As he opened the door, he was shocked to see two men in casual clothes standing on his porch. His hackles rose immediately as the sense of danger hit him like a Mack truck.
He dropped his coffee cup and tried to slam the door closed but the two men were fast and he was hit and knocked backward into the entrance hall and then before he could recover was wrestled to the floor. One of the large men hit hard him hard on the face just as he saw through the still-open door the garbage truck move slowly down the street. As his head rocked backward from the blow, he was amazed at the normalcy of things just outside the horror that was happening in his home.
Monroe was stunned, but he was determined to get upstairs somehow. He was roughly turned over, and as the front door and the view of that normal world was cut out of his view, he felt a plastic wire tie being zipped to his wrists behind his back. He was frustrated beyond measure but tried to keep his cool. He had to allow his wife, Jenny, time to realize what was happening. He was pulled roughly to his feet as blood dripped from his mouth and stained the white bathrobe he was wearing.
He heard his bedroom door close upstairs and he closed his eyes. He just knew that Jenny was going to walk right into the middle of what was happening to him. But then again, he had the single ray of hope that his wife had the gun that was kept in the nightstand next to their bed.
Monroe was picked up then and led into the living room, where he was pushed to his knees. He raised his head just as he heard the soft padding of feet on the stairs. He looked up and his heart sank as he saw that it was a woman dressed in a nice pantsuit with a black overcoat. Her hair was blond and she walked with an air of confidence into the living room. She looked from the two men to himself and then sat on their couch and leaned forward with her gloved hands resting in her lap, one on top of the other.
The FBI agent lowered his head to try to get some sense of the situation. His hair was pulled roughly upward so that he faced the woman.
"Pay attention to the lady, she has words she wants to say," the larger of the two men said, leaning over Monroe's right ear.
"For you, Special Agent Monroe, this morning will not turn out as well as you're now hoping," the blond, very elegant-looking woman said as she held Monroe with her eyes and slowly removed her gloves, one finger at a time. "But for your wife, Jenny, who is now being detained upstairs, there is still hope that she can live beyond this day. Do you understand what I am saying? Just nod your head; no need to speak, as there will plenty of time for that later."
Monroe did as she'd instructed, giving a single dip of his chin.
"Good, we are off to a wonderful start. Your little foray into Westchester County last evening was beyond your scope of charter and expertise. I want you to tell my associates here who it is you are working for, and don't bother saying it was an FBI investigation because we have people in your field office that claim they had no knowledge of your actions. Your deceit may pass muster with your superiors, but I assure you it will not with me."
The woman, having stated what she had to state, slowly stood and looked at her wristwatch.
"Be very forthright, Agent Monroe, and your wife will be alive in the coming weeks, months, and years to mourn your passing. If you lead these men falsely, they will not kill your lovely wife without very much pain and humiliation. All we need to know is where the artifacts are and who it was that assisted you in your daring raid. Okay?" She smiled and nodded at the two men and then walked through the living room and disappeared.
The two men pulled him to his feet and led him into the kitchen. They sat him in a chair and then closed the curtains on the sliding glass doorway that looked out into his backyard. Then one of the men went to the kitchen table and moved a chair over to face him, and then sat down. He was smiling.
An hour later, the two men reported to the woman, who had relocated not far away in Islip, New York. They passed on the required information they tortured out of the FBI agent. What they had learned was almost unbelievable. They asked for instructions about the wife and they received them.
The man closed his cell phone, then reached out, and expertly sliced into the throat of Agent William Monroe, severing the jugular vein with ruthless precision. Then he stood slowly from his chair and made his way toward the stairs and the bedroom.
UNITED STATES FEDERAL COURTHOUSE CENTRAL ISLIP, NEW YORK
The new federal courthouse was situated in the middle of Long Island. The giant white concrete building had been constructed not for beauty but with security in mind, and all who passed by it had to shake their heads at the ugly monstrosity where federal justice was meted out.
William Krueger was waiting in a holding cell in the lower level of the courthouse. The orange jumpsuit they had issued him was four sizes too small and he could not even unzip the tight-fitting collar due to his handcuffs.
There were two other men waiting with Krueger to see a federal judge. One was a large black man with a shiny bald head who looked about with the soulless eyes of a career criminal. The other was what Krueger would have called normal-looking. His hair combed neatly, he looked as if a tailor had fitted him for his prison jumpsuit.
There were three guards in the holding area. Two sat behind a large desk and another walked a slow path between the three holding cells, of which only theirs was in use. Krueger watched as the guard looked in quickly and then moved off. He could not figure out what he was looking in the cell for: after all, the three of them were handcuffed to a chain that was bolted to the floor in front of them. They couldn't scratch their noses even if they wanted to.
Krueger was watching the large black man when he heard a noise in the corridor leading to the holding area. He figured that it was the courthouse guards coming to take him in to see his lawyer before he was to be arraigned. From what the guard had told him earlier, that was the procedure.
"Good morning," an unseen voice said to the guards.
"Morning," a female voice answered. Krueger figured that it was one of the guards from behind the desk. "Where's Stan?"
"He called in sick, so they got me moppin' in his place."
Krueger heard the sounds of a janitor and he relaxed. He heard the guards go back to an earlier conversation as the janitor went about his work.
The black man with arms the size of tree trunks was squeezed into his jumpsuit almost like Krueger was, only his discomfort was due to being muscle-bound. The man was looking at Krueger as if he were a bug that had just crawled out of his kitchen cabinet. Krueger immediately looked away.
Outside the cell, as the conversation continued between the two guards at the desk, Krueger heard two loud popping noises as if someone had hit a hollow cardboard tube. Then he heard running and then another hollow pop and then a clattering noise. As he looked around, he saw the thin white prisoner, who had a limited view of the area in front of the cell, lean back and then saw his eyes go wide. Krueger now became concerned.
A shadow fell inside the cell as a man stepped up to the bars. The three prisoners looked around wildly as they saw that the man was armed with what looked like a handgun with a long tube attached to the end. He was dressed in a janitor's jumpsuit and even had an ID tag with his picture on it. He looked from face to face and then raised the silenced weapon and fired twice into the small white prisoner.
"Hey, what the--"
The large black prisoner had tried to stand as he spoke but the chain held his cuffed hands and body close to the bench he was sitting on. He was then caught in midquestion by two bullets fired directly into his forehead. His head jerked backward. Then, just for certainty, another round went into his temple. Despite the silencer, the noise was loud enough that it echoed into the hallway and into the rest of the holding area.
William Krueger leaned as far away as his restraints would allow. He could only hope that the loud reports would bring someone running. However, that hope was fleeting because he knew exactly why that man was there. He also knew that the man would not fail at what he'd been sent the
re to do. He had expertly shot the three guards and then his cellmates. The silencer had worn out its insulation and had become very loud, which meant that the assassin had never intended to get away with his murders. Krueger's eyes were wide as the dark-haired man looked straight at him.
"I was told you would understand the price of failure, Mr. Krueger."
The fat man started shaking uncontrollably. "But ... but ... you'll die too," was all he said.
"That was a forgone conclusion long before today. What is better than to send a dead man to kill another?"
There were sounds of many footsteps running down the hallway and shouts of more guards. The assassin did not bother to look away from the cell. He simply raised the handgun and fired four times into the head and face of William Krueger. The Coalition had just made a public statement of their intention to come out of the shadows and protect what was theirs.
The assassin reached through the bars and tossed the smoking weapon into the cell, were it hit the body of William Krueger and then clattered to the floor. Without hesitation, the man turned and left the holding area and made his way to the back door.
Outside the courthouse, the blond woman watched from her expensive car as the federal building was hurriedly evacuated. Once outside, workers and visitors alike were held in an area just to the left of the white-painted fortresslike courthouse for questioning. As she watched, she saw guards and United States marshals swarm the interior of the building.
The woman started her Mercedes and slowly left the large parking area. She did not smile or gloat on how good she was at arranging things like the assassination. She did exactly what she was paid for--to fix problems.
She slowly turned her car out onto the street and made her way to the Southern State Parkway for her trip into New York City, where she had another job to do before she moved to her next location in Boston. This next venture was also to be a public statement by a power that was far beyond American law enforcement to thwart. It was against an entity that was as secret as the Coalition she worked for--the Event Group.
EVENT GROUP WAREHOUSE 3 SEVENTH AVENUE, NEW YORK CITY
Two Mayflower moving vans backed into the large loading dock just a half hour after a nondescript truck removed the scrolls and maps--and the three-man security element of Jack, Carl, and Will--to JFK airport. The back of the Event Group-owned Freemont Building was deserted, with the exception of a guard in his shack overlooking the dock area.
A driver stepped from the first moving truck and hopped up to the dock. He was carrying a clipboard and was wearing the livery colors of Mayflower Transit. He looked around and waited.
The guard-shack door opened and a man stepped out wearing a standard security uniform. He placed a cap on his head and stepped toward the man who was looking at him with a smile.
"We don't accept deliveries at this address, son," the man said as he eyed the two trucks.
"Actually, my boss called and said that we had a pickup at this building." He made a show of looking at his clipboard. "Yeah, says right here, the Freemont. There isn't another building with that name on this street, is there?"
"No, but you may want to check back with your--"
A seven-inch knife in between his ribs cut the guard's words off as effectively as if he had shut off a radio. The man who had come up behind the guard was the driver of the second truck. The first man laid his clipboard down and then reached out and raised the sliding door of the first large moving van. As he did so, thirty-five men exited quickly. All were dressed in black Nomex and all had black hoods on their heads. It was exactly the same uniform that Jack and his men had worn for their raid the night before in Katonah.
A three-man team ran to the guard shack and another group to the large sliding doors of the loading dock. The first group smashed the communications-and-monitoring console in the guard shack and the second group placed quarter-pound timed charges against the base of each of the two loading doors that led into the warehouse. Each thirty-five-man team from the two trucks lined up on either side of the two doors just as two loud pops sounded, freeing the doors from their interior lock slots. As one man from each team slid the doors up, the rest ran into the dark interior.
Lance Corporal Jimmy Sanchez had been part of the Event Group for four years and loved the detached duty. He was moving up fast and the work under Colonel Jack Collins was challenging, to say the least. Being a veteran of the Event in the desert and the expedition down the Amazon the preceding year, he had come to be a trusted member of the security team that Collins had forged since he'd begun work for the Group. He'd even heard from Will Mendenhall that he was to advance in pay-grade to sergeant in the fall.
As Sanchez started to move, the ceiling lights flickered just as the sound of automatic gunfire erupted somewhere below them. He immediately ran to the wall-mounted phone and picked it up. There was no dial tone. He then reached into his pocket for his Group cell phone and punched only one number. It would alert all Event Group personnel that an emergency had arisen, which meant that the security team should come running to their aid. It also sent an automated message via satellite to Nevada, where the emergency alert would be relayed to Group Center.
Sanchez tossed the phone to the nearest wide-eyed technician.
"Dial 911 and tell them we have a break-in and shots have been fired!"
Sanchez withdrew his holstered 9-millimeter automatic and ran to the door. The corporal was on the second floor of the thirty-story Freemont Building, placing him only three levels above the loading dock. As he rounded the corner heading to the large staircase, he heard the volume of gunfire increase. He heard the distinctive reports of his own team's XM-8 automatic assault rifles, which meant that they had responded quickly to whatever was happening. As he gained the balcony overlooking the first floor, he stopped suddenly. Below, just as his men came into the main foyer to meet the attackers, they ran into at least fifty men. They quickly overwhelmed his first-floor team. They were everywhere. Sanchez cursed and ran back the way he had come. He had to get the technicians and professors out of harm's way.
"Corporal, the phones aren't getting a signal. At first we could, and then they all suddenly stopped sending. We couldn't get the police," the field tech said as Sanchez ran by him.
"They are jamming the cell signals with independent microwaves! Get upstairs with the rest of security; this is a kill raid!"
As Sanchez was trying to rally what was left of the Group's security element, the attackers started making their way upstairs.
Waiting below with a five-man protection team, the well-dressed blond woman looked at her watch, impatient for the long morning's work to be finished. She turned to her personal bodyguard.
"I want at least four of these people alive to answer questions. In addition, after we are finished here I want a man stationed outside to take photos of everyone who comes into the building. Police, medical teams--I want everyone documented, with particular interest taken in subjects in civilian attire."
JOHN F. KENNEDY AIRPORT QUEENS, NEW YORK
As the last of the pallets containing the maps and scrolls were rolled into the vast cargo hold of the giant air force C-130 Hercules, Jack was approached by the aircraft's commander.
"Colonel Collins, a man by the name of Compton is on the radio. He said he couldn't get through to you on your cell phone, there isn't much signal here in the cargo hold. So he's been patched through the tower."
Jack followed the air force captain into the cockpit and took the offered headphones.
"Collins," he said, holding the headpiece to his ear.
"Jack, we have some major problems."
Jack heard the strain in those few words from Niles Compton.
"What've you got, Niles?"
"Jack, listen ..." Niles hesitated. "Agent Monroe has been murdered."
"What?"
"He was tortured and killed in his house. His wife was ... well she's dead also, Jack. That's not all I'm afraid of. William Krueger was hi
t this morning inside his secure holding cell at the federal courthouse out on Long Island."
"Dammit! How in the hell could this have happened?"
"Jack, you and Carl get back to Manhattan. We had an emergency alert from Sanchez. We don't know what's happening at the warehouse and we've been unable to establish contact. We had no choice but to bring in the local authorities. Their cover as a National Archives depot will hold up to scrutiny, so act accordingly when you arrive. Now move, Jack--move!"
Jack didn't comment, as he had already tossed the headphones to the aircraft's pilot.
"Get this bird in the air ASAP and don't stop for anything. You'll be given instructions in flight on your way to Nellis. Clear?"
Again, he didn't wait for an answer. Two minutes later, he, Everett, and Mendenhall were on their way back into Manhattan.
EVENT GROUP WAREHOUSE 3 SEVENTH AVENUE, NEW YORK CITY
Collins, Everett, and Mendenhall were met at the front of the building by a police captain from the NYPD. Jack gave him identification stating that he was a field supervisor for the National Archives in Washington. The captain looked it over and then eyed Jack closely.
"I didn't think the National Archives Security Department carried firearms?" he asked, still holding Jack's ID.
Collins stared at the man and did not blink. Nor did he offer any explanation. All he knew was that this man was stopping him from checking on his team inside the building.
Everett stepped up and offered an explanation: "When you are used to guarding little documents like the Declaration of Independence, firearms are desirable, Captain. Now may we check on our people?"
The captain relaxed and returned Jack's identification.
"It's not good, gentlemen. We have paramedics working on the only survivor. It looks like a straight robbery. If you have information on what was being stored here, my detectives would be interested."
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