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Authors: Andrew Britton

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BOOK: The Operative
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Yasmin shut her eyes. “Kamilah,” she sighed. “God. Oh, my God. I want ... to ... go ... home.”
Bishop didn’t know what to say. He took her good hand. He understood what they had been doing in the lab. He held the fingers that had caused so many deaths. After a moment her eyes rolled back slightly and the fingers relaxed. He laid her hand on her side.
Bishop looked out at the sparkling waters of the Hudson as he called Kealey.
“Reed, where are you?”
“On the roof at One West,” Bishop told him. “I got Yasmin and her nuke.”
“Nice work. Real nice.” There was a slight pause. “I see you. By the water tower.”
“Right.” Bishop looked up, saw the silver 23 hovering over the World Financial Center a few blocks north.
“I think the Xana project was about brainwashing,” Bishop said. “After I shot her, Yasmin had no idea where she was or what she was doing.”
“Wipe killers’ minds, you’ve got plausible deniability,” Kealey said. “Any idea what her target was?”
“Given where she was aiming, I’d guess the bathtub of the World Trade Center site, west wall,” he said looking north toward the site. “If she’d popped that, Manhattan would’ve been cooked. The subways, Penn Station, Grand Central ... There would have been endless miles for the river to empty into.”
“Jesus.”
“Exactly. The nuke is armed, but I’ve got the bomb squad—”
“Leave it,” Kealey said.
“What?”
“For just a minute, I mean. We need to get its GPS signature so we can find the other one.”
“Roger that.”
There was muted talk on the other end of the phone. Bishop looked down at the woman he’d killed. She was paling quickly as blood and life left her. He had never shot anyone. It had been easy to pull the trigger; the rest, he imagined—whatever degree of sadness, regret, revulsion—would come later, if at all. The big pain was that despite having hunted one participant down and prevented unimaginable slaughter, he didn’t feel a damn bit better about the loss of his daughter. He glanced at the bracelet. Did that have something to do with Kamilah, or was it something else? Maybe Veil’s mind was impacted by the gunshot wound, or maybe it was something else. But Bishop got the feeling that this woman truly had no idea what had just happened to her.
Like so many of your victims over the years,
he thought,
if they were even permitted to have a final thought.
Kealey got back on. “We got it, Reed. Listen, can you see the marina from there?”
“Negative. World Financial tower’s in the way.”
“Okay. I’m going to send you a photo of a launch at the marina. Tell me if that’s the one you saw.”
The sun was high and hot to his left, over the harbor. Bishop shielded the phone from the glare and waited for the e-mail. The sun felt good. Life felt good.
Damn these people
...
damn them
. Tears streamed along his cheeks as he thought of Laura and the days and sunlight she would never know. The graduations, books, dates, children
... Damn them all for eternity
.
The phone pinged, and Bishop opened the attachment.
“That looks like the one,” Bishop told Kealey. “So he’s on foot? With a nuclear-tipped rocket launcher?”
“I doubt it,” Kealey replied.
“Right, of course,” Bishop said. Being spotted wasn’t the issue. Hunt was expecting Veil’s bomb to go off. He would have wanted to be as far away as possible.
“I’m sure he’s skipped town, and there’s one other thing I’m sure of,” Kealey said. “That SOB will have been expecting to hear a blast by now. We need to intercept Plan B.”
 
The speeding runabout passed below the George Washington Bridge as it left New York City.
Hunt looked at his watch. He exhaled loudly. “Was it your work or did they screw up our plan?” he asked Dr. Gillani.
“I do not believe the fault was mine,” she insisted.
“No, of course not,” Hunt rasped.
“She’s right,” Dr. Samson said as he steered the runabout north. “The programming worked straight down the line. There’s no reason to think it broke now. We spent the most time on this part of it. She was solid.”
Hunt shook his head. The years of work and planning, from Pakistan to here, and it ended up on his shoulders, after all. His one consolation was that if they took Yasmin prisoner, she would remember nothing. If they killed her, the effect would be the same: another Muslim had participated in a wave of Muslim attacks against the United States. That also meant the lab would not be destroyed. Even if they got in there—
And they wouldn’t have much time to do that
, he thought—even if they checked all the records, everything would point back to another Muslim, Dr. Gillani. A call to her from Scroggins’s phone would tie them together; the men would take the blame for the nukes. Trask would see to that. The drivers would disappear into a cell at any number of secret government prisons for weeks.
By then it would be too late.
As for himself, he would say that he was undercover, trying to sniff out this Muslim brainwasher. Dr. Samson was the voice of her process, knew how it worked. He was all they’d need. In one hour, she would be the last victim of this necessary evil.
Except for the ten million people of New York. That, too, was a tragic requirement for the liberation of the world.
 
“You store your city views?” Kealey asked.
“For twenty-four hours,” Perlman said.
“What have you got of the marina from the last hour or two?”
Perlman opened the video library, typed in the street he needed, brought up a fuzzy video of the marina from an hour before.
“That’s the best we’ve got,” he said. “We were over Midtown, between Thirty-Fourth and Forty-Second Street.”
The FBI launch had not yet arrived. There were several boats that did not appear to be there now, yachts mostly. They would probably have headed out to sea, where there was room to maneuver, up-the-coast or down-the-coast choices available.
“Can you pick me a good frame and print it out?” Kealey asked.
Perlman stepped through the video, selected an image, enhanced it as best he could, then handed Kealey an eight-by-ten glossy. Kealey looked at it. Any one of them would be a suitable, anonymous strike ship. They would have to look for all of them, listen for the GPS signal, hope to hell they could get to it in time.
“You don’t happen to have grenades on board?” Kealey asked.
Perlman shook his head. “Just the OICW.”
“You better keep it handy,” Kealey said.
“We need authorization from Aviation HQ just to take it off the—”
Kealey took the handgun from his jacket. “I don’t have time for bureaucracy. I’ll shoot the bastard with this if I have to, but no one is going to fire a nuke on my watch.”
Sagal and Perlman exchanged looks. Sagal nodded. Perlman angled awkwardly behind him and unscrewed the wing-nut bracket from the stock and barrel of the weapon. He kept it in his lap.
“Thanks,” Kealey said.
The intelligence officer nodded.
Times Square, Herald Square, Grand Central Station, the United Nations, the Empire State Building—those were obvious targets for a sniper. Some would make meaty bull’s-eyes for a nuke. If that were the case, though, why did Hunt head south toward the harbor? Why circle the island? He could have had the nuke left somewhere in that vicinity, in a van or car trunk or a storage unit.
Kealey considered the other options. Aside from the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge or Statue of Liberty, which he’d already determined could be destroyed by conventional weapons, Staten Island, Brooklyn, and the Atlantic Ocean were the closest southern targets. He didn’t think those made sense. Farther south were Philadelphia and Washington, but Kealey didn’t believe Hunt would want that kind of exposure for the time it would take to reach them. North was ... what? The George Washington Bridge. Highways clogged with cars trying to get out. A pair of baseball stadiums, which would be empty in light of what had happened that morning.
There was a map on a monitor that sat on a thin metal arm beside the seat.
“How do I work this?” Kealey asked.
Perlman held up an index finger, wagged it up and down.
Kealey nodded, used his finger to scroll the map. It responded faster than MapQuest on his laptop.
“You can expand the view using your thumb and index finger,” Perlman said.
“Got it. Thanks.”
Kealey followed the river north, out of the city and into Westchester, Putnam, Dutchess counties. Nothing jumped out. He magnified the image and went back toward the city slowly.
“Shit,” Kealey said suddenly.
“What is it?” Perlman asked.
“They may not be going after people this time.”
He expanded a view. Perlman looked at it on his screen.
Save for the
whapping
sound of the rotors, the cabin was very quiet.
“We need to stop this,” Perlman said.
“We do,” Kealey agreed. “But if we commit to going north, and he isn’t there, we’re screwed.”
“I can take us to the GW Bridge and wait for the ping,” Sagal said. “That’ll put us more or less equidistant, in reach of him north and south.”
“In reach or on top of him?” Kealey asked. “We won’t have a lot of leeway here, about thirty seconds.”
Sagal shook his head. “No way to answer that, Mr. Kealey. It depends where he plants himself. If he goes ashore, tucks himself under a bridge or tunnel—”
“Of course.” Kealey considered their options. They hadn’t any. “Let your aviation unit know. They have other choppers they can put on this?”
“Yeah, plus maritime,” Sagal told him.
“But we’re the only ones that can hear the GPS signal.”
“In time to act,” Perlman said. “It’ll have to go through channels to turn all our ears on this.”
“Time is something we don’t have,” Kealey said. “Let’s get other eyes up there and head for the bridge.”
Sagal gave him a thumbs-up and turned the helicopter north along the river.
CHAPTER 33
BUCHANAN , NEW YORK
I
t was called the Indian Point Energy Center because
nuclear power plant
had an unfashionable connotation that summoned images of Chernobyl and Fukushima. In operation since September 1962, the facility had undergone many upgrades since then, some in response to geological concerns, others as a result of terrorism 38 miles to the south, in New York City.
The red buildings with their yellow-golden domes were a familiar and inherently ominous sight to local residents. Despite assurances from Entergy Corporation, which owned the facility, the truth was that no nuclear power plant could ever be made entirely safe.
Though the plant had received the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s top safety rating, and there was a National Guard base a mile away, Alexander Hunt had read the reports from the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation and Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory findings that the power plant was nonetheless vulnerable to earthquakes and megaton-level attacks. With the sophisticated radiation detection systems attached to any nuclear plant, no one was anticipating anyone being able to smuggle even a well-protected nuke into the vicinity.
Hunt had also read a 2003 report prepared for then governor George Pataki, which noted that radiological response systems were inadequate to protect the citizens of three states from radiation that could be released from Indian Point in a worst-case scenario. Yasmin’s mission was to be a one-time hit. This one would be a lingering and constant reminder that the Muslim world represented an ongoing and inevitably catastrophic danger. The sooner they were dealt with, the quicker the world could move from the present Dark Age.
The runabout entered Haverstraw Bay, which carried them northwest around the promontory that preceded the plant. There were other boats moving through the area, some of them pleasure vessels, others patrol ships on alert because of the events in New York. As long as Hunt kept them moving north, they would be fine. No one would think to stop a vessel that had already passed by the facility.
The facility was on the northeastern side of the large outcrop of land; the first part of it that became visible was the white smokestack with its distinctive red bands. It sat between the three domes.
Like an ace of clubs,
Hunt thought as the entire complex rolled past. He had instructed Samson to take them to the western side of the river, where 202 broke off from Old Ayers Road, the route that ran along the Hudson. He would fire the rocket from that point, and they would move farther up the river to West Point. That was where Dr. Samson would leave and a heroic FBI officer would shoot the monstrous Dr. Gillani. She was sitting placidly beside him, playing absently with a drawstring on the Windbreaker she had donned against the brisk river breeze. A cloud cover had rolled in, and the wind had a bit of a nip. The scientist was probably trying to figure out how things had gone wrong with Yasmin Rassin. Maybe they hadn’t. It was possible that Bishop or Kealey had caught up with her at One West, prevented her from completing her mission. That was why they needed two nukes. As with the rest of her mission, Yasmin was there to keep the authorities moving, distracted, focused on someone who was more or less a sideshow. The irony was that all those people she had chased from Manhattan with her sniping—
all
of them would be even more vulnerable to the radiation cloud that would spew from the reactors. Most of them were closer now, in their suburban homes.
“Any place in particular suit you?” Samson asked.
Hunt looked over at the shore. “That cluster of trees,” he said, pointing to a row of oaks along the shore. “We’ll tie up there.”
He needed the cover of the canvas top, but Hunt wanted the boat to be secured when he fired. There were yachts and motorboats moving mostly north along the river, along with the private security boat hired by the plant, which ran by every ten minutes or so. He didn’t want the wake of one of those to cause him to miss one of the domes. The blast was guaranteed to kick down the door, but only if it landed squarely.
Samson maneuvered the runabout toward the shore.
“Wait until the security boat has passed,” Hunt said, watching as the black and white speedboat sliced by, close to the opposite shore. He didn’t catch the glint of sunlight off binoculars, but that didn’t mean the men on board weren’t watching. If something had happened to Yasmin, the NYPD might have put out an alert to watch out for another nuke. They might even be told to watch out for a rogue FBI agent, though he wouldn’t be expected to announce himself. A crew of three agents would probably get a pass.
If not, then a security unit would die,
Hunt thought.
Samson powered down the runabout as he nosed toward shore. The current carried it sideways, and he brought them to a low sandstone cliff. Branches hung over the water. Samson took the towline that was attached to the bow ring and slung it over a limb. Hunt went to the back of the cockpit.
Excitement burned in his belly.
While Samson took the spare fuel and filled the tank for a rapid getaway—and to provide a reason for them being there, in case anyone looked over—Hunt went to the open area of the cockpit and picked up the rocket launcher. He knelt, as if in prayer, as he raised it to his shoulder.
“Let me know when you’re ready,” he told Samson.
“It’ll be a minute,” the scientist told him.
There was no one near enough to stop him. He smiled. They had done it.
This was going to happen.
 
Kealey was a restless, unhappy passenger.
It was a rule of the field that, in the absence of intel, staying put was a good idea. The operative got a chance to know his or her immediate vicinity, find the strengths and weaknesses, plan a quick-exit strategy if necessary. Even though the enemy might know where to find him or her, so did allies or extraction teams. For Kealey, it wasn’t the chopper sitting over the George Washington Bridge that gnawed at him. It was not having intel flowing in.
He had contacted Andrews, who had the National Reconnaissance Office turn their space eyes on the river. They could see boats in the breaks of cloud cover. But the angle of the Taurus 9 geosynchronous satellite gave them only the east side of the river, the side with the power plant. It would take time to move another set of eyes into place. The sporadic cloud cover didn’t help.
“What about the plant?” Kealey asked Perlman. “They’ve got to have cameras on the river.”
“They do,” the intelligence officer replied. “Access code changes daily. I’m trying to get it, while my tech team is working to hack it. One way or another, we’ll get in. Just may take some doing.”
Kealey shook his head. Goddamn bureaucracy. It was one reason he got out of this game.
You hire people to do a job, let them do it.
Meanwhile, one of their trusted insiders, Assistant Director Alexander Hunt, had turned rotten and was about to blow them a new “mole hole,” as the CIA called it. The big damage radius caused by someone with an all-access pass.
Kealey looked out the windshield, saw moisture rippling from the middle to the top of the sloping glass. It was condensation from the clouds just above.
“Is rotor wash doing that?” Kealey asked.
“No, sir,” Sagal replied. “That gets deflected around us. That’s a southeasterly air movement.”
Kealey’s heart was running at full throttle.
You hire people to do a job, let them do it,
he thought again. “Mr. Sagal, let’s head up to Indian Point.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah. The wind is blowing toward the city. Toward Newark. Toward all of Westchester County and part of Connecticut. If I were a bad guy, I’d want killer doses of radiation riding that stream.”
“If we do that—”
“We leave the city open. I know.”
Nothing more was said. Sagal nosed into the wind and headed north.
Kealey watched the river on the monitor next to his station. There was a built-in mouse so he could scroll the nose camera, zoom in or out, look ahead. He had the printout of the boats in his lap, watching for any of them. He thought he saw one of the yachts, checked it on the monitor, did not see anything that suggested either great haste or a weapon. He did not see Hunt on deck, or a porthole that would accommodate a rocket launcher without blowing out the inside of the vessel. He didn’t think the AD was prepared to die for this.
“I’ve got you into the IP security camera,” Perlman said. “Not legally, but we’re in. Sending it over.”
“Thanks.”
Kealey was looking at a view of the river from a slightly elevated point. The camera was either on one of the domes or the smokestack. It was slowly panning north to south, then back again.
“I don’t suppose we’ve hijacked the zoom capability,” Kealey said.
“Afraid not. But if you see something you want to look at, we might be able to do that from here.”
Kealey watched the screen. Perspiration was dripping into his eyes. He blinked it away, bent closer to the screen. “Slow” had never been so frustrating. He saw trees. He saw rust-colored rocks. He saw river and boat traffic, a security vessel... .
“Whoa. Can you grab this image?”
“Yes.” Perlman hit a button, froze the screen. “Enlarge it?”
“Yeah. You see—”
“The blue runabout tied to the branch.”
“FBI jackets,” Kealey said. “Magnify on the woman sitting in the cockpit.”
Perlman did so.
“Her torso,” Kealey said.
The picture blurred, then sharpened. It wasn’t perfectly clear, but it was enough to see what he wanted: she wasn’t wearing a holster, shoulder or hip.
“She’s not FBI,” Perlman said. “And that canvas top ... perfect cover.”
Kealey did not have to give the order. Sagal pushed the helicopter ahead as Kealey and Perlman went back to the live view.
“I’m going to call this in,” Perlman asserted.
“No!” Kealey barked.
“Mr. Kealey, they have people on-site—”
“If anyone approaches him, he will fire. He has to think he’s safe until we’re in range.”
“HQ is going to ask where we’re racing. We’re not exactly off the grid,” said Sagal, stating the obvious.
“Don’t answer,” he said.
“That’s not going to work,” Sagal told him.
“We don’t have a
choice!
” Kealey insisted. “You tell them, they tell Indian Point, and hired-hand security charges in. Unless they’re going to gun this guy down, he—”
The conversation was cut short by a dinging sound.
“That’s him,” Perlman said gravely. “The weapon’s been activated.”
There was no more talk. Kealey had a sense of motion like nothing he’d ever experienced, not even in an F-16. The cockpit of a fighter was aloof from the air, the elements. This helicopter was pushing against that barrier, slamming it hard, not letting the air roll around a streamlined design.
“I need the OICW,” Kealey said.
Perlman looked at him.
“We’ve got seconds, not minutes,” he said. “Please.”
The officer handed him the weapon. Kealey threw off the safety, kept it pointed down. The contours of the Hudson shores were winding past, like separately undulating snakes. He saw the domes of the plant. The western bank curved in a way that did not allow him to see the site from the surveillance camera.
“Take us down,” Kealey said.
The chopper dived forward. Kealey put a hand on the door. The power plant was coming into view.
That also meant Hunt couldn’t see them, though he’d hear them approaching. Hopefully, he would be too focused on his target, on waiting for the go-ahead signal from the rocket launcher... .
“As soon as that boat comes into view, you’re going to have to hit the brakes and turn me toward it,” Kealey said.
“Don’t open the door till I do that,” Sagal said.
“Yeah.” If Kealey thought that by flying from the chopper, he could stop Hunt, he would gladly take the flier.
“He’s hot in ten ... nine ... eight ... ,” Perlman said.
They were about a half mile downriver and 1,000 feet too high.
“
Push it!
” Kealey shouted.
“Seven ... six ...”
Kealey felt the harness dig into his chest as the helicopter screamed forward. It didn’t matter if Hunt knew they were there. He couldn’t fire for another few seconds... .
“Five ... four ...”
The chopper came out of the half-parabolic dive, just skimming the Hudson.
“
Brake, now!
” Kealey yelled.
Kealey grabbed the door handle hard. The turn was so sharp that Kealey was thrown against the left side of the harness, but he retained his grip. As the chopper leveled, he yanked the handle, popped the harness, and put his foot to the door.
BOOK: The Operative
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