The System

Stan Kolodziej

Description

Three young Americans are fed up with the system and vow to take it down.

Jimmy, Ann and Kaz are fed up with the System – the network of corporations and government operations that has destroyed their families and, even now, threatens the privacy and security of ordinary American citizens. So, swearing to a suicide pact, they vow to take it down.

The three teenagers transform the New York underground into a weapons storage unit and their own private haven and, from there, plan a series of guerilla attacks on System-run buildings around the city. But when they’re caught by a New York detective unit before they can set up their final bombing, however – intended to take out the “nexus”, a fabled corporate building in Manhattan rumored to house the communications used to monitor the lives of citizens – all of their carefully laid plans begin to fall apart.

Suddenly, what began as an ambitious small-scale terrorist effort has transformed into an all-out manhunt as the three frantically try and stay one step ahead of the agents who are tracking them through the tunnels. As the race grows ever more desperate, who can they turn to? And can they even really trust each other?

Sujets

• Crime
• Thriller
• Fiction

Informations

• Publié par: Anthem Press
• Date de parution: 30 juin 2014
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781783081448
• Langue: English

Extrait

THE SYSTEM
THE SYSTEM
STAN KOLODZIEJ
The System
THAMES RIVER PRESS An imprint of Wimbledon Publishing Company Limited (WPC) Another imprint of WPC is Anthem Press ( www.anthempress.com ) First published in the United Kingdom in 2014 by THAMES RIVER PRESS 75–76 Blackfriars Road London SE1 8HA
www.thamesriverpress.com
© Stan Kolodziej 2014
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by any means without written permission of the publisher.
The moral rights of the author have been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All the characters and events described in this novel are imaginary and any similarity with real people or events is purely coincidental.
A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 978-1-78308-132-5
This title is also available as an eBook
To those sleepwalkers about to awaken
Prologue
T hey saw unmarked cars parked on the street outside the hotel. This time they were watching me, waiting. It was like a performance. And the audience was getting restless. The actress hadn’t come out yet. Maybe she never would.
Morning came. Friday. I hoped I had enough nerve to go through with it. Fear was waiting for me again. It was always there now. At 1:30 p.m. I was outside the station. I didn’t hide. I was through with that. They had to be on time. I didn’t know how much longer I could wait.
Finally I saw the three of them leave through the back of the station. I walked over to one of the trash bins and took out the paper bag with Kaz’s plywood and bomb. I waited right there with the package. No one stopped me, no one even noticed.
There’s that stop sign before you turn onto 35th coming out of the station. That’s where I waited. In a few minutes the car appeared. There was a lot of traffic on 8th. They could be waiting there for some time. I left the package on the street and walked away. The car pulled up and stopped, right over the package. I could see Copernik in the driver’s seat. Vecchio was not in the car. That prick had nine lives. No man in the suit either. Just Copernik. That was OK. That would do for now.
Two police cars pulled into the station parking lot. One of the officers looked at me closely as they passed by. I could see he was trying to add it together, trying to get the letters to click and tumble, trying to come up with an answer.
Another police car pulled out of the station parking lot and started coming towards the exit, right behind Copernik’s car. There was more traffic than I ever saw those days watching the station, it was like a regular freeway.
I turned for a moment and knew Copernik saw me. I don’t know what he could have been thinking. He must have wondered what I was doing there. Maybe at that second he knew what was coming. Maybe we resign ourselves to things faster than we think. We don’t even know it. It’s just a matter of catching up to it.
I tried to detonate the package with the cellphone but nothing happened. Maybe Kaz was fucking with me one last time. Copernik hit the accelerator and the bomb went off and the back of the car disintegrated. That was that. I just kept walking towards the car. Go straight at the lion, right? I wouldn’t have more than a few seconds. The two officers in the car behind were already getting out. Copernik was still moving in there. It was weird. There were no flames. It was more like a concussion bomb. Kaz must have done something wrong when he made it. Figures. The back of the car was lifted up and came back down a few feet like it had been punched from beneath and then from above. The two back tires burst and the back windshield shattered. That was all.
I walked up, didn’t run or slow down or crouch like in the fucking manual, and while I was walking I pumped a lot of rounds into what was left of the car. I could see Copernik still reaching for his gun. I ejected the empty magazine from the Glock and fumbled with a new one. It was a matter of seconds, either way. I relaxed just enough for it to make a difference. Yeah, I made the mistake, after all that training, of lowering my gun while I reloaded. Copernik raised his gun just as I got my new clip in, aimed and fired. It was all over in a few seconds.
That other training, the Mozambique Drill and going for the cranial cavity and the obdulla longella, or whatever it’s fucking called, it’s all bullshit. I didn’t aim, just kept firing, until all the bullets were gone, until whatever I was aiming at didn’t move anymore. Copernik was just a big shadow to me; he could have been anyone, anything, in there. I just wanted him to be still.
When I stopped there was no more moving inside the car. Copernik had sagged against the driver side door, very still, and his eyes had that faraway look. I started walking away. Police were coming out of the building and cars now. Some cars were stopping on the street, people getting out. I remembered now that something shot past me when the bomb went off, part of the car maybe, then something hit me in the shoulder. I looked back. I saw the little guy in the suit. He was looking at me. He raised his gun and fired. Something smacked into the wall a few feet behind me. Then I heard someone shouting to stop firing. I thought at first they were yelling at me. I couldn’t remember firing any more shots.
I staggered then ran and didn’t look back. I walked in the opposite direction of the warehouse on 8th. After a while I stopped and then began to walk again. It’s nothing, I told myself, and kept walking. I could hear police cars behind me. There was no time. They would be here any second. A change of plan. I tossed the cellphone into a trash bin. When I reached the office building on 32nd I entered the lobby. Someone shouted at me. It was the man in the suit. He was right there this time, in the blind spot with me. Everyone in the lobby scattered. He raised his gun again and I ignored him. He looked pissed off, like I had betrayed him. He could do what he wanted. I went through the door to the stairs going to the parking levels. No one shouted at me, no one fired. Something told me they wouldn’t.
I reached the third level of the parking garage, just as Kaz had mapped it for me.
In a few moments I was through the maintenance door and the little rabbit was in the maze again. The police had missed blocking this one. I was in the tunnels one more time. I had to keep going, I couldn’t black out. It was so quiet. There were no police, no one was behind me. They had seen me go into the parking garage. They would find the door, they must have already found it.
I heard people talking ahead in the tunnels. They had to be the police. I went to the surface and into the city again, coming out on 27th Street through an office building. I began walking towards Penn Station. I could see a police car turn onto 27th heading my way. I went through the nearest door and into a small clothing store. The young woman behind the counter looked up and smiled at me, and then her face got real serious.
I had to sit. I was starting to black out, but there were no chairs so I leaned against the wall and closed my eyes. If I didn’t close my eyes I knew I would collapse. The only shopper in the store, a middle-aged woman, looked at me when I first came in. You could hear the police sirens in the distance, a few streets away. When I opened my eyes again, I saw her looking directly at me. You could see her putting it together. It was only a few seconds before she would be getting her cellphone out. I wasn’t sure what I was going to do. It was like I was watching myself, like the others, not having a clue what would happen.
The young woman left the counter and surprised me by coming over and putting her hand on my shoulder. She spoke to me like she knew me, like she was expecting me. I didn’t say anything. It was the last thing I expected. She led me towards the counter. Her hand was on my back and I could feel the blood there getting cold against my skin. The young woman said something to the shopper. I don’t know what she said but the middle-aged woman said something back then left the store.
The young woman led me into the back of the store. There were cloth cutting tools and opened boxes filled with clothes everywhere. She got an old armchair from the corner, pulled it out and sat me in it.
She started to take my coat off and I panicked. Who was she? Did the whole city know about me? I pulled out my gun and pointed it at her and she backed away and stared at me.
She asked me if I had been shot. I said I thought I had been. I didn’t know. Maybe it was the bomb or part of the car. Was any of it real? I couldn’t be sure.
She knew about me. By some city jungle tom-toms she knew about the bombing at the radical center. She said she could try and get me out of the city, that she knew people. Everybody knew people. I had enough of it.
I told her that I didn’t need help. I just needed to get to the street again. I started to get up again then collapsed. I was so tired. She made a call on her cellphone and then said there were police everywhere. We would wait. I had to let the world turn in this woman’s hands.
After a while she started to take my coat off again. This time I let her.
She retrieved some bandages from another room, then took my shirt off and looked at my back and I heard her gasp. So that was it. I was dying. She stared at the wound for some time before she got a small towel from a restroom and started to get some of the blood off. She put bandages on the