After giving the old, tall structure a long look, he raced out to Coney Island. There he drove by the New York Aquarium, where dolphins used to put on a show. He doubled back heading west on the Belt Parkway around Bay Ridge and back toward Manhattan. He passed under the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge, rolled down the window, surveying the half dozen chemical and container ships moored across the harbor, waiting their turn to unload cargo heading into port, or riding out a storm before sailing to the Atlantic Ocean.
As Merk drove, eyeing the long-hull ships anchored across the narrows on the Staten Island side of the harbor, he realized the scope of finding bombs in and around the eleven-mile long island of Manhattan was going to be a vast, long, and monumental task. It would prove especially true when factoring in that he was going to deploy no more than a dozen dolphins to cover such large bodies of water.
As he drove the last stretch on the Belt Parkway toward Leif Ericson Park at 66th Street and Fourth Avenue, Merk looked out at the ships on the long throat that led into New York Harbor between northern Staten Island and Bay Ridge, Brooklyn. Consumed in deep thought, Merk failed to notice a dark green car shadowing him in his right blind spot. He lifted a mobile phone to take a picture of a Chinese flagged freighter across the channel, when the car slammed into the front right panel of Merk’s vehicle, ramming it against the concrete median barrier. Brakes screeched. In a jolt airbags deployed from the steering column and door panel. The seat belt pulled taut as Merk’s face slammed into the airbag, scraping his cheek and forehead.
Merk heard a car door open and knew the assassin was coming for the kill. Locked in place, he frantically searched his pants pocket, pulled a knife out, and cut the seat belt away. With his left hand, he reached down for the seat recliner to lower the seat back when the first rounds swept across the windshield, ripping the interior of the car, bursting the airbag, blowing the rearview mirror apart. With all his force, Merk slammed his back against the seat, snapping the recline lock all the way back, in effect breaking the seat. That allowed him to roll into the backseat and pop open the rear door.
More bullets strafed the vehicle, chewing up the windows, roof, and hood of the car. The seats were being torn to pieces as Merk slithered low out of the vehicle. He looked under the car and saw a pair of black boots with jeans, as the assassin stopped to reload the next magazine.
In the cacophony of shells tearing into the vehicle a third time, other vehicles screeched to a halt; horns honked; people abandoned their cars and SUVs, screaming as they fled and retreated from the ambush. Merk rose up the concrete median barrier, glimpsed the head of the lanky assailant — a Middle Eastern man with olive skin, cropped brown hair — and rolled over the wall into the southbound lane of traffic. And then—
A car reacted to the firing and jammed on the brakes. Sliding into the concrete barrier, it just missed hitting Merk. Two more cars avoided the new crash, while other southbound vehicles skidded and screeched to halt, with a couple of them colliding in fender-benders.
The terrorist stepped cautiously around the front of the vehicle. He peered inside the cab, seeing the shredded airbags, cut seat belt, and surveyed the broken seat pushed to the back — nothing. He looked down at the asphalt, but didn’t see a trail of blood. He peered down the Belt Parkway, noticing the cars on his side of the northbound lanes had stopped, with other desperate motorists backing away, while others still abandoned their cars and fled on foot.
The assassin turned away from the panic and toward the median divider.…
On the other side of the barrier, Merk pinned his back against the concrete, making his body area small. He looked up at the crash victim in the car, and watched the injured man raise his head, his one eye opening with blood streaming down his face. The airbag in his vehicle didn’t deploy. When his open eye widened with fear, the injured man tried to close the door in a futile attempt to escape. Merk kicked it shut and reached up as the gunman stuck the assault rifle over the side. Merk grabbed hold of the hot barrel, pulling the assassin down.
Bursts of gunfire pelted the asphalt around Merk, like the nose of a jackhammer, hitting him with spats of flak from the shrapnel and asphalt. The assassin’s trembling hands refused to let go, as the weapon’s recoil tried to shake Merk’s strong grip. Merk refused. He reached up and pulled the terrorist over the barrier, slamming his face into the blacktop. Merk rolled on top of him and headbutted the assassin in a jarring blow. Blood poured from the assassin’s nose.
With speed, Merk chopped the side of the assassin’s head and then struck his throat, cracking cartilage with a fierce blow, knocking the terrorist out cold. Merk’s killer instinct had returned. With rifle in hand, Merk pivoted on one knee, raised the barrel as if to fire the weapon, and watched the other terrorist scramble back to the green car, jump in it, and drive off.
Injured, bruised with scrapes to his face, a welt on his head and blood running from his nose and lips, Merk pulled the magazine out and watched the green car speed away. The car dashed off the parkway on the Belt’s last exit.
A piercing whistle droned through Merk’s ears and burrowed into his skull. Dazed, Merk tried to shake the whistling sound, to no avail.
He searched the roadway on the northbound side, looking for his mobile phone. Some fifty feet back up the road he saw it lying in three pieces. Holding the rifle in one hand and the magazine in the other, Merk stepped to the crashed car, opened the door, and asked the injured driver if he could use his cell phone to make a call on behalf of the US Navy. The injured man nodded in pain.
Merk gave the rifle and magazine to the bloodied man to hold; he looked up in wonder. “I hate guns,” Merk said, tapping Jenny’s number. As it started to ring, he put two fingers on the man’s bloody neck and felt his pulse. Merk made a gesture to the injured man letting him know that he was going to live, when Jenny King answered the call.
“Hey, Memo, are you listening?… A tango tried to take me out on the Belt Parkway. His partner escaped in a banged-up green Buick,” Merk said.
“Got it, Blue,” Jenny replied, not wanting to use Merk’s name either for OpSec reasons. “You and I will need a secure way to communicate going forward. I was right. SEA hacked Dante’s smartphone in Somaliland. The tangos know what you look like.”
Sirens wailed and chirped in the background; the police were on their way.
Merk felt relieved. He realized that for the first time in months he was standing on US soil. It was good to be home, even if he was under the duress of a terrorist attack.
Chapter Seventy-Three
Police cruisers and motorcycles escorted the ambulance after it picked up the unconscious terrorist on the Belt Parkway, placed him on a gurney, and put the gurney into an ambulance with a pair of FBI agents making sure the handcuffed terrorist wouldn’t come to and try to escape.
A CIA agent filed Merk into a black SUV with dark tinted windows. He slid over to the middle seat next to an upset Jenny King, who gave her lover a hard look as a CIA medic stepped in, closed the door, and attended to the cuts and abrasions Merk suffered in the car crash and firefight. The medic said in a demure voice, “You don’t follow rules, do you?” Merk smiled.
“Don’t ever pull that crap again. Next time ask me to cover your dorsal fin. You grab an assault rifle from a terrorist and do what? You give it away?” Jenny shouted in disbelief.
“Will I be on the news tonight?”
“The news? Hell yes,” she said, flicking his ear with her finger. “Merk, you’re not a SEAL anymore. This is the twenty-first century and social media dominates.” She held up her mobile phone. “Look at the Twitter feeds coming out of the local TV stations.… Pictures taken by drivers of the accident.” Jenny showed him the pictures and videoclips of Merk dazed, of him hiding behind the median barrier, of him wrestling the assassin, of him handing the rifle while tending to the injured driver as he made a call, of him inspecting the bullet-ridden crashed rent-a-car. “Very photogenic. I’m sure the admirals and Director Hogue will be pleased to see this.”