06 Double Danger

by Dee Davis

  She and Simon had been separated on arrival. She’d been taken to a decontamination chamber and then a doctor had examined her mouth and nose, taking samples and leaving her to wait. They’d taken her cellphone and left her alone with her tumultuous thoughts.

  There hadn’t been time for talking. They’d wanted to avoid any further contamination of the brownstone. So they’d thrown on their clothes and driven to the hospital. The rest of the team had traveled separately, so she hadn’t seen anyone since leaving Simon at the entrance. And now the suspense was killing her, imagination far worse than anything reality could dish out.

  From an intellectual point of view, she knew that even after exposure to anthrax, there was a good chance of survival if the patient was removed from the source of contamination and treated with antibiotics. But emotionally, her mind insisted on replaying the moment when she and Simon had stood amid the falling confetti, the air quite possibly filled with anthrax spores.

  How the hell had they missed it? There’d been so much security present. Of course, they’d also missed a drug dealer with a gun. She ran a hand through her hair, wishing to hell someone would come and tell her what was happening. Or at least let her see Simon.

  The most frightening thing about all of this was the idea that she and Simon had only just found each other again. She knew that there was validity in her need to move slowly—to be certain before taking the leap into another relationship, but just at the moment, none of that made any sense. Life was short. It could end at any moment. Especially in their line of work. Caution was a waste of time.

  She should have told Simon how much being with him had meant to her. Should have told him that she wanted to give them a chance. No matter how scary it was to say the words out loud. The truth is that she’d loved him for such a very long time. And now, suddenly, he was here. And although he hadn’t told her he loved her, he’d certainly made it clear that he wasn’t going anywhere.

  So maybe she was being foolish to try to keep him at arm’s length. Maybe it was time to let go of the past and grab on to the future. That is if they had one.

  She blew out a breath, taking her hundredth turn around the room. She was talking crazy. The only people who died from anthrax exposure were the immunocompromised. Which wasn’t anyone on the A-Tac team. Of course if the anthrax had been upgraded, modified to make it more deadly…

  She stopped in front of the door, slamming her hand against the window, her stinging palm somehow making her feel better—more alive. She sucked in a breath, relieved to find her lungs still clear, no sign of pulmonary damage. She might be scared shitless, but she was breathing just fine. And facts always outweighed irrational fear, except that her fear apparently hadn’t gotten the message.

  She closed her eyes, leaning her head against the cool glass, thinking of Simon. He’d been through so much. The attack in Somalia, the loss of Ryan and most of his team. The damage to his leg. Losing his place with the SEALs and then her revelations about his best friend. And now this.

  Please God, she prayed, let him be all right. Let them both be all right.

  The doorknob rattled, and she jumped back as a nurse pushed the door open.

  “Ms. Montgomery?” the woman asked, consulting a clipboard in her hand.

  Jillian nodded, her heart in her throat.

  “I’m sorry it took so long. As you can imagine, we’ve been overwhelmed with potential victims. But I’m happy to tell you that there’s no sign of your having been exposed to the anthrax.”

  “And my friend?” she asked, unable to make herself say Simon’s name.

  “I’m afraid I can’t tell you anything,” the woman said with an apologetic shrug, her mind clearly already on her next patient. “But you’re free to go. Your personal effects should be at the front desk.”

  Jillian didn’t even stop to say thank you. Just ran out into the hall, checking rooms as she passed them, her heart pounding as her mind teetered on full-blown panic. And then she saw him. Standing at the end of the hall with Avery.

  She opened her mouth to call his name, but nothing came out, the relief washing through her so powerful she thought she might collapse on the spot. But then he was there, his arms around her, his lips against her hair.

  “Thank God, you’re all right,” she whispered into his chest, relishing the rise and fall of his breathing. “I was so frightened.”

  “Me, too,” he said, pulling her tighter against him. “But it’s over. And we’re going to be okay.”

  She nodded and stepped back, hating to break contact, but needing to see his face, to reassure herself that he was telling her the truth. “You’re sure?”

  “I promise,” he said, his lips tipping into a smile. “Never been better. The doc released me. I was just signing myself out.”

  “And the rest of the team?” she asked, the new worry sending her heart pounding again. In such a short time, they’d all come to mean so much to her.

  “Everyone is fine. Apparently the upper-level cannons weren’t contaminated. Only the ones on the field level.”

  “But Drake was—”

  “On the middle deck with us,” he said, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. “He came up when he heard about the shooting. Well before the air cannons went off.”

  “Glad to see you’re all in one piece,” Avery said as they sprang apart, Jillian feeling her cheeks going red. “Don’t move for me. Truth be told, I’m tempted to hug you guys myself. It’s been a really long couple of hours.”

  “So any idea how many people were exposed?” Jillian asked, still holding on to Simon’s hand.

  “We don’t know yet,” Avery said. “It’ll be awhile before we have a clear picture. And once we have more details, we’ll have to decide how much to tell the press. But for the time being, the stadium staff is working to contact attendees. Especially those in the sections we believe were most affected.”

  “So what happens for now?” she asked.

  “We get you checked out of the hospital and then head back to the brownstone,” Simon said.

  “I already took care of it,” Avery assured them as they moved down the hall toward the entrance to the ER. “If it’s okay, I’ll catch a ride with you guys. The rest of the team is already en route, but I didn’t want to leave until everybody had been cleared.”

  There was something comforting in the fact that Avery had waited for them. And even though she wasn’t an official member of A-Tac, for the moment she felt like one.

  “Do we have any idea how this happened?” Simon asked as they walked through the sliding doors.

  “Not yet,” Avery replied. “But Hannah and Harrison are already on it. And we’ll all be working around the clock until we figure it out.”

  “So what have we got?” Simon asked as he and Jillian walked into the de facto war room.

  Hannah was sitting at the dining table with her computer. Harrison was in the corner at the computer console, working with both a laptop and an iMac. Nash and Avery were standing near the head of the table discussing something while Drake flipped through the contents of a manila file folder. Tyler was the only one missing, but Simon assumed she was probably still at the warehouse where they’d gathered all the bomb components.

  Basically, ignoring the fact that they’d just been through decontamination proceedings at the hospital, it looked like business as usual.

  “Glad to see you got a clean bill of health,” Hannah said, looking up with a grin. Today her glasses were fuchsia, her hair streaked a brilliant, but clashing, shade of orange. “I’d have hated to have to move to a hotel.”

  Simon shuddered, thinking that it would have meant a hell of lot more than just moving if they had actually brought the spores back to the brownstone. But since everyone was clean, it was a moot point.

  “Now that everyone’s together,” Avery said, nodding at the table as they all moved to find chairs, “we’ll get started.”

  “So do we have any idea how many people were affe
cted?” Jillian asked. She’d changed to a pair of jeans and a T-shirt, the outline of her breasts proving to be quite a distraction. Simon swallowed and forced himself to lift his eyes, only to find Drake grinning at him across the way.

  “Still no final totals,” Avery said. “But we’ve got twenty-five patients at the hospital in the city and another fifteen who’ve been admitted at various regional facilities. And something like ninety who’ve been checked and released either because they’re clean or because they didn’t have any preexisting conditions that might complicate recovery.”

  “By my count,” Simon said, “you’ve only accounted for a little over a hundred people who’ve been checked out. There were over fifty thousand at the stadium. And even if the upper deck can be counted out, that’s still at least twenty thousand people.”

  “Well, that’s a bit of good news, actually.” Hannah leaned back with a sigh. “For whatever reason, only two cannons were actually seeded with the anthrax. Both of them in the right infield covering about five rows in three sections. So no more than one hundred or so with direct exposure. The adjacent areas may have had some minimal contact, but the CDC is saying only about 200 to 225 people total.”

  “So we dodged a bullet,” Nash said.

  “A big one.” Drake tipped his chair back, his brows drawn into a frown.

  “Have there been any fatalities?” Simon leaned back, rubbing his throbbing leg, the activities of the past few days wreaking havoc with his damaged muscle.

  “Not yet,” Harrison said, “but patient zero isn’t looking good. He was sitting in the direct line of fire. And he has existing respiratory problems.”

  “But if he was patient zero, then that means he was treated early, right?” Nash asked.

  “Yes. And that should help.” Harrison was reading something on his computer screen. “In fact, I just got an email, and it looks like he’s turned the corner. So maybe we’re going to get lucky. He was definitely the worst off of the people who were admitted.”

  “So this guy coming into the hospital was the first clue we had that there might be a problem?” Drake asked.

  “Unfortunately, yeah,” Hannah said. “Although right after that, the forensics lab for the NYPD discovered that the cocaine we found wasn’t cocaine at all.”

  “It was anthrax.” Nash shook his head in disbelief. “And I almost opened it for a taste to confirm.”

  “Thank God you didn’t or we’d all have been exposed,” Jillian said. “I guess the baseballs were just a cover. So you’re thinking that since he was carrying the anthrax, that makes him the one who seeded the cannons, right?”

  “It would seem so,” Avery acknowledged. “Although there’s still a question of access.”

  “So why limit it to just two cannons?” Drake asked.

  “Maybe we interrupted the process,” Simon suggested. “If we hadn’t made the guy as acting suspicious, then he’d have managed to seed more of them.”

  “I don’t buy that,” Avery said. “Not that your stopping him wasn’t a good thing, but I’m guessing the seeding had to have happened a lot earlier than that. By the time you saw him, the game was practically over. Seems a little last minute for something so critical.”

  “Any idea who this guy was?” Drake asked.

  “Yes,” Hannah said. “And I finally got an ID on the seaport bomber as well.” She hit a key and two photographs flashed up on the screen. The men, both of them young, were clearly of Middle Eastern descent. The one on the left, with the scar, was the man Simon had faced off against at the seaport. “Aamir Hassan and Saed Rahimi. Aamir,” Hannah indicated the bomber with her laser pointer, “is a student at Manhattan Community College. He’s first-generation American. His parents are from Afghanistan.”

  “I’m assuming he wasn’t on any watch lists or you’d have been able to ID him sooner.”

  “Exactly right. Kid was a model citizen. Parents, too. I don’t know that I’d have ever found him if it hadn’t been for his cousin here.” She moved the pointer until it illuminated Saed. “Saed is Afghani. Arrived here about six months ago and has been driving a cab. He also has nothing in his background that raises a red flag.”

  “But I thought you said that Saed led you to Aamir.”

  “As an alien working in New York, Saed’s got a file. Nothing damning in it, but it was easy enough to tag who he was. And then with a little more digging, I discovered that Saed was admitted into the country under the sponsorship of his aunt—Aamir’s mother.”

  “They’re cousins,” Jillian said. “That’s why I thought I recognized Saed at the baseball game. It wasn’t that he looked like Isaacs; it was that looks a lot like Aamir.”

  “Except for the scar, they could be brothers.” Simon nodded. “So if they were both clean, then how did they wind up in the middle of all this?”

  “That’s where it really gets interesting,” Harrison said, as usual picking up on Hannah’s thread. “Turns out that they have another relative in common. A second cousin through their mothers.” Hannah put a third photograph up on the screen. It was slightly blurry, but Simon didn’t need a clearer picture to know who it was.

  “Kamaal Sahar.” He leaned forward, frowning up at the photo. “We’re talking the same guy who was running the terrorist camp in Afghanistan. The one intel has linked to the Consortium.”

  “Exactly.” Hannah nodded. “And thanks to some emails Harrison was able to snag off of Saed’s computer, we know that he has been in constant contact with Kamaal.”

  “So we’ve managed to connect at least some of the dots,” Harrison said. “Although there’s nothing in the emails that directly connects to the attacks on the seaport or Yankee Stadium.”

  “Still it’s a coincidence that we can’t afford to ignore,” Jillian insisted. “If Saed and Aamir were working for Kamaal, then that ties them and the two attacks, at least indirectly, to the Consortium.”

  “Yeah, but even if we agree that Kamaal’s terrorist cell is responsible for the seaport bombing and the anthrax attack, we’ve still got nothing to connect them directly to Isaacs and Lester,” Drake concluded. “All we’ve really got is another piece to one hell of a confusing puzzle.”

  “The weird thing about it,” Jillian said, chewing on her bottom lip, “is that there’s such an uneven mix of sophistication and naïveté. Getting past security at the stadium would require someone with both knowledge and connections. But getting caught in the bathroom with a Ziploc full of anthrax is amateur hour.”

  “So maybe the guy panicked and deviated from the plan,” Simon suggested. “Maybe he got cut off from his assigned exit, and he was doing an end run, trying to get the hell out of the stadium.”

  “Well, he had to have some smarts,” Nash said. “He managed to get past five national organizations and their supposedly unimpeachable security.”

  “Actually, I think it was as simple as using the pyrotechnics company for access.” Hannah hit a key on her computer, and one of the stadium security feeds was broadcast up onto the screen.

  The footage showed a large truck being waved through one of the gates onto the field. “The truck belongs to Fire and Ice, a company in New Jersey that handles pyrotechnics for major events in the tristate area. F&I for short. They’ve been working in the area for years and have a solid reputation, including passing routine personnel background checks initiated by the FBI and Homeland Security.”

  She fast-forwarded the video and then froze it, zooming in on a man emerging from the truck.

  “That’s Saed Rahimi,” Avery said.

  “Yeah.” Simon frowned up at the still. “And he’s wearing an F&I uniform. So was he working for the company? You said he was driving a cab.”

  “He was.” Hannah nodded. “And I double-checked, and he definitely wasn’t listed as an F&I employee or on the security clearance list for the job. But look at this.” She zoomed in again on the still shot of Rahimi, closing in on the name badge displayed on the pocket of his uniform.
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  “Robert Kahn,” Nash read. “So Rahimi was posing as someone else. Do we know what happened to the real Robert Kahn?”

  Hannah started to say no, but Harrison interrupted her, his eyes on the iMac’s screen. “Actually, they just found him.”

  “And I take it the news isn’t good?” Avery asked.

  “No.” Harrison shook his head, still reading. “He was found in his apartment in the Bronx. Single shot to the head. ME says he’s been dead at least twenty-four hours.”

  “When was the footage shot?” Jillian asked.

  “About three hours before the game. Just before the stadium opened,” Hannah said. “The schedule notes it as the final review of the cannons and their operating system.”

  “That’s why he was by himself in the truck,” Drake observed. “And why there wasn’t anyone to question his identity.”

  “So we know how he got in. And that he had the opportunity to seed all the cannons if he’d wanted to. Which sure as hell doesn’t explain why he only did two, and why he showed up after the fact, out of uniform, carrying a bag of anthrax.” Simon slammed a hand down on the table, frustration getting the better of him. “Jillian is right. It doesn’t make any sense. Even if he was a low-level player.”

  “Do we have a record of his leaving?” Drake asked. “Or at least the truck?”

  “Yeah. He was clocked out about an hour later. So that means he had to have come back.”

  “Or maybe somebody else was already inside, and he’s the one who drove the truck away?”

  “Actually, I think you might be right about that,” Hannah said as more footage flashed on the screen. “This is from the video taken just before the truck left.” Again she zeroed in on the man in the driver’s seat. But it wasn’t Rahimi.

  “Son of a bitch,” Simon said. “That’s Isaacs.”

  “What the hell is he doing there?” Nash asked.

  “And more important—how did he get inside the stadium?” Jillian was staring up at the screen, shaking her head in amazement.

  “Unfortunately,” Harrison said, “absent additional evidence from the security cameras, that’s probably a question only Isaacs can answer.”