17
WELLS TURNED OFF the Major Deegan Expressway into the heart of the South Bronx, long dark blocks only beginning to share in New York’s renaissance. The open-air drug markets were gone, but women in skirts the size of handkerchiefs leaned against cars, looking for business. Outside brightly lit bodegas, men stood in clumps, sipping oversized bottles of malt liquor.
He wended his way through streets made narrow by double-parked cars, battered American sedans with tinted windows and NO FEAR stickers plastered on their windshields. Finally he found the address Khadri had given him. As he pulled over he saw in his rearview mirror that Exley had stopped a block behind. Not great tradecraft. She should have driven past and parked farther down. The slipup reminded him that she hadn’t been in the field for a long time. She didn’t belong anywhere near this.
But he had let her come, and now he was responsible for her, a complication he didn’t need at this moment. He closed his eyes and allowed himself to think of her promise. “When we’re done.” If they made it through tonight, they would find a quiet room and a big wooden bed and make love until they both were sated. That would take some time.
He shivered and coughed, a thick gurgle from deep in his lungs. The driving had gotten to him; he felt as if he’d been awake for three days straight. And he had developed a nasty headache somewhere in New Jersey. Adrenaline would have to carry him the rest of the way.
He opened his door, coughed again, spat a wad of phlegm onto the asphalt. He had given up trying to predict what Khadri had planned. Tonight he would end Khadri’s games. He cocked his head left and right. The street was empty. He stepped out of the Ranger and walked to the building, one slow step after the next.
The tenement was battered and gray, its bricks covered with sprawling whorls of graffiti whose meaning Wells could not decipher. Its front door was set back from the street, black with a porthole-shaped window, the glass reinforced with chicken wire.
The door opened easily, the brass knob loose as if the lock had been forced. Wells stepped inside and found a narrow hallway dimly illuminated by flickering fluorescent lights.
“Jalal.”
A man Wells did not recognize sat at the top of a narrow set of stairs, cigarette in his mouth, gun held loosely in his lap.
“Nam.”
“Come.”
Without another word the man stood and turned away.
Wells let the front door fall shut behind him and walked up the steps.
EXLEY SAT IN her minivan, fighting the impulse to run into the tenement and bang on every apartment door until she found him. She had covered the digital clock in the Caravan to stop from being maddened by its slow march; she had never been so bored and so anxious at the same time. Wells had gone inside around midnight. Now four hours had passed with no sign from him. Or anyone else. The building had been silent since he went in. Where was he? she asked herself. What was he doing? She couldn’t wait much longer. Another hour? Until dawn? Perhaps she should have gone in already, but she didn’t want to blow his cover, the cover he’d worked so many years to build.
If only the agency hadn’t alienated Wells. If only he’d been able to convince Duto of his value. If only he hadn’t disappeared for so long. He ought to be wearing a wire. These blocks ought to be swarming with FBI agents and police. Though even that wouldn’t lessen the danger he faced. He was on the other side now, in a place where no one could get to him quickly enough to make a difference if something went wrong. Khadri—or whoever was up there—could put a gun to his head and pull the trigger in a second. All the cops in the world couldn’t stop that. No wonder Wells didn’t have much use for Duto and the rest of the Langley paper pushers.
Exley looked up as a black Lincoln Town Car rolled past her van. The Lincoln stopped in front of the apartment building and double-parked, its blinkers flashing. She held her breath. The Lincoln’s door opened. A man wearing a blue blazer—an unlikely sight in this neighborhood at this hour—walked out, looked around quickly, and stepped into the building.
APARTMENT 3C was small and shabby, a railroad flat with a windowless living room and a tiny bedroom that looked into an airshaft. Mold stained the peeling orange wallpaper, and the refrigerator produced a maddening electric hum. On a broken coffee table, a small television silently played a DVD of the hajj, the pilgrimage to Mecca. But even the jihadis around Wells looked bored with the tape.
Wells sat on a sagging couch in the living room, his hands cuffed in front. He had fallen asleep briefly after they cuffed him, fatigue overtaking him until the thought of Exley downstairs jolted him awake. Now he was hardly talking, harboring his energy while he waited for Khadri. The men with him didn’t seem to mind. There were seven, but only two had introduced themselves. Ghazi was the oldest and seemed to be the leader, a heavy man with a close-cropped beard and dark pouches under his eyes. The man who had been waiting for Wells called himself Abu Rashid—father of Rashid. He smoked constantly, flicking ashes onto the floor, putting his cigarette down only to spit into the sink. In fact all seven men smoked, and the room’s air was stale and heavy, worsening Wells’s nagging cough. He wished someone would crack a window.
With the possible exception of Ghazi, the seven men in here had never been professionally trained, Wells could see. They weren’t nearly as aware as Qais and Sami had been. Only three of them had pistols, the guns tucked loosely into their pants: Ghazi and Abu Rashid and a dark-skinned Arab with a long beard whose name Wells didn’t know. Most importantly Abu Rashid hadn’t found Wells’s knife because he hadn’t patted down his legs.
But Wells wasn’t about to make a move. Not yet. Not until he saw Khadri.
“Water?” Ghazi asked him.
“Please,” Wells said.
Ghazi looked him over with concern. “Are you all right? You seem unwell.”
“I could use a good night’s sleep.” Wells sipped the water Ghazi offered and closed his eyes, shutting out the room’s dim light. Around him the men spoke quietly in Arabic about the World Cup; for an hour they had debated Jordan’s prospects.
“Is Khadri coming?”
“Soon, my friend, soon.”
And then Wells heard the steps on the stairs.
KHADRI TOOK A single step into the apartment and closed the door. A surgical mask covered his nose and mouth. “Jalal.”
“Omar. My friend. Salaam alaikum.” Wells began to stand. A wave of dizziness passed through him. Why the mask? he wondered.
“Don’t get up,” Khadri said. “You need your strength.”
Wells stood anyway. A violent cough shook him.
“I’m sorry about Qais and Sami—”
“You’re here now. That’s what matters. And you have the package?”
“There.” The briefcase sat on the kitchen counter.
Khadri smiled. “I knew they wouldn’t keep you at the border.” Khadri punched numbers into the briefcase’s digital lock. The latch popped open.
“Your secret’s in there,” Khadri said. “See for yourself.”
He sent the case skittering toward Wells across the pocked wooden floor of the living room. My secret isn’t in this apartment, Wells thought. She’s sitting outside in a green minivan.
Wells sat back on the couch and fumbled with the briefcase. “Ghazi, will you uncuff me?” he said casually. “I can’t open it like this.”
Ghazi looked to Khadri. After a moment, Khadri nodded, and Ghazi unlocked his cuffs.
Wells lifted the lid of the case. Inside, nothing. He ran a hand along its inside walls, looking for a false bottom. But he couldn’t find anything. He had been a decoy after all.
He shook his head wearily. “I don’t get it,” he said. “Who’s the courier? Where’s the package?”
Khadri pointed at Wells. “You are.”
“But—” Wells coughed again. He looked at Khadri’s mask. And suddenly he understood.
“I’m infected.” The words came out as quietly as the final fading notes of a symphony that had gone on much too long.
Khadri’s smile was the only answer Wells needed. He considered the possibilities. Anthrax didn’t spread person to person. Smallpox had a longer incubation period.
“Plague, right?” He kept his voice steady, as if the question were of only theoretical interest.
“Very good, Jalal.”
For a moment, only a moment, Wells felt the deepest panic overwhelm him. He saw his lungs filling with blood, his skin burning from the inside out. Unthinkable agony. But he kept himself still and waited for the fear to pass, knowing that remaining calm was his only hope of beating Khadri now. The panic subsided, and when he spoke, his voice was steady.
“But why like this? Why not just have me bring the germs in?”
“What would I do with a vial of plague? I’m no scientist. And plague is fragile. At least outside the body. Or so Tarik tells me.”
“I thought Tarik was a neuropsychologist.”
“He’s a molecular biologist. A very good one. Though he has some problems of his own.” Wells couldn’t be sure, but behind the mask Khadri seemed to smile. “He said infecting you would be the best way to make sure the germs survived.”
Another cough ripped through Wells.
“It seems he was right,” Khadri said.
Wells looked around. “Seven men. Where will you send them?”
Khadri considered. “I suppose I can tell you now, Jalal. Four here, on the subways, mostly. Times Square, Grand Central. The other three to Washington, Los Angeles, Chicago. Lots of plane rides. Seven martyrs. Eight, including you. The sheikh will be pleased.”
Seven men coughing clouds of plague bacteria into packed subway cars. Boeing 767s and Airbus 320s. Department stores and office lobbies. How many people would they infect before they died? Thousands? Tens of thousands?
“Brilliant, Omar.” And despite himself Wells couldn’t help but be impressed with the plan’s boldness. Then he remembered. “But…isn’t plague treatable with antibiotics?”
“Nam. If it’s diagnosed in time. But in three days your people will have something besides plague on their minds. And the germs move very fast. As you can see better than anyone. The hospitals will be full before the Americans recognize what we’ve done.”
“Another attack?”
Now Wells was sure he could see Khadri smile. He’s chatty, Wells thought. He’s talking to a dead man.
“Anthrax?” Wells wondered aloud. “Smallpox?”
“Jalal. You are not thinking clearly, I’m sorry to say. Would I use a biological attack to distract the Americans from a biological attack?”
“A bomb then. Like L.A.”
“Not exactly. This bomb is special.”
Wells’s fever seemed to rise. He mopped at the sweat that had suddenly beaded on his forehead. “A dirty bomb?” The agency had been right after all.
“I just think of it as the Yellow.”
“The Yellow?”
“You would have been very impressed with the Yellow, Jalal. I’m sorry you won’t be alive to see it.”
Wells wondered if he could get his knife, make it across the room, cut Khadri’s throat before he was tackled. Probably not. Seven men stood between them. In any case, killing Khadri would make no difference now. The other men surely knew where the dirty bomb was hidden. Wells couldn’t even slit his own throat and kill himself to stop the plague from spreading. He’d been coughing in this room for hours; he’d already infected the others.
“Will you tell me something, Jalal?” Khadri said from behind his mask. “Now that your martyrdom is certain. The truth. Are you one of us?”
Wells didn’t hesitate. “Nam. With my heart and soul. Allahu akbar.”
“Allahu akbar, Jalal. We’ll meet again. In paradise.”
With that, Khadri walked out.
EXLEY DRUMMED HER fingers against the wheel of the minivan, listening to the same stale news WCBS had been recycling all night. The Lincoln had been double-parked for fifteen minutes. She was desperate to go inside the tenement. But she held back. Wells would come out soon enough, she thought.
The door to the apartment building opened, and the man in the blazer walked out. Alone. He stepped into the Lincoln and drove slowly away. So much for her intuition. She turned off the radio and considered her options. She had told Wells she would call in the cavalry if he got in trouble. She had to assume he was in trouble now, that he was being held captive and the man in the blazer had been checking on him.
But she didn’t know which apartment he was in. If she called the agency, the JTTF would surround the building, start kicking down doors. The al Qaeda operatives would know they were caught and kill Wells immediately. No. She would go in, find the apartment for herself. Then she would decide what to do.
She reached into the glove compartment and pulled out the .45 and the silencer that Wells had given her. She held the gun in both hands. This was insane. She didn’t even know how many men were with him. What would her kids do if she got herself killed? Walking into an apartment full of terrorists? Insane.
Yet she began to screw the silencer onto the barrel of the .45. Insane or not, she couldn’t let him die in there. She would find out where he was. And then? said the nasty little voice in her head, the one she hated. Then what?
She ignored the voice and finished attaching the silencer. She would leave a message on Shafer’s voice mail at work, explaining what had happened, where she was. He always checked that mailbox when he woke up. Worst-case, the JTTF would only lose three hours. Anyway, al Qaeda wouldn’t attack now, with the streets empty. Whatever they had planned wouldn’t happen before morning.
She tried to tuck the pistol into her pants. It wouldn’t fit. She unscrewed the silencer and tried again. Still too big. A sure sign that she belonged behind a desk, not out here. But the frustration only made her more determined to prove them all wrong. Duto. Khadri. Shafer. Even Wells. These men who thought their war was too important for her to fight.
She dumped out her purse, everything, the detritus of her life, lipstick, wallet, cellphone, Luna bar, makeup mirror, a wadded-up pack of Kleenex, all of it falling onto the seat and the Caravan’s dirty carpets. Luckily she’d brought an oversized bag, a black leather purse. She screwed the silencer back on. She racked the pistol’s slide. She dropped it and the keys to the van into her purse, sweeping everything else under the seat. If these guys captured her she’d be better off without any identification, especially her CIA badge. She called Shafer’s voice mail and left her message.
Then, before she could reconsider, before her better judgment could take over, she stepped out of the minivan and onto the empty black street.
WELLS COULD ALMOST feel the germs multiplying inside him. He was husbanding his strength, and he still believed he could survive if he got the right antibiotics. His fever was under control. He wasn’t coughing blood. But in a few hours he would pass the point of no return. If Exley or the police didn’t show up before then, he would go for his knife and kill as many of the men in this room as he could. In the commotion the neighbors would surely call the cops, and if he survived until they arrived he would tell them what was happening.
Exley. He hoped she would be prudent and call in the professionals. Be smarter than he had been. He couldn’t blame any higher power for putting him in this place, only his stiff-necked hubris. Pride before the fall. If only Duto hadn’t pushed him so hard back in April. If only he had killed Khadri in Atlanta. If only…
None of the hypotheticals mattered now. He was dying in this dirty apartment, the bacteria in his blood proof that he and the agency had misunderstood each other as badly as they misunderstood their common foe. He had never earned Khadri’s trust, and he never would. With his parting question, Khadri had showed that he suspected—or at least wondered if—Wells was still working for the agency. He had used Wells as a courier at least in part as an ironic gesture, a final twist of the knife. You can die for us but you’ll never be one of us. Wells had always hated irony, the favored drink of wannabe intellectuals. He hated it more now.
No matter. He still had his knife. Don’t bring a knife to a gunfight, the marines always said. But he thought he would be okay. He was quicker than these amateurs, and now his hands were free. As he had expected, Ghazi hadn’t bothered to cuff him again after Khadri left. And Exley was out there too. Everything depends which side of the shotgun you’re on. His mother and his father, lying in their graves in Hamilton. He missed them, but he wasn’t ready to join them just yet. Wells rubbed his wrists. He wanted nothing more than to reach for his stiletto, but he restrained himself. He glanced at his watch. Almost five A.M., the night nearly over. He would give Exley until the sun rose. Then he would start some unironic knife twisting of his own.
EXLEY STEPPED INSIDE the tenement and looked around the dim first-floor hallway. Her purse hung unzipped on her left arm, close to her body, so she could reach quickly for the pistol inside. Still, she wouldn’t be as quick as somebody with a holster. She remembered what Wells had said in Kenilworth, a world away now. Shoot first. You’ll know.
Her eyes adjusted to the semidarkness and she saw a roach skittering down the corridor. She followed it, ignoring the stairs for now. She walked slowly, resisting the temptation to turn and see if anyone had slid in noiselessly behind her. She was predator, not prey.
At the end of the hall she could hear music playing quietly from behind apartment 1F, a gospel hymn seeping under the door. She hesitated, then tapped lightly. Inside the apartment heavy steps shuffled toward the door, then stopped. Exley tapped again.
“Howard?” an old woman’s voice whispered from behind the door. “That you?”
“No ma’am,” Exley said as quietly as she could.
“Howard?”
“Wrong address, ma’am. Sorry to bother you.”
The door creaked open, a chain holding it in place. An old black woman in a housedress peeked out, her eyes glazed with cataracts behind thick plastic glasses. “Where’s Howard?”
“Ma’am, please go back to sleep,” Exley whispered, thinking, Please don’t raise your voice.
“Why’d you knock on my door?”
“I’m looking for someone.”
“Howard?”
“No ma’am. Someone else. A man.”
“Join the club.” The woman smiled, a big toothless grin.
“A man in this building. Upstairs.” Exley pointed up. “Maybe you heard him come in tonight. Not too long ago.”
The smile turned into a scowl. “They was banging up and down before.”
“Can you think what floor?”
“The third. Maybe the second.”
“Goodnight, ma’am. Thank you.”
“If you see Howard—”
“I’ll tell him.”
“Promise?”
“I promise.”
The door closed, and Exley was alone again.
SHE WALKED UP the stairs noiselessly. Until now, she had never been grateful for the ballet lessons that her mother had forced on her in grade school. She would have to thank Mom properly tomorrow. If she got the chance. At the top of the stairs she stopped. Up here both overheads were working, throwing their harsh light on the dirty yellow walls of the hallway. A dozen cigarette butts lay in a pile at her feet. Someone had been sitting here tonight, smoking. Waiting.
The floor was silent, the apartments dark. Outside a car rumbled by, its speakers pumping bass. Exley found herself shrinking against a wall. Then the noise faded, and the tenement was still.
She looked down at the cigarette butts again. Of course. Cigarettes meant smoke. She sniffed for a moment. There. The faint odor of smoke grown stale after hours in this hallway. She moved forward slowly, following the scent, as obvious to her now as a trail of bread crumbs.
When she turned up the stairs to the third floor, the smell grew stronger. She slipped her hand inside her purse and found the .45. Without taking the pistol out of the purse, she slid down the safety. Slowly, silently, she climbed the stairs.
“JER-RY! JER-RY!”
A woman. In the hall. She knocked once, paused, then hammered furiously on the door of the apartment as if her fists could break the door off its hinges. “Jerry, you come out right now! Jerry!”
Wells recognized her voice immediately. How had she found him? No matter. He leaned forward, moving his hands closer to his knife. He could feel the adrenaline rising in his blood, overcoming the germs. Ghazi pulled out his pistol and leaned over Wells. Too close, Wells thought. He doesn’t know he’s too close.
“What do you know about this?” Ghazi said in Arabic.
“Nothing.”
Ghazi smashed his Makarov into Wells’s skull, just above the ear. A starlit pain flashed through his head. He grunted and leaned back but kept his arms forward.
“Is she with you?”
“I swear I know nothing.”
“It’s just one woman,” Abu Rashid said, his eye at the peephole. “There’s no one else out there.”
“Jer-ry!” Exley screamed outside. “Leave that whore and come out RIGHT NOW or I’m calling the cops!”
The knocking began again, then a crash.
“She’s drunk,” Abu Rashid said. “She dropped her bag.”
“Fuck,” Ghazi said. “Crazy American woman. Get rid of her.”
“How?”
“I don’t know. Just get rid of her.”
A BEARDED ARAB man opened the door. A second man stood just behind him, a cigarette hanging from his mouth.
“You’re not Jerry,” Exley said. Shoot first. She leaned over her bag and reached inside, feeling the pistol.
“This isn’t the apartment you’re looking for,” the man said. He began to close the door.
NOW. WELLS COUGHED, leaned over, reached down with his right hand for his knife. As he came up he flicked open the knife. With his other hand, he grabbed Ghazi’s arm, pushing the gun away.
“Exley!”
Ghazi fired. Too late. The bullet missed Wells, blew through the couch, lodged in the wall. Wells forced the stiletto into Ghazi’s belly, feeling the fat and muscles tear underneath the blade, then ripped the knife upward, tearing viciously through Ghazi’s stomach. When the knife had gone as far as it could go, Wells reversed downward, widening the wound into the intestines. Ghazi screamed, dropped his gun, pressed his hands to his stomach, the blood already pouring out, black in the dim light.
WHEN WELLS SHOUTED Exley’s name, the man at the door looked back for a moment. She heard an unsilenced shot from the apartment. Without hesitation she lifted her purse and squeezed the trigger of the .45. The pistol fired through the bag, its echo muffled by the silencer and the leather. The round tore into the man’s hip, pushing him into the door.
The man tried to close the door, but Exley raised the gun inside the purse and pulled the trigger again. This time the shot caught him in the center of the chest. He stumbled backward, his bearded mouth forming a silent furry O as he fell. Exley wrenched the .45 out of the bag to get a clear shot at the second man, the man with the cigarette in his mouth. But now he was reaching into his waistband for a gun of his own.
She fired again, hearing another shot from the apartment as she did. This time the gun kicked high on her and her shot caught him in the neck as he pulled the gun out of his pants. He began to fall, his cigarette dropping from his mouth
—and Exley heard him shoot and felt the agony in her left leg all at once. The bullet seemed to have caught her just above the knee. She could no longer hold herself up. She screamed and fell forward, toward the apartment. She grabbed for the door with her left hand as the man collapsed, blood spurting from his neck
—and now a third man came forward, a fat shoeless Arab, stepping toward the two in the doorway, reaching for the gun on the ground. Exley forgot the pain in her leg and focused on the fat man. She pulled the trigger of the .45 as he bent over, groping for the gun. But the heavy gray pistol kicked up on her, and her shot flew over his head.
The recoil pushed her backward and she lost her balance and fell, dropping the .45. It kicked away from her, down the hallway. She crawled for it. Her leg seemed to be on fire and she screamed. The fat man in the doorway picked up the pistol. A small smile formed on his face as he turned toward her and raised the gun. Exley turned toward him and began to raise her hands, hating herself for her useless, pointless surrender even as she did
—and the top of the fat man’s head exploded and he collapsed, falling obscenely upon the first two men she’d killed.
Then Wells shouted. He seemed to be a long way away.
“Exley! Stay out there!” Like she had a choice. The hallway spun, faster, faster, and the blackness filled her eyes and she passed out.
AS GHAZI SCREAMED and fell, Wells dove for the Makarov Ghazi had dropped beside the couch. Wells grabbed the pistol and twisted around to see two men almost on him. With his right hand he fired, the shot catching one of the men in the chest, puncturing his heart, sending blood spurting through his shirt. The man groaned and rolled over, his legs twitching as he died.
The other man, a skinny Pakistani who hadn’t spoken all night, reached Wells and jumped toward him, close enough for Wells to see the tiny veins in his eyes and feel his hot desperate breath. The Pakistani grabbed for the Makarov with both hands. With his left arm Wells hit the Pakistani with a forearm shiver, snapping back his chin. Wells grabbed the man’s scrawny neck and the Pakistani forgot the gun. He gasped for air, his hands pulling hopelessly at Wells’s wrist as his mouth opened and he begged for breath. And now Wells’s right hand was free. The hand that held Ghazi’s gun. Wells shoved the pistol into the Pakistani’s mouth, watching his eyes widen in the moment before Wells blew out his brains.
Wells looked toward the door, where two more men lay in a heap—and a third had just grabbed Abu Rashid’s gun. He would have time for only one shot. He aimed across his body as the fat man stood. He squeezed the trigger.
The man went down. One shot, one kill.
“Exley!” he yelled. “Stay out there!”
AS QUICK AS that, they were done. The room was quiet, its rough wood floor slick with blood and brains. Ghazi was still moaning, but weakly now. Wells was certain he would be dead in minutes. The other five were already gone. Wells didn’t see the seventh jihadi, a Saudi college student who had bragged earlier in the night about reading Mein Kampf. But he could hear the kid inside the tiny bedroom, begging in Arabic, “Please.”
“Get in here,” Wells said. He could feel his adrenaline fading, the plague rushing back. The Saudi appeared in the doorway, his hands up.
“Lie down.” Wells pointed to the corner. “Hands on the back of your head.”
“Please.” The Saudi was crying now.
“Lie down.”
The Saudi lay on his stomach, his arms on his head. Wells hoisted himself to his feet and walked toward the man. His trigger finger ached. This one surely deserved to die. He raised the Makarov and took aim.
Don’t, he thought. Keep this much of yourself at least. He had killed men in cold blood. But never this way. Never when they had already given themselves up. He lowered the gun, pulled himself back from the abyss.
He heard Exley sighing softly in the hallway, the neighbors beginning to rustle. Time to move. He grabbed the handcuffs and cuffed the Saudi to the steel radiator in the corner of the room.
WELLS STEPPED OVER the bodies in the door and walked into the hall. He felt as though he had recrossed the River Styx. Exley lay pale and quiet, her eyes closed, the left leg of her pants dark with her blood. Wells tore off his shirt and tied a crude tourniquet around her leg to stanch the bleeding. Her eyes fluttered open.
“Jennifer. Jenny.” She moaned softly. He leaned down to hug her. She was cold. “You’ll be okay.” He hoped he was right. A cough racked him and he turned away. Though she was surely already infected, thanks to their kiss in Kenilworth. “We did it, Jenny.”
“Nobody but you calls me Jenny,” she whispered. “Why is that?”
“They don’t know you like I do.” He smoothed her hair. “I have to go.”
“Khadri?”
“Promise me you’ll hold on.”
She nodded, weakly.
“Promise,” he said.
“I promise.” He kissed her on the cheek as she closed her eyes.
WELLS CHECKED THE clip on Ghazi’s pistol to see how many bullets were left. Six. Should be plenty. He had just one man left to kill. He popped the clip into the pistol and tucked the gun into his jacket.
If he told the neighbors about the plague, they would panic. There would be time to get them antibiotics. He would call the police from the Ranger. He could already hear distant sirens through the walls of the tenement. As quickly as his poisoned lungs would allow he ran down the stairs.