Worst Case (Michael Bennett 3)

He’d made it. He was in the maze of downtown now. This was going to happen. Absolutely nothing could stop him now.

Mooney found the Bowery and took it to St. James Place and farther south onto Pearl. He thought he would feel nervous as he neared his final destination, but it was the exact opposite. He’d never felt so elated, so clean. He was coming into contact with the sublime now.

Stopping the stolen taxi on Pearl half a block north of Beaver, Mooney looked out on the compact downtown skyline. Austere modern glass cliff faces squeezed between soaring Beaux Arts granite facades. An entire vista built by greed, he thought. By evil and slavery and war.

Was it any wonder that, even before the two attacks on the World Trade Center, the area had retained such a violent, bloody history? The 1970 Hard Hat Riot, where hundreds of thug blue-collar workers severely beat the members of an antiwar demonstration. The 1975 Fraunces Tavern bombing by the Puerto Rican separatist group FALN, which had killed four people. As far back as 1920, a wagon loaded with iron slugs and a hundred pounds of dynamite had been set off by anarchists in front of the New York Stock Exchange, killing thirty-three people.

History really does repeat itself, Francis thought as he opened his bag.

He began to methodically prepare the boys and doorman and himself. Wordlessly, he stepped out with them onto the sidewalk. A pudgy Asian businesswoman coming out of an Au Bon Pain in front of them screamed before throwing herself back inside.

Francis gazed at the monstrous American flag draped down the massive Corinthian columns of the Stock Exchange’s famous Neoclassical facade. He looked at the maze of steel barricades and concrete car stops that provided blast cushion, to use the parlance of counter-terror circles. There was about a regiment of heavily armed law enforcement on the sidewalk. They stood beside Emergency Service panel trucks, holding rifles and black telescope-like Geiger counters. He was supposed to get by them?

A snatch of Nietzsche came to him, comforted him.

He who has a why to live can bear almost any how.

Mooney and the three young men were turning the corner of Exchange Place and Broad when the bomb dogs started up. He was linked to the men with strand upon strand of the det cord and strips of plastic explosive. Tangled together in the thick clothesline-like explosive, they looked strange and terrifying, a cross between performance artists and victims of a construction accident.

The cocking of automatic rifles from the SWAT cops behind the steel barricades rang down the narrow trench of the street as Francis shuffled toward them, connected to the two boys and the doorman. The police were converging on him as he made it to the barricade closest to the Exchange’s corner employee entrance.

An older, pugnacious-looking buzz-cut cop in a suit and trench coat was the first to reach them. His name was Dennis Quinn, and he was the Stock Exchange’s security chief for the day shift. Francis knew all about him, had done hours of extensive research on the man, in fact.

Quinn had served ten years in the Marine Corps and another twenty in the FBI before landing the well-paying Exchange security job. The middle-aged man yelled into a collar mic as he drew a Ruger .40 caliber and pointed it at Mooney’s head.

“I’d watch where I pointed that thing, if I were you,” Francis said with a smile. “I wouldn’t want you to hurt anyone.” He indicated the doorman tangled beside him to the right.

“Most especially your son here, Dennis.”

The gun in Quinn’s hand trembled as he looked at the doorman for the first time.

“Oh, my God! Kevin?” Quinn said.

Francis raised his hands with the electronic detonator controller taped between them. He showed Quinn where his thumb was taped down to the detonator’s charge button.

“See the indicator light? The det cord? The plastic? We’re charged and ready to go, Dennis. All I have to do is pull the trigger.”

Dennis Quinn’s Adam’s apple did a hard bob as he thought about that.

Francis stared dead into the man’s eyes.

“It’s simple. I die, we all die. You, me, these two young men here. Oh, and your only son. I know you’re a patriot, Dennis. Rah-rah, 9/11, never forget, and all that. But are you actually willing to kill your only son? Are you that crazy? Because that’s exactly what’s going to happen if you don’t move the barricades to the side and let me through that door.

“This is a test, Dennis. You can protect either A, those heartless, money-worshipping savages inside that building behind you, or B, your son. One or the other. Not both. What is it going to be?”

Chapter 87

AFTER MOONEY HUNG up on me, I ran as fast as I could back to the main entrance at St. Edward’s. On the way, I called for a roadblock on Lexington and for Aviation to keep an eye s

outh on Lex for erratically driving taxis. That was pretty much asking for them to keep an eye out for water in the ocean, so I wasn’t too hopeful. In fact, after the most recent events and Mooney’s messianic nutball monologue, I was deep in full-despair territory.

A lot of blond, ladies-who-lunch, Upper East Side moms were now embracing their kids by the Park Avenue median. Other worried-looking parents were breathlessly waiting by the police sawhorses, yelling and gazing into the crowd of released schoolkids. Were Mason’s and Parrish’s mothers waiting there? I wondered.

“Bomb Squad and the Hostage Rescue guys are still inside, securing the building,” Emily told me as she cupped her cell. “They’re searching for booby traps, making sure Mooney hasn’t left any of the explosive behind.”

“I’m more afraid that he hasn’t,” I said, dialing my boss. “In fact, I’m much more afraid that he’s taken every ounce of it with him and those two poor kids.”

EMTs were bringing out the body of Coach Webb as my phone rang. No one else had been hurt, thank God.