His vidcam image showed him rushing to the door that led out to the outside balcony. Two other agents joined him, their own rifles pointed at the door. Headband lights illuminated the door. A large window in the middle of the door showed no one on the other side. One agent reached forward, grabbed the handle, twisted and pulled it open.
“Going low,” called the agent on O’Shannahan’s left as she leaned down and thrust herself onto the floor of the balcony, barely avoiding a head bang against the balcony wall.
As she rushed low, O’Shannahan jumped to the right, twisting to the right to aim his shotgun along that side of the circular balcony.
“Clear,” he called.
“Clear,” called the woman on the ground, who was aiming her rifle to the left.
“Moving,” called O’Shannahan. “Whistler, move left. Be prepared for him to be armed. He has that butcher knife.”
“Moving as ordered,” the woman said, standing and heading down the two foot wide walkway that lay between the outer balcony wall and the inner wall of the 103rd floor room.
The other wallscreen showed Mitchell in the copter, rising up and moving toward the shiny paraglider. The glider was nearly to the MetLife building but was too high. It would pass over MetLife and head down and out, maybe hitting the side of a low skyscraper unless the intruder worked his control cords to steer it.
The low light scope video screen showed the paraglider approaching. It was unclear if anyone was underneath it, though there was a baggy clump under it.
“Richardson, we’re going to hover over that paraglider and use our blade wash to force it down to MetLife’s roof.”
“Proceed,” Richardson said, switching his attention away from the MetLife screen.
Janet looked back to O’Shannahan’s live image.
The man slowed his steady walk around the balcony as the headband light of the agent Whistler came into view. “Whistler! It’s me,” O’Shannahan called.
The two lifted their rifles as they came into view of each other.
“Clear. Nothing on the ground or wall,” Whistler said, looking up. “No way he could reach that roof overhang up there. Nothing to grab onto.”
“Agreed.” O’Shannahan turned away from her. His headband light illuminated the third agent who’d followed him out through the door. The man was looking out over the balcony edge.
“Looks like he launched in that paraglider over there,” the other agent said.
“Maybe, Delaurentis,” O’Shannahan said, sounding grumpy. “Whistler, you and me inside. Delaurentis, you follow us.”
In seconds O’Shannahan and Whistler were inside the103rd floor room. Moving about the limited space were the NYPD officers. The fourth FBI agent was at the top of a green railed stairwell that led upward through the ceiling of the 103rd floor.
“Clear up above. Barely room for a big closet. The hatch is locked and shut,” she said.
“Damn,” muttered O’Shannahan. “Thanks Murchison.” The big man gave a sigh. “Agent Richardson, no sign of the intruder guy inside or out. Orders?”
The man in charge of the SIOC room operations, and the dispersed agents of the HRT and CIRG team members, frowned darkly. “Mitchell is handling the paraglider that launched from the balcony. Leave an agent to secure the room and take everyone else down to the 102nd floor. Look for anything left by the intruder. Like dirt from his shoes. Anything that might give us a line on him. You head down to 86th and take command of the body recovery team.”
“Will do,” O’Shannahan said bluntly. “At least the hostages are alive and healthy.”
“But the terrorist is dead,” Richardson said. “Use your QCP to fingerprint Omar. Cross-check him against the IAFIS and ABIS databases. Transmit whatever you find to my computer.”
At Quantico, Janet had trained on using a Quick Capture Platform scanner and computer. The backpack portable device allowed any agent to collect and store fingerprints. The device then compared them with the agency’s Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System and DOD’s Automated Biometric Identification System. It was a great way to check captured or dead terrorists for their links with any terror group worldwide.
“Will do,” O’Shannahan said.
The live image of the agent who’d led the team now showed him walking down the black-railed stairwell and then into the assembly well next to the elevator shaft. He spoke to Delaurentis, conveying the orders of Richardson.
“Special agent, site secured. Delaurentis will control access up top. The rest of the team will scour this place. Heading down,” O’Shannahan said. His shoulder vidcam image grew jerky as he walked toward the antique elevator door.
“Agent Richardson,” called Yamaguchi from her desk. “The body of suspect Omar Muhammad has been found by the NYPD. On the eastern side of the roof. Uh, Mastricht in the New York field office is getting calls from the WABC news copter asking about what we are doing outside and are the women hostages safe? What response?”
Richardson scowled. “Yamaguchi, order Mastricht to tell them the women are safe. They can say our agents are securing the outside of the spire. More information will come later. Then put in a call to the Office of Public Affairs. They’ve got to have someone inside the ESB. Have their person take over media response.” The man grimaced as if he’d bitten into something sour. “And no one, no one except our people, talks to those women! Have one of O’Shannahan’s people pull them into a conference room on a lower floor.”
“Will do,” Yamaguchi said She looked down as something on her desk beeped. “Oh. The perimeter agent says the women have already called relatives on their smartphones to say they are safe, and that a hooded man rescued them.”
“Crap!”
Janet saw a look of fury mixed with frustration on the special agent’s face.
“Tell our agent to confiscate those phones. Isolate the women. Have our Laboratory Division people vacuum their clothing for any loose hairs from the intruder. Especially focus on the white-haired woman. She hugged him. We need to track that man down, whoever he is.” Richardson looked away from O’Shannahan’s image and over to the image of copter interior. “Mitchell! Land your copter. Take control of that paraglider and whoever is flying it. And get one of your CNU people over to the ESB to handle the hostages.”
“Heading down,” Mitchell said. “The paraglider has landed close to the roof’s edge. My spotter scope agent is running over to it.”
Janet looked to Beverly. “Twenty bucks this intruder is not with the paraglider.”
Her friend looked surprised. “Done,” she said.
The image of from Mitchell’s shoulder vidcam showed her jumping out of the copter and onto the night dark roof of the MetLife building. The man who had earlier been at the spotter scope ran up to her.
“No one there, agent Mitchell. Just the glider and a bag underneath filled with a shotgun.”
Mitchell’s video wall screen grew a new image. It showed Mitchell as seen from the spotter agent’s own vidcam. The woman looked frustrated.
“Richardson, you heard. My people and I will take control of the paraglider and the shotgun. Must be the one Omar used. Orders?”
New fury showed on the face of Richardson.
“Where the hell is he!” the tall, broad-shouldered agent growled deeply, looking around at his audience of more than thirty other agents. Then his face went neutral as he realized his emotional reactions might send the wrong signals to the agents working in SIOC. He looked back to Mitchell’s image.
“Put on your gloves. Deflate the paraglider and put it and its rucksack into sample bags. Get the stuff onto one of our executive jets and mark it for the Laboratory Division. Then get your team over to the ESB and work with O’Shannahan and the NYPD people on site security.” Richardson paused. “No public is allowed onto the 86th floor or higher. Work on those women. They had a better view of this intruder than what we’ve seen on the security cameras. Transmit video interviews of each of them to my computer. I’ve go
t a report to make to the deputy director, who may pull me into the director’s office! We can’t get behind the national media speculation. Understood?”
“Understood,” Mitchell said. Her shoulder vidcam showed her stopping before the partly crumpled silky fabric of the paraglider. “Speaking of analysis, I see something relevant. There’s a logo on one end of this paraglider. It says REI. If that is the outdoor recreation REI, this thing will have a serial number on it. We can track that to whatever office carried this particular paraglider. Which can’t be many places. Don’t think REI had paragliders in stock the last time I visited the D.C. store.”
Richardson grew thoughtful. “You’re right. The REI I’ve visited in Reston has no such thing in stock. Maybe this is a new product launch. Get that serial number, track it down and send a text to my smartphone once you get that data! Anytime, anywhere, send that data to me. Along with anything useful from the women. Proceed.”
Janet felt surprise that two senior agents shopped at the national outdoor camping and hiking supply chain. She’d never visited one of their stores. Then again her family had not been one to go camping much. The small amount of camping equipment they had owned in Nebraska came from Wards or Sears.
“Proceeding,” Mitchell said. Her shoulder vidcam showed her turning away from the crumpled paraglider and gesturing to two FBI agents who were just coming out of the rooftop access doorway. “I’ll be at the ESB within minutes. Will live post you anything vital.”
“Good,” Richardson said. “Maybe O’Shannahan will have an ID on this Omar, a real name, once he gets his QCP to work on the man’s fingerprints.”
“Hope so. Heading down and out to ESB.”
Richardson looked away from the video wall screens with the images from Mitchell and O’Shannahan. He looked down at Yamaguchi, who tapped something on her laptop and looked up.
“Yes, senior agent?”
“We have all that 102nd floor imagery in digital format, right?”
“We do,” she said.
“Send a copy of it to my computer. And put some people from the Critical Incident Operations Unit onto analyzing it. I need to know everything possible to know about this intruder.” He frowned. “Losing track of a suspect in a venue totally controlled by our people is not good. I need an explanation for how he escaped, why he showed up and who he is. I need it yesterday.”
“Working on it,” Yamaguchi said. She looked thoughtful. “Could the intruder have ridden the paraglider partway to MetLife, then dropped off, fell to within 200 feet of the ground, then pulled a chute and landed somewhere on the street?”
“If he did, nearby street cameras should show that,” Richardson said. “Pull in imagery from every street level camera within a ten block radius. If he did land, maybe he had an accomplice in a car.”
“Will do,” Yamaguchi said.
Richardson looked up and then around the room. “Anyone else got ideas like Yamaguchi? I’ll listen to anything, no matter how crazy it sounds.”
Janet stepped forward. “Senior Agent Richardson, I have information about the intruder.”
The man turned and stared at her. “Who are you?”
She licked her lips. “Special Agent Janet Van Groot, Counterintelligence Division, NSB.”
His eyebrows went up. “Who is that standing next to you? Neither of you are assigned to SIOC.”
“I’m Beverly Chase, Terrorism Screening Center, of the NSB,” her girlfriend said.
Richardson looked impatient. “Out with it, Van Groot. What do you know?”
“I know that the young male intruder spoke with a Southwest U.S. accent, based on a visit I made years ago to Albuquerque. Also, he is six feet three inches, likely weighs 160 pounds, has blue eyes, straight black hair and is young, in his twenties.”
Richardson blinked. “The accent I’ll buy. I too noticed his blue eyes and hair. What’s the source for your other claims?”
“Comparison to the stairwell door that led up to the 103rd floor,” she said. “It’s a standard door height. Plus I visited the 102nd floor with my parents as a teenager. I’ve seen that door. And the other areas of that floor. His weight is based on his shape and the way he moved. Twenties age range is based on analytical studies I did for my foreign intelligence agent tracking work.”
The man nodded slowly. “Helpful data.” Richardson looked down to the Japanese-American woman. “Yamaguchi, add Van Groot’s data to your intruder profile. Anyone else?”
“Sir,” called Beverly. “I can say that this Omar Muhammad is not listed in our division’s terrorist databases. Before I came down here with agent Van Groot, I checked his face against the ABIS file of DOD. Nor did his image show on any airport imagery from the last month for entries from suspect nations.”
Richardson shrugged. “Interesting. But your boss would have told me if this Omar had shown up on your databases.” He looked down. “Yamaguchi, add in Agent Chase’s comments. Let me know what the fingerprint analysis says once O’Shannahan is finished. And get the Behavioral Analysis Unit working on this intruder guy.”
Beverly turned away, her expression puzzled. “How did you know he would not land on the MetLife building?”
Janet turned her attention away from Richardson as he barked out orders to the SIOC room agents. She fixed on Janet.
“What he said at the beginning. Recall how he knew about the 103rd level floor and its outside balcony?” She spoke softly, not wanting to draw unwanted attention from Richardson. “This man did a lot of homework before he showed up. Somehow he got to the floor above Omar. Maybe by way of the hatch that was installed in the 30s when it was thought rigid airships would tie onto the spire’s mast and lower passengers through the hatch to the spire’s top two floors.” She put her back against the room’s wall as agents began moving around and heading for the exit door near her and Beverly. “Will be interesting to see what the paraglider serial number indicates for store location. Bet you there won’t be any video of him grabbing it.”
“Why?” Beverly murmured, moving to follow an agent out of the room. She pulled a twenty bill out of her jacket pocket and handed it to Janet.
She took it and followed her friend. “Because he does not want anyone to know who he is. Other young men would be smiling before CNN’s cameras right now and talking up what they did. And they’d soon have a million dollar book deal and TV special based on the exploits we just saw. This man is not doing that. For some reason, he is serious about remaining unknown. That interests me.”
Beverly led the way into the fifth floor hallway. “I believe it. That’s why you’re in Counterintelligence. You like the chess game part of tracking spies. Or unknown rescuers of hostages. Do you think this guy will show up again?”
Janet followed after her friend, her heart beating fast with the awareness she had escaped being dressed down by Richardson. “Yeah. This guy is the silent hero type. Bet you twenty he’ll show up again.”
“No way,” Beverly said. “You just got my week’s entertainment budget.” Her friend stopped before the door that opened on the stairwell leading down to their fourth floor cubicles. She peered at Janet. “Are you going to track after this guy?”
Janet smiled and walked down the stairwell. “Wouldn’t you? Anyway, I like puzzles. And I am certain about that Southwest accent. Though there was a touch of a Midwest accent underneath it. Maybe from this guy’s parents.”
“Well,” Beverly said. “Have fun. On your own time. Official time is for your trip to New Mexico and interviews with the adult children of Los Alamos scientist types. Right?”
“Right.”
One part of her was happy that her friend had gotten her boss to put in the field trip request. She’d never been to any of the other Southwest states. The trip would expose her to more Hispanic and Anglo accents from that area, beyond her memory of the family trip to Albuquerque. And with her own computer live-linked by satellite to the bureau’s databases, she could keep track of what Yamaguchi and o
thers turned up on this mysterious intruder. She didn’t mind going short on sleep. She just hoped the unknown intruder was somewhere in the Southwest. Course there were tens of thousands of six foot three young men in their twenties in the states of the Four Corners. Finding the one who really wanted to remain unknown and anonymous would be fun!
CHAPTER FIVE
Valery walked out of her private office and into the waiting room of her counseling office. Young Jeff Webster was seated against one wall, looking at a Newsweek magazine. She put a smile on her face.
“Hi Jeff! Want to join me?”
He looked up, his blue eyes locking onto her. His lips half rose, which was the closest to a smile she’d ever seen him make. “Sure Ms. Stockton. Coming.”
She shook his hand as he approached her. “Jeff, call me Valery. You’ve been coming long enough for us to relax and use first names. Right?”
“Right,” he said.
She led the way into her spacious private office. It held some Asian woodblock prints from the 1800s, a Matisse landscape print and overstuffed seats that faced each other. Her desk filled one corner. As she sat in her seat and looked across at Jeff, the room’s window light grew darker. It was a late fall afternoon in Santa Fe and rainstorms sometimes blew in on the westerlies. The summer monsoon rains from the Gulf were over, but cold rain still happened. She grabbed her yellow notepad from a nearby end table, put it on her lap and told herself her dress reached below her knees even when seated. And she had no reason to think young Jeff would be juvenile enough to try looking up her skirt. By now his avoidance of young women was well known to her. It was just one of the several puzzles about him that appealed to her. But most important were the periodic deep depressions he had, partly due to unresolved grief over the death of his mother just before he’d graduated from high school, and partly from the death of his father a year ago, in a bad DWI that had left young Jeff alive. The depression he felt over surviving that crash was the reason he’d shown up at her office four months earlier, on the recommend of his Unitarian minister.
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