took the fingerprints with them,” he said.
Chapter 5
Luke and Don, dressed in street clothes again, walked quickly down the hospital corridor with the sharp dresser from the NYPD counter-terrorism unit. Luke hadn’t even caught the guy’s name. He thought of him as Three-Piece. Luke was about to give the guy his orders. They needed things to happen, and for that they needed the city’s cooperation.
Luke was taking charge, like he always tended to do. He glanced at Don, and Don nodded his assent. That’s why Don brought Luke on: to take charge. Don always said that Luke was born to play quarterback.
“I want Geiger counters on every floor,” Luke said. “Somewhere away from the public. We didn’t hit any radiation until six levels down, but if it starts to move upward, we need everyone out, and fast.”
“The hospital has patients on life support,” Three-Piece said. “They’re hard to move.”
“Right. So start putting those logistics in place now.”
“Okay.”
Luke went on. “We’re going to need an entire hazmat team down there. We need that body brought up, no matter how contaminated, and we need it done fast. The clean-up can wait until after we have the body.”
“Got it,” Three-Piece said. “We’ll put it in a lead-lined casket, and bring it to the coroner in a radiation containment truck.”
“Can it be done quietly?”
“Sure.”
“We need a match for dental records, DNA, scars, tattoos, surgical pins, whatever we can find. Once you have the data, pass it on to Trudy Wellington on our team. She’s got access to databases your people won’t have.”
Luke pulled out his phone and speed-dialed a number. She picked up on the first ring.
“Trudy, where are you?”
“I’m with Swann on Fifth Avenue, in the back of one of our cars, on our way down to the command center.”
“Listen, I’ve got…” He looked at Three-Piece. “What’s your name?”
“Kurt. Kurt Myerson.”
“I’ve got Kurt Myerson from the NYPD here. He’s with the counter-terrorism unit. They’re going to bring the body up. I need you to connect with him for dental records, DNA, any identifiers at all. When you get the data, I want this guy’s name, age, country of origin, known associates, everything. I need to know where’s he been and what he’s been doing for the past six months. And I need all of this yesterday.”
“Got it, Luke.”
“Great. Thank you. Here’s Kurt, he’s going to give you his direct number.”
Luke handed Kurt the phone. The three men pushed through a set of double doors, barely slowing down. In a moment, Kurt handed the phone back to Luke.
“Trudy? You still with me?”
“Would I ever be anywhere else?”
Luke nodded. “Good. One more thought. The surveillance cameras are off here at the hospital, but there’s got to be cameras all over this neighborhood. When you get to the command center, grab a few of our people. Have them access anything they can find within a five-block radius of this place, and pull video from, let’s say, 8 p.m. until 1 a.m. I want to get a look at every commercial or delivery vehicle that came near the hospital during that time. Highest priority is small delivery vans, bread trucks, hot dog trucks, anything along those lines. Anything small, convenient, that can carry a concealed payload. Lower priority is tractor trailers, buses, or construction vehicles, but don’t overlook them. Lowest priority is RVs, pickup trucks, and SUVs. I want screen captures of license plates, and I want ownership of the vehicles tracked. If you find one that looks fishy, you search more cameras for that vehicle on an expanding radius, and find out where it went.”
“Luke,” she said, “I’m going to need more than a few people for that.”
Luke thought about it for two seconds. “Okay. Wake up some people back home, bring them in to SRT headquarters, and forward the license plate data to them. They can track ownership down there.”
“Got it.”
They hung up. Luke reoriented himself to the present moment, and a new thought occurred to him. He glanced at Kurt Myerson.
“Okay, Kurt. Here’s the most important thing. We need this hospital locked down. We need the employees who were on shift tonight gathered up and sequestered. People are going to talk, I understand that, but we’ve got to keep this out of the hands of the media for as long as we can. If this gets out, there’s going to be panic, there’s going to be ten thousand false leads called in to the police, and the bad guys will get to watch the entire investigation unfold on television. We can’t let it happen.”
They pushed through another set of double doors and into the main lobby of the hospital. The entire front face of the lobby was glass. Several security guards stood near the locked front doors.
Outside was a mob scene. A crowd of reporters pushed up against police barriers on the sidewalk. Photographers pressed against the windows, taking interior shots of the lobby. News trucks were parked ten deep on the street. As Luke watched, three different TV reporters filmed segments directly in front of the hospital.
“You were saying?”
Chapter 6
5:10 a.m.
Inside a van
Eldrick was sick.
He sat in the rear passenger seat of the van, hugging his knees, wondering what he had gotten himself into. He had seen some bad shit in prison, but nothing like this.
In front of him, Ezatullah was on the phone, shouting something in Farsi. Ezatullah had been making calls for hours now. The words didn’t mean anything to Eldrick. It all sounded like gibberish. The real deal, Ezatullah had trained in London as a chemical engineer, but instead of getting a job, he had gone to war. In his early 30s, a wide scar across one cheek, to hear him tell it, he had waged jihad in half a dozen countries – and had come to America to do the same.
He screamed into the phone again and again before he got through. When he finally reached someone, he launched into the first of several shouted arguments. After a few minutes, he settled down and listened. Then he hung up.
Eldrick’s face was flushed. He had a fever. He could feel it burning through his body. His heart was racing. He hadn’t thrown up, but he felt like he was going to. They had waited at the rendezvous point on the South Bronx waterfront for over two hours. It was supposed to be a simple thing. Steal the materials, drive the van ten minutes, meet the contacts and walk away. But the contacts never showed.
Now they were…somewhere. Eldrick didn’t know. He had passed out for a while. He was awake again, but everything seemed like a vague dream. They were on the highway. Momo was driving, so he must know where they were going. A technology expert, Momo, skinny with no muscle tone, looked the part. He was so young the smooth skin of his face didn’t have a single line. He looked like he couldn’t grow a beard if Allah himself depended
