Money to Burn

Ivy was outside the hangar now, crouched low, hiding behind the door and holding it partly open for me. Bullets continued to skid across the floor, ricocheting off the concrete. I lost track of the number of rounds McVee had fired so far. At most seven, and even with my limited knowledge about firearms, I knew there were plenty of pistols with magazines bigger than that.

I continued moving toward the door, but my momentum was slowing. My leg was starting to feel numb, and my head clouded up with congestion in places I had never felt congested, as if my entire brain were turning into cotton. Losing consciousness was an immediate possibility.

Another bullet whizzed past my ear. McVee continued to fire in my direction, but I couldn’t see him. I, on the other hand, was a sitting duck, and as my thoughts became less and less coherent, I had a memory flash of Papa telling me the story of the LST-“large stationary target”-that had transported him and some other very unlucky souls onto the beach at Normandy. I fought off the mind fog, giving it my all, but it felt as though I were moving at a turtle’s pace. Had McVee been a better shot, I would have been dead already. But I couldn’t remain out in the open, an easy target-LST-just waiting for him to finally hit the bull’s-eye. I suddenly recalled Burn’s warning about the fuel. I reached inside for one last burst of energy and sprang toward the open doorway. In midair I reached back and aimed in the direction of the fuel cans Wald had dropped to the floor. I squeezed off a shot as I rolled out the doorway.

68

“WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON?” SHOUTED AGENT ANDIE HENNING.

Andie was three hundred yards from the heliport, inside an FBI mobile command unit that was parked on the entrance road. A full hostage negotiation team was with her.

Minutes earlier, FBI tech agents had just completed an infrared-camera scan of the hangar, which picked up a fourth hostage inside the helicopter. A recent corpse could give off enough body heat to be picked up by a scan, but the possibility of a fourth hostage tipped the already shaky balance away from an all-out SWAT assault. A peaceful resolution also seemed highly achievable once Kyle McVee had entered the building, a powerful businessman whose entire life was about cutting deals. The negotiators were just thirty seconds away from initiating contact by loudspeaker when the shooting started. Andie raced out of the command unit and couldn’t believe what she was hearing in her headset. WhiteSands Hangar No. 3 sounded like a war zone.

Andie was immediately on the bone microphone with the FBI sniper, who was on the rooftop of WhiteSands Hangar No. 2, directly across the heliport from Hangar No. 3.

“The order was to hold your fire!” she shouted.

“Roger that,” came the reply. “No shot from here.”

She switched over to the SWAT unit commander. Agent Kowalski and his team had taken various strategic positions, completely surrounding Hangar No. 3, invisible even to Andie, ready to move in the event that the pla

“Are you green on breach?” asked Andie.

The breach was forced entry-showtime in SWAT-speak. Green was the assault-the moment of life and death, literally-after yellow, the final position of cover and concealment.

“Negative,” said Kowalski, his voice crackling with radio squelch. “Hot environment, no element of surprise. Holding at yellow.”

From the sound of things in Andie’s headset, Kowalksi was positioned right outside the building.

“Who went green?”

“Local SWAT.”

“Repeat that, please.”

“Local SWAT sniper did not copy the order to hold fire.”

Andie had been in a similar situation before. It seemed that everyone right down to neighborhood crime-watch volunteers had a SWAT unit these days. Usually the SWAT leaders were able to agree and coordinate efforts. Usually.

An unmarked car squealed around the corner, and it screeched to a halt so quickly that its front bumper nearly kissed the pavement. Supervisory Agent Malcolm Spear jumped out and hurried toward Andie at the mobile command center.

“What the hell happened?” he shouted.

Andie looked toward the flaming building just as it exploded.

69

IT MAY HAVE BEEN A DIRECT HIT, OR PERHAPS MY SHOT RICOCHETED off the floor, skipped up, and punctured the fuel can. Regardless, the explosion threw me out the door and at least another ten yards toward the helipad, which was a good thing. The hangar was engulfed in flames.

And then I blacked out-but only for a moment. When my eyes blinked open, I was looking up at Ivy. Olivia was beside her.

“Michael, can you hear me?” Ivy asked.

It was a feeling I’d never had before-knowing my name only because she was calling me “Michael.”

“Yeah, I can hear you,” I said. I tried to sit up, but Olivia gently pushed me back onto the pavement.

“Be still,” said Ivy. The expression on her face was somewhere between fright and concern; her tone was beyond urgent. “Do you have pain anywhere besides your leg?”

Olivia’s coat was tied around my thigh to stop the bleeding, and before the question, the pain had oddly gone away. But suddenly my leg was throbbing again.

“Just in the hamstrings,” I said.

There was another explosion from inside the hangar, and I felt the blast of heat on my face. Fortunately, we were far enough away to be out of danger. Sirens sounded from somewhere down the road. Olivia jumped up and darted off into the darkness. I could no longer see her, but I heard her shouting for help.

“Over here!”

“You’re going to be okay,” said Ivy.

“This way!” someone else shouted.

A moment later I was looking up at another woman. It gave me a moment of confusion-What the hell is Mallory’s friend doing here?-but then my thoughts cleared, and I remembered that she was an FBI agent. She had paramedics with her, and right behind them was the FBI SWAT unit dressed in full tactical armor. A fire truck rumbled right past us and the firefighters jumped off and went immediately into action. The SWAT guy cut Ivy’s hands free from the plastic cuffs with a serrated knife. As the paramedics checked me out and lifted me up onto the gurney, I heard Andie screaming at two men, one from FBI SWAT and the other wearing a black flak jacket that said SHERIFF in white letters. Both men were shouting back at her. As best I could tell, the plan had been for SWAT to hold its fire until negotiations failed, but there had been a miscommunication. It was hard for me to comprehend a blunder like that, but it would soon mesh perfectly with everything I would read about law enforcement activities directed toward Wall Street.

The paramedics lifted me into the ambulance, and Ivy started to climb inside with me.

“Sorry, miss,” said the paramedic. “You can’t ride in here.”

“You can’t stop me,” she said.

He grabbed her arm. “Who are you?”

“I’m his wife,” she said.

“And I’m her husband,” I said, just feeling a need to say it.

The paramedic was too rushed to argue.

“Hurry up then,” he said.

Ivy climbed inside, and it felt good as she took my hand and laced her fingers with mine. Through the open ambulance doors, we glanced back at the firefighters battling the inferno, knowing that there was no way McVee had survived. Ivy’s reason to run was no more.

The ambulance doors closed, and I looked up at her face. She leaned forward and kissed me on the forehead.

“You feeling okay?” she asked.

“Yeah.”

“You sure?”

“Yup,” I said, feeling a little foggy again, another one of those memory flashes to Papa coming on. “Just another beautiful day in paradise.”