Hard Road

by J. B. Turner

  Everyone began to talk at once.

  Meyerstein held up her hand. “Can we shut down that train? I need an answer?”

  The Metro specialist shook his head. “The trains are controlled in two separate ways. The cab signals to protect the trains, and a centralised speed-control system.”

  Meyerstein shouted above the rising din. “Can we get the cab system to pull up a stop signal?”

  “No can do. The cab signal system is not centralised. And the centralised speed control is only about slowing down or braking.”

  “Right, we want this train to stay where it is and not move.”

  “Can we get a message to the driver? A simple yes or no!”

  “Yes.”

  Meyerstein pointed at Shields. “You’ve got access. Get a message to the operator. Tell him, this is an emergency. Stop the train!”

  Shields nodded and punched in the keys. A few moments later he shouted, “Done!”

  “OK, we don’t know what’s gonna go down. Let’s try and work this problem.”

  Stamper said, “What if our guys try and flee this train, here and now? What if they decide to pull the plug now and release the contents down in the Metro?”

  Meyerstein nodded. “It’s a possibility. But I think as they’re so close to the target area, they’d want to do everything in their power to release it at the target destination to cause maximum impact to the American military, and those working inside the Pentagon.”

  A WMD expert Dr Lorna Renwick was nodding. “If the material is released a station early, our computer modelling shows that we might only be talking a few hundred casualties. The next stop down, and there would be a significant risk that it would spread inside the Pentagon. We don’t believe they want to give us a metaphorical bloody nose, they want to bring us to our knees.”

  Meyerstein nodded. “OK, let’s pull up the map and find possible exits out of Pentagon City Metro. I repeat, Pentagon City Metro. And Roy, I want a lockdown on the Pentagon, right now! Have you got that?”

  Stamper shrugged. “The whole Pentagon?”

  “Yes, the whole Pentagon. This train is still more than one stop away. But no one gets in or out of the Pentagon. I don’t give a damn if it’s a four star general or a cleaner, no one gets in or out until I say, got it?”

  Stamper punched in a secret Pentagon number and relayed the message.

  “Also, I want the air con shut down until further notice.”

  Stamper nodded as he spoke on the phone.

  A few moments later a detailed Metro map appeared up on one of the huge screens.

  “OK, let’s figure this out. Firstly, how many exits are we talking about from the Pentagon City Metro, people?” she asked, looking around the room. “And remember the target destination is still one mile away, the Pentagon Metro.”

  Jimmy Murphy, the all-source analyst who was an expert of seeing the big picture piped up. “The way I see it, they have one obvious route when the train pulls up. Namely, getting off the train and out of the Metro. I disagree with Lorna. I reckon they would release the bio-material if they felt they were cornered.”

  Meyerstein strode across to the screens and picked up a pen to point at one of the maps. “What is this? A walkway?”

  Murphy nodded. “That is a pedestrian tunnel under I-395 connecting Army Navy Drive to the Pentagon’s south parking lot. You get to it from the Hayes Street parking lot, which is directly opposite the parking lot at the Pentagon City Mall. That’s doable.”

  Meyerstein’s mind was whirring. “Roy, let the Pentagon know everything. Are they on lockdown yet?”

  Stamper had just come off the phone. “As we speak. Team heading down the escalators of Pentagon City Metro right now. Do the SWAT guys have a green light to storm this train when it arrives?”

  Meyerstein paced the room again as her options narrowed. “No. It’s containment just now. Besides, who would bet that they wouldn’t empty any bio-materials out into the tunnel here and now?”

  Renwick nodded. “The dispersal pattern of the virus in an enclosed space as a rushing train goes past would be their ideal scenario.”

  Stamper relayed the instructions on a headset.

  “There’s something we’re forgetting, people,” Meyerstein said. “What about if they decide to go on foot, direct to the target from Pentagon City?”

  Jimmy Murphy said, “I thought I covered that?”

  “I’m not talking about that route. What if they decided to run direct to the target, through the goddamn tunnel?”

  Stamper turned and looked at her, ashen faced. “Shit.”

  Meyerstein snapped her fingers. “OK, let’s keep them on this train. And they don’t get off. No point taking out a wingman if the main man survives and pulls the pin.”

  Shields stood up and shouted across the room, “I think I’ve got something.” He turned and looked across at Meyerstein. “It’s Reznick, ma’am. His audio feed is back up and running.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Damn straight. Reznick’s still in play.”

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  In the panic following the gunfire, Reznick had squeezed in amongst around a dozen terrified passengers, sobbing and crying together in the rear left of the front carriage. A few feet away, three men and two women lay dead. They were spread-eagled on the floor, blood seeping from head wounds, as if they’d tried to flee for their lives.

  Reznick’s left cheek was pressed to the grey rubber floor and he saw four dead bodies further up the carriage. Blood spattered glass against two window seats, ten feet away on the opposite side of the aisle. A few cell phones strewn in the panic. Then he saw the crumpled bodies sitting in their seats and he assumed they were Feds, heads blown apart. Brain matter on the seats.

  The vibration of the hurtling train was hurting his face and sounded like a high-pitched scream.

  Reznick adjusted his body position and slid a few inches forward, keeping low, as he peered further down into the first carriage, towards the operator’s cab. Then he craned his neck to the right and saw one of the bad guys. A smart-dressed clean-shaven man, with sunken dark eyes and a pale face, stood pointing a Beretta 9000S. It was a compact semi-automatic. The kind Reznick liked.

  Where were the Feds’ guns?

  Reznick glanced at the man with the gun to make sure he hadn’t noticed his movement. The man’s eyes were black, highly agitated and the awkward way he was holding the gun indicated that he was clearly not a military man.

  Reznick was straining his neck as he scanned the floor as the passengers around him whimpered and wept, clutching at each other, shaking like mad. He saw pools of blood, discarded coats and dropped books and newspapers strewn around. Then he noticed something, sticking out from behind the leg of a seat, eight feet or more away.

  It was the butt of a gun. But it was out of reach.

  Fuck.

  Reznick adjusted his position slightly and looked to the opposite side of the aisle and saw a guy wearing a grey sweatshirt. It was the same clothes as Scott Caan. But something about the man’s posture didn’t chime with Reznick. Slightly hunched, not quite the right build or the right height.

  Was this another wingman? Was this a move to confuse? He needed to be sure.

  The screech of the train’s brakes as it slowed.

  Suddenly, the earpiece crackled into life.

  “Jon, it’s Meyerstein. We have the video feed back up and running. Listen, the guy with the gun is Faizan Agha, a Pakistani national, studying at Georgetown University. He is the wingman. Tap on the earpiece: once for yes and twice for no.”

  Reznick said nothing and discreetly tapped once on the earpiece.

  “The guy in the grey sweatshirt has to be Caan, but we haven’t ID’d him with the face recognition software as his back is to the camera. Can you ID him?”

  Reznick tapped the earpiece twice.

  The train slowed down and Reznick looked up out of the window. The lights of a deserted Pentagon City Metro c
ame into view. But Reznick knew that while the Feds were out of sight, they would be all around the station, locking the whole thing down.

  The deafening sound of two gunshots rang out further down the first carriage, near the operator’s cab. Suddenly people were screaming, fighting and falling over each other as they retreated away from the rear of the first carriage and scrambled into the second carriage. Reznick did the same.

  A few moments later, “Jon, do you read me?”

  The passengers who escaped the first carriage ran towards the rear of the train. Only Reznick was in the second carriage, alone.

  Meyerstein sighed. “Jon, do you read me? The driver has just been shot. Point blank.”

  Reznick didn’t understand that move. Why would they kill the guy who could move the train to their target destination? He craned his neck further and peered through into the first carriage, a handful of people still lying on the ground, either dead or too badly injured to move. “I can’t see the shooter. Where the hell is he?”

  “Jon, the shooter has now entered the operator’s compartment. He’s fiddling with the controls.”

  It was then that Reznick saw another man, at the edge of the carriage, spread-eagled on the floor, talking into a cell phone, clutching a black travel bag.

  It was him.

  He wore a grey Abercrombie & Fitch sweatshirt, faded jeans, Nike sneakers, and brown tortoiseshell-framed glasses on the bridge of his broken nose. The hair was short and died brown.

  “There is a third man in the first carriage, do you copy?”

  The man with the grey sweatshirt adjusted his position on the ground slightly and Reznick caught sight of his profile. The broken nose, the strange tight look round the eyes and puffy cheeks.

  “Jon, can you repeat that, over?”

  “There is a third man. He fits the profile. Abercrombie grey sweatshirt, brown glasses. He’s got a damaged nose, the cosmetic changes and he’s clean-shaven. He’s hiding on the goddamn floor. And he’s got a black bag.”

  “Jon, I can’t see him. Are you sure?”

  “You must have a blind spot. I can see him clear as day. He’s talking into some phone.”

  “Christ,” was all she could say.

  The man scrambled across the floor to the other end of the cab clutching the bag, near the operator’s compartment.

  A few moments passed without any chat from Meyerstein. “We got him. Son-of-a-bitch.”

  “What’s our next move?”

  “As it stands, it’s contained within the train. We’ve switched the lights to red, so they can’t move. The train is in automatic mode.”

  “But can they override it?”

  Suddenly the train jolted forward, giving him his answer.

  “They’re trying to move the train.”

  “We cannot allow that.”

  The train jolted again for a couple of yards and Reznick could hear the passengers way back at the rear of the train scream. “I can see the guy trying to move the lever. But they’re all spread out. As it stands, I could try and take them out.”

  “With what?”

  “Don’t worry about that.”

  Reznick thought about the Fed’s gun under the seat.

  Meyerstein paused for a moment. “You have no combatant role to play. You can only observe. We’re in charge. Do you copy?”

  “That was then. This is now.”

  “We have this contained. Do you–”

  “It is just a matter of time before they figure out how to manually operate the train. And then we will be in shit. I need you to cut off the train’s power and put the train into darkness, do you copy?”

  “Are you serious?”

  “Make it happen. And I’ll bring them down. It’ll give me the cover I need.”

  “Jon, that’s absolutely not going to–”

  “Make it happen! Right now!”

  THIRTY-NINE

  Meyerstein stood and stared at real-time images of the screaming passengers, including some children, huddled in the rear carriage of the Metro train, some trying to smash windows. The nightmare was slowly unfolding before her eyes. The killing of two Feds in cold blood and the dead and injured passengers had left everyone in shock. It was almost like nothing could be done to stop the chain of events. And to compound matters, there may now be a three-man operation and she had Reznick on board with no authority, no gun, and calling for a blackout so he could try and bring Caan and his accomplices down.

  She knew they were nearing the end game. And everyone was watching what her next move was going to be. How was she going to call it? She knew that one slip-up and God knows what would befall America. Failure was not an option.

  Meyerstein let out a long sigh and took a few moments to appraise the situation. She knew in her guts that Reznick was right. Attack, and the biomaterials would be released. But they were nearly out of time and in danger of letting the whole scenario unfold without armed intervention.

  She turned and looked across at Jimmy Murphy, the all-source analyst who was studying data on known Islamic terrorist tactics. “What’s your take on this, Jimmy? A Metro blackout? High risk strategy?”

  “For sure it’s high risk,” he said. “But so is a full assault on the train. Reznick is the best, least-worst option.”

  Meyerstein stared back at Murphy.

  “Look, every permutation is high risk. These guys don’t know Reznick is among the other passengers. That’s one good thing. They think they’ve dealt with the threat on the train.”

  Robbie McVivar, another all-source analyst who had been drafted in from Homeland Security, was scribbling some notes. “I concur with Jimmy. They think they’ve got all the cards because they have the bio-material. Ordinarily we would have got the negotiation team in, maybe storm the train, but these are a unique set of circumstances. This is about disarming the terrorists. And to do that, we need to get in close. Perhaps we need to be unorthodox. Render the terrorists unconscious.”

  Meyerstein felt herself biting her lower lip. “You mean like a gas?”

  Jimmy Murphy shrugged. “Perhaps. Consider this. Confined space might give us a chance to pump in fentanyl or something equivalent, incapacitating everyone inside.”

  “Fentanyl?” Meyerstein said. “You’re talking about the drugs the Russians used to flush out the Chechen terrorists during the Moscow Theatre siege.”

  Murphy cleared his throat. “Very controversial, I know. But if it was pumped in via the ventilation system, we would certainly incapacitate them.”

  Meyerstein felt a headache coming on.

  “The downside is, that, according to official figures, if I remember correctly, one hundrd and twenty-eight out of the one hundred and twenty-nine hostages died as a result of the gas, but so did most of the terrorists.”

  Meyerstein said, “But not all the terrorists.” She looked at Stamper. “Don’t know about you, but this sounds like a slow death for all concerned. It would give them time to release the bio-materials.”

  Stamper nodded. “No question.”

  A WMD expert Dr Lorna Renwick put up her hand. “I concur. Gassing them wouldn’t knock them out instantly. So, that wouldn’t solve the release of the virus.”

  Meyerstein looked at Stamper. “What do you think, Roy? Should we cut the power?”

  He looked ashen-faced. “You have to. End of story.”

  “OK, let’s do it.”

  Within a minute, Meyerstein had convened an emergency teleconference with the military in the Situation Room at the White House, the National Counterterrorism Center in McLean, Virginia and Dr Horowitz and his WMD bio-team in New York. She relayed the full story as succinctly as possible to the military and intelligence experts up on the huge screens. She felt all eyes on her.

  “You want us to out the power?” the chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said.

  “Absolutely, sir.”

  “There will be no air conditioning, everyone will be in darkness, is that what you’re saying?”<
br />
  “Sir, with respect, it’s a risk and not something I take lightly. But we are looking at a bio-terrorist attack in the offing. Their killing of two FBI Special Agents and members of the public means we can’t just sit back and react to the situation as it develops. We have to do everything in our power to stop this train reaching its target destination. We pull the power, the train will be unable to move. We will have confined the threat, and we can focus on taking down those responsible inside the train.”

  Professor Horowitz appeared on another screen from New York, still dealing with the first incident. “Can I say something?”

  The chairman nodded. “Go right ahead.”

  “Assistant Director Meyerstein’s analysis is sound. We need to stop this train from getting into the tunnel and to the Pentagon Metro where I believe they will release their bio-material. And the consequences will be devastating, until we find an antidote and have the vaccine.”

  The chairman stared out of the huge plasma screen and said nothing.

  “Sir, we’re wasting valuable time. We need to do this. We haven’t got the luxury to debate this at length.”

  “You’ll need to run this past Homeland Security.”

  “Sir, we need a decision right now!”

  “I said, run it past Homeland Security.”

  Meyerstein wanted to curse him for his timidity, but instead she let out an exasperated sigh. “Of course, sir. If you give the go ahead, I can speak to them in a matter of seconds.”

  A long silence opened up as he considered his options.

  Meyerstein glanced at the clock, the seconds ticking by. She glanced at the real-time feed from the Metro carriage. It showed hysterical passengers at the rear of the train, jolting violently as the terrorists tried to get the train moving again. “Sir, they are trying to get the train into gear as we speak. Now this is not something that we should drag our heels on. This is not time for a discussion. I need a decision.”

  The chairman sighed. “Do you think this will work?”

  “It’ll have to.”

  “Then do what you have to do.”

  The seconds ticked by on the SIOC Command Center clocks showing the time in the major cities around the world, as Meyerstein was put straight through to Sarah Harper, Under Secretary at the Department of Homeland Security’s National Protection and Programs Directorate. Meyerstein skipped the pleasantries and went straight to what she needed.