Ground Zero

by Don Pendleton

  “It would have been simpler if you’d chosen a better airport, but then again you don’t tend to do simple, do you?”

  “Andrew, you find a way of getting a charter flight that can land without getting noticed at LaGuardia or Kennedy, and I’ll save your drivers some gas. I’d prefer to do simple.... It’s these other bastards who make it difficult.”

  “Fair point. Damn these terrorists for making life hard.”

  Bolan looked at him. “Okay, I’ll give you that. We are looking for terrorists. Beyond that, I can’t tell you much.”

  “Because it’s too secret even for the Bureau?”

  “Because I don’t know much more myself,” Bolan replied. “We knew they were in D.C. One cell has been eradicated, but we only uncovered the identities of two of the other cell when they broke cover to run. We know it’s a four-man cell. Add to that, we know we’re two men blind and we also have no idea of target specifics. Only that it’s here in the city.”

  Low nodded. “I get it. Now, if you’d told me that...”

  “You live here, Andrew. What would you go for?”

  Low shrugged. “The last time they hit NYC they went for something that was not just a big collateral target, but had a symbolic resonance. The Twin Towers were something that was so identified with this place. Short of bombing the Empire State or the Chrysler, maybe Central Park...though what that could achieve, only God knows.”

  “According to them, He does,” Bolan said sourly. “I know our boys have looked at military targets, but that could be damped down, and besides there’s nothing that major. They’re looking for a big splash. The targets they had lined up for D.C. were national monuments and had governmental importance.”

  Low exhaled sharply. “Supreme Court, maybe. Manhattan Municipal Building or city hall, perhaps—though those are not national.”

  Bolan checked his watch, then the Amtrak boards. The train on which the GPS had tracked the hot phone was about to pull into the platform. The soldier turned to Low and was about to speak when he was stayed by the look on the young man’s face: it was a mix of realization and disgust.

  “Cooper,” he began, knowing Bolan only by the cover name he had used for some time, “I think I know what they’ll go for. Freedom Tower is almost finished construction, and the World Trade Center Museum is about to open. You hit those and the memorial, and you don’t just cause collateral damage—you know how many are visiting the sites already?—but you hit at the heart of what we lost on 9/11. You twist the knife in front of the whole world.”

  Bolan’s lip curled. “Should have seen that.... I’ve been thinking of something that could cause economic or military damage as well as personal and symbolic. But why not that? Hit there and you break spirit. Any domino effect from that is a bonus. We need to get on their asses.” He indicated the Amtrak board.

  Low nodded, almost visibly shaking from the temporary inertia his disgust had caused him. “Keep frosty,” he said softly into his headset. “Train’s in—start recon.”

  Pennsylvania Station was never still. Even at the quietest times people were always flowing in and out and across the concourse. Some times of day were, inevitably, busier than others. This was such a time. Bolan was grateful for the men who were linked to the CCTV and carefully positioned, as it was by no means clear which streams of human traffic were headed where. So much the better: the last thing he wanted was for Fraser or Banjo to recognize him. He had nothing concrete on which to base the assumption that they would, but his instincts told him that Fraser, at least, had seen him from his window.

  As the people streamed past them, each lost in their own worlds and wrapped up in their own preoccupations and problems, Low and Bolan stood like islands, still and calm, waiting for word.

  It was not long in coming.

  “Third sector, Devlin reporting,” crackled over the headset. “I’ve got the two targets in sight. They’re headed for the subway and they’re not onto me. I have taken up position in train and am following.”

  “This way,” Low said simply as he set off through the crowds, carving a path toward the section of the station that was being covered by Agent Devlin. Bolan followed in his wake.

  They caught up with Devlin as he reached the street and was headed toward the subway entrance. His eye caught Low’s and he indicated briefly with an inclination of his head. Bolan followed his line of sight and saw a man he recognized—even from behind—as Banjo disappear down the stairs leading into the subway station.

  Without a word, he took up the tail that Devlin had begun, bidding farewell to Low with a tap on the shoulder as he passed him.

  As he descended into the station, he kept passengers between himself and the two targets. It was like being back on tail in D.C. again. So far, much of this mission had consisted of the mundane, broken by sudden bouts of violence. He felt sure that he would have to step up the pace and wrap this one up swiftly. He watched as Fraser and Banjo purchased subway tokens like any other passenger. He followed suit, again just like any other passenger—though he doubted that many other subway users were carrying a Micro Uzi and a Desert Eagle, which he had equipped himself with on arrival in NYC.

  * * *

  BOLAN STUCK WITH them as they traveled the system, taking the Port Authority Trans-Hudson train headed out to New Jersey. The soldier wondered about the kind of timescale they were now working on, and why their base of operations was so far removed from the city center. Had Low’s guess about the possible target been wrong? Had they realized they were being followed and were seeking to deflect and either evade or eliminate their tail? He hoped not, not with two men still unknown and at large, for it was pretty certain by now that Banjo and Fraser were traveling alone.

  They disembarked at Hoboken, and Bolan followed them as they walked from the station to one of the restored brownstones that littered the town. The residents of Hoboken had always kept their buildings in good condition, which was one of the reasons the area had been such a target for the newly affluent and the hip and trendy of the ’80s when they’d sought to move from the inner part of the city to the Jersey side of the Hudson. As a result, the town now had an odd mix of families that had been resident for several generations, and newer arrivals, who were either financial workers or artists from downtown in search of a little space.

  It made this a perfect environment for the targets to blend in. It was a more racially mixed area than many parts of New York. The other thing it had going for it was the Stevens Institute of Technology, one of the oldest technology colleges in the United States. Knowing that Banjo and Fraser traveled light and without any ordnance, and suspecting that their two missing colleagues would do the same, it made a kind of sense that they would come to a place where students and science could combine. There was a bell ringing somewhere in the back of Bolan’s mind. He watched the two men enter a brownstone; then he headed for a bar down the block, where he ordered a beer and hunkered down in a booth to scroll through the material on his smartphone without interruption.

  He found what he was looking for. Heider’s political connections before his conversion to Islam included a radical student body whose leadership included ex-students of Stevens. One of whom was now a research fellow in mining engineering. Not an obvious connection. His student past had been privileged information even back then, so the college would have no indication of past affinities. Mining engineering was not a subject allied to ordnance per se; there were, however, some points where the two could touch.

  Had this been one of the people Heider had seen on his last trip to NYC? It was all circumstantial, but it added up so far, and, frankly, it was all he had to go on right now.

  Bolan stood and left the bar.

  * * *

  “YOU KNOW SOMETHING, Bear? I was thinking on the way down here that this was a mundane mission and that I needed to step up the pace and tidy
it up. Guess I got that one wrong. I feel like I’m in a bad P.I. movie.”

  “What happened yesterday was more like Die Hard goes Hong Kong,” Kurtzman replied. “And I’m not sure Hal would appreciate your ‘stepping up’ from that.”

  The first thing Bolan had done on leaving the bar was go to the nearest car-rental company and rent the least conspicuous car he could find. Having scoped the neighborhood, he realized that the majority of the people in the brownstones, either by income or by choice, favored smaller Japanese models rather than U.S.-made vehicles.

  The Nissan was a silver hatchback, two years old, and fitted nicely into the background as he found a spot and parked up for the night. After, of course, setting up a surveillance cam and taking the time to go and get coffee and food to last him the long watch to come. Again, the makeup of the neighborhood served him well. Numerous coffee shops and cafés were in walking distance, most of which favored healthy food over junk.

  The surveillance had been productive in one sense. Several people had come and gone during the evening and early part of the night. One of them, presumably returning from Stevens, was Piet Schrueders, the research fellow with links in his past to Heider. So his assumption had been correct and Schrueders was involved—either willingly or not—up to his neck. So much so that Fraser and Banjo had headed for his apartment for a meet up.

  He relayed this information to Kurtzman and finished with a request for any information filed for Schrueders, any additional intel would help build a complete picture for the takedown.

  “There’s one last thing,” Bolan added. “I think the other two members of the cell have arrived. At five twenty-three a camper van rolled down the street. Two males, one Caucasian and the other African American, left the vehicle and entered the brownstone. They looked to be in their mid-twenties. I took some stills, and there are the surveillance-cam images. I’ve uploaded them so you can run them to see what you come up with.”

  Bolan killed the connection and got out of the Nissan, stretching as he did so. He checked his watch: seven minutes after eight. Schrueders would be leaving for work soon if he was going to Stevens today. If he wasn’t, that could mean his involvement was very deep, and could presage the beginning of the endgame.

  Time to call Brognola and put some precautions in place. He hit the speed dial number as he walked down the empty sidewalk, keeping an eye on the brownstone as he soothed his aching muscles with exercise.

  “Striker, I need to hear your explanation of what went down. I’ve got the President breathing down my neck and half the authorities in D.C. asking awkward questions. It hasn’t got back here yet, but the big man has an idea it’s tied in with what he’s asked, and that’s making things—”

  “Difficult,” Bolan finished. “Hal, I know. If I could have mopped up more discreetly I would have, but things have moved fast.”

  “I know, I’ve had updates from Stony Man. Last one’s just come through. You don’t have to go over that. I just—”

  “Hal, listen,” Bolan interrupted. “There’s something I haven’t told Bear yet. It’s not confirmed, but I think it’s possible, and I think we need to implement some precautions with maximum discretion. I want to nail these bastards, but I need a net in place.”

  Brognola was silent for a moment. “What is it?”

  The big Fed’s attitude had changed in an instant, and the soldier breathed a sigh of relief. He knew from long experience that Brognola had faith in his judgment, but he also knew the pressure the big Fed would be under right now. Briefly, he outlined his conversation with Andrew Low from the previous afternoon.

  “That would be a logical conclusion,” Brognola concurred when Bolan had finished. It was a simple statement, delivered in a tight voice that told the soldier of the anger and outrage that the big Fed was keeping in check. “I could get a shutdown on the site immediately.”

  “Not a good idea,” Bolan replied. “I need to confirm I have the complete cell before taking them down. Any movement that puts their mission in jeopardy is going to make them run. It’s not just the four of them, either. This guy Schrueders is involved, and there may be others they’re either using or in collaboration with. I want all of them. I’m not going to let that scum desecrate the site and harm anyone who gets in their way. But there’s always a chance I won’t make it, so I want backup in place.”

  “I understand,” Brognola said. “Problem I have is that as soon as I raise the question, military and security will want a total shutdown. That would be easy. Getting the level of discretion you require without the kind of objection they’ll raise...” He let the statement hang.

  “I know it won’t be easy. But it’s necessary.”

  “I know you won’t let me down, Striker.”

  Bolan disconnected and checked the surveillance cam on his smartphone. A quick scroll through the imaging showed that none of his targets had left the brownstone during his brief absence. He bought himself another coffee and made his way back to the Nissan.

  No sooner had he settled himself than three of his targets left the brownstone together.

  * * *

  PIET SCHRUEDERS HAD passed a sleepless night. There had been many of these since Heider had tracked him down. It was ten years since they had been part of the same group, protesting and mounting raids on capitalist institutions. Schrueders had realized that no amount of such protest would make a difference. In truth, as his education progressed and his talents ensured that giant engineering corporations took an interest in sponsoring his PhD and MA, he began to realize that he was rather taken with the fruits of capitalism and the idea of amassing a sizable bank account that would enable him to indulge his whims and passions. One of which had once been politics. That had changed.

  He was lucky in that he had never been arrested on any demonstration, and any actions he had been part of had never been traced back to the source. He was clean on record, if not in conscience. He took advantage of that to distance himself, which had been aided by Heider’s imprisonment. He had moved to Hoboken and taken up a fellowship at Stevens, secure in the knowledge that his past was well and truly buried. He could not have known that he was on a list of known associates, forever marked on a file.

  When Heider had tracked him down, he hadn’t known what to do. He was thankful that his partner did not live with him. What Janice would have made of the radical arriving at his door, he shuddered to think. Although the reaction of a girlfriend turned out to be the least of his worries.

  Heider had learned a lot about the art of blackmail, and he had practiced it on the frightened Schrueders. The engineer had never been the most committed or courageous of his comrades back in the day, and Heider had played on those fears. Schrueders saw his life collapsing before him unless he did one small thing. Then he would be left alone. Even though he knew that this last statement was probably far from the truth, he was desperate enough to blind himself to believing it.

  He was not surprised when Fraser and Banjo had arrived the previous day. He had been expecting them, although he was taken aback that Heider was not with them; a creeping fear spread down his spine when his queries about Heider’s whereabouts were met with a blankly hostile, “He ain’t coming,” from Fraser. They told him that they were expecting two compatriots who should arrive sometime in the night. They gazed around his apartment with a mixture of disdain from Fraser, who had introduced himself as Mummar, and envy from Banjo, who almost seemed to be pricing the contents for larceny. Certainly, the way that Mummar spoke, he had little time for the creature comforts of soft furnishings, state-of-the-art home cinema and media players and expensive prints on the walls that Schrueders had amassed with the rewards of his trade. He sat on the edge of one of the sofas, facing Schrueders across an antique mahogany coffee table, and spoke in a low monotone of the kind of explosive and detonating technology that Schrueders would have access to at Steve
ns.

  “We want state-of-the-art—small, powerful, portable. We can pay you, but that ain’t why you’re going to do it. You’ll do it because of what Heider knew.”

  Schrueders had shivered at that: the past tense made him certain that death followed these men.

  “Why can’t you make it yourselves or buy it from an illegal arms dealer—isn’t that what you people do?” Schrueders asked desperately.

  This had actually elicited a smile from the otherwise taciturn Mummar.

  “You forget that you were one of ‘us people,’ and that’s why you’re going to help,” Mummar said softly. “We had a few problems with our supplier and can’t make a reliable connection on our timetable. As for making it ourselves, we need more power than we can manufacture quickly. Don’t worry about us giving you away. We’re not coming back. You be careful, and you’ll be fine. Face it, you’re our one-stop shop, Piet, like it or not.”

  Schrueders chose not to like it, but kept his mouth shut. As far as he could see, there was nothing he could do except comply and hope to God that he would never be found out. Part of which meant that he wanted them to be successful, even if he had no idea what their objective was. He chose to shut that out of his mind, despite his protesting conscience.

  When the two others had arrived—introduced to him only as Amir and Hus—they had greeted him with a mixture of indifference and disdain. Indeed, for much of their conversation thereafter he had been ignored as though not even present. There was a part of him that preferred it that way, as they had things to discuss of which he would rather have no knowledge. By the same token, he felt sure that he really should keep an ear open for what they would require of him.

  Schrueders had retired for what little rest he could get as the men talked on in his living room. But he had been unable to sleep, staring at the ceiling and wondering how fate had decreed that the past he had worked so hard to divorce himself from should now catch up and bite him in the ass.