Countdown, page 30
The sudden increase in the number of people pouring out of the office building—most of them running—tells him everything he needs to know: in one-third of the floors within One World Trade Center, his carefully placed smoke bombs have gone off. There’s no fire, no explosives, nothing save choking clouds of smoke.
Meaning that within minutes, tens of thousands of people are going to be streaming out, jamming the side streets.
Panic, his sponsor Rashad Hussain had told him. What I want is panic on that day, and crowds of people running to safety toward the Hudson River.
Mike tugs at the rope at his side and the left-hand rear window slides up, revealing the crowds of people moving and standing on the sidewalk.
Picks up his M4, sights in, wondering which target he will choose first.
Panic, Rashad had told him. Just shoot into the crowds, move them like the cattle they are, head them to the west.
There.
That man standing on the sidewalk, hugging a blond-haired girl, colorful backpack at their feet.
“You’re first,” he whispers.
And squeezes the trigger.
Chapter 106
THIS DAY is blessed indeed, for standing at the west side of the roof of his hotel, the Nansen Arms, it’s sunny with a steady breeze coming in from the banks of nearby New Jersey, there on the other side of the Hudson River. There are antennas up here, bulky air-conditioning and air-handling units, and he confidently strides over to a huge square apparatus with a splash of orange paint on one corner, hard by the edge of the roof.
He puts down his two cases, kneels on the crushed stone of the roof, and reaches under the square. He drags out a larger, bulkier case, placed here two days ago by his most trusted local associate, Mike Patel.
With all three cases in hand, he opens up the lids and gets to work.
He has practiced this many times before, so it’s quick work indeed.
Rashad stands up, examines what is before him: a heavy metal tripod made by Meade, built for binoculars scaled for astronomical viewing. He sets up the tripod, making sure each leg is firmly planted in the crushed stone. A set of what looks like bulky black binoculars comes up next, and is securely screwed into the tripod’s mount. The binoculars, however, are a classified Zeiss viewing system built under contract for the German army. Once they’ve been secured, Rashad toggles a tiny switch that powers up the system.
There.
The little lightbulb comes on red.
Rashad waits, rubbing his hands not from cold or fear but from anticipation. He is not a particularly religious man, but years ago he had stood on this very roof as it neared completion, remembering with cold rage the constant gibes of his father, who had insulted Rashad for going into mercantile work, instead of the honorable profession of being in government service or the oil industry—essentially the same thing—where he might have worked with the Americans and the British to achieve a more equitable world, and those thoughts were on his mind that day when Allah spoke to him.
The little light remains red.
He was at this very spot, ignoring the words of his architects and builders, looking over the Hudson River at the coast of New Jersey, when Allah spoke to him, giving him a vision of a great cloud coming from that coast and sweeping over here, taking down Manhattan and its empire and the dreams and hopes of so many, including his now thankfully dead father.
The light is now green.
There’s a small keypad at the rear of the viewing system. After Rashad taps in the appropriate GPS coordinates, the system gently whirs into position.
Rashad double-checks that his 9mm pistol is at his side. If anyone dares to question him in the next few minutes—a maintenance worker or a security guard—Rashad will shoot him dead with no hesitation.
He lowers his face to the twin optics, gazing across the river to an area south of the Hoboken Terminal, where his rail business has its southern terminus. The view is crisp and dramatic, showing cars, fences, pedestrians walking, and a collection of freight cars and trains.
But what is best is that he sees a flashing beacon from on top of a diesel locomotive—an infrared signal visible only to Rashad that tells him the first of his blessed trains is about to depart.
And to change the world.
Chapter 107
CLICK.
Mike Patel anticipates the slam of the recoil hitting his right shoulder to go along with the sharp bark of the M4 firing, but…
A click?
Must be a jam.
He lowers the rifle and pulls back the action. A cartridge spins out and hits the metal floor of the van.
He lifts the rifle, pulls the trigger again.
Click.
What in God’s name is going on?
Faulty ammunition?
A metallic taste of failure is in his mouth and his hands tremble as he pulls out the rifle’s magazine, works the action, and watches another cartridge spin uselessly onto the floor. Mike grabs a fresh magazine, slams it into the M4, works the action one more time.
He aims at the crowds now moving quickly out of the Fulton Street entrance of One World Trade Center, and pulls the trigger to another disappointing click. Just then the front passenger door of his van flies open, there’s a push through the curtain, and a pistol barrel is shoved into his left ear.
A British-accented voice says, “You amateurs think you’re full of jihad and glory, but you stupid gits never check the firing pin’s in place before pulling the trigger. Am I right, Mike?”
Chapter 108
MY SEATBELT keeps me secure as I swivel around and look at the rapidly approaching New Jersey side of the Hudson. There’s the Hoboken Terminal, and a spaghetti mix of rail lines with freight trains of differing lengths scattered across my field of view.
In my earphones I hear Lisa say, “Your freight train is departing Hoboken Terminal?”
“No,” I reply. “There’s that small train yard, just to the south. That’s where it’s heading out.”
The male copilot says, “Lisa, look over at eleven o’clock. Northbound freight train leaving the yard—must be it.”
I turn harder in the seat, and as we close the distance I spot the freight train and its long retinue of freight cars and tankers trundling along.
Dual use, I think. Gasoline can power your car or burn down your house, depending on how it’s handled.
“Lisa?” I ask.
“Right here,” she says.
I look farther up the track and see that the railway cuts through commercial and residential areas, with power lines and pedestrian bridges passing overhead.
The target train is gaining speed.
“We’ve got to stop that train.”
Lisa says, “Yeah, I figured that’s the plan.”
“But look at all those obstacles down there—the power lines, the abutments, utility poles—”
Lisa swears at me as she increases the speed of the Bell 429. “Shit, Captain, you see any moojs down there shooting at me with RPGs or AK-47s? Does it look like the ’stan down there? Is it night or bright daylight? I think I can handle flying into urban New Jersey just fine, thank you very much. So shut up already.”
I shut up.
Check my watch.
It’s 10:40 a.m.
Just twenty-seven minutes left to go.
God, we just might make it.
Chapter 109
AS JEREMY Windsor slows his stolen twin-engine speedboat, he worries how he’ll get past the rocky shoreline and onto Manhattan, but bless us all there’s a small marina just south of Rockefeller Park, within sprinting distance of Rashad’s hotel.
Brilliant.
He slows the twin engines even more and glances back at New Jersey, knowing that if he and Amy don’t make it…a rising cloud of death will be coming this way in a very few minutes.
Ahead the marina comes into better view. Behind it Jeremy can see ten- or fifteen-story brick buildings, and beyond them the high and shiny skyscrapers of south Manhattan, including that architectural phoenix, One World Trade Center.
The interior of the marina is small, but the luxury yachts moored there are so long and high they could use his stolen boat as a tender.
There.
An open slip.
He steers the boat in, tugs the wires to switch off the engine, and doesn’t bother tying her up. A quick glance at his iPhone and the area map tells him where to go, so he starts running—just as two heavyset marina workers come trotting toward him, shouting, faces red, demanding to know who he is, what he’s doing here, and why he doesn’t have enough goddamn sense to tie off his goddamn boat?
Jeremy points his SIG Sauer at the two men and says, “Not my goddamn boat—but this is my goddamn pistol.”
They move out of his way.
He keeps on running.
A minute later his phone rings; he checks it—BLOCKED NUMBER—and says, “Windsor.”
“Jeremy, it’s Amanda, you bloody idiot,” comes an angry woman’s voice. “What the hell do you mean by calling me at the consulate after you’ve been Faroe’d? You’re lucky I was able to grab this burner phone to call you back.”
Run, run, run. Passing people out enjoying this May morning. The nearby park. Kites in the air. Music being played. Frisbees being tossed.
All of you, he wants to shout, all of you get out of here!
“Amanda,” he says, slowing his pace just a bit so he can maintain a conversation, “I’ve got an emerging terrorist threat here that’s about to blow in less than twenty minutes.”
“Jeremy…”
He dodges a nanny pushing a two-seater stroller. “This is not a joke. This is as real as it gets. Please…Amanda, I need to know if there’s anything unusual that MI6 has picked up in the Manhattan area during the last week.”
“Unusual? Jeremy, please.”
“Amanda,” he says, raising his voice as he keeps running along North End Avenue, “you know what I mean. Anything that doesn’t fit, stands out, sounds strange.”
Even against the din of Manhattan traffic, he can make out her sigh. “We got a couple of phone calls from idiots claiming to be Irish separatists, saying they were going to blow up the consulate next year to mark the Easter Uprising. Some Scottish twit accused his roommates of being in league with Satanist pedophiles. A couple of drunken lads called us, joking about wanting to kidnap the Duchess of Cambridge the next time she’s in town.”
The facade of the Nansen Arms grows larger as he continues to run. Old aches and pains from injuries that Jeremy received in Lebanon and on that deserted runway in France scream at him.
“And here’s the latest,” she says. “A Special Branch chap called in something he learned about an illegal Pakistani immigrant working at One World Trade Center.”
He comes to a halt, breathing hard.
“Go on,” he says. “Please make it quick.”
“Well, he claims the man was keeping an illegal automatic rifle in his flat,” Amanda says. “And I don’t blame him, being a Muslim in America nowadays, but the other thing was a code.”
“What kind of code?”
“Hold on, I’ve got my notes here.”
He’s tries to ease his breathing, tries to keep his focus on what Amanda’s telling him.
“Here it is,” she says. “This Special Branch fellow says he found these words and numbers on a slip of paper. The words lift four, followed by the numerals 6, 6, 8, and 9. Then the words access roof, followed by the numerals 9, 8, 6, and 6. That’s it.”
As she is talking, Jeremy—pen in hand—scribbles the words and numbers on the palm of his hand.
Amanda says, “Do you think this is important?”
Jeremy looks up at the roof of the hotel owned by Rashad Hussain. He knows—sweet Jesus, he knows—that the bastard is up there right now, watching everything unfold.
“God, I hope so,” he says, then disconnects the call and resumes his race.
One more time check.
The explosions will occur at 11:09 a.m.
It’s now 10:43 a.m.
Chapter 110
IN HIS seat at the controls of HV412-29, Orrin Block sees clear cruising ahead of him, as they are now north of the Hoboken Terminal. He turns in his padded chair and is about to ask after Miguel’s weekend plans again when a dark shadow suddenly dims the interior of the cab, like a passing thundercloud.
Miguel sits up and stares out his side window, and Orrin says, “What the hell was that?” Then comes the roar of engines overhead, and Orrin sits back in fear as a helicopter swoops over them, heading up the track at low altitude.…Jesus, it looks like fifty feet, if that!
The chopper turns so Orrin can make out the blue-and-white fuselage, and there’s no missing the large white letters on the tail boom:
N Y P D
New York cops?
Here?
“Miguel!” he calls out, as the helicopter refuses to move. “Call Dispatch, see if they know why the cops want us to stop!”
The helicopter moves up the track, then rotates again.
Still at low altitude.
Still blocking their way.
“Miguel!”
He turns and his conductor is standing up, holding something in his hand.
Damn it, he was carrying a pistol after all.
Orrin literally cannot understand what’s happening.
“Miguel?” he says, looking down at the pistol and then back to his conductor. “What the hell is going on?”
Miguel cries out something Orrin can’t understand, then opens the cab door and runs onto the narrow catwalk at the rear.
The phone receiver to contact Dispatch is right there, but to hell with it.
Gripping the familiar handles in front of him, Orrin throttles back and starts applying the brakes.
He may not know what the hell is going on—either with Miguel or with the NYPD—but Orrin’s bringing things to a halt, right now.
Once the train slows enough so he can jump without hurting himself, Miguel Marcos leaps from the catwalk at the rear of the diesel electric locomotive and lands in the crushed stone and gravel between the two sets of railroad tracks.
Tossing the pistol aside, Miguel starts running away from the train. He crosses the other set of tracks and starts climbing up a brush-covered, trash-filled embankment to get away.
The truth is, the Abu Sayyaf terror group had recruited Miguel in error months ago in the Philippines, mistaking him for his cousin Carlos. He’s been living in fear ever since, looking for a way to break free but never having the courage to do so.
Until now.
Both of his grandfathers had served as stewards in the U.S. Navy, and Miguel has always loved America, thinking of it as a benevolent if sometimes grumpy grandfather living far, far away. Seeing the New York police helicopter show up, well, now he’s found the courage to run away.
He just hopes he can run away far enough before the bombs go off.
Chapter 111
“DADDY…”
Instinctively, Tom pulls Denise close to him as more and more people run out of the Fulton Street entrance of One World Trade Center, a faint haze of smoke coming out. A man runs by with his briefcase bouncing against his right leg, screaming, “There are bombs going off in there! Bombs! The whole building is coming down!”
Tom yells, “No, that can’t happen,” but quickly realizes he’s wasting his time. The people running out of the building—crowding Fulton Street, flowing into the nearby memorial park—are no longer stockbrokers or administrative assistants or hedge-fund managers. They are a fearful, crazed mob, and at this moment, with adrenaline flowing through them and only thoughts of running and surviving going through their minds, they won’t listen to facts.
Tom knows the facts: OWTC is the safest building in the world. It was built with high-strength concrete. Most metal rebar in buildings is the circumference of one’s finger. In this beautiful building, the rebar is as thick as a forearm. No explosives are taking it down.
So what’s going on?
Ticonderoga.
“Come on, Hon, let’s get out of here,” Tom says. The fear that he’s too late comes to him as the crowds get harder and harder to move through.
Freddie Farrady of Scotland Yard’s Special Branch feels a savage bit of glee when he dives into this van and shoves his pistol in Mike Patel’s ear.
“Drop the goddamn rifle or I’ll blow your head off,” he says.
The rifle falls to the floor.
Patel raises his hands.
“Now, you’re going to—”
Patel’s left elbow flies back, catching Freddie under the chin. In any other time and place, a blow like that would merely stun him. But he’s standing on the edge of the doorframe, and the shock makes him fall out of the van.
Freddie hits the sidewalk hard on his back, his feet tangled up in the passenger-side seat belt. Patel leaps into the front seat, starts up the van’s engine, and puts it in Drive with the passenger door still open.
Shit!
Freddie kicks hard and frees his feet from the strap just as the van takes off. His anger at Patel—and his fear of what he’s up to—makes him scramble to one knee and fire three shots at the retreating van.
Tom snaps to when he hears the familiar sound of a weapon being fired, and now he’s being crushed as more screams erupt. Denise yells, “My backpack, my backpack!” and now the adrenaline surge of being on a battlefield—of being in a place where anything can kill you right at this moment—comes back to him. It’s a familiar feeling but God he’s so scared, because he’s not out on this battlefield alone.
He’s on this battlefield with his eleven-year-old daughter.
Chapter 112
FOR THE first time in a long time I taste the sweetness of good news: the northbound train starts slowing down.
“Hold tight,” I yell at Lisa. “I want to make sure that train stays put!”
