Takedown (8 page)

Y
ou scared the hell out of me,” Fiore said as he lowered his pistol. “Why’d you come around the front of the vehicle?”

“Because my door was jammed and yours was open,” replied Marcy, a little unsteady on her feet. “What happened?”

“Terrorists with multiple vehicle bombs. Apparently, all the bridges and tunnels in and out of Manhattan have been hit. Echo Two is unresponsive, and Grossi and Swartley are gone.”

“Gone?”

“Our vehicle took a pretty bad hit.”

Marcy looked down at the president’s daughter and referred to her by her codename. “How’s Goldilocks?”

“She’s alive, which is more than we can say for her girlfriends.”

Delacorte peered into the backseat and felt like she was about to retch. It was a gruesome sight. As she regained her composure she began to ask about their plan of action, but Fiore stopped her. He had a transmission coming over his earpiece and signaled for her to listen in.

“Echo One, this is Skybox. Do you copy? Over.”

“Roger that, Skybox. We copy. Over.”

“Echo One, we want you to evacuate the package to the west end of the bridge immediately. When you get there find a secure location and dig in. We’re mobilizing our tactical team and will get them to you ASAP. Over.”

Marcy, who had now bent down to examine Amanda, responded, “Negative, Skybox. The package needs immediate medical. There’s no time to wait for the tac team. Over.”

“Echo One, ambulances have been dispatched to multiple attack sites, including your location. Can you get the package to the west end of the bridge and seek medical attention there? Over.”

“Will do. Echo One out,” replied Delacorte, who then looked up at Tim and said, “How do you want to play this?”

“Let me get us some muscle so we can walk shotgun. I’ll be right back.”

Removing his credentials, Fiore ran up to two large men who had just helped extricate a woman from her badly damaged car and said, “U.S. Secret Service. I have a priority injury I need your help with over here.”

The men followed Tim back to where Amanda Rutledge lay on the litter next to the sheared SUV. “She don’t look so good,” one of them commented. “Are you sure you want to be moving her?”

“We don’t have a choice,” replied Marcy. “If we don’t get her to help soon, she’s going to die.”

“You’re the boss,” said the other man as he waved his buddy to the rear of the litter while he grabbed the handles near Amanda’s head.

“Gently now, fellas,” said Fiore. “On three. Ready? One. Two. Three.”

The men delicately lifted the litter as Tim and Marcy took up security positions on either side.

Looking down again at the young woman who lay unconscious on the litter, one of the men remarked, “Hey, is this who I think it is?”

Marcy was about to respond, when there came the sound of groaning metal followed by cries of terror. The group turned to see the number seven subway train on the upper deck behind them teetering on the edge of an enormous blast hole that revealed the river below and sky above.

A moment later, there was the horrible sound of metal scraping on metal as subway cars tumbled one after the other through the hole on the upper deck, straight down through the hole on the vehicle level and then plunged toward the East River below. It was one of the most horrific sights any of them had ever seen.

As if that wasn’t bad enough, suddenly, the bridge beneath their feet began to shake violently. Large pieces of metal buckled and yawed as the structure prepared to meet its watery death.

Not a man to mince words, Tim Fiore looked at his group and yelled, “Run!”

T
his is a real bad time to be asking me for favors,” Stan Caldwell, the exhausted forty-two-year-old deputy director of the FBI, said into the phone.

“Who’s asking for favors?” replied Gary Lawlor, who had been both Caldwell’s mentor and his predecessor before moving over to DHS and the Office of International Investigative Assistance to head its covert counterterrorism initiative known as the Apex Project. “I’m asking you to do your job.”

“I
am
doing my job, and I’m up to my eyebrows in shit right now. Do you have any idea what the preliminary death toll is coming out of New York City?”

“It’s not good. I know. I’ve been getting the same reports you have.”

“You’re goddamn right it’s not good.”

“Stan, I’m not trying to make more work for you,” he said from his office across town, “but there are a couple of things here that don’t make sense, and I need you or somebody in your office to get to the bottom of it for me right now.”

“There’s nothing to get to the bottom of. Whoever your guy talked to at the JTTF office in New York is wrong. That’s all there is to it.”

“Don’t bullshit me, Stan. We’ve got too much history together. I want to know what the DIA’s role is in all of this. Why were they posing as JTTF agents for Sayed Jamal’s handoff?”

“Gary, I’m going to tell you one more time, and then I’ve gotta get back to my desk in the SIOC. The men your agent worked with in upstate New York are JTTF, plain and simple. Whoever pegged them as DIA is wrong. Tell your man that if he wants to help out in Manhattan, I suggest he grab a hard hat, attach himself to a search-and-rescue team, and start digging.” With that, Caldwell hung up the phone.

“Did he buy it?” asked FBI Director Martin Sorce.

“I don’t think so. Especially since he had to leave four messages over here before I called him back.”

Sorce turned to the other man in the room and said, “What should we do now?”

From behind his frameless glasses, the Defense Intelligence Agency’s chief of staff, Timothy Bedford, fixed the two FBI men with a steady gaze and replied, “Nothing. We’ll handle it from here.”

As Bedford stood up to leave he added, “And, gentlemen, please remember the national security implications of this issue. As far as anyone is concerned, our meeting never took place.”

Once Bedford had left the director’s conference room and the door had shut behind him, Sorce remarked, “I never did like that guy. It’s no wonder Waddell uses him to do his dirty work. What does he mean,
this meeting never took place?
At least two dozen people saw him come in here. What an asshole.”

Caldwell smiled. “The fact that his tie is knotted a bit too tight notwithstanding, what are we going to do about this?”

“What can we do?” asked Sorce as he stood up from his chair. “You saw the letter he was carrying from the president. We’ve been told in no uncertain terms to stay out of their operation.”

“And in the process lie to people we should be working with—in particular, Lawlor, who’s a former deputy director of the Bureau?”

“I don’t like it either, Stan, but that’s the way it is. Listen, we’ve got too much on our plates now anyway.”

“And it could skyrocket if Gary is right about a secondary attack,” said Caldwell as his attention was drawn to an urgent message coming in on his pager.

Sorce opened the door of the conference room and nodded to his staff that he was ready to return to the floor of the Strategic Information and Operations Center, or SIOC, for a quick morale booster. But before he left, he turned and said, “The next several hours are going to be absolutely critical, so let’s make sure we’re focused on doing our job.”

“Which is, using anything and anyone at our disposal to stop any further terrorist attacks, correct?” queried Caldwell as he looked up from the message on his pager.

The director’s ability to read people was the sine qua non of his successful leadership of the FBI. He knew what his deputy was driving at. “As long as you operate within the framework of the law and remain faithful to your oath of duty, you’ll have my full support.”

“Even if it means potentially pissing off the president?”

Sorce looked Caldwell in the eye and said, “For the record, I left the room after I told you to operate within the framework of the law—”

“And remain faithful to my oath of duty,” added Caldwell. “I got it.”

S
cot Harvath slid his BlackBerry back into the plastic holder at his waist and said, “The official word from the FBI is that the JTTF duty officer has no idea what he’s talking about.”

Herrington looked at him and replied, “He seemed pretty sure of himself to me.”

“Even so, they suggest we find a search-and-rescue team and focus our efforts in that direction.”

“I think I’d rather focus my efforts on catching terrorists.”

“Me too,” said Harvath.

“So where are we?”

“Apparently on the corner of Ignorance and Bliss without a goddamn clue.”

“Why would the FBI cover up the DIA’s involvement in all of this?” asked Herrington.

“Who knows? I can’t figure any of these people out anymore. Subterfuge on top of subterfuge, all wrapped up with prime government red tape. It’s getting harder and harder to believe we’re all on the same side.”

“Agent Harvath,” yelled a voice from behind them. “Agent Harvath!”

They turned to see the JTTF duty officer running out of the revolving door of 26 Federal Plaza.

“I think I might have something for you,” he said.

“Like what?” asked Herrington.

“NYPD picked up a guy at the temporary PATH station at the World Trade Center just off Church Street. They think he was supposed to be one of the bombers.”

“What makes them think that?” asked Harvath.

“They found him with a backpack full of explosives that failed to go off. There’s nobody from our office who can get over there right away, so I’ve been authorized to give you first crack at him, if you want it.”

“Authorized by whom?”

“Stan Caldwell, deputy director of the FBI.”

As Scot and Bob walked toward the NYPD’s 1st Precinct on Ericsson Place, the street scenes were surreal. On some there were absolutely no signs of life. On others, entire avenues were taken over by throngs of people still pouring out of lower Manhattan, making their way north. As part of the city’s emergency plan, the subways had been shut down and many streets were restricted to emergency vehicles only. The drivers who were still out, searching for a way off the island, faced an absolute traffic nightmare, with most of their routes blocked by people who had abandoned their vehicles and had fled on foot.

To make matters worse, the sky was obliterated by a smoky haze, while a powdery gray ash, as if it were the cremated remains of the victims themselves, had begun falling across the city.

Harvath, though, tried to force the macabre scene from his mind by focusing on the matter at hand. “For some reason, Stan decided to throw us a bone” was all Gary had said when Harvath called him to relay the update.

Turning to Herrington, Harvath wondered aloud, “First Caldwell says the JTTF duty officer doesn’t know what he’s talking about, and then he sends him chasing after us with an interrogation on a silver platter. It doesn’t make sense.”

“There’s a little too much fruit in this salad, but what do I know?” replied Herrington. “As far as I’m concerned, we shouldn’t look the gift whore in the mouth.”

While chatting with the arresting officers, Harvath was handed the evidence bag that contained the few items the man was carrying when he was picked up. His backpack was with the bomb squad and held nothing of interest other than the explosives that failed to go off.

Scot and Bob were shown into the brightly lit interrogation room. Cuffed to a chipped Formica table in the center was a Middle Eastern man in his early-to-mid-twenties. His face and arms were covered with cuts and bruises. Whether the injuries came from having been in the PATH tunnel when one of his colleagues’ devices went off or if he had “slipped” getting into the squad car, Harvath didn’t really care. What he wanted was information, and he hoped this bomb jockey had something that they could use.

“Masaa al-Khair,”
said Harvath as he pulled the metal chair out from the other side of the table and sat down.
“Kayf Haalak?”

The man looked up at Harvath and spit at his face.

Why were they all spitters?

Herrington, who had been trying to up the intimidation factor by leaning against the wall behind the prisoner, sprung forward, grabbed a handful of his hair and jerked his neck back so that he could stare into the man’s face. “My friend asked you how you were doing. It would be polite to respond.”

“Elif air ab tizak!”
groaned the Middle Easterner.

Bob, who could also speak Arabic, was familiar with the insult involving the placement of an unfathomable number of male private parts into a certain orifice of his body and responded now with an even less tasteful insult of his own,
“Elif air ab dinich.”

The prisoner was enraged with the reference to his religion and struggled to free his head from Herrington’s grasp. “Bastard fuck you. Bastard fuck you,” he yelled over and over again.

Harvath signaled for Bob to let go of him and step back. Upending the evidence bag, Harvath poured its contents onto the table and said, “Any more spitting and I’m going to leave you and my friend in here alone for some etiquette lessons. Understand?”

“Lawyer. Give me lawyer,” the man replied in his broken English.

That really pissed Harvath off—just as much as the fact that there were Americans who would fight to the death to see that this piece of shit got a fair and just trial. Where was the justice for the thousands, if not tens of thousands, of Americans who had just been killed by this asshole and his pals? “You don’t get anything unless you cooperate. No lawyer, no judge, nothing until you give us some answers. Let’s start with your name.”

“I no hear you. I talk lawyer.”

Harvath signaled Herrington, who came off the wall and slammed the man’s head right into the table.

“Can you hear me now?” asked Harvath as blood gushed from the man’s broken nose.

When he didn’t respond, Herrington cuffed him with an open-handed slap to the left side of his head and added, “How about now?”

Waving Herrington back, Harvath stated, “Let’s talk about this brand-new Casio watch of yours. They make pretty good detonators, don’t they? Your colleague Ramzi Yousef used one of these to detonate a little saline solution bottle filled with nitroglycerin on a plane bound for Tokyo a while back. He called it his microbomb, but it didn’t bring the plane down like he hoped. We caught him before he could improve upon the formula, Allah be praised.”

“Waj ab zibik!”
yelled the man, wishing Harvath an infection in a very private place for invoking the name of his god.

Harvath ignored him and continued, “This watch wasn’t meant as a detonator, though, was it? I’d be willing to bet that all of you got the same new watch for synchronization. Am I right?”

The man said nothing. He just sat there as blood rolled down from his nose, along his chin, and dripped onto his shirt.

“How about the phone?” pressed Harvath. “Motorola iDEN. Pretty nice, but a bit out of your league, don’t you think? I mean, digital wireless phones like this are meant for
business
people. Two-way digital radio, alphanumeric messaging, fax capabilities, high-end Internet access. That’s a lot of features just so you and your buddies can set up blow-job parties at the local mosque, Allah be praised.”

“Nikomak,”
the man growled.

Harvath ignored the suggestion of what he should do to his mother and toyed with the phone as he continued posing questions. “Since at least one other bomb went off in the PATH tunnel, we’re assuming you were either a primary or a contingency operative, or was the plan to wreak as much damage as possible?”

The man remained silent.

“How were you recruited for this job? Who contacted you?”

Nothing.

“When were you first contacted?”

Still nothing.

“What else do your colleagues have planned? More bombs? Something with an airplane? Other cities? What is it?”

At this, the prisoner smiled.

Bob was about to reach out and strike him again, when Harvath stood up and stated, “I’m going to post a flyer over at the World Trade Center site to see if there are any lawyers willing to represent you.” Turning to Herrington he said, “Let’s go.”

Once outside the interrogation room, Bob stopped Harvath and said, “We were just getting started in there. The fear was absolutely wafting off that guy. You could smell it.”

“I was definitely smelling something, though I don’t know if it was fear. Listen, we’re both fans of the art of not-so-subtle persuasion, but we don’t have the time to work this guy over the way we’d like to. Even the NYPD is going to have a limit as to what they’ll let us do to a terrorist suspect in their custody.”

“So let’s remove him from their custody,” said Herrington. “We’ll take him back to 26 Federal Plaza, or to a quiet hotel room, an abandoned building, wherever. It doesn’t matter. He knows something. You could see it in his face.”

“What he knows is that we’re desperate. If we put the testicle clamps on him maybe he’ll tell us something of value, maybe not. We’d need to have psychological leverage—have his family in custody or something like that. But at this point, we don’t even know his name.”

“Give me five minutes with him and you’ll have it.”

“This guy could turn out to have been nothing more than cannon fodder for al-Qaeda—a means to get a bomb into the PATH train tunnel. I don’t want to waste any more time on him. Besides, he may have already helped us out without even knowing it.”

“How?” asked Herrington.

Harvath held up the cell phone and said, “With this.”

“Are you going to tell me this moron was dumb enough not to erase his call log?”

“Nope. In fact I don’t think his phone was used for calls at all.”

“So what’s it for, then? Text messaging?”

“Let me ask you a question. You’ve been in Iraq as well as Afghanistan. How many people does it take to detonate a suicide bomb?”

Most people would have thought it was a trick question, but Herrington knew better. “One, plus a handler nearby with a remote detonator in case the bomber chickens out. You think that is what this is all about? Backup detonation?”

“Not necessarily. There were too many bombers to have had handlers physically following each one of them. I think this is a coordination issue. These phones work on a combination of cell phone towers and GPS. I’ve got a very similar setup on my BlackBerry. If all of the bombers had these phones, they’d have access to maps of New York City that would allow them to always know where they were. A good feature if you’d just been brought in from out of town.”

“And provide their handler a way to keep track of them at all times,” added Herrington.

“Exactly. If one of them got pulled over driving into a tunnel, the handler would be able to see that they were stopped and either call or text the operative to see what the holdup was, or automatically warn the other bombers and put a contingency plan into effect. It’s a pretty clever way to coordinate multiple attacks on a large scale.”

“Do you think you can backtrack the signal?”

“That kind of stuff is way beyond my ability,” replied Harvath. “But I think I might know somebody who can.”