“Where are you now?”
“Nearly at the East River,” Bishop said. “I want to see if I can spot him.”
“Whether you see him or not, you need to get to the lab. There’s no way I can get down there now.”
“Yeah, I hear that,” Bishop said. He was nearly a half block from South Street. The broad avenue, which followed the river, looked like the top half of an hourglass with human sand pouring down. People were making the loop down Frankfort up to the entrance ramp to the bridge. Vehicular traffic was basically halted now, with horns voicing their displeasure. “Man, I don’t see how somebody in a hurry would go any way but the direction from which I was coming.”
“Could Hunt have ducked down a side street?”
“That would have put him in the mess by City Hall Park,” Bishop said. “I could have run into him the same way I did Agent Muloni.” Bishop pushed harder as he neared the bottleneck. “Oh, shit.”
“What?”
“Hold on.” Bishop stopped being polite. He stiff-armed his way forward, shoving and driving his hip against anyone who was in his way. “FBI!” he repeated, with his badge raised. “Please step aside.”
There were isolated protests, but for the most part, people made faces and tried to accommodate him. He finally reached South Street, crossed it, went to the esplanade that followed the river. It was packed with humanity, but he wasn’t looking for Hunt. Not there. He looked north, then south along the river.
It was packed with maritime traffic. Most of the boats were ferries-water taxis and even private vessels- which were pulling up to the seawall. Most were doing this for free; some were charging people anywhere from twenty to one hundred dollars to cross to Brooklyn. Times were tougher and citizens were more polarized than they were in 2001, when all civilian vessels provided this service for free.
“My insurance company won’t let me do this,” one tug captain was saying as he asked for 120 dollars. “You gotta make it worth my while.”
He had some passengers already. The exploitation made Bishop sick.
There was other traffic moving up and down the river, mostly police and coast guard ships.
Except for one. It was speeding toward the harbor.
“What’s going on?” Kealey asked.
“The river,” Bishop said. “I’m guessing that’s how he’s getting back to One West.”
“Is there anything there you can commandeer?”
“I can try, but there’s no way I’m going to catch him.”
“He wouldn’t be going back to clean the place,” Kealey said. “He could do that with a phone call. He must be-” Kealey stopped.
“What?”
“The crates,” he said.
“What target?” Bishop asked. “The Statue of Liberty?”
“Doesn’t fit,” Kealey said. “He wouldn’t need the punching power of a nuke to cut her in two.”
“Speaking of ‘two,’ why would he need two?” Bishop said. Though he knew the answer even as he said it.
“Double jeopardy,” Kealey said. “He’s pulled the police all over Manhattan so they can’t organize to stop him. They’re too busy with goddamn crowd control.”
‘Look, I’m going to hoof it,” Bishop said. “I can cut across from the Staten Island Ferry terminal, get there faster than on the river. If he’s going to the West Side-”
“I’m on it,” Kealey said. “I’m going to need Brenneman’s muscle for that. Call me when you get to the building. Don’t pull in any cops unless you need to. There isn’t time to get a search warrant.”
“Agreed,” Bishop said.
Kealey was gone, and Bishop turned and headed downtown. He was tired, but he was focused now. However much his cramped legs protested, he couldn’t afford to rest.
Not if Baltimore was only a warm-up for something written on a much larger canvas with a much stronger pen.
CHAPTER 30
WASHINGTON, D.C.
“I need a helicopter, now. With firepower. I’d like Twenty-Three.” In government circles Kealey’s request-put on speaker-was what was known as a torpedo. It had the effect of sinking whatever was in front of it.
The president and his team had been sifting through the IDs of the Baltimore bombers and the FBI impostor, hoping to find a common link. There was nothing, save what their fingerprints told them: they were all Muslims here on visas, mostly students, from different world hot spots where hatred of the United States was high: Kosovo, Yemen, Somalia, Libya, and the like. As with so many other things in these past two days, it seemed too pat to be real. They had been debating whether the attacks had been designed to be conclusion driven-individuals recruited to guarantee that blame attached itself in a particular way-when Kealey called.
“Sorry, what’s that?” the president asked. “The high-tech surveillance chopper?”
“Yes, sir,” Max Carlson said. “It went into service in two thousand eight. Named for the number of officers killed in the World Trade Center attacks.”
“What do you plan to do with any chopper?” Andrews asked.
“Bishop thinks Hunt may have escaped by sea, to get to One West and the nukes maybe there.”
“Bishop thinks that,” Cluzot said.
“He’s your man, Mr. Director,” Carlson pointed out.
“He’s internal affairs!” Cluzot said. “A desk jockey. What does he base that on, Mr. Kealey?”
“Suspicious activity, reasonable assessment.”
“SARA is not sufficient for the president to make this call,” Cluzot said.
“Where did he get a boat?” Andrews asked.
“He probably had it there, waiting,” Kealey said. “He knew there was going to be an attack on the bridge. He knew he’d be going over there with us. Hell, the timing of both attacks seems to have been built around us. That and the death of Agent Muloni.”
Cluzot made a face. “You and Bishop are the new Ground Zero?”
“Hey, if I’m wrong, you can put me in the corner. That SOB knew we were going to be stranded on the far side of a big goddamn crowd. Even if we knew how he got away, we wouldn’t be able to follow. Everything he’s done has been to buy himself or someone else time. And right now we’re giving it to him.”
“You know where he’s going?” the president asked.
“Yes, sir, and he’s already halfway there, with me unable to find him. Bishop’s on his way. In case he doesn’t make it in time, or if things don’t break our way, we need a Plan B. The chopper is it.”
“Do you know what kind of boat he’s in?” Cluzot asked. “We can phone that information to-”
“We don’t know for sure if we’ve even got this right! ” Kealey admitted. “We can’t have the NYPD storming the river, looking for him. That could scare Hunt into doing whatever he’s planning.”
“It could also stop him!” Cluzot said. “The NYPD has a pretty good antiterror unit.”
“That isn’t the point. What they don’t have are facts. Maybe the second nuke is support in case the NYPD does pursue. Or maybe that’s the sniper’s job, to start taking down aircraft over the boat. We just don’t know. That’s why I have to get up there, watch from a distance, with the ability to act if necessary. That chopper’s got facial recognition software. We’ll need that. You want to summon the cavalry, I’m happy to back the play when it’s appropriate. But let’s make sure of our target first!”
The president did not have the authority to commandeer an NYPD resource. He could not tell the police commissioner why he wanted it. He would have to put his reputation on the chopping block and make the strong request.
“Is there any other bird we can get over there?” the president asked his team. “Maybe something from Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst.”
“Not without having to explain that to the NYPD,” Andrews said.
