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.
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 amp;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 amp;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
