Carrion (The Bren Watts Diaries #1)

Chapter 63

Most government buildings adopted Greco-romanesque architecture. The New York State Capitol, however, was like a royal palace. It stood five stories high, ornate with many visible arches, towers flanking each side with pyramidal-coned roofs painted red, and a massive plaza that led up to the grand staircase and then to the baroque-style entrance doors of the building itself.

It was the most heavily guarded building in the entire city.

We studied the building's perimeter, which took half the afternoon. The soldiers were thorough on every entryway. There were K9 dogs to smell trouble, X-ray conveyors to check on the employees' bags, full-body scanners to sniff out weapons, rotational snipers from the rooftops, ID scanners, and the IDs themselves required a photograph. Each employee had their own unique barcode on their IDs.

There were heavy traffic barriers and barrels filled with water strategically placed around the perimeter. The plaza was a sufficient open space to expedite early visual detection of suspicious activities, and if I started approaching, they would notice me right away. CCTV cameras covered all vantage points (and I did not see a blind spot), and these were the type that would record 24/7, the files archived for at least twenty-eight days. I made sure to keep everyone out of sight, just across the street around the Fallen Firefighters Memorial Park.

"So, you're saying there's no way in?" Logan asked me.

I shook my head. "They thought Troy was impenetrable, or Alcatraz inescapable, and looked what happened to those places. No one found out a way in yet."

"We can break the windows, and every building has a backdoor," Luke suggested.

"But not this one. Look around. It's specifically built around wide main roads—Washington Avenue and State Street—no alleys and no secret side doors. No building is connected to it, so we can't just hop over the rooftops. Both the north and the south side face their own plazas, large open grounds without any cover. If we try to break in, everyone will see us. If we try to attack, we'll have no cover. Impressive design, really."

"The windows—"

"Bulletproof, or at least reinforced, and probably polycarbonate. The doors might look like wood, but it's not. It's designed to resist bullets, blasts, or forced entry, maybe with a heavy gauge or steel frames built-in or a ribbed core of plate armor. I wouldn't be surprised if it's multi-point locked with an SAT device." Luke's mouth hung open, and I shrugged. "My father works at a security firm after he retired from the navy. He analyzes weak points of entry."

"And did you find one?" Logan asked.

"No. I mean, it's the freaking State Capitol building. What do you expect? That's where the state senate, members of Congress, the attorney general, the governor, and basically everyone in New York who sat in Uncle Sam's office congregate there. Their security insurance better be that freaking amazing, or what's the point on paying them taxes?"

"So, how are we going to get in? Should we wait for them, follow Clemons to his apartment or wherever he's staying at?"

"I thought about that. Then, we have another problem. Curfew's in four hours."

Logan looked at his watch and groaned. "Well, shit."

"Four hours. I think we can do that," Luke said optimistically.

"Clemons might be in there for that long. We'll be caught out in the open here without anywhere to hide."

Luke frowned. "Oh."

"And if he goes to another neighborhood, we'll lose him again, and we can't pass our weapons through the gates."

Logan muttered, "This keeps getting better and better."