Twelve Hours - 04 Page 9

  Under the Park Avenue viaduct, Frieze tried Morgan’s phone for the twelfth time. Again it rang with no response.

  “Frieze,” came Chambers’s pissy voice. “I need you to tell me something good.”

  “No answer from Morgan,” she said. “He’s not going to pick up.”

  “Goddamn it,” he said, kicking a plastic Gatorade bottle down the street. “And where is the goddamn rescue helicopter?”

  “On their way,” said Nolan. “ETA ten minutes.”

  “It should have been here twenty minutes ago. Nolan! Do we have the information on Soroush?”

  “The Iranian embassy is not forthcoming,” said Nolan. “State Department is pushing on that front. Meanwhile, we have CIA reports. I’m sending them your way now.”

  “What about the explosives teams?” asked Chambers.

  “We’re a few minutes from being able to breach,” said Frieze.

  “Have them ready to go on our signal. We’re timing this to the rescue of the President. I don’t want those hostages in there one minute longer than is necessary.”

  1:48 p.m.

  Alex Morgan clutched the MP7 in clammy hands as she stood flat against the wall of the flight of stairs that led up to the catwalk. She had gone all the way up there looking for her father, only to find that he was downstairs in the concourse. She made her way down slowly, so that she wouldn’t be heard or bump into the attackers.

  The MP7 felt awkward in her hands. She had gone with her father to the shooting range before, but this was heavier than a handgun, and she had no idea what the accuracy or recoil would be like. She hoped she wouldn’t have to fire.

  She was out of her depth.

  She heard the movement ahead of her, right outside the control room. She listened as they passed, counting three, from the sound of the footsteps.

  She waited until they had gone through the threshold to creep around the corner and stand at the door. In the control room, mere feet from the door, were two armed men and her father, with their backs to her.

  “Freeze,” she said. “And drop ’em.” She punctuated this by cocking the handle. The men tensed up but didn’t turn around. “I said drop them.”

  The men unslung their submachine guns. A victorious grin was forming on her lips when rough hands grabbed her from behind. The MP7 was wrenched from her hand and she was pushed aside, stumbling into a desk.

  “Now, who is this?” said the man behind her in a cool British accent. “And what is she doing here?”

  Alex turned to look at him, the tall, steel-gazed leader of the terrorists. The man who Ramadani had called Soroush.

  She stood in defiant silence against his cold authority. He ran his hands over her pockets, and she pushed them away, which led him to punch her in the stomach. Pain rang in her head and bile surged up her throat, leaving her doubled over and retching. He reached into her back pants pocket and pulled out her student ID.

  “Alexandra Morgan,” he said, looking at her father. “Do I detect a family resemblance?”

  Through tearing eyes, Alex saw the fury on her father’s face. Soroush grabbed her by the hair and bent her over against the table, cheek against the cool smooth surface. An I love New York snow globe sat inches from her face, obscuring most of her view. She struggled but couldn’t get free. Soroush then gripped her left arm and pinned her hand. He released her hair, and she looked back at him to see that he had drawn a black serrated folding knife from his pocket.

  “I was going to torture you,” Soroush said to her father. “But I like this better.” He grabbed her index finger, pulling it back so hard it felt like he’d broken it, and she screamed in pain. He set the knife against the base of her finger. “Where is Navid Ramadani?”

  “Don’t tell him shit, Dad,” said Alex, through sobs of pain and fear.

  “Quiet, love, the adults are talking,” said Soroush. “Morgan. Where? And if you send me up a blind alley, I will cut off her finger. Next, it might be her pretty little nose.”

  She could hear her father’s heavy breathing.

  “Don’t,” she said. “Don’t tell him.”

  “Suit yourself,” said Soroush. Alex took a deep breath and braced for the pain.

  “No!” Morgan roared. “Don’t. I’ll tell you. I’ll tell you. Just let her go.”

  “No, Dad,” she said. “You can’t do this. Not because of me.”

  “Quiet,” her father said. “You’re not the one who decides. He’s up in the clock. You get up there through the door in the conference room up those stairs.”

  Soroush relaxed his hold on her and drew the knife away. “If you are lying, it will be more than a finger.”

  “What did you do?” Alex said. “Dad, what did you do?”

  Soroush spoke in Fasrsi to one of his men, who ran toward the situation room. Soroush and the other guard backed off, giving them some space. Her father bent over her and ran his hand through her hair. “I would cause World War Three if it meant saving you,” he whispered to her.

  “Dad, no . . .”

  “Now I’m going to get you out of here,” he said. “Get ready to run.”

  He took the snow globe from the desk and threw it at the man with the submachine gun. That was her cue. To the sound of shattering glass, Alex Morgan ran out the door with her father close behind.

  2:09 p.m.

  “The chopper’s making its approach,” said Nolan. They all moved outside, everyone who was not engaged at their workstation, all looking up with nervous anticipation. Frieze could hear whispered prayers around her. She turned and saw that Peter Conley was standing next to her. He caught her eye and took her hand in his. They were large and calloused. The gesture carried more comfort than she’d like to admit.

  Squinting against the blue sky, she spotted the chopper once it cleared the surrounding buildings, an AS365 Dauphin painted red and white. It began its slow descent until it came to a stop, hovering in place a few yards above the ornate Tiffany clock. The window on the clock face was already open, but no one came out.

  They waited interminable minutes for the figure of the President to appear. It was Conley who said it first.

  “There’s no one there.”

  The undeniable fact sank in. Chambers threw a clipboard against the pavement.

  “What the hell do we do now?” asked Frieze.

  “Now we hit them hard,” said Chambers. “Nolan, are the teams ready to breach the entrances?”

  “Yes, sir. The explosives are in place.”

  “Have them be in position and hold for my order. Let’s smoke out those sons of bitches.”

  2:18 p.m.

  The desk squealed as Paiman pushed it against the outer door of the control room. Soroush watched from the window of the situation room. He had decided not to have him go after Morgan and his daughter, but to wait for Masud to bring down Ramadani. That was the prime target. Morgan was nothing more than a distraction, a rock in his shoe. From behind him, Soroush heard the clamor of the two men descending a steel ladder. Ramadani emerged first from the door, visible through the floor-to-ceiling window of the raised situation room. Masud came next.

  “Give me the cell phone you took from Morgan,” said Soroush as Masud escorted Ramadani down the stairs. Soroush took the Nokia brick phone from Paiman and hit redial. It rang twice, and then a man picked up.

  “This is Chambers. Morgan, where is Ramadani?”

  “I’m afraid I have some bad news,” said Soroush. “Morgan is gone, and we have custody of Navid Ramadani now.”

  “Who is this?”

  “I will now offer you proof,” said Soroush. He held the phone near Ramadani’s mouth. “Speak.”

  “This is President Navid Ramadani. I am a hostage to—”

  Soroush pulled away the phone before he could say the name and backhanded the President. “You come in now,” he said, “and he dies. Along with as many other innocent bystanders we can take with us.”

  2:34 p.m.

  Morgan led
Alex to the safest place he could think of inside Grand Central—underground. He tramped down the steel staircase toward the basement from which he’d come, above Track 61. He felt tired. His legs were weak. Now that they were away from danger, his pace slowed and he felt the deep weariness of the day.

  “Dad,” Alex whispered. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean for that to happen. I swear, I—”

  “Don’t,” he said. “You risked everything to save me. I can’t blame you for that. I did the same. I did worse.”

  “Dad . . .”

  They reached the short service hallway where Morgan had hidden from the MTA police earlier that day, with its twisting pipes. It seemed so long ago now.

  “It’s okay,” said Morgan. “I just need to sit down for a while.”

  He rested against the cool concrete wall, shirt clinging to his back with sweat. He closed his eyes, shutting out the dim light. The only sound came from Alex, sitting opposite him and sobbing.

  2:49 p.m.

  Soroush sat at the conference table and reclined in the mesh office chair. Morgan’s cell phone continued to ring, as it had for the past half hour. He regarded Ramadani, sitting across from him, and his lips broke into a victorious grin. Ramadani sat, impassive, no emotion etched onto his face. But Soroush saw that he was tired, shoulders low, bags under his eyes.

  “You haven’t won,” said Ramadani.

  “Haven’t I?”

  “You are stuck in a train station with the entire United States security apparatus parked outside,” said Ramadani. “How do you think you will fare?”

  Soroush grinned.

  “Give up, Shir. Turn yourself in. I will fight for extradition and give you a pardon in Iran. The madness can stop here.”

  “You are weak,” said Soroush. “And a traitor. It is no wonder you cannot discern real devotion.”

  “You can’t possibly survive this.”

  “Even if I don’t,” said Soroush, “the Islamic Republic will prevail.” He took up the ringing cell phone and picked up. “Your persistence is touching,” he said.

  “We just want to start a conversation,” said Chambers, the FBI man. “Find out if you need anything in there. Maybe get some of the injured hostages out.”

  “I am not an amateur bank robber,” said Soroush. “I don’t make conversation. I don’t make compromises. I make demands.”

  “And we’d like to know what those are so we can start working on getting you what you want.”

  “I want you to send in a representative,” he said. “With a cell phone, nothing more. No guns, no wires. We will open the Lexington Avenue passage for this representative to pass, and we can begin our ‘conversation.’ ”

  “Okay, we can work with that,” Chambers said.

  “Good. Let me remind you that we have access to all CCTV feeds. If you attempt to come in, we will begin killing hostages, starting with Ramadani. Is that clear?”

  2:55 p.m.

  The Pershing Square Café was in an uproar, people trying to shout over each other to get the information out to every one of the agencies represented there.

  “Give me a list of hostage negotiators!” Chambers yelled out to an NYPD liaison. Lisa Frieze tapped Chambers’s arm

  “Let me go, sir,” said Frieze.

  “What?” he turned to her in surprise, his blond mustache twitching.

  She adjusted her poise toward greater confidence, shoulders back and chin up. “I want to go in. With your permission, sir.”

  He shook his head and opened his mouth to speak, but she interrupted him. “I’ve trained for this. I’m close to the situation. I’ve been here at the heart of it from the beginning. I’m the right one for the job.”

  He turned to Nolan. “Am I insane for considering this?”

  “She makes a strong argument,” said Nolan. “She knows everything that’s going on. It’ll be hard to get an outside negotiator up to speed on all these details.”

  Chambers frowned and rubbed his temples. Staring her in the eyes, he said, “I need to know that you’re ready for this.”

  “I’m ready, sir,” she said.

  “If you break down in there, it’s my ass.”

  “Send me in,” she said.

  3:11 p.m.

  Frieze took timorous steps through the Lexington Avenue doorway to face the thick steel door. She gave an “OK” signal to Nolan, who stood at a distance outside, flanked by dozens of NYPD officers and more than a few sharpshooters. She stood there a few seconds before the door rumbled open, only about waist high. She crouched and passed underneath it into the granite interior of the terminal, and the door rumbled closed behind her.

  She hurried past the deserted shops, so eerie in their emptiness. Her footsteps echoed in the silence. A man appeared at the end of the passage, by the looks of him Iranian, holding an HK MP7.

  “Arms out,” he said. She complied, cell phone in her right hand. He pawed at her shirt, her breasts and between her legs, looking for a wire. There was no lewdness in the act, just callous disregard. “Turn around. All the way, like a ballerina.” He finished his inspection. “Good. Follow me.”

  He took her to the south side, into a service hallway and up to the control room, and into some kind of conference room, all of which she recognized from poring over photographs and floor plans outside. At the conference room table, seated in fancy office chairs, she saw Soroush and a face she recognized.

  “Ms. Frieze,” said Soroush. “Meet Mr. Navid Ramadani, President of Iran.”

  “It’s an honor, sir,” she said.

  “I wish it had been under less strange circumstances, Ms. Frieze,” said Ramadani.

  “I’d like you to confirm to your people outside that Ramadani is alive,” said Soroush. He looked like he did in his pictures, with carefully trimmed facial hair, all sharp angles. There was a coolness about him, even in this situation.

  Wasting no time Frieze made the call.

  “Chambers.”

  “This is Frieze,” she said. “I’m inside. Ramadani is alive and in one piece. I’m with him now.”

  “Good,” said Soroush. “I would like you now to relay our demands to your people on the outside.” He picked up a clipboard from the table and tilted it toward him. “First, fifty million dollars in unmarked bills. Second, ground transportation to John F. Kennedy Airport. Third, a private jet, fully fueled, and safe passage out of United States airspace.”

  She repeated the demands into the phone. “Did you get that?”

  “Got it,” said Chambers. “You know what to do.”

  “I’ve put through the request with my superior,” said Frieze. “Now we’d like a show of good faith from you. Release some of your civilian hostages—the wounded and the children.”

  “This is not a negotiation, Ms. Frieze,” said Soroush. “These are demands.”

  “My superiors—”

  “I know precisely how your superiors operate,” said Soroush. “They will stall until they get a chance to strike. So we will do this. You will bring the money by four p.m. or I will start sending out the children in pieces. The transport will be arranged by five p.m. or the same will happen—ten children every ten minutes until the demands are met.”

  Soroush waited until Frieze relayed this to Chambers.

  “Goddamn it,” said Chambers. “Tell him we’ll work on it.”

  “He says they’ll work on it.”

  “The lives of the hostages are in his hands,” said Soroush, holding up his palms.

  4:00 p.m.

  The blast door opened once again waist high, and Lisa Frieze bent down to pass under it. She found the two black duffel bags at the entrance, as they had promised. Nolan was there, looking at her as if to ask her, Are you okay? She nodded, then turned her attention to the bags. She tried to pick them up, but some quick mental math told her that they weighed about one hundred pounds each. She settled for dragging them through the threshold one at a time. The door closed, shutting out the grayish light that filtere
d from the outside, leaving only the yellow illumination of the Vanderbilt passage. Two men grabbed one bag each and carried them away, back toward the control room.

  4:02 p.m.

  Dan Morgan opened his eyes to his daughter saying, “Dad. Dad,” in a persistent and level tone.

  “I’m awake,” he said, blinking in the darkened underground hallway.

  “Dad, what are we going to do?” she demanded, urgency in her voice. “They have the President.”

  “We need to find out what they’re planning,” he said, bracing against the wall to stand, voice thick from sleep. “We’re unarmed. There’s no use coming at this blind, too. You wouldn’t happen to have a mirror, would you?”

  “No, I—” Alex began, then remembered she did—she never returned the mirror she’d been lent earlier to fix up her ear. “Will this do?”

  “Perfect,” he said, grabbing and pocketing it. He then held her arm tight. “Do I even have to tell you to stay?”

  “No, Dad. I won’t budge from here, I promise.”

  “Good girl,” he said, hugging her. He then turned to go upstairs. He made his way to the control room, keeping to the service passages. At each turn, he held the mirror around the corner to check whether it was clear. On the hallway leading to the control room, he saw two men, lurching with the weight of the duffel bags they were carrying. They were so heavy that the men needed both hands to carry them, leaving them disarmed, MP7s dangling at their backs.

  Like candy from a baby.

  Morgan waited for them, flat against the wall. They passed, too concerned with the weight of the bags to spare a glance his way. Once they were ahead of him, Morgan stepped out and grabbed the nearest man’s submachine gun, still attached to the strap, releasing the safety and sending a burst of bullets into his back point-blank. The bullets erupted in a mist of blood. Morgan held on to the man’s sidearm, which he pulled from the holster as the man fell. Morgan raised the gun and shot just as the other terrorist wheeled about to face him. The bullet burrowed in his neck. He gasped and gurgled.