Early Warning

by Michael Walsh

  The only rules Ben Addison ever knew were the rules of the street, the law of the jungle. School held no interest for him, and when his mama managed to scrape together enough scratch to send him to that Catholic school one year, he never got along with the other kids, mostly Latinos; never liked having to wear a uniform; and seriously disagreed with the turn-the-other-cheek tenets that they preached there.

  One hot summer night Ben and some of his crew had gone into the city-gone into New York, as some Brooklynites still said-to see what was up. Even after one of the former mayors had cleaned up the place, there were still parts of Manhattan that outsiders were well advised to stay out of, and when they found a group of smashed college kids bar-hopping along the old gangland main drag of Allen Street, near Rivington Street, they decided to mug them. The boys gave it up quick, but one of the girls had mouthed off to him, called him out, dared him to do something, and so he did. He shot her in the head and then, because the guys had seen them, he shot the rest of them too. One, though, had lived, and it was his testimony that had sent Ben to the slammer. The mouthpiece had managed to negotiate the beef down to manslaughter, on the grounds that the kids had provoked him, and that they reasonably should have known that a man with his underprivileged background might react violently to any perceived assault on his manhood. At sentencing, Addison ’s court-appointed shrinks made the pitch that “black rage” had contributed to the events of that night, that Ben was not solely responsible for his actions, and the judge saw it their way. Ben got eight-to-twelve years, was out in seven.

  And that had been the only break he had ever caught in this life until he got to Green Haven, which was where he met the Imam. It was not until then that he learned what the words mercy and compassion truly meant-not weak weasel words, the way the Christians used them, but strong, muscular language that befits a warrior race. Courtesy of the people of New York State, and cheered on in the editorial pages of the New York Times, the Imam came regularly to minister to his burgeoning flock. He was so much more compelling than the pallid padre and the timorous rabbi, both of whom spent their time trying to understand the men and their crimes, to “work with them,” to tell them that God forgave them. The hell with that.

  Most of the converts were, like Ben, African Americans, but there was a smattering of white boys as well, guys looking for something better than passivity and forgiveness toward others, cons who regretted their time but not necessarily their crime. In Islam, they found a new way of looking at the world, at their society, and at themselves, and they liked what they saw. The Imam Abdul never forgave anybody; forgiveness jive was not what he was selling. Instead, the Imam was selling punishment, misery, pain. The Imam didn’t want to understand the old you: he wanted him to die, and be reborn, not as a Christian but as a fighter. You died in Christ, but arose again in Allah, whose plan for mankind required killers, not healers. “We love Death as you love Life,” the Imam taught them to chant in Arabic, after he had trained them in the recitation of selected verses from the Holy Koran. Ben’s childhood Christianity, what little there was of it, had sloughed away like an old skin, to reveal the proud Islamic warrior beneath.

  And so Ben Addison, Jr., had become a new man, with a new name. He was now Ismail bin-Abdul al-Amriki, Ishmael the American, son of Abdul, and his vengeance on the society that had spawned him would be terrible.

  Once he had nothing to live for; now he had everything to die for.

  “You know how I hate that word, schmuck.” said Shirley Acker, just as they heard the shots behind them. Not that they recognized them as shots. Like most New Yorkers, the Ackers lived in a gun-free world, at least as far as their social circle was concerned. They were against firearms in all forms, didn’t see why a little thing like the Second Amendment couldn’t easily be ignored, failed to understand why anyone would hunt for food when you simply buy it at Fair-way, and were quite sure that, were they ever to possess a gun, one of them would quickly kill the other, or perhaps him-or herself, entirely by accident. And should there ever be trouble in a post-Giuliani New York (they hated the sonofabitch, but had to admit that fascist had cleaned up the town), they would simply call 911 and the cops would come running.

  “Look, Morris, there’s a Sabrett’s guy,” said Shirley. “I could use a nosh. How about you?”

  With a muzzle velocity of 2,346 feet per second, and a 40-cartridge magazine, you could fire 600 rounds per minute and pretty much hit everything within 300 meters. Unless you were a sniper, in combat you were basically firing at a man standing right in front of you, and the Kalashnikov was designed to be operational in all kinds of weather and under all kinds of conditions. There might be better assault rifles-and there were-but none could touch it, even today, for ease and reliability.

  Death from a weapon like the AK-47, even the cheap Chinese-made imitation of the Soviet original, was not like it was in the movies. The impact of the bullets did not lift you off your feet and knock you back 25 feet. Instead, they put you down, hard. One shot might shear off the top of your skull. Another might drill a hole in your forehead and blow out the back of your head like a pumpkin, but in either case you dropped, dead.

  At the training camps in Pakistan, Ismail had learned to shoot. Not for him was the gangbangers’ spray paint job, stylin’ as they shot and pretty much missing everything except babies in their carriages and nuns on their way to Mass. With the AK-47, you fire either semi-automatic-one trigger pull, one shot-or full auto, but Ismail had learned to husband his ammo and make every shot count. Besides, he wasn’t alone. From all over midtown Manhattan, Chelsea, the Flatiron District, and Hell’s Kitchen, more holy warriors had converged and were in place, freshly armed. In fact, he could hear them firing now.

  The first people the former Ben Addison, Jr., killed were an elderly couple who were heading for him, right in the line of fire. The old man never saw him, so intent was he on not falling on his face as he stepped into the street, and the woman only had time to allow a fleeting look of understanding flit across her face and then she, too, went down.

  Then he opened fire in earnest. At first he fired single-shot, semi-automatic. It was fun to see how well he had been trained, to watch the enemy-he didn’t think of them as “victims,” since everybody was a victim these days, most especially himself-fall, ripped apart, just as first the paper targets had shredded and then the metal targets had clanged and finally the live-fire captives, scrambling desperately for their worthless lives, had been cut down in a burst of well-placed fire.

  Now people screamed and ran. But withering fire came from everywhere, from all directions, high and low-the Brothers, activated by the sound of the explosions. Gunfire came from everywhere, from several stories high in some of the surrounding buildings, from the streets, even from the storm sewers. Screams rent the air as bodies dropped. Panic broke out. Nobody knew where to run, where it might be safe. There was noplace to hide. Vehicles collided, pancaked. And still the gunfire continued, a rain of fire from hell.

  Phase one was now well and truly under way. And then the ground beneath his feet rippled, buckled, and exploded.

  The No. 3 train was just starting up to leave the station for its run uptown to 72nd Street when Ali Ibrahim al-Aziz pressed the talk button on his cell phone and activated the bomb that had been stowed away on the train in the few minutes the sensors had been down. The resulting explosion sent several cars of the train hurtling skyward, ripping apart the street where the ancient cut-and-cover was at its shallowest. Immediately, the signal shorted out all along this stretch of the line, which meant that the trailing No. 2 had no way of knowing that the station wasn’t clear. The resulting collision forced the cars from the demolished No. 3 train up and out into the street, carrying a load of incinerated corpses into what had become a running gun battle.

  The force of the car bomb that had struck the AMC Theatres on 42nd Street was nothing compared to this. Triggered by the cell phone call, more than 1,000 kilos of plastic explosive had obli
terated much of Times Square. A giant sinkhole yawned across the famous intersection, swallowing up cars, buses, and small buildings alike. The military recruiting center above the station was one of the first to go, collapsing in upon itself and tumbling into the abyss. Beneath the ruined train, tunnels fell in upon themselves, then plunged down, into the network of other tunnels-electrical, steam-that had run beneath the streets of Manhattan for more than a century.

  The ripple effect was devastating, as electrical systems failed, manhole covers were blown 50 feet into the air dozens of blocks away and scalding steam flayed alive anyone unlucky enough to be near a vent when it sundered. Chunks of pavement became lethal weapons, buried electrical wires became snaking, spitting instruments of death. Worst of all were the ruptured gas lines, which quickly ignited and set ablaze the buildings directly above. The air quickly filled with acrid, lethal smoke.

  And still, gunfire from all directions continued to rake the killing field that had once been Times Square.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Teterboro Airport -later

  Technically, Teterboro was a township in New Jersey, but it was basically an airport and not much else. As Van Nuys was to Los Angeles, Teterboro was to New York -an unglamorous location for the very glamorous private airplanes of the moneyed set.

  “What?” said Devlin. “Say again?”

  Maryam looked at him as he spoke softly on the secure phone. Throughout the flight aboard the custom-built Gulfstream C-37B, he had kept his own counsel, remaining mostly silent as he absorbed real-time information streaming over his direct connection to Fort Meade. Since she was not, officially, an employee of either the NSA or the Central Security Service, it was none of her business to inquire. He would tell her soon enough, if he chose to.

  Secrets. They were the basis of their relationship. Even though she knew it was not his real name, she still called him “Frank,” because that was how he had first introduced himself. She had since learned that “Frank Ross” was one of a series of operational pseudonyms he had used, never to be repeated, but Frank he first was to her and Frank he had remained. Perhaps, someday, she would learn who he really was. But then, she supposed, he would have to kill her.

  As for herself, there were plenty of things she hadn’t told him. Most things. In fact, everything about their relationship-even their love affair-was based on indirection, misdirection, or outright lies. And neither of them would have it any other way.

  They both had jobs to do. Thrice already in their lives their jobs had intersected, the first time in Paris, the second last year in Los Angeles and, later, in France. They had been there for each other, when they needed each other, and in their business that was just about the highest compliment one could pay to a colleague-or a lover.

  And she did love him. Whatever had been the original impetus for her assignment, it didn’t matter. Iranian politics, especially since the revolution, were impenetrable to outsiders, even to him. But she had been raised in them. For more than thirty years her country had cried out for justice and vengeance. She only hoped she could give it a little bit of both.

  Most Americans over the age of 50, she understood, had zero sympathy for Iran. As young people, they had had their senses assaulted by the hordes of Iranian demonstrators on the streets of America ’s cities, shouting about the Shah and his secret police force, the SAVAK. Then Khomeini came back to Tehran from Paris and the Shah fled and the ayatollahs took over, and suddenly the most Western country in the Middle East, a Persian culture that had existed for millennia, with great art, literature, poetry, and music, had succumbed once more to an alien, fundamentalist oppressor and was taking American hostages and shoving its women into burqas. In less than a decade, the glorious Peacock Throne had degenerated into another totalitarian dictatorship.

  Then the demonstrators took the streets again, this time against the Ayatollah. With hundreds of Americans being held hostage in the embassy, in violation of every international diplomatic protocol, they found no shoulders to cry on. If, in 1980, President Carter had nuked Tehran, he would have won reelection in a landslide, thought Maryam. But he was too weak, and the rot that had taken over America had first revealed itself; despite Reagan’s tough talk, his primary focus was breaking the Soviet Union, which he did. And after him, the deluge of mediocrity that resulted from warring political families, neither with the best interests of the nation at heart. Which is why Tyler had been elected as a breath of fresh air, a plague and a pox on both their houses.

  “…ready?” he was asking her.

  “Sorry, what?” she said, coming out of her fog of remembrance.

  Devlin looked at her. Every instinct, every bit of his training told him that he shouldn’t trust her, that he didn’t really know anything about her, and yet he did. It was Milverton’s last question to him as they battled to the death in London: “Do you trust the bitch? You don’t even know her real name.” But he had ignored that, instead taking a page from Milverton’s old outfit, the SAS-22’s: “Who Dares, Wins.” All his life he had trusted nobody, but he trusted her.

  “ New York is under attack. We have to move. Now.”

  Maryam tried not to let her alarm show. She was, after all, a professional. But an attack on New York was the nightmare that had been waiting to happen for a decade. “Then we go in together,” she said.

  The plane was rolling to a stop as he replied: “No. I go in. You go on.”

  “Where? When?”

  “As soon as I tell that idiot Tyler what we’re going to do. Right now you’re going to tell me how bad it is.”

  “But-” She caught herself. She knew it was no use to remonstrate with him. Neither love nor guilt played any role in his psyche, and on some level she felt that he would willingly sacrifice her if the mission ever required it. Just as she knew, deep inside, that if the day ever came when she had to choose between her mission and their happiness…She let the thought trail off, not wishing to finish it.

  “There’s some kind of incident going on in Times Square. Whether the police are up to handling it, we’ll soon find out. Probably not, but they’ll never admit it. That’s why I need you to crack the CTU unit and find out what they know.”

  “With what?” Even though they were aboard an NSA plane, which was as well equipped with computers and surveillance equipment as anything in the air, including Air Force One, they still might not be up to the challenge. The New York Counter-Terrorism Unit was famously secure.

  “With your head,” he replied. “Now get cracking.”

  Devlin pulled out his secure BlackBerry and opened up a direct channel to Seelye. This was not his preferred method of communication, because he felt a wireless device, no matter how well designed by the NSA engineers at The Building, could never be as safe as the hard-wire he’d had back at his home in Falls Church, but at this point he didn’t have any choice. This would get him straight to Seelye, which meant straight to Tyler.

  IN PLACE SIT UPDATE ASAP

  The scrambled and decoded text came flying right back at him. There were a lot of things he hated about Tyler -almost everything, in fact-but one thing he had to admit, the man was always on the job. Tyler had taught him a lot of things Devlin wished every night he could forget, but a work ethic and a sense of duty was not one of them.

  HANDS OFF THIS END. YOU ARE SOLO. NORMAL ROE. CONFIRM

  CONFIRMED. ACCESS?

  NONE. LOCKDOWN. NYPD SHOW.

  TOOLS?

  IN PLACE, SAFE HOUSES. STAND BY. REVOLUTION

  Devlin had to wait only a beat or two before a series of numbers flooded the secure computer screen. In a few minutes, they would be sorted out into street addresses superimposed upon enhanced-imaging maps provided by the National Reconnaissance Office, another of the many U.S. intelligence organizations few Americans had ever heard of. The NRO was attached to the SecDef, and it was responsible for collecting and coordinating aerial imagery from airplanes and satellites. In other words, the NRO was Google Earth on s
teroids, and it could send you a picture via nearly instantaneous transmission that could show you the Iranian nuclear installations at Qom or the tramp stamp on the girl on the beach at Ipanema.

  “Revolution” simply meant that the vetted safe houses revolved on a daily basis and the secure information he was receiving would sort out the active flops from the dummies and the poisoned pills. Assuming he could get to one of them, it would be outfitted with just about any kind of weapon he might need, short of a low-yield nuclear device and he wouldn’t put that past NSA, either. Devlin glanced at the computer, which had identified three safe houses in Manhattan; one in midtown near the United Nations, one downtown near Wall Street, and one at the northern tip of the island, in Inwood.

  ROGER THAT. COOP?

  ASSUME NONE.

  EMERGENCY LIAISON BYRNE, FRANCIS X, CORRECT?

  UNDER ROE ONLY, YOUR CALL

  Devlin clicked off. He memorized the locations of the safe houses and committed the floor plans to memory as well, noting all entrances and exits. There would be codes at each of them, security death traps for the unwary, the too-curious, and the sacrificial pawns, but he could handle that sort of thing in his sleep. He only hoped that the situation would not get too far out of control before he could in and get fully equipped.

  Maryam’s voice nearly startled him: “It’s him, isn’t it?” He didn’t need to ask who “him” was. They both knew and they both knew it was him. Hope was not a plan.