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“If the time they picked the girl up is even close to being right, they may be in Philadelphia already,” the state police captain told Dean as the helicopter became airborne.
The girl had described a long light-colored cargo van, with no windows. An Army surveillance aircraft and a Coast Guard plane normally used for work against drug smugglers recalibrated their search grids and began hunting for the vehicle in and around the city. At the same time, police and National Guard units moved to shut down the roads completely. The alert going out over the police and Homeland Security networks added a description not only of Babin but of a man who was probably General Tucume. The Art Room was supplying several *.jpg files, digital photographs that could be shown on computer screens or printed out.
It was after 1:00 a.m. The city loomed in the distance, its well-lit skyline proclaiming that it would survive even this challenge. It had witnessed the birth of democracy more than two hundred years before and withstood the wrath of what was then the greatest army in the world. It would not cower tonight.
“If I were going to blow up Philadelphia,” Dean said to Daniels, “I’d make Congress Hall ground zero. That or the Liberty Bell. We should start searching there.”
“We will,” said the trooper, pushing his headset lower on his head. “They’re in the city by now,” Lia told the helicopter pilot. “We can help the search.”
“Uh, I have orders to get out of the blast area,” said the pilot. “Specifically, Red Sky—”
“Nah, that doesn’t apply to you,” said Karr, leaning forward. “Let’s go.”
“We’re looking for a light-colored van,” Lia told the pilot, reaching for the controls to the forward-looking infrared radar.
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Babin fell over to the driver’s side of the truck, the phone bouncing from his hand to the floor. He raged against the whirlpool of pain that enveloped him, screaming and flailing and refusing to give up, refusing to be cheated of his revenge. He rolled and tried to grip his assailant, remembered his gun, then saw the cell phone a few inches from his head; unsure which to grab, he hesitated, and in that moment the pain increased exponentially. He felt himself falling, surrounded by flames — he was back in the aircraft, back in the ambush, screaming at the pilot and yelling at himself, tricked by the CIA liar, murdered, murdered, murdered.
Tucume lowered the pistol, then reached through the window and pulled Babin’s body upright. He had killed a number of men in his life as an army commander but never one so close to him.
He went around to the other side of the van and opened the door. He reached on the floor and picked up the cell phone, then dashed it on the street. It broke in two. Not satisfied, he stood over each piece and shot it. It took two bullets to hit the second piece, his hand was shaking so badly.
He threw the pistol aside and went back to the truck. He thought from Babin’s directions earlier that the waterfront was nearby somewhere; he’d drive the van into the water and be done with it all.
But which way was it? Left? Right?
Slowly, he backed down the road, struggling to see and control the van at the same time. As he reached the intersection, the ground began to shake with the heavy beat of helicopters overhead.
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One of the crew members in the cockpit spotted the van backing down the dead-end street a few blocks from the historic district in downtown Philadelphia. Dean went to the side of the Pave Low, peering down through the open door.
“Yeah! Could be it,” he yelled into the interphone. He grabbed hold of the rail near the door and punched the button to the shared police channel, starting to describe the vehicle.
“They’re in the center of the city, not far from Congress Hall and the Liberty Bell,” the pilot of the Little Bird shouted to Lia. “We’re real close.”
“Get us there!” she yelled.
Karr jerked behind her, the whole helicopter seeming to rock as he leaned out the side and looked down. They were maybe fifty feet over the street, so close to some of the rooftops that they could have stepped off onto them. The pilot barked into his microphone, talking to another nearby helicopter.
“That’s got to be it,” yelled Karr. “Watch him — he’s going up Eighth.”
The helicopter veered left, spinning around a building and then running in the direction the van was taking. It went in the direction of 676, the arterial that ran between 76 and 95 north of City Hall. It cut left, then right, veered suddenly, and bashed the end of a police cruiser parked across the entrance ramp to the highway. The van veered onto the sidewalk, careened against the guardrail, and made it onto the roadway.
“Stop him!” Lia shouted to the pilot. “Use the machine-gun.”
“We’re going to.”
The small helicopter bucked and pitched almost straight down, its tail whipping around. The truck veered across the divider as the pilot began to fire; bullets flashed along the roadway and right under the truck. The wheels blew out as the chopper veered off.
“All right, all right, he’s stopping,” yelled Karr in the back. “Get us down! Get us down!”
“We’re in,” said the pilot, gliding for a landing on the roadway ahead.
As they settled down, Dean’s helicopter appeared right above. Lia closed her eyes, sure they were going to hit.
“Oh God, Charlie Dean,” she whispered. “Oh God.”
“Lia, come on!” yelled Karr, jumping from the rear as the Little Bird set down. “Let’s go, let’s go! I got the front; you got the rear. Go!”
Lia, in disbelief, pitched herself out of the cockpit, amazed that they hadn’t collided.
“No offense, but we’ll do better if I use that,” said Dean, putting his hand on the M4 carbine the crew chief had in his hand. It wasn’t a request; Dean took the gun firmly in hand and in the same motion leapt to the ground, running forward as the van slammed to a stop against the concrete road barrier and spun sideways.
Dean took two steps. The driver of the van turned his head toward him.
The voice Dean heard was Turk’s, muttered in the jungle some thirty years before. It was the one piece of advice no experience had ever contradicted, the one thing anyone had ever told Dean that he knew to be true under any circumstance.
And by the time Dean heard it in his head, he had already pressed the trigger on the automatic rifle. Three bullets struck the driver of the van in the head, taking off a good part of the skull and killing him instantly.
“Charlie Dean!” yelled a voice close to him, and for a second Dean thought it was Turk, back from the dead, back from the war he would always be fighting, congratulating him. But it was Karr, yelling at him, telling him he was going to flank the van and to watch out for the rear.
“I got the back! I got the back!” screamed Lia, appearing to Dean’s right.
Dean covered them, advancing slowly, gun trained on the van.
“Dead guy!” yelled Karr. “They’re both down. We’re OK! We’re OK!”
“We have the bomb here!” said Lia in the back. “Jesus, Charlie!”
“I’m here,” said Dean. He went around to the back of the van. “Are you all right?”
