Eagle Ascending Read online

  EAGLE

  ASCENDING

  DAN WHITFIELD

  Relax. Read. Repeat.

  EAGLE ASCENDING

  By Dan Whitfield

  Published by TouchPoint Press

  Brookland, AR 72417

  www.touchpointpress.com

  Copyright © 2021 Dan Whitfield

  All rights reserved.

  eBook Edition

  ISBN: 978-1-952816-51-2 (sc)

  This is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters, and events are fictitious. Any similarities to actual events and persons, living or dead, are purely coincidental. Any trademarks, service marks, product names, or named features are assumed to be the property of their respective owners and are used only for reference. If any of these terms are used, no endorsement is implied. Except for review purposes, the reproduction of this book, in whole or part, electronically or mechanically, constitutes a copyright violation. Address permissions and review inquiries to [email protected].

  Editor: Kimberly Coghlan

  Cover Design: David Ter-Avanesyan, Ter33Design

  Connect with Dan Whitfield

  @danwhitfield82 @DanJWhitfield @danjw82

  First Edition

  To Michael and Jennifer Whitfield, who started it all.

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  IT’S HARD TO CONCENTRATE when the guy next to you is playing with a gun.

  Sighing, Joe Krueger turned to his partner, his eyes narrowing in frustration. “You gotta do that, Sammy?” he asked.

  “Relax,” Sam O’Brian replied. “Pressure getting to you, honey? You want me to turn on the AC, hmmm?” O’Brian chuckled to himself as he settled back into the seat of his Chevy. A former boxer, he was the tallest detective in New York City, almost seven feet, and Krueger was usually happy to partner with him, except when he got the fidgets on a stakeout—especially on a stakeout so fraught with risk.

  O’Brian holstered his Sig Sauer and ran his fingers through his curly brown locks. “It’s been two hours,” he said, thumbing the smart, sunlit sidewalk opposite. “I think the buyer got cold feet.”

  Krueger shook his head. Across the street, Krueger saw the man whose photo he had been staring at for the last eight months, during long winter nights and lonely weekends, trying desperately to get inside his head.

  “It’s going down,” Krueger said. “Transit Police identified Lucas using the subway this morning. He only comes into the city if it’s for a big score.”

  Grimacing, Krueger opened the window, closing his eyes as the faint breeze kissed his troubled brow. The smell of hotdogs wafted in the air.

  As he tried to keep his breathing even, Krueger opened his eyes and looked across the street once more. Past the crowds, shaded by the red awning of Gimbels department store, he saw the man he eagerly wanted to see in handcuffs: Marty Lucas, a hood from upstate who had started selling his meth on the streets of Krueger’s hometown.

  Dressed in a blue blazer and spectacles, Lucas was the kind of guy you’d pass a thousand times in the city and never look back. But the poison he was selling had already killed three people.

  Possessed with a low cunning to match his short stature, Lucas had gotten his homebrew meth onto the streets last year, and powerful people were demanding that Krueger personally put a stop to it.

  Of course, dime store meth dealers like Lucas rarely won the attention of the Narcotics Division of the Organized Crime Control Bureau, but that was before the daughter of the Mayor’s golfing buddy had been found strung out on Lucas’ poison.

  Priorities had shifted soon after, and Krueger’s captain, Mac Hassler, had ordered him to shut down Lucas’ operation.

  The radio inside O’Brian’s car crackled into life.

  “Krueger, this is Lieutenant Holloway, you copy?”

  “I copy, Lieutenant,” Krueger replied. Holloway and his SWAT team were hidden in the plain white van idling behind the Chevy.

  “Still no sign of the buyer?”

  “Negative,” Krueger replied, growing more frustrated. The radio hissed, and Krueger imagined Holloway and his boys at the end of the line, cramped in the dark, sweating in their Kevlar, as the sunshine beat down on the asphalt.

  “They want the order to stand down,” O’Brian said.

  “I know!” Krueger barked in response.

  Krueger got the breakthrough on the case five weeks ago. Patrols in the Bronx, Queens, and Brooklyn hadn’t turned up a thing. The low-level dealers knew nothing either.

  But then came the DeGroot robbery. Two professionals had busted into a Manhattan jewelry store in the early morning and made off with several hundred thousand dollars’ worth of stones. Reviewing the tape from the day of the robbery, one of Krueger’s colleagues had spotted Lucas loitering outside the store and handing over odd-looking packages to passersby in exchange for cash.

  Lucas hadn’t been part of the robbery, but the video was all Krueger needed to break the case open. Krueger and O’Brian began checking the security footage from similar high-end retailers, and it proved how the pale-faced amateur from Oswego had outsmarted the police for over a year.

  Lucas didn’t risk selling his wares in dark alleys late at night, like so many of the toughs hawking drugs. He was doing it on the busiest, most exclusive streets of the city, dressed like a white-collar worker. Heck, he’d even instructed his buyers to come dressed like the cream of New York’s society.

  Cops rarely bothered men dressed in suspenders for fear they were donors to the Mayor’s election campaign.

  “Here we go,” O’Brian said, his voice cut to a whisper, “this looks like it.” The Irishman’s eyes grew hard, and he pointed to a thin man shuffling along the street. He wore a silver double-breasted suit, but the evil red blotches on his skin revealed the truth: he wasn’t a stockbroker; he was an addict.

  “Stand ready,” Krueger spoke into the radio, as a bead of sweat rolled down his flushed cheeks. He was parked on Madison Avenue, and dozens of tourists strolled past Lucas as he waited for the buyer, oblivious to the firepower in the white van parked on the opposite side of the street.

  Having cracked Lucas’ distribution route, the next challenge had swiftly confronted Krueger: how to apprehend him without harming civilians. Lucas and his sellers always used carefully selected pick-up points, places that were very popular with tourists. Krueger knew that if anyone was hurt, particularly anyone important, Hassler wouldn’t hesitate to heap all the blame on his shoulders.

  “We’re ready to roll,” Holloway replied, in a high, strained voice, which proved to Krueger that he was becoming too excited for the job.

  “Be careful,” Krueger said icily. “You don’t fire unless they pose a clear threat.”

  “We got this!” Holloway yelled, angered by the implication he didn’t know what he was doing.

  The addict stumbled onward, following the orders he’d received from Lucas. He paused outside a clothing boutique, admiring the expensively-tailored suits in the window. Finally, he moved on, as if enjoying a casual stroll, until he faced Lucas.

  The addict slowly handed the short dealer a bundle of cash wrapped in paper.

  Lucas, in turn, picked up his leather briefcase from the sidewalk and handed it to the buyer. It was all the proof Krueger needed and the signal for the bust to sta
rt.

  “Go! Go! Go!” he shouted into the radio, before he and O’Brian leapt out of the car. Together, they ran onto the street, heedless of the oncoming traffic, laser-focused on the drug pusher in front of them.

  Behind him, Krueger heard the heavy thud of boots, as Holloway’s SWAT team disgorged onto the street and spread out, ready to foil Lucas’ escape.

  A female shopper, admiring her purchase from Gimbels, gave a cry of surprise when she saw the black-clad men approaching the store, and the sound alerted Lucas to the danger he faced. He’d been in the Coast Guard before turning to drugs and was as lithe as a sprinter. Ignoring the stupefied addict in front of him, Lucas picked up the case and ran northwards, toward Grand Central Station, where the crowds of summer tourists provided ample chance to escape.

  Lucas was quick, but Krueger was quicker. Three tours in Afghanistan and two more in Iraq had left him with the body of a well-drilled athlete, and he mounted the curb with ease, breezing past the stunned pedestrians. Holloway and the SWAT team, weighed down by Kevlar, helmets, and AR-15 rifles, couldn’t hope to match the detective’s speed, and instead pounced on the dazed addict.

  Drawing huge gulps of air, Krueger surged forward. Lucas faltered in front of him, his lungs starting to burn, his arms flying in panic and desperation. From the corner of his eye, Krueger saw O’Brian beside him, but his pace was beginning to slacken. Krueger had expected as much. The Irishman was handy with his fists but too big for running.

  Lucas darted past the wide-eyed shoppers, his blazer flapping wildly, ignoring their curses and cries. He blundered onto 41st Street, shouldering past a young family and the taxi they were hailing. Behind him, Krueger grew closer. Timing his breathing, feeling the steady weight of the Sig Sauer in his hand, Krueger saw glimpses into the future: Lucas cuffed and sweaty in the back of an NYPD Crown Victoria, while O’Brian shook his hand, promising him that the crook would soon be headed to Riker’s Island.

  But then the sound of a freakish explosion tore across the New York sky, and it shattered Krueger’s reverie along with the windows of Gimbels.

  The force of the blast was enough to lift Krueger off of his feet and slam him into the side of a parked taxi. The wind was wrenched from his lungs, and he crumpled to the ground, defeated by the brutal force of the shockwave. In front of him, it appeared as if the whole of 41st was being eaten by the flame and ash of Hell itself.

  The sound subsided, and for a precious moment, an unnatural silence fell over the street, before being replaced by a cacophony of screams.

  Krueger held out a feeble hand and grabbed the cab’s broken side mirror. He used it to pull himself up onto unsteady legs in time to see plumes of smoke, black and acrid, rising swiftly into the air.

  Krueger closed his eyes. The blast had taken him back in time, back to a dark time he’d tried hard to forget. He was no longer in New York, with its sweaty August haze. He was in Fallujah once more—that hellscape of torn buildings, bodies, and hopes.

  Krueger knew what the blast meant: he would soon draw his M4 rifle and begin dealing death to those fanatics who’d threatened his platoon. He’d done it many times before.

  But then Krueger opened his eyes, and the city in crisis was not a desert rat-hole; it was his city, the best city, and it needed him.

  The blast had come from the opposite side of 41st Street. The plain grey building that had stood there moments before was now a smoking ruin.

  Lucas, hidden amongst the other bodies flung to the street by the blast, rose and stood with his limbs trembling. His blazer had been reduced to rags, which smoked and flapped at his sides. No longer the target of the cops behind him, Lucas sped away, his escape hidden by the crowds which raced from the explosion.

  Krueger tried to shake the ringing from his wounded ears. Blood ran from his head, painting a red ribbon down the side of his face.

  “Museum’s hit!” Holloway shouted over the radio, which soon erupted in a tinny chorus of yelled orders and exclamations. “Corner of Madison and 41st!” The lieutenant and his company of SWAT soon caught up to Krueger, grim and eager to help.

  “Get your team down there,” Krueger ordered, pointing toward the blast site in front of him. He was summoning the courage that had seen him graduate both the Army Ranger School and the New York Police Academy with distinction. “O’Brian and I will meet you there; we’ll head through Gimbels and rendezvous at the store’s exit on 41st.”

  Holloway nodded, understanding Krueger’s grim logic. Terrorists often planted secondary bombs timed to explode a few minutes after the first, with the hope of killing first responders the moment they arrived. By taking two different routes to the explosion, Krueger and his team reduced the odds that they’d all be hit by a second blast.

  Holloway led his men forward, leaving Krueger and his partner to force themselves through the swelling crowds of shoppers emptying onto the streets. Trembling, tattered, and grey, they fled from the scene, fear swelling in their eyes. They looked like the victims of other terror attacks, which had struck the Big Apple too many times, and hurt too many people. Krueger felt anger kindle in his heart.

  Gimbels was filled with an oily, hazy smoke, and Krueger’s lungs soon raged in protest. Coughing, he pulled a wad of tissues from his back pocket and held them to his mouth. O’Brian yanked a pricey sequined shirt from its hanger and covered his face.

  The screams in the store were terrifying, but Krueger knew they were the sounds of the shocked, not the sounds of the sick or dying. He learned the difference long ago. Darting through the smoke, patrons and staff headed to the doors that Krueger had just used, desperate to escape from whatever evil had struck. Outside, the wail of police sirens rose in the air, but the sound provided small comfort to the men and women whose lives had just been irrevocably altered.

  Running past once-clean rails of expensive clothing, Krueger and O’Brian soon arrived at the 41st Street entrance to Gimbels. The doors were smoldering ruins, metal deformities lying on the ground next to the broken glass and debris from the road outside.

  Surveying the scene, Krueger knew it must have been an enormous blast. Smoke obscured the worst of the damage opposite, but the blood splattered like paint on the sidewalk gave enough of a hint of the horrors inside. Krueger wiped tears from his eyes, brought on by the smoke, and as he did so, the first fire truck bounded into view. The guys inside were already on the sidewalk before the vehicle had come to a stop.

  Krueger and O’Brian slowly descended the broken steps of Gimbels onto 41st Street. Another fire truck and an ambulance pulled up, as uniformed officers began pulling the wailing survivors from the carnage. Clenching his massive jaw, Krueger dismissed his own injuries, nodded to O’Brian, and plunged into the chaos before him. He was one of New York’s best cops, and he was going to prove it. The people he’d sworn to protect were hurting and were depending on him.

  “Jesus,” one paramedic said to another as they pulled a gurney from their ambulance. “What is this place? Apartment building?”

  “Nah,” replied his partner. “This is some Jewish Museum. Well, it was a museum.”

  IT WAS ONE WEEK since the bombing, and New York was still reeling.

  Although no terrorist group, foreign or domestic, had admitted responsibility for the blast, the FBI had quickly discovered that a nitromethane bomb had been responsible for the devastation. Their experts, working alongside agents from the ATF, had combed the blast site and discovered the remnants of a detonator inside the ground floor restrooms along with a can containing nitromethane residue. ATF agents were openly theorizing that tovex had been used too, an explosive that Krueger knew was safer to manufacture and less toxic than dynamite. Because of that, it was popular in mines, oil wells, and quarries across the country, and thus easier to steal. Even more troubling for the investigators was that fact it was made in dozens of factories across the globe, from Canada to Pakistan.

  “This looks just like the Oklahoma City bom
bing,” O’Brian had said through gritted teeth when he discovered what the analysis proved.

  Ninety-six people had died in the explosion, which had utterly destroyed the Meyer Cultural Center, and another three were still in intensive care. The media ran stories about the victims, blaring their names and their catastrophic injuries from every TV station in the country. They told of the dead security guard, a single mother from Brooklyn, whose youngest daughter was sick with kidney failure. They told of a toddler who lost a leg and a missing janitor whose fiancé had recently arrived from El Salvador in anticipation of their wedding.

  The stories never stopped. There was always some new heartbreak, some new outrage.

  And Krueger saw it all. He didn’t turn away from the bloody carnage or try to close his mind to the enormity of the attack. Long tours in Iraq and other warzones had taught him that you needed to keep your eyes open to catch the killers, even if it meant looking at horror that would turn lesser men insane. It had to be done.

  But looking at the obscenity that was the bombing came at a steep price for the forty-one-year-old. Krueger found himself having three drinks at night instead of his usual one. He’d taken up smoking again too, an addiction he’d quit the same time as his marriage.

  There was no room for Krueger on the investigation, however. NYPD’s Intelligence Division & Counter-Terrorism Bureau was working alongside the suits from Washington law enforcement agencies, who’d arrived armed with a casual disregard for the New York cops whose resources they were commandeering. The NSA had also descended on New York too, and their agents came with angry orders from the President still ringing in their ears.

  “You did choose Narcotics,” Krueger said to himself one morning, seated at his desk as he watched a fresh collection of officers, led by a man wearing a navy FBI jacket, depart for the FBI Field Office in Federal Plaza, where the investigation was being overseen. And he was right; years spent in the Middle East had left Krueger sick of the bombs, the rage, and the incessant hatred of America. He figured busting drug dealers was preferable to fighting demented totalitarians.