Threat Level Black (33 page)

Blitz nearly jumped when the phone rang. He glanced across the room at the President, then picked it up.

“Nothing new,” said Brott, the NSC military aide who was monitoring the situation from the Pentagon. “Civilian plane, false alarm.”

“Right,” said Blitz.

The Secret Service had asked—demanded, really—that the President leave the city when the alert came through three hours before. The President had folded his arms across his chest, listened patiently to their arguments, and looked at Blitz.

“I think you should go,” Blitz had told him. Even as the words left his mouth, he knew D’Amici wouldn’t.

“With due respect, gentlemen, fuck yourselves,” said the President. It was the only time in his life that Blitzcould remember the President using that particular profanity, at least since he had been elected to office. “The people of the United States did not elect me to run away and hide from terrorists,” continued the President. “And if something horrible does happen here, then this will be exactly where I should be.”

He was a stubborn son of a bitch. That’s what it came down to. It wasn’t the fact that he thought his place was here; it wasn’t that he thought the political ramifications of running from a rumor of danger were immense. The real reason he was staying was that he wouldn’t back down from any confrontation. In his heart of hearts, he probably wanted to go down on the streets and work with the details trying to catch these jerks.

Blitz admired that instinct, even as he questioned the wisdom of it.

“Keep me informed,” he told Brott.

“Yes, sir. Mozelle wanted to talk to you.”

Blitz pushed down the button on the receiver and called his aide at the White House.

“You okay up there?” she asked as soon as she heard his voice.

“Not a problem here,” he said.

“Lot of calls. One in particular I thought you’d want to know about,” said Mozelle. “Your friend Kevin Smith called. He was mad that you didn’t tell him you were coming into the city.”

Smith was an old friend; they often got together when Blitz was in New York or he was in D.C., but security and the press of business had prevented him from calling this time. Blitz made a mental note to call Smith later on and tell him he was sorry.

“He said he had tickets to the NCAA championship game tonight,” Mozelle continued, “and he would have taken you instead of his brother-in-law.”

“Oh,” said Blitz softly.

Tempted as he was to call Smith’s cell phone—he knew the number by heart—he realized he couldn’t. Instead he hung up and rose, looking out the nearby window at the brilliantly lit Manhattan skyline.

“I hope you’re okay, Kevin,” he told the glass. “I hope to God we’re all okay.”

Fisher walked up along the track about a hundred yards, slowing as the light from the station faded behind him. The problem wasn’t the darkness; he could see fairly well. But the schematic of the tunnel system he’d seen earlier had shown a passage here to his left, and he couldn’t find it now.

Fisher took another two steps. There should be a little work light along the narrow walkway that flanked the tracks here somewhere.

As he stared at the wall, the light appeared about ten yards to his right. But it was dark. The socket was empty.

Fisher glanced down the tracks. The light bulb had been unscrewed and thrown on the tracks. He could see the glass shards quite clearly.

Which was a problem, actually. All of a sudden there was plenty of light flooding into the dark tunnel: A train was approaching.

Rather quickly too.

The door he was looking for stood next to the light. He made it with something like three seconds to spare, pulling himself up onto the ledge as the train’s brakes squealed and the tunnel shook.

When the train passed, Fisher took his pistol from its holster and opened the door.

Howe steadied Iron Hawk on its course toward the contact, riding over the rooftops of Bergen County, New Jersey. He had the UAV now, the computer boxing it in the upper right corner of his screen.

“Zoom on Unidentified 1-3-1,” Howe told the computer, using its tag for the contact. The image blossomed in his screen. It was as if Howe were hovering just in front of its nose. The UAV was moving at just over three hundred knots, skimming above the waves at about eight feet roughly forty miles from the tip of Manhattan, across Brooklyn in the Atlantic due south of Long Beach, Long Island.

“Viper Two to Iron Hawk. Colonel, is this it?” asked the pilot in the second F-16. He was approximately twenty miles beyond the Statue of Liberty, just about ready for an intercept. Viper One was north, escorting Qual-Air back to Boston because of the earlier threat.

“Affirmative, I have the target on my screen,” said Howe. He read off the UAV’s location, heading, and speed, pulling back on the magnification level so he could better direct the F-16.

The fighters that had just taken off checked in. One peeled off to back up Viper Two; the other took up a patrol position in case this, too, was a ruse.

It wasn’t. Howe felt his heart beating steady now, the rhythm familiar. His fingers felt heavy, his eyes almost hollow.

He’d flown in combat before, but this time it was different: This time there were people he knew on the ground, in harm’s way. This time his own people were in the crosshairs.

The contact tucked left, adjusting its course. There were thirty-five miles between it and New York.

As Viper Two approached, it quickly became apparent that he would have to get very close to the UAV to shoot it down. The UAV’s extremely small radar profile protected it against a longer range shot by the AMRAAM missiles; the pilot’s best bet would be to choose either heat seekers or his cannon. Howe could see him sizing up his strategy and preparing for it: He had a parallel track to the UAV’s course that would allow him to turn and get on its tail as it approached; the F-16’s superior speed would make the terrorist craft an easy target.

Not easy, exactly. Viper Two still had no idea where it was. In the dark night, moving at hundreds of miles an hour, the world was a flashing blur. The airplane and its target moved through four dimensions—three spatial, one of time—in a complicated dance. It was man against machine, and the jock at the stick of the F-16 was now in a confrontation where the slightest error, the wrong twitch at the wrong moment, might mean disaster. The pilot had trained for countless hours, but no simulation, no drill, could come close to duplicating what he was flying against now.

Howe had been there himself. You reached down at that moment and found what you had.

He watched the display. Viper Two couldn’t find the UAV, even as he closed.

“Turn,” snapped Howe. “Now.”

The F-16 stuttered in the display. Then it moved downward toward the water, pirouetting on its wing, 18,000 pounds of metal and machinery transformed into a graceful ballerina. The wings straightened and the dancer became a linebacker blitzing unmolested toward the fleeing quarterback.

“Range is five miles,” said Howe. “You’re dead on. Dead on and steady.”

“Roger that.”

Howe told the computer system to zoom in on the target. The screen blinked—and then went back to the large-area scan.

He started to curse, then saw the change was not due to a malfunction: A second contact had been spotted, this one behind him, only five miles south of the Statue of Liberty.

The only person in the room whose face wasn’t a mask of worry was the President’s. Blitz watched him from the other end of the suite, still working the phone as he talked to congressional leaders about an amendment to the Medicare Prescription Bill. Each call began the same way:
Senator, how are you? Did you catch my speech? We need your support on this legislation.

It was impossible to tell from the President’s reaction whether the man or woman on the other line was for or against the proposal. Only when the call ended and he signaled one of his aides with a thumbs-up or -down could one judge the success of the call.

Meanwhile, the Secret Service detail, chief of staff, and military aides were walking back and forth, trying to appear calm. They had formulated and reformulated and formulated once again plans in case the alert proved real. They had flashlights, night-vision goggles, flak vests—everything they needed, Blitz thought, which only made the situation seem even more impossible.

The President finally put down the phone and got up from his chair.

“So, what do you think, Professor?” he asked. “Should we head over to the Garden?”

The Secret Service people began to protest en masse. The President raised his hand to shush them.

“What do you say, Doc? We getting over there or what?” asked the President.

“I wouldn’t want to get in the way of the professionals while they were doing their work,” said Blitz.

“Neither would I,” answered the President. “Come on. We’re not cowering in a hotel room.”

“Sir…” started the head of the Secret Service detail. “With all due respect, your safety—”

“My safety isn’t the question,” said the President. “The question is, who’s going to win this stinking basketball game? Syracuse or Kentucky? I have Syracuse. My national security advisor takes Kentucky. Now, let’s get our act together so we don’t hold up too much traffic, all right?”

Three people tried to speak over the same radio frequency at once. Howe sifted through the cacophony, eyes glued on the new triangle on the right side of the display.

How the hell had the system missed the contact earlier?

Maybe it hadn’t. Maybe this was just an anomaly, a screwup.

Or maybe it had been lost in the clutter until now.

Howe yanked at his stick, snapping back in the direction of the UAV. The Iron Hawk pulled nearly 9 g’s, testing the limits of his flight suit and its wing structure as it jerked onto the new course. A pair of fists smashed against Howe’s temples, gravity angry that he had dared to fight it. Momentum slammed against his chest, drove down against his groin; Howe fought through it, his brain swimming hard to keep up with the superbly engineered plane as she shrugged off the awesome forces trying to pull her back.

The aircraft won. Iron Hawk began accelerating.

Howe blinked his eyes and saw his target on the screen seven miles away, flying to his right now as he leaned on the throttle and strained against the stick.

Lady Liberty stood proud in the harbor, her arm holding a beacon to the oppressed of the world.

“Splash Target One!” reported the F-16 pilot. “Splash that motherfucker!”

“I have a new target,” reported Howe, belatedly realizing he had forgotten to alert the others. “Tracking.

The UAV dipped right. There was a Navy destroyer ahead, near the mouth of the harbor.

Someone was hailing him.

The Navy people couldn’t see the target, but they could see him: The targeting radars on their ship-to-air missiles were locking on him, ready to fire.

“Iron Hawk acknowledges,” said Howe, slapping at his Talk button. “I am in pursuit of an unidentified aircraft, probably one of our targets.”

The black shadow flew toward the center of the statue ahead.

Those bastards are going to blow up the Statue of Liberty,
Howe thought to himself.
And there isn’t anything I can do about it.

The corridor was a utility passage that connected to another set of tracks and opened directly across from a passage way below the Garden. The only way across was through a set of girders and then over the tracks; unlike the other tunnel, there was no walkway on the side.

According to the plans, the access had been closed off. Pretty much a dead giveaway, as far as Fisher was concerned.

He climbed down between the girders, trying to judge whether the rumble he felt was coming in his direction or not. Finally he decided to take his chances; with all these tracks down here, the odds were that it wasn’t.

But it was. Fisher was just reaching the metal plate that covered the opening when the yellowish-white light crept across the wall.

He pulled down against the plate, trying to get it to open. It didn’t budge.

Fisher took a step back. Ordinarily he would have reached for a cigarette so that he could fully contemplate the implications of the panel being secured in place. But the approaching train made such contemplation a difficult venture. The FBI agent kicked at the bottom of the metal with his foot.

It still didn’t move. The tunnel now practically quaked with the thunder of the approaching subway cars, the rattle moving the ground in a motion not unlike the steady, comforting
perk-perk-perk
of an old-fashioned coffeemaker.

The light filled the space, casting him in shadow. Fisher glanced to the left, admiring his growing length….

And finally spotting a second panel, six feet away.

He stepped over to it and saw that it was propped up at the side of the opening. The FBI agent slid in feetfirst, and found himself in a dank, water-filled hole.

Howe watched the UAV pass under the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge like a rifle bullet moving at just over 275 knots. It nudged right slightly, its faceted beak aimed directly for the Statue of Liberty. Howe was flying more than a hundred miles an hour faster than the UAV, but even with that advantage he couldn’t close the distance between him and the UAV before it slammed into the statue.

And even if he did, he had no weapons aboard.

But he couldn’t simply pull off. He stayed on his course.

And then the UAV made a course correct, turning not right, which would have taken it over Manhattan, but left, flying toward northern New Jersey.

Howe didn’t understand for a moment. It seemed to him that the enemy plane—an unthinking missile—had had a change of heart, warned off by the glare of the statue herself.

Then he realized that it had never been programmed to strike the statue.

An E-bomb would be targeted for a power yard or a transformer station to have maximum effect on the power grid. It was possible to shield some devices against the weapon itself, but a close-range hit on a weak link could not be defended against. Even if the weapon proved not as powerful as its designers intended, a jolt directly over a concentration of power lines would fry the Northeast grid for months.

There were plenty of choices in northeastern New Jersey. Hit the right one and the power grid would come down. You didn’t have to hit Manhattan at all.

“Iron Hawk, this is Viper One. I need vectors to the target. Iron Hawk? Iron Hawk?”

Howe responded with the course and location, even though he knew the F-16 was too far off. It would take it at least three minutes to close the gap. By then the UAV would be over its target.

The UAV began to rise. That must mean it was getting ready to ignite its bomb.

He had it in his screen now, less than two miles ahead. If he had a cannon, he could easily shoot it down.

He could run the damn thing down, collide with it.

I don’t want to die.

The idea shot into his head, the errant firing of a cramping muscle.

It was just ahead of his left wing now, eight hundred meters, seven hundred. The AMV showed it clearly in the display—the bomb was lashed to the body—but he wasn’t watching the screen; he was looking at it in his windscreen.

He’d have only one chance. Howe eased his grip on the stick, trying to avoid the tendency to overcorrect.

As Howe came up, something about the night reminded him of the dim computer screen he’d fiddled with in the Smithsonian, the simulation of the Hurricanes taking on the V-1s in the air over the Channel.

He could do that now.

Tip the wing right, get the UAV to tumble into the water.

Was he chickening out?

There was no more time to think. Howe pushed the stick, threw his body with it, came back.

A long tunnel opened behind him, the rushing howl of the engine rising two octaves into a shrill hiss. He felt his right arm cramp into a rock.

The Iron Hawk stumbled but held solid, following its pilot’s command.

The wings of the two aircraft smacked against each other. The UAV tumbled, its gull wings spinning. The craft’s tail turned over once, twice, three times. The plane’s internal guidance system started to correct but it was too late: It was far too low to recover from the spin. Gravity had too firm a grip for the craft to shake off; it spun once more, then hit the water about ten yards from shore, disappearing in a volcanic burst of steam.

Iron Hawk rolled awkwardly but recovered, the modifications designed to ensure her survivability in combat proving her salvation now. Howe steadied the craft, eyes on the AMV screen, hardly breathing. He was lost, unsure where he was in the sky—unsure even if he hadn’t blown himself up.

He blinked, and he had it all back.

He was rising over the Hudson River, turning eastward now, New York City a bright mélange of lights. The UAV hit the water below.

He’d saved the damn place, he and the F-16 pilots, and Fisher, and a million other people, doing their jobs and putting their necks on the line.

He’d saved the whole damn place. Manhattan sparkled like a fistful of diamonds, her bright lights blazing in the dark night. New York, New York, brighter than ever.

And then every light in the city flashed out.