“What do you think I am? A terrorist?”
—Raza Jabarti
Jamie piloted Jules’s news chopper south over the Central Park Reservoir en route to the UN. Banking southeast toward the East River, he spotted a police helicopter, a half mile away, heading north up Second Avenue.
“Hey, Elena,” Jamie shouted to her, “something’s weird about that chopper. Its hatch is open, and it’s slowing down over J. T.’s Needle Tower. See if you can a get a look inside.”
Elena had a pair of Monarch HG 10X42 binoculars strung around her neck. At that distance, the inside of the chopper would appear less than eighty yards away through the binoculars.
“What’s bothering you?” Jules asked Jamie.
“Tower has hundreds of federal agents and half the U.S. Army inside that skyscaper,” Jamie said. “Why would a police chopper be over there? It can’t do anything for them. It should be covering UN Plaza. That place is huge, spread out and impossibly difficult to protect. It would take Patton’s Third Army to properly secure it. The UN needs the NYPD choppers, not that building.”
“Oh, my God,” Elena screamed, focusing the binoculars on the interior of the police helicopter through the open hatch, “is that who I think it is? Danny, is that her?”
McMahon took Elena’s binoculars and fixed them on the police chopper.
“As I live and no longer want to breathe,” he shouted. “It’s Raza, and the chopper’s cabin has some bodies on its deck. Someone shot them to pieces, and one of them looks like Marika.”
Elena relieved him of the binoculars and refocused them. “Fahad’s dead too,” Elena yelled. “Jules, zoom that nose camera in on that open hatch. Jamie, move in closer.”
Jules was still strapped into her jump seat, her open laptop camera controls resting on her knees. She moved the joystick around until the camera was focused on Elena’s open door. On her monitor and on the video assist, mounted above the chopper’s control panel, the police helicopter came into view. Jules zoomed in for a close-up. Now Jamie, Elena and their team could also see into the chopper.
The cabin clearly had three bloody bodies in cop uniforms on its deck, and weapons were scattered all around them. Only Raza, who had just slipped out of her police uniform, was left alive. Decked out in a black tank top, matching panties and sunglasses, an MP5 straddling her lap, she lowered the helicopter onto the roof of the Needle Tower of Power on 59th Street.
Elena’s own chopper was now less than a quarter mile away from Raza’s, and in the camera monitor, Elena saw Raza studying her through a pair of field glasses. The MP5 braced on her hip, Raza lowered her binoculars but continued to stare Elena down, looking her dead in the eye, giving her the evilest grin Elena had ever seen—and would ever see.
Elena also saw that on the cabin’s deck was a hydraulically powered ramp which would lock on the open hatch. Just behind the far side of the ramp was what appeared to be … a … a …
A cannon barrel!
“Holy shit!” Elena screamed. “Raza has the fucking nuke!”
The chopper was now on the Needle Tower’s roof. When two rooftop guards in black suits and sunglasses approached the open hatch, she raised the silenced MP5 machine gun and stitched them each across their faces with short, rapid bursts.
She then pushed a button, lowering the ramp onto the building’s roof. It hooked automatically on to the edge of the open hatch. The hydraulic lift eased the old cannon barrel onto the ramp, and it began rolling down the ramp onto the Needle Tower’s roof.
Elena and her team wore headsets, so Elena said to Jamie:
“They’re probably on a police frequency. See if you can reach them. Danny, you know her. Try to talk her out of this.”
“In the meantime, swing around,” Rashid yelled. He was holding the Barrett-M83 anti-transport sniper rifle by the barrel. “I ought to have a shot.”
“Swing it around,” Elena yelled to Jamie. “Let him take it. Danny, you talk to Raza.”
Meanwhile, Rashid eased himself down on the chopper’s deck. He lowered the Barrett’s bipod. He laid himself belly-down, propping the rifle’s muzzle on the edge of the open hatch. He began adjusting the scope for distance and windage.
“Hi guys,” Raza’s voice was on their radio. “Who all’s there?”
“Rashid and I, for openers,” McMahon said.
What the fuck? Elena thought, stunned.
“Ask her what’s going on!” Rashid shouted. “That’s not a terrorist nuke, is it?”
“Is a pig’s pussy pork?” Raza thundered in their headsets, clearly having heard his question. “But don’t worry. It’s only one kiloton—probably less. It won’t destroy your sacred Big Apple, but it’s going to incinerate the holy shit out of J. T.’s 59th Street Needle Tower of Power—to say nothing of those mega-rich motherfuckers inside. You know, the ones plotting a hostile takeover of Planet Earth?”
“Almost ready,” Rashid said.
“I thought you were going to nuke the UN,” McMahon said to Raza.
“And kill all those caring, hardworking, innocent people?” Raza asked. “What do you think I am? A terrorist?”
Her insolent laughter filled their headsets.
“Instead,” McMahon yelled, “you’re going to nuke Tower’s oligarchs?”
“Of course I am,” Raza said.
Again, her malicious laughter rang in their ears.
“I don’t get it.” McMahon said.
“And you never will,” Raza said. “Remember what I always told you, Danny?”
“Not to understand you too quickly,” McMahon recited numbly.
“Because,” Raza said, “you can never understand us—our world, our women, our lives.”
Suddenly, Raza was back at the controls, and her police chopper was lifting off, then banking south away from the Tower of Power, as fast as it could.
Rashid’s big Barrett roared, but the shot missed, as did the second.
“Don’t chase me,” Raza yelled at them. “You’ll head straight into the fireball. Bank north as fast as you know how.”
Jamie instantly wheeled the chopper around and headed straight for the park.
“Goodbye, Danny,” Raza shouted, laughing maniacally. “Don’t think of me too harshly. In my own way I almost … love you.”
Elena and her crew were back over Central Park, Raza’s hilarious howls still bombarding their eardrums like the baying of bloodhounds after treeing a prey. Rocketing over the zoo, they were coming in fast and low over the Central Park Reservoir, then—
They were too close to the bomb to hear the blast, which at that distance produced decibels far beyond their hearing range. Against the windscreen, however, they glimpsed a dimly reflected flash of the bomb’s thermal flare, and the reservoir water below replicated the blaze as well. They felt the shuddering, shattering, earthquake power of the shock wave. Knocking them sideways, it sent them spinning toward the drink. Crashing into the water, the blades smashing and thrashing against the surface, the chopper rolled twice. The aircraft finally came to rest upside down in about five feet of water, which quickly extinguished the engine’s flames.
Unbuckling their harnesses, they dropped down onto the cabin ceiling, which was now underneath them. One by one, they eased themselves out of the hatch into the middle of the reservoir.
To the south, an incandescently brilliant, ever-expanding, red-yellow fireball slowly rose above the city. It was too blindingly bright to observe with the naked eye, but Elena could note its progress, which was mirrored in the reservoir’s H2O. Only when roiling billows of dark, dense smoke enveloped it did she turn to watch. Levitating upward, the rising fire and dark, billowing smoke slowly, incrementally began to dissipate with infinite lassitude.
As the dense, fiery clouds languidly and lazily dispersed, Elena turned to survey the extent of the destruction. Through the drifting haze and to her eternal dismay, Elena saw that J. T.’s Needle Tower of Power was no more.