State Of Siege (1999)

by Tom - Op Center 06 Clancy

  The young guide introduced herself as Kako Nogami. As the visting parents followed her, the young lady went into an abbreviated version of her tour-guide speech.

  "How many of you have been to the United Nations before?" she asked, walking backward.

  Several parents raised their hands. Hood didn't. He was afraid Kako would ask what he remembered about it, and he'd have to tell her about James LaVigne and Batman.

  "To refresh your memories," she went on, "and for the benefit of our new guests, I'd like to tell you a little about the area of the United Nations we'll be visiting."

  The guide explained that the Security Council is the United Nations's most powerful body, primarily responsible for maintaining international peace and security.

  "Five influential countries including the United States sit as permanent members," she said, "along with ten others, elected for two-year terms. Tonight, your children will be playing for the ambassadors of these nations along with their executive staffs.

  "The Economic and Social Council, as the name implies, serves as a forum for the discussion of international economic and social issues," the young woman went on. "The council also promotes human rights and basic freedoms. The Trusteeship Council, which suspended operations in 1994, helped territories around the world attain self-government or independence, either as sovereign states or as part of other nations."

  For just a moment, Hood thought it would be fascinating to run this place. Keeping the peace inside, among the delegates, had to be as challenging as keeping the peace outside. As though sensing his thoughts, Sharon slipped her fingers between his and squeezed tightly. He let the idea go.

  The group passed a large, ground-floor window that looked out onto the main plaza. Outside was the Shinto-style shrine that housed the Japanese Peace Bell. It was cast from coins and metal donated by people from sixty nations. Just past the window, the lobby fed into a wide corridor. Straight ahead were elevators used by UN delegates and their staff. To the right was a series of display cases. The guide led them over. The cases contained relics of the atom bomb blast that razed Hiroshima: fused cans, charred school clothes and roof tiles, melted bottles, and a pocked stone statue of Saint Agnes. The Japanese guide described the destructive force and intensity of the blast.

  The exhibit wasn't moving Hood or Barbara's father Hal Mathis, whose father had died on Okinawa. Hood wished that Bob Herbert and Mike Rodgers were here. Rodgers would have asked the guide to show them the Pearl Harbor exhibit next. The one about the attack that happened when the two nations weren't at war. At twenty-two or twenty-three years old, Hood wondered if the young woman would have understood the context of the question. Herbert would have raised a stink even before they got this far. The intelligence chief had lost his wife and the use of his legs in the terrorist bombing of the United States embassy in Beirut in 1983. He had gotten on with his life, but he did not forgive easily. In this case, Hood wouldn't have blamed him. One of the UN publications Hood had browsed through at the gift shop described Pearl Harbor as "the Hirohito attack," tacitly absolving the Japanese people of guilt in the crime. Even the more politically correct Hood found the revisionist history disturbing.

  After finishing at the Hiroshima exhibit, the group went up two flights of escalators to the upstairs lobby. To their left were the three auditoriums with the Security Council chambers located on the far end. The parents were led to the old press bull pen across the hall. There was a guard outside, a member of the United Nations Security Forces. The African-American man was dressed in a powder blue short-sleeve shirt, blue gray trousers with a black stripe down each leg, and a navy blue cap. His name tag read Dillon. When they arrived, Mr. Dillon unlocked the bull pen door and let them in.

  Today, reporters generally work in the high-tech television press rooms situated in long, glass booths on either side of the Security Council auditorium. These booths are accessible by a common corridor between the Security Council and the Economic and Social Council. But in the 1940s, this spacious, windowless L-shaped room was the heart of the United Nations's media center. The first part of the room was lined with old desks, telephones, a few banged-up computer terminals, and hand-me-down fax machines. In the larger second half of the room--the base of the L--were vinyl couches, a rest room, a supply closet, and four TV monitors mounted on the wall. Ordinarily, the monitors displayed whatever discussion was going on in the Security Council or Economic and Social Council. By putting on head-sets and switching channels, observers could listen in whatever language they wished. Tonight they'd be watching Ms. Chatterjee's speech followed by the recital. A pair of card tables at the end of the room held sandwiches and a coffeemaker. There were soft drinks in a small refrigerator.

  After thanking the parents for their cooperation, Kako very politely reminded them what they'd been told by letter and by the United Nations representative who had met them at the hotel the night before. For security reasons, they must remain in this room for the duration of the event. She said she would be returning with their children at eight-thirty. Hood wondered if the guard had been posted to keep tourists out of the press room or to keep them in.

  Hood and Sharon walked over to the sandwich table.

  One of the men pointed to the plastic plates and utensils. "See what happens when the U.S. doesn't pay its dues?" he cracked.

  The veteran Washington police officer was referring to the nation's billion-dollar debt, a result of the Senate's unhappiness with what it characterized as chronic waste, fraud, and financial abuses at the United Nations. Key among these charges was that money allocated for UN peacekeeping forces was being used to bolster the military resources of participating nations.

  Hood smiled politely. He didn't want to think about big budgets and big government and greenback diplomacy. He and his wife had had a good day today. After their tense first night in New York, Sharon tried to relax. She savored the pleasant fall sunshine at Liberty Island and didn't let the crowds get to her. She enjoyed Alexander's excitement at learning all the technical facts about the statue and at being left alone with his video games and less-than-nutritious takeout from a salad bar on Seventh Avenue. Hood wasn't going to let imprisonment or America-bashing or cheap utensils ruin that.

  Harleigh may have been the catalyst for all these good feelings, but neither their daughter nor Alexander was the glue.

  There's something here, Hood told himself as they filled their plates and then sat on one of the old vinyl couches to await their daughter's New York City debut. He wanted to hold onto that feeling in the same way that he had held Sharon's hand.

  Tightly.

  SEVEN

  New York, New York Saturday, 7:27 P.M.

  Traffic in Times Square is extremely dense after seven P.M. on Saturday night as theatergoers arrive from out of town. Limousines clog the side streets, garages have cars lined up waiting to get in, and cabs and buses inch through the center of the theater district.

  Georgiev had allowed for the delay when he planned this part of the operation. When he finally turned east on Forty-second Street and rolled toward Bryant Park, he was relaxed and confident. So were the other members of the team. But then, if he hadn't served with them, seen that they were cool under pressure, he never would have recruited them for this mission.

  Apart from Reynold Downer, the forty-eight-year-old former colonel of the Bulgarian People's Army was the only truly mercenary man on the team. Barone wanted money to help his people back home. Sazanka and Vandal had issues of honor dating back to World War II. Issues that money would clear away. Georgiev had a different problem. He'd spent nearly ten years as part of the CIA-financed underground in Bulgaria. He'd fought the Communists for so long that he couldn't adapt to an era that had no enemy. He had no trade apart from soldiering, the army was not paying its people with regularity, and he was much poorer now than he'd been taking American dollars and living under the shadow of the Soviet empire. He wanted to open a new business: financing petroleum and natural gas
exploitation. He would do that with his share of the take from today's mission.

  Because of Georgiev's familiarity with CIA tactics and his fluency in American English, the others had no trouble with him leading this half of the operation. Besides, as he'd proven when he organized the prostitution ring in Cambodia, he was a natural leader.

  Georgiev drove slowly, carefully. He watched out for jaywalking pedestrians. He didn't tailgate. He didn't shout at taxi drivers who cut him off. He didn't do anything that would cause him to be stopped by the police. It was ironic. He was about to commit an act of destruction and murder that the world would not soon forget. Yet here he was, the model of tranquil, lawful motoring. There was a time, growing up, when Georgiev wanted to be a philosopher. Maybe when all of this was over, he would finally get to take that up. Contrasts fascinated him.

  When he had driven this route the day before, he noticed a traffic camera on a streetlight at the southwest corner of Forty-second Street and Fifth Avenue. The camera faced north. There was another on Forty-second Street and Third Avenue facing south. Vandal, who was sitting in the passenger's seat, and Georgiev both adjusted their sun visors to cover those windows. They'd be wearing ski masks when they went into the UN. The NYPD would probably review all the cameras in the area, and he didn't want anyone to have a photographic record of who was in the van. The traffic cameras would tell them nothing. And while police might find a few tourists who had videotaped the van, Georgiev had intentionally approached the target from the setting sun. All any videotape would see was glare off the windshield. God bless the things he'd learned from the CIA.

  They passed the New York Public Library, Grand Central Station, and the Chrysler Building. They reached First Avenue without incident. Georgiev timed his approach so they'd stop at the light. He'd made sure he was in the right-hand lane. When they made the left turn, he would be on the same side of the street as the United Nations, on the right. He glanced toward the north. The target area was just two blocks away. Almost straight ahead was the Secretariat Building, set back behind a circular courtyard and a fountain. A seven-foot-high iron fence fronted the complex for its four-block length. There were three guard booths spaced along the gates, behind them. NYPD officers patrolled the street. Across First Avenue, on the corner of Forty-fifth Street, was an NYPD command booth.

  He had reconnoitered all of this the day before. And he'd studied photographs and videotape he'd taken months before that. He knew this area completely, from the location of every streetlight to every fire hydrant.

  Georgiev waited until the DON'T WALK sign began flashing to his left. That meant they had six seconds until the light changed. Georgiev's black ski mask was tucked between his legs. He pulled it out and slipped it on. The other men did likewise. They were already wearing thin white gloves so they wouldn't leave fingerprints but could still handle their weapons.

  The light turned.

  So did Georgiev.

  EIGHT

  New York, New York Saturday, 7:30 P.M.

  Etienne Vandal pulled on his ski mask. Then he turned to receive his weapons from Sazanka, who was in the back of the van along with Barone and Downer. The seats had been removed and piled in a corner of the hotel garage. The windows had been painted over. The men were able to prepare in total secrecy. Barone holstered his own two automatics and picked up the Uzi. He would also be wearing the backpack containing tear gas and gas masks. If it became necessary to fight their way out, they'd have the gas as well as hostages.

  It was difficult to twist very far because of the bulletproof vest, but Vandal preferred discomfort to vulnerability. The Japanese officer handed him two automatics and an Uzi.

  Downer was kneeling beside the door on the driver's side of the van. He placed his own weapons on the floor. A Swiss-made B-77 missile launcher lay across his shoulder. He had requested an American M47 Dragon, but this was the closest Ustinoviks could come. Downer had examined the short-range, lightweight antitank missile and had assured the team it would do the job. Vandal and the others hoped so. Without it, they'd be dead in the street. Barone was crouched beside the side door, ready to pull it open.

  Vandal had already checked his weapons at the hotel. Now he sat and waited as the van continued to accelerate. It was here at last. The countdown they'd been working for, going over again and again for more than a year. In Vandal's case, it was a moment he'd been awaiting for even longer than that. He was calm, even relieved, as the target area came into view.

  The other men also seemed calm, especially Georgiev. Yet he always came across as a big, cold machine. Vandal knew very little about the man, but what he did know, he didn't like or respect. Until Bulgaria drafted a new constitution in 1991, it was among the most repressive nations in the Soviet bloc. Georgiev helped the CIA recruit informants inside the government. Vandal would have understood if the man had struggled to overthrow the regime for principle. But Georgiev had worked for the CIA simply because they paid well. Though the goals were the same, that was the difference between a patriot and a traitor. As far as Vandal was concerned, a man who would betray his country would certainly betray his partners in crime. That was something Etienne Vandal knew about. His grandfather was a former Nazi collaborator who died in a French prison. It wasn't only that Charles Vandal had betrayed his country. He'd been a member of the Mulot resistance group, which had been responsible for stealing and hiding art and treasures before the Germans could plunder them from French museums. Charles Vandal not only turned over Mulot and his team, but he led the Germans to a cache of French art.

  They had less than one block to go. A few tourists who were still out at this hour turned to look at the speeding van. The vehicle shot past the UN library building on the south side of the plaza. Then Georgiev raced past the first guard booth with its green-tinted bulletproof glass and bored-looking officers. The booth was located behind the black iron fence, which was separated from the avenue by twenty feet of sidewalk. There were extra guards for tonight's soiree and the gate was closed, but that didn't matter. The target area was less than fifty feet to the north.

  Georgiev passed the second guard booth. Then, clearing a fire hydrant just beyond, he swung the van to the right and floored the gas pedal. The vehicle shot across the sidewalk, hitting one pedestrian and running him under the driver's-side wheel. Several others were knocked to the side. A moment later, the van ripped through a yard-high chain-link fence. The sound of the metal scraping the sides of the van drowned out the screams of injured pedestrians. The vehicle plowed through a small garden filled with trees and shrubs, Georgiev steering clear of the large tree on the south side of the garden. A few low-hanging branches from other trees smashed against the windshield and roof. Some branches snapped, others whipped back as the van pushed ahead.

  To the north and south, UN police, members of the NYPD, and a handful of white-shirted State Department police were just beginning to respond to the breach. Guns drawn, radios in hand, they ran from the three guard booths along First Avenue, from the booth inside the courtyard to the north, and from the police outpost across the street.

  It took just over two seconds for the van to drill through the garden and the row of hedges at the far end. The men in the back of the van braced themselves as Georgiev crushed down on the brake. The garden was separated from the circular plaza by a concrete barrier just over three feet high and nearly one foot thick. The flagpoles, which flew the flags of the 185 member nations, stood in a row beyond the barrier.

  Georgiev and Vandal ducked low. They were expecting to lose the windshield. Barone slid the van door open. Sazanka lay down, prepared to spray covering fire if necessary. Downer leaned out over him and pointed his missile launcher at the thick wall. He aimed low to make sure he didn't leave anything close to the ground. Then he fired.

  There was an ear-ringing roar, and then a seven-foot-wide section of the concrete barrier was gone. Several large chunks flew across the plaza like cannonballs, some landing in the fountain, others b
ouncing across the drive. But most of the wall rose in a wide, fifty-foot-high plume of jagged white shards, then rained down like hail. Behind the wall, five of the tall white flagpoles snapped near the bases. They fell straight and hard and landed on the asphalt with a loud clang. Vandal could hear it even though his ears were still clogged from the explosion.

  Even as the bits of concrete were still falling, Georgiev gunned the engine and pushed the van ahead. Timing was critical. They had to keep moving. He roared through the breach in the barrier, clipping the driver's side on an outthrust of concrete, but didn't stop. Downer had ducked back into the van, but Sazanka continued to lie in the open side door, ready to fire at anyone who shot at them. No one did. While they were part of the PKO and first conceived of this idea, the men had easily obtained a copy of the United Nations police guidelines. They were very explicit: No one was to act individually against a group. The threat was to be contained, if possible, by whatever personnel were on hand, but not challenged until sufficient units were made available. It was pure United Nations philosophy. It didn't work in the international arena, and it wasn't going to work here.

  Georgiev headed northeast across the plaza. Though the windshield had shattered, it was still in the frame. Fortunately, there wasn't much the Bulgarian needed to see. The van shot across the exit lane of the courtyard and hopped onto the lawn that led to the General Assembly Building. Georgiev sped east around the Japanese Peace Bell. As Vandal ducked again, the van crashed through the large plate glass windows that opened onto the courtyard from the small lobby. The van slammed into the statue of El Abrazo de Paz, a stylized human figure "embracing peace" that stood just inside. The statue fell over, and the van rode up on it; that was as far as the van was going. But that was also as far as they needed the van to go. By the time guards and attendees at the delegates' soiree first became aware of the disturbance, the five men were already out of the van. Georgiev fired a short burst at the guard who was posted outside the corridor that led to the staff elevators. The young man spun and fell, the first UN casualty. Vandal wondered whether he'd get a peace statue in his honor as well.