They emerged on a quiet, shady street with tall granite apartment buildings on either side. Jack read the street sign: Grace Court. From a canopied apartment entrance a half block away, a uniformed doorman gaped at them.
Taj eyed the doorman as he rose. “Come, we must move before we attract more attention.”
“Where are we going? What about the attaché? Don’t you need it?”
The man’s narrow face grimaced. “It’s too risky to retrieve the case now. We must proceed to the safe house.”
Jack nodded. “Will Tanner be there?”
“Perhaps,” said Taj.
After escaping the rats and the flood, Jack and Taj had moved through the sewer system until they were blocks away from Atlantic Avenue. Even now they could still hear the sirens blaring, but the noise, the chaos, the death seemed far away from this peaceful, sun-washed block.
At the end of Montague Street, Taj guided Jack through a shady park entrance and around a flagpole. A sign told Jack they had arrived at the Brooklyn Promenade. They entered a concrete strip of public space built over the busy Brooklyn/Queens Expressway. The Promenade offered a panoramic view of the East River and Lower Manhattan beyond. Behind them were rows of pricey townhouses and apartments. Roaring up from directly beneath was the steady noise of rush hour traffic.
Beyond the raised Promenade, the Brooklyn piers jutted into the East River, its muddy water dotted with tugboats, barges, and pleasure craft. Then came the banks of Manhattan Island. Beside the green expanse of Battery Park rose the granite buildings of the Financial District. At its heart stood the gleaming, massive twin towers of the World Trade Center. The towers dwarfed everything around them. Reflecting the bright June sky, the golden sun danced across their mammoth glass facades.
Taj touched his arm. “We cannot linger here, Mr. Lynch.”
The Afghani gestured for Jack to follow him. They walked the length of the esplanade until they reached the last bench. Beneath a nearby guardrail, cars and trucks moved on the expressway below.
“There is a cell phone hidden under that park bench,” said Taj. “With it we can speak with our associates, summon transportation. The phone is to be used only once.”
Several dog walkers passed them, along with a woman pushing a stroller. The bench was empty, its wooden surfaces covered with scratchffiti. Jack sat down. Taj kept watch. “The phone is taped under the seat, Mr. Lynch.”
Jack stooped over, reached under the seat and felt around. “I can’t find—”
A garrote made of strong hemp dropped over Jack’s head and closed around his throat. He grabbed for the thin cord, his fingers digging into the flesh of his own neck. The noose only tightened.
As Jack’s breathing was cut off, Taj loomed over him. Jack felt hot breath on his cheek as a voice hissed in his ear.
“If you were really Shamus Lynch, you would know I am not Taj, but his brother, Khan Ali Kahlil. Remember the name for it is the last you will ever hear…”
14. THE FOLLOWING TAKES PLACE BETWEEN THE HOURS OF 10 A.M. AND 11 A.M. EASTERN DAYLIGHT TIME
“All in all it’s a pretty shoddy operation. The technicians didn’t even bother to take out the old bathroom pipes in the ceiling before they set up shop. And yet they went through all the trouble of glassing in this computer room and installing air-conditioning and high-tech scrubbers. What were they thinking?”
Mickey Chen couldn’t keep the disdain from his voice as he lumbered to a chair and settled in. At five-foot-nine and close to three hundred pounds, Mickey managed to fill the tiny workstation, forcing Milo into a corner.
“Just look at that mess up there.”
Milo followed the man’s gaze to the broken plaster over his head. Through that ragged hole and several others, he saw a web of crisscrossing rusty pipes.
“What about explosives? Booby traps?”
Mickey shook his head. “The CTU bomb squad’s been here and gone.” He laid a meaty arm over the monitor screen. “She’s a sweet baby, this one. You gonna give her a go?”
“Oh, you first. Be my guest,” Milo replied.
Mickey had a habit of referring to all computers in the feminine form. Jamey Farrell said it was because a computer with a girl’s name was the closest the Hawaiian programmer was ever going to get to a romance.
The glass doors hissed. A short, curly-haired brunette entered the computer room, bringing in her own briefcase computer. It contained the decryption programs she would need to bypass or overcome the mainframe’s security and download the data.
Mickey grinned at Danielle Henkel. “About time you showed. This little lady was getting impatient.”
“Blow it out your ass, Mickey,” said Nell.
“Speaking of an impatient lady, I have to make a phone call before we get started.” Milo pulled out his cell, tried to get a signal.
“Not in here, dude,” said Mickey. “This room is shielded.”
“Okay, I’ll be right back.” Milo walked to the door.
“Don’t expect us to wait for you,” called Mickey. “Me and this little lady have been waiting too long for this night.”
Mickey swung around in the chair and began tapping the keyboard to probe the computer’s security system.
On the other side of the glass wall, the temperature was much warmer, but at least Milo could acquire a signal. Turning his back on the others, he called up Tina’s number from his directory and pressed send.
Milo placed the phone to his ear, but the sound of the first ring was drowned out by the hiss of a gushing spray, followed by shrieks of confusion, terror, and agony.
Milo turned, gagged, dropped his cell.
Inside the glass-enclosed computer room, Pyrex tubes inside the “rusty pipes” in the ceiling ruptured the moment Mickey Chen tried to gain access to the data without first entering the proper security code. But it was not water pouring down on Milo’s colleagues. Mickey had inadvertently triggered the computer’s real firewall — a downpour of scorching acid. While Milo watched helplessly, the caustic chemical shower rained down on Mickey Chen and Nell Henkel, burning great smoking pits in their living flesh.
Mercifully the screaming stopped almost as soon as it began. A white chemical mist instantly filled the computer room as the acid fumed. Inside the haze, flashes of sizzling electricity erupted as thousands of volts of electricity crackled through the computer room. The searing, melting bodies flopped in an obscene dance before they toppled to the gouged and pitted concrete.
Somewhere in his horrified mind, Milo deduced that the caustic chemical was probably hydrochloric acid, an excellent conductor of electricity. A shower of the stuff would effectively fry the circuits along with anyone tampering with the computer before any data could be recovered.
Choking back the hot bile that rose in his throat, Milo watched as the chemical soup continued to cook away flesh, muscle, hair — until nothing remained but twitching, smoking mounds of flesh and bone.
Jack’s vision fogged as oxygen deprivation scrambled his brain. Though weakening, he continued to claw at the noose around his throat and struggle against the man who loomed over him. But the Afghani’s full weight was on Jack, pinning him to the bench. Ali Kahlil grunted with the effort as he pulled the noose tighter.
Jack could not break the man’s grip, so he tried a desperate bid to fool his assassin. Abruptly Jack ceased struggling, went limp. After a long moment the pressure of the noose and the man’s weight eased slightly — enough for Jack to suddenly shift position and push upward with all his strength.