The initial satisfaction of standing up to Monica was deflating out of him faster than a punctured tire. The gravity of the words he had just spoken transformed the fleeting relief in Blackwell’s belly to fiery tightness in his chest.
Blackwell had first heard of Monica’s troubled and secretive past through the grapevine at the Bureau, just like everyone else. After the Hermosa Beach incident, he had descended into a mad obsession of wanting to know everything about her. He broke many ethical and legal boundaries to get his hands on an unauthorized copy of her FBI psych profile. And what he read in her file was the basis of the nasty things he had spewed.
The entire room was staring at him, especially Natasha Shaker. He knew exactly what they were thinking. Blackwell, not Monica, had hit below the belt first.
Pushing Monica to her emotional limit wasn’t the only thing that left Blackwell feeling hollow. The way he behaved was a knee-jerk reaction conditioned by his own sense of failure. Deeper issues he thought were resolved. The illusion he had been able to forgive himself had crumbled with shame in front of some damn fine FBI agents and analysts. Even worse, Monica was actually making sense this time. Putting Seth and his men on a plane was probably the worst thing they could do. Blackwell’s burning need to have a showdown with Monica clouded his better judgment.
She wiped a tear from the corner of her eye and composed herself.
“Mr. Blackwell, the hostage negotiations are now officially over. We’ve entered the second stage to rescue the hostages and apprehend the terrorists. You’re welcome to stay in the room until we’re done but there will be no more weighing in on my decisions And that goes for everyone else in the room.” Her eyes scanned around like a wounded lioness still strong enough to make a prey out of whoever dared challenge her.
A silence engulfed the room as everyone else avoided eye contact with Blackwell and Monica.
He grabbed his cellphone and stormed toward the door, still behaving like a twat. Then he stopped in his tracks and turned around to look at Monica. He’d already allowed the animal to cause enough damage. The time had come for him to behave like an adult.
“With your permission, I’d like to stay on until the end.”
NINETEEN
Sunday, November 6, 2011—9:00 a.m.
Manhattan, New York
Blackwell and the rest of the team were huddled around what used to be his negotiating desk, their eyes glued to a monitor broadcasting live footage. Three men wearing black ski masks and dark sunglasses were exiting 200 Park Avenue. They climbed into the silver Lexus SUV and drove away on Park heading south.
Tagging the Lexus a safe distance behind was an unmarked red Camry with two FBI agents. Their brief was to follow the SUV to JFK. A wide-angle camera installed on the Camry transmitted live footage back to command post. One of the agents also had a secondary camera attached to his shades for any action outside the car.
Four hours earlier, based on Monica Vlasic’s recommendation to Deputy Director Benny Marino, the final stages of the operation kicked in. The president approved an unprecedented nationwide evacuation of all known day cares and their immediate vicinities. Police bomb squads would follow to comb for and defuse any explosives.
The FBI’s orders had come from the director and trickled down to the agency’s fifty-six regional field offices, which in turn worked with local and state law enforcement and emergency services. In the towns and cities where first responders were thinned or overstretched, the army or the National Guard stepped in. Across the fifty states, Puerto Rico and other US overseas territories, children and their minders were removed from any facility vaguely defined as a day care. Buses were chartered to take them to temporary locations such as churches, public school gyms and libraries.
The main risk facing the evacuation was the possibility hundreds, maybe even thousands, of illegal facilities existed outside the regulatory oversight of the local child protective services. Monica had rationalized if a day care was indeed operating in the dark, it would have been unlikely for Seth to select it for inclusion as one of his targets. A huge gamble on her part based on pure gut instinct. Blackwell was no longer in a position to object or offer counterplans.
Within four hours after the White House had approved it, the evacuation protocol was completed. Its smooth implementation exemplified the best and worst of the country’s law enforcement practices. A rare show of how federal, state and local systems can, when they wanted to, cooperate to implement massive public safety operations. Yet the fact this tactical move was not implemented when Seth had first disclosed his intentions spoke volumes of the contempt the FBI had for the news media.
Blackwell too had a special place in the hate compartment of his heart for the news media. He blamed them for corrupting local police to feed an insatiable hunger for sensational stories. A hunger that often obstructed justice, and in this case, would also have endangered lives. If the operation had been unleashed any sooner, there was a patent risk a news outlet could have gotten wind of it through the dreaded ‘anonymous’ tip-off from within a police department.
A nationwide evacuation involving children was a story worth telling.
The second part of Monica’s counteroffensive against Seth was even flimsier. With Julia Price safe, Benny Marino had developed a greater appetite for bolder risks. Monica had sold him on the idea of rescuing the Exertify hostages by extracting them from the building as their only viable option, and it could only be done during the short window of opportunity when Seth and his accomplices were driving from Manhattan to JFK.
Once the rescue was completed, and with the weekend care centers evacuated, Seth and his men would be apprehended before they even came close to an airplane. Theoretically the plan was sound, but the devil was in the implementation. Still, Blackwell had conceded it was marginally more appealing than Seth’s original proposal to hand him a plane and the open skies with the hope he’d make good on his promise.
The team tasked with extracting the hostages from the tower comprised an NYPD bomb squad and a fresh Hostage Rescue Team unit to replace Albert Voss’s now-murdered squad. Fifty-three men in total traveling on a borrowed city bus heading to the Thirty-Third Street subway station. From there, the men would hop on a train to Grand Central Terminal on Forty-second street. With a big chunk of midtown Manhattan still evacuated, the team could move and use public transport unhindered.
Through the main terminal of the station complex, the team would cross over to 200 Park Avenue through a maintenance tunnel connecting the two buildings. From the basement of the tower, they would ride two of the five service elevators up to the Exertify offices in successive waves. Exertify had prohibited freight elevators from stopping on the thirty-ninth floor, so the team had to disembark on the thirty-eighth then cross over to the only passenger elevator with access to the thirty-ninth.
Once they were on the Exertify floor, no one had any idea what they would be up against. Seth had cut off the company’s headquarters from the outside world. The security lifeline connecting the Manhattan office to their other operations was the first thing he had severed, followed by all other lines of communication, including the hostages’ cellphones.
With no meaningful plan of action prior to entry, this rescue operation was of the most dangerous type. The bomb squad and the hostage rescue unit were going in blind and would be forced to respond to whatever dangers they encountered on the fly. This was the sort of incompetent law enforcement that the public was never privy to.
They were going in on a sliver of unverified intelligence fed to them by Seth. He had told Blackwell the entrance of the conference room had a motion detector installed to detonate the explosives if breached. Assuming they were able to get to the conference room without setting off any other hazards along the way, the only semblance of a plan was for the bomb squad to guide one of the hostages to override the motion detector by following their verbal instruction
s.
By the time the extraction team had reached the basement of the building, the Lexus SUV had already crossed the Midtown Tunnel and was heading east on 495 into Queens. Traffic conditions were perfect, and at forty-five miles per hour, the Lexus would reach the airport within twenty minutes of crossing the tunnel.
When Monica had hatched the extraction plan, Blackwell refreshed his knowledge of the besieged building at 200 Park Avenue. The iconic tower had started life in the sixties as the
Pan Am building. Along the years, it had witnessed a CEO jumping to his death from the forty-fourth floor, as well as the rotors of a helicopter slicing through passengers in a horrific accident, back when its rooftop was still used as a heliport. One of the most visible structures in the Manhattan skyline, the building was also the most loathed architecturally, often described as an ugly behemoth. For many years it held the unenviable honor as the structure New Yorkers would most like to see demolished.
Its scale and visibility also made it an attractive target for terrorist plots. Every member of the FBI Hostage Rescue Team and the NYPD bomb squad heading to rescue the hostages would have known the insides of the building like the back of their hands. The structure was a staple in the tactical response training curriculum.
When the men of the extraction and rescue team reached their launch point, a live camera feed of what they were seeing also began transmitting to Blackwell and the other agents and analysts on another monitor.
A group of twelve FBI hostage rescue operators and two bomb-squad officers took a freight elevator up to clear access for the rest of the men. They crossed over with little difficulty from the thirty-eighth floor to a passenger elevator, then rode it up one floor as planned.
The doors slid open with the familiar bell sound. Blackwell swallowed hard as the fourteen men took their first steps into the lobby of Exertify.
Meanwhile, the Lexus had cleared the end of the JFK Expressway and followed the red signs for Terminal Eight departures. The Camry slowed down to maintain a safe distance. Both cars pulled over to the curb of the departures terminal and parked, with the Camry a few vehicles behind the Lexus. The FBI agents jumped out and made their way to the target SUV.
Any time now, the three men would emerge from the Lexus no longer wearing their disguises. Through a camera attached to one of the agent’s shades, Blackwell would finally see Seth.
The agents had been instructed to trail them inside the airport until further orders came in from Monica and her team. If they had to, they would throw as many curveballs at them inside the terminal to delay them as much as possible until the extraction was completed.
Back in Manhattan, the fourteen men had survived the entry into the foyer of the Exertify floor without setting off any explosions. They stood in front of a spacious cavity with marble floors, steel walls and a low ceiling covered in a futuristic honeycomb material. The ‘vault’ was a high-tech buffer zone built by Exertify to screen anyone entering their offices, staff included.
The entry and exit of the vault were both wide open, with the lights of motion detector devices blinking. Seth hadn’t just booby-trapped the entrance to the conference room, he had extended the same protection to the vault as well.
Blackwell turned his attention to what was happening at JFK. No one emerged from the Lexus, which had now been idle for close to five minutes. The hovering FBI agents had to convince a few airport police cops who were suspicious of the SUV to ignore it for now.
Blackwell’s neck was stiffening from alternating between the two monitors broadcasting the events inside the building and outside JFK simultaneously. Neither was of less importance.
Out of the corner of his eye he noticed movement on the third monitor streaming footage from the rooftop of the building. Monica and the rest of the team were too absorbed with the other feeds to notice it.
“Is this one of ours?” Blackwell blurted.
Monica looked at him. “One of ours what?”
He pointed to the screen. “That red helicopter landing on the rooftop, right there.”
The chopper in question had just contravened the no-fly zone imposed on midtown Manhattan.
Nishimura, who clearly knew his choppers, said, “That’s a Bell 206 L IV Long Ranger. It has Manhattan City Dreams written on it. Most likely a commercial tour operator.”
Three shadowy figures dressed in black and carrying backpacks ran across the rooftop and boarded the aircraft, which bounced back up in the sky in record time. This can’t be happening.
Blackwell yelled over the radio to the two agents at JFK, “Check the Lexus. Intercept the car now and check the passengers!”
Everything descended into madness swiftly.
Monica dialed feverishly in to the FBI Hostage Rescue Team unit inside the building.
Nishimura stepped back from the group to use his phone.
At JFK, the two agents approached the car from both sides and knocked on the front doors with their pointed guns. The driver’s window rolled down and the masked man behind the wheel whispered to the agents, “Is it over?”
“Barrett, this is Vlasic,” Monica said to the Hostage Rescue Team in the building. “Watch your step. Suspects may have been in the building all along, and only just escaped from the rooftop using a helicopter. What’s your status?”
Roger Barrett, the lead Hostage Rescue Team operator, responded, “Confirmed. We found motion detectors in the vault separating the entrance and the office. But something’s not right here, Vlasic.”
“What’s up?”
“NYPD bomb guys tried to disable the sensors but said they’re decoys, not wired to anything. We’re also not detecting any trace of explosives. None whatsoever.”
Slant touched Blackwell and Monica’s shoulders from the back. “It could be a trap to lead them into the conference room to maximize casualties. Tell them to tread carefully.”
A common terrorist tactic used with impunity. A deceiving layer of decoys to lower the rescue team’s guard, followed by the real death trap.
The FBI agent at JFK kept his aim at the temple of the masked man in the Lexus and questioned him cautiously. “Who are you?”
“We are hostages from the Exertify building. Who are you?”
“FBI. Move slowly and get out of the car with your hands on your heads. Now.”
“I need a helicopter in the sky, Liam. Now!” Monica said.
Nishimura hung up his phone, rushed back to his computer and activated yet another video feed on an unused monitor.
“I am on it. There’s an NYPD chopper over Hoboken. I instructed them to turn around and get on their tail. We’re picking up their video feed right now.”
A few seconds later, an audio feed came in. “This is Detective Morris Lynch from the NYPD Aviation Twenty-two. We’ve established visual contact with the escaped aircraft. It’s heading south. Are you getting our video feed?”
“Confirmed, Detective. Video feed live now. This is Special Agent-in-Charge, Monica Vlasic.”
“I’m patching you up for our radio communication with the target chopper. What do you want done with them?”
“Force ’em down.”
“Copy that.”
Lynch initiated communication with the renegade helicopter.
“Mike-Charlie-Delta-Seven-Niner-Zero, this is NYPD Aviation Twenty-two. You do not have permission to fly over this airspace. Take her down at Juliet-Romeo-Bravo. I repeat, proceed immediately to the Downtown Manhattan Heliport.”
“Aviation Twenty-two, this is Mike-Charlie-Delta-Seven-Niner-Zero. Unable to comply. Flying under gunpoint. Aircraft has been commandeered by four armed men—the one who hired me and the three we picked up from Manhattan. They’ve instructed me to put her down on Staten Island.”
Monica’s cheeks turned a deeper shade of ruby.
“What the hell will they do on Staten Isla
nd?”
Nishimura pulled up a map of Manhattan on one of the screens and zoomed in on the radar positions of the two choppers.
Blackwell froze, his mind was overwhelmed by onslaught of events. He scrutinized the positions of the two choppers—two green dots cruising with a safe distance between them.
He glanced at his watch.
It was nine thirty-nine.
Then he figured it all out.
“They’re not going to Staten Island!”
He pointed to the Verrazano Narrows Bridge on the map. “They’re heading for the bridge. It’s the New York marathon, and it starts right now.”
“Why the hell hasn’t the marathon been shut down? Half of mid-town is cordoned anyway,” Monica yelled.
“It’s been re-routed to avoid the evacuated zone, but not cancelled,” Nishimura responded.
Barrett’s voice came in on the radio from the building across the street.
“Vlasic, we’ve disabled the motion detectors in the conference room. Decoys again, and you’re never gonna believe this.”
“What?”
“It’s all bullshit. There is not an ounce of explosives on the entire floor, just props. Small bags of sand by the looks of it. The hostages have all been shackled with cable ties.”
“Everyone alive?”
“Yeah, for the most part. Mark Price’s face looks like burger. Three hostages are unaccounted for. We’ll check the whole floor and report back if we find them.”
“Don’t bother, Barrett, they’re at JFK.”
The hijacked Manhattan City Dreams helicopter dipped then decelerated its forward flight until it came to a stop, hovering over the Verrazano Narrows Bridge.
Beneath it, a massive swarm of bodies like worker ants covered the bridge. Runners heading out to Brooklyn as one of the most celebrated marathons in the world kicked off.
The events unfolded before Blackwell’s eyes faster than his mind could process. From the chopper a thick rope was dangled down until it was just a few feet above the marathoners’ heads. Then one by one, four men dressed in black and wearing ski masks began fast-roping down and merged into the crowd. When all four of them had left the helicopter, the pilot steered his chopper away from the bridge, probably heading to the Downtown Manhattan Heliport as instructed earlier by the police chopper.
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