Nothing I observed suggested deception. I saw exhaustion. One instance of mild intoxication. Two bored sociopaths, hungry for violence. But more than anything, uncertainty and fear. And I couldn’t blame them. The more I understood 140 Broadway, the more I could see why Kara had chosen it. Up there on floor 33 or 34, she had a perfectly defensible position. It was going to force me to do something crazy.
“The target is Kara Ramsay.” No one asked if she was my sister. I suspected they didn’t really know who I was. “You should have a recent sketch of her. She’s operating out of One forty Broadway, twenty-four blocks due south of our current position. You should also have the floor plans by now.”
“How much resistance are we expecting?” Noyes asked.
“Several guards with special forces training. But these aren’t ordinary soldiers. They have abilities you’ve never seen.”
“They know we’re coming?”
“I don’t think so, but they’ll be ready. I suspect the lab is on the thirty-third or thirty-fourth floor. Obviously, there’s no elevator access. There are four stairwells. Two toward each end of the building. When we get there, I’ll want a twenty-minute head start. Take up positions outside the stairwell entrances on the ground floor and wait for my signal. Four stairwells. Four teams. There will be motion-activated surveillance cameras, so use your personal signal jammers. I would anticipate barricades. Choke points.”
“Shooting galleries,” Noyes said.
“Basically. And now you know everything I know. We’ll head south, make a pit stop at the intersection of Fulton for drone surveillance and final comms setup. Any questions?”
As the team returned to their rafts, Brandes handed me my loadout. I donned the Chainmail body armor and fastened the magnetic straps. Then I hung my NightShades from the front of my collar and opened the small pack, removing the weapon I’d requested—a Belgian-made FN Five-seveN with low recoil and a twenty-round magazine capacity. I slipped three magazines into my pocket, inserted the fourth into the pistol, and jacked a round into the chamber.
The SWAT team finished stowing their gear, then dragged their rafts to the water’s edge. I followed, pulling the kayak behind me until it floated eight inches over the white dotted lines that had once designated a bus-only lane.
I climbed in, got situated in the cockpit, then grabbed the paddle and pushed myself off into deeper water.
Three in the morning now.
A cold street wind biting down the urban canyon.
The four rafts floated a short distance ahead, the sounds of the city behind us echoing through the corridor of dark buildings. The ubiquitous sirens and horns. The drunken cacophony of last-callers tumbling out of bars. And all of it growing fainter and fainter.
After seven blocks, all I could hear were the oars dipping into black water.
We paddled south down Broadway, the water deepening. Past flooded Duane Reades, a Sephora, a Forever 21, a Bloomingdale’s, banks, and bodegas.
Occasionally, I would see a flicker of firelight through a broken window, smell the acrid bite of woodsmoke or whatever was being burned for warmth.
We passed City Hall and St. Paul’s.
From one of the skyscrapers high above, I heard the fragile notes of a violin—someone playing “Tonight” from West Side Story. It echoed down the dark and flooded avenue, between the hulking shadows of what had once been the greatest city in the world. Tonight, tonight, it all began tonight, I saw you and the world went away.
Almost two miles from where we started paddling, just beyond the intersection of Fulton and Broadway, the rafts began drifting to the left side of the street, gathering under the old signage of a Shake Shack.
We had made good time—just two blocks now from 140 Broadway.
I eased my kayak alongside one of the rafts. Brandes lifted the drone from the bottom of his, powered it on, then fired up a small laptop. He tossed the drone into the air, its propellers whirling it off down the street.
After a moment, he said, “I’ve got a visual.” I watched him from my kayak. He was hunched over the tiny laptop with a joystick plugged into the side.
“Anything of note?” I asked.
“Not yet. Just a tall, dark…Jackpot.”
“What?”
“Your intel was solid. Looks like someone put up IR panels around an entire floor.”
Infrared panels were built-in defenses against thermal-imaging surveillance, usually in the form of walls that lit up the entire lab, making it impossible to determine where and how many people were working. It also made it impossible to target the people inside with thermal scopes.
He took a few more laps around the building, investigating the lobby, roof, and secondary entrances, before piloting the drone back to us.
Noyes handed me an earpiece and a wireless rig.
“Switching over to comms,” he said. “Channel two.”
* * *
—
The building loomed black against the starry sky as we approached the intersection of Broadway and Liberty Street. The SWAT teams donned their hoods, and two rafts separated from the flotilla, heading down Liberty.
I followed the remaining two, which peeled off across the plaza toward the Isamu Noguchi cube—once bright red, now rusting and submerged in six feet of water. It had been the showpiece of the main entrance before the city flooded.
I continued paddling until I reached Cedar Street, between 140 Broadway and the Equitable Building. As I drifted in the darkness between black skyscrapers, Noyes’s voice came through my earpiece. “This is A-team. We’re approaching the main lobby entrance. Initiating personal signal jammer. Logan, which stairwell are you taking? Over.”
“No stairwell,” I said. “Over.”
“There’s another way up? Over.”
“Nope. I’ll be climbing. Over.”
There was a brief pause and then: “Sorry, I thought you said you’d be climbing. Over.”
“You heard right. Over.”
“Climbing the building? Over.”
“Yes. Over.”
“C-team approaching the Nassau Street entrance. Over.”
I paddled my kayak to the side of the building and stared up at a sheer black wall.
“B-team in position at the southwest stairwell. Over.”
I opened my backpack and dug out a door-breach charge—a candy-bar-size piece of C-4 with a timer and blasting cap. I shoved it into my pocket, then unlaced my shoes, tied them together, and hung them from my pack.
I knew the stairwells—especially the entrances and lower floors—would be under surveillance and likely booby-trapped. The moment someone set foot inside one of them, Kara would know. It would be a race to reach her through a dark, mazelike building with all sorts of nasty shit waiting in the wings. But if I could get inside first, entering a stairwell high above the lower floors, I might have a chance at reaching her undetected.
“D-team in position at the southeast stairwell. Over.”
The water came halfway up the ground floor. I stood carefully on the kayak, which shifted precariously under my weight.
Reaching up, I took hold of a vertical beam that separated the window bays. It was a three-inch strip of textured black aluminum, and the only element of the exterior I could actually grasp.
I pulled myself up, clutching the vertical beam with both hands, my bare feet purchased on the cold glass. Reaching my left hand over my right, I squeezed the beam, then lunged for the next handhold.