David Hudson, who scouted and studied the street from the lead cab, was beginning to feel an unexpected sense of release. It was almost over. Finally, dignity. Finally, revenge.
He experienced some of his old combat sensations from Viet Nam, only this time with a difference.
A big, important difference.
This time, they were going to be allowed to win.
A New York police detective, Ernie “Cowboy” Tubbs, who had been dragged unceremoniously out of bed to join the manhunt, saw one of the cabs go past on Division Street.
Then he saw two more Vets cabs.
He turned to his partner, Detective Maury Klein, a short man in a black tent of a raincoat. Tubbs said, “Christ, that’s them. That’s Green Band. Bingo, Maury.”
Detective Klein, who was addicted to Rolaids and Pepto-Bismol, peered sorrowfully through the windshield. His stomach was already killing him.
“Jee-sus Christ, Ernie! Half those bastards are supposed to be Special Forces.”
Ernie “Cowboy” Tubbs shrugged and swung their late model Dodge out behind the line of yellow cabs. Only a single car separated them from the rearguard Vets cab.
“We’ve spotted Green Band!” Tubbs rasped into the hand-mike on his dashboard.
Maury Klein uneasily cradled an American-180 submachine gun in both arms. The assault gun looked out of place inside the Dodge, middle-class family car. The American-180 fired thirty rounds per second. It was never used in city fighting for that reason.
“This sucks, man. Sucks! Bar on 125th Street, I tangled with one Green Beret Special Forces dude. That was enough for me, forever.” Maury Klein continued to complain. The notion of mixing it up with ex-Special Forces veterans seemed like one of the worst ideas he’d ever had in his police-force life. Maury Klein was a vet, too, class of ‘53, Korea.
At Henry Street there were only a few working traffic lights. There was almost no other traffic. An eerie, dockside feeling pervaded the steamy gray area of lower Manhattan.
“Looks like they’re going to the FDR Drive for sure…. Entrance is down here somewhere. Right around Houston.”
“North or south?” Ernie Tubbs yelled to his partner and gave a quick glance.
“I think both ways. South for sure. We’ll see it here any … there! That’s it.”
Just then, Tubbs spotted the dilapidated ramp to the south lanes of the drive himself.
The Vets cabs were approaching fast from both directions. The first cabs were already rattling up the crumbling stone and metal rampways.
Tubbs flicked on his hand mike again. “Contact! All units. They’re getting on the FDR! They’re heading due south! Over.”
Suddenly the rear Vets cab veered sharply. It tried to cut Tubbs’ car off.
“Son of a bitch!”
Tubbs swerved left with skillful, near-perfect timing. The unmarked police sedan continued to shoot up the half-blocked entranceway that didn’t look wide enough anymore.
“Jesus Christ, Ernie! Watch the walls!”
The Vets cab meanwhile had finished its tailspin. It was blocking off every police car except one, Tubbs’s, which had somehow slipped by.
“Son of a bitch! Son of a bitch!” Detective Tubbs yelled as he fought the unmarked car’s steering wheel for control.
“All units, all units! They set a roadblock on the FDR! Repeat. There’s a roadblock on the FDR! Over.”
Meanwhile, the single police sedan was screeching into teeming traffic filling all three narrow, twisting lanes of the FDR south. A truck slammed to a jolting stop behind. Horns blared from every possible direction.
The police car was hemmed in tight by two of the Vets cabs. The black barrels of M-16s were jammed out both windows of the cab to their left.
Ernie Tubbs couldn’t breathe. He was bottled in at fifty-five miles an hour. One of the M-16s fired a round.
The warning shot flared over the police sedan roof like night tracers in a combat battle zone.
A Vet in military khakis and black greasepaint screamed over at Tubbs. His voice was muffled under the traffic whistle, but Tubbs could hear every word.
“Get off at the next stop! Get the fuck off this road!… Everybody but the driver hands up! I said hands up! Hands up!”
Closing on the next exit, Tubbs spun his wheel hard right toward the guardrail. The unmarked police sedan shot at a seventy-degree angle toward the off ramp.
It bumped hard over loose plates, sending off sparks. The patrol car went up on two wheels. It threatened to turn over. After a moment when gravity seemed an indecisive force, the car finally bounced back onto all four wheels. It shimmied down the off ramp, then stopped dead on the bordering city street.
“We lost them! Over.” Tubbs screamed into his radio transmitter. “We lost them on the FDR!”
Detective Maury Klein finally Whispered out loud inside the police sedan, “Thank fucking God.”
Chapter 85
AS SOON AS he heard the news that Green Band had been spotted, Carroll spun down several steep flights of stairs inside No. 13.
He took the rubber-edged steps two and three at a time. He was racing outside, hoping to find a police helicopter waiting.
Everything was happening at once on the street.
Crashing footsteps of other running men. Police squad car engines starting. Tires screeching up and down Wall Street and Broad and Water.
Carroll was carting an M-16 rifle, which felt weird bouncing against his body. Flashback time—he was an Army infantry soldier again….
Except for one thing: this was downtown Manhattan and not Viet Nam.
His sports coat flew open as he ran, revealing the Browning holster as well as a bulletproof vest. His heart was pounding at a volume consistent with the street noise.
A radio squad car he passed relayed me latest information on Green Band’s whereabouts.
“They’re moving at about thirty-five miles per hour Six vehicles. They’re all regular Checker cabs. All are heavily armed. They’re proceeding east.” It’s a set-up for something else, Carroll thought.
What though? What were the Vets going to do now? What was Hudson’s plan?
A silver and black Bell helicopter was waiting in a Kinney parking lot A few weeks earlier, the parking lot would have been filled with the luxury cars of Wall Street workaholics. The police helicopter was whirring like an outsized moth. It was ready to fly.
“M-16 and a Bell chopper.” Carroll winced as he swung his body inside the hot, cramped helicopter cockpit. “Christ, this brings back memories. Hi, I’m Carroll,” he said to the police pilot seated inside.
“Luther Parrish,” the pilot grunted. He was NYPD, a heavyset black man with a leather flak jacket and clear yellow goggle glasses. “You ex-Viet Nam? You look like it. Feel like it.” Parrish snapped a thick wad of gum as he talked.
“Class of 1970.” Carroll finally smiled. He played it a little combat cool, like you would boarding a copter in Nam. The truth was, he hated choppers. He hated seeing the goddamn things. Carroll didn’t like the idea of being suspended in air with nothing to rely on but slender blades that furiously slashed the air.
“How ‘bout that! Class of ‘70, too. Well, here we go again, sports fans. I take it you don’t much like airplane rides?”
Before Carroll had a chance to answer in the extreme negative, the Bell copter jumped straight up from the parking lot cement. The ascent left Carroll’s small intestine somewhere behind. The chopper pierced the smoky city morning, hugging the dusky walls of nearby buildings. The pilot cleverly avoided swift winds sweeping off the river.
Then the copter swung out wide toward the East River. A second helicopter, another Bell, joined in from due south.
“No, I’m not real crazy about helicopters. No offense, Luther.”
Adrenaline flowed wildly, it raged like a flooding river through Carroll’s body. Down below, he could see traffic streaming on the FDR highway.
The police pilot eventually spoke up ove
r the rotors’ noise. “Beautiful morning, man. You can see Long Island, Connecticut, almost see Paris, France.”
“Beautiful morning to get shot in the fucking heart.”
The black pilot snorted out a laugh. “You been to Viet Nam all right. Let’s see, we’ve got two, three armed patrol helicopters on them right now. Pick up more help once we find out which borough they’re goin’ to. I think we’ll be fine.”
“I hope you’re right, Luther.”
“You see them down there? Little toy taxicabs. See? See right there?”
“Yeah, with little toy M-16s, toy rocket launchers,” Carroll said to the pilot.
“You talk just like ex-infantry. Ironic-type shit. Makin’ me all misty-eyed.”
“Still infantry from the look of things. Except I’m afraid we’re fighting the Green Berets today.”
The pilot turned to Carroll with a knowing look. “They’re bad dudes all right. Definitely Special Forces.” He nodded as if to a secret beat. He almost seemed proud of the Vets’ bravado. Their street fighting style had hit a chord.
A thousand feet below, the FDR Drive was a delicate ribbon of silver and shiny jet black. The Vets cabs looked intensely yellow, almost tawdry down there. As the lineup of cabs crossed the Brooklyn Bridge, both Bell helicopters swung high and wide to avoid being seen. The copters actually briefly disappeared into low-flying clouds.
Carroll’s shirt was already soaked through. Everything seemed to be happening at a distance. The world was slightly fuzzed and unreal. They were going to solve Green Band after all.
On the Brooklyn side of the bridge, he could see that traffic was heavy but moving. The steady whoosh of cars, an occasional bleating horn, traveled all the way up to the helicopter cockpit.
“They’re getting off at the Navy Yard exit! This is Carroll to control. The Vets convoy is exiting at the Navy Yard! They’re proceeding northeast into Brooklyn!” Carroll screeched into the microphone.
Chapter 86
AT THAT SAME INSTANT, a deafening explosion jarred the underbelly of the police helicopter with a jolt that seemed to rattle right through Carroll’s bones.
His head cracked hard against the metal roof and sharp bolts of pain stabbed behind his eyes.
Then a second jarring blast struck the reverberating cockpit.
Splinters of glass flew in all directions. Star fractures cobwebbed across the windshield. Everywhere, metal was ringing with gunshots. Glaring red flashes were angrily ribboning the sky.
“Ohhh, goddamn, I’m hit. I’m hit,” the pilot moaned as he slumped forward.
Meanwhile a machine gun loudly chattered off to Carroll’s left. Carroll caught a brief glimpse of floating, blinking red lamps on the right and the hulking shapes of two choppers he hadn’t seen before.
Christ! Two Cobras were attacking them.
Suddenly the sky was filled with bright, jarring yellow orbs of light, with roaring fire and billowing black smoke.
The companion police helicopter had disintegrated before Carroll’s disbelieving eyes.
Where the chopper had hovered just seconds before, there was nothing except for leaping gold and orange flames. Nothing was left except this eerie, fading afterimage in the sky.
Carroll could see that Luther Parrish had been hit badly. Puddles of blood were collecting from a wound somewhere on the left side of his head. The electric circuits in the helicopter cockpit seemed to be useless.
Heavy machine gun fire welled up from below. The pilot temporarily revived, moaning, grabbed both his legs. The helicopter had begun to fall, to somersault and plummet helplessly. Parrish didn’t notice.
Carroll fired his M-16 at one of the attacking Cobras. The red light winked derisively—then the copter calmly disappeared from sight.
Carroll froze. He was pressed extremely hard into his helicopter seat Blood was rushing, swirling through his head. The police helicopter had suddenly flipped completely upside down.
Then the helicopter was in a dead fall, sailing and spinning into the gauzy gray nothingness of the Brooklyn Navy Yard below.
A flat black rooftop with a water tower mounted on it suddenly loomed enormously, coming as fast as another airplane at the, copter’s windshield. The flailing helicopter skimmed over an expanse of shadowy factory buildings a block long, at least. It missed a smoking industrial chimney by inches. The copter’s tail was clipped off by a high brick retaining wall.
A deserted grid of avenues and streets appeared through the windshield as the helicopter cleared the last building. Cars were parked in long, uneven lines up both sides.
Carroll reflexively grabbed at the controls. He knew what everything was, from too many trips in “Viet Nam, though not how to really use any of it. His body was trembling. Deep, jolting spasms flew up his spine.
He was beyond any compartment of fear he’d previously known. Beyond anything he’d felt in combat or police action. He was in a new realm of sensation—a clear, hard place where he seemed acutely conscious of everything going on around him.
This was the moment of impending death, he thought without real comprehension,
The helicopter’s belly cleanly sheared the rooftops off a half dozen parked cars. Carroll covered his face. He shielded the wounded police pilot as best he could with his body.
The helicopter struck the street on a side angle. It skidded, bounded violently. The copter’s belly issued a grinding shriek, and Carroll could feel his blood turn to ice.
Sparks, plumes of intense red flames, flew in every possible direction. Whole sides of parked automobiles, headlights and bumpers were effortlessly cut away. A red fire hydrant popped out of the cement like a bathtub plug.
The police helicopter, skidding on its side, finally slowed. It plowed to a tearing, screaming, crunching halt up against two crushed compact cars.
A man in a factory security uniform was running crazily, zigzagging down the deserted street toward the unbelievable accident.
“Hey, hey! That’s my car! That’s my car!
Carroll was cradling the badly wounded pilot, “Grab hold. You just hold me,” he whispered, hoping the man wasn’t already dead. “Just hold me, Luther.”
Then he was limping away from the burning helicopter wreckage. He was half-dragging, half-carrying the hulking NYPD pilot in his arms.
His eyes nervously searched the skies for the attacking Vets’ Cobras, but there was nothing there now.
Nothing at all.
The choppers might as well have been the vehicles of some unlikely nightmare. It was like being in the war again. It was exactly like combat duty.
Except that the helicopter crash had happened right here on the streets of Brooklyn.
Chapter 87
THE VETS CABS proceeded northeast, then almost due east across Brooklyn.
They were moving inexorably toward Monserrat. They were headed toward the appointed end of Green Band.
Erect and alert behind the wheel, David Hudson was experiencing a moment of anxiety. It had something to do with being this close to the end. They were less than seven minutes from the rendezvous point with Monserrat.
Hudson tried to concentrate as if he were entering a combat zone. Nothing could distract him from Green Band now.
Nothing could look mildly suspicious either…
Monserrat’s soldiers could be watching the streets from neighborhood rooftops and darkened apartment windows. If they spotted the attack force, the final exchange of Wall Street securities wouldn’t happen. Green Band would fail.
Like an advance scout, Hudson checked and rechecked the squat, cheerless brick buildings as he drove closer to the meeting place. Hudson noted everything. A knot of youths was easing out of Turner’s Grill. Their voices carried—low, guttural sounds in syncopated street rhythms.
Hudson drove slowly on. He found a parking spot further down the slope-shouldered Bedford-Stuyvesant side street.
He parked and climbed out of the car. He continued to look around the quiet neigh
borhood chosen for the meeting. He finally popped open the cab’s dented and scarred trunk. The Wall Street securities were there in ordinary looking, gray vinyl suitcases.
Hudson hoisted up the bags, and he began to trudge as rapidly as he could toward a red brick factory at the next street corner.
He was almost certain he was being watched. Monserrat was nearby. All his senses and instincts corroborated that single message.
This was the moment of reckoning, then. All of Hudson’s Special Forces training to be matched against Monserrat’s experience, his deceit.
Hudson shouldered open the wood front door of a building which housed shabby apartments and a small Italian-American shoe factory, The Gino Company of Milano.
He pushed into a dark hallway, where trapped cooking smells immediately assaulted him. The musty scent of old winter clothes hung in the air. The meeting place seemed appropriately isolated.
“Don’t turn around, Colonel.”
Three men appeared in the dim corridor with Magnums and Berettas drawn.
“Move up against the wall. That’s good. Right there That will be fine, Colonel Hudson.”
The leader had a Spanish accent, more than likely Cuban. Monserrat ran the Caribbean, and most of the terrorist activities in South America. At the rate he was going, one day Monserrat was going to run the entire Third World.
“I’m not armed,” Hudson said.
“Have to search you anyway.”
One of the men positioned himself less than three feet away from Hudson. He pointed his gun at an imaginary spot between Hudson’s eyes. It was a popular gunman’s trick, one Hudson himself had been taught at Fort Bragg. At close range, shoot out the eyes.
The second man patted him down.
The third man searched the gray suitcases, slashing them with a knife, looking for false siding, a bottom that wasn’t actually a bottom.
“Upstairs!” The terrorist who held the gun finally commanded Hudson. He spoke like a military officer.
They began to climb a steep and creaking flight of stairs, then another flight. Were they leading him to Monserrat? Finally, the enigmatic Monserrat himself? Or would there be more deception?