by Rick Mofina
“Were you interested?”
John shook his head.
“People are entitled to their opinions,” John said. “You can argue that US foreign policy is flawed and Jerricko’s friends make good points, but it doesn’t mean I should rush out and cut somebody’s head off. That’s doesn’t improve things. I think these guys are off-the-chart crazy with their need for revenge.”
Kate nodded.
“So,” Bert said, “when we saw the news about Jerricko and the bank manager, the robbery and the bomb vests in Queens, we were so ashamed and disgusted. That’s why we’re going to the FBI this morning—in case we can answer any questions that could help them.”
“They don’t know you’re coming?”
“No. We’ll show up and tell them what we just told you,” Bert said. “I’m certain they’ll be very interested in talking with us. Last night, when my cousin in California called about you, I’m thinking, I must have the truth be known that our family denounces this and we have no part in it. That is why we’re speaking to you first, so the press hears this, too. Please, you must understand.”
“I do.”
“Okay, so here’s the thing,” John said. “Jerricko was trying to recruit me to their cause because I’m a chemist. They said if I helped them it would be part of something ‘really big, glorious and monumental,’ and that was going to happen very soon.”
“Did they mean the robbery using the bomb vests?”
“No,” John said. He looked around nervously, but Kate gave him a reassuring smile, nodding at him that it was okay to continue. “I think the robbery’s only the beginning.”
“Beginning of what?”
“I’m not sure. Something bigger,” Bert said, glancing at his watch. “We have to go now.”
“Wait,” Kate said. “I need to see some ID, so I know who I’m talking to?”
Unease spread across the older man’s face.
“My editors will think I made this all up,” Kate said. “I need to confirm your identity, but we won’t publish your names. I’ll protect you as sources, but I need to see ID.”
After a moment’s hesitation, both men produced wallets with photo ID. The father’s real name was Walid Sattar, and his son was Omar. After she photographed their IDs and made notes, both men got up and disappeared into Grand Central’s chaos.
Kate sat there for a moment absorbing what she’d just heard. It was astounding. Then she left and hurried down East Forty-Second Street half a block to the lobby of the Grand Hyatt, glad she’d alerted the photo desk to her meeting. Nothing was going to slip through her fingers this time.
Kate sat on one of the cushioned benches near the registration desk. Two minutes later, Strobic joined her. During her meeting at the Grabbin Run with Bert and his son, Strobic had positioned himself unseen at the next food vendor, taking pictures of Walid and Omar.
Strobic showed them to her, a series of crisp shots, clearly identifying the faces of the men, frame after frame. Kate would protect their identities, but if anything happened, she now had evidence of the meeting.
“Good work, Stan,” she said as her phone rang.
“Kate Page, Newslead.”
“Kate, it’s Thane in the newsroom. You’re with Strobic, right?”
“Yeah, what’s up?”
“We need you to get up to the Blue Coyote Mountains, about two or three hours north. I’ll get you directions. We’ve got a major break.”
“What happened?”
“They found Dan Fulton’s body.”
56
Coyote Mountains, New York
Lori kept waking, sleeping and waking again.
We’re still alive.
She lay there in the twilight, shivering under the vest as Billy slept with his head on her chest. Birdsong echoed with the rustle, cluck and screech of small creatures moving through the forest. Lori listened for sounds of any approaching threat until the sun rose, bathing the woods in light and the horror churning inside her erupted.
Dan’s dead! Oh God! Dan!
She covered her mouth with both hands to silence her sobs, but her anguished spasms woke Billy. Cold replaced his warmth against her as he went behind a tree a few yards away and relieved himself.
Lori regained a degree of composure and studied him closely, touching his cheek when he returned to her side. His eyes were reddened because he’d cried much of the night. Stress lines were carved deep into his face.
“How are you doing, sweetie?”
Billy shrugged.
“Do you want to talk?”
He shook his head, but then he nodded.
“What is it, honey?”
“Did they really kill Dad?”
Lori stared into his eyes and nodded, pulling him to her and holding him as they both wept. She was numb. None of this was real. How could it be real?
Dan, tell me. What am I supposed to do now?
When their tears subsided, she brushed his cheeks.
“We just have to keep going, okay?”
“But how can we, without Dad?”
“I know, honey. I know it’s hard, but we have to do this. Dad would want us to keep going.”
He nodded.
“Do you think they killed Sam, too?”
“No, I don’t. I believe in my heart that Sam’s okay and he’s waiting to see you again.”
Billy considered her words carefully as he absorbed them.
“I’m thirsty,” he said. “And hungry.”
“Me, too. Let’s see what’s in here.”
She hefted the backpack, positioned it on her lap and pulled out the bottled water, which she passed to Billy. As he drank she opened a package of twelve chocolate-iced donuts. They ate two each, careful to save the rest.
“Mom, what are we going to do?”
“We’re going to find a way out of here.”
Lori pulled out the laptop and turned it on. The computer came to life, and she immediately tried to get on to the internet. But it was futile. There was no signal and no capability to find one. They had no way of reaching help.
“Can I have another donut?” Billy asked.
“I’ll give you half of one. We need to save the rest.”
As Billy ate, Lori scrutinized the laptop with heightened intensity, searching for anything that might help. Other than a couple of standard icons, the desktop was clean. She went on to the drives, found several folders and began opening them. Reading as fast as she could. One held files that contained detailed maps of New York City. Another file contained a list of names, addresses and emails for several people. Most were in the United States, some were in Canada, Germany, Australia, Britain, Kuwait, Iraq and Syria.
Another file contained four videos.
She played the first and was greeted by the face of Percy. The running time was a few seconds. She kept the volume low, hit Play, and Percy spoke directly into the camera.
“Greetings from paradise. At this moment, you’re asking why. We’ll enlighten you. Because your elected government continuously perpetuates atrocities around the world, your support of them makes you, the people of America, responsible, just as I am and my brothers are responsible for protecting and avenging our people. Until we feel safe from your oppression, you will be our targets. What you have witnessed in New York is only the beginning. More acts will come and they will be stronger until you cease committing atrocities. Allah is great.”
The three other videos showed the other captors making similar short statements.
“Those don’t sound good. What are they?” Billy asked.
Lori knew but didn’t answer.
She opened more files, finding another map. This one was of Manhattan, clearly marked with four locations, the Staten
Island Ferry, Times Square, Penn Station and Grand Central Terminal. A name was affixed to each location, causing the tiny hairs on the back of Lori’s neck to stand up.
“Oh my God, no!”
“What is it, Mom?”
She opened files containing notes, one detailing how the group had planned to give the money from the bank operation in Queens and names of “young American believers” to a network, so that it could fund more “glorious operations.”
Lori shut off the laptop and took several deep breaths.
“We’ve got to get out of here and warn people.”
“Warn what people about what, Mom?”
“Something very bad is going to happen and we’ve got to stop it. Come on, we’ve got to find our way out.”
As they stood to leave, they froze.
Voices carried from the distance.
57
Coyote Mountains, New York
Daylight slowly began filling the forest.
As it fingered through the trees, Cutty could feel it needling him for his failure. His prisoner had defeated him and escaped.
The cuts, the bruising and the fractures he’d suffered from her surprise attack only fed his rage. He was the biggest, the strongest of the group, and he’d had his ass handed to him by a stupid nonbelieving woman.
His flashlight raked through the waning darkness as he and Percy hunted Lori down. Jerricko and Vic were hunting together another forty or fifty yards to the north. Both teams communicated to each other by way of signal bursts from their flashlights.
Cutty’s thoughts shifted to his family and the images his relatives had sent him from northern Iraq. The dead little babies, their mouths agape, buried in the rubble of shelters destroyed by American drones. His anger warmed his blood as he nursed his humiliation at losing his prisoner. He would personally exact payback from that bitch—right in front of her kid. He’d get Percy to record it before he and the others took their turn.
Problem was, Cutty was not sure if he would enjoy that more than just cutting off their heads and showing the world the price to be paid for oppressive regimes.
Soon every person on the planet will know me and my brothers and the glory we’ve attained.
As the sky brightened, Percy signaled—he had something.
* * *
With the rising sun Percy saw a flash of color in the distance.
He signaled to the others, then got on the ground and took a position, raising his small binoculars. Deep among the branches and needles, he saw a postage-stamp size patch of blue. He couldn’t discern movement or details, only that whatever the object was, it didn’t belong there.
“It’s them,” Percy whispered to Cutty, who’d joined him.
Percy, who was the best shot of the group, raised his gun and sighted the target, easily more than a hundred yards off. But he knew his gun’s limitations.
A thought arrived.
Percy lowered his gun and reached into his pocket for his cell phone, wishing right now that he had Vic’s satellite phone. Cell service was spotty, but there were brief periods when his cell worked, and if God willed it, this would be one of them.
“What’re you doing?” Cutty asked.
“I’m trying the code. Let’s blow them up!”
“But Vic and Jerricko said she’s got the laptop.”
“Yeah, well, I say we take our chances and kill them now. What good is the laptop going to do us if they get away? Besides, we’ve got the money. Vic’s got the sat phone. We know what to do, so let’s get on with it.” Percy held up his phone. “Look, I’ve got a signal! I’m making the call.”
58
Coyote Mountains, New York
The air ambulance helicopter whipped dirt and stones into the air, forcing emergency crews on the ground to turn away as it landed in a small clearing on the jagged hilltop.
Less than an hour earlier, after the Ferring brothers had gotten down from the ridge, Sidney Ferring had made a 911 call to a Greene County emergency services dispatcher who then set events in motion, alerting several agencies to a mountain trauma rescue.
On the scene now as the chopper put down were Greene County deputies, state police out of Cairo, forest rangers, and a K-9 unit that was checking the cabin and the trail to the outbuilding.
Crouching as they left the chopper with medical bags, the flight paramedic and flight nurse stepped down the hillside to join Greene County paramedics who’d arrived earlier with a scoop stretcher and gear.
They’d cleared away the branches and had set out working on the male patient when the chopper team arrived at the base of the slope.
“We’ve got vitals! He’s got multiple GSWs, multiple fractures, maybe spinal injuries,” one of the paramedics shouted. “Lost a lot of blood. Doesn’t look good.”
As they worked to get the patient on the stretcher and start an IV, one of the county paramedics shouted, “Stop!”
Everyone halted.
“He’s wearing a bomb vest! Everybody step back!”
Amid the blood-caked dirt and needles covering the patient, a canvas vest with various compartments, wires and a blinking red light of a battery pack was now visible.
The teams backed off several yards, using a rock formation as a shield as they shouted over the thud of the waiting helicopter.
“He’s that bank manager from Queens!” one of the county paramedics said.
“If we don’t move him now, he’ll die,” the flight paramedic called out.
“Yeah, but if that vest blows, we could all die! We need the bomb squad,” the flight nurse said.
“There’s no time. He’ll bleed out before they get here!”
“Wait! One of the deputies up top did bomb disposal work when he was with the army or marines.” The county paramedic shouted for help into his radio.
Less than a minute later, Greene County deputy sheriff Kyle O’Mara, who’d served with the US Army in Baghdad, hurried down the hill and huddled behind the rock with the paramedics, listening and looking toward the patient as they told him what they’d found.
“I’ll take a look,” O’Mara shouted then moved toward the patient.
He knelt over the bleeding man, studying the vest. The packs looked to him like C-4, which was material that was hard to obtain. He sniffed them for the characteristic smell of C-4 but was still not certain. He knew C-4 would not explode when moved or dropped and given the man’s injuries, he likely tumbled off the edge of the climb without detonating the bomb. Still, he was wary. The arming mechanism looked genuine and rigged to a remote detonation pack, but it wasn’t that sophisticated by his estimation.
With the helicopter thundering, the vest’s battery light ticking down and blood oozing from the patient, O’Mara knew he had to make a decision now.
Betting his life, he reached for the wire he believed would disarm the vest.
“It’s just you and me, buddy,” O’Mara said as he pinched a yellow wire, getting ready to pull it. “Our Father, who art in Heaven...”
59
Coyote Mountains, New York
Percy pressed the send button on his phone, but nothing happened.
No flash. No bang. No nothing.
He looked at the screen for an answer. He still had a signal, so he tried the number again.
Nothing happened. The blue patch was still there, tiny among the woods in the distance.
“What the hell?” Percy thumbed the send key repeatedly.
“What’d you think you’re doing?” Vic said, keeping his voice low as he arrived with Jerricko.
“I found them.” Percy indicated the colored square far off. “And I’m going to kill them.”
“Stop! You were ordered not to detonate the vests!”
&n
bsp; “But you know it’s the best way to stop them.”
“She’s got all of our data—you could destroy everything!”
“What the hell’re you thinking? We killed the husband. We don’t need the data, we know what to do.”
“We need that laptop. You don’t know what’s on there.”
“We know the operation. I say we stop running around and finish the rest of them—now!” Percy held up his phone. “I got a signal here but the code’s not working. Why isn’t it working?”
Vic didn’t answer.
“I asked you a question!” Percy said.
Percy, Cutty and Jerricko stared at Vic as he considered the question, letting a long tense moment pass before he said, “The bombs aren’t real.”
“What do you mean they’re not real?” Percy asked.
“The C-4’s modeling clay, and the batteries just make the light flash. The wires are for show.”
Percy and Cutty glared at Vic.
“We needed the family to think they were real—especially Dan—to guarantee they’d cooperate. I needed you, the squad, to believe they were real, so that we could convince them.”
“Why the hell wouldn’t we use real bombs?”
“We didn’t have the time or resources to make them for this part of the mission. Look, this was the only way to protect the entire operation.” Vic looked at each of the men in turn. “Do you get that?”
One by one they nodded.
“Now, we need to get that laptop, dispose of those two, then make our contact so we can proceed to the next stage before it’s too late.”
“Look,” Jerricko pointed at the moving patch of blue.
“We can’t waste another second,” Vic said. “Jerricko, you swing north. I’ll go south. You—” Vic tapped Percy’s shoulder “—swing east.” He nodded to Cutty. “Take the west. We’ll box them in, then tighten the noose.”
60
Coyote Mountains, New York
The East River dropped under Nick Varner, and skyscrapers reached up as the state police helicopter lifted off from Pier Six in Lower Manhattan.