As Harold continued, Connor turned to Thompson. “This whole thing… it isn’t Hakimi’s style at all.”
Richards raised an eyebrow at him. “Are you our resident terrorist expert now?”
“No, I’m not,” Connor said, resisting the urge to lash out. “But I did a lot of research on him, and I know that he’s never, ever, asked for anything in return for not bombing someone. And when he spoke to Khan on the phone, he said he’d make the Great Satan pay for what we’d done. He’s going to blow that nuke. It doesn’t matter what we do. The rest of this… this is just a stall tactic.”
“Or maybe he just changed his mind,” Richards offered. “Saw some dollar signs.”
“Not a chance,” Connor responded, crossing his arms. “There’s only one thing this guy cares about, and that’s killing infidels—namely all of us. He doesn’t give a crap about money or removing our troops from his lands. All he cares about is how much death and destruction he can inflict on us before he collects on his seventy-two virgins.”
Connor tried to run through everything that had happened as if he himself were running Hakimi’s operation. “Stay with me on this. If you want maximum death, you don’t broadcast that you have a nuke beforehand. That gives people a chance to evacuate. No, you just use it.”
“Maybe he wants people to know that it was him,” Thompson said.
“If he simply wanted people to know it was him, he could release his video later, after the attack.”
“True. But have you considered that maybe he really would rather have his demands met than to merely blow up a city? He could have realized that the old tactics are ineffective, and they need to try other things to beat us.”
“No. He isn’t trying to get his demands met, because they’re unmeetable. He has to know there’s no possible way to extract the thousands of troops, supplies, and equipment we have deployed around the Middle East in three days. It’s not even within the realm of possibility. Even if we just take the people and leave everything else, we’re still talking about a couple weeks at least.”
“And then there’s the power grid,” Richards said. “I don’t see the motivation for that.”
Connor frowned. “Yeah. I don’t either.”
“Could be something to help Müller with his epic bank robbery. Unless the heist was just a diversion.”
“That doesn’t make sense either. If he sells this heist to his people, and it doesn’t happen, he loses all credibility. What is he going to say: ‘Oh, never mind, maybe next time?’ I don’t think so.”
“Maybe he wants the lights out to make sure we don’t have any of the radiation detectors running so he can really plant the bomb?”
Connor shook his head, looking around the room. He found what he was looking for and pointed. “See that? The military liaisons are already on the phones. All of them. I’d bet you a hundred bucks that they’re scrambling everything they’ve got. If the president doesn’t make an announcement about this in the next ten minutes, I’d be surprised.”
“Isn’t that what these assholes want?” Richards asked. “Attention.”
“Right, but they want to be remembered as the people who brought down America,” Connor said. “Let’s play it out. Let’s say we do pull all the troops out and we shut down electricity and we get him his money, what then? Do you honestly think he’s just going to walk away, ride off into the sunset with his loot? Let bygones be bygones? No way in hell. He hates America. He hates everything we stand for. He doesn’t give a crap about money.”
There was a sudden commotion as a team of military officers left the room. The man in the center of the group, two stars prominent on his camouflage uniform, was barking orders into a cell phone. “No, the entire division, move them in. And contact General Adams. I want his birds in the air yesterday. Lock everything down.”
A sense of foreboding came over Connor. “This is going to get worse before it gets better.”
Chapter Thirty-Nine
The rhythmic thumping of the helicopter reverberated through the new Tahoe’s interior. The aircraft was so low, Connor could feel it in his chest. He leaned forward, looking out through the windshield. Two Apache helicopters cut through the air between two tall buildings, threading the needle.
“Crazy bastards,” Connor muttered, sitting back.
Behind the wheel, Thompson laughed. “Aren’t they all?”
They were waiting in a line of traffic, two car lengths back from the checkpoint laid across the road ahead. Two up-armored Humvees flanked the road, each armed with an M240b machine gun operated by an extremely nervous-looking soldier. Connor could only imagine what was going through the young men’s minds. He knew how most soldiers he’d deployed with felt about this kind of duty. In the Sandbox, you looked at everything as a potential threat. Everyone over there wanted to kill you. Here at home though, it was a completely different scenario. He wondered how much that was messing with their psyches.
He had to give it to the military on this one, though—they’d deployed fast. He’d never seen anything like it. Hundreds of checkpoints had been set up around the city, restricting access to and from Manhattan and the surrounding boroughs. General Adams had deployed two full divisions throughout the city, effectively sealing off the island. Of course, the citizens, not to mention the mayor and city council members, weren’t happy with the situation, but they hadn’t reached the point of condemning the military just yet. How bad would it be for election if they came out and ridiculed the military for obstructing their way of life, only to have a nuclear bomb wipe out everything and everyone?
It wouldn’t be good, Connor thought.
“Look at this,” he said, motioning to the checkpoint ahead. The soldier standing at the front of the left
