AS HE slashed back and forth between lanes, staying right on the tail of the van, Foxx told Julian his password. Of course, if it were only that easy. He wasn’t exactly asking Julian to hack his Book of the Month Club account.
Even without Foxx saying it, I knew the server he was referring to. So did Julian. As the CIA’s New York section chief, Foxx had access to the Agency’s tactics and operations protocol, including standing counterterrorism measures—most of them having been created and implemented after 9/11.
But the Agency took extraordinary measures to ensure that Foxx was actually Foxx. In addition to a password, he needed a simultaneous fingerprint and voice match. With Foxx on the phone, the voice wouldn’t be a problem for Julian. The challenge was the fingerprint.
“Your iPhone, Dylan. Give me the serial number. It’s listed in the settings,” said Julian.
I quickly found it, reading it off to him. He then asked for my IMEI number. As soon as he did, I knew what he was trying to do.
“I’m resetting my Touch ID,” I said. “Tell us when you’re ready.”
The FBI was limited by privacy laws, not to mention the likes of Apple, when it came to unlocking the phones of suspects. The CIA, however, really hates to be told no. By anybody.
Julian was setting up my iPhone’s Touch ID to take Foxx’s fingerprint. “Okay, ready,” he said.
I held out my phone to Foxx, trying to steady my hand as he whipped the steering wheel left and right. He was mimicking the van’s every lane change, zigzagging between cars with only inches to spare. “Thumbprint,” I said.
His thumb was on my phone before I’d even finished saying print.
“Got it,” said Julian. “I’m in.”
He now had access. The question was why.
“Homeland Security, DOT override,” said Foxx.
I knew DOT was the Department of Transportation, but I still had no idea what Foxx was planning. Julian did, though.
“You want the exit ramp or before the bridge?” he asked.
“Exit ramp,” said Foxx.
“The timing has to be perfect,” said Julian.
“Tell me something I don’t know,” said Foxx.
“Or maybe tell me what the hell is going on!” I said.
Pushing over one twenty, Foxx slid in right behind the back bumper of the van in the middle lane. Like a NASCAR driver, he was drafting them. The exit for the GW Bridge was only hundreds of yards away.
For the first time, he glanced over at me. “You ever try to back out of a rental car lot?”
Before I could ask what on earth he was talking about, he swerved into the left lane and pulled up alongside the van. We weren’t just close. We were touching. Metal grinding against metal, as Foxx began forcing the van toward the exit.
“Tell me when,” came Julian’s voice.
“Not yet,” said Foxx. “Not yet …”
The van tried to straighten out, but Foxx wouldn’t let it. Like a battering ram, he kept pounding the side panels, riding it harder and harder off the highway. The van had two choices, crash into the median or take the exit.
“Now!” yelled Foxx. “NOW!”
CHAPTER 106
IT HAPPENED so fast. It was as if I hadn’t seen it. I had to piece everything together in reverse.
You ever try to back out of a rental car lot?
The tires of the van exploded, all four of them, strips and chunks of rubber flying through the air. Followed by the van itself.
I whipped my head around as Foxx skidded to a stop in the breakdown lane by the exit. That really just happened, didn’t it?
Right before the tires ruptured, right before the van crossed into the exit lanes, the row of spikes had popped up from the pavement like magic. Only it wasn’t magic. It was real.
And it was why Foxx didn’t want to tell me—until it was done.
The van landed with a horrific thud on its side, crashing into the far guardrail, before flipping over on its roof. What remained of all four tires were still spinning amid a cloud of smoke and dust as we started running toward it, guns drawn. The cruiser, bringing up the distant rear the whole way, nearly hit us as it slammed on its brakes. The two cops had barely opened their doors when Foxx tossed one of them his ID.
“Two ambulances,” he said. “Call it in.”
I was pissed at Foxx. Not because he might have just gotten Sadira killed or that he’d kept me in the dark leading up to it. No. I was pissed because I knew he was right and there was nothing I could do about it. He did what had to be done.
Whoever wanted Sadira wasn’t one of us. And if she wasn’t in our hands, she couldn’t be in anyone else’s. It was as simple—and cutthroat—as that.
“I’ve got the driver,” I told Foxx.
He nodded, sidestepping to the passenger side of the van as I hung by the taillight for a moment in case he needed backup. “Unconscious. Pulse, though,” he called out.
I edged up to the driver’s side door, what remained of it. The van had landed so hard upside down, the door was half collapsed against the road. Bending down, I could still see behind the wheel. Only there was nothing to see.
“Over here!” came a voice behind me.
It was one of the cops from the cruiser. Before I even turned around I knew what he’d found. The driver.
Foxx stayed with the van as I went over to look. The driver had been thrown. More like launched. He was on his back. No pulse. No face either. The impact and his sliding across the asphalt rendered the front of him a bloody mess of ripped flesh and exposed bone.
“Jesus,” muttered the second cop, joining us. He quickly looked away while gagging.
“I need your cuffs,” I told the first cop.
I hustled over to Foxx. He’d just pulled out the guy from the passenger seat and was giving him a quick frisk as he lay on the ground. He was now conscious, moaning. I could barely hear him, though, over the backdrop of honking horns. We’d turned the Henry Hudson Parkway into a parking lot. Right in time for rush hour.
“You recognize him?” asked Foxx, taking the cuffs.
“Not a clue,” I said.
“What about his partner?”
“His own mother couldn’t recognize him now.”
“Any ID on him?”
But by then I was already on the move again.
There had been no thinking when Foxx and I first approached the van. Only training. First things first, eliminate any threat.
With one guy wearing cuffs and the other about to be fitted with a toe tag, I could think of only one thing now. The back of the van.
Sadira.
What would I find when I opened the door?
CHAPTER 107
IF I could open the door.
It was jammed shut, the hinges buckled and wedged against the frame. I tucked my gun and pulled as hard as I could on the handle, but nothing was budging.
Sadira had been bound and gagged when they loaded her into the van. All I wanted was some sort of signal from her. Any sound would do. I pounded my fist against the door. “Sadira? Can you hear me?”
Only I couldn’t even hear myself. The car horns had been joined by a chorus of sirens off in the distance.
“What?” I said to Foxx.
He was still alongside the van. I couldn’t make out what he’d said. He tried for a second time, yelling. “We need to get out of here!”
I heard him. Sort of. The words went in my ears, except they didn’t register. I was only focused on Sadira.
Again, I pounded while calling her name. Was she conscious? Was she even alive? I pressed my ear hard against the door, desperately trying to listen. I was about to keep pounding when suddenly I heard it. Her. Ever so faintly. The muffled sound of her trying to say something through whatever they’d used to gag her. It was one word. “Help.”
I called out to Foxx. Maybe the two of us pulling could open the door. “Get over here!”
“No, you come here!” he said.
I s
tepped around to the side of the van to see him lifting the guy he’d pulled out. Foxx was putting him over his shoulder. He didn’t have to explain why.
The smoke billowing up had turned into flames. The engine was on fire.
Cars only explode in the movies if the flames reach the gas tank, and it’s near empty. Fire plus fuel plus compressed air equals boom.
“Go ahead, get him out of here,” I said. “Get yourself out of here.”
“Where’s Sadira?” he asked.
“Still inside.”
Foxx looked at me. It was all in his eyes. Your call, Reinhart. Only we both knew what I was going to do.
“I’ll come back to help,” he said.
“Don’t you dare.”
I ducked down and climbed through the passenger side window, the flames now shooting through the air vents. I didn’t know what I had, seconds or minutes. The fire could rocket into the fuel line at any moment.
I called out Sadira’s name yet again, the back of the van so thick with smoke I could barely see.
But I heard her. Even with her mouth gagged she was able to make enough noise.
Everything was upside down. I was climbing on my knees along the ceiling of the van when I found her lying against the far side, one leg clearly broken. The other was bleeding from a huge gash above the thigh. She could barely move, her hands still tied behind her back.
I pulled the gag off her mouth. They’d used a ripped bedsheet. She was about to say something, only there was no time for conversation. I cut her off. “We’ve got to get you out of here,” I said.
There was no going back the way I came. The front of the van was now completely engulfed in flames. The blaze was coming right for us.
I turned to the back door. The same door I couldn’t open. It was the only escape.
Reaching for my Glock, the dos and don’ts of point-blank firing echoed in my head. Aim completely straight to avoid ricochets. That’s what you do.
But don’t shoot what can’t be shot.
That meant the hinges. Too much metal. Too thick. No, the best chance was targeting the latch where the door locked. If I could knock that out, my feet could do the rest.
Shielding Sadira, I emptied my clip in a half circle on the edge of the door. All I could do now was kick as hard as I could.
The fire was scorching my back as I angled myself as if doing the leg press at the gym. The way the door had buckled, I needed to aim low.
C’mon, feet, don’t fail me now …
CHAPTER 108
I WAS just about to kick when I heard the sound. Even before I saw what it was, I knew who it was.
Foxx was back. With a crowbar. He’d jammed it in below one of the hinges, prying open the door with one massive pull. There was a reason he was a gym rat, and it wasn’t so he could look good in front of a mirror.
“What took you so long?” I said.
“Maybe because you almost shot me?”
So much for the buddy-movie banter. The flames had overtaken the back of the van. Foxx made a beeline for Sadira, helping me lift her into my arms. She was in so much pain, and my running with her was only going to make it worse. But there was no choice. There was no time.
In that same buddy movie, the van would’ve exploded at the very moment we were out of harm’s way. Only this wasn’t the movies.
No, the moment I reached the ambulance came and went without any explosion. I gently placed Sadira on a waiting gurney, two EMTs immediately taking over.
I turned to Foxx, with a nod back at the van about a hundred feet away. I even cracked a smile. “Whatta ya know, the gas tank was full.”
BOOM!
The van exploded into a fireball, the sky above it filling with a massive cloud of thick black smoke and flames. Score one for the movies.
I watched for a moment, briefly entertaining the thought of Foxx arriving with that crowbar a little later than he had. When I turned back to the ambulance, the EMTs were lifting the gurney to load Sadira. I figured I’d ride with her to the hospital. She was in bad shape, but she’d live to tell about it—something I was banking on. Who were those two guys who had taken her? And why?
Foxx had already returned to the one he’d pulled from the van. The guy’s body language said it all. Dressed in jeans and a black sweatshirt, he wasn’t planning on saying anything. Another EMT was tending to him as the two cops from our car chase stood guard. Not that the guy was going anywhere. Forget making a run for it. He couldn’t even walk.
“Dylan.”
Sadira’s voice was so weak, but even with all the commotion around us I could somehow hear her. The way she said my name, it was as if she were whispering in my ear.
I climbed into the back of the ambulance. Neither EMT asked me who I was or gave me a hard time about my wanting to tag along. They’d seen me run out of the van with Sadira. If that didn’t buy me some slack, nothing would.
“What is it?” I asked her.
I suddenly remembered she’d tried to tell me something in the van.
“I was … about …” She paused, swallowed. She was already out of breath. “I was about to … call you.”
I could see how much it hurt for her to talk. The least I could do was fill in the gaps as best I could.
“You mean, before those guys broke into your apartment,” I said. “You heard from the Mudir?”
She nodded. “Rent a car … meet the Mudir near the train …”
“Yes, the train station.” The fact that he wanted her to rent a car most likely meant one thing. “He wants you to be a driver,” I said. But when? “Before or after the attack?”
“After,” she said.
This was good. Knowing where the Mudir wanted to rendezvous with her would be crucial if we stopped the attack without catching him.
“So what street around Penn Station?” I asked. “He must have told you an address, right?”
I waited for her to nod. Instead, she shook her head. “No,” she said. It was the whole point of what she wanted to tell me. “It’s not Penn Station.”
CHAPTER 109
I JUMPED out of the ambulance and sprinted over to Foxx while yelling his name.
“What the hell is it?” he asked.
“It’s Grand Central.”
“What is?”
“The attack,” I said. “The target is Grand Central Station.”
Foxx let that sink in for a moment. The implications. The logistics. The sudden loss of our leverage. “Holy shit.”
“It’s worse than that,” I said, looking at my watch. It was about twenty of eight. The Mudir had told Sadira to be in a white rental car at 46th Street and Third Avenue, right near the station, at 8:30 sharp. “Whatever’s going down, it’s all about to happen in less than an hour.”
Foxx had to make calls. Immediately. But right in front of us was a guy who clearly knew things about Sadira. Did he also know about the attack?
With his cropped blond hair, he looked more like a Hitler youth than a Middle Eastern terrorist, but that hardly meant there was no connection to the Mudir. He could’ve been Russian. He could’ve been anybody. What we couldn’t afford was his being useless. We had to get him talking. Fast.
He’d been staring at me since the moment I came over. His head was cocked, his eyes narrowed to a squint. I knew that look. It meant the same in any country and any language. The guy was sizing me up, trying to figure out if I was baiting him by what I told Foxx. I’m clever, but not that clever, dude …
Foxx reached for his cell while giving me the nod. The plan was to divide and conquer. He’d get the word to Evan Pritchard, who was camped at Penn Station, and I’d go to work on our mystery man here.
As soon as Foxx stepped away, I stared at the EMT, who thankfully was fluent in subtext and knew enough to step away as well. The two cops standing guard would still do their jobs, but their stares made it clear they would neither remember nor repeat anything they were about to hear.
All right, du ver
dammtes Arschloch, let’s you and I have a chat …
I knelt down, getting eye to eye with him. The key was letting him think he was in control. I’d ask the questions he’d never answer. He’d get into a rhythm. He’d get comfortable. Then, maybe, he’d get sloppy.
I asked him who he was, who he worked for, what he wanted with Sadira. Everything he expected. Then, out of nowhere, something he didn’t.
“Where’d you get the tattoo?”
The beautiful, crazy, unpredictable thing about the human mind is that … well, it has a mind of its own. No matter how much you try to control your own thoughts and actions, there’s simply no accounting for the occasional impulse or reflex.
It was the quickest of glances, a flinch of the eyeballs toward his right forearm. After his body got banged up in the van, his mind had no problem believing there was a tear in his black sweatshirt, exposing his skin.
Only there wasn’t a tear. The sweatshirt was still intact.
I yanked back the sleeve. He went to stop me, but both cops stopped him even faster. On the inside of his forearm, just above the wrist, was a Jerusalem cross. It wasn’t exactly a résumé, but it gave me something to work with. I suddenly had a hunch.
“You a fan of military history? Of course you are,” I said, sounding as if I were back in my classroom. “You probably know that the Prince of Wales got that same tattoo while visiting the Holy Land in the early 1860s. It was right after your great British field marshal Earl Roberts reportedly said that every officer in the British Army should be tattooed with his regimental crest.” I paused to make sure I had his undivided attention. “But you’re more than British Army these days. So for the last time, who are you?”
And for the first time, he spoke. “Who are you?” he asked. But it wasn’t a question. It was the answer to mine.
My hunch had made no sense and all the sense in the world, all at once. Foxx had only just shared the intel on Sadira with his counterparts at Vauxhall Cross, but our strongest of allies had already succumbed to their distrust. Rank nationalism may play well on our own soil, but it’s a shit show overseas.
Foxx’s driver, Briggs, was still alive because the men who took Sadira had no intention of killing him. They were skilled enough to stop him in his tracks without putting him in his grave. It may be a new world with new rules, but MI6 would never be in the business of killing CIA operatives. No matter who was in the White House.
Killer Instinct Page 23