Lieutenant Nathaniel watched from the shadows at the mouth of the alley across the street from the target building. There was a damp chill to the winter night but no precipitation, air temp just above freezing. He wore body armor and a black knit hat. The right side of his black nylon NYPD windbreaker was pulled up and tucked behind the holster of his Glock 19, clearing the path for a quick draw. Like a string of paper cut-out silhouettes, men in black combat fatigues and balaclavas, full-body armor, carrying bulletproof riot shields and M-16s ran soundlessly, in formation, down the other side of the street, toward the building’s front entrance.
Nathaniel keyed his secure, tactical com link and spoke into the headset microphone. “Team Bravo, this is Operational Command. Request an update. Over.”
After a brief pause, the bud in his ear crackled, and the gruff voice of the Emergency Services Unit leader replied, “Ten-four, Command. All rear exits secured and sealed off. Team Alpha is in position on roof opposite. Team Bravo entering front of target site now. Suspect contact is in estimated less than ten, repeat contact in less than ten.”
After looking at the building’s location, which was surrounded by other high-rise structures, they had decided not to helo drop a fourth team onto the roof in advance of the main assault. They didn’t want to risk alerting the suspects with rotor noise and echoes off the other buildings. The plan was to disable all but one of the lobby’s elevators, then ascend to the twenty-second floor, using that car and the two emergency staircases. Once the suspects were engaged by the three-pronged assault force, the helicopter would land and the fourth team would close the trap from above. With all escape routes blocked, the suspects had nowhere to go.
It was surrender or die.
“Confirm when you are in position to engage,” Nathaniel said. “Acknowledge.”
“Ten-four that. Out.”
Not often, but sometimes, things just fell into place.
The positive identification of one of the suspects in the metro attack had led Nathaniel in short order to the company that employed her, which had led in even shorter order to its location. A quick phone call to night security at the building revealed that eight individuals had been caught on video at about 5:30 p.m. entering the premises through the parking lot. Security had recognized one of them as Veronica Currant, and she had input the necessary entry key codes. The suspects had taken the elevator directly to the twenty-second floor and had not left the building.
Nathaniel immediately ordered a full-force response—mobilization and deployment of the precinct’s police, tactical and EMT units. Without lights or sirens, and out of sight of the target floor, squad cars had sealed off the connecting streets, blocking access to the building. Minutes later he and the ESU vans had arrived on scene. A pair of armed ESU personnel had borrowed the uniforms of the private security guards and then taken their places at the front desk. They had orders not to fire unless directly threatened; their primary function was to observe activity on the video monitors and report suspect movement inside the building.
Kidnapping seemed to be the major part of the gang’s MO. In all but one incident, a citizen had been taken away. Even though video showed the suspects hadn’t brought hostages in with them, that didn’t mean they hadn’t taken prisoners after entering, from the floor they were on or others above or below. If the perps were in fact holding anyone captive, the element of surprise combined with overwhelming force could save innocent lives.
Tactical units had still been assembling outside when Currant had informed the security desk she had phoned out for food to be delivered. Nathaniel had been tempted to take out whoever came down to pick it up and thereby reduce the odds, but the assault teams had been nowhere ready to close the net. He’d reasoned if the gofers didn’t return promptly with dinner, the other suspects would know something had gone wrong and would have the chance to prepare for attack. Nathaniel had told the disguised officers to sit tight, let the suspects collect their food and go back up.
When the time came, ESU would be going in first. Given the situation and attendant department protocol, it was the only option. There would be casualties, he had no doubt, but with any luck they would be one-sided—the other side. The sniper teams on the roof directly above him had a clear line of sight into the twenty-second floor offices. From initial reports, they had all eight suspects in view. All were in the same room. No hostages in sight, just viable targets.
The shooters were waiting for the green light, which was ultimately his call. He had no qualms about giving the command, but he had made it clear to the ESU leader how important it was to keep some of the perps alive if possible—they could provide valuable intel on the locations of the other suspects, the ones in purple. He was confident that ESU personnel would show more restraint under the circumstances than his precinct’s beat cops or even his detectives. They were better trained. Better armed. Better shots. And because they worked as a cohesive unit, they were less likely to go rogue and take individual revenge for the killings of their fellow NYPD officers.
The identified suspect, Veronica Currant, turned out to be a Canadian citizen living in the U.S. on a work visa. Age twenty-six. Single. No roommate. Educated at the University of Toronto’s Massey College. When contacted by Canadian authorities, her family had had little information to offer. They didn’t know the last names of her friends at work or the names of anyone she was dating.
Currant had no traffic citations. No wants or warrants in the United States or Canada. No prior arrests in either country. No New York state weapon permit, but a computer records check had turned up several occasions when she had legally purchased ammunition at a gun range in Connecticut—the total purchase amounted to nine boxes of .44 Magnum wadcutter rounds. When contacted by Manhattan police, the range owner remembered her and the weapon she’d had in her possession, because it had been a fancy semiauto Desert Eagle—and because it was a whole lot of gun for someone five foot five and 115 pounds. The range owner had been certain Currant had bought more ammo than she’d used on his targets.
Preliminary checks with the FBI and its Canadian counterpart, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police—RCMP—had revealed she had no connections to any known terrorist organizations. The Canadian Security Intelligence Service had nothing on her, either. She had worked for the same company for three years, paid her taxes and rent on time.
Hardly a usual suspect in a case like this.
Not that this case was in any way usual.
It got worse. Way worse.
Fingerprinting the metro turnstiles would have been a total waste of time had it not been for the Closed Circuit Television—CCTV—footage. When they zoomed in the video, they could approximate with some degree of certainty where the suspects’ fingers had touched the stainless-steel entry barriers. Of course, considering the number of hands that had also touched the turnstiles, pinpointing single sets of prints was still an incredible longshot.
But once again, things had fallen into place—sort of.
They had drawn blanks on six of the unknown suspects, but got a hit on the seventh, the black woman with the plaited hair. Three of the fingerprints on the turnstile belonged to a Dr. Mildred Wyeth, who had applied for and received a concealed-handgun permit. According to the permit application, she had competed on the U.S. national team and silver-medaled as a pistol shot.
Just when it looked as if they had their second suspect nailed down, the bottom dropped out. A further records check showed that Wyeth had nearly died on the operating table in December. An MD involved in cryogenic research, she was put into cryostasis and was flown to the Shelley Cryonic Institute in Minnesota. The woman in the metro video only vaguely resembled the driver’s license photo taken in 1998. She was black, yes, but her face was thinner and instead of an unruly Afro, she had beaded braids. On the CCTV she moved like a trained athlete or a battle-seasoned, elite soldier, not a deskbound academic.
But as everyone knew, fingerprints didn’t lie—no two sets were alike. The video showed the woman’s bare hand touching the steel in the exact spot where the fingerprints were lifted.
How was this possible? It just didn’t make sense. The timing was all wrong.
At every turn the case seemed to get more bizarre, and made to order for the tabloids. And the bestseller list. And the big screen. If he closed this one, he knew his story would be worth a fortune. He could even retire early, if he wanted to. But that was way down the road; many perplexing questions had to be answered first. Right now, his only concern was taking the next necessary step—successfully capturing at least one suspect alive.
His earbud crackled.
“This is Team Bravo,” the gravelly voice said. “We are in position for dynamic entry. Ready on your green.”
The time for reflection was over.
Nathaniel opened the channel on his com link. “Team Alpha, this is Command,” he said. “You have green light. Repeat, this is Command. Alpha you have green light. Take the shot.”
* * *
ESU SNIPER MATT CARTER knelt behind the raised lip at the edge of the rooftop. His balaclava pulled down over his face, he peered through the Remington M24’s Leupold Mk 4 LR/T M3 10×40 mm fixed-power scope. Thanks to the front bipod, the weight on his right shoulder was minimal. Downrange, behind the mil-dot wire reticle, the kill zone was a brightly lit, elongated rectangle in a facade of otherwise mostly darkened windows. Eight people were seated around a long table, eating from what looked like big bags of fast food. He could see them laughing as they stuffed their faces with both hands. They had no clue, didn’t realize they’d already been found. Clearly, they didn’t expect to be located so soon.
For some, if not all, it would be their last meal.
Finger resting outside the trigger guard, Carter put the crosshair wires on Snake Plissken’s chest. Bullet-drop compensation for the 150-yard distance to target had already been clicked into the Leupold. The zero was dead on. Because the rooftop gun was higher than the target, he used the vertical mil-dots to adjust his low hold. With the shot lined up, he focused on his breathing, slowing it until he could feel each beat of his heart.
Plissken would die first, as he appeared to be the gang leader. Cut off the head and all that.
Even for Manhattan, they were a strange-looking group. Survivalist-terrorist hippies or something. The long-haired albino was by far the freakiest of the bunch. He reminded Carter of a young Johnny Winter, the blues guitarist. The redheaded chick, on the other hand, was totally hot. He realized his concentration was slipping away and shut off the thought.
Ten feet down the roofline to his right, the shooting-team spotter, Joe Gaspers, had binocs on the kill zone. Fifteen feet to Carter’s left, Peter Balwan knelt behind a scoped Barrett M82. The semiauto .50 caliber weapon rested on its built-in bipod.
Usually when Team Alpha was called out, it was to bring down one, maybe two targets. In this case there were four times that many, and there was no way to drop them all. The initial problem was the heavily tempered and laminated glass that served as the building’s outside wall. Given distance to target, it was thick enough to stop and/or deflect the Remington’s 7.62 mm round, and cause a disastrous, first-shot miss.
The plan was for Balwan to break the glass between the 7.62 mm and the first target with the Barrett’s 660-grain slug, and then Carter would follow up a split second later with the kill shot slipped through the .50 caliber hole. The sniper team had practiced this sequence of precise shooting hundreds of times, until it was automatic and the separation timing between two dead-on shots less than half a second.
A further complicating factor was the fogging and spiderwebbing of the glass after a .50 caliber hit. It created a milky-white halo and fractures around the impact point, which would spread a good three feet in diameter and partially obscure the view into the room through that window panel.
After taking out the primary, they would move on to a predesignated sequence of targets, one through six. His bolt-action M24 held five rounds of M118 Match and one in the pipe. The semiauto Barrett’s box mag held ten. Once firing started, there would be no time for him to reload.
With exits at either end of the room, the targets could scatter both ways. Carter guessed he might hit three, if he was lucky and if they were slow getting up from the table. The short guy in the beat-up hat, the albino and the old guy had their backs to him and figured to be slowest to react. After the primary target was down, they would track aimed fire across the room from left to right, Balwan breaking glass for him with the .50 before he laid down each shot.
First the leader, Carter thought. He tapped outside the trigger guard with his fingertip. Bang! Riding the imaginary jolt of recoil, he smoothly swung the rifle’s sights, cycling the action in his mind, keeping his low hold, placing the mil-dot between shoulder blades of the guy in the hat, tapping the guard. Bang!
Back or front of target, it didn’t matter to him.
Dead was dead.
Carter had seen the highlights of the metro video as part of a very rushed mission briefing. Like everyone else in the room, they’d made him furious, but he wasn’t angry now. He never surrendered to any emotion when he was behind the gun. Hitting a moving target at distance was about control. Breathing. Heartbeat. Muscles. It required relaxation, then a precise application of finger pressure at a precise instant. Control was the only way to find and take advantage of that perfect moment of calm.
When the command to commence fire came through his earpiece, despite his training and his experience, Carter felt a surge of adrenaline. There was no way to turn off that reaction to showtime.
“Confirm green light?” their spotter asked them both. This to make sure they had all heard and understood the order to apply lethal force.
“Confirm,” Balwan said.
“Confirm,” Carter repeated. He again slowed his breathing and slipped into a routine, a ritual that had become second nature. He snuggled into the buttstock, then dropped the rifle’s safety.
“Laser targeting on,” Gaspers said.
Carter flipped the switch at the same instant as Balwan. Laser beams shot across the yawning divide between the buildings, above the deserted Manhattan street. Red dots jostled over the same one-inch space on the outside of the heavy glass.
“On three...” Gaspers said, his binocs locked on the distant window.
As their spotter began the countdown, Carter added the backbeat, which was his timing cue. One-and, two-and...
On three the Barrett roared. Carter didn’t flinch; he hit the back beat with smooth finger pressure, and the Remington bucked into his shoulder.
The sound they created together was boom-bam! So tightly spaced it could almost have been a single shot and quick echo.
Downrange, the big pane of glass blasted inward. Four feet of its surface turned opaque in a crude circle. A puff of glass dust twinkled as it fell down the front of the building.
Working from the same rhythmic count, unspoken, from the same playbook, memorized, Carter and his partner rained down hell.
Boom-bam!
Boom-bam!