Killer Instinct

by Patterson, James

  Julian was reminding me that we’d been here before. The setback. The bump in the road. But this time felt different. The word war had always been a metaphor. Now it was literal.

  “How much time do you figure?” asked Julian.

  “Forty-eight hours,” I answered.

  That’s how long we had to stop the Mudir before his next attack.

  CHAPTER 80

  TWO LARGE blackboards had been wheeled into the windowless conference room at the JTTF field unit, along with a mini fridge filled with sodas and waters. Four pizzas had been ordered, delivered, and eaten.

  “Go home and get some sleep,” Evan Pritchard told his assistant, Gwen, at almost three in the morning. She declined by quoting Warren Zevon.

  “I’ll sleep when I’m dead,” she said. Then she announced to the room that she was making another pot of coffee. “Raise your hand if you want some.”

  Everyone’s hand shot up.

  We were redefining the meaning of joint in the Joint Terrorism Task Force. In fact, the non-agents outnumbered the agents. Elizabeth and her boss, Pritchard, were the only ones with proper JTTF field unit IDs. Landon Foxx, my father, and I were their SIGs, special invited guests. SIGs who just happened to be current and former CIA. Last but not least, on the two-way encrypted speakerphone, was Julian.

  In the light of day, this ad hoc gathering of the minds would’ve never happened. Egos aside, there’d be too much bureaucratic red tape to slice and dice through. But under the cover of night, with the red tape asleep or at least looking the other way, here we were.

  Waiting.

  “I like the sound that chalk makes,” Pritchard had told us, explaining his preference for blackboards in strategy sessions. “That’s all we use here. It makes everything you write more emphatic.”

  Emphatically written across the two blackboards was everything we knew so far. And everything included a few things only some of us in the room should’ve been allowed to know. But there was simply no time for parsing security clearances. The clock was ticking. The Mudir had literally said as much.

  My old friend and operative Ahmed Al-Hamdah had infiltrated one of the Mudir’s cells. He gave his life trying to prevent the Times Square bombings. In doing so, he spooked the Mudir to the point of thinking there could be other moles in his cells. In his effort to find them, the Mudir somehow found a path that led directly to me. He literally knocked on my front door.

  Only days before that, Professor Jahan Darvish’s corpse had been discovered in his Manhattan hotel room. His toxicology report, filed by a city coroner, was initially viewed under the pretense of an accidental death. A second—and secret—report, issued by the CIA, had no such pretense but still couldn’t prove foul play. While the combination of drugs in Darvish’s system may have precipitated his cardiac arrest, two of the three had been prescribed for him.

  Now, in reexamining the report, what appeared to be an inadvertent overdose was most likely anything but. As for the mini bottle of Jim Beam in his actual butt, well, that was just clever to the point of genius. Classic misdirection of the mind. Professor Darvish just had to be the only person in the room given something like that, right?

  Wrong. Sadira Yavari either killed him herself or paved the way for someone else. Because she’d used Halo to conceal her identity, my initial thought was that she was CIA. Foxx, as the Agency’s New York section chief, would almost certainly know if she was an operative. But he swore up and down that she wasn’t. And while the first rule of being with the Agency is Trust no one, I had no reason not to believe him. Especially when he revealed that Darvish had been a CIA informant.

  There you have it. A terrorist attack and a murder in a hotel room. Two seemingly unrelated events that would’ve stayed unrelated were it not for a certain Russian art dealer, Viktor Alexandrov. Professor Darvish had been receiving additional money beyond what the Iranian government was paying him, and Alexandrov had been the cryptocurrency point man. Turned out, he also had been a point man for the Mudir on some type of shipment that had yet to clear customs.

  Which, over the span of two rectangular blackboards, brought everything full circle. The Mudir and Darvish were somehow connected, courtesy of Alexandrov. Unfortunately, out of those three, two of them were dead.

  So was a young man named Gorgin, as well as the guy with a pointed beard who killed him when it became clear that Gorgin was going to help Elizabeth. Gorgin, whoever he was, saved Elizabeth’s life.

  Now, with a little luck, he would end up saving the lives of countless others. That was why, at three in the morning, we were all still up and waiting.

  The speakerphone on the conference room table suddenly crackled with the sound of Julian’s voice. “Found it!” he said.

  The waiting was over.

  CHAPTER 81

  HOURS EARLIER, Chase Bank had provided us with the security footage from its branch at Penn Station. Matching up the time stamp from the ATM withdrawal slip Elizabeth had taken from the shirt pocket of the guy in Gorgin’s house with the pointed beard, we were able to see him enter and leave the branch.

  What we weren’t able to see—or learn—was his name. According to Chase, the account he withdrew money from belonged to a Priscilla H. McManus. Miss McManus had reported her card stolen one day after making an ATM withdrawal from a branch in Jersey City.

  Suffice it to say, larceny was probably the very least of our guy’s sins.

  “So where did he go after the bank?” asked Foxx. “Did he catch a train? Was he meeting someone?”

  Foxx was the only one in the room who had just learned of Elizabeth having the ATM receipt. We all turned to him. Damn. Good question.

  There were a lot of sharp minds around the table, and we’d all been focused on who this guy was, not what else he might have been doing besides getting cash. Psychologists like to call that tunnel vision. I just call it a brain fart. Happens to the best of us.

  Julian to the rescue.

  We could’ve woken up the head of the Manhattan Transportation Authority, who, in turn, could’ve woken up his head of security, who then could’ve woken up whoever it was whose job entailed archiving all their daily surveillance footage on some MTA server. Even then, it would’ve taken hours. Tick-tock, tick-tock.

  We didn’t have hours. But we did have Julian.

  “Give me a moment. I’m synching up all the timecodes,” he said over the speakerphone. “How many monitors do you have?”

  We all started looking around the room, but Pritchard already knew the count. He undoubtedly spent more time at the JTTF offices than anywhere else, including that crazy Operation Desert Storm townhouse of his.

  “Seven monitors,” said Pritchard, reaching over to a control panel built into the table. With the press of a few buttons the screens all lit up, flashing blue with the FBI logo. “Tell me when you want our password.”

  Julian chuckled. Which made me chuckle. Pritchard clearly didn’t have a full grasp of Julian’s hacking talents. A password? Who needs a password?

  Not Julian. Not ever. Within seconds, all seven monitors were filled with different camera angles of Penn Station. Julian had assigned a letter to each piece of footage next to its timecode.

  “Okay, here’s before he went to the ATM,” said Julian. “The first up, A, is him entering the main entrance, western end of 32nd Street.”

  Like a play-by-play announcer calling a football game, Julian circled the guy with a telestrator. The man with the pointed beard was walking alone into Penn Station dressed in a pair of jeans and a zip-up hoodie. He had a backpack slung over one shoulder.

  Our eyes darted to another monitor as Julian circled the guy again, moving through the main concourse. Then once more, heading toward the entrance of the Chase branch. A to B to C.

  That was it. No detours. A direct path to the ATM machine.

  “Anyone see anything out of the ordinary?” asked Pritchard. We all shook our heads. Pritchard nodded. “Yeah, I don’t either.”

/>   “Okay, let’s take a look at afterward,” said Julian.

  A new set of images appeared. Same angles. Just a couple of minutes later. Julian resumed telestrating the guy as he left the bank, as well as when he began walking back across the concourse to where he’d entered. Instinctively, we all turned to the next monitor, expecting to see the guy leaving the station.

  “Wait. Where did he go?” asked Foxx.

  We all leaned forward.

  Good question.

  There was no one for Julian to circle. The guy wasn’t on the next monitor or any others. We whipped our heads around the room, looking at every screen once, then twice.

  “Are you sure all the footage is synched?” I asked.

  Of course Julian was sure, but he double-checked anyway. “Yep. All the timecodes match,” he said. I could hear him pouring himself some more whiskey. “Occam’s razor?”

  “Yeah, probably a blind spot,” I said. In other words, that was the easiest and simplest explanation. Except there was one thing Occam’s razor wouldn’t explain. Julian knew it, too.

  “Let me fast-forward,” he said. “All eyes on the exits.”

  Julian sped up the footage. There was no way the cameras could cover every square foot of Penn Station. But there was also no way any of the exits could be among the blind spots.

  “There!” said Elizabeth, bolting up from her chair. She headed straight to one of the monitors, pointing. “By the Hudson newsstand.”

  “That’s him, all right,” said Julian.

  Suddenly, our guy with the pointed beard was back in frame and heading for the exit in his jeans, zip-up hoodie, and—

  Oh, shit.

  “Does everyone see what I’m not seeing?” I asked.

  CHAPTER 82

  WE IMMEDIATELY woke up the head of the Manhattan Transportation Authority, who, in turn, woke up his head of security, who then woke up whoever it was whose job entailed archiving all their daily surveillance footage on some MTA server. But not because we needed the footage. We already had that. We needed to know the areas of Penn Station the security cameras didn’t cover. Immediately.

  The backpack was missing.

  Within an hour, a small army descended upon the station. Over fifty officers from the NYPD were called in to seal the perimeter. It was hardly rush hour at just past four in the morning, but there were going to be news vans for sure. If the busiest transportation facility in the country was about to be evacuated, it didn’t matter what the hell time it was. The press would be there.

  “Keep ’em outside,” said Pritchard. “Them and anyone else. No one gets in.”

  The press would be told it was a bomb scare. Even if they weren’t told, they’d ultimately see the arrival of the bomb squad. There was no hiding it. There was also no reason to. Staying far away from the building was for their safety, and they would have no argument.

  But as I heard Pritchard bark that order down the chain of command, I had a feeling he and I were both thinking the same thing. There was definitely an argument coming, only it was going to be among ourselves. I could smell it. As sure as every bomb-sniffing dog that had been brought into the station.

  “They’re not all Vapor Wakes, are they?” my father asked as soon as a dozen of the dogs were led in.

  “No, only half of them are,” the chief handler answered. “That’s what I figured made sense when I got the call.”

  My father nodded his approval. Years before Diamond, his cherished vizsla, was one of the world’s best hunting dogs, he was one of the world’s best bomb sniffers, deployed with US Special Forces in Afghanistan. After my father inherited Diamond, however, training for a majority of bomb dogs changed. This new breed was called Vapor Wake because they were trained to detect scents in motion, as in a moving suitcase in an airport terminal or a suicide bomber weaving through a crowd. In the modern age of terrorism, the change seemed like a necessity.

  Tonight was a reminder, though. Embrace the future but never fully let go of the past. We needed the old-school dogs as much as, if not more than, the Vapor Wakes. Wherever that backpack was, it wasn’t moving.

  “Looks like the same tactics they used before Times Square,” said Pritchard, staring at a schematic provided by the MTA’s head of security, who introduced himself as Mac. “They methodically find all the blind spots before planting the bombs.”

  Mac was sporting some serious bedhead and a couple of missed belt loops, but other than that he was on the ball. He’d already highlighted the areas the security cameras in the station didn’t cover.

  But where there could be one backpack, there could easily be a half dozen. Just like in Times Square. While Pritchard was right about the blind spots, we needed to check every spot there was in Penn Station.

  “Where’s the bomb squad?” asked Foxx.

  “They take longer than the dogs,” said the police captain on duty for the Midtown South Precinct. He squinted at Foxx. “I’m sorry. Who are you again?”

  “He’s with me,” said Pritchard, without looking up from the schematics.

  “And you two?” the captain asked, pointing at me and my father. “Who are you?”

  “They’re also with me,” said Pritchard, who finally looked up from the schematics to give the captain a death stare. “Any more fucking questions?”

  And just like that, the captain suddenly had something else to attend to.

  I turned to Elizabeth, fully expecting to see her fighting back a smile. Her new boss certainly had a way with words. Isn’t that right?

  Elizabeth? Wait. Where are you? Where did you—?

  She was gone.

  CHAPTER 83

  ELIZABETH HAD walked away from the group. She turned to me the exact moment I spotted her. It was as if she could tell I was searching for her.

  She didn’t say anything. She didn’t need to. The look in her eyes, even from fifty feet away, told me everything I needed to know.

  I turned back to the group. “Hey, guys?”

  My father had moved over to Foxx and Pritchard, who were staring at a tablet screen they’d just been given by an IT guy with MTA security that showed a live feed from every security camera in the vicinity. We could now identify every blind spot in the station simply by looking at the tablet and checking if we could see ourselves as we walked.

  “What is it?” asked Pritchard.

  “This way,” I said, pointing.

  I led them over to Elizabeth, who was standing in front of a large trash bin, the square kind with a door on one side so the actual bin could be removed to empty it.

  Pritchard tilted his head. “What are you looking at, Needham?”

  “Basic geometry,” said Elizabeth.

  It was all she had to say. The bin was a circle within a square, which created four hiding places, all about the size of a backpack. Pritchard glanced down at the tablet before holding it up for all of us.

  Does everyone see what I’m not seeing?

  We weren’t in any of the security camera feeds. We were standing smack-dab in the middle of a blind spot.

  “Dog!” yelled Pritchard. “DOG!”

  His voice echoed throughout the concourse as the nearest handler came over with his German shepherd. Elizabeth pointed. We all pointed at the garbage bin. The handler never broke stride.

  Within seconds, though, he was turning back to us and shaking his head. We could already tell. His dog wasn’t picking up anything.

  “Maybe it’s the metal?” asked Pritchard, referring to the bin. “Is it trapping the scent?”

  “Not at all,” said the handler, pointing to the gaps along the side panels. “Plenty of places where air is getting through.”

  “And the smell of the garbage itself?” asked Foxx. “It wouldn’t mask the scent?”

  The handler thought for a second, which was clearly one second too long for Pritchard. “Dog!” he yelled again. “ALL OF THEM!”

  It was shades of Westminster as a parade of canines made its way past the
bin. Mostly German shepherds, a few rottweilers, and one Belgian Malinois. I knew for sure what my father was thinking, especially since there was no vizsla in the pack. He was wishing Diamond were here.

  We all kept waiting for at least one of the dogs to sit—what they’re trained to do when they smell an explosive. If there’d been any C-4, they would’ve all sat immediately. Of all bomb components, C-4 gives off the strongest scent. After that comes dynamite and Tovex. No dog could ever miss any of those.

  But not a single dog sat.

  “Screw it,” said Pritchard, stepping forward. “Everyone clear the area.”

  CHAPTER 84

  THE DOG handlers were as well trained as their dogs. They immediately pulled back, as told.

  Foxx turned on his heel to Pritchard, staring at him sideways. “What do you think you’re doing, Evan?”

  “I’m seeing if the damn backpack is in there or not,” said Pritchard.

  “The hell you are. EOD will be here any minute.”

  It was typical of Foxx that he would choose explosive ordinance disposal over bomb squad. But it didn’t matter either way what Foxx had said. Pritchard didn’t care. “I don’t feel like waiting,” he said.

  “I’m sure you don’t,” said Foxx. “I’m also sure you don’t feel like dying.”

  We listened to them go back and forth a few more times. This wasn’t the argument I’d been thinking about with Pritchard. That argument I knew was still coming—the kind of moral dilemma that haunts all law enforcement in the war on terror. The sooner we got to it the better.

  Tick-tock, I kept hearing in my head. But not from any backpack.

  “There’s no bomb,” I announced. Apparently not loud enough, though. Everyone was still tuned into the Foxx versus Pritchard jabberfest. I tried again. “THERE’S NO BOMB!”

  That did the trick. Everyone turned to me. Huh?

  “How do you know there’s no backpack in there?” asked Pritchard.