Shock and disbelief greeted the news. Nina continued to speak over the noise.
“This second Threat Clock is a countdown. Zero hour is five p.m. Eastern Daylight Time — nine hours and thirty-six minutes from right now.”
“What about a briefing,” someone called from station six.
“It’s on a need-to-know basis right now, which means I’ll need a second Crisis Management Team immediately. I expect all daily and hourly logs to be kept up-to-date, even if it means triple duty. All shifts are to remain in position until further notice — no one’s going home.”
Nina ignored the moans of protest, knowing full well some of her staff had been on duty for more than twelve hours already. She’d been working fourteen hours straight herself.
“Station managers will inform their staff and rearrange duties accordingly. The new team leaders are to assemble for a briefing in thirty minutes.”
The young Afghani led Jack and Taj to another basement room. As they stumbled through choking smoke, staccato bursts of gunfire continued in the store above them. At one point an armed Afghani pushed past Jack and pounded up the stairs. More gunfire erupted.
The youth kicked through a door, into a corner room where a wide hole had been dug into the dirt floor. Jack followed Taj to the edge, peered into the dark pit but could not see the bottom. A rope dangled over the center of the yawning chasm.
Without hesitation, the youth thrust the Uzi into his sash and jumped for the rope. He caught the thick hemp, hung for a moment, then climbed down.
“Go!” barked Taj.
Jack leaped, caught the rope. Fingers digging into the rough hemp, Jack wrapped his legs around the swinging cable and lowered himself into the dim abyss. Jack wondered how far he had to go, then perceived a bright glow under him. The young Afghani had switched on a bank of naked light bulbs that had been strung through a narrow earthen tunnel. The walls were supported by the same untreated wood used to make the partitions under the store, and Jack smelled freshly turned earth. This told him that Taj and his men had fashioned this escape tunnel themselves.
Jack’s feet touched the dirt floor and he let go of the rope. Taj landed in a crouch at his side a moment later.
“Through here!” The youth hurried forward, toward the far end of the earthen pit where a narrow crawlspace had been cut into a solid stone wall. Following the man’s lead, Jack squirmed through the hole, to emerge into a cool dark space, pitch black. His labored breathing echoed off distant walls, as if the chamber he had entered was large.
“Come!” called the youth.
“I can’t see anything,” hissed Jack in reply.
Jack heard a click as the youth tripped another bank of electric bulbs, blinked against the sudden glare. As his vision cleared Jack was amazed by his surroundings. “What is this place?”
“The Atlantic Avenue Tunnel,” said Taj. “It was built in 1844 by the Long Island Railroad, but the tunnel was sealed up in 1861, during America’s Civil War.”
Jack marveled at his surroundings. The smooth walls were made of chiseled stone, the curved ceiling towering eighteen feet above his head. Though no tracks remained, Jack could believe that trains had once moved through this shaft because the tunnel was more than twenty feet wide.
“How far does this go?” Jack asked, staring down the dimly lit shaft.
Taj shrugged. “Only about two thousand feet— roughly five blocks. The rest of the shaft is completely filled, but there are many side tunnels no one knows about.”
“How did you find this place?”
“The tunnel was rediscovered in the 1980s, and the city government had electricity installed before sealing the tunnel off again. Now the shaft is inspected once or twice a year, but we have obscured our tracks and the authorities suspect nothing.”
“So you’ve been using this tunnel for a long time?”
“Several years, Mr. Lynch. Like you, we have been planning this event for a long time.” Then Taj smiled. “Our work ends soon, Mr. Lynch.”
Taj faced him. “When the Soviets invaded Afghanistan, the chieftain of my clan greeted the agents of the Central Intelligence Agency as the protectors of our tribe. The Americans provided us with the weapons we needed to fight the Russians—”
“Stinger missiles, you mean?”
Taj nodded. “At the start of the invasion, Russian HIND helicopters dominated our skies, slaughtered our people. Then the CIA brought us shoulder-fired missiles. They were the arrows we used to bring the Russian vultures down. After the Stingers came, the Russians feared us.”
“What went wrong?”
“Someone from my clan — a renegade, an outcast I later murdered with my own hands — this man provided intelligence to the Soviets. The Russians used that knowledge to seize the CIA weapon shipments, capture American agents. After that, the CIA stopped trusting my chieftain, and they stopped supplying weapons to my clan.”
Taj’s expression darkened. In the dim lighting, his eyes seemed to burn with hatred. “Then the Spetsnaz came—”
“Soviet special forces?”
Taj nodded. “They hunted down our clan leaders, ran them to the ground like dogs and blew them up in their caves. They came to our settlements, raped our women and murdered our children, stuffing their mouths with forbidden pork so they could never, ever sit at the table with their God. And it was not enough for the Russian demons to destroy my people, they also ravaged the land, slaughtered our goats, and poisoned our wells.”
Taj paused, working his jaws under his sallow skin. “In time, we dealt with the Soviets. We butchered them. Drove the infidel from our lands and brought jihad to their homeland. Now I have come to America, to New York, to deal death to America, to take my revenge on the great power who left us defenseless in the face of our enemy.”
A sudden burst of gunfire echoed through the tunnels, reaching their ears.
“We have to move now,” said Jack. “If you know about this tunnel, the FBI will know about it, too. They’re going to follow us.”
“No,” Taj replied.
“But—”
“Keep silent and listen, Mr. Lynch.”
A moment later, they all heard the roar of a muffled explosion, then the crash of tons of masonry. Jack knew the century-old building that housed the delicatessen had been blown up by the men inside.
The young man grimaced, blinked back tears. Taj clapped his hand on the young man’s shoulder, squeezed it.
“
12. THE FOLLOWING TAKES PLACE BETWEEN THE HOURS OF 8 A.M. AND 9 A.M. EASTERN DAYLIGHT TIME
Boxy and utilitarian in design, Building One on Clifton Road at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was the venue for many of the CDC’s press conferences and media briefings. On this sunny, sweltering Georgia morning, the main conference room was not open to the press or the public, but the space was already crowded for
