Tower of Terror at-1 Read online

  "That's the man!" Smith called out. The two agents in the front seat turned and saw Lyons. One of them reached back, unlocked the back door. Lyons stepped in as the traffic light changed.

  The agent in the passenger seat stared at Lyons. "So you're the hotshot. I'm Agent Tate. That's Agent Lopez. Your man in the van said you had a phone for us."

  "A secure phone," Lyons told them, opening the case and passing it forward to them. They made no effort to take it from him. "Impossible to intercept or monitor. Hey, take it. It'll be your only connection to us."

  "We don't need it," Tate told Lyons. "We got scramblers in our cars."

  "Yeah, and maybe they do, too. Nothing concerning my partner and me, or what we do, is to be sent over the scramblers. We can't risk it."

  "That's being a little paranoid, don't you think?" Lopez commented. He made a right turn. "Going back around to pick up the limo again."

  "All day long I've been paranoid," said Lyons coolly. "It seems to be keeping me alive. And while we're on the subject of staying alive, why don't you paste an FBI insignia on each door of this car, make it official? A three-year-old could spot this Dodge. And your clothes — how about just wearing uniforms? What's the point of keeping Davis under surveillance if..."

  "Hey, hotshot," Tate interrupted Lyons, "Mr. Davis is not a suspect in this case. What we're doing is called protective surveillance."

  "That just changed. What we're going to do now is to help him make a break. He's out here to meet one of the crazies, and he won't do it while he's got agents watching him. So, you're going to lose him."

  "What're you talking about?" Tate sneered. "That man is not a suspect. He is our responsibility. He is not to leave our sight. Those were our instructions. And we will follow them to the letter."

  Lyons looked at the man for a long moment. "Do what I say or take a walk. Resign."

  The scrambler buzzed. Lopez took the microphone. "Here."

  A tinny, mechanical voice came from the speaker. "Do you have Davis in sight? He pulled away from us."

  "No, we don't," Lopez replied. "We're circling to come up behind him again."

  "You can't, because he's gone," the mechanical voice told them.

  "Not a suspect?" Lyons asked. "Then why is he evading you?"

  Tate snorted, reaching into the glove compartment. "He can't go anywhere. We got a D.F. on the limo."

  "You don't have one on him." Lyons punched the secure phone. "Taxi! You on our man?"

  "This is Taximan. Hardman Two saw Davis dodge into a theater crowd. He went after him."

  Killing the connection, Lyons keyed the code for his own secure phone in the van. Smith answered immediately, "Your partner's in motion. What do you want me to do?"

  "Hold on." Lyons put his hand over the mouthpiece. He leaned over the front seat, grinning at the agents. "Well, our distinguished gentleman just became a suspect. Do you fellows want to get with it?"

  "No scramblers?" Lopez asked. "How do we contact the other car?"

  "Use the scrambler with them," Lyons explained, "but don't mention us. We'll direct you with the secure phone. You follow the limo, make like nothing's changed. We'll follow him. If we need you, we'll call you on the secure phone."

  "Davis isn't in league with those terrorists, is he?" Tate asked, his confidence shaken.

  "I think they've got a hook in him," Lyons told him. "I'll brief you later." Lyons spoke into the secure phone. "Smith, pick me up."

  Swinging open the sedan's door, Lyons jumped from the car. He ran a few steps through traffic and jumped to the curb. The unmarked sedan turned the corner, became one of the thousands of cars on Forty-second Street. Lyons watched the early evening diners and theater patrons walking past him. Some of the people, dressed in expensive fashions or conservative dinner clothes, saw him and veered away, keeping six feet of sidewalk between him and themselves.

  He did look bad. He'd borrowed a sports jacket from the FBI's wardrobe of costumes. It didn't fit right, but there was no blood on it. Blood splatters stained his white shirt, however, and his tie was gone. He needed a shave. There was a puffy bruise over his left eye. And he needed a shower too.

  Headlights swept by him. A door flew open. Lyons ran three steps, then leaped into the van's bucket seat. Smith whipped the wheel around, U-turned.

  "Taxi's right behind Davis and your partner," Smith explained. "They're on Forty-second, but if we try to navigate that street, we'll lose time in traffic. I'm going to parallel them in the alley."

  Smith swerved the van around an idling truck and jumped the curb. A young couple walking arm in arm on the sidewalk saw the van's headlights bearing down on them and ran screaming into the street. Smith whipped into the alley, accelerated. Lyons braced his hands against the dash as stairways, stage doors, trash bins, drunks flashed past at sixty miles an hour. Then Smith slammed on the brakes as they approached Sixth Avenue.

  "You can look now," Smith said. "We're still alive."

  "Look yourself," Lyons muttered out of the side of his mouth. "See that man in the gray suit? That's Davis."

  Davis stood at the alley's curb, hesitating to cross in front of this apparently reckless van driver. Only after he was sure the van had come to a complete stop did he continue down the Avenue.

  "And there's my partner." Lyons nodded at Blancanales. Hardman Two gave his partner a quick glance, motioned for Lyons to accompany him.

  Lyons took a hand-radio and told Smith, "He wants me to come along. Every few minutes, I'll give you our location. Real quick. Don't call me unless you absolutely have to."

  Joining the sidewalk crowd, Lyons hurried after the two men until he had both in sight. Then he cut through traffic to the other side of the Avenue, pacing Davis.

  The sandy-haired man walked briskly, passing other pedestrians, hurrying through traffic lights, putting block after block behind him. From time to time, he stopped, apparently window shopping. But his eyes were not on the windows' merchandise, but on the reflections of the street, crowds, and traffic behind him.

  They followed him almost eight blocks before he suddenly took a handful of coins from his pocket, got on a bus going back up to Forty-second Street. Both Lyons and Blancanales whipped out their hand-radios.

  "I'm running after the bus," Lyons told Blancanales. "You get the cars in motion."

  Without waiting for an answer, Lyons sprinted after the uptown bus. He ran on the opposite side of the avenue, dodging through groups of people to block Davis' view if he looked back. The bus driver accelerated from one stop to another up the one-way avenue, but he didn't race the lights. Lyons did.

  At one intersection, the bus coasted through a yellow light. Lyons, half a block behind, sprinted until he came to the intersection, then slowed only long enough to glance at the traffic. He wove through the slow-moving cars, forced one or two to brake, then sprinted again. A city cop waved at him, blew his whistle, but didn't attempt pursuit.

  Davis got off the bus at Forty-second Street and started walking over toward Times Square. Lyons slowed, keeping a hundred yards behind him, and spoke into his hand-radio.

  "Forty-second Street West. Maybe going to Times Square."

  Lyons saw the customized van pass him. Blancanales waved nonchalantly. Ahead of Lyons, Davis walked quickly through the crowds. A panhandler approached him. Davis shoved the man aside without a backward glance. He hurried to a passenger loading zone in front of a hotel, grabbed for a cab's door, but three men with suitcases blocked him and took the cab.

  Davis scanned the pedestrians and street traffic. Lyons ducked into a doorway. He saw Davis step into traffic and wave down a cab.

  "Hey. He's in a taxi. Don't lose him, he could go anywhere!"

  In reply, Blancanales' laughter came through the hand-radio. "I think we'll be able to keep up. Get out on the curb, we'll pick you up. Bet Taximan had a heart attack when Davis waved him down!"

  Less than a minute later, the van slowed in traffic. Lyons ran to the back door, jerked
it open and jumped in. Blancanales passed him a bottle of mineral water. Lyons gulped it.

  "You did those eight blocks in record time," Blancanales commented. He glanced at Smith. "Even the hot-rod here couldn't keep up."

  "Where's the limo?" Lyons asked. "You think he could be doing this just to check for shadows?"

  Blancanales keyed the secure phone, but Smith stopped him. "He's out of the taxi. Going into that hotel."

  "Must be a thousand rooms in that place!" Blancanales exclaimed. "Pull up into the taxi zone. Maybe he's meeting someone in the lobby."

  They peered through the hotel doors and watched Davis cross the lobby to the elevators. He punched the button and waited. When the doors opened, the indicator arrow pointed down.

  "I'm going to the garage!" Lyons told them as he left the van.

  He ran to the entrance of the hotel's underground garage. At the bottom of the ramp there was a glass-walled attendant's booth. The uniformed boy inside watched Lyons. Deep in the cavernous garage, another attendant parked a car, started back.

  Davis left the elevator and called to the attendant. He gave the attendant a dollar and a set of keys. The attendant ran to fetch the car.

  "Can I help you, sir?" The boy in the booth asked Lyons.

  "No." Lyons turned around, returned to the sidewalk. He stood with his back against the plate glass of a hi-fi store and waited. Within seconds, Davis was driving up the ramp in a white Mercedes coupe. Lyons keyed his hand-radio.

  "He took off, going north, in a white Mercedes sports model. I'm at the head of the ramp. Let's go!"

  When the van reached him, Lyons got in the back and immediately checked the camera and light-intensifying lens. He switched on the lens power, glanced at the film-load indicator. Smith followed the Mercedes toward Central Park. Lyons aimed the lens through the van's side windows. He scanned the park's quiet darkness. He saw lovers on the lawns, late evening bicyclists, and a few kids. He saw it as if the night were day.

  Focusing on a young girl riding a bicycle, he clicked off two frames to test the camera. Then he braced the lens between the front bucket seats and searched the traffic ahead for the Mercedes.

  "Ready to go," Lyons told the other men. "Where's Taximan?"

  "Up ahead of Davis. He said Davis tipped him a dollar..."

  The Mercedes followed the curving drive through Central Park. It rejoined heavy traffic near the Dakota apartment building. Jaywalking tourists were slowing traffic somewhat. They saw Davis searching the sidewalks, looking for someone.

  "This is it," Smith said. "Looks like he's looking for his man."

  Lyons scanned the passersby with the lens. Hundreds of faces flashed through the viewfinder. Blancanales grabbed his shoulder and pointed.

  "There, that guy. He saw the Mercedes. He's..."

  Lyons caught a young man in the viewfinder. He followed the youth as he ran out to the Mercedes, snapping frame after frame. But it was when the young man paused at the side of the Mercedes, and put a lighter's flame to a cigarette that Lyons identified him.

  Only the night before, in the North Carolina swamps, Lyons had seen that man light a cigarette as he unloaded high-powered explosives. Lyons now watched as the guy entered the Mercedes. Davis put an arm around the young man, hugged him. In the viewfinder, Lyons saw the two faces very clearly. The younger man had dark Latin skin; but his hair, remarkably, was sandy blond.

  "They're hugging each other!" Smith said. "What are they, lovers?"

  "No," Lyons corrected. "Father and son."

  14

  "It would be utterly beyond our authority!" Agent Tate's voice carried a touch of panic through the secure phone. "There'd be repercussions that you can't imagine. Mr. Davis is a personal friend of the President of the United States. And you're talking about grabbing him off the street like some kind of punk?"

  "I don't care whose friend he is..." Lyons yelled down the phone at the agent. As he spoke he glanced through the windshield at the Mercedes, two cars ahead of the van. The van, the Mercedes, and the agent's taxicab moved among the hundreds of other cabs on the George Washington Bridge. The lights of New Jersey spread on the horizon ahead.

  Inside the Mercedes, Davis and his son talked as they had for the previous several miles, Davis glancing to the young man, gesturing with one hand, the son waving his hands as he spoke, emphasizing his words with a clenched fist.

  "...and I don't need to explain it to you. The President of the United States gave us the authority to break these crazies. And Davis is up in front of us talking business with one of them."

  "What do you mean, talking business?" Tate asked him. "From what you've told me, you've got no proof the other man is a terrorist. Now you're asking..."

  "Hey! Listen to me, Mr. Federal Agent. You were assigned to support my mission against the crazies. I asked you for assistance, and you have refused. This is it! Talk to you later."

  Lyons hung up, leaned forward to Blancanales. "Tate told me Davis is a friend of the President. Said he wouldn't move against him. So we don't have any backup."

  "You and me, huh?"

  "What about me and Taximan?" Smith asked. "We got our instructions straight from Mr. Brognola. He told us to do what is necessary. So you can count on us."

  "Yeah." Lyons smiled. He keyed the secure phone. "Taxi, you ready to help us take those two in the Mercedes?"

  "Anytime. Give me the signal."

  "Davis is a personal friend of the President. Right or wrong, there will be heavy, heavy flak."

  "Like I said, give me the signal."

  "There's one other man we're looking for, maybe they're on their way to talk to him. So hold on. Over."

  "What's the plan?" Blancanales asked.

  "We got two of them," Lyons said, thinking out loud. "But there's at least one more man, who might be back there in the city someplace. The go-between we saw in the photos. Or he might be inside the Tower. But I doubt it. I figure that anybody who's talked face to face with Davis wouldn't have been sent into the Tower. In case they were captured and interrogated."

  "That makes sense," Blancanales agreed. "You think these two will meet up with him?"

  "This little drive around town could just be a conference. If they meet the other man, we'll take all three. If not, we'll take Davis and his son before they split up. Chances are they're talking about the big bang problem."

  They followed the Mercedes into New Jersey, turning off into quiet, modest residential neighborhoods. Davis made no effort to evade surveillance. They did not slow until they entered an industrial area.

  Only one or two of the one-story corrugated metal factories had weekend night shifts. The parking lots of other factories and assembly plants were wastelands of asphalt and broken glass. The Mercedes turned from the boulevard, sped through a parking lot. At the far side of the lot, there was a line of parked semis and trailers. All but one of the trucks were blue and red with a merchandising company's insignia. The last truck was blue. It had no insignia.

  When the Mercedes crossed the parking lot, the truck flashed its lights.

  "This must be it."

  Even as Lyons spoke, Smith whipped the van into an alley opposite the parking lot. The alley's darkness swallowed the van. Lyons keyed the secure phone.

  "Taxi! Stay back! He's meeting..."

  "I'm half a block back, with my lights off. Waiting for instructions."

  Lyons put down the hand-set. Blancanales watched the parking lot in the van's side mirror.

  "What're they doing?" Lyons asked.

  "He's stopped the car. His son's getting out."

  "You take the rifle, I'll put the camera on them." Lyons beamed the camera through the van's back window, got the Mercedes and semi in focus. Behind him, Blancanales took the M-16 from its case and chambered a round.

  "Locked and loaded."

  "The son's getting into the semi." Lyons watched as the young man went around the semi and climbed in on the passenger side. The electronics of the lens re
vealed another man behind the wheel of the truck.

  "The go-between's in the truck," Lyons told the others. "Let's see what they do now."

  Lyons clicked off a photo of the two men side by side in the cab of the truck. Then he zoomed back to include the Mercedes — with Davis waiting inside — in the photo. The lens brought out the features of the three men. Lyons clicked again.

  The camera's electric motor advanced the film automatically. Lyons touched the focus. He wanted a perfect photo linking Davis to the other man.

  As his fingertip came down on the shutter button, Lyons saw the son raise a pistol to the head of the go-between, and fire. Lyons snapped the photo at the same instant that the impact of the slug threw the man sideways, the bullet continuing through his head to shatter the tempered glass of the door's window, bits of sparkling glass raining like diamonds onto the Mercedes.

  "The crazy just put a bullet through the driver's head." Lyons' voice was calm, slow. "I've got a picture of it. With Davis in it."

  "Jesus!" Blancanales' usual calm had snapped.

  "Wait till you see it. We have a real-for-live court case against them. I think I'll even read them their rights." Lyons keyed the secure phone. "Move it, Taxi. He just killed a man. Be careful, play it by ear. We don't have any backup."

  As soon as Lyons spoke to the cabbie, Smith slammed the van into reverse. It shot backwards from its hiding place behind a factory wall, and continued across the boulevard, Smith whipping the wheel around, accelerating and burning rubber. The taxi was only an instant behind them.

  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.