Early Warning (13 page)

“Look, Morris, there’s a Sabrett’s guy,” said Shirley. “I could use a nosh. How about you?”

With a muzzle velocity of 2,346 feet per second, and a 40-cartridge magazine, you could fire 600 rounds per minute and pretty much hit everything within 300 meters. Unless you were a sniper, in combat you were basically firing at a man standing right in front of you, and the Kalashnikov was designed to be operational in all kinds of weather and under all kinds of conditions. There might be better assault rifles—and there were—but none could touch it, even today, for ease and reliability.

Death from a weapon like the AK-47, even the cheap Chinese-made imitation of the Soviet original, was not like it was in the movies. The impact of the bullets did not lift you off your feet and knock you back 25 feet. Instead, they put you down, hard. One shot might shear off the top of your skull. Another might drill a hole in your forehead and blow out the back of your head like a pumpkin, but in either case you dropped, dead.

At the training camps in Pakistan, Ismail had learned to shoot. Not for him was the gangbangers’ spray paint job, stylin’ as they shot and pretty much missing everything except babies in their carriages and nuns on their way to Mass. With the AK-47, you fire either semi-automatic—one trigger pull, one shot—or full auto, but Ismail had learned to husband his ammo and make every shot count. Besides, he wasn’t alone. From all over midtown Manhattan, Chelsea, the Flatiron District, and Hell’s Kitchen, more holy warriors had converged and were in place, freshly armed. In fact, he could hear them firing now.

The first people the former Ben Addison, Jr., killed were an elderly couple who were heading for him, right in the line of fire. The old man never saw him, so intent was he on not falling on his face as he stepped into the street, and the woman only had time to allow a fleeting look of understanding flit across her face and then she, too, went down.

Then he opened fire in earnest. At first he fired single-shot, semi-automatic. It was fun to see how well he had been trained, to watch the enemy—he didn’t think of them as “victims,” since everybody was a victim these days, most especially himself—fall, ripped apart, just as first the paper targets had shredded and then the metal targets had clanged and finally the live-fire captives, scrambling desperately for their worthless lives, had been cut down in a burst of well-placed fire.

Now people screamed and ran. But withering fire came from everywhere, from all directions, high and low—the Brothers, activated by the sound of the explosions. Gunfire came from everywhere, from several stories high in some of the surrounding buildings, from the streets, even from the storm sewers. Screams rent the air as bodies dropped. Panic broke out. Nobody knew where to run, where it might be safe. There was noplace to hide. Vehicles collided, pancaked. And still the gunfire continued, a rain of fire from hell.

Phase one was now well and truly under way. And then the ground beneath his feet rippled, buckled, and exploded.

The No. 3 train was just starting up to leave the station for its run uptown to 72nd Street when Ali Ibrahim al-Aziz pressed the talk button on his cell phone and activated the bomb that had been stowed away on the train in the few minutes the sensors had been down. The resulting explosion sent several cars of the train hurtling skyward, ripping apart the street where the ancient cut-and-cover was at its shallowest. Immediately, the signal shorted out all along this stretch of the line, which meant that the trailing No. 2 had no way of knowing that the station wasn’t clear. The resulting collision forced the cars from the demolished No. 3 train up and out into the street, carrying a load of incinerated corpses into what had become a running gun battle.

The force of the car bomb that had struck the AMC Theatres on 42nd Street was nothing compared to this. Triggered by the cell phone call, more than 1,000 kilos of plastic explosive had obliterated much of Times Square. A giant sinkhole yawned across the famous intersection, swallowing up cars, buses, and small buildings alike. The military recruiting center above the station was one of the first to go, collapsing in upon itself and tumbling into the abyss. Beneath the ruined train, tunnels fell in upon themselves, then plunged down, into the network of other tunnels—electrical, steam—that had run beneath the streets of Manhattan for more than a century.

The ripple effect was devastating, as electrical systems failed, manhole covers were blown 50 feet into the air dozens of blocks away and scalding steam flayed alive anyone unlucky enough to be near a vent when it sundered. Chunks of pavement became lethal weapons, buried electrical wires became snaking, spitting instruments of death. Worst of all were the ruptured gas lines, which quickly ignited and set ablaze the buildings directly above. The air quickly filled with acrid, lethal smoke.

And still, gunfire from all directions continued to rake the killing field that had once been Times Square.

Teterboro Airport—later

Technically, Teterboro was a township in New Jersey, but it was basically an airport and not much else. As Van Nuys was to Los Angeles, Teterboro was to New York—an unglamorous location for the very glamorous private airplanes of the moneyed set.

“What?” said Devlin. “Say again?”

Maryam looked at him as he spoke softly on the secure phone. Throughout the flight aboard the custom-built Gulfstream C-37B, he had kept his own counsel, remaining mostly silent as he absorbed real-time information streaming over his direct connection to Fort Meade. Since she was not, officially, an employee of either the NSA or the Central Security Service, it was none of her business to inquire. He would tell her soon enough, if he chose to.

Secrets. They were the basis of their relationship. Even though she knew it was not his real name, she still called him “Frank,” because that was how he had first introduced himself. She had since learned that “Frank Ross” was one of a series of operational pseudonyms he had used, never to be repeated, but Frank he first was to her and Frank he had remained. Perhaps, someday, she would learn who he really was. But then, she supposed, he would have to kill her.

As for herself, there were plenty of things she hadn’t told him. Most things. In fact, everything about their relationship—even their love affair—was based on indirection, misdirection, or outright lies. And neither of them would have it any other way.

They both had jobs to do. Thrice already in their lives their jobs had intersected, the first time in Paris, the second last year in Los Angeles and, later, in France. They had been there for each other, when they needed each other, and in their business that was just about the highest compliment one could pay to a colleague—or a lover.

And she did love him. Whatever had been the original impetus for her assignment, it didn’t matter. Iranian politics, especially since the revolution, were impenetrable to outsiders, even to him. But she had been raised in them. For more than thirty years her country had cried out for justice and vengeance. She only hoped she could give it a little bit of both.

Most Americans over the age of 50, she understood, had zero sympathy for Iran. As young people, they had had their senses assaulted by the hordes of Iranian demonstrators on the streets of America’s cities, shouting about the Shah and his secret police force, the SAVAK. Then Khomeini came back to Tehran from Paris and the Shah fled and the ayatollahs took over, and suddenly the most Western country in the Middle East, a Persian culture that had existed for millennia, with great art, literature, poetry, and music, had succumbed once more to an alien, fundamentalist oppressor and was taking American hostages and shoving its women into burqas. In less than a decade, the glorious Peacock Throne had degenerated into another totalitarian dictatorship.

Then the demonstrators took the streets again, this time against the Ayatollah. With hundreds of Americans being held hostage in the embassy, in violation of every international diplomatic protocol, they found no shoulders to cry on. If, in 1980, President Carter had nuked Tehran, he would have won reelection in a landslide, thought Maryam. But he was too weak, and the rot that had taken over America had first revealed itself; despite Reagan’s tough talk, his primary focus was breaking the Soviet Union, which he did. And after him, the deluge of mediocrity that resulted from warring political families, neither with the best interests of the nation at heart. Which is why Tyler had been elected as a breath of fresh air, a plague and a pox on both their houses.

“…ready?” he was asking her.

“Sorry, what?” she said, coming out of her fog of remembrance.

Devlin looked at her. Every instinct, every bit of his training told him that he shouldn’t trust her, that he didn’t really know anything about her, and yet he did. It was Milverton’s last question to him as they battled to the death in London: “Do you trust the bitch? You don’t even know her real name.” But he had ignored that, instead taking a page from Milverton’s old outfit, the SAS-22’s: “Who Dares, Wins.” All his life he had trusted nobody, but he trusted her.

“New York is under attack. We have to move. Now.”

Maryam tried not to let her alarm show. She was, after all, a professional. But an attack on New York was the nightmare that had been waiting to happen for a decade. “Then we go in together,” she said.

The plane was rolling to a stop as he replied: “No. I go in. You go on.”

“Where? When?”

“As soon as I tell that idiot Tyler what we’re going to do. Right now you’re going to tell me how bad it is.”

“But—” She caught herself. She knew it was no use to remonstrate with him. Neither love nor guilt played any role in his psyche, and on some level she felt that he would willingly sacrifice her if the mission ever required it. Just as she knew, deep inside, that if the day ever came when she had to choose between her mission and their happiness…She let the thought trail off, not wishing to finish it.

“There’s some kind of incident going on in Times Square. Whether the police are up to handling it, we’ll soon find out. Probably not, but they’ll never admit it. That’s why I need you to crack the CTU unit and find out what they know.”

“With what?” Even though they were aboard an NSA plane, which was as well equipped with computers and surveillance equipment as anything in the air, including Air Force One, they still might not be up to the challenge. The New York Counter-Terrorism Unit was famously secure.

“With your head,” he replied. “Now get cracking.”

Devlin pulled out his secure BlackBerry and opened up a direct channel to Seelye. This was not his preferred method of communication, because he felt a wireless device, no matter how well designed by the NSA engineers at The Building, could never be as safe as the hard-wire he’d had back at his home in Falls Church, but at this point he didn’t have any choice. This would get him straight to Seelye, which meant straight to Tyler.

IN PLACE SIT UPDATE ASAP

The scrambled and decoded text came flying right back at him. There were a lot of things he hated about Tyler—almost everything, in fact—but one thing he had to admit, the man was always on the job. Tyler had taught him a lot of things Devlin wished every night he could forget, but a work ethic and a sense of duty was not one of them.

HANDS OFF THIS END. YOU ARE SOLO. NORMAL ROE. CONFIRM

CONFIRMED. ACCESS?

NONE. LOCKDOWN. NYPD SHOW.

TOOLS?

IN PLACE, SAFE HOUSES. STAND BY. REVOLUTION

Devlin had to wait only a beat or two before a series of numbers flooded the secure computer screen. In a few minutes, they would be sorted out into street addresses superimposed upon enhanced-imaging maps provided by the National Reconnaissance Office, another of the many U.S. intelligence organizations few Americans had ever heard of. The NRO was attached to the SecDef, and it was responsible for collecting and coordinating aerial imagery from airplanes and satellites. In other words, the NRO was Google Earth on steroids, and it could send you a picture via nearly instantaneous transmission that could show you the Iranian nuclear installations at Qom or the tramp stamp on the girl on the beach at Ipanema.

“Revolution” simply meant that the vetted safe houses revolved on a daily basis and the secure information he was receiving would sort out the active flops from the dummies and the poisoned pills. Assuming he could get to one of them, it would be outfitted with just about any kind of weapon he might need, short of a low-yield nuclear device and he wouldn’t put that past NSA, either. Devlin glanced at the computer, which had identified three safe houses in Manhattan; one in midtown near the United Nations, one downtown near Wall Street, and one at the northern tip of the island, in Inwood.

ROGER THAT. COOP?

ASSUME NONE.

EMERGENCY LIAISON BYRNE, FRANCIS X, CORRECT?

UNDER ROE ONLY, YOUR CALL

Devlin clicked off. He memorized the locations of the safe houses and committed the floor plans to memory as well, noting all entrances and exits. There would be codes at each of them, security death traps for the unwary, the too-curious, and the sacrificial pawns, but he could handle that sort of thing in his sleep. He only hoped that the situation would not get too far out of control before he could in and get fully equipped.

Maryam’s voice nearly startled him: “It’s him, isn’t it?” He didn’t need to ask who “him” was. They both knew and they both knew it was him. Hope was not a plan.

Devlin turned to Maryam. There was no point in lying to her. Instincts had kept them both alive for years, and to try to deny them was suicidal. Nevertheless, Devlin preferred to base his conclusions on evidence, which right now was in short supply.

Maryam saw it in his eyes, saw the lack of the comforting lie. “I know it. It’s him.” Her eyes flashed and, for an instant, changed color from deep brown to something more akin to gold. “He’ll never leave you alone. He’ll never leave
us
alone. Until we kill him.”

“Or he kills us. But right now this isn’t about us.”

“Of course it is. You’re going in. That makes it about us, whether it began that way or no.” He loved that, “or no.” There was a slight British quality to her speech that he would have to expunge if she ever really had to pass for an American overseas, but they could work on that later.

She placed her hand on his wounded shoulder, into which Milverton had plunged his killing knife. How close the thrust had come to severing an artery she would never know, and he would never speak of it. She only knew how close to death he had been when she got to him in that horrible cell in France. To watch the sight of his life’s blood draining away was a vision she never wanted to see again. “How do you feel? Are you fit enough?” It was not a question she should have asked, but one that she had to ask.

“Fine. In the pink. Never better.” He smiled. “Any other clichés I can lay on you to make you think twice about asking a stupid question?”

She gave him that look, that mysterious Oriental glance that women of the region had been giving their men since the days of Darius. The one that is at once challenge, taunt, reproach, and exhortation. He returned the glance as best a Westerner could, then glanced down at the computer. The safe house information had already been atomized and now only the screensaver—an animated gif of a bobblehead Alexander Graham Bell doll doing handsprings and backflips while rushing for a ringing telephone—now visible.

“This might tell us something while Washington figures out what’s going on.” He punched a few keys, and Maryam saw that he was tapping into the live Echelon II feeds across Manhattan. ATM cameras, CCTV cameras, bodega cameras, building security cameras—their cyclopean images floated across the tiny screen, stupefying in their uneventful reality.

“Nothing much—Jesus!”

Times Square. Something was happening there. It was hard to make out, but one of the rotating CCTV cameras was on to something…

A streetscape and then smoke. Flames. Even in grainy low-res, it was clear that something was happening. Devlin called up the cable news nets and divided the screen in four quadrants.

“We have to do something.” Maryam’s eyes were still glued to the unfolding disaster. Devlin turned to look at her, and then, once more, the voice of his old enemy sounded in his ear:

“What is she to you? She’s a dream, the dream of the prisoner in the condemned hold. You think that this time it’s going to be different, but when they string you up and drop the trap, you’ll realize as your neck snaps that it was all a fantasy.”

Milverton’s voice, in his head. Not the voice of his conscience, but of caution. The caution that, as the saying went, had been thrown to the winds in his desire for her, and in his desire to be free—from Seelye. Free of the past that had entrapped him and refused to let him go. But freedom was not a gift. It had to be won, and hard-won. Milverton had been there at the beginning, in Paris, and he had been there at the end, in London. He haunted them still.

Devlin’s hand shot out, grasped hers. The horror remained on the screen. “Are you real, or only a dream? Who are you?”

“What?” She pulled back a little, frightened by the intensity in his eyes. She knew that look. She was one of the few—perhaps the only one—to have seen it and lived.

Best not to show fear. “Who are you, Frank?”

“You know who I am,” he replied calmly. His touch was like ice. “I am the Angel of Death.”