James Patterson - Black Friday

PART ONE

Green Band

The pure products of America go crazy.

William Carlos Williams

Chapter 1

COLONEL DAVID HUDSON leaned his tall, athletic body against the squat, battered trunk of one of New York's Checker-style taxis.

Raising one hand to his eye, Hudson loosely curled his fingers to fashion a "telescope." He began to watch morning's earliest light fall on the Wall Street scene.

He carefully studied 40 Wall Street where Manufacturers Hanover Trust had offices. Then, No. 23 Wall, which housed executive suites for Morgan Guaranty. The New York Stock Exchange Building. Trinity Church. Chase Manhattan Plaza.

Once he had it all vividly in sight, Colonel Hudson squeezed his fingers tightly together. "Boom," he whispered quietly.

The financial capital of the world completely disappeared behind his clenched right fist.

Boom.

Seconds before 5:30 on that same morning, Sergeant Harry Stemkowsky, the man designated as Vets 24, sped down the steep, icicle-slick Metropolitan Avenue Hill in the Greenpoint section of Brooklyn.

He was riding in a nine-year-old Everest and Jennings wheelchair, from the Queens VA. Right now, he was pretending the chair was a Datsun 280-Z, silver metallic, with a shining T-roof.

"Aahh-eee-ahh!" He let out a banshee screech that pierced the deserted, solemnly quiet morning streets.

His long thin face was buried in the oily collar of a khaki Army fatigue parka replete with peeling sergeant's stripes, and his frizzy blond ponytail blew behind him like ribboning bike streamers. Periodically, he closed his eyes which were tearing badly in the burning cold wind. His tightly pinched face was getting as red as the gleaming Berry Street stoplight he was racing through with absolute abandon.

His forehead was burning, but he loved the sensation of unexpected freedom.

He thought he could actually feel streams of blood surge through both his wasted legs again.

Harry Stemkowsky's rattling wheelchair finally came to a halt in front of the all-night Walgreen's Drugstore.

Under the fatigue jacket and the two bulky sweaters he wore, his heart was hammering wildly. He was so goddamn excitedhis whole life was beginning all over again.

Today, Harry Stemkowsky felt he could do just about anything.

The drugstore's glass door, which he nudged open, was covered with a montage of cigarette posters. Almost immediately, he was blessed with a draft of welcoming warm air, filled with the smells of greasy bacon and fresh-perked coffee.

He smiled and rubbed his hands together in a gesture that was almost gleeful. For the first time in years he was no longer a cripple.

And for the first time in more than a dozen hard years Harry Stemkowsky had a purpose.

He had to smile. When he wrapped his mind around the whole deal, the full, unbelievable implications of Green Band, he just had to smile.

Right at this moment, Sergeant Harry Stemkowsky, the official messenger for Green Band, was safely at his fire-base inside New York City. Now everything could begin.

Chapter 2

INSIDE THE FORTRESS that was New York FBI headquarters in Federal Plaza, a tall, silver-haired man, Walter Trentkamp, repeatedly tapped the eraser of his pencil against a faded desk blotter.

Scrawled on the soiled blotter was a single phone number 202-456-1414. It was a private number for the White House, a direct line to the President of the United States.

Trentkamp's telephone rang at 6:00 exactly.

"All right everybody, please start up audio surveillance now." It was early in the morning, and his voice was harsh. "I'll hold them as long as I possibly can. Is audio surveillance ready? Well, let's go then."

The FBI Eastern Bureau Chief cleared his throat selfconsciously. Then he picked up the telephone. The words Green Band echoed perilously inside his brain. He'd never known anything like this in his Bureau experience, which was long and varied and not without bizarre encounters.

Gathered in a grim, tight circle around the FBI head were some of the more powerfully connected men and women in New York. Not a person in the group had ever experienced anything like this emergency situation either.

In silence, they listened to Trentkamp answer the expected phone call. "This is the Federal Bureau ... Hello?"

There was no answer over the outside line.

The tension inside the room was as sharp as the cutting edge of a surgical blade. Even Trentkamp, whose calm in critical police situations was well known, appeared nervous and uncertain.

"I said hello. Is anyone there on the line? Is anyone out there?... Who is on this line?"

Walter Trentkamp's tentative, frustrated voice was being electronically monitored in a battered mahogany phone booth at the rear of the Walgreen's Drugstore in Green-point, Brooklyn.

Inside the booth, Sergeant Harry Stemkowsky finger-combed his hair as he listened.

His heart had gone beyond mere pounding; now it was threatening to detonate inside his chest. There were new and unusual pulses beating all through his body, opening and closing with the sharpness of mechanical claws.

This was the long overdue time of truth. There would be no more war game rehearsals for the twenty-eight members of Green Band.

"Hello? This is Trentkamp. New York FBI." The plain black phone receiver cradled between Stemkowsky's shoulder and his jaw seemed to tremble and vibrate on each phrase.

After another interminable minute, Harry Stemkowsky firmly depressed the play button on a Sony 114 portable recorder. He then carefully held the pocket recorder flush against the pay phone's receiver.