“Got it,” Zachery said. “Report back as soon as you can. And don’t do anything stupid—that means heroic—either of you. Catch these guys.”
“Will do, sir.”
Mike drove fast over the Bayonne Bridge, past Newark Airport and into Elizabeth. They saw flames and black smoke visible from the tip of the island, lighting up the night sky like a huge torch. As they neared the refinery, they saw broken glass all over the sidewalks and streets, dozens of people crowded outside, staring toward the refinery. The flames made it bright as day.
It had taken Mike less than ten minutes to get to the refinery, and they spoke once the whole way. Mike said, “You know it’s COE, has to be.”
“Of course it was. Up until now, it’s been small stuff, refineries away from where people live, and the grids haven’t impacted too many people, either. But now they’ve upped the ante. This is a big leap, Mike. They’re now saying they can cause us grave hurt.”
Nicholas and Mike had taken over from a small task force that had gotten nowhere, until now. And they hadn’t been in time. Even with Hodges’s tip, their home-run break, they hadn’t been in time.
COE had to know there were people working in the refinery, and that meant injuries and deaths. Why had they suddenly become bona fide terrorists?
Nicholas stared at the swelling orange flames that were turning the air acrid and bitter, the thick billowing black smoke scorching the very air they sucked into their lungs.
This was going to be bad.
4
PAWN TO G6
Bayway Refinery
Elizabeth, New Jersey
They arrived on scene along with most of the first responders. Mike speeded through the gates of the refinery, onto the long road leading to the huge converters, closer and closer to the fire. When the road ran out, blocked by a large chunk of metal, she pulled to a stop and flew out of the car, running toward the flames, Nicholas beside her, both dodging the debris still raining down. Nicholas grabbed her arm, jerked her back to him. He pulled off his leather jacket, ripped off his shirtsleeve, and wrapped it around her face. “Tie it tight.”
He ripped off the other sleeve and covered his own nose and mouth. Still, the choking black smoke seeped in, making them wheeze and cough. And then they were off. It was like running through a battlefield toward a wall of flames, he thought, as he shrugged his jacket back on. It wasn’t much protection, but some. Mike was wearing her motorcycle jacket, heavier than his, and that was good.
They sucked in their breaths and kept running. He heard Mike scream, “Over here, Nicholas!”
He changed course, dodging flying rubble, banging his hip against a concrete pylon, there to ensure the security of this place, only it hadn’t done any good. The bombers had gotten in despite all the safety precautions.
Nicholas saw a man pinned under a piece of the wreckage. His skin was deathly white and blood seeped from his legs, black in the night.
Nicholas moved behind the man, nodded to Mike. “One, two, three,” she yelled, and Nicholas pulled up the stinging hot metal, burning his hands, heaving with all his strength while Mike tugged the man clear. He dropped the metal back to the ground with a crash barely heard in the hellish chaos around them.
“Bloody hell.” He shook his hands, rubbed them together, wincing at the blisters that had popped up. He hadn’t thought to get gloves from the car’s boot, brain that he was.
“There’s another man over there!”
Nicholas saw a large chunk of metal sticking out of the man’s neck and the odd angle of his head. “He’s dead. Keep moving.”
Mike swallowed, nodded. They wound their way closer to the center of the blast site. The heat was incredible, the flames shooting madly into the night, singeing their arms and hair, but they kept moving, picking through the rubble, looking for survivors.
“Here’s one,” Nicholas shouted, and they dragged the man free, picked him up by arms and legs, and ran him back to where firemen had set up a protected space for the arriving EMTs to tend to the wounded.
They lost count of the men they’d carried back to the staging area. Finally a firefighter stepped in their way, hands up.
“Hey. Stop, both of you. I don’t know who you are, but you don’t have the right equipment. Get back away from here, now. I don’t want the two of you hurt as well.”
Mike shouldered her way past him. “These men are going to die if we don’t get back in there. Help us or get out of the way.”
The firefighter opened his mouth to yell at her when Nicholas grabbed his arm, saw his name on his jacket. J. JONES. “Don’t bother, mate. She’s unstoppable. Come on, we could use your help. We’ll tell your supervisor you were escorting us. Move it, now.”
Without waiting to see what the man did, Nicholas ran after Mike into the flame-lit night.
Twenty minutes after the bomb went off, the scene looked like a Hieronymus Bosch nightmare scape. The air was still ripe with the scent of carnage, men stumbling from the converters, others slumped silent on the ground, bloody, groaning, so many others more seriously hurt and bleeding in the staging area. In that instant, this hell shot Nicholas back to a place more than three years before, in another part of the world, and the terrible mistakes made, and he felt a ferocious hit of pain and guilt.
The firefighter who’d tried to stop them, Jones, was at his elbow, pointing and shouting. Nicholas whirled round. He thought they’d cleared everyone in this quadrant. He couldn’t see any more bodies in the hellish light.
“What is it? I don’t see anyone.”
Jones yanked on his shoulder, pulled him backward, shouting, “No, look, over there. Bomb, bomb!” and Nicholas saw a black backpack on the ground, with wires sticking out of the top. His heart froze.
Mike was a good twenty feet in front of him. He sprinted to her, caught her, grabbed her hand, and dragged her as fast as he could away from the backpack into the darkness, yelling, “Secondary device, run, Mike, run!”
They ran toward Jones, who was still screaming at everyone to fall back, fall back.
The backpack exploded, and the world around them shattered.
5
KNIGHT TO C3
Nicholas barely had time to fling his arms up to protect his face before he was hurled backward to the ground, unconscious. A year, a day, moments, he didn’t know, but when he came to, he was lying facedown on the oily tarmac. He shook his head, pulled himself together. He saw Mike lying ten yards away, sprawled on her back, legs and arms flung out, Jones lying beside her. Neither of them was moving. He saw something dark and wet on the ground near Jones’s head—blood, yes, blood was the word he was looking for—and Mike still wasn’t moving. He tried to stand up but couldn’t, he had no balance.
He crawled to Mike, pressed his filthy fingers to the pulse in her neck. She was breathing, thank the good Lord.
He pulled her onto his lap and held her close, rocking her. “Come on, Mike, wake up, come on, sweetheart, you can do it.”
She began to moan low in her throat and he said over and over, “Come on, Mike, come back to me, you can do it. I’ve promised a dozen years of good works if you’ll be okay. Come on, Mike, wake up, do it now before I stroke out.” Finally, she twitched and opened her eyes. He looked into her beautiful blue eyes, now vague with confusion, and knew such relief he wanted to shout with it. He wondered if this was how she’d felt in Geneva, with him out cold on the ground, the building exploding behind him? Her glasses lay on the ground beside her, incredibly unbroken. He handed them to her, watched her shove them back on.
They’d both lost their shirtsleeve masks. Mike’s hair was sticking out in all directions. Her face was grimed with soot, but he could clearly see the big bruise on her cheek and the beginnings of a black eye.
Amazingly, she smiled up at him. He pressed his forehead to hers, knowing his heart was still poun
ding too fast, the fear still eating deep. “Tell me you’re okay. Promise me you’re okay.”
“Yes, don’t worry, Nicholas, I’m only battered a bit. You look pretty scary. Can you believe it? My glasses aren’t broken. You okay?”
He nodded. “But our savior, Jones, he doesn’t look good.”
Together they crawled to where Jones lay motionless. He was still, too still. Mike leaned close, said over her shoulder, “He’s breathing. He lost his hardhat, but he’s wearing his fireman’s jacket, it cushioned his fall.” Mike patted his face, ran her hands over his head, down over his shoulders, while Nicholas felt his arms and legs. She patted his face again. “Mr. Jones? Come on, wake up, tell me you’re okay.”
A few moments later his eyelids began to flutter, and he was back with them. “Wh-what’s happening?”
“Don’t worry about it,” Nicholas said as he pulled a handkerchief out of his pocket, amazingly still snowy white. “Here, your nose is bleeding.”
Mike sat back on her knees, watched Jones take a swipe at the blood. She said, “Hey, way to get out of the way, dude.”
He gave a ghost of a laugh. “Do I look as bad as you guys?”
“Probably worse,” Mike said. “You have blood smeared all over your face.”
“Feels like I busted my nose again. Weird, but it doesn’t hurt like the first time. You guys all right?” He sounded like he had a bad cold.
“Bumps and bruises,” Nicholas said. “Can you stand?”
They hauled him to his feet, all three clinging to one another for balance. Mike said, “You know the drill, keep pressure on your nose. What’s your name?”
That took him a minute, then he grinned. “Jimbo, everyone calls me Jimbo.”
“Okay, Jimbo,” Nicholas said. “I’m Nicholas and this is Mike. Let’s get you back to the EMTs.”
The scene behind them hadn’t worsened after the second blast. Since they’d been closest, and they were alive and nearly walking, it hadn’t been a very strong bomb. Nicholas thought back to the placement—the backpack had been lying on the ground out in the open, almost as if it had fallen off the wearer’s back. Perhaps it was the bomber’s and he’d been running away from the first blast.
Nicholas said, “This is curious. I mean, a second bomb—that’s the MO normally used by terrorist organizations to achieve maximum death tolls by taking out the first responders. What’s going on? COE has never pulled this trick before.”
“No, they haven’t.” Mike looked around at the devastation. “This makes no sense. If it’s COE and not a new wild-hair come to the party, they’ve changed their ways. Up until now, that second smaller bomb should have been the one and only one detonated, not that big honker first bomb. This is scary, Nicholas, really scary.”
A gaggle of firefighters was headed their way, shouting. Nicholas waved them off. They were fine, no reason to waste resources. Jimbo still had Nicholas’s wadded-up handkerchief pressed to his nose, was using his other hand to brush the dirt off his uniform.
Nicholas said, “Thanks for spotting the bag, Jimbo. You saved our lives.”
Jimbo Jones grinned, showing a mouth and teeth rimmed in blood. “Buy me a beer sometime, guys. Now, you two need to get out of here, to safety. Really, I’m okay now. You can leave the rest to us.” He started to hand Nicholas back the handkerchief, shook his head at himself, and jogged off in a drunken zigzag pattern to rejoin his company.
More fire trucks were arriving, a parade of red and white lights, sirens shrieking.
“How many fire companies do you think have been called, Mike?”
“I don’t know. Of course Bayway has their own resources for this type of emergency, but they need all the help they can get tonight. This explosion was certainly much bigger than anything Bayway’s people could handle alone.”
“Has an explosion on this massive a scale ever happened before here at Bayway?”
“There was a major explosion in 1970. For a while, everyone believed it was the work of revolutionaries, since the FBI received a call from a man who claimed to be a member of the United Socialist Revolutionary Front. His demand: release of political prisoners. The FBI dug deep, but it turned out to be an accident, not a bomb. Then a smaller explosion ripped through the refinery in ’79. Again, a suspected bomb, but it turned out to be another accident.” Mike looked around her. “But this wasn’t an accident. This was a huge purposeful hit.”
Nicholas tried to wipe off her face, but it didn’t do much good since his hands were black with soot. “COE designed this hit for maximum damage and disruption, and they didn’t give a crap about innocent lives.”
Her hand tightened on his arm. “We’ve done all we can, Nicholas. Let’s regroup and find these bastards.”
6
BISHOP TO G7
They made their way toward the car, feeling like salmon swimming upstream with all the rescue personnel and cops and firefighters rushing toward the scene.
Nicholas said, “I wonder how COE managed to pull this off—a bombing in our own backyard, at one of the most secure refineries in the country, under close scrutiny and additional security.”
Mike was feeling pain in every inch of her body, screaming at her for aspirin or something much stronger, but she ignored it, no choice. “That first bomb was so powerful, why bother with the small secondary bomb? And no deaths before, but now I’m afraid to know how many people died tonight. Why have they done this? Nicholas, we need to track down Larry Reeves right away, open him up like a can, find out who paid him the big bucks.”
The farther they were from the blast site, the better the air became. She stopped, sucked in deeply. “I hadn’t realized—Nicholas, if Mr. Hodges hadn’t called us—”
“Then more people would have died, so we did some good, Mike. You know, it strikes me as odd—sneaking someone into this facility is certainly doable, if one were properly motivated, but still very risky for Reeves. How could a man so drunk he staggered out of the bar manage to pull it off?”
“Well, it doesn’t sound like he was faking being drunk—I mean, flapping his mouth like that—sounds like he gave his COE contact access before his little celebration party with his buddy.” She shook her head. “Still, what a moron, shooting off his mouth for anyone to hear. Good for us, though.”
Nicholas looked up at the video cameras on the light poles. Several had been blown off their mountings and were hanging by their wires. “Ah, there are a couple of good ones, thank the good Lord.” He pointed them out to Mike. “Here’s hoping they still function after the blast and we’ll have enough footage to recover.”
“Good eyes, Nicholas. I’ll get Gray Wharton on it. Digits crossed the blast didn’t knock out the connections.”
She put her phone to her ear as she walked. Nicholas paused for a moment, looking back, and he sent up a prayer of thanks that he and Mike were both unharmed, a prayer for the health and happiness of Mr. Hodges, and a prayer to mourn the men who hadn’t made it.
At the car, Mike reached in for her bag, drew out a wad of hand wipes, started scrubbing at her face, making comical streaks in the black. Nicholas took one from her, swiped it over his own face, felt the grit and dirt and whatever else pebble beneath the wipe. He breathed in the scent of antiseptic mingled with blood and death and acrid smoke. A nightmare, and they’d been in the middle of it, playing with death. Too late—they’d been too late to stop it.
He leaned against the car and watched the orange flames funnel into the night sky, still ferocious and lethal, and he wondered when the firemen would manage to finally kill it. He hoped by morning. Then all the experts could get closer, find the ignition point, find the elements that could lead them to the bomb maker.
“Too bad we can’t summon a bloody hard rain to come down and help.”
Mike said, “With all the oil on fire now, it wouldn’t help much.”
“Have I ever told you about the fire in Farrow-on-Grey?”
“You haven’t. When was it? Was anyone hurt? I can’t imagine your lovely home damaged. Breaks my heart.”
“It was the town itself, not Old Farrow Hall. It happened in 1765, nearly one hundred years after the great fire destroyed London. Our fire damaged many of the buildings, but the town was spared because of several quick-thinking young lads who’d been playing whist in The Drunken Goose. There used to be a large lake on the grounds of Old Farrow Hall, where the gardens are today. Family lore says they emptied the lake to save the town.”
“I assume one of the quick thinkers was the Baron de Vesci at the time?”
He smiled. “The third Baron, yes. Colin Drummond. He quickly organized the whole town—women and children, too—into a fire brigade. They saved the church and the pub, and the lower two-thirds of the town.”
“So you’re telling me firefighting’s in your blood?”
He coughed out a laugh. “Apparently I am.”
She cleared her throat. It hurt, hurt deep. She was quiet for a moment. “Nicholas, our information was that COE had threatened to take out Rodeo San Francisco next, not Bayway.”
“For whatever reason they changed their minds. You know what? I think they’ve made a big mistake coming to New York. Now they’re here on our turf and shoving their god-awful destruction right in our faces. They’re going to regret ever screwing with the FBI.”
“I agree, Agent Drummond.” SAC Milo Zachery walked out of the night. They hadn’t heard him drive up over all the noise—helicopter rotors and car alarms and the shrieks and calls of the first responders and the roar of the fire. Mike realized he was nearly shouting to be heard, supposed she and Nicholas had been shouting at each other as well. The flames outlined Zachery in an orange mantle.