The Hammer of God (30 page)

“Tell me more, Sergeant.”

As Bridgestone further explained the trail of events that brought them to New York, Hiccock realized they had bits and pieces of the puzzle but nothing hard, no evidence. Then Bill remembered that evidence was the purview of law enforcement and the kind of stuff you needed if you planned on going to trial. In this case, if there were a second loose nuke, there would be no trial. In fact, if they didn't follow these threads there might be no courthouse or enough people left to form a jury. The endgame here was not jurisprudence. The endgame was ending the game before, as the President put it, sudden death overtime.

In a moment of silence, Bill realized his deja vu was happening all over again. He had been here already. He had gone from being a paper-pushing bureaucrat into field operative before. He kept trying to tell himself it was just until Joey got back.

∞§∞

Number 1 looked at his watch and mentally went through the next steps: in two minutes, Number 3 would be on his way and executing his second diversion phase to take place in 33 minutes. In ten minutes, Number 4 would initiate the primary distraction and revenge for Number 1's brother. One hour from then, the package would be picked up, then five minutes later…

His mental checklist was interrupted when he saw one of the two cops that were chatting with the caterer approaching him.

“Mr. Rashani, Officer Ralph Chesney.”

“Nice to meet you, Officer. Anything wrong?”

“Probably not, sir. But I need to see your original permit.”

“May I ask why?”

“You could ask, but I don't need a reason.”

“Very well.” Number 1 picked up his walkie-talkie and called to his assistant director. “Please bring me the production book. I need the original permit.”

Number 1 looked back to see the other officer still at the catering truck. “Officer Chesney, let's go to my camper. The A.D. will meet us there with the paperwork.”

∞§∞

“Where did you get this?” Hiccock asked, looking over the filming permit.

“They are a matter of public record. You just go to the mayor's office and ask,” Bridgestone said.

“Description of action to be filmed: ‘Bita Asayesh, ace reporter, exits news helicopter, into boyfriend's arms, Crane up - End credits'.” Bill looked at Bridgestone. “News helicopter.”

“Yeah. Ya see where this could be going?” Bridgestone said.

∞§∞

Ross watched as the front door of the mosque opened and Rashid, a.k.a. Rodney, walked out carrying a suitcase. Although it was smaller than the nuke case they were looking for, it was suspicious enough for him to interdict. He approached Rodney as he walked towards the PATH train station, placing a call as he did so. At that moment, Bill and the sergeant were in the Holland Tunnel, so he got Bridge's voicemail instead.

“Bling. Rodney on the move with a case. Too small to be the bomb. I am going to stop him.” He closed the phone and went right up to Rodney. “Hey, Mister, you got a light?”

“No, I don't smoke,” Rodney said, never breaking his stride.

Ross pulled his gun, stuck it in Rodney's neck, and strong-armed him into an alleyway. “Where you headed, Rashid?”

Rodney was stunned that this man knew his real name. “I … I was… Er…”

Rodney heard a pop as Ross' head exploded right in front of him. He heard footsteps running up to where he was. A split-second later, a man he'd seen at the mosque appeared with a sniper's rifle and scope attached to it.

“Go… Go! I will handle this.”

“Who are you?”

“Number 1 had me stay here to make sure you weren't followed. Now go, Allah be with you! Here…” He tossed the still-shocked Rashid a handkerchief, then motioned his hand across his face.

Rashid wiped his face and pulled back the handkerchief to see red blood and gray matter. Then he puked.

∞§∞

As they were coming out of the Midtown Tunnel, Bridgestone proposed they go to the location and check out the copter. He motioned to the back seat. “Our rad detector is in the small case. If there's a nuke anywhere close, we got a good shot of picking it up.”

Bill's phone rang.

“Li, wha'cha got?”

“Not even close, Bill”

“Best guess?”

“Radiological device, but no big plutonium signature…. Sorry I missed this before.”

“We were all fooled by the false responsibility claim and…holy Shit!”

Bill grabbed his other cell and said as he dialed, “Janice, Mom, Pop.”

∞§∞

“…pagers or beepers. Also the use of flash photography during this afternoon's performance is strictly prohibited…” was coming over the theater's public address as Janice obediently silenced her cell phone and slid it into her purse. She looked around one more time, but still saw no sign of Bill.

∞§∞

“What is it?” Bridge asked as he weaved in and out of traffic at 75 m.p.h.

“These guys duped us and the entire world, except for you and Ross. The message the NSA intercepted with Roosevelt and Mahgra was obviously a plant. The failed attack on the
TR
was just a dirty bomb suicide decoy. That and the premature Al Jazeera video were all part of a massive deception to get us to stop looking for the bomb and drop our guard.”

“Sun Tzu – all warfare is based on deception.”

Bill snapped his fingers as he remembered the reference. “Hence, when able to attack, we must seem unable.”

“I'm impressed, sir.”

“I studied Tzu when I played ball in college. Used many of his strategies.”

“Well, it seems the terrorists studied
The Art of War
before this game, sir.”

“Why couldn't these guys have stuck to just reading the Koran.”

∞§∞

“Oh, I see now, it was only the photocopy that didn't have the street address…” As Ralph turned to Rashani to explain the discrepancy, he felt a sharp pain in his chest. Number 1 then jerked the scarab up in strong pulls, ripping open Ralph's ribcage. He finished off his work by slashing the policeman's throat, leaving him to fall back onto the floor of the trailer.

Number 1 turned and nodded to Number 5, who was screwing a silencer onto his pistol. He stepped out of the trailer to summon the other officer, shedding his blood-splattered jacket along the way. He checked the side-view mirror of the lighting truck to be sure that he was clean.

“Officer? Officer Chesney would like you to join him in my trailer. There's seems to be a problem with the permit.”

Sammy watched as the producer escorted the cop into the trailer. From this distance, he couldn't hear the dull pops the silenced weapon made. He did see the trailer rock once, but figured it was normal when people went to one side or another. He returned to dishing out the crew lunch.

∞§∞

“Take the BQE,” Hiccock said. “I used to live here.” Just then, Bridgestone's phone chimed, indicating that there was a voicemail. He retrieved the message as Bill watched his expressions. “Well?”

“Ross said Rodney was on the move with a case too small to be the nuke.”

“Was he headed out of town or carrying something else?”

“We'll know soon. Ross was making a move on him. We must have been in the tunnel when he called. Anyway, you know the reason I asked for Palumbo was for cover, in case we had to deal with locals. Flashing an FBI card could keep a lot of nosy cops out of our business. I don't suppose you have any official looking I.D. on ya?”

“Well let's see.” Bill opened his wallet and rifled through his I.D. cards. “Office of Homeland Security, no, National Security Agency, no, Defense Intelligence, nah, Central Intelligence, uh uh, Oh here we go, Federal Bureau of I. By the way, on this case I am the lead agency for all these agencies, so since they all are working for and reporting to me, I get to hold all the cards, so to speak.”

“Cool!”

∞§∞

Customs Agent Hector DeNardo was scanning the last container of the current tier when the radiation monitor in his hand registered low-level contamination. He quickly got out his handheld scanner and waved it past the decal on the door. In an instant, the shipping history of the container was displayed on the device's four-inch display. He relaxed a bit when he saw it was from Teva Radiological Industries Ltd. Petah Tikva, Israel. Still he'd report it, after lunch.

Sometimes Allah smiles on you and sometimes he's looking the other way. It was a fast shootout as the two Jersey City cops stopped and fought it out with the guy dragging the dead body down the alleyway. They happened upon him by accident while investigating a call on a gas leak. Since the dead guy with half his head missing had no I.D., the only thing they found was the set of car keys in his pocket. As other cops and investigators arrived, they pushed the button on the key ring. A half a block away, a Cadillac Seville beeped and its lights flashed. Three minutes later, the NCIC sent a flag to Homeland Security. As a major member of government, all Bill's friends and family were on a watch list. The inquiry tripped an alarm and the Secret Service detail assigned to Bill was signaled. They were embarrassed and professionally crushed that Bill had eluded them and wasn't in his suite. Furthermore, the one agent assigned to Janice and the Hiccocks almost gave his mom a heart attack when they rushed to the row in the theater and ascertained that the dead man on the street in Jersey City wasn't the registered owner of the Caddy, the senior Hiccock.

∞§∞

Bill's encrypted phone started to oscillate, the signal that indicated flash traffic. At the risk of exposing their location, he had to answer it.

“Mr. Hiccock, Brooke Burrell, sir. We've got a dead John Doe who had the keys to your father's car on him. Do you know why your father's car would be in Jersey City?”

“Oh, dear god. How did he die?”

“Gunshot to the head, sir. Not pretty and the body had no I.D., sir.”

“Agent, that man was an investigator for the White House operating under special orders from the President of the United States.”

Bridgestone's hands gripped the wheel tighter as he overheard this end of the conversation. His partner and friend for the last four years was dead.

“Was a man named Rashid apprehended?”

“No sir. There was a shootout with Jersey City P.D. but the man who they killed was an R. Nadal. Who is this Rashid?”

“Rashid is a suspected terrorist on the loose with a suitcase device of some kind. He was the one stopped at the subway last week, so get an A.P.B. form NYPD. Ross was on his tail when he was… shot.”

∞§∞

Number 8 started warming up the helicopter. The technicians and camera people started turning on lights and rolling the dolly up and down the specially made track that insured a smooth ride of the lens. The two stars, a little miffed that the first day of shooting was the big end scene, did the best they could to fill in the blanks in the less than helpful rehearsals they had been suffering through with some third A.D. They felt snubbed by the director, who only seemed interested in the logistics and effects.

∞§∞

The new floor construction assured that no one would discover him or what he was doing. There were still two weeks to go before the new Radiology Center was to be opened and the floor was empty. In its own room, the brand new nuclear medicine machine sat, partially crated, awaiting critical wiring to bring high voltage to its working parts. Slowly, Number 10 turned the knurled screws that held the expansion power supply access panel in place on the large, Israeli built, machine.

Later, no one at NYU Medical Center questioned the orderly pushing the clothes hamper into the elevator. Only the most astute observer would have questioned his pushing the button for the top floor when the laundry room was in the basement.

∞§∞

Bill jumped into crisis management mode. He had the White House switchboard conference his cell phone call with Agent Burrell with the DHS and the NSA. His orders were simple. Find Rodney, aka Ali Rashid, and find the case he was carrying. Get the N.Y.P.D. to release his mug shot from the subway arrest. Shut down all means of egress from the scene of the shooting. Widen the circle and stop and search everything that moves. Report to him immediately with any developments.

He hung up, breathed out, and started ticking off his mental checklist as Bridgestone took the exit to Citi Field. He was starting to second-guess his decision not to have added finding and securing his wife and parents in the call. He could order them into a basement or bunker of some kind.
But where?
New York City took down all the black-and-yellow-diamonded public shelter signs years ago.
Maybe a public school?
Maybe they still had stored water and food in the bomb shelter area. Wait, didn't Gracie Mansion have a bombproof safe room? How the hell could he get them up there? Why the hell didn't he check that before all this?

He then caught himself. Everybody believed the bomb was no longer a threat. That was the main reason to bring Janice along on this trip to hang with his parents. Except he brought them right to what was looking more and more like Ground Zero 2.

Bill then looked across at Bridgestone and his list dissolved. “Sergeant, I am sorry about Ross, he was…”

“Thank you, sir. Ross was good. The only way they could have got him was from up high and away.”

“Sergeant, call me Bill from here on in.”

“Thanks, Bill.”

“How should we play this?”

“Question is, is the cat out of the bag?”

“If we play it like it isn't, we could be walking into a trap.”

“If we come in guns blazing, we may force them to detonate.”

“So what do you think, Sergeant?”

“They have to know that Ross is dead. They also have to know we got their shooter. That alone could move up their timeframe.”

“So it's back to ‘bomb, bomb, who's got the bomb.'”

“I'll just need 10 seconds to get a radiation reading on the chopper.”

∞§∞

NJ Transit had a hit. A railroad cop lost a guy in the crowd who could be Rashid. The train had already pulled into Pennsylvania Station.

∞§∞

Number 1 used a disposable cell phone for the one and only time it would ever be used. “Number 4, don't miss your curtain.”

Thankfully, Americans had a short memory, so no one was thinking that what happened in a theater in Moscow, only a few years back, could ever possibly happen to a theater in New York.

∞§∞

On the other end, Number 4 threw the phone under the wheel of a passing New York City bus. It flattened with a cracking sound swallowed up by the pre-matinee hubbub. The six doors of each of two ubiquitous stretch limos – in no way out of place in the theater district – sprang open and eight men exited from each, right in front of the Brooks Atkinson Theater. They all wore long bulky coats. Four of them separated into two teams of two each and spread to the stage door and load-in doors of the theater. Ten others walked right in. The two drivers followed, wheeling a case from the trunk. As the ushers and one security guard protested, each was shot in the face by suddenly raised guns with silencers. The men then just shut the doors behind them and one produced a chain, which they threaded through the panic bars of the main doors, thus sealing the patrons inside. The two who remained outside looked at one another and, upon a nod, lifted their machine guns out from under their coats.

Harold Benson had waited his whole life to see a Broadway play. So on the occasion of his 50th birthday, his wife Doris got two tickets from Decatur, Illinois to New York on Jet Blue, found an affordable Holiday Inn in midtown, and nabbed two tickets to the biggest show on Broadway. They had just finished his birthday dinner at Sardi's and were leaving. Cindy and Dan were running late and the traffic wasn't helping. Dan told the cabbie to pull over and that they would walk the next half-block to the theater.

Rimi Patel was walking with her grandson who had just scored big at the M&M store. His mother would be cross, but she was following the Grandmother's Oath, “First, spoil the child.” They passed Vietnam vet Rufus Kincaid who sat in a wheelchair with his one and only leg and a sign explaining why he needed your change for him and other disabled homeless vets. Innocently, Rimi's grandson dropped three M&Ms into Rufus' cup.

When Harold started to falter, Doris instinctively grabbed him, thinking he was suffering from a heart attack. Then a bullet entered her and the searing pain made her collapse. Harold fell dead on top of her. The window on the cab that had just dropped them off shattered as the cabbie caught a round in his head and fell dead on the wheel, sounding the horn. The bullets spun around the man entering the cab and he slid down the rear panel of the car, streaking blood in his wake. His date was blown back into the cab taking three in the chest blossoming red bloodstains on her new dress for the evening.

Rufus heard the shots and immediately grabbed the little Indian boy and spun around his chair to shield him. Rimi didn't understand why the man grabbed her grandson, but started screaming. Her screams fell silent as she was hit with three rounds. Dozens of other people fell dead or wounded, turning 47th Street into the Great Red Way.

Edie Deagan was posing for a picture with his mount as two blondes from South Dakota had their boyfriends shoot the ubiquitous tourist shot in New York – the pretty girls smiling alongside the mounted policemen atop his “10-foot cop.” The ripping of the machine pistols finally registered in his ear. He immediately kicked Atticus and let out the rein. The one-ton horse traversed the half-block from Broadway in eight seconds, during which time 10 people were hit. Eddie pulled his Glock and, like a cavalry trooper, started firing at full gallop at the gunman in the long coat spraying the street. His third and fourth shots found center mass on the shooter and he went down. A second shooter on the other side of the theater was too far away for him to get a good shot at while not hitting a pedestrian.

Atticus didn't hesitate when Eddie nudged him in closer to the shooter, yelling for everyone to get down and take cover. Two white-shield anti-crime cops who were looking out for scalpers and pickpockets had their guns drawn down and in front of them as they advanced one car at a time for cover towards the shooter. As soon as they felt they had a shot, they both swung onto the hood and trunk of a Town Car and pumped 30 shots into the shooter who went down screaming, “Jihad.”

Eddie Deagan took on the role of lookout from his perch atop Atticus. He triggered his lapel-mounted radio. “MTS mounted to Central K. Shots fired, multiple gunmen IFO 256 West 47th Street. Repeat, multiple gunmen. Citizens down, many down.” He scanned the street as the undercover cops kicked the dead shooter's gun from his body.

He saw a man in a wheelchair keel over as a young boy ran from behind him, then he realized it was Rufus, the vet he'd chased from spot to spot every day. Today, Rufus bought the spot he died in…a hero.

It went out as a Critical Response Call. Immediately, 75 patrol cars, almost one from each precinct in the city, headed toward the theater district. The rolling roadblock method they utilized, where the lead car blocks a cross-town street while the main body zooms by then takes up position in the rear, meant they cut a swath through the city at speeds as high as 60 m.p.h. They got there in less than 120 seconds from their recent post at the Museum of Natural History.

Eddie Deagan was down from his mount and, heard how the shooters were part of a group of men who went into the theater. He tried the doors, but they wouldn't open.

Of course, none of this happened without the news services being aware. News trucks and helicopters scrambled to the theater district.

For the terrorists, all was going according to plan.

∞§∞

A theater is acoustically a live-end/dead-end room. The live end, where the actors work, amplifies sound so that all their nuances of performance can be heard. The dead end, where the audience sits, is designed to muffle sound and absorb reverberation. So when the house manager came into the lobby to see what all the fuss was about, the shot that perforated her forehead didn't sound out more than 10 feet. The instant human reaction was also muffled, so the rest of the theater was not aware of what was happening in the rear of the house. In time, though, the screams became more numerous and, hence, louder and clearer.

From his perspective returning from the men's room, Phil Dunowsky, an off-duty corrections officer, gauged the situation and decided he could get the guy with the gun. He drew a bead on the guy who just shot the woman with the headset on. He was about to do it by the book and yell “Police, freeze,” when he saw the thug point his gun at an old guy who witnessed the killing.

“You bastard. I'm going to shove that gun up your ass!” Mitchell Herzog, a veteran of the Korean War, blurted out. He was more angry than smart. He realized this when the hooligan with the gun turned it towards his face.

Phil fired three times and the bad guy fell. As he died a spasm-induced pull on the trigger fired the gun, just missing the old guy and shattering a sconce on the back wall of the theater. What Phil would never know was that there were more than just that guy in the theater. His world went unexpectedly black as another terrorist loosed a three-shot burst into his head from behind.

∞§∞

From their spot in the parking lot at Citi Field, 100 yards from the shooting set of the film, they began to see some activity.

“Let's roll,” Bill said as his cell rang. “Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.” He ended the call and said “Call Joey.” to his voice-activated iPhone.

“Joey, the President has covered your agent Burrell under the same executive order as Bridgestone and Ross. Tell her she is free to use any means necessary.”

“Roger that. Thanks, Bill. How's your end going?”

“I'm late for the theater and we are about to see if the movie guys are really making a bomb. Parking lot at Citi Field. Have NEST and extraction teams ready waiting for my order. If you don't hear from me in five minutes, come in blazing.”

∞§∞

The inter-agency alarms, triggered by the possible sighting of Rashid, took 12 seconds to ripple through every cop, national guardsman, plainclothes and uniformed railroad security personnel throughout Pennsylvania Station. Within a minute, they thought they had a target located in the upper concourse next to the Amtrak waiting area. They didn't want to spook the guy until they had a clear shot and a chance to secure the case.