by Dana Haynes
* * *
In the truck, Owen Thorson realized just how badly, and quickly, the scene had deteriorated. His well-trained team and the completely contained meeting site melted like dew at dawn. Behind him, the Texan informed Langley.
* * *
Across the street, on a roof and leaning next to a tin cube of HVAC vents, the sniper leader watched the scene unfold through his scope. He caught an image of three NYPD officers with binoculars checking the roofs. That’s when he heard the approach of police helicopters.
“We are blown, people! Go, go, go!”
The snipers scrambled to disassemble their weapons and abandon their aeries.
* * *
From across the street and a block away, Belhadj watched the pandemonium. He noticed that no one was bothering him.
He thought: Daria Gibron.
He had no idea what had just happened but he felt certain, to the depths of his soul, that no living person could foul up the works as quickly and cleanly as that hellspawn.
Seven
Operation Pegasus went to hell in a rocket ship.
The command truck was compromised, the watchers on the ground the same. The snipers were in danger of getting their asses shot off by New York’s Finest. One of two targets, the Syrian, had appeared, then evaporated during the melee while the second target, the Israeli ex-pat, never even showed up.
Owen Thorson’s crew kept a Ziploc baggie of federal shields in the truck. The CIA, for obvious reasons, doesn’t carry badges in the field. These faux IDs led to false identities in the Drug Enforcement Administration, which might—might—be good enough to get them out of this jam.
Thorson doffed his suit coat to show that he was unarmed, threw open the back door of the truck and, federal shield in hand, descended to the pavement. His two men followed. No sooner had the last man disembarked then SWAT officers began sweeping on board.
“Hey! Hey!” Thorson bellowed, ID pressed forward. “What the hell is this?”
SWAT officers shouted over one another. “Down! Now! On your knees! Do it!”
Thorson surged forward. “We are DEA! You get on your goddamn knees! Now!”
The New York cops hesitated in the brunt of his obvious command.
“Who’s in charge here! Who’s in charge!”
A man in Kevlar and helmet, his laser target boring a hole in Thorson’s sedately striped tie, said, “I’m senior com—”
“This is a federal investigation! Stand your people down! Now!”
“We are investigating a bank robb—”
Thorson thrust his ID into the face of the leading officer. “I am not asking! Stand down! Now!”
Confusion spread among the police officers. The takedown had seemed to be going like a well-rehearsed dance number. But now…?
Television news crews began arriving in microwave trucks. Someone must have called them in advance, since this was record-breaking time even for them. Owen Thorson began to have a very bad feeling.
Cops and spies shouted at one another, arguing for dominance and situational protocol as the news camera crews set up.
Thorson focused on the SWAT officer who identified himself as commander. “I am a federal investigator. Get those camera crews back. My people cannot be photographed at this scene.”
“We are gonna call this in but—”
“I’m telling you there’s no time! We’re with an intelligence unit. We can’t be photographed. Entire careers are at stake here. What’s your name, mister?”
“Jacob Willis. We’re—”
Thorson spoke into his voice wand. “All units, stand down, stand down. Assist local law enforcement! Do it! Get the civilians out of the plaza now.” He turned to the SWAT commander. “Willis? This is a federal investigation. Call this in. Call whoever you gotta call in. But keep the camera crews away from my agents!”
Willis made the decision. He toggled his shoulder-mounted mike. “NYPD. We have friendlies. Repeat: Friendlies. We are red for stop. Create a cordon. Street units, keep the media at bay!”
The scene was chaos. Civilians scrambled for cover or reached for cell phone cameras, to show their loved ones and buddies, Hey! Did you see that on TV? I was in that shit!
Police and CIA agents hesitated, both sides giving each other wary glares. Both sides wore ear jacks, and both sides had heard their bosses call a truce. But guns were waving; those things are hard to ignore.
* * *
In the Grand Cherokee, Asher Sahar watched the melee and sighed theatrically.
Eli Schullman whistled, high-low. “What in the name of a righteous God just happened here?”
Asher absently ran the pad of his forefinger over his old and jagged throat wound. “Oh, I have a few suspicions. But for now, if one of you could place the satchel, please?”
The Cypriot nodded and stepped down from the Jeep, carrying a leather satchel. The man was unarmed, so as to eliminate any chance of encountering police or the CIA. He quickly melted into the chaos of civilians in the plaza scrum.
* * *
Both cops and CIA agents began hearing more sirens approach. Someone called it in to the NYPD unit on scene. “Commander Willis!” a lieutenant shouted. “We got a bomb threat!”
NYPD Commander Jacob Willis and Owen Cain Thorson said, “What?” almost in harmony.
“Bomb threat, sir! Disposal units are en route. It’s not the bank! It’s the bookstore!”
The commanding police officer and the commander of Operation Pegasus turned together to look at the bookstore.
Commander Willis hesitated. He was still wrapping his head around a federal drug operation broken by a bank robbery. The words bomb threat pinged around his brain like a pinball. “It’s … what?”
* * *
Back at Langley, John Broom took advantage of the single most important piece of technology in the room, the coffeepot. He lowered himself down onto the second of three steps in the auditorium-style room, elbows on his knees.
Nanette Sylvestri, all joints and angles, rested her rear on the closest desk. “Hey.”
John looked up.
“You were right. You called it. We were being played by this Daria Gibron.”
John gave her an obligatory smile. “Cold comfort.”
She stood, taking a second to touch John’s shoulder with her fingertips, as if to say thanks.
“Why’d she do it?” John asked.
“Hmm?”
But he was staring at his coffee. “Why’d she do it?”
Nanette thought that was obvious. “Gibron? To shake her surveillance.”
He slowly shook his head. “No. That was the shtick on Forty-second Street. The Life and Death code to move our carnival uptown. If her goal was to shake her surveillance, all she had to do was move south, away from the scene. What’s with the bank job and the bomb scare?”
He looked up at Sylvestri, looming over him, as he sat on the stairs.
“She’s not done.”
* * *
A bomb disposal unit from the New York Police Department was still three blocks away as NYPD Commander Willis oversaw the civilian evacuation.
The bookstore occupied a corner storefront in the building that stretched over the six-way intersection and stood eight stories tall. It housed more than fifty businesses, both small and mid-sized. A police dispatcher began the protocol of contacting building security who, in turn, began calling the businesses. The evacuation had been practiced often enough since September 2001.
The street scene was chaotic. People streamed out of the building, slamming into one another. Others got stuck in the revolving doors as hordes tried to jam through the exits. A subway train had arrived and commuters, unawares, sauntered out into the insanity.
Police began cordoning off Seventy-second Street (east to west), Amsterdam Avenue (north to south) and Broadway, which slashed laterally between them. They didn’t have barricades yet, so they used their patrol cars.
Owen Thorson glanced back to se
e that one of his team had the foresight to take the wheel of the white truck and was moving it out of the likely blast radius.
Security officers in the bank directed customers to the exit, then quickly locked down all the tills and set the weekend alert for the vault. They were the only people in a three-block radius still wondering if a bank heist was under way.
Television news helicopters roared overhead.
Thorson glanced around. His eyes hunted Daria Gibron and Khalid Belhadj. He also kept an eye out for the heavy cameras and bulky microphones of TV reporters. Which is why his vision slid past the handful of bloggers and correspondents using their cell phones for still photos and video.
* * *
The sweep of the bookstore and coffee shop took twenty minutes. The bomb squad found no evidence of any explosive devices.
The debriefing of the bank manager ended up with a description of the robbery suspect—a young woman in leather and latex with a dystopian duster out of some futuristic western. The robber also had described Thorson’s command vehicle, some of his pedestrian watchers and his snipers.
At Thorson’s request, Commander Willis had secured a camera shop for the federal agents to hole up. But by that time, at least two images of the imbroglio—showing CIA agents—had been posted on New York media Web sites.
Thorson’s head reeled as the enormity of the disaster struck him. He stood inside the camera shop, fists clenched at his side, looking at a news Web site and the photo of one of his own men.
Another agent surged into the shop, spotted Thorson, and crossed to him. He held a beat-up leather satchel with a bowed handle.
“What’s this?”
The agent yanked open the mouth of the satchel, revealing a silenced handgun and two extra clips. Another agent joined them and withdrew a manila envelope. He opened it, fanned out a sheaf of legal-size sheets. Some were scrawled in Arabic. Others showed meticulous diagrams, etched by a steady hand holding a hard-nibbed pen.
“I read Arabic,” the agent holding the satchel said. “We found this where Belhadj had been standing. He must have dropped it and run.”
Thorson studied the sheets. “Is it about the president?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Emory University?”
“No, sir. These are aerial and topographic maps. Look!”
Owen Cain Thorson blinked. Several times. “Oh hell.”
“Yes, sir. No doubt about it. This is Camp David!”
Another CIA agent burst into the room, eyes wild.
Thorson turned to him. Something in the man’s demeanor set off his alarms. Fortunately, Thorson thought, the situation likely couldn’t get any worse.
“What?”
“The, ah, our command vehicle, sir.”
“Right. I saw someone move it out of the bomb radius? That was good thinking.”
“That’s just it, sir. That wasn’t us. Hill caught sight of it, a block from here, heading east.”
“Wait … what?”
“He said there was a woman at the wheel, sir. Slicked-back hair, leather coat. It, ah … it may have been the Gibron woman, sir.”
* * *
In the Shark Tank at Langley, Nanette Sylvestri spun to look at the guy manning the primary communication array. “Say again?”
“Field team says the target isn’t the president’s speech tomorrow in Atlanta! It’s Camp David!”
Sylvestri was at the room’s bank of secure phones before the word David was out of the man’s mouth. She had just begun to enter a number when, with a blink, all the feeds from Manhattan died. The audio, the screens, Thorson’s team comms, the computer monitor links. Everything.
Eight
The Middle East
Almost Twenty-five Years Ago
The Tunnel Rat of Rafah had grown from malnourished to lean and strong. The Bedouin cousins who employed him grew rich and—as is the way everywhere in the world—the authorities on both the Egyptian side and the Gaza Strip side got a taste of the profits.
The cousins’ second tunnel was twice as wide and much better lit. The third through fifth tunnels had tracks, cables, and hydraulic pulleys on either side to move the goods and the profits. The flatbed, small-gauge rail car in the fifth tunnel could move the component parts of a car. Or a cow.
The Tunnel Rat of Rafah was now ten years old—although he couldn’t have told you his birth date or exact age—and supervised the distribution of goods in the alleys and back parlors of the Gaza side.
The Bedouin cousins still didn’t know the boy’s provenance or name. They brought in Iraqi tunnel diggers—those guys knew how to dig!—and the Iraqis called the boy “Kahlet.” It meant “filthy beggar.” The Tunnel Rat of Rafah was far too keen an entrepreneur to deserve the epithet. But he also didn’t complain.
Increasingly, he was given control of the most vital cargos. It took him some time to realize they were guns and explosives.
New York City
Daria disconnected the power for all the communications equipment in the CIA command vehicle. She ducked under the steering wheel and dug around for the inevitable GPS transmitter. She tossed it out the window and pulled back into Manhattan traffic.
She had driven massive, three-axle dinosaurs during her stint in the Israeli army. Those standard-transmission beasts had been hell to drive. In comparison, the command vehicle purred like a Lexus coupe.
Her trainers drilled into their young charge’s head: It’s called “intelligence” for a reason. Before you act, learn all that you can.
The operational command vehicle had been Daria’s true target since she identified it back on Forty-second Street. If “intelligence” was the brass ring, this rig seemed ideal.
* * *
The Grand Cherokee wound its way to the Queens Midtown Tunnel. Nobody minded the traffic. They had nowhere to be and no one was looking for them. Everyone knew the basic tenet of the operation—to perpetuate a massive distraction for the American intelligence community—had been a rousing success.
However, none of the four in the SUV cheered.
Eli Schullman turned his thick bulk as far as the passenger-side seat belt would allow and turned to Asher Sahar in the back. “That was interesting.”
Asher smiled. “Wasn’t it?”
The Cypriot driver looked perplexed. “The targets? Gibron and Belhadj. I don’t understand. I thought we had them. What happened? One second, we were in control. The next … police.”
The Croat mercenary in the other back seat grunted. “Lots of police. Waves of police.”
Asher squeezed his eyes shut and listened to the traffic. He played back the scene of chaos in his head. The whole thing: it had Daria Gibron’s signature. Only that woman could take his well-crafted scenario and turn it into comedia del’arte. Asher admired her so much. Now she was free and would soon get involved in Asher’s plans. Plus, the Syrian butcher, who had been digging into his operation, was free as well. It was a tactical nightmare.
“We accomplished our primary goal. Will Halliday will be heading our way soon. Get us to the rally point, please.”
His phone vibrated. He checked the incoming message and spoke to the others in the car. “We accomplished our primary goal. Will Halliday will be heading our way soon.”
He scrolled through his message. “Drop me off, next corner, please.”
Schullman started to speak but Asher smiled at him. “I have unfinished business. I’ll catch up.”
The Cherokee pulled over. “Damn,” the Cypriot groused. “Losing the Syrian fucker was bad enough. But Gibron never even arrived!”
Eli Schullman stayed twisted in his seat. His eyes locked on Asher Sahar. The old friends stared at each other for a few silence-sodden seconds.
“No,” Schullman eventually agreed. “She never even arrived.”
Los Angeles
FBI agent Ray Calabrese didn’t bother going to his West Hollywood condo to pack. He kept a gym bag at work with underwear, undershirts, socks, and a
toiletry kit. Plus extra ammunition clips. Within minutes of reading the CIA report on Daria and the plot to kill the president, Ray was in a cab to LAX.
Ray was in line for the United check-in desk when his BlackBerry chirped. It was L.A. Station Chief Henry Deits.
“Heads-up. Spookville is going nutso over this thing with Daria. I don’t know what happened, but the alerts just upgraded from a number one priority.”
Ray willed the line ahead of him to move faster. “What the hell’s the upgrade from a number one priority?”
“Though I walk through the valley.…”
“Got it.” Ray rubbed his face with one beefy, open hand. He liked to think he had a good grasp on Daria Gibron’s ability to create havoc. Once again, he had underestimated her.
“She’s still listed as a threat?”
“Al-Qaida, Daria Gibron, North Korea. In that order.”
The line moved forward almost seven inches. “Okay. Thanks. Try to run interference for me, boss. Let them know the bureau isn’t sitting this one out. She is one of ours.”
Henry said, “Done,” and disconnected.
The line moved forward another two inches. Ray held his temper rather than shoot everyone in front of him. He checked his phone and scrolled through the buffer of intelligence circulars, looking for Daria’s name.
A routine notification had gone out to all law enforcement personnel. A river levee had been breached in Colorado. A motel had been swept away. No word yet on a cause or casualties.
Langley, Virginia
The same routine notification also popped up on John Broom’s tablet computer in the Shark Tank at Langley. The Genevieve River had roared over a broken levy and had wiped out several businesses and homes. Out of idle curiosity, John surfed over to a weather Web site. It had snowed three days earlier in Colorado. Other than that, the weather had been mild.
Odd timing for a levy failure, John thought, his attention returning to Operation Pegasus in Manhattan.