The Operative (39 page)

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Authors: Andrew Britton

BOOK: The Operative
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The phone on the table beeped. Yasmin, sitting calmly beside it, answered.
“Yes?”
“It’s time,” Emile Samson told her.
“I know.” She hung up. Yasmin took a Glock from the top shelf of the closet, then picked up the rocket launcher. There were two grips on the underside; she grabbed the forward one and went to the door. There was something familiar in the air. A hint of fragrance she recognized. Where was she? Where had she been? Beside the door, arranged neatly in a vase, were chrysanthemum flowers.
Why do I care? Why do I want them?
Suddenly she was back in Damascus. There was a man; he was reaching out to her. She knew him and wanted to reach back. She extended her arm toward the flowers and caught a glimpse of her marble bracelet, of her world. It was in trouble. Turning to open the door, she glanced at her cousin’s body before leaving.
“You never win by betraying your own people,” she said and walked into the hallway.
She held the firearm in her right hand as she slung the rocket launcher to her left shoulder. If anyone tried to stop her, they would be shot. The safety of the palace was too important. There was no time to deal with anyone who might be loyal to Nabi Bakhsh.
There was a stairwell at the end of the hallway. She tucked the gun in her pants, threw the door open wide, and stepped through. She walked the single flight to the roof. The surface was covered with concrete tiles and afforded a 360-degree view of the city. To the south she could see the harbor, all the way out to the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge. Westward, planes were coming and going from Newark Liberty International Airport. She saw the Statue of Liberty, Ellis Island, and the line of red lights on cars heading toward the entrance to the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel. To the east were the skyscrapers of finance, the Trump Building at 40 Wall Street and the AIG Building at 70 Pine Street. Classic structures from the previous century, bought and rebranded, but not repurposed. They were still, all these things, the emblems of a kingdom. The kingdom her cousin had wanted to usurp.
The kingdom she was to protect.
Helicopters moved up and down the river, behind her in the harbor, and well to the east, above the Brooklyn Bridge. This building was alone at the end of the island, bordered by a park, not a high-security concern. Yasmin made her way to the north side of the building. The former Downtown Athletic Club was the only structure there, looming high but slightly to the east of her position. She had a clear line of sight to her target.
She crouched on the tiles. She looked behind her, saw large slabs of concrete that had been removed by work crews repairing the ornate façade of the old building. She wondered if that might cause blowback, which would singe her back when the weapon discharged.
Possibly. Instead, she went over to one of the boulder-size fragments of concrete and laid the back of the rocket launcher on it. That would spare her and give her added support. She took out the Glock, laid it beside her within easy reach. She held the forward grip of the rocket launcher with her left hand, the center grip with her right. She rested the rear section of the tube on her right shoulder—there was a plastic cushion under the weapon for that purpose, two-thirds of the way back—and looked through the sight. Her aim was a little high: all she could see was the midsection of the 1,776-foot-tall One World Trade Center Tower, one of the five skyscrapers that were rising at the site of the complex where the slightly shorter Twin Towers once stood. She lowered the weapon. She still couldn’t quite see the target. She looked around.
The turret ...
The image returned to her. She was supposed to climb the highest wall of the palace. There was a water tower on the southern side of the building. It rose about 30 or 40 feet above the point where she was now. There was a ladder on the side.
Rising, she kept the rocket launcher on her shoulder as she strode to the steps that led to the base of the water tower. She lowered the weapon to her side when she began to climb the ladder. Reaching the top, she climbed onto the narrow area between the peaked top and the low rail that surrounded it. The view was commanding—and perfect. She raised the weapon and found her target on the western side of the site.
There was nothing there, which was exactly what she expected. Her job was to expand the moat so it would encircle the palace. To do that, she needed to put a hole in the foundation of the pit, the concrete bathtub in which the Twin Towers once stood. The slurry walls kept the Hudson River—and that harbor that nourished it, and the Atlantic Ocean beyond that—from filling the dry underground passages through which the trains moved. Trains that could carry enemy troops, who would soon learn of the death of their prince.
Yasmin’s slender finger slipped between the trigger and the trigger guard. There was no timetable for her action; she had been told to fire when she was ready.
She exhaled slowly, just as she had done on the scaffolding by the train station, just as she had done on top of the UPS truck.
She was ready.
Beside the trigger was a button. When she pressed it and held it down, the projectile and the launcher would be one. Ready to be fired, ready to defend the realm.
She pressed it.
 
Breathless and struggling on feet that had turned to deadweight, Reed Bishop arrived at One West Street.
Cars were backed up to Broadway, trying to get onto West Street, but the sidewalks were eerily empty, there was no one there except a man walking his dog. Four police officers were literally feeding cars into the tunnel entrance one at a time.
Bishop needed the brass handrail to help him get up the stairs. He went through the revolving door and showed his ID to the concierge.
“ I work with an FBI guy. Hunt. You know him?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Where does he work when he’s here?”
“Penthouse.”
“I need to get there, fast.”
“None of the tenants are there,” the young man told him. “I saw Drs. Gillani and Samson leave—”
“I need to get up there
now,
” Bishop said.
The concierge hesitated, but only for a moment. He picked up a walkie-talkie. Bishop slipped his gun from his pocket and placed it on the countertop.
“You call for help, I shoot you.”
The concierge said into the walkie-talkie, “Michel? I need you to take someone up to the penthouse.” He regarded Bishop. “Michel Buñuel. The handyman. May be packing a putty knife.”
Bishop huffed. “Sorry. It’s been that kind of day.”
“Go to the freight elevator, straight ahead. Middle door. Michel will take you up. You, uh ... you got a search warrant?”
Bishop picked up the gun.
“Yeah, that’s what I thought,” the concierge said. “Michel will let you in if you need it. Just be ... I dunno. Careful with stuff?”
“Thanks,” Bishop replied. “Anybody else been up there?”
“Just a lady,” the concierge said. “Got here about a half hour, forty-five minutes ago. Up there now.”
Bishop felt acid in the back of his throat. “Dark skinned? About five foot, slender?”
“That’s the gal.”
Bishop started running through the lobby. “Get me that goddamn elevator ASAP,” he shouted back. “Now!”
CHAPTER 32
NEW YORK, NEW YORK
T
he ten-million-dollar NYPD 23 was a sleek silver chopper with parallel red and blue stripes running along its tail section and turning down halfway across the cabin. Inside was a crew of three: a pilot, a copilot, and an intelligence officer, who watched one of the three flat-screen monitors mounted on a slender tabletop. With sophisticated cameras mounted around the helicopter, the chopper could read faces and license plates on the ground below; it could also watch every exterior section of John F. Kennedy and LaGuardia airports. If the TSA flagged an exiting passenger, or ground crews reported suspicious activity around any of the fuel lines or tanker trunks, the helicopter could watch them without leaving Manhattan airspace. And still had two cameras turned elsewhere.
The helicopter carried only one weapon: an XM29 Objective Individual Combat Weapon with a laser range finder. The operator of the thick, relatively compact weapon had the ability to place a 20mm shell at a target up to .6 miles away. It was an extremely powerful weapon that could take down an aircraft, directed only by the police commissioner or the assistant police chief in charge of the aviation division.
There was not enough room in the equipment-packed helicopter for four passengers; as the helicopter set down, the copilot exited and Kealey took his place. The intelligence officer had rudimentary flying skills and would be able to land the bird if necessary.
“Mike Perlman,” the crew chief said, offering his hand as Kealey came aboard.
“Ron Sagal,” the pilot said.
Kealey introduced himself as the exiting copilot shut the door. The chopper rose instantly. In any helicopter, there was a sensation of the bottom dropping out when you rose; the amount of hardware in this one, the weight of the reinforced airframe, made the sense of the bottom about to drop out even stronger. And it was more cramped than any aircraft Kealey had ever flown in. Surrounded by hardware and tubes filled with cables, it was literally impossible to turn to either side in some sections of the helicopter.
Kealey slipped on the headphones offered by Sagal. Otherwise, he wouldn’t be able to hear.
“Where are we going?” Sagal asked.
Kealey adjusted the microphone. “We’re checking the Hudson for a launch that will be headed somewhere in a hurry,” he said.
“Is that all you got for us?” Perlman asked.
“No,” Kealey added. “We think it’s carrying a nuke that can be fired from a rocket launcher. I’ve got that.”
The men were instantly focused as the chopper rose.
“Any way we can patch my cell into these?” Kealey tapped the headphones.
The crew chief nodded. He plugged a jack into the phone, pasted a Velcro strip to the back, pressed it on a patch on the console beside him. “When it rings, I’ll hit TALK. You want me to cut Ron and me out?”
“No,” Kealey told him. “I’m hoping it’s the FBI. One of their guys is chasing a second nuke.”
“Mother of God,” the pilot said.
“The good news is, both weapons have GPS locators,” Kealey went on. “The bad news is, they’ll only be active thirty seconds before the weapon can be fired. How do you scan for signals like that?”
“The signals come from the satellites to the cars, cell phones, etcetera, on the ground,” Sagal told him. “Those are just passive receivers.”
“Okay, so we’re looking for an incoming signal. The weapon won’t activate without it—”
“The weapon will have to be in the open,” Perlman said. “Signals can be intermittent in those canyons.” He pointed to the city, which was falling beneath them.
“River or top of a building, then,” Kealey said. “How do we find two goddamn signals?”
“Are the weapons identical?” Perlman asked.
“Twins.”
“So we’re looking for one signal in two places,” Perlman said. “Anything data the manufacturer can provide?”
“Negative,” Kealey said. He didn’t bother explaining that people at Trask were probably involved.
“Is this DoD ordnance?” Perlman asked.
“Yes.”
“Well, that’s a break,” he said. “We’ll watch for the Y-code.”
“Which is?”
“It’s an encryption sequence designed to prevent spoofing—mucking with military signals,” he said. “The normal satellite-to-earth signal is a P-code, a precision code. That’s used to piggyback a modulated W-code, which creates a Y-code.”
“Can you block the Y-code? That will shut the weapon down.”
“No,” Perlman said. “The W vacillates, so you can’t pin a tail on that donkey. But the W is about fifteen times slower than the five hundred kHz of the P. Not a lot of those footdraggers bouncing about. We can watch for that. Narrows the field to a manageable number.”
“Do it,” Kealey said.
“We going to circle or pick a direction?” Sagal asked.
“Not sure,” Kealey said. There was a pair of binoculars in a case at the side of the seat. He took them out and looked at the river, some 2,000 feet below. There was still a lot of traffic going to New Jersey, upriver, out of Manhattan. He looked south, hoping to catch sight of the boat Bishop had described.
“Shit,” he said.
“What is it?” Sagal asked.
“South, by the marina. There’s a launch just sitting there.”
“The one you’re looking for?” the pilot asked.
“Possibly,” Kealey said. It was empty. He looked around the area. A man with a rocket launcher would not be inconspicuous, especially in a city on high alert.
So where the hell would he go?
The freight elevator opened next to the mechanical room, the housing for the elevator equipment. Bishop stepped out, followed by the short, elderly handyman. He was dressed in a blue janitorial uniform splattered with white paint. There was, indeed, a putty knife in his back pocket.
“Is that door locked?” Bishop asked.
Buñuel tried it, nodded.
“Where’s the apartment with the lab?”
“This way,” the handyman said, pointing around a corner.
“I need to get in. Hurry.”
Bishop drew his gun as he followed Buñuel. He had no idea what he would find there. And then he saw the bloody footsteps on the hall carpet. They went in the opposite direction a few paces before vanishing.
“Sweet Jesus Christ,” the handyman cried.
“Where do those footprints in the hallway lead?”
“To the stairwell, it looks like,” Buñuel replied.
“Up as well as down?”
“Yes.”
Someone opened their apartment door, peeked out. “Is everything all right, Michel?” the young woman asked.
“It’s fine,” Bishop answered, waving with the gun. “Back inside, please.” The door slammed.
The two men hurried, then stopped by the lab door. Bishop held up a hand before the handyman could use his master key. He listened. There was no sound inside. He looked along the jamb. He couldn’t see any wiring, smell any putty. That didn’t mean there weren’t plastic explosives on the other side. It just meant he couldn’t detect any.
“Okay, Michel. Open it. Then get behind me,” Bishop said.
Buñuel did so and stepped back. Bishop tapped the door with the base of his toe, allowed it to swing in. He immediately saw the body on the floor, the empty room. He stepped in cautiously, took a quick look around. He noticed the open crate with a Trask Industries stencil on the outside. He saw the garment bag with a distinctive outline pressing against the vinyl. He went to the latter.
A sniper rifle. Fired fairly recently, from the smell of it. He took another look around. There was a window, a gurney, a booth... .
What the hell were you doing up here, Hunt?
There was no time now to try and figure that out. He looked out the window, saw the Hudson. At the edge of the window he saw the western corner of the World Trade Center site. He looked up at the ceiling. The roof was above them. He looked back at the Hudson, thought for a moment. Then he swore as he grabbed the rifle. He ran into the hallway.
“Michel, call nine-one-one,” Bishop said. “Tell them we need a bomb squad, and tell them to go to the roof.”
“Sir?”
“Just do it. Inform them we’ve got a dead body in the penthouse. Make sure you tell them to take the stairs, not to come in by chopper, and to hurry like hell.” He started down the hall, then stopped. “Also, tell them
not
to take out the guy with the rifle. That will be me. I’m on their side.”
Bishop turned to his left, and followed the bloody footprints to the stairwell. He had no idea what the configuration of the roof was like, where she might have positioned herself. If seconds mattered, he wanted to have the range of a rifle.
There was only a single flight of concrete stairs between the thirty-sixth floor and the roof. He opened the door quietly; he didn’t want her to hear him and fire prematurely. He peered out. From where he stood, he could see most of the roof to the north. It was covered with cement tiles 3 feet square, and it was empty. He took a few steps out, looked around, and cleared the dormer-like exit that blocked the view to the south.
That was when he saw the shadow of the water tower before him, and an irregular shape on top of it. Such an unusual contour was what snipers referred to as “tree cancer,” an abnormal growth on an otherwise ordinary object. Bishop crouched, looked up, peered through the telescopic sight at the tower itself. He recognized the assassin instantly. His heart beating thick and fast, he put her in the crosshairs.
“Yasmin! Put down the weapon!”
He watched her shoulder. There would be a slight flexing if she intended to shoot. He started to squeeze the trigger... .
The woman looked back. He relaxed his grip on the trigger, but slightly.
“Yasmin, raise your right hand now, or I
will
shoot!”
“Who are you?” she asked.
“Agent Reed Bishop. We met at the Quebec airport,” he told her. “Come down now. You can’t get away!”
She hesitated. “The airport?”
“I was there with another agent,” he said. “We went to a room, talked about your daughter.”
She shook her head. “You’re wrong. I have no ...”
Yasmin didn’t bother to finish. She looked away, resighted the rocket launcher, hunkered into the rocket launcher.
Damn you,
Bishop thought. Her head, in profile, filled the circular scope. He dropped the site very slightly; a head shot could still cause a reflex action in her finger. He remembered that much from basic weapons training. He aimed at her shoulder and squeezed the trigger. There was a pop, a recoil, the gun site exploding in red before it kicked up toward the soft blue sky.
Bishop lowered the rifle just in time to see her jerk toward the tower. He laid the weapon down, took out his handgun, and ran to the base of the water tower. He could hear her groaning, see her feet kicking at nothing, like those of a wounded animal, as they hung over the edge. He couldn’t see her hands or the rocket launcher. He hurried up the ladder, gun at the ready. When he reached the top, he saw her lying on her side, the rocket launcher at an angle beneath her. She was trying to reach the trigger, but her right arm was hanging on by sinewy strings, the flesh ripped and the shoulder shattered, the side of her face coated with blood. The blood on her face was not from her shoulder: the bullet had glanced hard from her temple upon exiting. It was still there, nestled in a raw hole in her skull.
Bishop tasted bile, swallowed hard as he walked over and carefully moved the tube from under her. He did not want to touch anything. He laid it gently beside her and knelt, called for an ambulance. He was told there would be a wait of forty minutes or more. He didn’t think that would matter.
He kept the phone out. “I’m sorry, Yasmin,” he said.
She looked up at him with uncomprehending eyes. “Where ...”
He didn’t answer. He saw her good hand pawing at her broken arm. At a bracelet with a marble. She hadn’t had that in Quebec. He slipped it from her wrist. Then he searched her for a cell phone. There wasn’t any.

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