Twelve Hours - 04 Read online

  9:52 a.m.

  Alex Morgan examined her left ear in a compact mirror borrowed from a Latina girl about two years younger than her who was sitting nearby. The ear was cut up and looked like it might leave scars. Wincing, Alex dabbed at it with a wet wipe provided by the same girl, cleaning out the dirt and congealed blood. Fresh blood welled out bright red. She wiped that away too, and held the sleeve of her sweater against it like a compress until the bleeding stopped. She’d have preferred to do this in the bathroom rather than sitting on the cold marble floor, but the line to the bathrooms went halfway around the downstairs waiting area.

  “How are you doing?” she asked Clark, who lay back against the marble floor, staring at the ceiling, phones in his ears. He shrugged, hoodie rustling against the stone beneath.

  She reached to her pocket to check if her cell phone was there, but it wasn’t. She’d left it in her backpack, which she lost when she was knocked down by the crowd.

  “Hey,” she said, prodding him. He removed his earphones. “Can I borrow your phone?”

  He pulled the earphones out by the wire and propped himself up on his elbows. “Here,” he said, pulling out the headphone jack and holding it out for her. “I tried to call the ’rents already, though. Couldn’t get through. Maybe you’ll get lucky, though.”

  She dialed her father, then her mother. No luck.

  “I’m going to take a look around,” she told him, handing him back the phone. She stood up with aching muscles. She couldn’t sit still. She was antsy, with a bad feeling something else might happen, something worse. More than anything, she wanted to make herself useful.

  The main concourse of Grand Central Terminal echoed with loud voices. People were standing and sitting around the expansive floor, and more were downstairs. She estimated that they numbered at least five hundred. MTA Police had spread out, mostly keeping to the exits and the walls, although she spotted two K9 teams doing rounds, inspecting people’s bags. She passed a prayer circle as she made her way around the concourse, people old and young, of all races, holding hands as a middle-aged black man spoke a solemn supplication. “Lord, deliver all your children from harm . . .”

  Near the passage to the Lexington Avenue and Forty-seventh Street entrance, she heard the disconsolate sobs of people who had lost someone outside, or who had simply broken down from fear and shock. “My son is out there,” one young mother pleaded with a policeman holding people back from the door. She sank to her knees. “Please. My Lawrence, my baby . . .”

  From there, Alex made her way to Vanderbilt Hall, which opened into the main entrance. It had been cleared and set aside to form a sort of makeshift hospital. Here, people in everyday clothes were attending to the injured. Only two of the people there had bullet wounds. The rest had been injured in the tumult, trampled, pushed, or had fallen against the pavement.

  “Hi, excuse me, dear,” said a tiny lady who looked to be in her forties sporting spiky orange-red hair in comfortable pants and a casual sweater. She spoke with surprising authority. “Come over here, we’ll have someone look at your ear.”

  Alex said, “No, my ear’s okay. I want to help. I have some first-aid training.”

  “Oh, that’s very kind of you,” said the woman. “We actually have enough doctors and nurses here. But we could use some more water, if you’d be a dear and get it for us at the market.”

  It wasn’t the help she wanted to give, but, of course, help shouldn’t be about what the helper wants. Alex made her way to the Grand Central Market. The shops all seemed to be closed, but a group of girl scouts and other children were lined up to receive bottles of water and fresh fruit at the door to the market itself, where four vendors were distributing them to the kids for free. Alex approached one of them, a young, brown-skinned Hispanic man in a black cap.

  “I need water,” she said. “For the wounded.”

  He set off into the market and came back with a plastic-sealed case of six twenty-ounce water bottles.

  “You want me to carry that for you, miss?”

  “Don’t worry,” she said, grunting under the weight as he handed the case to her. “You look like you have your hands full.”

  9:58 a.m.

  Morgan and Rosso watched through security video as two of the Iranians attached the wire, which had been zip-tied to about one in four people in the crowd, to the ten or so black suitcases that were laid along the perimeter of the hostages.

  “What are they doing?” asked Rosso. He sat in the chair, clutching his wound, his breathing heavy. His eyes were beginning to glaze over.

  “It’s a trip wire,” said Morgan. “Attached to the bomb in the suitcase. If the wire is cut or detached, they blow.”

  “They’re going to have to cut the zip ties loose one by one,” said Rosso. “Evacuation’s going to be impossible.”

  “Yeah,” he said. “For the hostages and the terrorists.” Morgan reached for the phone on the desk. “I need to talk to my man on the outside.” He lifted the receiver, but it was dead.

  Rosso pointed toward the dead Secret Service agents. “Whatever they had to communicate with the outside, they’re definitely not using it anymore,” said Rosso.

  Morgan bent down over one of them. He had short, curly brown hair, and he was young, so goddamned young. He had the slightest bit of stubble, and Morgan could tell his beard was still patchy and irregular. “Sorry about this,” Morgan said, and popped the earbud out of his ear and followed the line to the transmitter in his breast pocket. Morgan pulled it out and fiddled with it to patch into the frequency he was using to communicate with Conley.

  “Conley, Conley, come in,” he said.

  “Conley here. Morgan, is that you? It’s mayhem in there. What—”

  “The Iranians,” he said. “They took out all the Secret Service agents.”

  “Shit,” said Conley. “There’s been shooting at Grand Central, too. Reports say more than one sniper fired at the crowd.”

  Morgan banged his hand on the table in a mixture of rage and worry. Alex. “Conley, I need you to try to call my daughter. She’s supposed to be coming into Grand Central this morning. I need to know that she’s okay.” He gave Conley the number.

  “I’ll try,” said Conley. “But the cell system’s overloaded. Not sure I’ll get through.”

  “Any idea what the endgame is here?” Morgan asked. He looked at Rosso, who was stooped on the desk, examining the feeds. “They’ve got no chance of making it out of this building alive.”

  “They might try to use the hostages for leverage,” said Conley.

  “I have no idea what that could achieve. Why here? Why now?”

  “I don’t know,” said Conley. “Listen, an NYPD Hercules team is already on its way.”

  “Son of a bitch! They’re wiring this place up with explosives. You need to hold them back. We need to find out what they want, and how it’s connected to the shootings at Grand Central—”

  “Did you say,” Rosso cut in, “that what happened here might have something to do with Grand Central?”

  “Yeah. Do you know something?”

  “Maybe it’s nothing,” said Rosso. “But there’s an old train line called Track Sixty-one. It was built for FDR in the thirties. It runs underground between here and Grand Central Terminal.”

  “Could the Iranians access it from here?” asked Morgan.

  “If they know where it is. There’s an elevator that leads down there from the hotel.”

  “Did you get that, Conley?”

  “Got it,” said Conley. “That’s their way out, then. Which means they have no reason not to blow up the lobby of the Waldorf.”

  “Conley,” said Morgan. “Keep the Herc team outside. If they come in here, they’re going to get themselves and everyone else killed.”

  10:04 a.m.

  “Do you have contact with any of your people on the inside?” Lisa Frieze asked the Secret Service man, one of two left on the outside. The scene was chaos, as agents of vari
ous law enforcement branches moved about frantically outside the Park Avenue entrance to the Waldorf, trying to coordinate with each other. The policemen, instead of trying to keep onlookers away, now surrounded the doors, ready for whatever might come out. She shivered, pulling her blazer tighter around her torso and wishing she’d worn something warmer.

  He shook his head. “No response on any of the communicators.”

  “Do you have any word from the field office?”

  “They’re mounting a response. That’s all I know.”

  She swore under her breath and dialed the number for the hotel, which returned a busy signal.

  “Agent Frieze!”

  She looked up from her phone to see Peter Conley making his way toward her. “Have you got anything?” he asked.

  “First responders are thin on the ground,” she said as he approached, “scrambling to deal with the three-pronged attack. From what I gather, though, the Waldorf attack has priority one. This place is going to be swarming with people from at least half a dozen agencies within fifteen minutes.”

  “That’s going to be a problem,” he said. “I’ve got a man on the inside, and he just made contact. We’ve got a hostage situation. The people inside are wired with explosives. There’s no way to get them out safely.”

  “You’ve got a man on the inside? We need to establish reliable contact with him and coordinate with—”

  “He’s not going to wait,” said Conley. “And neither is this situation. We need to buy him time to deal with the situation.”

  “NYPD is getting a negotiator here,” she said. “Plus tactical response teams and snipers. Protocol for defusing this sort of situation.”

  “That’s not going to work here,” said Conley. “The hostage situation is just a diversion. The terrorists are leaving through an old train tunnel that goes from the Waldorf to Grand Central.”

  “How do you know this?” asked Frieze. “Who’s this man on the inside? Is he State Department?”

  “He’s a trained black operative,” said Conley. Frieze eyed him, but left it at that. There was no time to quibble about these things.

  “How does he know their plan?”

  “I’d call it a professional hunch,” said Conley. “It’s the only plan that fits.”

  “What if they’re suicide bombers?”

  “Then everybody would already be dead.”

  Frieze kicked the ground. “Goddamn it,” she said. “What the hell do we do, then?”

  “We keep the tactical teams out of the hotel,” said Conley.

  “If this doesn’t pan out, my career at the New York bureau is over on my first day.”

  “Do you think there’s any other plausible explanation?”

  The tire squeal of a halting car cut off Frieze before she could respond. A thickset man with side-parted salt-and-pepper hair and the expression of a charging bull sprang out and pushed through the barrier.

  “Get these people out of here!” he yelled to the policemen at the scene. “I want a perimeter set up on a one-block radius. You.” He pointed at the young cop who had let Frieze through earlier. “Push the crowd back, have the barriers set up on Fiftieth, half a block down that way.” The cop stood still like a deer in the headlights. “Now would be good.”

  He charged the few additional yards to the front door of the Waldorf. “I’m taking charge of this scene,” he yelled out to all present. “All decisions and new information now go through me. Do we have eyes on the inside?”

  Frieze spoke up. “Agent Frieze, FBI.”

  “Sergeant Pearson.” His cheeks were splotchy red, nostrils flaring at the base of his bulbous nose. “Are you in charge of the scene?”

  “No,” she said. “But I need to talk to you.”

  10:15 a.m.

  “Another camera’s gone black,” said Rosso, hunched over the monitors in the surveillance room. “The elevator to the Presidential Suite.”

  Morgan poked his head out the door and looked both ways down the hall. Wisps of extinguisher powder still hung in the air, but it was otherwise empty. “Does that give them access to Track Sixty-one?”

  “Yeah,” said Rosso. “That’s the one.”

  “Then it won’t be long before they blow this place,” said Morgan. He sat down next to Rosso. “We need to act. There,” he said, pointing at a monitor showing the lobby. Only one Iranian was left there, all the others having disappeared. “In that man’s hand, see?” It was something small and black, barely visible in the hotel feed. “That’s our detonator. We need to get to him before he blows this lobby sky-high.”

  “All right,” said Rosso. “What’s the plan?” He winced in pain.

  “You sure you’re up to it?”

  “I’m not doing this out of heroism,” he said, refolding his bloody handkerchief and pressing it again to the wound. He stood up, bracing against the desk. He let go to stand only on his feet and swayed. Morgan was ready to catch him, but he didn’t fall. “I’m not getting out of here unless that guy is dead. Saving those people is the only way I make it out alive. So that’s what I’m going to do.”

  “I have an idea,” said Morgan. “Let me tell you how we’re going to do this.”

  10:18 a.m.

  “That’s quite a story,” Sergeant Pearson said to Frieze, half turned away from her. He towered above her, heavyset and broad shouldered. Working his bushy gray eyebrows into a scowl, he addressed two newcomers bearing tactical sniper rifles, gesturing to them with a hand like a ham. “I want you on the roof of the building across the street, and you at the Intercontinental on Forty-ninth.”

  “You need to trust us,” said Conley, at her side. “Keep the Hercules teams out.”

  “The Iranians will blow the explosives on the first sign of invaders,” added Frieze.

  “What the hell do you want me to do?” said Pearson, still looking past them at the wider scene, the lines of cop cars and two fire trucks, and dozens of first responders, moving with purpose in all directions. Some pushed people back farther and several scanned the windows of the hotel with binoculars.

  Pearson gestured to someone behind Frieze. “If what you’re saying is true, we need to get the Herc teams in there as soon as possible.”

  “That would be a mistake,” insisted Conley.

  “So instead I’m supposed to trust that this guy on the inside is going to take care of the situation?” Then he shouted, “Get those civilians back! I want Park clear of civilians!”

  “It’s our best shot,” said Frieze.

  “Get me in contact with this guy. We’ll see where to go from there, all right?”

  Frieze saw two black shapes approaching from Forty-ninth Street—large vans, which halted just around the corner. Men clad in black tactical gear with helmets carrying Colt Tactical Carbines and shotguns spilled out. The NYPD Hercules teams—New York City’s elite police special forces. They were running out of time.

  “All right,” said Conley. “I’ll patch you through.”

  10:21 a.m.

  Morgan was checking the magazine of the dead Secret Service agent’s gun when he was hailed on the radio communicator.

  “Sergeant Pearson here,” he said. “NYPD. Is this Morgan?”

  “Can I help you?” said Morgan, keeping his voice down and his steps light as he made his way down the hall. It was deserted, and any sound seemed to echo in either direction. A hiss emanated from one of the pipes that ran its length. He glanced backward and saw Rosso disappearing around a corner at the far end.

  “I’m told you’re on the inside of the Waldorf. I need eyes and ears to coordinate the tactical insertion for the rescue operation.”

  “Don’t attempt anything yet,” said Morgan, looking around a corner.

  “Excuse me?” Pearson huffed.

  “Stay out until I give the all-clear. These guys are not looking to negotiate. All they want is to keep you busy as long as possible. Come inside and they have no reason not to blow.” Morgan made a mental map of
the lobby in his head, picturing the enemy’s location as shown by the security cameras. Only one had stayed behind. They only had to get the one.

  “Who the hell do you think you are? You’d better do what I’m telling you to before I make sure you’re held personally responsible for the deaths of any—”

  Morgan clicked the communicator off as he reached the door leading form the service hallway into the lobby and waited, looking at his watch.

  This had to be perfectly synchronized. He and Rosso were going to get one chance. It had to be a one-shot kill—anything less and the terrorist might squeeze the detonator switch.

  Morgan checked his watch again. Five seconds.

  He heard gunfire right on cue, and afterward, the screams of the people on the floor. Rosso’s diversion having been achieved, Morgan pushed the swinging door out into the lobby, which led him behind the front desk. He found the trigger man hiding behind a column, taking cover from the hail of bullets loosed by Rosso on the far end of the lobby.

  Morgan had a clear line of sight, but he was too far away. He couldn’t be sure of his shot. He had to get closer.

  He pushed off the ground, one hand resting on the reception counter as he swung his legs over. His feet hit the floor as he landed catlike on the other side. The trigger man heard and turned to look.

  His eyes went wide under thick black eyebrows. Morgan saw the calculation in those eyes—his chance of not being shot if he surrendered, the life that awaited him if he did survive that day—life imprisonment in Guantanamo Bay, enhanced interrogation. In slow motion, Morgan saw him make his decision—the man’s eyes cast on the detonator in his left hand.

  But the split-second hesitation was enough to give Morgan the advantage. He put two slugs in the man’s chest and one between the eyes. The Iranian slumped against the pillar, leaving a red smear as he slid down onto the ground.

  “We’re clear!” Morgan yelled out.

  “Everyone stay put!” Rosso yelled to the crowd. “We’re going to get you all out of here in just a moment.”