“That’s just my luck,” Emily said. “I came up this morning on the Acela and was starting a VICAP presentation to some junior agents when the bells went off. You know the drill. Now it’s all hands on deck until further notice. With the roads blocked the way they are, they’re going to chopper the entire New York office up here from lower Manhattan if they have to.”
“Have you heard anything?” I said.
“I was about to ask you the same question. One of the agents with me, John Bellew, was on the horn with some State Department think-tank guy. The initial read is that this was caused by one or several NNEMPs.”
“The whosiwhatsits?” said Arturo.
“Nonnuclear electromagnetic pulse weapons. It’s a weapon that creates a massive electromagnetic field and then pulses it in a given area, creating an energy wave so powerful that it erases magnetic computer memories and welds closed the microscopic junctions in sensitive transistors and computer chips.”
Arturo looked befuddled. Agent Parker had that effect on people, I knew.
“That seems pretty high-tech. Who could pull this off?” asked Brooklyn.
“NNEMPs aren’t impossible to build, but it’s very difficult. You need someone with high-level technical expertise. Basically, this isn’t a homemade pipe bomb. This is the result of a highly intelligent operation that’s probably well funded.”
“Which points to terrorism — but as of now, there are no demands,” I said. “And no claim of credit. The subway explosion, the assassination, and now this. Why keep doing all this? What’s the motive?”
“The same as all terrorism,” said Emily. “To inspire fear, to cause pain and injury, and induce psychological torture. The rapidity of each act seems to be an attempt to crash the system, to overwhelm our ability to respond.”
“They’re doing a damn good job,” said Arturo.
“Is it Islamic?” asked Doyle. “Al Qaeda? Like nine eleven?”
“They’re certainly on the list, but it could be anyone. Iranians, North Koreans.”
“Hey, Mike, you hear that? Iranians again,” said Brooklyn.
“Why, what’s the Iranian link?” Emily asked.
“The mayor’s shooter is actually Armenian,” I said. “It could just be a coincidence, but he traveled home recently, and Armenia is next door to Iran.”
“Or maybe it’s some ramped-up American nut job,” said Doyle. “A smart one with a real hard-on for the people of New York City.”
We all turned as a big NYPD Harbor Unit boat suddenly roared past out of the fog on the river, heading north.
“Whoever it is,” I said, “we need to find them. Fast.”
Chapter 31
Half a mile southeast of the FBI’s staging area, the wake of the speeding sixty-foot blue-and-white NYPD Harbor Unit boat washed up a broken neon-yellow kayak paddle and a Clorox bleach bottle covered in old fishing line onto the rocky shore of southern Roosevelt Island.
Sitting in the rain on an empty bench above the island’s garbage-strewn shoreline on West Loop Road, Mr. Joyce looked at the junk and then out at the water. New York was rarely thought of as a coastal city, but it actually had 520 miles of coastline, more than Miami, LA, and San Fran combined.
His reddish goatee was gone now, and he wore his hoodie up over a Knicks ball cap and a reflective orange traffic vest over his black denim construction coat. Beside him on the bench was some construction equipment as well as a fluorescent yellow construction tripod along with a surveyor’s graduated staff.
He turned as a car pulled up. It was a big, bulky old ’76 Cadillac Calais, a two-door hardtop that was nineteen feet long with a 7.7-liter V-8 and a curb weight of more than five thousand pounds.
Mr. Joyce did not have to look at who was behind the wheel to recognize it immediately as one of Mr. Beckett’s many cars. Mr. Beckett, who was a bit of a gearhead, was obsessed with American cars, with a particular and peculiar soft spot for Cadillacs from the 1970s.
“You’re late,” said Mr. Joyce as Mr. Beckett emerged from his metallic-brown barge, putting on his own traffic vest.
“How is that possible?” Mr. Beckett said, smiling, as he extended his hands playfully. “The boss is never late.”
“Was there trouble?” Mr. Joyce said, eyeing him.
“Please,” Mr. Beckett said, knocking on the trunk. “You’re the brains, I’m the muscle. You do your part, and I’ll do mine, okay? Is it time to do our little survey?”
“Yes.”
Mr. Joyce handed him the staff and a walkie-talkie as they walked north toward the base of the 59th Street Bridge.
“So they did use the abandoned helipad, as you anticipated,” Mr. Beckett said as he gazed across the water and saw the activity on the Manhattan shore of the channel.
Mr. Joyce shrugged.
“With the streets impassable, a dock with helicopter access is the most logical place.”
Mr. Joyce stayed back near the street with the tripod while Mr. Beckett walked off a bit with the staff and stood on a patch of muddy grass near the water.
“This is one big bitch of a bridge, eh?” Mr. Beckett said over the Motorola. “How old is it? Give me the tour. I know you want to.”
“It was built in 1909,” Mr. Joyce said. “Between 1930 and 1955, in that bridge pier behind you, they actually used to have a car elevator to bring people on and off Roosevelt Island.”
“A car elevator in a bridge? That’s incredible. What an amazing city this is. It’s almost a shame bringing it to its knees.”
“Emphasis on the almost,” Mr. Joyce replied. “Move to your left.”
“If I go any more left, I’ll be swimming.”
“Okay, stay there. Don’t move.”
Instead of a construction level on the yellow tripod, there was a Nikon camera fitted with a zoom lens. For the next twenty minutes, Mr. Joyce took photographs of the police and FBI agents. It was time in their campaign for reconnaissance. Time to assess the competition, as it were. The police could hardly be called competition, especially at this point, but one never knew. The two partners couldn’t get too cocky. Besides, information was like weaponry. Better to have it and not need it than need it and not have it.
Mr. Joyce snapped a photo and sent it through Wi-Fi to the facial recognition software on his iPhone. Michael Bennett came up on the readout with an address on West End Avenue. Mr. Joyce nodded. Good to know.
“Foggy out here today,” commented Mr. Beckett when they were done and heading back for the car.
“Yes, isn’t it?” Mr. Joyce said, walking with the tripod on his shoulder like a soldier on parade. “And I have a funny feeling it’s going to get even foggier.”
“What do you think of this honey, Mr. Joyce?” said Mr. Beckett in the car as they did a broken U-turn. “Rides like a dream, doesn’t she?”
“Tell me, how many miles to the gallon does it get, Mr. Beckett?” asked Mr. Joyce.
“City or highway?” asked Mr. Beckett.
“City,” said Mr. Joyce.
“One,” said Mr. Beckett.
He stopped suddenly another hundred feet up, by an abandoned construction site. The huge car’s weight bounced low and soft in the springs.
“Well, what do you know?” Mr. Beckett said, looking around. “Opportunity knocks. Give me a hand, Mr. Joyce, and we’ll kill two birds with one stone.”
Mr. Beckett popped the trunk, and they got out. Mr. Joyce went to the back of the long car and stared down at the two NYU graduates they had hired to place the EMP devices. The young men stared back up with their empty eyes open and their hands and mouths bound in duct tape. They had multiple bullet holes in their heads.
“Would you look at this trunk, Mr. Joyce?” Mr. Beckett said proudly. “Just look at it. It’s bigger than most apartments in this city.”