At only a little over two hundred flight miles from Washing-ton, DC, to New York City, it took the unmarked government Gulfstream twenty-one minutes tarmac to tarmac to land Reyland and his men at New Jersey’s Teterboro Airport.
At five after three in the afternoon, they disembarked into the gray and cold and transferred everything off the sleek white jet into the three black Ford Expedition SUVs waiting along the open tarmac side fence.
By 3:10, they were on the Jersey Turnpike eastbound with all the traffic heading into the city. But they didn’t head into the city. Right as the traffic began backing up before the Holland Tunnel, the three dark vehicles swerved onto the litter-strewn shoulder one after the other.
Down at the end of a battered off-ramp was a stop sign they blew past into an industrial area called Kearny. Huge chemical tanks went by on their left. A transmission tower. A looming dark steel railroad bridge.
When they came around a bend, a CSX freight train double stacked with rusty shipping containers was rolling out in the opposite direction.
Getting out, Reyland thought, smiling.
While the getting was still good.
A hundred yards farther south down this godforsaken road, the convoy of tinted-windowed vehicles slowed. The potholed drive they pulled onto had a tall razor-wired fence gate across it with a rusted sign that said KEEP OUT New Jersey State DOT.
Reyland’s driver zipped down the window. He fished into his pocket as Reyland listened to the terrific ocean-like roar from the rushing traffic on the turnpike above. Then the driver finally laid his electronic passkey to the fob reader and the rusty gate slid sideways with a rattle and a buzz.
Beyond the gate were salt sheds and stacks of cement highway barriers and columns of road plows that they quickly skimmed past on their way toward a half-dozen construction trailers and shipping containers that were set up in a horseshoe pattern at the truck yard’s rear.
Reyland stared at the bristle of satellite dishes and cell tower masts rising from the huge trailers’ roofs.
Port New York Center 11, as the site was officially known, was one of the very first federal-to-local law enforcement fusion centers set up in the scramble after 9/11.
He had actually attended the not-so-publicized ribbon-cutting ceremony with Dunning and the former FBI director almost fifteen years before.
Up the stairs and through the door of the huge center trailer a moment later, it looked like a war room. There were columns and rows of desks and computers everywhere.
Reyland looked at the huge screen that took up the entirety of the back wall. It was divided up into smaller ones that showed street traffic and various locales. One screen showed New York City’s Central Park. On another was Kennedy International Airport.
Center 11 usually had an alphabet soup of JTTF, FBI field agents, NYPD, Port Authority cops and New Jersey state troopers manning it. But today it was staffed with a small group of hand-selected counter-intel agents and contractors for a special covert counterterror training exercise.
Or at least that was what Reyland was describing it as in the official report.
Reyland turned as Emerson brought over a tall balding Hispanic guy wearing steel-rimmed glasses.
“Robert, you know Agent Arietta, right?” Emerson said.
“Of course. Edgar, how are you?” Reyland said, putting out his hand to the lanky Hispanic.
Arietta, who was rumored to be somewhat autistic, didn’t even glance at it or him as he called out, “Bring up array one.”
The patchwork grid of screens instantly morphed into one big screen that showed the parking lot of a small brick building on a suburban street somewhere.
“Okay. This is Eric Wheldon’s apartment building in Pelham, Westchester,” Arietta said.
“Where did Wheldon work again?” Reyland said.
“He rode a Middle East desk at Langley,” Emerson said.
“Is that right?” Reyland said. “I wonder how much he’s going to like getting rode in a Leavenworth mop closet after we get through with him.”
“We’ve been on it since four in the morning,” Arietta continued. “We were about to pop in for a peek around five when he came home alone with no girl. But the good news is we were able to get this with a shotgun mic through the crack in a window.”
“Okay. I can meet him tonight if it’s legit,” came a voice over the overhead speaker. “Okay. Okay. Get me a number. I’ll call him back with the location.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Reyland said.
“It means he’s meeting up with someone tonight,” Arietta said. “The New York office has been watching this joker on and off since his last leak came out at the Washington Post. We’ve been watching him for the last three months. Whenever he meets with people, it’s usually one of three locations.”
Arietta went to a keyboard and the screen suddenly changed into three side-by-side views of the city.
“Here at the Roosevelt Island Tram on the East Side,” Arietta said, pointing. “Or this diner here on Tenth Avenue in Chelsea or this hotel here down from Madison Square Garden.”
Reyland looked up at the already-congested pre–rush hour New York City vistas, the crush of cars, the stressed-looking people. The resolution of the images was remarkable. It was like he was standing in the flat-screen section of a Best Buy.
“These camera angles seem high. Traffic cameras, right? Are these live feeds?” Reyland said.
“Yes, it’s called the 3RT Retina system,” Arietta said, heading over to a keyboard. “It’s brand-new. We just got it patched into the traffic cameras a month ago. Watch this.”
Arietta went over and clicked some more keys. All of a sudden, red computer-generated squares appeared around the license plates of the cars and on the faces of people in the crowd. The squares followed along with the moving subjects as driver’s licenses began to appear along the bottom of the screen. One after another after another.
Reyland looked in shock at the smiling driver’s license faces that began to line up along the bottom of the screen. The computer was ID’ing everyone, he realized. He felt a fluttery feeling in his stomach as he watched.
“This is live?” Reyland said. “In real time. You’re picking all this up live? And ID’ing everyone live? I’ve never seen this.”
“It’s the new video analytics platform coupled with the latest in facial recognition. We have the software tapped into that new Cray at the DOE at Oakridge. They just put it online. With our full trunk-to-block fiber-optic linkup, the speed of the processing is mind-blowing. We’re talking two hundred petaflops, which is the equivalent—”
Reyland put up a hand.
“Yeah, uh-huh. It’s quick and powerful. Great,” Reyland said. “Bottom line, if our little navy friend shows her face in one of these locations, we got her?”
“Her face is already in the system,” Arietta said with a nod. “If she shows her face, the computer will know in a fraction of a second.”
“Ruiz, what do you think in terms of a setup?” Reyland said.
The short, stocky mercenary stepped forward. He’d been watching everything silently from near the rear of the room among his contingent of men. He pursed his lips and squinted his eyes as he slowly looked from one location on the screen to the next.
“Let’s get some printouts of these locales,” he finally said. “And we’ll take a look-see.”