Tower down a kirk mcgarv.., p.27
Tower Down--A Kirk McGarvey Novel, page 27
“Yes, they will, because you’ll be someplace nicer than you can imagine,” Kamal said. “Inshallah.”
“Inshallah,” Reed muttered.
“Did you shut off the system and do the erasure?”
“Yes, but I only managed to make contact with four of my people.”
“It’s enough,” Kamal said.
* * *
Kamal drove the Ford over to an area of the city called the Bluff, which according to Reed was one of the most dangerous sections of Atlanta. He parked a block away from where a crowd of loiterers had gathered, and tossed one of the FBI wallets on the street, keeping the other one for himself. He went back to Reed, who’d followed him with the Rolls.
“Drug dealers,” Reed said.
“Let’s go back to your office, I want to get my car.”
“Those were FBI guys. Won’t they have called in your plate?”
“They would have asked for backup if they had.”
“Someone will be waiting for us if they did.”
“Then let’s go see,” Kamal said. “Before your pals at the end of the block come down to say hello.”
* * *
Reed approached his office with a great deal of care under Kamal’s instructions. No one was surveilling the place from the front, nor were there any vehicles other than the Chevy parked in back.
“We’re clean,” Kamal said.
“What now?”
“Park your car in the garage, and I’ll take you someplace from where you can go to ground until I can arrange for a team to come pick you up.”
Reed didn’t answer at first. Around back he powered open the garage security gate and parked in his spot. He turned in his seat. “I’m putting my faith in you.”
“As I have in you, my friend.”
Reed got out of the car and started around back to walk up the ramp to the Chevy.
Kamal reached across the seat and pushed the button to open the trunk. He got out, went around to the back, and fired one shot into the lawyer’s head. The man’s knees gave out and he crumpled to the pavement.
Holstering his pistol, Kamal manhandled the lawyer’s body into the trunk, then took out the Glock and fired an insurance round into the side of the man’s head before he shut the trunk lid.
He took the stairs up to Reed’s office, where he found the surveillance systems controls, and made sure that the recordings had actually been erased. He also checked the phone log to make sure that his voice wasn’t on it, then powered up the tablet and pulled up the e-mails that Reed had sent earlier. There were four of them.
By three he was well clear of the city on I-85 heading northeast toward Richmond and eventually I-95, which would take him to New York City. There he would abandon the car, in about ten hours, around one in the afternoon.
Then he would take a cab to a massage parlor, which was actually a whorehouse in the Village, where he would have something to eat and drink a bottle of Dom Pérignon if that’s the best they have, have a massage and a good fuck, and get a few hours of sleep till six.
Inshallah, as the lawyer would day.
SIXTY-THREE
The Gulfstream touched down at LaGuardia shortly before eight in the morning, twelve hours before Jian Chang’s party at the Tower. Nancy Nebel had sent a car for them, and as the aircraft pulled up in front of the VIP terminal the driver got out.
“What happens now, Mr. Director?” Gratto asked.
“It’ll be a done deal by midnight,” McGarvey said. “One way or the other.”
“We’ll refuel and stand by for your call.”
“Give ’em hell,” Toynbee told them as they got off the plane and crossed to the waiting car.
The driver took their bags and put them in the trunk. “Mrs. Nebel is waiting for you with the others, but she said that she would understand if you wanted to check in to a hotel first.”
“Later,” McGarvey said.
* * *
Because air traffic was already back to more or less normal, the highway leading through Queens to Manhattan from the airport was choked with rush-hour traffic. The car was a Lincoln limousine and McGarvey was sure that it was armored from the way it handled.
Callahan Holdings’ office took up the top three floors of a building at West Broadway and Park Place at the edge of the Financial District and within sight of the new World Trade Center.
The driver took them through the Midtown Tunnel and pulled up in front of the office. He jumped out and opened the door for them.
“You’re expected. Security will escort you up. What would you like me to do with your luggage?”
“Will we have use of the car after the meeting?” McGarvey asked.
“For as long as you want it, sir.”
“Then leave the bags in the trunk for now.”
Four security officers, in light gray blazers, were stationed behind a desk in the anonymous lobby. McGarvey and Pete were buzzed in through the glass doors, and one of the men came around to get them. His name tag said PARKER.
“Good morning. Are either of you armed?”
“We both are,” McGarvey said. “Will that be a problem?”
“No, sir. If you’ll follow me I’ll escort you up to the conference room.”
“Just give us the floor number and we’ll find our way,” Pete said.
“No, ma’am. You need a security card to get past the fortieth floor.”
* * *
An attractive young woman who introduced herself as Kate Sullivan, Mrs. Nebel’s personal assistant, met them at the elevator. “Good morning, Mr. Director, Ms. Boylan,” she said. “If you’ll follow me they’re waiting for you in the conference room.”
A receptionist sat behind a desk in the reception area. Behind her were three frosted-glass panels showing artists’ depictions of three towers. One of them was impossibly tall, tapering in stages all the way to a narrow spire at the top. It looked like a rocketship ready to blast off.
McGarvey hesitated a moment.
“Quite a concept,” Kate said. “It was Mr. Callhan’s dream project.”
“How tall is it?” Pete asked.
“One mile—five thousand two hundred eighty feet.”
“Will it ever get built?”
“If Mrs. Nebel can convince the board it will be.”
They followed the woman to the conference room that was at the end of the corridor and took up the southeast corner looking toward the World Trade Center. Models of AtEighth and the Tower rose eight feet from a display table in one corner.
Nancy Nebel was seated with two men whom she introduced as Dan Endicott and Millard Greenberg. Both worked for the FBI, Endicott in the Bureau’s counterterrorism section, and Greenberg as special agent in charge of the New York office. Neither seemed very happy.
“We can use your help, Mr. Director, especially after what happened overnight in Atlanta,” Greenberg said. He was a large, somewhat clunky man with a round head, fleshy cheeks, and no hair. He didn’t look like a cop.
“The two agents sent to the attorney’s office ran into trouble?” McGarvey asked.
“Their bodies were discovered an hour ago, shot to death in the remains of their car parked in what I was told is a troubled section of the city.”
“No backup was sent with them?”
“The SAC thought it wasn’t necessary.”
“Christ. Tell them to have the medical examiner check to see if they were shot in the head, postmortem, at close range.”
“After they were dead?” Nancy Nebel asked.
“An insurance shot. It’s our man’s signature. What about the lawyer?”
“His body was discovered in the trunk of his car parked in an underground garage beneath his office building. He was shot once in the back of the head and again in his right temple.”
“If there was a surveillance system, you’ll find that it was disabled,” McGarvey said. He took out his cell phone and called Otto’s number.
“This room is shielded, your phone will not work here,” Nancy Nebel said.
Otto answered on the first ring. “If you’re at Callahan’s tell them that they have a shitty shielding system.”
“Nero took out the two Bureau agents and the lawyer in Atlanta. He’s on his way here.”
“We did everything we could, except hold their hands.”
“Their surveillance system was almost certainly wiped clean, but I want you to take a look anyway, see if you can come up with something.”
“He had to have gotten the weapon there in Atlanta. I’ll try hotel check-ins again and correlate them with nearby gun shops. We might get lucky.”
“Keep us posted.”
“Will do,” Otto said, and rang off.
“Who’s Nero?” Greenberg asked.
“We don’t know his actual name, but he may be a freelancer that the Saudis call Nassr. The Eagle. He’s the guy who sabotaged the mass damper system which brought down AtEighth.”
“Impossible,” Endicott said. “The engineering is all wrong.”
“What brought it down?” McGarvey asked.
“Explosives on several key structural members between the fourth and fifth floors.”
“Has residue been found?”
“Not yet. Could have been something new, something my people have never seen before.”
“Witnesses on the ground said that the building was swaying way off center,” Pete said.
“People in situations like that tend to be unreliable. But assuming they were right, we think that one or two preliminary explosives prematurely detonated. It would have caused the building to become unstable and sway well beyond its design parameters.”
“My architectural engineers agree,” Nancy Nebel said.
“Have all your other buildings been checked for explosives?” McGarvey asked, knowing that he was probably beating a dead horse.
“Thoroughly,” Endicott said.
“And the mass damper chamber?”
“It needs a special security pass for access,” Nancy Nebel said.
“Who has them?”
“I have the only one, other than the ones in security.”
“You’d bet your life and the lives of the owner and his guests that the building is safe?” Pete asked.
“With all the security measures that have been put in place, yes,” Nancy Nebel said.
“I hope you’re right,” Pete said. “But we’d like to take a look for ourselves sometime today, before the party, and before the caterers show up.”
“I’ll have someone from our security team show you around whenever you like.”
“Thank you,” Pete said.
“I wonder why Nero took the trouble to kill our two people and the lawyer?” Greenberg asked.
“I’m not sure, a diversion probably, but I expect that we’ll know sometime tonight,” McGarvey replied. “In the meantime, what about all the other skyscrapers in town? Have they been checked for explosives?”
“We’re working on it,” Greenberg said.
SIXTY-FOUR
The limo pulled up in front of the Tower on Forty-first Street, kitty-corner from the UN across First Avenue. Crowds of tourists, among them many children with their parents here for the UNICEF celebrations all day today and into this evening, crossed when the cops held up traffic and streamed into the Plaza.
“We might be an hour or more,” McGarvey told the driver.
“I’ll be here, Mr. Director.”
They got out of the car but instead of entering the building, they went across the street so that McGarvey could get a better idea of the line between the impossibly tall, slender building and the UN General Assembly.
“It’s the children who worry me the most,” Pete said. “We should have them moved away from here.”
“He’d call off the attack.”
“Well and good.”
“He’s not going to give up. He’ll just go to ground and wait until the right time. Maybe when the building is filled with tenants and maybe when the president is addressing the General Assembly.”
“I hate to say it, but better a bunch of politicians than children,” Pete said.
“It’s not going to happen,” McGarvey told her. “We’re going to stop the bastard. Today. Tonight.”
Pete shivered. “I can feel him, you know. He’s on his way, and I’m frightened.”
“I know.”
They went back across the street, where they were met at the building’s front glass doors by a security officer in a dark blazer, a pistol obvious under his jacket. He was large, and looked fit. Ex-military, McGarvey guessed. He was extremely serious, and didn’t bother to introduce himself.
“Good morning, Mr. Director, ma’am,” he said.
Three other similarly dressed men with the same rigid attitude were stationed at the reception desk and communications/surveillance console.
The atrium lobby, like the one at AtEighth, soared eighty feet above the pristine white marble floor. Two sets of escalators ran to the mezzanine level where, Nancy Nebel had explained, there would be a high-end boutique restaurant by the official opening day in one month.
A thirty-foot-tall statue in clear crystal of a nude woman, her breasts partially covered by her waist-length hair, her arms outstretched over her head as if she were giving thanks to some god, hung from the center of the ceiling, itself covered with crystal panels at all angles.
The total effect was stunning.
“It’s almost like being in some ancient temple,” Pete said half under her breath. “Ready for the faithful to show up.”
“Home sweet home,” McGarvey said, impressed despite himself.
Pete laughed, but it was without humor. “Gaudy, if you ask me.”
“If you’re ready, I’ll take you up to security on the fiftieth,” the officer said. “Cathy Kennedy is chief of today’s detail, she’ll show you around.”
“How many people on her detail?”
“Including us, three more on fifty.”
“I suggest that you guys lighten up. When the perp shows up tonight and gets a good look at you, he’ll do a one-eighty disappear.”
The officer cracked a slight smile. “That’s the point, isn’t it, sir?”
“No, it’s not.”
“What then, you want us to arrest him?”
“No,” McGarvey said. “Either you kill him on the spot, or I will if we come face-to-face.”
* * *
The security center on the fiftieth floor, with access only by the service elevator and emergency stairwells, was nearly a carbon copy of the one at AtEighth. The other spaces on the floor housed mostly electrical panels, plus the communications, surveillance, and computer mainframes.
Cathy Kennedy turned out to be a slender, almost wispy woman possibly in her midthirties with short blond hair and a pleasant oval face. Her blazer hung over the back of her chair at the center console. She was armed with a Wilson Tactical pistol in a shoulder holster under her right arm.
She introduced herself. “Happy to have your help, Mr. Director, ma’am,” she said. Her voice held a slightly Southern twang. Maybe Texas. “Especially since we’ve been ordered to keep everything low-key.” Her deep, almost impossibly blue eyes were slightly narrowed, as if she were expecting an attack to come at any moment from any direction.
“Navy?” McGarvey asked.
“Green Berets,” she said, lightening up a bit.
“Afghanistan?”
“Iraq, Pakistan, Iran. Does it show?”
“Around the edges,” McGarvey said. “A key card is the only way here by the service elevator?”
“Yes.”
“Who has them?”
“One downstairs, one here, and Mrs. Nebel’s.”
“This door?” McGarvey asked.
“Entry by recognition only.”
“What about upstairs?”
“The bad guy won’t get to the penthouse, sir.”
“He’ll be on the guest list,” McGarvey said. “But I meant the machinery room on the top floors.”
“The tuned mass damper,” Kennedy said. “Yes, sir, we were told that you believe that’s how AtEighth was brought down. But the computer that ran that system was located right next to it. In this building the machinery is controlled from this floor. And we can override the system from this room.”
“Can you be hacked here?” Pete asked.
“Nothing gets in or out of here except through our equipment.”
Pete took out her cell phone and speed-dialed Otto.
“I just told you that your phone won’t work in here, ma’am.”
Otto answered. “You’re in the building. Security?”
“Yeah. Send them a greeting, if you would.”
“Just a mo,” Otto said.
Three seconds later the image of the devil, horns and all, appeared on all the screens in the room.
“Son of a bitch,” one of the techs said. He did something on his keyboard, but the image remained.
“Thanks, Otto,” Pete said, and she hung up and pocketed her phone.
A moment later the image on the screens disappeared.
“You made your point, “Kennedy said. “Your geek is smarter than ours. So what’s next?”
“We’re calling our suspect Nero, for want of a better name,” McGarvey said. “He’s on his way here from Atlanta, where he murdered two FBI agents and a lawyer who probably worked with ISIS. He took down AtEighth and he intends to take this place down tonight.”
“Kill him before he gets in.”
“That’s the problem,” Pete said. “Unless we manage to take him before he gets in, and he escapes, he will come back and try again once we let our guard down. Which we will have to do sooner or later.”
“I’m not liking it, but I’m listening.”
“Otto,” McGarvey said.
“Yes?” Otto’s voice came from all the speakers in the room.
“Jesus,” Kennedy said.
“Send us the guest list, photos, and a précis of each of them.”
“Gotcha.”
One by one the list of seventy-two names, including Nancy Nebel’s, plus the security staff in the building, came up. The image of Valdes appeared halfway through.
