and burst, sending shards of glass hurtling through the air. May Anne was grabbing bottles as they toppled, but it was a lost cause. The few customers were yelling, diving for cover, hands over their heads. Nicholas felt a shard of glass slice into the back of his hand. He realized Mike was struggling to get out from under him.

The shuddering stopped.

“Get off me, Nicholas, get off. What blew up?” But she knew it had to be the Bayway Refinery, as Nicholas did.

He rolled off her, yelled, “Is everyone okay?”

People started to stand, all of them clearly shaken. May Anne came out from behind the bar to help brush off her customers, soothing them as best she could. As Mike and Nicholas ran out of the bar, she heard May Anne yell, “Everyone, calm down. You're all okay. I've got insurance! Drinks are on the house!”

Mike and Nicholas rushed outside to hear car alarms, loud and piercing, and people shouting, pouring out of their homes, out of the pizza parlor. Glass littered the sidewalks. Nicholas jerked open the driver's-side door and shouted, “We can help, Mike, hurry. You drive.”

Mike was turning the key in the ignition when their cells began to ring. She floored the Vic down the street as Nicholas answered his. It was their boss, Milo Zachery.

“Sir, is it the Bayway Refinery?”

“Yes, a huge explosion. No reports in yet, so I don't have any idea how bad it is. Where are you and Agent Caine?”

“We're nearby, sir. We'll be on-site in five minutes. Listen, we met with a man who tipped the hotline.” Nicholas told him about Larry Reeves, gave Zachery the description Hodges had given them, found Reeves's home address on his laptop, and read it off to Zachery. “Sir, we need agents to be on the lookout for him. There's little doubt he's involved in the bombing.”

“Got it,” Zachery said. “Report back as soon as you can. And don't do anything stupid—that means heroic—either of you. Catch these guys.”

“Will do, sir.”

Mike drove fast over the Bayonne Bridge, past Newark Airport
and into Elizabeth. They saw flames and black smoke visible from the tip of the island, lighting up the night sky like a huge torch. As they neared the refinery, they saw broken glass all over the sidewalks and streets, dozens of people crowded outside, staring toward the refinery. The flames made it bright as day.

It had taken Mike less than ten minutes to get to the refinery, and they spoke once the whole way. Mike said, “You know it's COE, has to be.”

“Of course it was. Up until now, it's been small stuff, refineries away from where people live, and the grids haven't impacted too many people, either. But now they've upped the ante. This is a big leap, Mike. They're now saying they can cause us grave hurt.”

Nicholas and Mike had taken over from a small task force that had gotten nowhere, until now. And they hadn't been in time. Even with Hodges's tip, their home-run break, they hadn't been in time.

COE had to know there were people working in the refinery, and that meant injuries and deaths. Why had they suddenly become bona fide terrorists?

Nicholas stared at the swelling orange flames that were turning the air acrid and bitter, the thick billowing black smoke scorching the very air they sucked into their lungs.

This was going to be bad.

4

PAWN TO G6

Bayway Refinery

Elizabeth, New Jersey

T
hey arrived on scene along with most of the first responders. Mike speeded through the gates of the refinery, onto the long road leading to the huge converters, closer and closer to the fire. When the road ran out, blocked by a large chunk of metal, she pulled to a stop and flew out of the car, running toward the flames, Nicholas beside her, both dodging the debris still raining down. Nicholas grabbed her arm, jerked her back to him. He pulled off his leather jacket, ripped off his shirtsleeve, and wrapped it around her face. “Tie it tight.”

He ripped off the other sleeve and covered his own nose and mouth. Still, the choking black smoke seeped in, making them wheeze and cough. And then they were off. It was like running through a battlefield toward a wall of flames, he thought, as he shrugged his jacket back on. It wasn't much protection, but some. Mike was wearing her motorcycle jacket, heavier than his, and that was good.

They sucked in their breaths and kept running. He heard Mike scream, “Over here, Nicholas!”

He changed course, dodging flying rubble, banging his hip against a concrete pylon, there to ensure the security of this place, only it hadn't done any good. The bombers had gotten in despite all the safety precautions.

Nicholas saw a man pinned under a piece of the wreckage. His skin was deathly white and blood seeped from his legs, black in the night.

Nicholas moved behind the man, nodded to Mike. “One, two, three,” she yelled, and Nicholas pulled up the stinging hot metal, burning his hands, heaving with all his strength while Mike tugged the man clear. He dropped the metal back to the ground with a crash barely heard in the hellish chaos around them.

“Bloody hell.” He shook his hands, rubbed them together, wincing at the blisters that had popped up. He hadn't thought to get gloves from the car's boot, brain that he was.

“There's another man over there!”

Nicholas saw a large chunk of metal sticking out of the man's neck and the odd angle of his head. “He's dead. Keep moving.”

Mike swallowed, nodded. They wound their way closer to the center of the blast site. The heat was incredible, the flames shooting madly into the night, singeing their arms and hair, but they kept moving, picking through the rubble, looking for survivors.

“Here's one,” Nicholas shouted, and they dragged the man free, picked him up by arms and legs, and ran him back to where firemen had set up a protected space for the arriving EMTs to tend to the wounded.

They lost count of the men they'd carried back to the staging area. Finally a firefighter stepped in their way, hands up.

“Hey. Stop, both of you. I don't know who you are, but you don't have the right equipment. Get back away from here, now. I don't want the two of you hurt as well.”

Mike shouldered her way past him. “These men are going to die if we don't get back in there. Help us or get out of the way.”

The firefighter opened his mouth to yell at her when Nicholas grabbed his arm, saw his name on his jacket.
J. JONES
. “Don't bother, mate. She's unstoppable. Come on, we could use your help. We'll tell your supervisor you were escorting us. Move it, now.”

Without waiting to see what the man did, Nicholas ran after Mike into the flame-lit night.

Twenty minutes after the bomb went off, the scene looked like a Hieronymus Bosch nightmare scape. The air was still ripe with the scent of carnage, men stumbling from the converters, others slumped silent on the ground, bloody, groaning, so many others more seriously hurt and bleeding in the staging area. In that instant, this hell shot Nicholas back to a place more than three years before, in another part of the world, and the terrible mistakes made, and he felt a ferocious hit of pain and guilt.

The firefighter who'd tried to stop them, Jones, was at his elbow, pointing and shouting. Nicholas whirled round. He thought they'd cleared everyone in this quadrant. He couldn't see any more bodies in the hellish light.

“What is it? I don't see anyone.”

Jones yanked on his shoulder, pulled him backward, shouting, “No, look, over there. Bomb, bomb!” and Nicholas saw a black backpack on the ground, with wires sticking out of the top. His heart froze.

Mike was a good twenty feet in front of him. He sprinted to her, caught her, grabbed her hand, and dragged her as fast as he could
away from the backpack into the darkness, yelling, “Secondary device, run, Mike, run!”

They ran toward Jones, who was still screaming at everyone to fall back, fall back.

The backpack exploded, and the world around them shattered.

5

KNIGHT TO C3

N
icholas barely had time to fling his arms up to protect his face before he was hurled backward to the ground, unconscious. A year, a day, moments, he didn't know, but when he came to, he was lying facedown on the oily tarmac. He shook his head, pulled himself together. He saw Mike lying ten yards away, sprawled on her back, legs and arms flung out, Jones lying beside her. Neither of them was moving. He saw something dark and wet on the ground near Jones's head—blood, yes,
blood
was the word he was looking for—and Mike still wasn't moving. He tried to stand up but couldn't, he had no balance.

He crawled to Mike, pressed his filthy fingers to the pulse in her neck. She was breathing, thank the good Lord.

He pulled her onto his lap and held her close, rocking her. “Come on, Mike, wake up, come on, sweetheart, you can do it.”

She began to moan low in her throat and he said over and over, “Come on, Mike, come back to me, you can do it. I've promised a dozen years of good works if you'll be okay. Come on, Mike, wake up, do it now before I stroke out.” Finally, she twitched and opened her eyes. He looked into her beautiful blue eyes, now vague with
confusion, and knew such relief he wanted to shout with it. He wondered if this was how she'd felt in Geneva, with him out cold on the ground, the building exploding behind him? Her glasses lay on the ground beside her, incredibly unbroken. He handed them to her, watched her shove them back on.

They'd both lost their shirtsleeve masks. Mike's hair was sticking out in all directions. Her face was grimed with soot, but he could clearly see the big bruise on her cheek and the beginnings of a black eye.

Amazingly, she smiled up at him. He pressed his forehead to hers, knowing his heart was still pounding too fast, the fear still eating deep. “Tell me you're okay. Promise me you're okay.”

“Yes, don't worry, Nicholas, I'm only battered a bit. You look pretty scary. Can you believe it? My glasses aren't broken. You okay?”

He nodded. “But our savior, Jones, he doesn't look good.”

Together they crawled to where Jones lay motionless. He was still, too still. Mike leaned close, said over her shoulder, “He's breathing. He lost his hardhat, but he's wearing his fireman's jacket, it cushioned his fall.” Mike patted his face, ran her hands over his head, down over his shoulders, while Nicholas felt his arms and legs. She patted his face again. “Mr. Jones? Come on, wake up, tell me you're okay.”

A few moments later his eyelids began to flutter, and he was back with them. “Wh-what's happening?”

“Don't worry about it,” Nicholas said as he pulled a handkerchief out of his pocket, amazingly still snowy white. “Here, your nose is bleeding.”

Mike sat back on her knees, watched Jones take a swipe at the blood. She said, “Hey, way to get out of the way, dude.”

He gave a ghost of a laugh. “Do I look as bad as you guys?”

“Probably worse,” Mike said. “You have blood smeared all over your face.”

“Feels like I busted my nose again. Weird, but it doesn't hurt like the first time. You guys all right?” He sounded like he had a bad cold.

“Bumps and bruises,” Nicholas said. “Can you stand?”

They hauled him to his feet, all three clinging to one another for balance. Mike said, “You know the drill, keep pressure on your nose. What's your name?”

That took him a minute, then he grinned. “Jimbo, everyone calls me Jimbo.”

“Okay, Jimbo,” Nicholas said. “I'm Nicholas and this is Mike. Let's get you back to the EMTs.”

The scene behind them hadn't worsened after the second blast. Since they'd been closest, and they were alive and nearly walking, it hadn't been a very strong bomb. Nicholas thought back to the placement—the backpack had been lying on the ground out in the open, almost as if it had fallen off the wearer's back. Perhaps it was the bomber's and he'd been running away from the first blast.

Nicholas said, “This is curious. I mean, a second bomb—that's the MO normally used by terrorist organizations to achieve maximum death tolls by taking out the first responders. What's going on? COE has never pulled this trick before.”

“No, they haven't.” Mike looked around at the devastation. “This makes no sense. If it's COE and not a new wild-hair come to the party, they've changed their ways. Up until now, that second smaller bomb should have been the one and only one detonated, not that big honker first bomb. This is scary, Nicholas, really scary.”

A gaggle of firefighters was headed their way, shouting. Nicholas waved them off. They were fine, no reason to waste resources.
Jimbo still had Nicholas's wadded-up handkerchief pressed to his nose, was using his other hand to brush the dirt off his uniform.

Nicholas said, “Thanks for spotting the bag, Jimbo. You saved our lives.”

Jimbo Jones grinned, showing a mouth and teeth rimmed in blood. “Buy me a beer sometime, guys. Now, you two need to get out of here, to safety. Really, I'm okay now. You can leave the rest to us.” He started to hand Nicholas back the handkerchief, shook his head at himself, and jogged off in a drunken zigzag pattern to rejoin his company.

More fire trucks were arriving, a parade of red and white lights, sirens shrieking.

“How many fire companies do you think have been called, Mike?”

“I don't know. Of course Bayway has their own resources for this type of emergency, but they need all the help they can get tonight. This explosion was certainly much bigger than anything Bayway's people could handle alone.”

“Has an explosion on this massive a scale ever happened before here at Bayway?”

“There was a major explosion in 1970. For a while, everyone believed it was the work of revolutionaries, since the FBI received a call from a man who claimed to be a member of the United Socialist Revolutionary Front. His demand: release of political prisoners. The FBI dug deep, but it turned out to be an accident, not a bomb. Then a smaller explosion ripped through the refinery in '79. Again, a suspected bomb, but it turned out to be another accident.” Mike looked around her. “But this wasn't an accident. This was a huge purposeful hit.”

Nicholas tried to wipe off her face, but it didn't do much good
since his hands were black with soot. “COE designed this hit for maximum damage and disruption, and they didn't give a crap about innocent lives.”

Her hand tightened on his arm. “We've done all we can, Nicholas. Let's regroup and find these bastards.”