“I’ll ask you again. What the hell is this all about, Jim?”
“Only one way to find out,” Weller said. He spun on his heel and marched through the vestibule, opened the door of the temple and walked out, the door slamming shut behind him.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
12:45 P.M.
IT WAS AS IF WELLER’S WORDS HAD FROZEN them in shock, his actions so bizarre that they couldn’t react. Hawke didn’t move, waiting to see in which direction things would go. The room grew quiet again, and then Young tried to go after Weller, but Vasco grabbed her and everyone exploded into action at once. The rabbi waved his arms as if to usher them right out of the building, shouting something about terrorists, the rest of his flock surging forward behind him. Vasco began to protest, his face red, veins standing out in his temples, as the rabbi came up to him with arms still out like a rancher herding cattle. Hanscomb shrank away from it all, creeping backward along a pew toward the wall.
“Out!” the rabbi shouted. “All of you! Leave us in peace.” The others shouted with him, their faces flushed with anger. Only the young woman, Ana, tried to calm him, her protests lost in the cacophony of voices crashing over the worship room.
They gathered for a moment in the vestibule, Hanscomb coming last with her own hands up. Two of the people behind the rabbi had picked up heavy candelabras and were brandishing them like clubs.
“Don’t hurt me,” she said. “I’m not with them, I’m just trying to get my husband and go home.” When she reached the vestibule, she looked back, saw Hawke, Vasco, Price and Young and blanched, as if she were being thrown into a jail cell with a pack of murderers.
“Get out,” the rabbi said, one more time, and then he took hold of the second set of interior doors that separated the vestibule from the worship room and slammed them shut, closing off the group and leaving them in relative silence.
“Well, that was fun,” Vasco said. “Like visiting the in-laws.”
Vasco still had Young by the arm. She shrugged free, staring at him in a way Hawke couldn’t quite decipher. She stood rubbing her wrist as if scrubbing away something foul.
Price was pacing back and forth, muttering something softly to himself. Hanscomb pressed herself against the interior doors like a cornered animal, watching them. “What?” Vasco said to her. “You think we’re all killers now? Is that it? Jesus.” He shook his head, the grin-grimace back on his face again, the same one he’d had inside the worship room.
“Everybody just needs to calm down for a minute,” Hawke said. “We need to work together—”
“Is what he said true?” Hanscomb asked.
“Of course not,” Vasco said. “Look, we’re caught in the middle of this thing just like everyone else. I don’t know what’s going on any more than you do. But I do know we need to be very careful before we open this door.”
“Might as well have killed Susan,” Price said suddenly. He’d stopped pacing and was staring at Young. “The great Jim Weller just left her to bleed out in my arms. You all did. And nobody’s said a word about her since.”
“What do you want us to say?” Vasco said. “She was dying. There was nothing anyone could have done to change it.”
“I watched the life go out of her eyes,” Price said. “I couldn’t help her.” He turned his head from side to side, as if searching for something that would absolve him of guilt. “You have any idea how that feels?”
“Maybe I do,” Vasco said. “But that doesn’t matter. Right now we’ve got to focus on keeping our own asses alive.”
“We have to go after Jim,” Young said. “He’s alone out there; he needs us.”
“I’ll go with you,” Price said. He had turned away from Vasco as if he couldn’t stand the sight of him for another second. “I wouldn’t mind asking him a few questions myself. And I need to get the hell out of here.”
Vasco shrugged and put up his hands. “Go ahead,” he said. “But before you do, just think this through for a minute. Where are you going? You step one foot outside these doors, you could get beaten, shot, blown up. A bus could come around the corner and turn you into a frog on the freeway. People are rioting, they’re terrified and nobody knows what’s happening. It’s like the Wild West out there, and we don’t know who’s on our side.”
“You don’t think the police actually want to kill us?” Hanscomb said. She looked at Hawke. “Did you really see them shoot someone?”
“He was standing there, holding the laptop case,” Hawke said. “They took it from him. He put his hands up, and they shot him in the head.”
Hanscomb shook her head. “Oh God—”
“He ain’t going to help you, lady,” Vasco said. “God has left the building.”
“I don’t know any of you,” Hanscomb said. “You could be
“You don’t have a choice,” Vasco said. “If we leave here, and any of us have a prayer of making it out of New York, we’ve got to stick together, like he said.” Vasco motioned at Hawke. “Watch each other’s backs.”
“Who are you to tell us what we need to do?” Hanscomb had folded her arms across her chest as if trying to protect herself.
“I served two tours in Afghanistan,” Vasco said. “Okay? That good enough for you? I know what I’m doing. This is like a military exercise. We have an objective; we have rules. Everyone’s got a job to do. You do it, you stay alive.”
“Okay.” Hanscomb nodded, more tears coming, as if she had released control and was relieved someone was taking over.
“The first thing is to stay calm. We plan a course of action, and we stick to the plan. Each of us is responsible for the others in the group. Leave nobody behind.”
“So where do we go?” Price shook his head. “What’s the plan, exactly?”
“I need to get to Hoboken, to my family,” Hawke said. Hanscomb might have been ready to hand over the reins to Jason Vasco; he was not. “I don’t care about anything else.”
“My wife is in Jersey, too,” Vasco said. “I’m with you. But it’s some kind of war out there, and we don’t even know who the enemy is. You might not make it out of the city alone. We need to know more, and we need help. So we get everyone to a checkpoint alive and safe. Lenox Hill Hospital is a couple of blocks away.”
“What about the police?” Hanscomb said. “What if they… get violent?”
“I don’t know why they shot that guy,” Vasco said. “But cops don’t just kill people for no reason. Look, maybe he really was a criminal. Maybe he had a gun.”
“He didn’t,” Hawke said. “He was unarmed—”
Vasco shrugged. “Okay. Maybe there was something else you didn’t see. I don’t know.”
“And if they do think we’re a part of this, for whatever reason?” Hanscomb said.
“We get the chance to explain the mistake.” Vasco shook his head. “Look at us, for Chrissake. Nobody’s going to believe that this group had anything to do with any terrorist attack. It’s ridiculous.” He pointed at Young. “We go out together. You, watch left. Sarah, you watch our right flank. Anyone sees anything at all, threatening or not, speak up. That’s your job; you focus on it. I’ll take point, and you two”—he pointed at Hawke and Price—“take up the rear. If we find Weller and he agrees, we bring him along, but no arguing, no debating. We stay together, stick to the buildings, shadows, whatever cover we can find. You do what I say. Okay?”
Hawke took a deep breath. He wasn’t sure yet what Weller had been talking about, although he had some ideas, and none of them were pleasant. The alternative was that Weller had completely lost his mind. But at this point, it didn’t matter. Weller was gone, they needed a plan and this was as good as any.
But he was wrong.
