He was about to move when his eyes were drawn to an object that had been carelessly tossed on an elaborately carved end table — his own Glock, taken by the Albino that morning, at the restaurant. Jack shifted the weapon he’d borrowed from Morris to his right hand, slipped his own gun into the empty holster with his left.
Jack moved cautiously down the hall. The television continued to blare from the living room — now it was turned to the Serbian News Network. Hearing the familiar language made Jack pause. He waited for the channel to change again, but minutes passed and the somber Serb anchor continued to drone her monologue.
The Albino speaks Serbian…
The realization made Jack consider something almost impossible. Memories came over him. He flashed back to the war in Bosnia. His Delta Force missions. Operation Nightfall.
Jack remembered the stories of Odreðeni cˇlan bled ubica—the Pale One.
Could it be…
Jack peered around the corner, into the living room. The furnishings in here were sparse — Danish modern — sitting on a parquet floor. A sliding glass door looked out on a balcony and the park beyond. At only the eighth floor, Tobias’s view of Central Park was basically a sea of treetops.
Across the park, the windows of Manhattan’s East Side skyscrapers glowed like stars above a dark, leafy sea.
On a table, a desktop computer displayed financial news. A large-screen TV mounted on the wall was still tuned to Serbian television, and Jack spied the satellite dish attached to the balcony’s railing.
Finally, he saw the Albino. The man was lounging in a chair of cream-colored leather, legs crossed, clad in a silk robe. His white hair was damp from a shower, and he appeared to be dozing off — then Jack saw the hypodermic needle clutched in his pale hand.
Jack slipped past the man, searched the kitchen and dining room, and found no one else. Glock raised, Jack returned to the living room and boldly entered.
“Led pa Sneg! ” Jack shouted, addressing the Albino as “Ice and Snow,” the name the Pale One’s victims had given him.
The Albino’s colorless eyes opened wide, not with confusion but recognition. He moved to rise, and the robe’s lapels parted, revealing a small black tattoo of a snarling dog on his milky chest. That’s when Jack knew for certain: Erno Tobias, the Albino, was the Pale One.
As the brutal war criminal got to his feet to move forward, Jack took aim above the kneecap, avoiding the artery, and fired.
Howling, Erno Tobias dropped back into the chair. He clutched his leg to stanch the bleeding. Still shocked by the attack, the Albino looked up, and their eyes met.
“Remember me?” Jack asked.
Morris O’Brian watched the screens, where real-time images out of Atlantic City displayed the firefight at the Ali Baba Casino from several different angles.
He tapped his keyboard, moved the mouse, and the speakers came to life, broadcasting chaotic radio transmissions from varied sources.
“… Shooter on roof. Return fire…”
“… We have multiple victims inside the casino. Need medical teams…”
“… He’s taken a hostage. Bring in the sniper…”
“Officer down! Officer down!”
Peter Randall stood at Morris’s shoulder, watching the screens in rapt attention. The phone rang and Morris grabbed it.
“O’Brian.”
“It’s Jack. I’m inside Erno Tobias’s penthouse.”
“Was the little bugger at home?”
“Affirmative,” Jack replied. “I’m about to have a talk with him. But first I want to send you the contents of the Albino’s computer.”
Morris frowned. “Another data dump?”
“A large one.”
Morris fed Jack the access codes for a large cache in the CTU database. “Everything you send, I’ll copy and forward on to the analysts at Langley.”
“Have the police found any more trucks?” Jack asked.
“There’s mixed news on that front. Rutland, Vermont’s been hit. A truck bomb went off at a factory. We don’t know how bad it is yet, but authorities anticipate many casualties…”
Morris heard Jack exhale.
“But there’s good news, too,” he added quickly. “The New Jersey State Police and the local SWAT team stopped a truck outside a large casino in Atlantic City. The bomb’s been neutralized, but several armed terrorists escaped into the casino. The firefight’s still under way.”
The silence on the other end of the line was heavy.
“Have you learned anything from Mr. Tobias?” Morris asked.
“I’ll get back to you on that,” Jack said, and the line went dead.
18. THE FOLLOWING TAKES PLACE BETWEEN THE HOURS OF 12:00 A.M. AND 1:00 A.M. EASTERN DAYLIGHT TIME
“For a gang-banger’s crib, this place seems pretty dead,”
Tony said.
He and Judith Foy were on the stoop of an abandoned building on the opposite side of the street. Their surveillance had revealed a complete lack of activity at the Thirteen Gang’s headquarters.
“Usually these places have a lively nightlife,” said Tony.
“Punks coming and going. Women. Parties. The occasional gunplay. This crib’s way too quiet.”
Tony shook his head. He’d even paced the block twice, looking for any signs of life. But all the doors and windows along this blighted block were boarded up and covered with graffiti — including the massive garage door on the empty warehouse at the end of the block. There was not even a crack dealer in sight, and no car had driven down this street in almost thirty minutes.
“You’re sure this is the right place?” Foy asked.
Tony shrugged. “Priests tend not to lie. And the one I talked to wasn’t afraid of me. He could have just sent me away with no information.”
“Still, he could have — wait a minute.” Foy gripped Tony’s arm and pulled him back, into the shadows.
“That Hummer at the end of the block,” she whispered.
“I think I recognize it. From Kurmastan.”
Tony saw it, too. The black vehicle had swung onto Crampton Street two blocks away. Now it moved slowly toward the row house with the red door. Judith Foy gripped the digital surveillance camera, hoping to snap pictures of the Hummer’s passengers.
What happened next surprised them both. Instead of continuing down the block, the Hummer cut a sharp left at Peralta Storage, the supposedly abandoned warehouse on the corner. The garage door that seemed to be boarded up tight began to rise. Bright fluorescent light streamed out of the interior of the warehouse. Tony spotted equipment, holding tanks, men in white lab coats.
Though the angle wasn’t good, and they couldn’t see very deep into the garage, Foy managed to snap a few pictures. Meanwhile the Hummer rolled into the hidden space and the door closed behind it, plunging the block into darkness once more.
Crouched in the shadows, Tony and Judith exchanged puzzled glances.
“What’s with the lab equipment?” Foy whispered. “Do you think the gang’s manufacturing crystal meth?”
Tony shook his head. “I’ve seen meth labs before and they’re not that complex. There’s a state-of-the-art research lab inside that supposedly deserted building.” He paused and rubbed the back of his neck. “What the hell are they doing?”