“Yeah,” said Foxx. “How do you know?”
“I didn’t say there was no backpack. I said there’s no bomb.” That didn’t clear anything up. Nor did this. “In fact, I’ll bet the backpack is actually in there.”
Foxx shook his head in disgust at me. I’d seen it before. Heard it, too. “You give your instincts way too much credit, Reinhart.”
“Then you’re really not going to like this,” I said, walking up to the trash bin. “Ten seconds for anyone who feels like running.”
The only one who didn’t flinch was my father. I was sure he’d already worked it out in his head, probably a split second before I did.
It wasn’t just that the dogs didn’t smell anything. Or that the guy originally carrying the backpack would somehow think to hit up an ATM before depositing a bomb. It was that he allowed himself to be in front of the station’s security cameras without making any attempt to conceal the backpack. That would’ve been the same foolish mistake those Al-Qaeda wannabe kids made with the Boston Marathon. They were smart enough to wait until the bomb-sniffing dogs had swept the area around the finish line but too stupid to realize there would be footage of them before and after they placed their backpacks.
Only we weren’t dealing with kids here.
As sure as Sadira Yavari did reconnaissance at the hotel without using Halo, this guy with the pointed beard never thought anyone would be watching him after the fact. Why? Because this was only a dress rehearsal. A dry run. A way to see if the backpack would stay unnoticed until all of the backpacks were planted. Just as they did in Times Square.
“What do you think they’ll ultimately use, Dad? A duffel or a carry-on?” I asked. In other words, how would they transport the backpacks with the actual bombs?
“Probably carry-ons,” my father answered. “Two wheels, pop-up handles. Standard.”
“Any chance they’ll make the same mistake the Lashkar-e-Tayyiba did in New Delhi?”
“You mean, at the Karim Hotel?” My father grinned.
Lashkar-e-Tayyiba, the Islamic terrorist group that mainly attacks targets in India, had attempted to blow up the famous Karim Hotel but inexplicably used red suitcases. A half dozen of them, no less. The CIA, working in conjunction with India’s Intelligence Bureau, already had been tracking the bombers, but the red suitcases made spotting them almost comically easy.
“So you’re saying this cell is probably a little smarter, huh?” I said.
“That depends,” replied my father.
“On what?”
“If there’s actually a backpack in there with no bomb in it.”
I turned to the rest of the group. “Okay, that was more than ten seconds,” I said.
No one had moved.
Kneeling down, I slowly opened the side panel of the trash bin.
CHAPTER 85
THERE IT WAS.
The backpack was stuffed in the corner on the same side as the panel’s hinges. The zipper was exposed, the pull tab at the top and right in front of me. All I had to do was reach for it.
I turned around again. “Anyone want another ten seconds?” I asked.
Except now there was an extra pair of eyes staring back at me. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” he asked.
If I didn’t know better, it was Jeremy Renner from The Hurt Locker. He was certainly dressed like him with the full blast suit, head to toe. His visor was flipped up over his helmet. Even if the visor had been down and concealing his eyes I was pretty sure I would’ve still been able to feel his stare.
I was also pretty sure he’d asked a rhetorical question. He knew exactly what I was doing. Or was about to.
The Irish have a saying. A good retreat is better than a bad stand. I simply stood up and backed away.
Renner didn’t ask who anyone was. He flat-out didn’t care. As far as he was concerned, we all answered to the name Idiot. When Pritchard tried to explain, the guy raised a big padded arm with his palm out front. Talk to the Kevlar hand …
“I don’t give a rat’s ass who you are,” he told Pritchard. “I need all of you to vacate the area, and not in ten seconds,” he said. “I need you to do it now.”
Behind him, far behind him, was the rest of the bomb squad, standing in various poses, none of them happy. These guys had enough to deal with—the threat of being blown up, for instance. They certainly didn’t need the added headache of an abnormal psychology professor trying to explain himself. Or just as bad, someone else trying to do it for me.
“Of course,” said Pritchard, motioning across the concourse. “We’ll be over there if you need us.”
“Make it way over there,” said Renner.
To Pritchard’s credit, he let the guy have the last word. Or maybe he was just saving up his ammo.
The argument I knew was coming had arrived.
We’d barely reached the middle of the concourse when Pritchard turned to my father, Foxx, and me as if we were some three-headed CIA monster. “I know what you boys are thinking, and it ain’t going to happen,” he said. “So get it out of your heads.”
I couldn’t speak for my father or Foxx. Nor did I need to. I had plenty of my own thoughts on what Pritchard was talking about. I cut right to the chase.
“If you close down this station, you’ll kill our best chance of catching them,” I said.
I stopped walking, thinking Pritchard would do the same.
“Keep moving,” he said instead. “We’re not far enough away, in case you’re wrong about that backpack.”
“I’m not wrong about it. I’m also not wrong about why you have to keep the station open as if nothing had happened here tonight.”
“Oh, yeah? And what if we do keep it open and something does happen? Should we gather all the grieving families together at once so you can explain the CIA’s ethical theory of utilitarianism or would you prefer simply going funeral to funeral?”
With that, Pritchard stopped. We all stopped. We were in front of a Zaro’s Bread Basket. When was the last time I ate?
“If we close down the station, it’s game over,” I said. “They’ll know we’re on to them, and they’ll just choose another target.”
“Then we catch them before they do,” said Pritchard.
“Yeah,” I shot back, “just like you caught them before Times Square.”
Me and my big mouth …
CHAPTER 86
I KNEW the moment I said it I’d gone too far. So did Foxx and my father. Before Pritchard had even raised his arm to clock me, they’d stepped in between us. They had to hold him back, and it was definitely a two-man job.
“I apologize,” I said. “That was the wrong thing to say.”
“You’re damn right it was,” said Pritchard.
“He has a point, though,” said Foxx. “You know this is our best chance. You don’t have to like it, but you can’t deny it.”
“You’re the ones in denial,” said Pritchard. “You’re trying to rationalize the risk. How do you know this station doesn’t already have a half dozen other backpacks planted?”
“The same way I know there isn’t a bomb in the one in that trash bin,” I said.
“We’ll see about that,” said Pritchard.
“You’re right, we will. In the meantime, do you see a sitting dog anywhere?” I asked.
The handlers were working the far side of the concourse, where we were now standing. They’d yet to find anything.
“Even if you’re right about the backpack and the station is clean, you’re forgetting one thing,” said Pritchard.
“What’s that?”
“Outside,” he said. “The press. All they’ll be talking about later today is the bomb scare at Penn Station.”
“No, they won’t,” I said.
“Of course they will. And as soon as that happens, this station will be the safest place in the city. They’ll be choosing another target, just as you said.”
“Only they won’t. Because they’re not going to kn
ow about the bomb scare,” I said.
“Oh, that’s right, I forgot,” said Pritchard, rolling his eyes. “Terrorists don’t watch the news.”
“I told you. It won’t be on the news. Or in the papers or anywhere else.” I turned to Elizabeth. “Isn’t that right?”
It took her a moment. At first she was clearly wondering why the hell I was dragging her into the argument. She looked mortified. She was on thin ice with Pritchard as it was.
Then, as if logging into my brain, her eyes suddenly lit up. She and I weren’t partners for nothing.
“That’s right,” said Elizabeth. “Who knows what really happened in here tonight?”
CHAPTER 87
PRITCHARD WAS listening. He wasn’t sold on anything yet, not by a long shot. But he was listening.
All the more so when I was interrupted even before I could fully pitch the plan. Renner from the bomb squad had called out to us from across the concourse. He was standing in front of the trash bin, holding up the backpack. They were done x-raying it.
“You got lucky,” he yelled out. “Some cans of soda and a few magazines. Nothing more.”
“Yep, that’s what it was. Dumb luck,” I muttered under my breath, albeit loud enough for Pritchard to hear me.
He gave me a slight nod. It was as close to an acknowledgment as I was going to get from him. “As you were saying, Reinhart?”
It suddenly occurred to me to let Elizabeth tell him the idea. She’d be the one making the phone call, after all. This was originally her connection, not mine.
“Actually, go ahead,” I told her. “You tell him.”
Pritchard still wasn’t sold on anything when she was done. But he was still listening. You want to change someone’s mind? Start with their ears.
“Are you sure he’d even go along with it?” he asked.
“Go along with it? Hell, he’ll thank us for it,” said Elizabeth.
Pritchard thought for a moment. There was still time to decide on whether to close the station, perhaps as much as an hour, and he knew there was no harm in seeing if we could pull this off.
“All right,” he said. “Wake the guy up and sneak him in here as fast as you can.”
Elizabeth made the call, although she and I both knew it was highly doubtful we needed to wake the guy up. When people say Manhattan is the city that never sleeps, Allen Grimes and his crime column for the New York Gazette is one of the reasons why. The only real question was whether or not he’d be sober when he arrived.
Minutes later, by way of his being picked up and then being told to lie flat in the back of a speeding patrol car, Allen Grimes came walking toward us in the station. As soon as he saw me he shook his head.
“I should’ve known,” he said, wagging a finger.
Elizabeth wisely hadn’t mentioned my name when she called him. The last time Grimes and I “worked” together he nearly got killed.
“Glad you could make it,” I said.
“Did I have a choice?” Grimes glanced around. “So what’s with the bomb scare?”
“What bomb scare?” I said.
“Nice try. I peeked on the way in and saw the bomb squad packing up,” he said. “The dogs, too.”
Grimes folded his arms, waiting for me to come clean. When I simply stared back at him, saying nothing, he began looking around at each of us. First at Elizabeth. Then at the others—Pritchard, Foxx, my father—none of whom he’d been introduced to. We were all staring back at him, stone-faced.
“Did you ever do any acting?” I asked. “Drama club in high school? Summer stock?”
Grimes broke into a grin. We both knew his entire life was a one-man show. “Okay, but just promise me one thing,” he said.
We also both knew he didn’t need to spell it out. I knew exactly his one demand. “I promise,” I said. “You get to be the hero in the end.”
CHAPTER 88
WE STOOD watching from behind a window in a small station master’s office on the upper level of Penn Station that acted as a one-way mirror once we turned off the lights.
Grimes was being “escorted” out to the curb, kicking and screaming, by two officers chosen specifically for the task based on having the kind of height and weight typically seen at the NFL Scouting Combine. To say Grimes was getting manhandled would be an understatement. He was being taken out like the trash.
All according to the plan.
“The guy has some lungs on him, huh?” muttered Pritchard.
Grimes was yelling so loudly it didn’t matter that we were easily a hundred feet away and behind thick plate glass that had been designed to drown out street noise. We could hear him perfectly. Hell, there were probably people across the Hudson River in New Jersey who could hear him perfectly.
“I know what I saw!” he kept yelling. “I know what I saw!”
Grimes was selling it, and by the looks of everyone gathering around him, people were buying it. His fellow reporters especially.
Sure, they all mostly hated him. But there was also a begrudging respect. Grimes was good at what he did for a living. Very good. He got stories that they didn’t, and his writing sold papers. A lot of New Yorkers bought the Gazette just for his Grimes on Crimes column. He was known for doing whatever it takes in pursuit of a story, and this seemed to be a perfect example. While the rest of the media accepted their fate—shut out from the station and relegated to the sidelines—Grimes had seemingly figured out a way to sneak in.
So what if he got caught and was now getting his ass kicked out to the curb? He clearly had discovered something.
“Cover-up!” Grimes now yelled. “It’s a cover-up!”
As soon as the cops let go of him with a shove, the circle around Grimes quickly tightened so everyone could hear his story. He was no longer screaming; we couldn’t hear him. But we didn’t have to. He was surely sticking to the script.
It’s never the crime. Always the cover-up.
The bomb scare was a ruse. The real story was far less sexy as headlines go but potentially a political house of cards. That’s what Grimes was telling them.
The station had been closed down due to an asbestos find in an area that still contained remnants of the original Pennsylvania Station built by McKim, Mead, and White. The reason for the made-up bomb scare, Grimes would speculate, was because of the legal liability the city would face given how many people had been exposed to the asbestos on a daily basis. Someone very high up, perhaps as high as the mayor himself, had clearly given the order to see if the asbestos could be removed in secret.
“Do you really think they’ll buy it?” asked Pritchard as we kept watching.
“That’s the best part,” I answered. “They can’t buy it.”
“I thought you told me—”
“I said they’d believe him. To buy it and, more importantly, for their editors to run it they’ll need a second source. That’s something they’ll spend all day trying to get and never will. Without that second source, there’s no story.”
“I’ll believe that when I see it,” said Pritchard. “Or rather, don’t see it.”
Tick-tock. “We don’t have that long,” I said.
“He’s right,” said Foxx. He motioned out the window. “If Grimes pulls this off, nothing’s changed. This station is still the next target, and we need to be ready.”
I glanced at my watch. In less than an hour, the first commuter trains of the morning would be arriving, assuming the station was open.
Pritchard stared me straight in the eyes. I stared right back.
“It’s now or never,” I said.
CHAPTER 89
IT WAS NOW.
After Pritchard briefed the director of Homeland Security, immediate around-the-clock surveillance of Penn Station began. A horde of undercover NYPD and FBI was assembled faster than a New York minute.
At some point the soda cans and magazines in every backpack were going to be replaced by actual bombs. The trick was not only to spot each one but also to
tail each courier back to the proverbial nest. This was about more than stopping an attack and apprehending some terrorists. This was about eliminating an entire cell, and with any luck, all the cells attached to the Mudir.
And the Mudir himself.
In the eyes of each and every civilian making their way through Penn Station, there couldn’t be anything out of the ordinary. Everyone assigned needed to blend in seamlessly as commuters or employees of the station.
Backing them up would be additional surveillance personnel manning the cameras all around the station, including the new cameras that had been hastily installed to cover the blind spots. Nothing could be left to chance.
We controlled everything except the timetable.
“I have to admit, I was pretty tempted,” Foxx said to me in the back seat of his bulletproof Ford Expedition as the sun began to rise over the East River. His driver, a young operative he called Briggs, was taking my father and me to the safe house in Brooklyn. Foxx needed to file a report immediately for the Agency’s director, and I needed to finally catch up on some sleep. While my father could crash at Elizabeth’s apartment if need be, the safe house was really my only option. Thanks to the Mudir, I was homeless and a marked man.
“What do you mean by tempted?” I asked.
Foxx chuckled. “Letting Pritchard take a swing at you.”
“You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”
“You do have a way of pissing people off, Reinhart.”
“You say that like it’s a bad thing,” I said.
Foxx closed his eyes for a catnap, and in the silence that ensued, my thoughts turned to Tracy and Annabelle, and the mess I’d made of our family. I couldn’t help it. As if things couldn’t get any worse, they now didn’t have an apartment to come home to—assuming they were ever coming home again. The idea that I had to call Tracy and warn him to stay away from the city was the ultimate irony. All I wanted was for him and Annabelle to come back. Even if Tracy wanted to, they couldn’t.
Twenty minutes later, in the basement of the Agency’s safe house, I set the alarm on my phone for four hours later. Turned out, I didn’t need to.
Killer Instinct Page 19