If the twins had more at stake than some in what occurred, they were also somewhat used to their family going from the frying pan and into the fire on a regular basis. If it gave them a rather unusual childhood, they also developed a strong belief that things would turn out all right; after all, their mother and father were in the fray.
“So what?” Zak said.
“I’m watching Lucy’s hands,” Giancarlo said. “She’s signing.”
“Signing what?”
“Would you quit being dense? She’s saying something in sign language.”
“Cool! What’s she saying?”
After he was blinded by an assassin’s shotgun pellet, Giancarlo had taken up reading in Braille. Then when he regained his sight, he’d remained fascinated by how the blind, and then the deaf, communicated and started to learn sign language, which was one of the sixty-some-odd languages Lucy knew.
“Um, let me see,” Giancarlo said. “I’m still pretty shaky at this. She’s keeps signing the same thing over and over. ‘Lucy hostage. Annoy Satan. Baker. Field…. Lucy hostage. Annoy Satan. Baker. Field.’ ”
“I don’t get it,” Zak said.
“Neither do I,” Giancarlo replied. “But she wouldn’t be doing it if it wasn’t important.”
“So who do we tell?” Zak said. “We can’t get anybody on their cell phones.”
“The guy outside the door,” Giancarlo said and walked over to the front door. He opened it and invited the agent inside. “Um, we think our sister is trying to tell us something about what’s going on at the cathedral?”
The agent glanced at the television just as Kane stopped the broadcast. “Like what?” he said.
“We don’t know,” Giancarlo replied. “That’s why we want to go down there and tell somebody like Espey.”
“Espey?” the agent replied.
“Yeah, Espey Jaxon, he’s a G-man,” Zak said. “He’ll know what to do with the information.”
The agent smiled. “Why don’t you just tell me, and I’ll relay the information,” he said.
Giancarlo frowned. “No. I think we’ll go to the cathedral. Our folks are in there.” He started to walk to the front door, but the agent pulled him back and shut the door.
“Keep your mouths shut,” he said, opening his coat enough to show them his gun. “Where’s your mother?”
“Gone,” Zak said. “What’s it to you?”
“Shut up, kid, and have a seat.”
“Shut up yourself. We’re leaving, and if you try to stop us, our dog is going to eat you.”
The agent looked over at Gilgamesh who was standing watching the conversation but wagging his tail. The agent’s orders were to kill the kids and the mother, who had now mysteriously disappeared. He wasn’t looking forward to it; then again, national security sometimes required small sacrifices. He laughed and put his hand on his gun, ready to pull it and shoot the dog. “Yeah, right. Gilgamesh, attack!” The dog just stood there wagging his tail. The agent laughed again, “Gilgamesh, sit!” The dog obeyed.
The agent looked back at the boys and pulled his gun. “Some guard dog. You little fuckers aren’t going anywhere. Now, sit on the couch while I go check on your mom. If you try to get out of here, the agent at the front door will make things very unpleasant for you.”
“You said it wrong,” Giancarlo pointed out.
“Said what wrong?” the agent replied, walking over to scratch the dog’s neck.
“His word for ‘attack’ isn’t English,” Zak said.
“No? He speaks other languages?” the agent smirked.
“Yeah, Italian,” Giancarlo said. “The word is
Too late the agent heard the rumble start within the big dog’s chest. He tried to reach for his gun, but the big dog already had his forearm in his mouth. The agent screamed as the dog bit down and screamed again at the sound of the bones in his arm being pulverized. He fumbled for the gun with his other hand and almost reached it when he noticed the dog had let go of him. There was a moment when he looked into the dog’s brown-yellow eyes, just before the animal tore his throat out.
“Mom’s going to be pissed about all the blood,” Zak said as they walked out the front door.
“I think she’ll understand,” Giancarlo said. He rapped the code on the elevator door. A moment later, the door opened and the hanging ladder appeared.
A few minutes later, the agent on the bottom floor heard the elevator coming down. Job’s finished, he thought. Figured that was what the scream was about. He waited for his partner to emerge after which they’d disappear-maybe take a month or two down in Costa Rica until the dust settled. However, when the door opened, the agent took a look at the slaughtered body of his partner and threw up.
Ten minutes later, the twins showed up at the police barricade at Forty-seventh and Fifth Avenue and squirmed their way to the front of the anxious crowd. “We’re District Attorney Butch Karp’s kids,” they told the officer at the checkpoint. “And we need to talk to the FBI guys at the cathedral.”
“Yeah, right, kids, just like everybody else here,” the officer said. “But sorry, no one gets through.”
Zak and Giancarlo backed off for a moment. “You got to get through,” Zak said.
Giancarlo agreed. “But how?”
“What we need here,” Zak replied, “is a diversion. You ready?”
“What? Wait! No!” Giancarlo shouted, but Zak had already dashed through the checkpoint, followed by the officer and several others. The officers who closed ranks to prevent other dashes watched the mad chase as Zak darted this way and that, so they weren’t ready when Giancarlo slipped between two of them and took off up Fifth Avenue.
Three blocks later, winded and barely ahead of the pursuing police officers, Giancarlo ran up to where he saw Jaxon and some other men who were watching a television screen. A pretty woman with dark hair and a mole on her cheek was speaking at the camera.
“We have increased our demands,” she shouted. “We insist that all prisoners held by the criminal United States and its puppet allies captured in its illegal wars on Muslim lands be freed immediately. We also demand that all Muslims captured in the Russian war of aggression against Chechnya be released immediately and that all Russian troops leave Chechnya.”
“She’s building up to something,” Jaxon said to Denton. “I think you better get your guys ready to go in. She knows nobody is going to go for these demands. And where’s Kane in all this? He’s not the sort to blow himself up for Allah or anybody else.”
“Jaxon, Jaxon!” Giancarlo shouted. “I have to tell you something.”
A police officer grabbed the boy and started to pull him away, kicking and screaming. The agent looked over and saw who was shouting at him and called out to the officer. “That’s okay. Let him go.”
When Giancarlo ran up, Jaxon leaned over. “Hey, it’s okay. We’re going to try to get your dad out of there.”
“Mom, too,” Giancarlo said.
“Your mom’s inside?” Jaxon said. “I didn’t see her go in.”
“She snuck in with a couple of guys after she figured out something was wrong.”
Jaxon smiled. “Smart lady, your mom.”
“Yeah, but that’s not why I came,” he said. “Lucy was using sign language on the television to tell us something.”
“What she say?” Jaxon asked.
“She said she’s a hostage,” Giancarlo replied.
Jaxon straightened up. “Not anymore,” he said. “She’s out and on her way to a hospital. She’s going to be okay. Now, I need to get back to-”
“No,” Giancarlo said tugging at his arm. “She said this when they were threatening to kill the Pope. So we already knew she was a hostage. She was trying to say she was still going to be a hostage. Sign language isn’t that exact, especially when Lucy had to be careful no one would notice.”
Jaxon furrowed his brow. Where is Kane? he wondered. Dead? Killed by the terrorists? Or gone? “What else did she say?”
“It didn’t make a lot of sense,” Giancarlo explained. “She just kept signing the same thing. ‘Lucy hostage.
