by Brad Thor
An enormous piece of twisted metal that looked like a pitchfork had pierced the second row of seats, impaling both of Amanda Rutledge’s friends. Amanda was unconscious, but Tim didn’t see any wounds. He reached for her and felt for a pulse; it was weak, but at least she was alive. For how much longer, though, he couldn’t tell.
Fiore looked over at his partner, whose chin was slumped against her chest.
“Marcy?” he said as he felt for her pulse. “Marcy, can you hear me?”
There was no response.
Twisting out of his seatbelt, Fiore kicked his door open and began yelling into his radio. “This is Echo One. We’ve been hit. I repeat, Echo One has been hit. All units respond. Over.”
Hopping out of the SUV, Fiore scanned for threats as he came around to the rear passenger door. Where the hell was the other Secret Service vehicle? It should have been right behind them. It was then that he began noticing the screams. Screams of terror. Screams of agony. All around, cars were overturned and huge sections of the bridge were missing. Their van had been slammed perpendicularly into the guard rail and, judging from the marks on the roof and hood, had flipped at least three or four times. It was only out of sheer luck they had landed upright and had managed to stay on the bridge at all. This wasn’t the work of just one bomb, there had to have been at least two, probably more. The injured were everywhere, and those who weren’t wounded sat frozen in their cars, wandered aimlessly in shock, or ran for their lives.
Fiore tried to open Amanda’s door, but it wouldn’t budge. With the extensive damage their SUV had sustained, going through the shrapnel-ridden cargo area was also out of the question. He was going to have to go around the other side and pull the president’s daughter over the bodies of her two dead friends.
As he came around the rear of the vehicle, Fiore noticed that along with everything else that had evaporated, so had their medical trauma bag. All that was left was a collapsible litter, and being careful not to gash himself, he climbed inside and grabbed it.
He continued to try to raise the other agents as he raced around to the driver’s side of the SUV. Because they’d been trained on what to do in case of just such an assassination attempt, Fiore was able to react almost without even thinking about it.
Yanking the rear driver’s-side door open, Fiore crawled in as far as he could go. Gently, he unbuckled the first daughter, supported her neck as best he could, and backed out of the SUV, guiding her around the jagged edges of the steel pitchfork that had eviscerated her friends until he could lay her down on the litter.
With two enormous holes behind them and being nearer to the Manhattan side of the bridge, Tim scanned the nearby buildings for a safe haven. His training dictated that he get Amanda to high ground as soon as possible, where he could better control their situation and hold out until their helicopter could arrive. Trying the Secret Service Command Post, he said, “Skybox, this is Echo One. Do you copy? Over.”
“Roger that, Echo One,” came the response from the command post. “What is your status?”
“We’ve been hit. At least two vehicle-borne explosives timed to coincide with our route. Echo Two is gone, we’ve got two agents missing from our vehicle, a third unconscious, and the package has been damaged. Request you initiate Operation Upswing immediately. Over.”
“Negative, Echo One. No can do,” said the command center control agent. “All bridges and tunnels into and out of Manhattan have been hit. We’ve got a report of an NYPD helicopter down, possibly due to hostile fire. Until further notice, NYC airspace is too hot and has been shut down. Is your vehicle operable? Over.”
All the bridges and tunnels? How the hell could that be possible? As incomprehensible as it was, there was no time to even try to make sense of it now. “Negative,” replied Fiore. “Our vehicle has been totaled. Over.”
“Echo One. Stand by. Over,” said the voice.
Stand by? Was this guy nuts? They were completely vulnerable out in the open like this, and Fiore wasn’t convinced that they just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. What if there was a secondary attempt on Amanda’s life in progress right at this moment?
While watching the pandemonium around them, he bent down and checked her pulse again. Though each protective detail had a medical agent as part of the team, they all had gone through extensive medical training. Fiore suspected that if Amanda didn’t get help soon, she wasn’t going to make it.
“Skybox, we need to evac now! Over.”
“Stand by, Echo One. Over,” repeated the controller.
Fiore was about to tell the controller what he could do with his stand by’s, when he heard someone coming around the front of the vehicle.
Instantly, he moved his body to shield Amanda Rutledge while raising his pistol and applying pressure to the trigger.
The next thing he saw was a gun as it swung around the front bumper. He knew it—a secondary attack.
He was about to pull the trigger the rest of the way, when he heard, “Jesus, Tim. Don’t shoot! It’s me. Marcy.”
Twenty-One
You scared the hell out of me,” Fiore said as he lowered his pistol. “Why’d you come around the front of the vehicle?”
“Because my door was jammed and yours was open,” replied Marcy, a little unsteady on her feet. “What happened?”
“Terrorists with multiple vehicle bombs. Apparently, all the bridges and tunnels in and out of Manhattan have been hit. Echo Two is unresponsive, and Grossi and Swartley are gone.”
“Gone?”
“Our vehicle took a pretty bad hit.”
Marcy looked down at the president’s daughter and referred to her by her codename. “How’s Goldilocks?”
“She’s alive, which is more than we can say for her girlfriends.”
Delacorte peered into the backseat and felt like she was about to retch. It was a gruesome sight. As she regained her composure she began to ask about their plan of action, but Fiore stopped her. He had a transmission coming over his earpiece and signaled for her to listen in.
“Echo One, this is Skybox. Do you copy? Over.”
“Roger that, Skybox. We copy. Over.”
“Echo One, we want you to evacuate the package to the west end of the bridge immediately. When you get there find a secure location and dig in. We’re mobilizing our tactical team and will get them to you ASAP. Over.”
Marcy, who had now bent down to examine Amanda, responded, “Negative, Skybox. The package needs immediate medical. There’s no time to wait for the tac team. Over.”
“Echo One, ambulances have been dispatched to multiple attack sites, including your location. Can you get the package to the west end of the bridge and seek medical attention there? Over.”
“Will do. Echo One out,” replied Delacorte, who then looked up at Tim and said, “How do you want to play this?”
“Let me get us some muscle so we can walk shotgun. I’ll be right back.”
Removing his credentials, Fiore ran up to two large men who had just helped extricate a woman from her badly damaged car and said, “U.S. Secret Service. I have a priority injury I need your help with over here.”
The men followed Tim back to where Amanda Rutledge lay on the litter next to the sheared SUV. “She don’t look so good,” one of them commented. “Are you sure you want to be moving her?”
“We don’t have a choice,” replied Marcy. “If we don’t get her to help soon, she’s going to die.”
“You’re the boss,” said the other man as he waved his buddy to the rear of the litter while he grabbed the handles near Amanda’s head.
“Gently now, fellas,” said Fiore. “On three. Ready? One. Two. Three.”
The men delicately lifted the litter as Tim and Marcy took up security positions on either side.
Looking down again at the young woman who lay unconscious on the litter, one of the men remarked, “Hey, is this who I think it is?”
Marcy was about to respond, when there came t
he sound of groaning metal followed by cries of terror. The group turned to see the number seven subway train on the upper deck behind them teetering on the edge of an enormous blast hole that revealed the river below and sky above.
A moment later, there was the horrible sound of metal scraping on metal as subway cars tumbled one after the other through the hole on the upper deck, straight down through the hole on the vehicle level and then plunged toward the East River below. It was one of the most horrific sights any of them had ever seen.
As if that wasn’t bad enough, suddenly, the bridge beneath their feet began to shake violently. Large pieces of metal buckled and yawed as the structure prepared to meet its watery death.
Not a man to mince words, Tim Fiore looked at his group and yelled, “Run!”
Twenty-Two
WASHINGTON, DC
This is a real bad time to be asking me for favors,” Stan Caldwell, the exhausted forty-two-year-old deputy director of the FBI, said into the phone.
“Who’s asking for favors?” replied Gary Lawlor, who had been both Caldwell’s mentor and his predecessor before moving over to DHS and the Office of International Investigative Assistance to head its covert counterterrorism initiative known as the Apex Project. “I’m asking you to do your job.”
“I am doing my job, and I’m up to my eyebrows in shit right now. Do you have any idea what the preliminary death toll is coming out of New York City?”
“It’s not good. I know. I’ve been getting the same reports you have.”
“You’re goddamn right it’s not good.”
“Stan, I’m not trying to make more work for you,” he said from his office across town, “but there are a couple of things here that don’t make sense, and I need you or somebody in your office to get to the bottom of it for me right now.”
“There’s nothing to get to the bottom of. Whoever your guy talked to at the JTTF office in New York is wrong. That’s all there is to it.”
“Don’t bullshit me, Stan. We’ve got too much history together. I want to know what the DIA’s role is in all of this. Why were they posing as JTTF agents for Sayed Jamal’s handoff?”
“Gary, I’m going to tell you one more time, and then I’ve gotta get back to my desk in the SIOC. The men your agent worked with in upstate New York are JTTF, plain and simple. Whoever pegged them as DIA is wrong. Tell your man that if he wants to help out in Manhattan, I suggest he grab a hard hat, attach himself to a search-and-rescue team, and start digging.” With that, Caldwell hung up the phone.
“Did he buy it?” asked FBI Director Martin Sorce.
“I don’t think so. Especially since he had to leave four messages over here before I called him back.”
Sorce turned to the other man in the room and said, “What should we do now?”
From behind his frameless glasses, the Defense Intelligence Agency’s chief of staff, Timothy Bedford, fixed the two FBI men with a steady gaze and replied, “Nothing. We’ll handle it from here.”
As Bedford stood up to leave he added, “And, gentlemen, please remember the national security implications of this issue. As far as anyone is concerned, our meeting never took place.”
Once Bedford had left the director’s conference room and the door had shut behind him, Sorce remarked, “I never did like that guy. It’s no wonder Waddell uses him to do his dirty work. What does he mean, this meeting never took place? At least two dozen people saw him come in here. What an asshole.”
Caldwell smiled. “The fact that his tie is knotted a bit too tight notwithstanding, what are we going to do about this?”
“What can we do?” asked Sorce as he stood up from his chair. “You saw the letter he was carrying from the president. We’ve been told in no uncertain terms to stay out of their operation.”
“And in the process lie to people we should be working with—in particular, Lawlor, who’s a former deputy director of the Bureau?”
“I don’t like it either, Stan, but that’s the way it is. Listen, we’ve got too much on our plates now anyway.”
“And it could skyrocket if Gary is right about a secondary attack,” said Caldwell as his attention was drawn to an urgent message coming in on his pager.
Sorce opened the door of the conference room and nodded to his staff that he was ready to return to the floor of the Strategic Information and Operations Center, or SIOC, for a quick morale booster. But before he left, he turned and said, “The next several hours are going to be absolutely critical, so let’s make sure we’re focused on doing our job.”
“Which is, using anything and anyone at our disposal to stop any further terrorist attacks, correct?” queried Caldwell as he looked up from the message on his pager.
The director’s ability to read people was the sine qua non of his successful leadership of the FBI. He knew what his deputy was driving at. “As long as you operate within the framework of the law and remain faithful to your oath of duty, you’ll have my full support.”
“Even if it means potentially pissing off the president?”
Sorce looked Caldwell in the eye and said, “For the record, I left the room after I told you to operate within the framework of the law—”
“And remain faithful to my oath of duty,” added Caldwell. “I got it.”
Twenty-Three
NEW YORK CITY
Scot Harvath slid his BlackBerry back into the plastic holder at his waist and said, “The official word from the FBI is that the JTTF duty officer has no idea what he’s talking about.”
Herrington looked at him and replied, “He seemed pretty sure of himself to me.”
“Even so, they suggest we find a search-and-rescue team and focus our efforts in that direction.”
“I think I’d rather focus my efforts on catching terrorists.”
“Me too,” said Harvath.
“So where are we?”
“Apparently on the corner of Ignorance and Bliss without a goddamn clue.”
“Why would the FBI cover up the DIA’s involvement in all of this?” asked Herrington.
“Who knows? I can’t figure any of these people out anymore. Subterfuge on top of subterfuge, all wrapped up with prime government red tape. It’s getting harder and harder to believe we’re all on the same side.”
“Agent Harvath,” yelled a voice from behind them. “Agent Harvath!”
They turned to see the JTTF duty officer running out of the revolving door of 26 Federal Plaza.
“I think I might have something for you,” he said.
“Like what?” asked Herrington.
“NYPD picked up a guy at the temporary PATH station at the World Trade Center just off Church Street. They think he was supposed to be one of the bombers.”
“What makes them think that?” asked Harvath.
“They found him with a backpack full of explosives that failed to go off. There’s nobody from our office who can get over there right away, so I’ve been authorized to give you first crack at him, if you want it.”
“Authorized by whom?”
“Stan Caldwell, deputy director of the FBI.”
As Scot and Bob walked toward the NYPD’s 1st Precinct on Ericsson Place, the street scenes were surreal. On some there were absolutely no signs of life. On others, entire avenues were taken over by throngs of people still pouring out of lower Manhattan, making their way north. As part of the city’s emergency plan, the subways had been shut down and many streets were restricted to emergency vehicles only. The drivers who were still out, searching for a way off the island, faced an absolute traffic nightmare, with most of their routes blocked by people who had abandoned their vehicles and had fled on foot.
To make matters worse, the sky was obliterated by a smoky haze, while a powdery gray ash, as if it were the cremated remains of the victims themselves, had begun falling across the city.
Harvath, though, tried to force the macabre scene from his mind by focusing on the matter at hand. “For some reason, Stan decided to t
hrow us a bone” was all Gary had said when Harvath called him to relay the update.
Turning to Herrington, Harvath wondered aloud, “First Caldwell says the JTTF duty officer doesn’t know what he’s talking about, and then he sends him chasing after us with an interrogation on a silver platter. It doesn’t make sense.”
“There’s a little too much fruit in this salad, but what do I know?” replied Herrington. “As far as I’m concerned, we shouldn’t look the gift whore in the mouth.”
While chatting with the arresting officers, Harvath was handed the evidence bag that contained the few items the man was carrying when he was picked up. His backpack was with the bomb squad and held nothing of interest other than the explosives that failed to go off.
Scot and Bob were shown into the brightly lit interrogation room. Cuffed to a chipped Formica table in the center was a Middle Eastern man in his early-to-mid-twenties. His face and arms were covered with cuts and bruises. Whether the injuries came from having been in the PATH tunnel when one of his colleagues’ devices went off or if he had “slipped” getting into the squad car, Harvath didn’t really care. What he wanted was information, and he hoped this bomb jockey had something that they could use.
“Masaa al-Khair,” said Harvath as he pulled the metal chair out from the other side of the table and sat down. “Kayf Haalak?”
The man looked up at Harvath and spit at his face.
Why were they all spitters?
Herrington, who had been trying to up the intimidation factor by leaning against the wall behind the prisoner, sprung forward, grabbed a handful of his hair and jerked his neck back so that he could stare into the man’s face. “My friend asked you how you were doing. It would be polite to respond.”
“Elif air ab tizak!” groaned the Middle Easterner.
Bob, who could also speak Arabic, was familiar with the insult involving the placement of an unfathomable number of male private parts into a certain orifice of his body and responded now with an even less tasteful insult of his own, “Elif air ab dinich.”
