by Alex Lukeman
"Yeah, okay, just be sure you look out for people grabbing stuff from that front rack, where the earrings and stuff are hanging."
"No problem," Lamont said. "Ronnie, come on up front with me."
"You don't have to worry," Selena said. "Nobody's going to mess with those two."
"The sooner you find that slip, the sooner we're out of here," Nick said.
"Yeah, yeah, okay."
A beaded curtain hung over a door behind the counter. Niko went through and disappeared into the back. Nick watched the strings of beads swaying after he was gone.
"You charmed him," Nick said.
"Better than scaring him, like you and Lamont," Selena said.
"Hope he finds that slip."
Ronnie and Lamont stood at the front of the store.
"I'm going next door for some pizza," Lamont said. "You want a slice?"
"Make sure it's got pepperoni," Ronnie said.
Lamont disappeared. Ronnie stood guard by the earrings.
Back at the counter, Nick and Selena waited. A minute later the beads parted. Niko came out with a piece of paper in his hand.
"Here ya go."
He handed the paper to Nick. It listed the size of the sign, what was to be written on it, and the cost. It had a phone number and an address. Nick recognized the number of the burner phone.
"You always get an address?" Nick asked.
"Yeah. The guy used a credit card. I ask for a photo ID. That was the address that was on it. The phone number was so I could let him know when the sign was ready."
Nick copied the information.
"Was anybody with him when he came in?"
"Nope, just him."
"Thanks," Nick said. "You've been a big help."
"Whatever," Niko said. "What did this guy do?"
"Let's just say he's a lousy contractor," Nick said.
"Nobody wants to do an honest day's work no more," Niko said.
Nick and Selena walked to the front, where Ronnie was standing guard.
"Where's Lamont?" Nick asked.
"He went next door for some pizza. Here he comes."
"Anybody want a slice?" Lamont said.
"You ever stop thinking about food?" Nick asked.
"I figured we had time. It was right next door. Besides, I like New York pizza. This is the only place you can get the real thing."
Nick stepped out and hailed a cab.
CHAPTER 51
The cab dropped them off across the street from the address on the order slip. They were in the heart of the Lower East Side. The building was a red brick tenement that had been built sometime around the end of the nineteenth century. A rusty fire escape climbed up one side of the building. The bricks were dark with years of city grime. A sign in a front window advertised an apartment for rent.
"You think these guys might actually be in there?" Ronnie asked.
"It's worth a shot," Nick said.
"Why would they use a real ID?" Lamont asked.
"They wouldn't," Nick said. "But this whole thing smells like a long-term government op. They had to have good IDs to rent a van. The woman at the museum was in place for months. Maybe an apartment was provided for them. Someone could have made up ID's to go with it."
"If they did, it was a pretty stupid mistake," Ronnie said.
"Iran is like everywhere else. Their intelligence agency is a huge bureaucracy. Anything's possible in a bureaucracy. I've seen Langley make dumb mistakes in the field. Why should Iran be any different?"
"How do you want to play it?" Ronnie said.
"We don't know what apartment they're in. We'll find the manager."
"If this dump has one," Ronnie said.
"There has to be someone to keep everything working."
They climbed a set of concrete steps to the entrance. The outside door opened into an entry foyer with brass mailboxes and doorbells. The floor of the entry was made of small black and white tiles in a check pattern. The foyer smelled faintly of urine.
Nick tried a second door leading into the building. It was locked.
"There's a bell marked manager," Selena said.
Nick pressed it. Next to the bells was a brass plate with a speaker grill. A voice crackled from the unit.
"Who is it?"
"You the manager?"
"Who wants to know?"
Nick looked at the others and shrugged.
"We're interested in the apartment for rent."
The lock on the inner door buzzed. Ronnie pushed it open.
A stale odor of neglect greeted them inside. They stood in a hallway that ran across the front of the building. To their left, a set of worn stairs climbed to the upper floors.
"No elevator," Lamont said. "This place has a lot of class."
Down the hall, a door opened and a man came out. He wore stained coveralls and a blue work shirt. He was probably sixty years old, but it was hard to tell. His eyes were watery brown, tired. His hair was streaked with gray, his face worn down by life. He might've been handsome, once. He smelled faintly of alcohol.
"You want to see the apartment?"
Nick showed his badge. "We're not here for that."
The man sighed. "Cops."
"What's your name?"
"Benny. Everyone calls me Benny."
"Okay, Benny. You're not in any trouble. We're looking for someone we think is living here," Nick said.
He took out the FBI drawings and showed them to the manager.
"Do you recognize these men?"
"That one's pretty good," the manager said. He pointed at the same picture Niko had recognized at the sign shop. "The others, not so much, but yeah, I recognize them. They're in unit 5 D."
"Are they home now?"
"How would I know? People come, they go, I don't see them. Those three keep to themselves."
"Okay. I need a key to that apartment."
"You got a warrant?"
"Look," Nick said. "You make us go back and get a warrant, it will piss me off. How about we do it the easy way?"
He held up a twenty dollar bill.
Benny took the twenty. "I'll get it."
He went back inside his unit for the key.
"What a sad looking man," Selena said. "I wonder how he ended up here?"
"He's a drinker," Ronnie said. "He's lucky he's got a job."
Benny came back down the hall and handed Nick the key.
"Fifth floor, on the left, all the way down."
"We'll bring the key back when we're done."
"Yeah."
They went up the stairs until they reached the fourth floor. Nick stopped.
"If nobody's home, we look for whatever we can find. If they're inside, this could go south in a hurry. Don't mess around, but try not to kill everybody. We need information."
He looked at Selena. "I want you outside, in the hall. You don't come in until it's clear."
"Nick..."
"Just do it."
Selena was about to argue with him, but the way he looked at her told her it wouldn't do any good.
"All right."
"Let's go," Nick said.
They drew weapons and climbed up the last flight. At the top landing, Nick glanced right and left into the hall.
"Hall's clear."
They moved in single file, keeping against the wall. They passed the doors of two units. The sound of a television came from one of them. They reached the end of the hall and the door to 5 D.
Nick inserted the key in the lock, held up three fingers, and counted down.
Three. Two. One.
Nick turned the key, reached for the knob, and opened the door.
Inside the apartment, Hamid sat at the kitchen table, putting the finishing touches on his suicide vest. It was a little different from the traditional vest. The favorite design used a dozen or more sticks of explosives wired to a detonator or a dead man switch. It was bulky and heavy, hung from straps over the shoulders, and required a fair amount of clothing
around it to conceal the shape. That was one reason why women were so popular in the Middle East as suicide bombers. The traditional burqas they wore were perfect for concealing the bomb.
The one Hamid was working on was improvised. It would be strapped around his chest with duct tape. Hamid had flattened a kilo of Semtex and placed it inside a cloth grocery bag. The bag made a perfect container for the bomb. He'd added nails and tacks to the package. When the Semtex detonated, a cloud of sharp metal would fly in all directions, ripping into anyone unfortunate enough to be in the area.
An empty glass and a loaded Glock .45 lay on the table. Amin was in the bathroom, dealing with his upset bowels. Dayoud had gone out to a neighborhood store to buy orange juice. No one was planning on eating dinner. Dinner would be a pill, designed by the pharmacological geniuses in Tehran. It created a high that combined a feeling of euphoria with one of invincibility.
Hamid smiled. He would go to Paradise happy, ready to prostate himself at the feet of Allah. He wondered what the face of God would look like.
He heard the key turn in the door.
"Dayoud," he called. "About time."
The door slammed open.
Nick saw Hamid sitting at the table and the gun next to him.
"Freeze!" he yelled.
Hamid saw the big American and his gun and didn't think about what to do. He grabbed the Glock and brought it up. He'd almost made it before Nick shot him.
In the bathroom, Amin had just pulled up his trousers. He was buckling his belt when he heard the roar of Nick's pistol.
The bathroom door burst inward and knocked him back onto the toilet. A fierce looking man with a terrible scar across his face pointed a pistol at Amin's head.
"Don't move, mother fucker."
One flight below, Dayoud was coming up the stairs. He heard the gunfire from above and knew what it meant. He dropped the bag with the juice on the steps. He ran back down, left the building and quickly walked away. In a minute he had turned the corner. He hailed a cab and was gone.
"Selena, it's clear," Nick called. "Come on in. Ronnie, you stand out in the hall. Keep the civilians away. Keep your pistol out of sight and hold up your badge when you see the cops coming. They don't like guns."
Selena took in the scene. Hamid's body lay by an overturned chair. His blood was spreading out over the worn linoleum floor. The room stank of gunpowder and death. Lamont came out of the bathroom with Amin. Amin had his hands on his head. Lamont's pistol was pressed up against his skull.
Nick said, "Selena, there's duct tape on that table. Help Lamont tie that guy up. I'm going to call Harker."
"Lie face down on the floor, asshole," Lamont said.
"There is blood there," Amin protested.
"Tough shit. Lie down. You want me to shoot you?"
Amin lay down in Hamid's blood.
"Put your hands behind your back."
Amin did as he was told. Lamont kept his pistol on him while Selena tore a strip from the roll of tape. She wrapped it around Amin's wrists and bound them together. She got up and began looking around the apartment.
Nick had Harker on the phone.
"We've got two of them. I don't know where the third guy is."
"Did you take them alive?"
"One of them wanted to be a hero, but the other one is alive and well. We didn't even have to shoot him."
"You're sure it's them?"
"Aside from the fact that one of them is a dead ringer for one of those FBI pictures, the Semtex and detonators on the kitchen table clinches it. The dead guy was making a bomb or a suicide vest."
"Nick." It was Selena.
"Director, hold on. Selena's found something."
She came over with the map Dayoud had marked.
"There are three areas circled in red," she said. "I think they're targets."
"Director, there's a map. They were planning on hitting three more targets."
He looked at the map.
"One of them is Penn Station," Nick said. "One is in the theater district, and the last one is Times Square."
"All right," Elizabeth said. "Good work."
"Nick," Ronnie called. "The cops are here."
Nick could hear Ronnie talking to someone outside.
"Director, NYPD is here. They're going to be upset. You'd better make some calls."
"I'll call you back," Elizabeth said.
CHAPTER 52
Dayoud sat in one of the many anonymous restaurants that peppered the city, drinking a cup of coffee and thinking about his next move. Hamid and Amin were dead. At least he hoped they were dead. There had been two gunshots. Or was it three? He wasn't sure. Either way, he was the last one left. The entire mission had turned out to be a disaster. But if he was able to complete his part and release the sarin, that would surely earn him the place he deserved in Paradise.
He looked at his watch. It wouldn't be long until dark. Night time was best for the attack. The warm weather would help, bringing more infidels out onto the streets. By eight or nine o'clock, Times Square would be crowded with thousands of people, all bathed in the glare of bright lights and blazing neon that lit the area at night.
There would be tourists from other parts of the country. There would be women selling themselves, con artists looking to fleece the unwary, people looking for sex or to get high, thousands of others with nothing better to do than stand around hoping for something interesting to happen.
Tonight their hopes would come true, though it might be more than they'd bargained for. He'd release the gas and detonate the bomb he'd constructed. Many would die in the explosion, many more as the sarin dispersed. It was a terrible death, but the Americans deserved it. How many people had died under their bombs? His brother had been killed in Syria. His other brother, killed by the Jews in Lebanon. His grandfather tortured by the Shah's secret police, a victim of the American-backed regime.
He'd considered releasing the gas in the subway system, where it would be more contained. But Times Square was a symbol known throughout the world, and it had the advantage of being highly visible. It would be difficult for the American authorities to cover up hundreds of dead bodies lying out in the open. Their media would make sure of that. With luck, it would be thousands. There would be panic, people trampled underfoot as the crowd tried to flee.
Chaos, in the heart of the Great Satan.
It would rival the attack on the Twin Towers as a blow against the infidel. Dayoud knew his name would be remembered, forever.
Allah would be pleased.
Dayoud finished his coffee, paid his bill, and left the restaurant. He began walking uptown. The carryall with the gas and bomb was stored in a locker at Grand Central Station. He had plenty of time to get the bag and make his way across town to the target. Still, he felt impatient. Perhaps he shouldn't wait until nighttime.
How had the Americans discovered the apartment? Now they would be looking for him. Dayoud couldn't think of anything he or the others had done to give themselves away. Well, there wasn't any point in brooding about it.
He took a blue pill from his pocket and swallowed it. The effect would last for many hours, more time than he needed. As he walked, Dayoud tried to think if there was anything in the apartment that might give the police a way to find him.
The map! The map was on the table!
Dayoud stopped dead in his tracks. Someone bumped into him.
"Hey, watch it buddy."
The man gave him a hard look and walked on.
Dayoud started walking again.
They have the map. They know the targets.
As he waited at a corner for the light to change, Dayoud considered his options. He could still go to Times Square. They probably didn't know what he looked like. But with Times Square identified as a target, surveillance would be heavy, security tightened. They'd be looking for anyone with a backpack or a bag or a satchel.
It was too much of a risk. Reluctantly, he crossed off Times Square in his mind.
New York was a big city. There were many worthwhile targets.
CHAPTER 53
It was a warm evening outside the police station where Amin was being held. The streets were filling with people out for a pleasant stroll. Nick would have preferred a snowstorm, instead of the spring-like weather. Snow and cold would have kept potential victims off the streets. Nick had no doubt that the third man was plotting carnage. The only way they were going to stop him was to get the surviving terrorist to talk.
So far, Amin had refused to say anything. He sat cuffed to a table in an interview room, mumbling prayers to himself. No one had bothered to clean him up. Hamid's blood was still on his clothes and in his hair.
Nick and Selena stood behind a one-way observation window, looking at the prisoner. The room was crowded. An FBI agent had shown up at the apartment and was now standing with them. A police lieutenant named Holland, a detective sergeant from the station, and someone from Homeland Security were also present. Nick would not have been surprised if more people from the alphabet soup of intelligence and security agencies showed up as well.
"Has he asked for a lawyer?" Nick said.
"Not yet," Holland said. "It wouldn't do him any good. He's being held under the Patriot Act. He doesn't get a lawyer even if he wants one, at least not yet."
"His buddy is out there planning something," Nick said. "We have to find a way to get this guy to open up."
"SWAT teams are on site at all three of the places marked on that map," Holland said. "Half the force is out there watching for anyone suspicious. The mayor has been informed. He's made it clear that if we start profiling, heads will roll."
"Meaning that stopping a man carrying a bomb who looks Middle Eastern could cost someone their badge," Nick said.
"Welcome to New York," Holland said.
The FBI agent pointed at Amin.
"All this guy does is repeat that stupid prayer. Maybe we need to get rough with him."
