The Operative

by Andrew Britton

  “We were just kicking that around ourselves,” Andrews said. “We just received an action memo from Brigadier General Arthur Gilbert at White Sands. A pair of prototype nukes that were en route to the installation never made it.”

  “Projectiles?” Kealey asked.

  “Damn. How did you know?”

  “Just an ugly hunch,” he replied. “How are they fired?”

  “Shoulder-mounted.”

  “Shit.”

  “They may be in New York,” Andrews said. “The drivers are in custody. They swear everything they had was off-loaded downtown.”

  “Let me guess,” Kealey said. “One West Street?”

  “Yeah. That was one of the addresses.”

  Kealey had stopped on the corner of Fifth Avenue. The four miles from where he needed to be suddenly felt like a hundred. “Bishop is still downtown,” Kealey said. “I’m going to send him over. I’ll call you when I can.”

  As he was clicking off, he heard Andrews say, “Thanks, and Godspeed.”

  Reed Bishop felt like a corked bottle on the sea. He would shift and move, not always forward, as people shifted around him. And it was in one of those backward pitches, as a fire truck moved in front of him, that he lost Assistant Director Hunt.

  The maneuver might have been intentional; Hunt was there and then gone. It was too clean. He had to be watching for the opportunity.

  Bishop charged in that direction, shouldering through people when there wasn’t an opening. He fished out his badge, apologizing and flashing it at the same time; he didn’t want to have to stop and explain what he was doing to anyone, police or civilian. He was moving against the human wave on Frankfort Street, as people who had walked along the East River resumed making their way to and across the Brooklyn Bridge. He couldn’t imagine that all these people lived in the borough of Brooklyn; Bishop had the feeling that people just wanted to get out of Manhattan.

  Or were being driven out? he wondered.

  An air of relief seemed to pass over the crowd as people chattered about a gunman having been slain at the bus terminal. Bishop took out his phone, was about to call Kealey as he weaved his way past the Manhattan base of the bridge.

  The phone beeped. It was Kealey.

  “What happened?” Bishop said as he answered.

  Kealey told him about the shooting. “I think we have a bigger problem,” he said then he proceeded to tell about the missing nukes. “Where’s Hunt?”

  “Gone,” Bishop told him. “I lost him when traffic got between us.”

  “Where are you now?”

  “Nearly at the East River,” Bishop said. “I want to see if I can spot him.”

  “Whether you see him or not, you need to get to the lab. There’s no way I can get down there now.”

  “Yeah, I hear that,” Bishop said. He was nearly a half block from South Street. The broad avenue, which followed the river, looked like the top half of an hourglass with human sand pouring down. People were making the loop down Frankfort up to the entrance ramp to the bridge. Vehicular traffic was basically halted now, with horns voicing their displeasure. “Man, I don’t see how somebody in a hurry would go any way but the direction from which I was coming.”

  “Could Hunt have ducked down a side street?”

  “That would have put him in the mess by City Hall Park,” Bishop said. “I could have run into him the same way I did Agent Muloni.” Bishop pushed harder as he neared the bottleneck. “Oh, shit.”

  “What?”

  “Hold on.” Bishop stopped being polite. He stiff-armed his way forward, shoving and driving his hip against anyone who was in his way. “FBI!” he repeated, with his badge raised. “Please step aside.”

  There were isolated protests, but for the most part, people made faces and tried to accommodate him. He finally reached South Street, crossed it, went to the esplanade that followed the river. It was packed with humanity, but he wasn’t looking for Hunt. Not there. He looked north, then south along the river.

  It was packed with maritime traffic. Most of the boats were ferries—water taxis and even private vessels—which were pulling up to the seawall. Most were doing this for free; some were charging people anywhere from twenty to one hundred dollars to cross to Brooklyn. Times were tougher and citizens were more polarized than they were in 2001, when all civilian vessels provided this service for free.

  “My insurance company won’t let me do this,” one tug captain was saying as he asked for 120 dollars. “You gotta make it worth my while.”

  He had some passengers already. The exploitation made Bishop sick.

  There was other traffic moving up and down the river, mostly police and coast guard ships.

  Except for one. It was speeding toward the harbor.

  “What’s going on?” Kealey asked.

  “The river,” Bishop said. “I’m guessing that’s how he’s getting back to One West.”

  “Is there anything there you can commandeer?”

  “I can try, but there’s no way I’m going to catch him.”

  “He wouldn’t be going back to clean the place,” Kealey said. “He could do that with a phone call. He must be—” Kealey stopped.

  “What?”

  “The crates,” he said.

  “What target?” Bishop asked. “The Statue of Liberty?”

  “Doesn’t fit,” Kealey said. “He wouldn’t need the punching power of a nuke to cut her in two.”

  “Speaking of ‘two,’ why would he need two?” Bishop said. Though he knew the answer even as he said it.

  “Double jeopardy,” Kealey said. “He’s pulled the police all over Manhattan so they can’t organize to stop him. They’re too busy with goddamn crowd control.”

  ‘Look, I’m going to hoof it,” Bishop said. “I can cut across from the Staten Island Ferry terminal, get there faster than on the river. If he’s going to the West Side—”

  “I’m on it,” Kealey said. “I’m going to need Brenneman’s muscle for that. Call me when you get to the building. Don’t pull in any cops unless you need to. There isn’t time to get a search warrant.”

  “Agreed,” Bishop said.

  Kealey was gone, and Bishop turned and headed downtown. He was tired, but he was focused now. However much his cramped legs protested, he couldn’t afford to rest.

  Not if Baltimore was only a warm-up for something written on a much larger canvas with a much stronger pen.

  CHAPTER 30

  WASHINGTON, D.C.

  “I need a helicopter, now. With firepower. I’d like Twenty-Three.” In government circles Kealey’s request—put on speaker—was what was known as a torpedo. It had the effect of sinking whatever was in front of it.

  The president and his team had been sifting through the IDs of the Baltimore bombers and the FBI impostor, hoping to find a common link. There was nothing, save what their fingerprints told them: they were all Muslims here on visas, mostly students, from different world hot spots where hatred of the United States was high: Kosovo, Yemen, Somalia, Libya, and the like. As with so many other things in these past two days, it seemed too pat to be real. They had been debating whether the attacks had been designed to be conclusion driven—individuals recruited to guarantee that blame attached itself in a particular way—when Kealey called.

  “Sorry, what’s that?” the president asked. “The high-tech surveillance chopper?”

  “Yes, sir,” Max Carlson said. “It went into service in two thousand eight. Named for the number of officers killed in the World Trade Center attacks.”

  “What do you plan to do with any chopper?” Andrews asked.

  “Bishop thinks Hunt may have escaped by sea, to get to One West and the nukes maybe there.”

  “Bishop thinks that,” Cluzot said.

  “He’s your man, Mr. Director,” Carlson pointed out.

  “He’s internal affairs!” Cluzot said. “A desk jockey. What does he base that on, Mr. Kealey?”

  “Suspicious activity, rea
sonable assessment.”

  “SARA is not sufficient for the president to make this call,” Cluzot said.

  “Where did he get a boat?” Andrews asked.

  “He probably had it there, waiting,” Kealey said. “He knew there was going to be an attack on the bridge. He knew he’d be going over there with us. Hell, the timing of both attacks seems to have been built around us. That and the death of Agent Muloni.”

  Cluzot made a face. “You and Bishop are the new Ground Zero?”

  “Hey, if I’m wrong, you can put me in the corner. That SOB knew we were going to be stranded on the far side of a big goddamn crowd. Even if we knew how he got away, we wouldn’t be able to follow. Everything he’s done has been to buy himself or someone else time. And right now we’re giving it to him.”

  “You know where he’s going?” the president asked.

  “Yes, sir, and he’s already halfway there, with me unable to find him. Bishop’s on his way. In case he doesn’t make it in time, or if things don’t break our way, we need a Plan B. The chopper is it.”

  “Do you know what kind of boat he’s in?” Cluzot asked. “We can phone that information to—”

  “We don’t know for sure if we’ve even got this right!” Kealey admitted. “We can’t have the NYPD storming the river, looking for him. That could scare Hunt into doing whatever he’s planning.”

  “It could also stop him!” Cluzot said. “The NYPD has a pretty good antiterror unit.”

  “That isn’t the point. What they don’t have are facts. Maybe the second nuke is support in case the NYPD does pursue. Or maybe that’s the sniper’s job, to start taking down aircraft over the boat. We just don’t know. That’s why I have to get up there, watch from a distance, with the ability to act if necessary. That chopper’s got facial recognition software. We’ll need that. You want to summon the cavalry, I’m happy to back the play when it’s appropriate. But let’s make sure of our target first!”

  The president did not have the authority to commandeer an NYPD resource. He could not tell the police commissioner why he wanted it. He would have to put his reputation on the chopping block and make the strong request.

  “Is there any other bird we can get over there?” the president asked his team. “Maybe something from Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst.”

  “Not without having to explain that to the NYPD,” Andrews said.

  “Mr. President, I’m on my way back to the West Side,” Kealey said. “That chopper is in the air twenty-four-seven. Please have it meet me at the West Thirtieth Street Heliport.”

  The president looked at Andrews. The CIA director nodded. He looked over at Carlson. The Homeland Security chief cocked his head to one side, then, with reluctance, nodded once.

  “I’ll make the call,” Brenneman told Kealey. “Bob will let you know what the NYPD says.”

  “Thank you, Mr. President,” Kealey said.

  Andrews ended the call. Brenneman looked at him. “I’m not completely sold on this, but I was afraid your boy would take a chopper at gunpoint.”

  “Sir, your concern is not unfounded,” Andrews replied with a half smile.

  Brenneman picked up the phone.

  “Mr. Meyers,” the president said, “get me commissioner Lee Strand. I’ll hold.”

  “Yes, sir,” his special assistant replied.

  “Thank you.” The president looked at the others in the room. “I want us to get ahead of this damn thing. Kealey’s got the only option on the table. Andrea, we know how this plays if it works. If it doesn’t ... ?”

  “If it doesn’t, Ryan Kealey’s not a lone-wolf operator anymore,” the press secretary replied. “This call puts the go-ahead on your shoulders, sir. There will be questions from both sides of the aisle about why you didn’t put massive force in the field to find a pair of missing nuclear weapons, as Director Cluzot suggested.”

  “My uncle Bernard once drove a hay truck off the road because there was a yellow jacket in the cab,” the president said. “If he’d been surrounded by horses or sheep, he’d’ve just stopped and waited for them to move on.”

  “The herds wouldn’t have been looking for him,” Cluzot pointed out.

  “Neither was the hornet,” the president said. “Point is, it was on him before he could react.”

  Commissioner Strand got on the line. Brenneman did not put the call on speaker.

  “Good morning, Mr. President.”

  “How are things up there, Commissioner Strand?”

  “Calm for the moment, sir. You’ve probably heard we got a shooter. We’re not sure he’s working alone.”

  “We’ve reached that same conclusion,” the president said.

  “Mr. President, forgive me, but we’ve been hearing disturbing rumors about missing nuclear weapons.”

  “They appear to be true,” the president replied. “We have two men on the ground who we believe are on the trail of a pair of highly classified projectiles with nuclear explosives. We need to get one of those people in the air. Can you lend us Twenty-Three?”

  “Will this protect my city?”

  “We believe the action has a good chance of doing that,” the president said.

  “Is there anything you can share with us, sir? Was the deceased FBI agent a part of the sniper’s support system?”

  Brenneman did not look at the others. He turned his chair, glanced out at the Rose Garden. “We believe she was framed by the individual who is behind this. We also believe he is in possession of the weapons.”

  “Where and when do you need Twenty-Three, sir?”

  “The heliport on West Thirtieth Street. Our man is on his way.”

  “Name?”

  “Ryan Kealey. K-e-a-l-e-y.”

  “Any special expertise, sir?”

  “Yes,” the president said. “He wants to see this bastard dead.”

  “Those are the kind of credentials I admire, sir. The chopper will be there.”

  “One more thing, Commissioner.” The president looked at his notepad. “Our second man, Reed Bishop, is on his way to One West Street.”

  “Around the corner from the killing yesterday.”

  “Yes. If you get any nine-one-ones from a research lab at that location, you would do well to delay responding.”

  “That’s against our policy, of course. But we are spread thin,” Strand replied.

  “Thanks to the individuals we’re pursuing,” the president said. “I’ll be in touch.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  The president hung up, then swiveled back to look at the faces of the other four people in the room. His press secretary looked the grimmest. “Andrea?”

  “You are personally very far out on a limb, sir,” Stempel pointed out.

  The president’s eyes shifted to Cluzot. “Chuck?”

  “The comment about nine-one-one ... if it ever got out ...”

  “That’s what I was thinking,” Stempel said.

  “If that happens,” the president replied thoughtfully, “it will pour gas on the debate about the rights of suspected terrorists, and I’ll have the Justice Department on my back for a few months for some violation of equal protection statutes. You know what? I’ll take my chances. I want to stop trailing these bastards. I want to get ahead of them.”

  “I like it,” Andrews said. “I like it a lot.”

  “That’s the good thing about being a lame duck,” Brenneman said. “Sometimes you get to do what you think is the right thing for its own sake.”

  “Besides, Commissioner Strand has his eye on my job,” the Homeland Security director said. “He won’t tell tales out of school.”

  “Amen. If it works, he’ll take credit for it,” Andrews said.

  The president chuckled. It broke the tension slightly.

  Stempel shut her laptop. “It’s ten past eleven. I’ve got to tell the press when I’m going to talk to them. How does one o’clock sound, Mr. President?”

  “I have a feeling this will be over b
y then,” he said.

  “This part of it,” Cluzot said.

  Except for Andrews, the others looked at him. The CIA director was nodding in agreement.

  “What do you mean?” the president asked.

  “Let’s assume—only for the sake of this discussion—that the two nukes are the finale of this wave of terror,” Cluzot said. “Someone, some group, put them into play. Someone got to my people and turned at least one of them. If Kealey is right, someone was watching him and Bishop. In short, someone has access to our playbook—or enough of it to cobble together a response.”

  It was an unpleasant thought. They had all been so focused on current events that they hadn’t given any consideration to the befores and afters.

  “Mr. President, I think we should continue to keep our thoughts in this room,” Andrews said. “If we start putting together DSTs, we may do exactly what we’re trying to prevent, which is continue to give the party or parties access.”

  Data strike teams were the new first wave of defense against potential terror threats. Each group had one: CIA, FBI, NSA, and the military intelligence branches. They took raw intel gathered by HUMINT and ELINT resources, saw if the pieces fit. If two or more went together, that DI—data image—was fed to the other intel units to see if they had any pieces that belonged there. It was an efficient coordination of resources grouped under the Homeland Security tent.

  “Everyone in agreement?” the president asked.

  That was his way of indicating he backed the play. Otherwise he would have said, “Thoughts?” Anyone without a strong dissenting opinion and the facts to back it was likely to get smacked down in the first moments of debate.

  The president called Meyers, told him they were going back downstairs.

  “I want a live feed from the NYPD Counterterrorism Division, and I want streaming updates from the Baltimore Convention Center,” the president said. “Something may turn up there that can help us in New York.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And see if you can put us inside the NYPD chopper Twenty-Three,” he added. “Audio is fine if that’s all we can get.”

  “On it, sir,” Meyers replied.