At about eight in the morning Brennan dropped off his daughter at St. Mary’s grammar school. “Elizabeth, you be good for the sisters. I’ll see you tonight.”
“Okay, Daddy.”
Nick began the drive to the train station. Another day in a desert of inactivity, he thought as he steered into the parking lot. The 8:10 showed up right on time, and Nicky walked to a seat in the back of the car as he decided to call John Planner.
“Johnny, we have to speak carefully. I’m on my cell. Anything?”
“Not really. I’m just sitting here reminiscing. Remember when Dan Stark had us move the box of junk down to the Saint George in Cholon and told us it was such a big secret even he knew nothing about it?”
“Yeah, sometimes things aren’t what they seem. He was kept in the dark.”
“Well, I feel that way right now. Maybe the message is really just a can full of shit; a diversion.”
“I don’t know, Johnny boy. Bhiren didn’t know we were intercepting that conversation. Logically, it doesn’t fit.”
“Remember what you didn’t know. Do you even know what Zulu time is right now?” Planner said, laughing into the phone.
“Yes it is eight fifteen here and London is five hours ahead; it’s one fifteen Zulu.”
“Wrong again, Mr. Brennan. You and London are on daylight savings time. Zulu doesn’t change in the summer. It is twelve fifteen Zulu, only four hours’ difference in the spring and summer, five hours in the winter.”
“Damn, I got it wrong again. Why can’t I do this?” Nick said, feigning genuine concern.
When the call ended, Nick Brennan settled into his seat, and looking out the window, he began to think again. Planner was right, I’m time zone challenged, he thought, laughing to himself. Then he remembered Mickey Bradford correcting him with the numerical expression of the date too. Suddenly something entered his mind with numbing speed and a dull rush. His eyes bulged and his temples began to expand and pound. Holy shit, my dates are also wrong. 0305 is May third, not March fifth. He stopped for a minute, took a deep breath and forced himself to think critically as the thought lit up in his head like a giant spotlight. Oh my God, the goddamn attack is today! Nick started to shake as he began to resist the urge to panic. Not thinking of his job but first his family, Nick called Joann, knowing Elizabeth had been just been dropped off at a Catholic school. “Jodie, no questions, please pick up Elizabeth right away. Take both the kids and go up to the house in Great Barrington. Call Tom and Carol DeBoer and have them meet you up there. Tell Tom to take the day off!”
“Nicky, how are you going to meet us up there?”
“I’ll leave my car at the station and take the bus from the city. I’ll call, just pick me up tonight at the South Egremont bus station. I’ll let you know what time,” he said as he abruptly hung up.
Nick quickly dialed Kristin and said, “Kris, real quick see if the Internet is showing any activities involving kids, particularly religious schools in the city, getting on the R train this morning.”
“Nick, what is this all about?”
“Krissy, please do it right now. There is no time.”
“Okay. Let me see…give me a minute, I have to do a search.” Kristin typed as fast as she could and finally picked something up. “Nick, according to posted church bulletins there are two schools taking a day trip to the Battery from Brooklyn today. They are two grammar schools, Saint Agnes and Saint Michael’s, both in Sunset Park. It is a Catholic celebration of the Trinity in lower Manhattan. Teachers and students grades K through 3 are to meet at 36th Street station at nine o’clock this morning. Nicky, 36th Street is an R stop, and the R goes to the Battery, Whitehall Street and South Ferry.”
“Ah shit, right out of the 4.171 lecture. Thanks, I’ll get back to you.”
With flashing perceptions, Brennan dialed Jack Mason’s office line. “Jack, the 0305 isn’t March the fifth, it’s May the third—the date the way the Brits express it. The attack is today. The 91 is New York time at nine in the morning and one in the afternoon Zulu. Bhiren is going to attack the R train out of 36th Street and Fourth Avenue. Two Catholic grammar schools are taking that train to the Battery for a celebration of the Trinity. We need to get the cops there forthwith.”
“Nick, calm down. We have been through all this before. The numbers could have many meanings. What time is it now?”
“It is 8:40. I’m going to 36th Street when I get off the train…”
“Okay, okay. I’ll let the bosses know. But this is probably another dead end, just remember that. Calm down and just check it out. Call me if anything is happening.”
After the train pulled in, Brennan sprinted from the station and jumped into a yellow cab. “I’m with the FBI. 36th and Fourth in Sunset Park, the R train as fast as you can!” He looked down at his cell phone, knowing it was useless in the subway system.
The cabbie took his mission seriously and rapidly drove through the city streets, passing cars on the right and the left. The car screeched to a halt at 9:10. Nick threw a twenty-dollar bill to the driver and ran to the station entrance. Once down the stairs he vaulted the turnstile and hoped for an NYPD officer to catch the obvious transgression. No luck. Nick ran towards the train just as the last of the hundred or more little children were getting on board. Breathlessly, he made it into the last car. The subway train moved out of the station slowly at first, picking up speed and then slowing as it approached the next station. The first stop was 25th Street, and as Nick moved forward in a journey to the lead car, he saw no suspicious activity as he left the last car.
By the time the train had reached the next station, Prospect Avenue, Brennan was beginning to comprehend the sheer number of grammar school students, all the little girls dressed in green plaid skirts and the boys wearing white shirts and plaid ties. In the next car he again saw no reason for alarm in spite of the crowded conditions. Maybe I blew it again, he thought for a second.
Far ahead approaching the first car, where the motorman operated the engine, police officer Regan Ryan slowly made her way forward to check on the train crew and make sure no ruffians had boarded to cause trouble. Regan, a twenty-nine-year-old cop, had two young children at home. Her youngest was eighteen-month-old Carey, a little girl with curly blonde hair who inherited her father’s ability to make funny faces; and her older sister, Lillian, five, a dark-haired, serious student who like her mother was a bit of an overachiever.
As Officer Ryan threw open the door between the cars separating the first carriage from the one behind, she casually looked forward and was startled by the barrel of a pistol. She sensed the deep fatal silence. Without warning she was shot in the forehead by a gunman with a large black 9 mm handgun as he sat against the metal wall directly behind the motorman’s operating station. The young cop, her face exploding in blood, was dead before she hit the floor. The moment the gun was fired there were kids and adults screaming and running about in every direction in the confined area as the gunman turned around and made his way to the motorman. He fired his weapon into the lock separating the operating position and the aisle and muscled open the door.
As he put the pistol to the subway worker’s head, he said with a pronounced British accent, “Do not stop at any stations and listen to my instructions carefully, or you and all the others on board will die.”
Now in the fourth car back, hearing nothing while deeply immersed in the loud rumbling of the hard wheels on the metal track, Nick Brennan continued to move forward deliberately. Nick knew that the next station was Ninth Street followed by Union. It would be about two miles before the train reached the Montague Street tunnel, he thought. In the next car, now only three cars from the front, Brennan looked out and saw the Ninth Street signs erected on the subway walls and support beams passing rapidly outside the window and the train did not stop. He shuddered as he suddenly realized the train had been hijacked. Shit, this is it! He is at the front of the goddamn train!
Pulling his pistol from beneath
his jacket, Nick ran towards the front of the train. Breathing heavily and with a heightened sense of awareness, he began to make a plan. He ran around and even over children, teachers and nuns with his gun held high and his suit jacket fluttering out and back from his hips. He knew he had no time to issue instructions to the crowd and had to make his way to the engineer before the train crossed into the tunnel. Suddenly the signs for Union Street appeared in his peripheral vision, followed quickly by Pacific Street. Now these train cars are racing toward the point of detonation, he knew.
As Nick entered the next car, the signs for DeKalb Avenue flew by his field of vision off to his left. One, maybe two cars to go, he reasoned. The train was moving so rapidly and making such rigid hardened turns on the old rails at such a high rate of speed that Brennan was losing his balance as he reached the last doorway. Suddenly Jay Street appeared in his peripheral vision; only one stop remained before they entered the tunnel. Nick, a bit dizzy and using all his strength, dragged at the metal handle. He slammed it to the right side and locked the door open into the head car. The rushing noise and wind from outside filled his ears and was almost unbearable, but he ignored the diversion.
As he entered the noisy lead carriage he saw directly to his front in the aisle the female officer lying prone, face up, her uniform covered in blood. Nick stopped and studied her blood-covered face for a brief moment and calculated the grit of his ruthless opponent. Small children and adults were sitting on the floor screaming, crying and some just sat in stunned silence. As Nick moved forward, the subway signs for Court Street now appeared out the window and the train began to slow. The tunnel was about one mile away.
With overhead florescent bulbs flickering on and off, projecting a surreal blackness and interspersing blue light, Nick saw the hijacker at the front of the car, staring away from the back of the car, looking intently aside. He had a gun in his right hand pointed directly at the head of the engineer through the narrow doorway to the motorman’s station. The gunman had a large package balanced carefully on his left forearm, awkwardly pinched down by his hand and held in place by his wrist and the inside crook of his elbow. Nicky knew it was al Mohammed. Brennan also knew there was no room for error. Nick had to hit his target before what he now knew was a bomb could be exploded. The train continued at a steady pace forward. Perhaps twenty miles an hour.
So as not to draw any attention, Nicky moved ever so slowly toward the killer. The train’s headlights revealed in the distance the entrance to the bifurcated tunnel ahead. The tube toward Manhattan was dead on; the tube to the left, the returning route looked dark and inactive. Nick needed to stop the madman before the front car reached the tunnel. A detonation inside the tube would flood the whole system with water and probably dismember the occupants of the front car and drown all the passengers further back, maybe even passengers on other trains.
In the unpredictable alternating light, Nick, like al Mohammed had, decided to fire without warning. He raised up his Keltec 9 and fired four rounds at the profile of the target just as the subway car went completely black. In all the noise he was able to discern the faint sound of breaking glass ahead. When the lights suddenly flickered back on, he realized he had missed Bhiren al Mohammed. Damn, up and to the left. I hit the friggin’ glass!
Bhiren’s attention was now drawn to the back of the carriage and he caught a glimpse of Nick; without hesitation he began to wildly pump off several rounds from his pistol in Nick’s general direction. Brennan dove to the floor of the car behind an empty plastic and metallic bench seat just as Bhiren kicked through the front doorway at the head of the engine car. The train came to a sudden stop. Al Mohammed jumped out the front with the bomb in hand and began to cautiously run toward the tunnel.
Sprinting forward to the motorman, Nicky, based on his planning moments earlier, started to issue orders as he crawled over the people, “Everyone stay down low. Move to the cars further back. It will be alright,” he yelled above the roar of the screaming and crying. When he reached the engineer, he looked through the broken glass and saw Bhiren running toward the left tube into the Brooklyn-bound track on the oncoming rail line. Brennan directed action in his signature staccato fashion, “Back this goddamn train out of here to Jay Street and get everybody out of the system. Get on the radio and stop all the subway traffic in both directions through that tunnel. Tell anyone who will listen I am an FBI intelligence officer and I am armed. Tell them I am wearing a gray suit and chasing al Mohammed—can you remember that name—through the south tube. Tell them he has a bomb!” Nicky screamed, just before he jumped out of the front car in pursuit of the killer.
Brennan knew it would be several minutes before the word would get out. He knew until then he was on his own. The tracks he was running on would be active, and the third rail would be alive until all of the trains had been cleared out of the tunnel by the transit authority. Bhiren will try to get near the middle of the tunnel before any detonation, more than two thousand feet, he calculated, and believed that al Mohammed wanted to escape, not die for the cause, so he will blow up the device remotely. Nick also knew there were only six rounds left in his pistol and he had to make them count and take a carefully measured fatal shot if the opportunity presented itself.
As Brennan followed Bhiren into the southern tube, he hesitated for a moment. I guess there is more room on the right wall. I have to stay away from that third rail. Not much light, but some. The stillness of the dark pathway was unsettling. Walking at a quickened pace, Nick stayed between the electric rail and the wall with his right hand, his gun hand, raised above his head, clinging to a narrow ledge to maintain his balance and provide guidance. The gravel and stones on the rail bed made each step uneven and dangerous, and with a confluence of moving shadows at his feet he resisted the temptation to look down in the barely lit tube.
Nick had travelled about five hundred feet when he saw the lights of an approaching train. Now he knew the electric was still on and the tunnel was not yet closed to traffic. Damn it! Brennan nervously stopped walking and pressed himself against the right wall and moved his arms to his side as he felt the rush of air headed in his direction. The wind became stronger as the train got closer and began to blow behind his back and was pushing him away from the wall. Leaning back, he turned his head to the right, holstered his gun, raised both hands and pulled himself against the wall by grabbing on to the concrete ledge. As the train passed, he closed his eyes and prayed—at one point thinking the screeching wheels had almost touched his left ear.
After the cars had passed, Nick breathed an audible sigh of relief. “Ooh, that was quite a haircut,” he said in a low voice as he resumed his careful journey further into the tube. Suddenly, far ahead he saw movement and a shadow but no profile. It has to be Bhiren, he figured. Nick decided to carefully move forward at a somewhat quieter yet faster pace. He knew al Mohammed had to be careful carrying his explosive package, no matter how well it was built.
Brennan, after walking briskly for about four minutes, approached a reflectorized sign anchored to the wall with a white background and black lettering barely legible in the poor lighting, which read: “Exit 1730 feet ahead.” Okay, less than a third of a mile. Bhiren is going to set the bomb right near here somewhere, he guessed. Nick slowed his pace and tried to stay in the shadows, moving back and forth from tunnel wall to wall. Each time he cautiously stepped over the energized third rail he held his breath.
Again, the lights of another approaching train appeared. Ah shit, the damn power still isn’t off. What the hell is going on? Am I doing this all alone? Watching for a moment, he realized the rail cars ahead were stopped for some reason. Perhaps a station, maybe a signal or maybe instructions by the transit police, he mused. Then the outline of a man illuminated by the headlights appeared about a hundred feet in front of him. It had to be Bhiren al Mohammed, and he was placing the package in between the two rails near the middle of the tube. Nick started to run towards the terrorist when Bhiren looked up. Bren
nan pulled his pistol, and not considering the consequences, fired without the benefit of a good sight picture. Al Mohammed was pushed back by the force of the bullet striking him in the right upper arm and fell to the track bed. Now Nicky couldn’t take a chance on hitting the explosives, so he decided not to shoot again. Bhiren rolled to his left side, bleeding from his right, and pushed himself to his feet, picked up his pistol and began to run towards the stalled train.
Nick looked down and saw the tightly wrapped package. Plastic cover, probably waterproof, he thought. Nick stood over the menacing device and tried to think quickly and figure out what to do. Then he realized the decision was made for him. Bhiren had the detonator, and the train began to move forward on the tracks toward the bomb. He had to get the explosive the hell out of there!
Brennan reached down with both hands, picked up the bomb package and again pressed himself against the right wall. This train is moving slower, he noticed, but even a slow train kills, he knew. He turned his head towards his right, as he had done before, placed the bomb at his feet and his hands at his side and took a deep breath. As the train moved past, Brennan saw al Mohammed also pressed against the wall two hundred feet ahead. When all the carriages had passed, both men again began to move toward the Manhattan side. Nick knew the exit was now about five hundred feet away and believed Bhiren would exit there and probably set off the explosion at that point. He certainly isn’t going to blow the damn tunnel up while he is still in it.
Nicky moved slowly and made certain not to shake the contents of his cargo in any way. Bhiren, now wounded and bleeding, was forced to move more slowly than before. His motion was slowed and aggravated by his wound. Bhiren was painfully pushing each leg forward toward the other to make his escape. The exit, a few feet ahead, had a small, exposed amber light bulb above the dark metal doorway on the left side of the tunnel. Bhiren began to run awkwardly and stumbled through the tube. He went up the three dark concrete steps which led from the rail bed to the portal on top. Nick followed closely behind, holding the explosive device in his left hand. Nick fired at al Mohammed again as he ascended the concrete stairway within the exit towards the street. Nick screamed out, “Bhiren, I’ve got the bomb with me!” hoping that being so close to the device himself al Mohammed would not pull the detonator’s trigger.
Once a Noble Endeavor Page 27