Brooklyn
At that same instant, a deafening explosion jarred the underbelly of the helicopter with a jolt that rattled 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 cockpit.
Splinters of glass flew in all directions. Star fractures cob-webbed 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,” Parrish moaned as he slumped forward.
A machine gun chattered loudly off to Carroll's left. He 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.
The sky filled with bright, jarring yellow orbs of light, with roaring fire and billowing black smoke. The companion police helicopter had disintegrated before Carroll's eyes.
Within seconds there was nothing left of the chopper but leaping gold-and-orange flames. Nothing but an eerie, fading afterimage in the sky.
Carroll could see that Luther Parrish had been badly hit. Puddles of blood were collecting from a wound on the side of his head. The electric circuits in the cockpit seemed to be completely out.
Heavy machine-gun fire suddenly welled up from below. The pilot moaned and grabbed his legs. The helicopter had begun to fall, to somersault and plummet.
Carroll crazily fired his M-16 at one of the attacking Cobras. The red light winked derisively-then the copter calmly disappeared from sight.
Carroll froze. The police helicopter suddenly flipped over. It was upside down. Blood was rushing, swirling through his head.
The helicopter was now in a deadfall, sailing and spinning into the Brooklyn Navy Yard below. A flat black rooftop, with a water tower mounted on it, suddenly loomed at the copter's windshield. Carroll could see them skimming over an expanse of shadowy factory buildings a block long, at least. They missed a smoking industrial chimney by inches. Then 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 chopper cleared the last building. Cars were parked in long, uneven lines up both sides.
Carroll was familiar with helicopters from his many trips in Vietnam, though not how to fly. Reflexively he grabbed at the controls.
He was beyond all fear now, beyond anything he'd even felt in combat or police action. He was in a new realm-a place where he was acutely conscious of everything around him.
This was it, he thought. He was going to die.
The helicopter's belly cleanly sheared the rooftops off half a dozen parked cars. Carroll covered his face and shielded Parrish as best he could.
The helicopter struck the street on a side angle. It skidded, bounded violently, then issued a grinding shriek. Sparks, plumes of intense red flames, flew in every direction. Whole sides of parked automobiles, headlights, and bumpers were effortlessly cut away. A fire hydrant popped out of the sidewalk.
The helicopter plowed to a tearing, screaming, crunching halt against two crushed cars.
A man in a factory security uniform came running down the deserted street, zigzagging crazily toward the unbelievable accident. “Hey, hey! That's my car! That's my
Carroll cradled the badly wounded pilot. “Grab hold. You just hold me,” he whispered, hoping the man wasn't already dead. “Just hold me, Luther. Don't let go.”
He began to half carry the hulking NYPD pilot away from the burning helicopter wreckage. His eyes nervously searched the skies for the attacking Cobras, but he could see nothing.
The choppers might as well have been a nightmare. The nightmare of Vietnam all over again.
And now Archer Carroll was out of the grand chase. He had lost Green Band. They had eluded him again.
40
The Vets cabs proceeded northeast, then almost due east across Brooklyn. They were moving inexorably toward Francois Monserrat and the appointed end of Green Band. Everything was precisely on schedule.
Erect and alert behind the wheel, David Hudson was experiencing a moment of unusual anxiety. It all had to do with being this close to the end. They were less than seven minutes from the rendezvous with Monserrat.
Nothing could distract David Hudson from Green Band now. He would concentrate as if he were entering a combat zone. Nothing must look even mildly suspicious…
Francois Monserrat's soldiers could be watching the streets from neighborhood rooftops and darkened apartment windows. If they spotted the unexpected attack force, the final massive exchange of Wall Street securities would fail. Green Band would fail.
Like an advance scout in 'Nam, Hudson noted everything. A knot of black youths was easing out of Turner's Grill. Their voices carried-low, guttural sounds in syncopated street rhythms. He checked and rechecked the squat, cheerless brick buildings as he drove closer to the agreed-upon meeting place.
Hudson drove slowly on until he found a parking spot farther down the slope-shouldered Bedford-Stuyvesant side street. Very nonchalantly he climbed out of the car. He continued to look around the quiet neighborhood, searching for any sign of danger. 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 began to walk as rapidly as he could toward a red brick factory at the next corner. He was certain he was being watched. Francois Monserrat was somewhere nearby. All of his senses and instincts corroborated that warning signal. This was to be the moment of reckoning. Hudson's Special Forces training to be matched against Monserrat's years of experience, his years of meticulous deceit.
Hudson shouldered open the heavy wood front door of a building that 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, but almost too mundane.
“Don't turn around, Colonel.”
Three men with long-nosed Magnums and Berettas drawn, stepped into the dim corridor.
“Move right up against the wall… That's good. Right there. That will be fine, Colonel Hudson.”
The leader had a cultivated Spanish accent, more than likely Cuban. Francois Monserrat ran the Caribbean and most of the terrorist activities in South America, Hudson remembered. At the rate he was going, one day Monserrat was going to run the entire Third World.
“I'm not armed,” Hudson said quietly.
“We have to search you anyway.”
One of the men positioned himself about three feet away from Colonel David Hudson. He pointed his gun 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, quickly and professionally. The third man searched the suitcases, slashing them carefully with a knife, looking for false siding, a false bottom.
“Upstairs!” the terrorist who held the gun finally commanded Hudson. He spoke like a military officer, Hudson noted.
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?
“This is your floor, Colonel. That blue door straight ahead. You can just walk inside. You're most definitely expected.”
“Point of information? I have a question for you, for all of you. Curiosity on my part.” David Hudson spoke without turning to face them.
An impatient grunt came from behind…
The Lizard Man. Past interrogations. Special Forces training. Hudson's mind continued to churn at a furious rate.
All to prepare him for this very moment? For this and no other?
“Do they ever tell you what's really happening? Has anyone bothered to tell you the truth about this operation? Do you know what this meeting
David Hudson was introducing some element of doubt into all of their minds, petty doubts and confusion, paranoid unease he could use later, if he needed to.
Deception.
“Don't bother to knock, Colonel.” The man in charge calmly spoke once again. “Just go right in; you're expected. Everything you try to do is expected, Colonel.”
A slice of dull yellow light emanated from the fourth-floor tenement room as David Hudson peered inside. He paused at the doorway's edge.
He was about to confront the mysterious and dangerous Monserrat. He was about to end Green Band's long mission.
The Vietcong's Lizard Man had taught Hudson an essential lesson in Vietnam: Play games in which your opponent wasn't given the rules. This was the principle behind all successful guerrilla warfare, Hudson believed.
Colonel David Hudson versus Monserrat.
Now it would begin, and end.
“All blue-and-white units! We've picked them up again… We've got our friends Green Band!”
NYPD cruiser radios echoed brassily above the noise of whining police and hospital emergency sirens at the helicopter crash site near the Brooklyn Navy Yard.
“They're moving into a residential neighborhood. Bed-ford-Stuyvesant. It's right in the heart of the fucking ghetto. They're traveling on Halsey Street in Bed-Stuy. Over.”
