Jessica smiled back at him, and Tony saw some of her old spirit return. “You do go on, Special Agent Almeida. Why, I think you could turn a girl’s head.”
Tony fixed her with his gaze. “Don’t go soft on me now, Captain. I was just starting to get back that old semper fi spirit. Anyway, you could take down these cholos with one hand tied behind your back.”
Captain Schneider grinned. “Well, if you put it like that…”
Her voice trailed off as she drew her Marine-issue.45. Tony peered out from between the two metal containers. The terrorists for hire — members of the Manolos, a Mexican street gang Dante Arete recruited out of South Central — had exited their vehicles and were setting up the missile launcher.
Tony spoke into the microphone. “Snipers take aim. Tactical Team, move on my command…”
Georgi Timko slung the AK–47 over his shoulder and stepped over to the bullet-riddled SUV. Safety glass lay scattered on the ground, sparkling like spilled jewels in the afternoon sun. Inside the SUV’s open bay, a young Afghani’s dead arms dangled over the edge of the truck bed. The Ukrainian dragged the man to the ground and sat down in the door of the truck with a satisfied sigh. Other armed men circled the perimeter, checking inside the vehicles, the contents of the dead men’s pockets.
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, ever.”
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.