“Osama’s here. If I back off, at five thirty they’ll find out they’re wrong.”
No answer.
She stood up. Walked to the first of Osama’s three sites. A set of trash receptacles all set neatly in a row. Walked to the second one. Then the third. The trash cans needed to be situated near the crowds to be effective. And Osama needed them near the crowds for the same reason. Except his idea of effective and the New York Department of Sanitation’s idea were necessarily at odds.
Security was everywhere, but the three sites were vulnerable. Why had no one tried this before? It was just a matter of getting a package into one of the cans near Broadway or Seventh long enough to be far enough away, but not long enough for the bomb sniffing dogs to score. Between 44th and 47th. Or hell, anywhere nearby.
The three sites in Grand Central were unlikely from what she had seen. Osama and his pal would have to leave the packs only minutes before detonation time. From what she had seen, the Grand Central soldiers might be bored, but they, and more importantly, the dogs, were all over unattended bags. And no matter how they disguised themselves, the Osamas of the world were suspicious walking around Grand Central with multiple bags that they dropped off in corners.
If it were me, she thought, I’d just leave them in line with some friendly, accommodating traveler. People were too polite to intervene and the cops might not even notice extra bags in line.
But that wasn’t Osama’s plan. For whatever reason, he wanted them in those three Grand Central sites.
Or here in Times Square. At these three sites.
Ping.
“Do you have a plan?”
“I’m close”
“Time to talk?”
“Close”
Then she decided to look for a spot from which all three of Osama’s Times Square spots were visible. She walked back over to the high steps of the grandstand that she was certain hadn’t been there when she was a young girl. Less than ten percent of the places to sit were occupied.
She sat at the top near enough to a large group of tourists that she would be considered by an observer to be part of them. Instantly invisible. Unless she’d already been spotted as suspicious, nobody would find her suspicious for the next few minutes.
She began doing three sixties. Looking for a lookout site that one person could use to observe all the trash sites. At first blush there were none. She tried again. Still none. She wanted to do this all herself. It would be too inefficient to bring Tom in to her analysis. The logistics were too complex.
She looked a third time. Moved down one step and over to the right edge of the grandstand.
More three sixties.
And there it was. She was certain it would work.
She walked down the steps and over to the spot at Broadway and 45th.
From there, she could see all three spots. Stepped back into the store front. Yes, she could see them even from there. And she was less likely to be a curiosity to any of the soldiers or cops standing in groups of three and four, bored out of their minds.
She texted Tom as she headed back to her room, “Ten minutes.”
*
Samms and Tom knew that some of the Mexican drug cartels had periodically been rumored to be selling into the sex trade as well as drugs in the greater Phoenix area. It was risky business for them, since they couldn’t enforce territory and secure protection from law enforcement as well as they could in Juarez, Reynosa, and Tijuana, each in their own secured territory.
But it was extremely lucrative business and, in the unlikely event they were stopped, it was a difficult charge to prove. Terrified young boys and girls made very poor witnesses. And both local and federal law enforcement were reluctant to put these kids in that position. Easier to bust a ring and try to find where the kids had come from and just send them home, while the cartel members disappeared into the underground. And it was a very nasty business. All cops hated the ultimate predators and users as much as they did the traders, the only ones in the transaction they could occasionally find.
But in this case, May’s industry contacts had enabled her to decrypt communications between two cartel members. One was driving a truck filled with young boys and girls that was crossing the border near the eastern edge of Arizona. He was delivering them southwest of the Phoenix airport to three of his fellow cartel members. There would be two Mexican cartel members in the truck, the driver and leader of the operation, and one riding shotgun. Literally.
The three waiting at the Phoenix rendezvous point where Cheese was now headed were planning to then take the truck and drive the hapless kids to an unknown location north of Phoenix itself.
May’s Intel was detailed and seemingly left nothing out. Place, time, number of dirtbags. It was all there. Everything except for the ultimate destination, which the gang members might not even know before the exchange.
The only thing that made the four of them queasy, including May, was that there was no way to verify that the kids were actually in the back of the truck. Or that they would be alive when Cheese broke up the handoff.
All May had been able to get was the communications between the truck driver and his colleagues. If this was a double-cross between rivals, this was going to be Samms’ first clusterfuck.
And they all knew it.
This was strictly Cheese against the five dirtbags. Avoid any shots into the truck, and hope the cartel members didn’t have the wherewithal or the instincts to take out the truck or the kids.
The communications between the two cartel members made it clear there would be no more than the two controlling the truck. So, Cheese didn’t have to worry about someone in the truck with the kids doing any damage after he took everybody out.
Or so the dirtbag leader professed in his texts.
Cheese didn’t even know if the three would look in the back. They just might hop in and drive off.
He would have to deal with however it went down in real time on the ground. I guess that’s why they pay me the big bucks, he had assured himself over and over again yesterday as he walked over the site the first time.
*
“How do you want to do this, May?” Tom asked.
She told them.
“What are the risks?” Samms asked.
“There are two risks. No, three. First, I’m wrong and they’re doing the Grand Central plan instead.”
“After all this planning, the Grand Central plan just seems too risky for them,” Tom said.
“What’s risky seem like to a suicide bomber?”
“Good point,” Samms said. “But they’re not playing either version of the plan as a suicide attack. They seem to be trying to get away with it.”
“Which is why I think they don’t do Grand Central. Ragheads carrying multiple backpacks, then dropping them off with all that surveillance? All I did was walk around and then sit on some steps and they rousted me.”
“Maybe one of those soldiers likes cute Asian women?”
“The second risk,” ignoring him, “is that Osama knows I’m following him and he gets me first.”
“Chances?” Tom asked.
“Well, I’d like to think nil. There’s no evidence in any of their messages that they suspect anything. No extra caution. No deviations in plan. No communications about being on the lookout for cute Asian women."
“And if you’re wrong?” Samms asked.
“It’s the risk we always take. This is no different.”
“Except you have no backup.”
“Except I have no backup. Speaking of which, how’s Cheese doing in Phoenix?”
“On track,” Samms said. “His would feel better with backup also.”
“Okay, wish him luck from me.”
“Roger,” Tom said. “You mentioned a third risk, May.”
“Yes. As we’ve gone through, all their communications suggest that Osama will plant two of the bombs at the two closest locations, while his buddy simultaneously plants the third at the other e
nd of the Square. They will then meet a couple of blocks away and remotely blow all three. Two minutes later.”
“Right?”
“What if it’s a double cross? What if Osama, say, plans to blow all three while the other dirtbag is planting his. Easy enough to do, frankly. If that’s the plan, they succeed and Osama expects to get away scot free, as the cops see the one dead terrorist left behind. And I’m left killing a successful terrorist instead of preventing the attack.”
There was silence at the other end of the line.
Finally, May said, “I’m not worried about number two, and I have a solution for numbers one and three, but you’re not going to like number three.”
“Tell us about number one first,” Samms said.
“It’s easy. Tell the New York SAC who doesn’t believe Tom that there are two possible attacks. We trust his people to check on Grand Central but not the second location. Tell him five thirty and the three locations. Tell him it’s on his head if hundreds of people die in Grand Central tonight at five thirty. He can be a hero. If it’s the second location, we’ll tell him where to find the bodies at five thirty-five. They’d be crazy not to watch those three Grand Central locations for five minutes. Bureaucratic jealousy or not.”
“Okay, I can do that,” Tom said.
“Now tell us your solution for number three,” Samms said.
And she did.
And, as she had predicted, they didn’t like it.
*
As he walked, sometimes upright, sometimes, ducking, and sometimes duck walking, through the arroyos, always with his left shoulder to the wall nearest the kill site, he was reminded of his first visit to the site of Custer’s Last Stand at the Little Bighorn River.
The cavalry on the Plains had always had to deal with the fact that you could be riding toward a point clearly visible a mile away. It looked like a ride in the park. But between you and that spot could be dozens of arroyos and very deep coulees, hiding hundreds and hundreds of hostiles.
It was up those coulees in June of 1876 that hundreds of Sioux and Cheyenne invisibly rode and crawled to what is now known as Last Stand Hill.
The Mexicans hadn’t chosen a hill. That would have been stupid. And Cheese had no reason to believe these men were stupid. But their rendezvous point was as vulnerable.
And Cheese had deadlier ammunition than the Sioux and Cheyenne had brought that day.
And he would be just as invisible.
*
May spent the afternoon reviewing all the communications between the two terrorists. Relayed messages back and forth between her inside social networking collaborators to confirm and reconfirm that she wasn’t missing anything. They both assured her that she was clear.
Then she walked the Times Square sites again, this time with several disguises. Reconfirming that blondes do indeed have more fun, especially in Times Square.
She found a slightly better spot from which to watch all three sites. Her biggest problem would be that she didn’t know what Osama’s partner looked like. She knew where he would be planting the bomb, so could watch for it, but until then, he would be essentially invisible to her.
She saw no evidence that security was more alert than they had been in the morning.
And she had no sightings of Osama.
Not that she’d expected to.
As she became more familiar with the area she became more and more convinced that she knew exactly the path that the two terrorists would take to get to the three sights. And the paths they were planning to take to then get away. And the different path and timing Osama needed to take if he was setting up his partner. A double-cross by his buddy seemed very unlikely and the resulting paths from that eventuality would be almost impossible to predetermine. She just had to make damn sure nobody planted a bomb at the partner’s site before Osama made his own move.
She now was comfortable that she knew how it would come down. Unless they were rank amateurs. In which case it would be somewhat more random than she liked. In that event, maybe the cops would take them out before she had to.
Even more random.
Osama was the key. If his accomplice was going to blow him up as he planted the bombs, then she was going to be just as surprised as Osama.
But for much longer.
*
The night before, Cheese had discovered a spot that gave him a perfect sniper’s view of both the drop-off point and the only way the truck could reasonably enter the area. The rendezvous spot was less than two hundred yards away. He was less confident about where the other three who would be coming from. But in his spot, they could not surprise him unless they were both better than he was and on foot.
Neither was very likely.
Camouflage face and hat in place, he peeked up in every direction. He once again gave them credit for picking a perfectly isolated spot.
Perfect for them, of course. But excellent for Cheese as well.
It made it likely that he would spend two hours seeing nothing but poisonous insects, snakes, and reptiles. One had to make do until the dirtbags arrived.
He went over his plan for what seemed like the thousandth time.
Then went through it again.
Each time, trying to visualize what he was going to have to do when it all went to hell. Except for the two concerns, he didn’t see any hope of an exit strategy for the five Mexicans.
The easy part of doing this work with Samms was that he never had to worry about survivors.
*
As of 5:25 there had been no sight of either dirtbag. But May hadn’t expected there to be. They were communicating in vague, increasingly urgent texts.
And now it was show time.
Time to go both according to the plan and to the sudden cessation of communications.
And there was Osama right where she expected him, stepping from the corner of 44th and Broadway toward site number one. It took all her training to keep from laughing at his disguise. It was worthless. Anybody who was looking for him would pick him out of a crowd.
Except, apparently, the surrounding security forces, who, to be fair, weren’t looking specifically for him.
And then he surprised her. He leaned over one of the trash cans, reached in, and took out a handful of trash as his front pack dropped in from under his coat. If you weren’t staring at him you would never see it happen. An invisible pack dropped from out of sight into the can.
He then looked through the trash, took out another handful, replacing it with the first, looked through the second handful, and, in an apparent act of disgust, dropped it back in and wiped his hands on his butt.
As she watched him head up Broadway toward the second site, out of the corner of her eye she watched for the second terrorist. If they were not trying to kill each other, he should be reaching the third site right now.
And, on cue, a man in a hoody deftly stepped out of a cab, precisely by the cans where the two of them had planned for the bomb to be. He closed the rear door and stepped quickly to the curb, walking by the trash receptacles.
She frowned. He didn’t have a pack. Front or back.
As she started to edge toward her intended point of rendezvous with the two, she watched Osama repeat his actions from the first site. Leaning in, picking up trash. Dropping trash, picking up more. Wiping his hands as he headed in the direction she expected.
She looked back at the cab the hooded terrorist had exited from. It was still sitting there. Horns were blowing. She could see what she was pretty sure was a driver’s head slumped over the wheel. Not the original plan. A risky change, she thought as she picked up her pace.
She saw both terrorists head toward their intended rendezvous point. May had placed herself in a strategic position to be able to get there ahead of them.
And then May saw a cop forcibly stop the second terrorist.
Osama saw it too. He slowed down to watch.
May was now jogging toward the rendezvous point so as to not be seen by Osa
ma, but keeping them both in site in case plans changed. Her first thought was that they were okay as long as Osama had the detonators. His buddy didn’t matter then. But if the second dirtbag had them, all might be lost. He could blow it before the cop knew what was happening.
And, of course, Osama could detonate early given his buddy’s unexpected stop. She watched his hands.
And then…she ran right into a little old lady who had blindsided her, knocking the lady flat.
May scrambled up trying to help the lady get up without losing sight of Osama or letting him see her.
Two out of three turned out to be good enough, as she left the lady lying on the ground with a small crowd, including two cops, rushing to help her up.
Osama didn’t see her, and May beat him to where they both were headed.
He was distracted. Unsure what to do about his partner.
It was clear now that he had the detonators. He wasn’t rushing back to salvage them from his partner.
She could guess what was going through his mind. Why’d the cop stop him? Innocent coincidence? Suspicion because he was hurrying while wearing a hoody? Or were cops looking for both of them? Was he also about to be nabbed? If random, did he dare blow the bombs and leave his partner back there? Could he trust his partner to not talk? Should he shoot the cop and then detonate the bombs? Shoot his partner?
He had to know dogs were at most minutes away from discovering at least one of the bombs. Police evacuation of the area would ruin the attack. Should he just detonate now and abandon his partner?
She watched him slow down. Watching his partner. He had the look of a truly desperate man.
They both watched as the other terrorist talked his way out of whatever the policeman wanted, holding his palms out, nodding his head up and down, walking backwards toward the now waiting Osama.
The whole near disaster took less than three minutes. Enough to keep Osama from just hitting the detonators, but too much for any remaining margin of error.
May waited in the shadows at the rendezvous point. She took out a sheet of paper. Found the spot she wanted on the map. Wrote “in taxi at this point, not in the nearby trash can.”
Watched the two terrorists converge toward her. The cop still watching.
The Point Of A Gun: Thriller Page 7