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 revealed 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.
Davis gaped at his son falling, and lost his chance to escape as the cab screeched to a stop in front of the Mercedes and Taximan leaped out, his pistol pointed at Davis' face. The older man raised his hands. A second later, Lyons and Blancanales jumped from the van, pointing pistols down at the stunned young man.
The .223 had torn away the heel of his fashionable shoe. He held his foot in both hands, rolling on the asphalt, his face twisted in pain.
'Good shot.' Lyons grinned at Blancanales. Then he took a card from his wallet, chanted aloud: 'You are under arrest. You have the right to remain silent. You may...'
New York's columns of lights wheeled around them as the helicopter banked. Lyons saw the helipad's rectangle of red landing lights in the window in defiance of gravity. Then the lights sank and the sawtooth horizon of skyscrapers and night returned. The helicopter dropped straight down for landing. Lyons continued the interrogation of Davis and his son, whose Colombian driver's license identified him as Roberto Alcantara.
'We have photos of you together.' Lyons told them. 'We have photos of you...' he pointed at Alcantara '...with the pistol in your hand as you killed that man. The New York courts can send you away for life. But if you cooperate, we will not surrender you to North Carolina, where you killed two people last night. In that state, murder and conspiracy to commit murder are punishable by death. Do you understand? You have the choice between life or death.'
Davis sneered, his gray aristocratic face becoming ugly, cunning. 'We would like to speak to my lawyers immediately, if you don't mind. And there are several calls I'd like to make.'
The helicopter bumped down. Agents on the roof threw the side doors open. Lyons grinned at Davis. 'Oh, but I do mind.'
Agents jerked the handcuffed Davis from his seat, quick-marched him across the roof to an open door. Lyons turned to Alcantara.
'You get special, extra-special personal attention.' Lyons shoved Alcantara from the helicopter. Blancanales followed one step behind them. Agents half-dragged the limping Alcantara to the doorway and hustled him to the elevator. Before the doors closed, Lyons looked into the cold, sneering face of Alcantara. The man's face was a replica of his father's: younger, darker, but his hair certainly the same, and with the same ice-blue eyes, the same expression.
'If you want to live,' Lyons told him, 'you will cooperate with us.'
'My father's lawyers will speak to you of this entirely unjustified arrest. You will soon learn that there are some men the police cannot touch.'
Lyons grinned, looked at Blancanales. 'Who said we're police?'
He saw Alcantara's sneer fail for an instant.
Speaking through an electronically secured telephone line to Washington, D.C., Lyons briefed his commander. 'His son's name is Roberto Alcantara. The mother met Davis when he was working in Colombia twenty-five years ago. There was no room in Davis' career for a scandal and divorce, so he bought the woman off. Then he paid for the best schools, the best university for the boy. Along the way, Alcantara picked up some very red political ideas. He only saw eye to eye with his father when they decided to put their heads together and buy a country.'
'Buy?' said Brognoia.
'Yeah. Seems so. Either buy one, or buy into one. It apparently irritated Davis that his son couldn't inherit WorldFiCor. So they worked out a scheme. Alcantara got the weapons and explosives, recruited the crazies. Davis got the money to pay for it all through a variety of international embezzlements, the latest involving a disgruntled Hungarian ex-Communist. Davis would have been the king, and his son the prince. But judging from how Alcantara operates, Davis would have died fast, and Alcantara would have been the number one man.'
'This is great background,' Brognola told him. 'But listen now — how is this information going to get the terrorists out of the Tower?'
'There's more,' Lyons said. 'First of all, there's no way we can get in from the ground. Period. They have this psycho named Zuniga who spent months preparing for this. The garage and first floor are crisscrossed with booby-traps. No bomb squad or anti-terrorist team could get through in less than a day or two. Second, the Tower is wired with explosives and incendiaries. Alcantara intended to blow away the Tower with his crazies inside. That would have eliminated both the crazies and the WorldFiCor records.
'But something went wrong. Alcantara pushed the button and nothing happened.
'If Zuniga doesn't know the radio-detonator has failed, great. No problem. But if he does, there's no way
