Twelve Hours (12 page)

Shir Soroush walked down the line of eleven drivers like a drill sergeant carrying out an inspection. They stood in fear, some frozen, some fidgeting, some outright trembling.

Fear was a good thing to inspire in people.

Facing the drivers was a row of eleven children chosen from among the hostages—one for each driver.

“Each of you is going to take your train, and you’re going to go to your destination,” he said. “You will not stop at any stations, and you will not make contact with anyone on the outside.”

He motioned to the children.

“Look at the child directly in front of you,” said Soroush. His man, with a Sharpie, began writing a number on each child’s forehead—each, Morgan realized, corresponding to a platform. “That is
your
child. You, and only you, are responsible for it. We will be taking them with us on our train. Each of your trains has been equipped with a GPS device.” He held up a tablet with a map on it, each train represented by a glowing green dot. “If you stop your train, for any reason, we will kill this child. If you contact anyone, we will kill this child.”

Soroush let it sink in as each man looked in the face of the child he would be responsible for.

“It’s time to go to your trains now,” he said. “We leave in two minutes.”

Dan Morgan, flat against the wall that separated the lower concourse from the platforms, looked at the Lost and Found window. He needed outside support if he hoped to stop the Iranians from escaping. Which meant he needed a phone.

He sprinted to the Lost and Found window and jumped through. He rifled through the cell phones as fast as he could, holding the power button of each for two seconds to see which would turn on. Finally, he found an LG flip phone that turned on, batteries charged to more than half.

Morgan heard the whining of the trains as they began to move all at once. He’d seen Soroush board the train on Track 114, halfway across the lower level. He turned into the passage to the platforms so fast that he banged into the wall. The train was already moving.

Morgan raced down the platform after it. In a few seconds, it would be moving faster than him, and gone beyond all hope.

Morgan sprinted, closing the distance between him and the last car, but less so as the train picked up speed.

He reached the back, so close he could touch it, when he realized that he and the train were moving at the same speed, and the train would only be going faster. This would be the last chance he’d get. Morgan swerved to the right, sailing off the platform and grabbing hold of the bar next to the back door of the train, landing his feet on the narrow ledge that jutted out, swinging and banging against the train with his right side.

Stabilizing himself, Morgan looked through the scratched window and made eye contact with one of Soroush’s men, guarding the last car of the train.

He swung out of the way, holding on to the bar with his left hand. The bullets from the man’s MP7 pierced the door and shattered the window of the back door.

Hanging on, Morgan reached with his free right hand to his back, where the Glock 37 he’d lifted from one of the Iranians was tucked into his pants.

He raised it and let loose two bullets against the glass of the side window, swinging away to avoid the shards of glass that rained down onto the tracks. He looked inside the train car to see that the man had fallen on the train aisle. With a little more time to look, he checked to see that no one else was there. At least he had the time to work this out now.

Morgan tried the door, but it was locked. He had no way of entering gracefully.
Window it is.
He cleared the broken glass that was stuck to the window frame with the barrel of the gun. Then he raised his leg and, crouching, hopped through.

Morgan hoped that the noise of the moving train had masked the gunfire.

He walked to the man, lying faceup on the train floor, panting like a wounded animal. He looked up at Morgan with fear in his eyes. Morgan took his MP7, tugging at the sling to get it over the man’s head, and put it over his own shoulder. He also took the earbud from the terrorist’s radio communicator and inserted it into his own ear. No one was speaking, which meant they had not heard the noise.

Morgan then pulled the cell phone from his pocket and checked for service. No bars. That would have to wait until they were out in open air.

No way to go now but forward.

Alex Morgan scanned the crowd, which was already restless and loud. A few of the braver souls had already stood up, though they were reluctant to move. It took her some thirty seconds to find who she was looking for. Grateful that he wasn’t far away, she ran among the kneeling people until she reached—

“Clark !”

The boy turned to look at her in surprise.

“Alex! I thought you were dead, you were gone so long! Where were you?”

“Never mind that,” she said. “Come on.”

He followed her away from the crowd. People looked at her in puzzlement, and several were emboldened by her presence to stand up as well and start walking.
Damn it,
she swore.
Should have thought of that.
Some people called out to her, but she paid them no heed.

“Listen,” she said to Clark on her tail, “I need you to do something for me.” She gave him his instructions. “Got it? Think you can do that?”

“Yeah,” he said. “Where are you going?”

“Just something I got to do.” She ran upstairs back to the control room and found Lisa Frieze, gasping for air and losing blood, holding her bunched-up jacket against the wound. She was trembling, although Alex didn’t know whether it was from cold or shock.

“Hi,” she said. “I’m Dan Morgan’s daughter, Alex. I’m here to help.” She took over the compress, letting Frieze relax her slack hand. It frightened Alex how pale she looked.

The tri-tone of the PA played over the loudspeakers, and Alex heard Clark’s voice begin. “I, uh . . .” Then, with a burst of confidence, “Help is on the way. The police are going to get everyone out of here soon. But for now, we need everyone to get away from the big steel doors. Please help anyone who needs it to stay clear of them. You should put at least thirty feet of distance between yourselves and the doors. I repeat, for your own safety,
stay away from the doors.
”

Alex cradled Lisa Frieze’s head. Her lips curled into a smile of pride.
Well done, Clark.

“It’s going to be okay,” she told the FBI agent. “Help is on its way.”

“You’re a good kid,” pronounced Frieze.

Morgan made his way toward the front of the train at a half-crouch. It was him against seven remaining men, and the element of surprise was all he had to keep him and the President of Iran alive.

He saw the movement two cars ahead. People. Gunmen.

He had to wait. He stood no chance without help and without a plan. He sat in the corner seat and waited for two minutes until, from the darkness of the tunnel, the train emerged out into the blue light of evening.

He took out the flip phone and dialed Conley.

“It’s Morgan,” he said when his friend picked up. “I need your help. Soroush sent out lots of decoy trains. I’m on the right one—the one Ramadani is on. Can you trace my location from this call?”

“No problem,” said Conley. “I’ll have Zeta run it and send the choppers to converge on it.”

“No!” said Morgan. “Do that, if you want to get a whole bunch of children killed.”

“What should I do, then?” he asked.

“Find the train first,” said Morgan. “But don’t move in. Leave it to me, at least for now. If I don’t contact you within ten minutes, that means I’m dead, so by all means, send in the cavalry.”

“Okay,” said Conley.

“Meanwhile, I need you to do something for me.”

Alex Morgan felt more than she heard the serial blasts that brought down the emergency doors. A cheer from the concourse filtered in dim and faraway through the service hallways to the control room.

“Hear that?” she said to the delirious Frieze. “That’s our rescue. That’s the sound of us being saved.”

Frieze mumbled something through pale, trembling lips.

It was some three minutes before Alex heard the sound of heavy boots approaching. Three firemen appeared at the door carrying a stretcher.

“Here,” called Alex, waving to get their attention. They tramped over to her and laid Frieze on the stretcher. They lifted in a smooth practiced motion and carried her out. These guys weren’t wasting time, and she felt like she shouldn’t, either. She walked after them, keeping pace. Once they emerged into the concourse, they ran into the crowds, which were packed at every exit. The firemen moved toward the Lexington passage, Alex following. The crowd parted for the stretcher to pass, but Alex didn’t feel right taking advantage, so she hung back. She looked backward toward the main concourse, where the last stragglers were moving into the passage. She ran back to help usher everyone out to the exits.

That’s when she saw him. A little boy, about six, wandering out from the ticket machine nook across the concourse. Somehow, he’d been missed, left behind, and he was ambling toward the giant clock. The bombs would go off at any moment.

There was no time to think. Alex tore out at a dead run toward the kid. Hardly slowing down, she bent down to pick him up. She grunted and he squealed at the impact. He was crying as she ran after the evacuees in the Vanderbilt tunnel. The kid wailed in her left ear. She was sweating, her legs feeling heavier and heavier.

She was within sight of the outside doors, people still funneling outside, when the blast knocked her off her feet and sent them both sprawling. She looked all around her, woozy and disoriented, but in one piece. The child she had saved was a few feet ahead of her, sitting down, crying, but there was no blood. She looked back at the main concourse, where concrete and twisted brass littered the ground. No one was there.

A fireman helped her to her feet while another scooped up the child. They ran together until she finally reached the street, into the blessed cool air and the darkness of the city illuminated in yellow light.

Morgan stood against the far wall of the train car, next to the door that would lead to the restaurant car. From what he’d gathered, the children were being held there, guarded by two men. The phone vibrated in Morgan’s pocket. He flipped it open and held it to his ear.

“The chopper is ready to broadcast the signal you asked for,” said Conley. “Are you ready?”

“Just waiting for your okay.”

“Ten seconds,” said Conley.

Morgan hung up and turned the volume to his radio receiver to the lowest setting short of muting it. He put the MP7 in his right hand.

The noise came as a quiet high-pitched hum—a feedback loop broadcast to every one of Soroush’s men’s communicators, each, if turned to a reasonable volume, now playing an intolerable loud feedback tone. He pushed the handle on the first door between cars, which sprung open on its own, then the second.

The two men, as expected, were distracted by the noise. One of them was to Morgan’s right, having looked up from tapping the device just long enough to see down the muzzle of Morgan’s handgun as he fired two bullets right-handed. With the MP7 in his left hand, Morgan took aim at the other, who was near the middle of the car, behind the bar. He had removed his earpiece, which he dropped onto the counter as he reached for his gun. Morgan already had the MP7 trained on him, and released a burst, hitting the man full in the chest.

That’s when he registered the high-pitched screaming of the hostages.

“I’m here to rescue you,” he said. “I need you to do what I say. Go back the way I came, all the way to the back of the train as fast as you can.”

One girl, taller than the rest, got up with a determined look on her face. “Come on, everyone,” she said. “Let’s get out of here.”

Morgan kept an eye on the far door, edging his way toward it against the current of children. Someone was bound to come investigate the noise. He crouched behind the bar for the inevitable. It was thirty seconds before he heard the door to the front of the bar car sliding open.

All he had to do was wait. He felt their footsteps on the floor as they passed him. He stood once their backs were to him and shot two bursts from the MP7. The men fell to the floor of the train.

Two were left, one of them Soroush. Who would be expecting him, with the President of Iran as a human shield. The odds were stacked against him, and Morgan couldn’t trust this to chance.

He dialed Conley again.

“Conley? Surprise is blown. We’re going to have to take this in a different route. This is going to require some preparation.”

Morgan, still crouched behind the bar, shifted his weight from his right to his left. He had spent a long time crouched here, waiting as the gears turned outside the train and as everything was being made ready for the plan. Soroush didn’t come, as Morgan had expected. It was too big a risk. All that was left was him and his second-in-command. He was scared and cornered, which made him equal parts vulnerable and dangerous.

Morgan checked his watch again, although he didn’t have to. He knew it was time. He dialed Conley.

“Are we ready?” Morgan asked.

“As we’ll ever be.”

Morgan dropped the MP7, the Glock, and the cell phone on the floor of the train and stood up. Two cars between him and Soroush, no more. He raised his opened hands and crept forward through the first intervening car, hands raised and visible. Soroush’s second-in-command caught sight of him while he was barely halfway down the first car and came through the double doors to meet him, MP7 raised chest high at Morgan.

He hadn’t shot on sight. That was something.

“Hey,” said Morgan. “No weapons, see?” He turned around to show his back.

“Zubin!” Soroush yelled out from the other car. “Bring him here.”

Zubin tilted his head for Morgan to go, keeping the MP7 trained on him. “Go,” he said. Morgan did, moving into the first train car where Soroush sat with Ramadani. The Iranian President met Morgan’s eyes for half a second, nothing left in his eyes but resignation. He was preparing to die.

“Take a seat,” said Soroush. “You’ve had a good run, Morgan. I think we can sit together and salute your defeat.”

“Is that right?” he said, taking his seat opposite Soroush. He rested against the seat back, crossing his legs in a lounging position. Zubin sat a few seats back, clutching his gun, not taking his eyes off Morgan.

“Of course,” said Soroush. The triumph in his voice was palpable. “What, are you talking about the men you killed? They were expendable, everyone is. All that matters is the cause, and the cause will succeed. Surveillance is divided among the different trains. We will make our escape soon, and we will not be found. And even if we are . . . When I say lives are not important, I include myself. I am willing to die for my cause, Mr. Morgan. All I need to succeed is for people to believe I was innocent of this. And they will. The US government will be blamed. The CIA. Even if we are all killed, Mr. Morgan, we win.”

“That’s one way things can go down today,” said Morgan.

Soroush shook his head with a condescending expression on his face. “You are a man of action, Mr. Morgan. But I am a man of intellect. My planning has been impeccable.”

“You didn’t count on me.”

Soroush chuckled. “In the game of chess, it is common for the novice to take a few important pieces from the expert player. It is the sacrifice the master knows he must make to achieve his victory. You may have taken some of my pieces off the board, but even those moves were steps along the way to my checkmate. The only reason you are still alive is so that you can witness your ultimate defeat before you die.”

Morgan felt the tug of inertia pulling his body forward, and suppressed a grin. Ramadani looked up in alarm, and Morgan saw a flicker of hope in his eyes.

“Why are we slowing down?” asked Zubin. “What is happening?”

“Go ask the driver!” Soroush demanded.

Zubin opened the door to the driver’s cabin. “Why are we slowing down?”

“There’s another train in the way, up ahead in that station. If I don’t stop, we’ll ram it.”

Soroush looked at Morgan with smoldering rage in his eyes. “What did you do?”

“I invited a few more people to witness my ultimate defeat,” said Morgan.

The train rolled into the station and slowly came to a stop. A barrage of camera flashes hit the car. Video cameras—at least half a dozen—were pointed through the windows

“Game over,” said Morgan. “If you kill him now, everyone knows it was you. It’ll be on every news channel, on every website, uploaded a thousand times on the Internet. You could have called it an American conspiracy if you did it quietly, away from the media. You can’t kill him for the whole world to see.”

Soroush was a deer in the headlights for a split second. Then the cool, cruel clarity that ruled his mind came into focus once more.

“Maybe you are right,” said Soroush. “But I can kill you.”

He raised his Beretta level with Morgan’s head.