Worst Case

Chapter 85

MOONEY ZIPPED THROUGH the Lexington Avenue traffic quickly, but not too quickly. Cutting off a FedEx truck, he skillfully made a hairpin right onto 57th Street.

He hadn’t pla

He now had the two students gagged and double-cuffed down on the floor. Mason was blond, and Parrish had reddish-brown hair, but the two seniors could have been brothers. Handsome, athletic-looking, and oh-so-elite in their Burberry shirts and Polo ties.

The question wasn’t where they’d be going to college, Mooney knew. The question was, which Ivy League school? An eye-popping twenty-five percent of the students at St. Edward’s went on to Ivy League schools. In some city public schools, fewer than twenty-five percent even graduated.

The inequality didn’t end there, of course. Parrish’s father was CEO of Mellon Zaxo, the household-product giant. He’d been the third-highest-compensated executive in the United States the year before, with over one hundred and thirteen million dollars in salary and stock bonuses. Mason’s dad was the North American chief of Takia, the monolithic Russian natural gas corporation. He’d just squeaked into the top ten by raking in a paltry sixty-one million.

This, while the average American household income topped off at fifty-three thousand. While regular people went without health insurance and lost their houses in banking subprime swindles.

A groan came from the backseat.

“One more stop, now, fellas,” Mooney called to them.

A short stop, he thought, but vitally important.

He slowed as he arrived at the Four Seasons Hotel on the corner of 57th and Park Avenue. The opulent fifty-two-story I. M. Pei-designed midtown landmark was a favorite with movie stars and billionaires.

A handsome college-age doorman in a nineteenth-century-inspired uniform and a top hat raced out through the brass revolving door.

Popping open the taxi’s rear door, the hotel worker stood there in his ridiculous footman’s uniform, staring stupefied at the two students handcuffed on the floor of the backseat.

Mooney leaned through the divider and pressed the Beretta to the doorman’s square jaw.

The male-model look-alike took a wad of ones from his pocket.

“Take it, bro. All yours,” he said.

Mooney pistol-whipped the bills out of the young man’s white-gloved hands.

“Get in now,” he said.

“What?” the doorman said. “Get in? Me?”

“Yes, get in the front seat or I’ll put a bullet in your chest. How’s that for a tip? I won’t tell you twice,” Mooney said as he unlocked the front door.

Chapter 86

TWENTY MINUTES LATER, Mooney let out a sigh of relief as he reached Canal Street. He made a left and then a quick right two blocks east onto Mott. He stomped down on the accelerator, barreling the Chevy taxicab down the narrow, winding Chinatown street.

He’d made it. He was in the maze of downtown now. This was going to happen. Absolutely nothing could stop him now.

Mooney found the Bowery and took it to St. James Place and farther south onto Pearl. He thought he would feel nervous as he neared his final destination, but it was the exact opposite. He’d never felt so elated, so clean. He was coming into contact with the sublime now.

Stopping the stolen taxi on Pearl half a block north of Beaver, Mooney looked out on the compact downtown skyline. Austere modern glass cliff faces squeezed between soaring Beaux Arts granite facades. An entire vista built by greed, he thought. By evil and slavery and war.

Was it any wonder that, even before the two attacks on the World Trade Center, the area had retained such a violent, bloody history? The 1970 Hard Hat Riot, where hundreds of thug blue-collar workers severely beat the members of an antiwar demonstration. The 1975 Fraunces Tavern bombing by the Puerto Rican separatist group FALN, which had killed four people. As far back as 1920, a wagon loaded with iron slugs and a hundred pounds of dynamite had been set off by anarchists in front of the New York Stock Exchange, killing thirty-three people.

History really does repeat itself, Francis thought as he opened his bag.

He began to methodically prepare the boys and doorman and himself. Wordlessly, he stepped out with them onto the sidewalk. A pudgy Asian businesswoman coming out of an Au Bon Pain in front of them screamed before throwing herself back inside.

Francis gazed at the monstrous American flag draped down the massive Corinthian columns of the Stock Exchange’s famous Neoclassical facade. He looked at the maze of steel barricades and concrete car stops that provided blast cushion, to use the parlance of counter-terror circles. There was about a regiment of heavily armed law enforcement on the sidewalk. They stood beside Emergency Service panel trucks, holding rifles and black telescope-like Geiger counters. He was supposed to get by them?

A snatch of Nietzsche came to him, comforted him.

He who has a why to live can bear almost any how.

Mooney and the three young men were turning the corner of Exchange Place and Broad when the bomb dogs started up. He was linked to the men with strand upon strand of the det cord and strips of plastic explosive. Tangled together in the thick clothesline-like explosive, they looked strange and terrifying, a cross between performance artists and victims of a construction accident.

The cocking of automatic rifles from the SWAT cops behind the steel barricades rang down the narrow trench of the street as Francis shuffled toward them, co

An older, pugnacious-looking buzz-cut cop in a suit and trench coat was the first to reach them. His name was De

Qui

“I’d watch where I pointed that thing, if I were you,” Francis said with a smile. “I wouldn’t want you to hurt anyone.” He indicated the doorman tangled beside him to the right.

“Most especially your son here, De

The gun in Qui

“Oh, my God! Kevin?” Qui

Francis raised his hands with the electronic detonator controller taped between them. He showed Qui

“See the indicator light? The det cord? The plastic? We’re charged and ready to go, De

De

Francis stared dead into the man’s eyes.

“It’s simple. I die, we all die. You, me, these two young men here. Oh, and your only son. I know you’re a patriot, De

“This is a test, De