by Tom Clancy
When he had driven this route the day before, he noticed a traffic camera on a streetlight at the southwest corner of Forty-second Street and Fifth Avenue. The camera faced north. There was another on Forty-second Street and Third Avenue facing south. Vandal, who was sitting in the passenger’s seat, and Georgiev both adjusted their sun visors to cover those windows. They’d be wearing ski masks when they went into the UN. The NYPD would probably review all the cameras in the area, and he didn’t want anyone to have a photographic record of who was in the van. The traffic cameras would tell them nothing. And while police might find a few tourists who had videotaped the van, Georgiev had intentionally approached the target from the setting sun. All any videotape would see was glare off the windshield. God bless the things he’d learned from the CIA.
They passed the New York Public Library, Grand Central Station, and the Chrysler Building. They reached First Avenue without incident. Georgiev timed his approach so they’d stop at the light. He’d made sure he was in the right-hand lane. When they made the left turn, he would be on the same side of the street as the United Nations, on the right. He glanced toward the north. The target area was just two blocks away. Almost straight ahead was the Secretariat Building, set back behind a circular courtyard and a fountain. A seven-foot-high iron fence fronted the complex for its four-block length. There were three guard booths spaced along the gates, behind them. NYPD officers patrolled the street. Across First Avenue, on the corner of Forty-fifth Street, was an NYPD command booth.
He had reconnoitered all of this the day before. And he’d studied photographs and videotape he’d taken months before that. He knew this area completely, from the location of every streetlight to every fire hydrant.
Georgiev waited until the DON’T WALK sign began flashing to his left. That meant they had six seconds until the light changed. Georgiev’s black ski mask was tucked between his legs. He pulled it out and slipped it on. The other men did likewise. They were already wearing thin white gloves so they wouldn’t leave fingerprints but could still handle their weapons.
The light turned.
So did Georgiev.
EIGHT
New York, New York
Saturday, 7:30 P.M.
Etienne Vandal pulled on his ski mask. Then he turned to receive his weapons from Sazanka, who was in the back of the van along with Barone and Downer. The seats had been removed and piled in a corner of the hotel garage. The windows had been painted over. The men were able to prepare in total secrecy. Barone holstered his own two automatics and picked up the Uzi. He would also be wearing the backpack containing tear gas and gas masks. If it became necessary to fight their way out, they’d have the gas as well as hostages.
It was difficult to twist very far because of the bulletproof vest, but Vandal preferred discomfort to vulnerability. The Japanese officer handed him two automatics and an Uzi.
Downer was kneeling beside the door on the driver’s side of the van. He placed his own weapons on the floor. A Swiss-made B-77 missile launcher lay across his shoulder. He had requested an American M47 Dragon, but this was the closest Ustinoviks could come. Downer had examined the short-range, lightweight antitank missile and had assured the team it would do the job. Vandal and the others hoped so. Without it, they’d be dead in the street. Barone was crouched beside the side door, ready to pull it open.
Vandal had already checked his weapons at the hotel. Now he sat and waited as the van continued to accelerate. It was here at last. The countdown they’d been working for, going over again and again for more than a year. In Vandal’s case, it was a moment he’d been awaiting for even longer than that. He was calm, even relieved, as the target area came into view.
The other men also seemed calm, especially Georgiev. Yet he always came across as a big, cold machine. Vandal knew very little about the man, but what he did know, he didn’t like or respect. Until Bulgaria drafted a new constitution in 1991, it was among the most repressive nations in the Soviet bloc. Georgiev helped the CIA recruit informants inside the government. Vandal would have understood if the man had struggled to overthrow the regime for principle. But Georgiev had worked for the CIA simply because they paid well. Though the goals were the same, that was the difference between a patriot and a traitor. As far as Vandal was concerned, a man who would betray his country would certainly betray his partners in crime. That was something Etienne Vandal knew about. His grandfather was a former Nazi collaborator who died in a French prison. It wasn’t only that Charles Vandal had betrayed his country. He’d been a member of the Mulot resistance group, which had been responsible for stealing and hiding art and treasures before the Germans could plunder them from French museums. Charles Vandal not only turned over Mulot and his team, but he led the Germans to a cache of French art.
They had less than one block to go. A few tourists who were still out at this hour turned to look at the speeding van. The vehicle shot past the UN library building on the south side of the plaza. Then Georgiev raced past the first guard booth with its green-tinted bulletproof glass and bored-looking officers. The booth was located behind the black iron fence, which was separated from the avenue by twenty feet of sidewalk. There were extra guards for tonight’s soiree and the gate was closed, but that didn’t matter. The target area was less than fifty feet to the north.
Georgiev passed the second guard booth. Then, clearing a fire hydrant just beyond, he swung the van to the right and floored the gas pedal. The vehicle shot across the sidewalk, hitting one pedestrian and running him under the driver’s-side wheel. Several others were knocked to the side. A moment later, the van ripped through a yard-high chain-link fence. The sound of the metal scraping the sides of the van drowned out the screams of injured pedestrians. The vehicle plowed through a small garden filled with trees and shrubs, Georgiev steering clear of the large tree on the south side of the garden. A few low-hanging branches from other trees smashed against the windshield and roof. Some branches snapped, others whipped back as the van pushed ahead.
To the north and south, UN police, members of the NYPD, and a handful of white-shirted State Department police were just beginning to respond to the breach. Guns drawn, radios in hand, they ran from the three guard booths along First Avenue, from the booth inside the courtyard to the north, and from the police outpost across the street.
It took just over two seconds for the van to drill through the garden and the row of hedges at the far end. The men in the back of the van braced themselves as Georgiev crushed down on the brake. The garden was separated from the circular plaza by a concrete barrier just over three feet high and nearly one foot thick. The flagpoles, which flew the flags of the 185 member nations, stood in a row beyond the barrier.
Georgiev and Vandal ducked low. They were expecting to lose the windshield. Barone slid the van door open. Sazanka lay down, prepared to spray covering fire if necessary. Downer leaned out over him and pointed his missile launcher at the thick wall. He aimed low to make sure he didn’t leave anything close to the ground. Then he fired.
There was an ear-ringing roar, and then a seven-foot-wide section of the concrete barrier was gone. Several large chunks flew across the plaza like cannonballs, some landing in the fountain, others bouncing across the drive. But most of the wall rose in a wide, fifty-foot-high plume of jagged white shards, then rained down like hail. Behind the wall, five of the tall white flagpoles snapped near the bases. They fell straight and hard and landed on the asphalt with a loud clang. Vandal could hear it even though his ears were still clogged from the explosion.
Even as the bits of concrete were still falling, Georgiev gunned the engine and pushed the van ahead. Timing was critical. They had to keep moving. He roared through the breach in the barrier, clipping the driver’s side on an outthrust of concrete, but didn’t stop. Downer had ducked back into the van, but Sazanka continued to lie in the open side door, ready to fire at anyone who shot at them. No one did. While they were part of the PKO and first conceived of this idea, the men had easily obt
ained a copy of the United Nations police guidelines. They were very explicit: No one was to act individually against a group. The threat was to be contained, if possible, by whatever personnel were on hand, but not challenged until sufficient units were made available. It was pure United Nations philosophy. It didn’t work in the international arena, and it wasn’t going to work here.
Georgiev headed northeast across the plaza. Though the windshield had shattered, it was still in the frame. Fortunately, there wasn’t much the Bulgarian needed to see. The van shot across the exit lane of the courtyard and hopped onto the lawn that led to the General Assembly Building. Georgiev sped east around the Japanese Peace Bell. As Vandal ducked again, the van crashed through the large plate glass windows that opened onto the courtyard from the small lobby. The van slammed into the statue of El Abrazo de Paz, a stylized human figure “embracing peace” that stood just inside. The statue fell over, and the van rode up on it; that was as far as the van was going. But that was also as far as they needed the van to go. By the time guards and attendees at the delegates’ soiree first became aware of the disturbance, the five men were already out of the van. Georgiev fired a short burst at the guard who was posted outside the corridor that led to the staff elevators. The young man spun and fell, the first UN casualty. Vandal wondered whether he’d get a peace statue in his honor as well.
The five men ran down the corridor and swung onto the escalators. The escalators had been shut down by security personnel. That was something they hadn’t anticipated, not that it mattered. They quickly ran up the two flights, then turned to their left. The stalled escalator was the only form of resistance they met. What Germany had proved in Poland in 1939, what Saddam Hussein had proved in Kuwait in 1990, is that there is no effective defense against a well-planned lightning strike. There’s only recovery and then a counterattack. And in this case, neither would be of any use.
Less than ninety seconds after turning off First Avenue, the five men were inside the heart of the Secretariat Building. They ran alongside the tall windows that overlooked the courtyard. The fountain had been shut down to allow clear visbility into the Secretariat windows. Traffic had been stopped, and tourists were being herded onto side streets. Police and security forces were everywhere now.
Seal off the building, contain the problem, Vandal thought. They were so damned predictable.
There were also several guards running toward them. The three men and one woman were wearing bulletproof vests and listening to their radios. They had their guns drawn and were obviously headed toward the Security Council chamber, which was on their right. They had probably been sent to evacuate the delegates in case that was the target.
The young guards never made it. Upon seeing the intruders, they stopped. Then, like any soldier or police officer who had never been in combat, they snapped into the only thing they knew: training mode. From the United Nations security force manual, Vandal knew that in a showdown situation, they would attempt to spread out and present a less concentrated target, take cover if possible, and attempt to disable the enemy.
Georgiev and Sazanka didn’t give them the chance. Firing their Uzis from the hip, they sliced across the guards’ thighs and dropped them virtually where they stood. Guns and radios clattered on the tile floor. As the wounded guards moaned, the two men walked on, firing a second burst into the head of each one. They stopped a few yards from the bodies. Georgiev picked up two of the radios that had skidded across the floor.
“Come on,” Vandal said and hurried on.
Barone and Downer joined him, and the five men continued forward. Now the only things that stood between them and the Security Council chambers were four dead guards and a blood-slicked floor.
NINE
New York, New York
Saturday, 7:34 P.M.
All the parents in the correspondents’ area heard and felt the crash downstairs. Since there were no windows in the room, they couldn’t be sure exactly where or what it was.
Paul Hood’s first thought was that there had been an explosion. That was also the conclusion of several parents who wanted to go and make sure the children were all right. But Mr. Dillon walked in then. The guard asked everyone to stay where they were and to remain calm.
“I just went across the hall to the Security Council,” Dillon said. “The children are fine. Most of the delegates are also there waiting for the secretary-general. Security personnel are on the way to evacuate the kids, the delegates, and then you folks. If you stay calm, everyone will be fine.”
“Do you have any idea what happened?” one of the parents asked.
“I’m not sure,” Mr. Dillon said. “It looks like a van ran through the barrier and into the courtyard. I could see it out the window. But no one knows—”
He was interrupted by several pops from below. It sounded like gunfire. Dillon got on his radio.
“Station Freedom-Seven to base,” he said.
There was a lot of yelling and noise. Then someone on the other end said, “There’s been a breach, Freedom-Seven. Intruders unknown. Go to Everest-Six, Code Red. Do you have that?”
“Everest-Six, Code Red,” Dillon said. “I’m on my way.” He clicked off the radio and headed toward the door. “I’m going back to the Security Council chambers to wait for the other guards. Please, all of you — just stay here.”
“How long until the other guards arrive?” one of the fathers shouted.
“A few minutes,” Mr. Dillon replied.
He left. The door shut with a solid click. Except for shouts from somewhere outside the building, everything was quiet.
Suddenly, one of the fathers started toward the door. “I’m going to get my daughter,” he said.
Hood stepped between the larger man and the door.
“Don’t,” Hood said.
“Why?” the man demanded.
“Because the last thing security, medics, and fire personnel need is people getting in the way,” Hood said. “Besides, they called this a code red situation. That probably means there’s been a major security breach.”
“All the more reason to get our kids out!” one of the other fathers said.
“No,” Hood replied. “This is international soil. American laws and niceties don’t apply. The guards will probably shoot unidentified personnel.”
“How do you know that?”
“I worked for a federal intelligence agency after I left Los Angeles,” Hood told them. “I’ve seen people gunned down for being in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
The man’s wife came over and took his arm. “Charlie, please. Mr. Hood is right. Let the authorities handle this.”
“But our daughter is out there,” Charlie said.
“So is mine,” Hood said. “And getting myself killed isn’t going to help her.” It hit him just then that Harleigh was out there, and she really was in danger. He looked at Sharon, who was standing to the right, in the corner. He walked over and hugged her.
“Paul,” she whispered. “I–I think we should be with Harleigh.”
“We will be, soon,” he said.
There were footsteps in the hall followed by the distinctive phup-phup-phup of an automatic. The shots were followed by clattering, cries, shouts, and more footsteps. Then the hall was silent.
“Whose side was that?” Charlie asked no one in particular.
Hood didn’t know. He left Sharon and walked toward the door. He crouched low in case someone fired and motioned for everyone in the room to stand back, clear of the door. Then he reached up and slowly turned the silver knob. He eased the door open.
There were four bodies lying in the corridor between the correspondents’ room and the Security Council. They belonged to UN security personnel. Whoever had shot them was gone, though they’d left bloody tracks in their wake. Tracks that led to the Security Council.
Hood experienced a strange flashback. He felt like Thomas Davies, a firefighter he used to play softball with in Los Angeles. One afternoon, Da
vies had gotten a call that his own home was burning. The man knew what to do, he knew what was happening, yet he couldn’t react.
Hood shut the door and walked toward the desks.
“What is it?” Charlie asked.
Hood didn’t answer him. He was trying to get himself moving.
“Dammit, what happened?” Charlie shouted.
Hood said, “Four guards are dead, and whoever shot them has gone into the Security Council chambers.”
“My baby,” one of the mothers sobbed.
“I’m sure they’re all right for now,” Hood said.
“Yeah, and you were sure they’d be all right if we stayed in here!” Charlie yelled.
Charlie’s rage brought Hood out of his shock. “If you’d been outside, you’d be dead now,” Hood said. “Mr. Dillon wouldn’t have let you into the chambers, and you’d’ve been killed with the guards.” He took a breath to calm himself. Then he slipped his cell phone from the pocket of his blazer. He punched in a number.
“Who are you calling?” Sharon asked.
Her husband finished entering the number. He looked at her and touched her cheek. “Someone who won’t give a shit that this is international territory,” he replied. “Someone who can help us.”
TEN
Bethesda, Maryland
Saturday, 7:46 P.M.
Mike Rodgers was going through a Gary Cooper phase. Not in his real life but in his movie life — though at the moment, the two lives were entirely codependent.
Op-Center’s forty-five-year-old former deputy director, now acting director, had never been confused or insecure. He had his nose broken four times playing college basketball because he saw the basket and went for it, damning the Torpedoes — as well as the Badgers, the Ironmen, the Thrashers, and the other teams he played. When he’d served two tours of duty in Vietnam and commanded a mechanized brigade in the Gulf War, he was given objectives and had met them all. Every damn one of them. On his first mission with Striker, to North Korea, he’d kept a fanatical officer from nuking Japan. When he returned from Vietnam, he’d even found time to get a Ph.D. in world history. But now—
