by Jack Mars
“Of course he did. We’ve had an internal leak for a while. Six months, maybe more.”
Luke ran a hand through his hair. A leak was bad news. He looked up and down the hallway. At the end of the hall, near the water foundations, a small knot of intelligence agents were gathered, murmuring quietly. One of them glanced his way, then covered what he was saying with his hand.
Luke was growing tired. He needed to find his bug-out bag. It was almost time for an eye opener.
“Who is it?” he said.
Don seemed reluctant to speak. “Luke…”
“Come on, Don. I’m a big boy. I can take it.”
“I haven’t been able to nail it down. But I have my suspicions. The writing’s been on the wall about SRT for months. We’ve got a couple of people who might be looking to jump ship before we go under.”
“Name one.”
“Trudy Wellington.”
“Don…”
Don cut him off. “Right. I know what you’re going to say. She’s our best intel officer. You’re right about that. And you were sleeping with her for a while. I know all about it. So was I. I regret that now. If Margaret ever found out, I think I would die. But it’s more than that. I told Trudy some things I shouldn’t have. Pillow talk. I assume you know how that goes. I’m afraid I might have made SRT an open book for others to read. Believe me, I feel very foolish.”
Luke didn’t respond. He couldn’t think of a single thing to say.
“Luke, I feel old.”
“Don—”
“There may be others,” Don said. “Besides Trudy. Things have gotten out that even she couldn’t have known. We sweep headquarters for bugs every week. We encrypt all of our communications. Our network is locked down. And still…”
His voice trailed off for a moment.
“SRT has become a viper’s nest, Luke. There’s no one I can trust anymore. You know what? Part of why I called you last night was so we could ride together again. I wanted it to feel like old times. Maybe we would fly in and put the smack-down on the bad guys one last time.”
Luke took a deep breath. He felt like this phone call could go on for another hour, and he might not say another word.
“So here’s the part you’ve been waiting for,” Don said. “Know that I have no choice in this whatsoever. It comes from on high.”
Don’s voice changed. Suddenly, he sounded like he was reading from prepared remarks. “Luke, you’re suspected of committing multiple felonies in the course of performing your duties. As such, you are formally relieved of your command at the Special Response Team, effective immediately. You have been placed on administrative suspension pending an investigation into your actions. You may be subpoenaed to testify on your own behalf. Your salary and benefits are intact during this time, but that’s conditional and depends on your full cooperation with the investigation.”
Luke finally found his voice. “I was on a leave of absence,” he said.
“You’ve been the best investigator, the best counter-terrorism agent, and one of the best soldiers I’ve ever worked with,” Don said. “Please surrender your badge and your service firearm to Trudy. Any personal firearms in your possession will require the use of a private concealed carry license, if you have one.”
“I do,” Luke said.
“I’m sorry about this, Luke. I really am.”
The call ended. Seconds later, Luke couldn’t recall how he had signed off. He might have just hung up. He stood in the hallway for a few moments, the phone still pressed to his ear. Then he floated back into the office. He didn’t seem to be in control of his legs. His feet were far away.
Trudy was there. She stared at him.
“What did Don say?”
A war of emotions raged inside him, and he needed to get it under control. He didn’t want to be that person. Jealous. Angry. Hurt. But it was him. He was that person. He was a married man, and yet he felt burned by this woman. He had thought there was something between them. The idea that she was just maneuvering… The idea that she was also with Don, maybe even at the same time… Who else was she with? Where was she passing agency secrets? He needed time to digest all of this.
Luke faked a smile, and the smile, all by itself, rallied him a little. It almost felt real. “Don said to hang in there and keep plugging. They want to suspend me, but he’s decided to fight it. You know Don. He’s a tough old bird.”
“He did?” she said. “He decided to fight your suspension?”
Reading her face was almost too easy. She didn’t believe a word of it.
“Yeah,” Luke said. “He changed his mind about the whole thing while we were talking. He knows it’s wrong. Don and I go way back, and he’s not just going to let that history drop. So I’m still in the game, at least for now. What do you have for me?”
She hesitated. “Well…”
Luke snapped his fingers. “Trudy, our backs are against the wall. We need to stay sharp. Vans, trucks, what happened with all that?”
She picked up her smartpad. “There’s been movement. The local cops tossed the hot dog truck. You were right. The Russian was operating a full-service restaurant for pimps and prostitutes. Hot dogs, Italian sausages, potato chips, Red Bull, Pepsi, Mountain Dew. Also oxycontin, methamphetamine, ecstasy, tranquilizers, diazepam… you name it. They found him in the back of the truck on a mattress with two prostitutes. Don’t get too excited. All three of them were asleep with their clothes on.”
“What else?”
“The stolen ambulance turned up in the parking lot of a meat warehouse in Newark, New Jersey. The Newark police went in. Ghastly. The warehouse doubled as a storage facility for human organs, mostly livers and kidneys. In a room at the back, they found two sets of lungs being kept alive inside sealed plastic domes. An apparatus forced oxygenated air into the lungs and the lungs were breathing. One cop described it as”—she glanced at her pad—“like giant pink meat wings.”
“What about the laundry truck?”
“Nothing so far. We called the company, Dun-Rite Laundry Services. The owner was there. He went outside and counted his trucks. He said they were all accounted for. Twenty-one trucks. He also said they only use step-up vans—he bought an entire fleet of converted bread trucks. They don’t use small delivery vans like the one we picked up on video. He invited us to send someone out and take a look.”
“Did we?”
She nodded. “An agent is on his way out there now.”
“So someone copied his company logo and put it on their own van.”
“Yes. And Dun-Rite has a contract at Center. So a van with that logo wouldn’t necessarily arouse suspicion if it was parked at the hospital.”
“We need to find that van,” Luke said.
“We’re looking, Luke.”
“Look harder.”
He walked away from her. The move was abrupt and gave away too much. It told her everything she needed to know. He moved over to Swann’s station. Swann was still working three screens simultaneously.
“What do you got, Swann?”
“The plot thickens,” Swann said. “Ali Nassar has an entire folder in his computer dedicated to drone technology. He’s got PDF files of full-color brochures. He’s got hundreds of photographs and bird’s-eye point-of-view videos. He’s got spreadsheet comparisons of specs, payloads, weaponry, speed, altitude. He’s either been buying drones or writing a term paper on them.”
“How about the phone?”
Swann nodded. “The phone. His call history has been completely wiped. He’s got an app that erases his history automatically as he goes. We can get it back, but we’d have to go to his service provider with a warrant.”
“You can’t hack them?”
“I could, but what’s the point? It would take me twelve hours, and by then whatever’s going to happen will have already happened. Anyway, we’ve got a more pressing matter. Just after midnight last night, Nassar bought a one-way plane ticket to Venezuela. It’s for 2:30 aft
ernoon, JFK nonstop to Caracas, executive class. The boarding pass was on his phone. The receipt and an extra copy of the boarding pass were on his computer hard drive.”
“Venezuela?” Luke said.
Swann shrugged. “We don’t have an extradition treaty with Venezuela.”
“Sure, but why not go home to Iran?”
Swann turned around. His eyes goggled behind his glasses. “What if the attack fails? Last I heard, they still have firing squads in Iran. That gives getting fired for incompetence a whole different meaning.”
“The point is he’s leaving the country,” Luke said.
“Yes he is. Today.”
“And he bought the ticket right around the time someone was stealing the radioactive materials.”
Swann nodded. “My guess is he bought it right after he learned they had successfully pulled off the heist.”
“We got him,” Luke said. He clapped Swann on the shoulder. “Good work.”
Luke turned, and Begley was standing in the doorway. Two large men in suits flanked him. Luke glanced around the room. Ed Newsam stood in a corner by the window, scanning the street below and drinking a bottle of orange juice. Trudy was simultaneously on her pad and her cell phone. A couple of local SRT guys were at desks, pecking away at laptops.
“Stone, why are you here?” Begley said. The room quieted when he spoke. Everyone looked at him.
Luke smiled. “Ron, for once I’m glad to see you. We’ve had a breakthrough. Ali Nassar made a quarter of a million dollar bank transfer from an offshore account to Ken Bryant, the dead janitor at Center. Nassar has been spending millions of dollars on military-grade robotic drones. And last night, while the thieves were hitting Center, he booked a plane ticket to Venezuela for this afternoon.”
Begley shook his head. “None of that impresses me.”
“We need to bring him in, Ron. We can’t let him leave the country. If he makes it to Venezuela, it’s going to be hard to get him back here.”
Begley looked at Ed. “A seizure, Newsam? That’s funny. I had them check your personnel record. You don’t have a seizure disorder. You were never even injured in Afghanistan.”
Ed barely moved. He raised his index finger. “Incorrect. I was injured twice. Cracked ribs, a concussion, and a broken arm one time when our Humvee hit an IED and rolled. The guy next to me lost his leg.” He shrugged. “Shot in the calf the other time. The bullet ripped a nice chunk out. They had to take meat from my ass to rebuild the muscle. To this day, the ass meat is a different shade of brown from the leg meat. You can see the line where they’re attached. You want to look at it?”
Begley said nothing.
“Anyway, those sound like injuries to me. I’ve got two Purple Hearts, so I guess Uncle Sam agrees.”
“I meant you never had a brain injury.”
Ed looked out the window again. “That’s different.”
“Begley, are you listening to me?” Luke said. “We have the man who bankrolled the terror cell. And we know what the delivery system is. It’s a drone attack. And that means there’s a good chance it won’t happen here. There’s no room in Manhattan to fly the kind of drones we’re talking about. We’re looking at a very targeted attack, a dirty bomb delivered to a specific enclosed place by a drone. And the drone will probably fly low, beneath radar detection.”
Begley smiled. “You have no idea what you’re talking about, Stone. The whole thing would be funny if you weren’t so serious about it. We have the intel we need. We know what the targets are. Ibrahim Abdulraman, remember him? The man with no fingerprints? His cousin happens to be in prison in Egypt. They’ve been interrogating him for over an hour.”
“Torturing him,” Stone said.
“Not much different from what you two did, is it?”
“It is different,” Stone said. “We broke a man’s fingers to get a computer password, which was instantly verifiable information.”
“There are three possible targets,” Begley said. “The chosen target is up to the discretion of the attackers, and depends on conditions at the site of attack. The first target is the below-ground restaurant level of Grand Central Terminal at lunch time. It’s always wall-to-wall people. We’re treating this as the most likely scenario. We’ve got men with Geiger counters at every entrance to the terminal.”
Luke shook his head. “You can’t trust it. They waterboard people in Egypt. You know that. They electrocute them. They hang them from the wrists. They impale them on iron rods. The subjects will say anything to make it stop.”
Begley went on, ignoring him. “Second most likely is the PATH train from Hoboken to Manhattan. Those trains are crowded, and they’re under the Hudson River for a long time. Same deal. We have Geiger counters in place at all entrances on both sides of the river. The third target involves causing a car accident in the Midtown Tunnel, then setting off the bomb after the traffic backs up. We’re checking all cars on both sides of the tunnel, but this is the least likely target. There are really too many variables at play to make an attack feasible. See what I mean, Stone? We’ve got the whole thing under control.”
“You’re wrong, Begley. You can’t trust intel you get from torture.”
“No. You’re wrong. You know why I told you the targets? Just so you would see exactly how wrong you are. You’ve been chasing phantoms. You’re out of the loop, and you’re under suspension. So go home and let the grown-ups handle this, okay?”
Begley turned to the two men flanking him. “I want this man, and the man over by the window, escorted from the building. Give them three minutes to gather up whatever belongings they have, and then get them out of here.”
Begley left, leaving silence in his wake.
Luke stood in the middle of the room, staring at the two men who would escort him out. The men watched him, their faces impassive. Luke glanced around the room. Everyone was looking at him.
Chapter 19
8:19 a.m.
East Side of Manhattan
“I guess we’re not high priority anymore,” Ed Newsam said.
The black SUV sat parked just outside the concrete barriers of the 34th Street heliport, where they had come in nearly five hours before. Morning traffic buzzed past them on FDR Drive. The chopper wasn’t on the pad, so they sat in the back seat of the SUV and waited. As they watched, a big white Sikorsky came in over the river, an executive helicopter.
It landed, and a group of outrageous young people climbed out. One man wore tight black jeans and no shirt. His hair was blue and spiked, and the entirety of his scrawny upper body was covered in tattoos. Another very thin man wore an electric blue suit, with a matching bowler hat on top. The three women with them were dressed like prostitutes from two decades before, in mini-skirts, halter tops, and five-inch heels. The whole group were stumbling, laughing, and dropping things. They seemed drunk.
Two very large older men, one white and one black, both completely bald, walked behind the young people. The big men were conventionally dressed in black T-shirts and blue jeans.
They all piled into a white stretch limousine. In a moment, the limo pulled into traffic and disappeared. Their helicopter was already gone. It had touched down, disgorged them, and taken off again.
“You worried?” Luke said.
Newsam was slumped back in the seat, his normal downtime look. “About what?”
Luke shrugged. “I don’t know. Losing your job?”
Newsam smiled. “I don’t think they’ll fire me. It’s politics, man. Somebody high up is protecting Ali Nassar, that’s all. Listen, we got the right guy. You know it and I know it. If a dirty bomb goes off today, God forbid, heads will roll, but they won’t be our heads. A couple of people in the Middle East will die in air strikes. Ali Nassar will turn up smoked in an alleyway in Caracas. None of it will make the newspapers. You and I will quietly get bonuses to help us keep our mouths shut. We’ll never understand any of it, mostly because it doesn’t make sense. And the person pulling the strings will go
on the same as before.”
Luke grunted. Cynical talk was widespread among intelligence agents. It wasn’t something that Luke usually got into. He had always tried to keep it simple. We were the good guys. Over there were the bad guys. That worldview was the protective veil that he wrapped around himself. He had to admit it was getting a workout this morning.
“And if a bomb doesn’t go off?”
Ed’s smile broadened. “I guess they’ll say we worked over a nice man who’s just trying to make the world a better place. What does it matter? You saw those kids come in a minute ago? Rock stars, TV stars, who knows? My little girls would probably know them on sight. You see those big guys with them? Bodyguards. I did a little bit of that when I first came back stateside. The hours are terrible because the kids are like werewolves. They only come out at night. But the money is good. I would do it again, if I had to. A man like me, who doesn’t get rusty, has a lot of options in this world.”
Luke’s phone rang. He glanced at the number. It was Becca.
“It’s my wife. I’m going to take this.”
“Go ahead,” Ed said. “I’m gonna take a nap.”
“Hi, babe,” Luke said as he hit the green button. He tried to put on a cheerful voice, more for her benefit than his own.
“Luke?”
“Yeah,” he said. “Hi.”
“Sweetheart, it’s good to hear your voice,” she said. “I’ve been worried about you, but I didn’t want to call. It’s been all over the television. That’s your case, right? The stolen nuclear materials?”
“Yes. It is.”
“How is it going?”
“I’m off the case as of twenty minutes ago. I’m actually on my way home.”
“I’m glad to hear it. Is that good or bad?”
“It’s office politics, I guess you’d say. But it’ll definitely be nice to get back and put this night behind me. What are you up to?”
“Well, Gunner and I have decided to take the day off and have a play date. He had a lot of trouble getting back to sleep last night, and so did I. We want you here with us, Luke. We want you to quit that silly job once and for all. So I figured Gunner has missed a total of four days of school all year, and I have plenty of personal days, so why not call in as well?”
