24: Deadline (24 Series) (8 page)

The pilot tried to scramble back to his feet and he looked up to find the yawning muzzle of the M1911 pistol aimed at the middle of his forehead. Jack didn’t need to shout out a command over the chop of the spinning blades. The transaction was clear, and the man backed off, hands out to his sides, ducking low as the rotor wash buffeted him.

Jack clambered into the helicopter’s cockpit and secured the door. The pilot broke into a run, and from the corner of his eye, Jack could see movement back near the office hut. He had no time to waste.

The gun went into the side of his waistband and Jack’s hands dropped automatically into the correct positions on the cyclic stick in front of him and the collective lever at his side. His feet found the pedals and he increased the throttle with a twist of his wrist. The thudding tone of the rotors became a chattering snarl as he applied more power to the engine. Jack felt the blades biting into the air and the helicopter immediately became lighter, lifting up off the ground.

Something struck the rear of the Long Ranger with a dull, hollow ring, and Jack glanced to his right, catching sight of the FBI team taking aim, firing. He pressed hard on one of the pedals and the tail of the helicopter slewed around, pointing the buzz saw disc of the rear rotor in their direction. Jack kept on applying more power, deliberately aiming the downwash from the main rotors to swamp his pursuers and disrupt their aim.

As he brought the helicopter around, he caught a glimpse of Hadley trying to draw a bead on him with his carbine. Jack aimed the Long Ranger’s nose toward the coastline of New Jersey on the far side of the Hudson and the aircraft raced away like a loosed arrow. More shots rang against the fuselage, but without result.

Moving low and fast, he skimmed across the surface of the river, taking the shortest possible route from shore to shore until he made landfall again over the suburban streets of Union City.

Jack found the fuel gauge and saw the needle resting at 75 percent reserves. Enough to get him into Maine, maybe across the Canadian border, or perhaps toward Philadelphia and Baltimore if he turned south—and then only if he could avoid contact with any police or Air National Guard units.

It was time to go dark. He switched off his transponder, cutting off any attempt local air traffic controllers might make to find his vector and lead others to him. Then Jack deactivated the Long Ranger’s running lights and the cockpit illumination until the only light he had was the soft glow of the instrument panel. The sun had set and the azure sky was darkening to black. As long as he could keep below the radar detection threshold and away from urban centers, escape was possible.

At least until this thing runs out of gas,
he thought.
And then what the hell am I going to do?

He glanced down at the black bag where he had dumped it on the empty seat beside him, thinking about the micro-SIM card he had recovered from the apartment. The FBI would have access to his CTU personnel file, and that would have most of the names and numbers from his “black book.” If Hadley was smart, he would already have taps on the most likely subjects and communications traffic analysts watching everyone else. And then there were the Russians, who had deep pockets, a very long reach and a whole different set of intelligence resources.

He couldn’t call Kim to alert her about his situation, or pull in favors from his usual contacts. Finishing what he had started was going to involve thinking a long way outside the box. He put the helicopter into a shallow turn and pointed it in the direction of the vanished sun.

Slowly, it came to Jack that the only person who could help him was a dead man.

05

The warehouse on the outskirts of Pittsburgh had once stored colossal rolls of paper for transport to printing works and factories all over the country, but now it was an echoing, vacant space. Just one more example of the economic downturn writ large across the city’s infrastructure, home now to a colony of tenacious rats and little else.

The homeless and the unlucky knew better than to try and find shelter in the place, however. As much as it stood idle and empty, the warehouse still did business of a sort. It belonged to the deSalvo crime family, and they kept it on the books as a place where they could meet without fear of being overheard by the feds. The fact that it was isolated enough to mean that the odd gunshot wouldn’t be noticed was just a bonus.

Charlie Williams drove the silver Chrysler 300 in under the half-open roller doors and brought it to a halt, a short distance from a pair of black Crown Victorias parked under the big skylight. In the rearview mirror he could see Roker in the backseat, shifting uncomfortably, visibly sweating even though it was a chilly evening. The other man pulled at the collar of his shirt and kept shifting his jacket like it was too tight for him.

Relax,
he wanted to say.
They’re not going to bring you here just to whack you.
But he said nothing. He had learned the hard way that “Big Mike” Roker didn’t like it when his employees spoke out of turn—and Charlie Williams was very much a servant of the Roker household, as Big Mike and his wife liked to remind him at every opportunity.

He turned off the engine and felt a spasm of pain from his right hand. He thought about the plastic bottle of Percocet tablets in his jacket pocket and unconsciously licked his lips. Today had been a bad day for the old wound, and he could feel the numbness in his fingers like a creeping rot. The nerve damage there had never fully healed, and he’d tried to make his peace with it. But sometimes even an action as simple as maintaining a firm grip on the steering wheel was difficult. With effort, he pushed away the thought of the temporary relief the pain medication would give him and concentrated on his surroundings.

Ernest deSalvo had four guys standing with him. Scanning the warehouse, Charlie saw the shadow of someone else under one of the support gantries toward the rear of the building. An extra man, a spotter maybe. He suppressed a thin smile. Ernest liked to think he was some kind of little general, talking about his side of the organization like it was a military unit with “point men” and “tactical overwatch” and all that kind of terminology. But the fact was, the man’s entire knowledge of warfare and soldiering came from a diet of lurid war documentaries on the History channel.

Roker kicked the back of his seat. “What are you waiting for? Get out there!”

“Right,” said Charlie, his lips thinning. He climbed out and opened the back door so Roker could exit with something approaching poise.

Ernest nodded at one of his guys, and the bodyguard came up and frisked Charlie, before giving Big Mike a cursory pat down.

“Hey,” Roker complained. “Not without dinner and a movie first.”

That drew a dry snigger from deSalvo. “This one. He’s always a joker.”

Charlie followed Roker toward the group, but stayed back a few feet. His gaze was instinctively drawn toward the man in the shadows. Big Mike hadn’t noticed the sixth guy.

“We, ah, not keeping your boy’s attention, Mikey?” said Ernest, gesturing at Charlie.

Roker shot him a look. “What?” he demanded.

Charlie sighed and pointed directly at the hidden man. “Is he looking for rats?”

“Who?” Ernest played dumb.

“
Your
boy, Mr. deSalvo. The one who thinks he’s playing ghost over there.”

The oily grin on deSalvo’s face froze for a second. He didn’t like being caught out. Then he laughed and spoke up. “Bobby! Stop screwing around!”

The sixth man sheepishly emerged from the shadows and lit a cigarette, staring daggers at Charlie.

“Eyes like an eagle,” Roker noted. “It’s why I pay him so much!”

“Not
that
much,” Charlie muttered under his breath.

“Yeah.” Ernest gave Charlie a hard look. “How’s the hand, tough guy?” He sneered. “You still on them pills?”

Roker was glaring at him as he replied. “Good days and bad days.” Charlie ran a hand over his closely shaved head and looked away.

But deSalvo had already dismissed him. The conversation went on in exactly the way the driver had imagined it would. Ernest wasn’t happy with Roker’s performance, and was here to remind him that his continued success, his comfortable home and the nice career he had carved out running his car dealership, all those things existed at the indulgence of the deSalvo organization.

Ernest was smart enough not to speak about specifics, but it was all there in the subtext. Roker’s dealership laundered money for the deSalvos, but how it actually worked wasn’t something that Charlie Williams was interested in. As a matter of fact, he had made it a point to stay as ignorant of Roker’s business dealings as possible.
I’m just the driver,
he would tell himself.
Just his security. Nothing more, nothing less.

And there were some days when he could almost believe that. The other days—those times when Charlie thought about the man he had been before he washed up in Pittsburgh with no money and no prospects—those were the moments when he hated himself. But the pills helped deaden those feelings, just like they killed the pain in his hand.
For a little while, at least
.

The meeting came to an end and Ernest deSalvo made an off-color joke that everyone felt obligated to laugh at. Roker couldn’t wait to get away, and he almost ran back to the Chrysler, not waiting for Charlie to get the door for him. When they were back on the road, he leaned forward from the rear seat and angrily prodded his driver.

“What the hell was all that crap back there? I guessed Bobby was around. You didn’t need to say anything!”

That was a lie, and both men knew it. “Just doing my job,” Charlie offered, wincing as his hand sent another spasm of pain up his arm. “Ernie likes to be the top dog, sure, but you can’t let him think you’re a chump.” The pain was occupying his thoughts, and the moment the words left his mouth, he knew it had been the wrong thing to say.

“I’m a what now?” Roker exploded with rage. It wasn’t surprising, all that frustration and fear at being forced into a face-to-face with deSalvo had nowhere to go, so now it was expressing itself in anger toward Charlie. He swore loudly and jabbed his finger toward the driver’s face. “I pay your wages, asshole! I pay you to drive and shut the hell up, understand?”

“I understand, Mr. Roker,” he said tonelessly, going through the motions of a conversation they had replayed a dozen times.

“That’s right!” Roker retorted. As they drove, Big Mike began picking apart every last detail of the meeting with deSalvo, repeating it and reliving it as if he were having a conversation with himself.

Charlie didn’t offer any more insights, he just let Roker talk and talk, and by the time they were turning off the highway toward the dealership, the other man had rearranged the narrative of the meet to make it sound like it was Big Mike who had made it happen, talking himself into believing that he was the key player.

The showroom was a glass-fronted hangar filled with new Chryslers like the 300 and a few classic muscle cars. It reminded Charlie of a gargantuan fish tank, the impression heightened by the cool blue-white lighting inside that showcased the polished bodies and chrome accents of the vehicles. Above the entrance, a large banner announced
BIG MIKE’S BIG DEALS!
and Charlie reflected that it was as much a mission statement for Roker’s life as it was a commercial for his dealership. Mike Roker so desperately wanted to be a big deal, and he was forever angry at the world for making him fall short of that.

Charlie frowned as they pulled to a stop at the rear of the building, where the maintenance bay was open to the evening air.

Roker’s wife, Barbara, pushed past two of the mechanics working late and strode out to meet them, and she too appeared to be spoiling for a fight. He remembered something his dad had once told him:
This is the kind of person who’ll find an argument in a bouquet of roses
.

For a moment, Barbara Roker’s sour expression shifted as he got out of the car, and as she saw the driver her face lit up with a predatory smirk. “Hey Charlie,” she purred.

“Mrs. Roker,” he replied. The woman had made it clear she was interested in furthering their employer-employee relationship in a way that he wasn’t comfortable with, and so far, he’d been able to keep himself at arm’s length.

But in the next moment, Barbara’s expression shifted back toward irritation as her husband stepped out from the 300. “Where were you?” she demanded.

“Ah, crap.” Big Mike deflated, running a hand over his face. “Barb. Yeah. Sorry.”

“
Sorry?
” she repeated, her voice rising. “You were supposed to pick me up, you prick! I had to get a cab!”

“Something came up,” Roker insisted, faking a smile. “Last second. Ernie deSalvo called me. Needed me to help him out.”

He made it sound like the other man had come to him on bended knee, but Barbara saw right through the spin her husband had put on the situation and scowled at him. “Oh yeah? He snaps his fingers and you say, ‘How high,’ right?” She shook her head. “Mike, when you gonna stand up to that roach? You make me sick.”

Roker’s false front collapsed and Charlie watched his cheeks color. “Do what? I talk back to him and I get a bullet in the face ten seconds later! Where would you get your cash for your stupid shoe collection then, huh?”

“You know nothing,” she shot back. “Men like that? They respect strength.” Barbara looked toward Charlie. “You know what I mean, right?”

“Don’t ask him!” Roker bellowed. “What the hell does he know?”

Charlie opened his mouth to say something that would let him disengage from the unfolding argument, but there was no need. It was already under way and neither husband nor wife were registering him anymore. He drifted toward the bench where the dealership’s two mechanics were loitering.

Frank and Josh were in their twenties, and they seemed to think that working for Roker was an entry-level job into the lucrative world of Pittsburgh’s criminal underbelly. Charlie didn’t have the heart to tell them how mistaken they were.