In the distance, beyond the shattered missile launcher, the airport shimmered in the June heat. No one had come, no one had even heard the shooting as Georgi’s men ambushed the terrorists while jets roared overhead. Now the fight was over, the threat ended.
Timko felt a presence at his side. “Vodka, Comrade Georgi?”
His eyes went wide as he faced Yuri. “Yuri, do you know this is the first time you’ve spoken to me since the day I hired you two years ago. And this is the first time you addressed me by name,
Old Yuri shrugged. His grin bared rotten teeth. “What is there to talk about. The job I have stinks. I sit around all day, wait for trouble. I bring you trays of food and brew hot tea. It’s boring. I should make it more boring by speaking to you?”
Yuri handed his boss a metal flask. “Drink,” he grunted.
Georgi took a deep gulp. Yuri sat next to him, gazing at the dead Afghanis.
“It was good this happened,” said Yuri, nodding. “I was becoming complacent in my job. I needed a challenge.”
Jack and Caitlin watched the monitor. The man in the ski mask was issuing complicated instructions for the transfer of the ransom money.
Jack’s cell chirped. He answered, heard Ryan Chappelle’s exuberant voice. “We got them, Jack. Every cell. In Washington the tactical team took most of them alive, same in Boston. In Chicago and LAX we had to take them out. And your Russian friend—”
“Ukrainian,” a young woman’s voice cried out on Ryan’s end.
“—they shot up the remains of the New York City cell at JFK. The threat is over Jack. We did it!”
“What about LaGuardia?” Jack demanded.
“Nothing, Jack. Timko’s men were waiting but the terrorists were a no-show. Nina thinks you may have taken out that cell yourself, back at Wexler Business Storage.”
Jack recalled the men he’d battled. Most of them were old. Some had missing limbs, eyes. “I don’t think so, Ryan.”
“Maybe they got cold feet, Jack. Whatever happened, the threat is over.”
“Not quite.” Jack told Ryan about the video conference, the masked man’s blackmailing threat, which was continuing as he spoke. At the end of the conversation with Chappelle, Jack addressed Jamey Farrell. “Listen to me, you can trace the digital video feed to its source, just tap into Prolix Security’s computer system.”
“I’ll need access to the computers in that office,” Jamey replied.
Jack moved to the desktop PC, discovered Felix Tanner had logged on to his computer before he’d been murdered. Following Jamey’s instructions, Jack opened a back-door channel for her to tap into the Prolix computer system.
“I’ve got the signal,” said Jamey after a few minutes. “But it’s going to take five or ten minutes to trace it back to a server, and then to the point of origin.”
“I doubt he’ll talk much longer,” said Jack. “But try your best.”
Less than a minute later, the masked man ceased speaking in the middle of a sentence. He touched his ear, as if he were wearing a headset under the mask. Then the screen went black.
“The signal is gone, Jack,” said Jamey. “I didn’t have enough time to run it down.”
“Damn!” Jack cursed.
Ryan came on the line. “Why did the man’s speech end so abruptly?”
“I think I know why,” said Jack. “He was probably in contact with some or all of the airport missile teams. He knew they’d been neutralized, killed, or captured — and that we might try to trace his signal.”
“Then we’re out of luck. We’ll never catch the ringleader,” said Ryan.
“I have one more lead,” Jack replied. “The man who contacted me claiming he was Agent Ferrer was a phony, I’m certain of it. I didn’t let on I figured him out. I went ahead and set up a rendezvous. I’m going there now, with Caitlin for bait. Maybe if I capture this impostor I can make him talk, force him to reveal the leader’s identity and location.”
“That’s your plan?” Ryan said, incredulous.
“I’m playing this by ear,” Jack confessed. “I have no other choice.”
Bauer checked his watch. “I wanted the rendezvous to happen somewhere nice and public, where the impostor would have a hard time making a move against me and escaping. The busiest place in New York City is Grand Central Station at rush hour, so that’s where I’m going…”
Griffin Lynch had driven from LaGuardia’s freight terminal directly to his final destination. Taking the last exit on Grand Central Parkway, the unmarked van bounced along a multi-laned avenue of battered concrete. Directly ahead was the slowly rising entrance ramp to the Triboro Bridge. But Griff wasn’t heading for that elevated toll plaza. Bearing right, he followed a branching road that angled down, all the way to the river’s edge.
Before reaching the water, Griff came to Astoria Park, a sixty-five-acre stretch of greenery in the borough of Queens that bordered the East River. Griff turned right and followed a narrow street along the park. On his right was an unending line of modest row houses, on his left a wide lawn covered with trees and peppered with benches.
Near the middle of the park, Griff drove past a sprawling brick structure that served as the bath house for Astoria Pool, an Olympic-sized facility built by the WPA and the city’s public works commission during the depths of the Great Depression. The pool attracted large crowds in the summer, but it wouldn’t be opening for the season until the end of June. A good bit of luck, because crowds would not have been productive. At the moment, the park hosted no more than a handful of dog walkers, pick-up soccer players, and teenagers.
The grass sloped downward, toward the boulder-strewn shore. Across the river, the Manhattan skyline glimmered in the cloudless afternoon. Near the center of the park, the tall oak, elm, and beech trees — some of them more than a century old — were dwarfed by a mammoth structure built of beige granite blocks. Rising at the river’s edge, the three-hundred-foot tower with its crowning parapets resembling a medieval fortress, served as the base for a high, arched railroad bridge that spanned the East River between Queens and the Bronx.
Constructed in 1916, Hell Gate Bridge took its name from the unusually turbulent area of water beneath the span — and the many men who’d plunged to their deaths in those waters while trying to erect it.
Griff continued to drive along the narrow road until he came to a break in the row houses. A chain-link fence stood unlocked. Inside, next to a massive supporting column for the Hell Gate Bridge above, a kelly-green New York City Parks Department truck was parked. Griff pulled his unmarked van next to the green truck and cut his engine.
Taj waited on the flatbed of the battered Parks Department vehicle, along with two other members of his cell. All wore Parks Department overalls, all carried valid IDs. More than two hundred feet above their heads, on the bridge’s span of faded red steel, others waited beside a makeshift block and tackle. When Griff arrived, they lowered a rope. The light, saltwater breeze from the river knocked the rope back and forth against the massive support column until it reached the vehicles on the ground.
Griff hopped out of his van, opened the rear doors. Taj climbed down to join him, and they both dragged the heavy box out of the cargo bay.
“One launcher with memory stick. Three missiles. You can’t miss,” said Griff.
Taj grabbed the lowered rope and secured the box to a steel hook, then stepped away. High above, the men hauled the rope, dragging the Long Tooth missile launcher to the top of the bridge.
After a long search, Griff had selected this location himself. Hell Gate lay directly in the flight path to La- Guardia Airport. The bridge was tall enough to afford Taj a clear shot, yet remote and inaccessible enough for them to act without detection. There was no pedestrian, car, or truck traffic on the railroad bridge, and any passing train would see only men in Parks Department uniforms. No one would suspect Griff or Taj or any of his men of anything sinister. No one would even fathom what FBI agent Frank Hensley had coordinated to unleash on America from the top of Hell Gate.
Captain Stoddard activated the auto pilot, keyed the cockpit radio.
“This is Charter 939 calling LaGuardia tower, come in.”
