9:15 A.M.
EAST RIVER
NEW YORK CITY
Dewey had the boat gunning, throttles wide open, and was moving fast across the open Upper Bay of New York Harbor. Between Governors Island and Brooklyn there was a channel, and Dewey steered the Hinckley into it, even as a procession of sailboats, ferries, motorboats, and even rowing shells moved down the channel and away from Manhattan.
He could see Manhattan to his left, like a monolith behind Governors Island, covered in clouds of smoke, and he was but a small speck in the boat. Nevertheless, he knew the Iranians were likely watching the mouth of the East River. That’s what he would do in their position.
It was a race against time. There was no way Hezbollah could keep American forces out for very long—but the Iranians didn’t need to keep them out for more than a few hours at most; they only needed to keep them out for as long as it took them to find J. P. Dellenbaugh and kill him.
Dewey kept the Hinckley as close as possible to Brooklyn’s shoreline, on his starboard side, to the right. After passing Governors Island, he exited the channel and moved north, along Brooklyn’s crowded waterfront, into open water, exposed, though at least a quarter mile from any part of Manhattan, and was soon at the mouth of the East River, cutting between Manhattan and Brooklyn.
The currents were fierce as the river poured into the harbor.
At the mouth of the East River, he could suddenly hear the faintest rat-a-tat-tat of automatic-weapon fire coming from somewhere at the southern edge of Manhattan, to his left—Battery Park, Wall Street, or the Seaport. There was no way to tell where the noise was coming from, but it didn’t seem as if they were aiming for him. But as he kept going, sporadic gunfire grew louder.
In the distance, spanning the low sky between Brooklyn and Manhattan, was the Brooklyn Bridge. It came into view gradually, but through the mist Dewey could see a small fire at approximately midpoint of the bridge.
Hezbollah had blown up the openings to the four tunnels. They didn’t need to destroy the bridges. All they needed to do was tie up traffic. The Iranians were doing it by simply killing motorists. The cars would provide the barrier. It was, tactically, a smart move. The result was chaos. As he moved closer beneath the bridge, Dewey heard screams and shouting, and the sound of gunfire became louder. He registered people running toward Brooklyn, away from Manhattan. Small dots of red, white, orange, and black in the distance.
The sheer scope of the Iranian attack was mind-boggling.
From a purely tactical perspective, it was coordinated, overwhelming, detail-oriented, and above all fast. They had huge operating leverage, meaning that with a relatively small group of soldiers they could inflict a great deal of damage. Four bombers in the tunnels. Active shooters mowing down a thoroughly unprepared citizenry, taking advantage of streets clogged with vehicles whose drivers were now dead or had run. It was a major challenge for law enforcement.
Where the East River met the ocean was a wide spread of water. Getting upstream to the UN wouldn’t be a problem. He was a tiny moving part of a larger maelstrom. Any gunmen looking for attacks coming from the river would need to be focused. Moreover, any Hezbollah on the bridges were likely there to settle traffic on the bridge. Dewey guessed that any men looking for people in boats would be set up in a separate location from the frontline shooter, or shooters, on the bridge.
As he came up to the Brooklyn Bridge, Dewey watched a woman running along the bridge, trying to get away, as a pair of Hezbollah gunmen fired submachine guns. Her body was interrupted in a violent thrust—she didn’t make it. He eyed the two killers as the boat approached and started to go out of sight, beneath the bridge. He raised the rifle. The closest one, a young man with a beard and mustache, with long, black hair, was too focused on the bridge to look down.
They didn’t notice Dewey below.
Dewey knew his responsibility was to get to the UN and yet he couldn’t resist. He set the fire selector on the AR-15 to manual. Just as the boat went beneath the outer steel of the bridge, he found the bearded thug in the optic. Dewey pumped the trigger. A slug from the rifle struck the killer square center in the ear, kicking him back—blowing his skull in a wet, red rain across the windshield of an empty SUV just as the Hinckley went beneath the Brooklyn Bridge.
Dewey quickly tied a line to the wheel, keeping the boat straight as it could go and letting it steer itself. As he acclimated to the speed, the shift in the Hinckley, and the movement of the Iranian, he stared up at the bottom of the Brooklyn Bridge.
The other gunman would no doubt see his dead comrade and come to the north side of the bridge to kill him.
Dewey went to the stern of the Hinckley. He crouched and moved the fire selector to semimanual, then targeted the bridge above, adjusting his eyes against the dark of the steel, knowing he would need to fire just as bright light hit after the bridge. He adjusted the optic. It took him several moments staring through the sight, but he locked in on the side of the bridge, tracking it, before even seeing anyone. As the boat moved out from beneath the bridge, Dewey heard gunfire from above as bullets ripped into the aft end of the boat. Dewey saw muzzle flash. He registered a gunman, aiming down and firing. Dewey swept and fired, spraying slugs which struck steel, and then one of the bullets hit the Hezbollah in the forehead. The killer stumbled over the railing of the bridge, twisting in a limp somersault and splashing into the East River less than twenty feet from Dewey’s boat, then he was quickly swept away by the fierce current.
Dewey went back to the steering wheel and took control, steering the speeding Hinckley along the opposite side of the East River from Manhattan, close to a wall of steel, brick, pier, and industrial construction along Brooklyn. He cruised beneath the Williamsburg Bridge, purposely not looking over at Manhattan, a horizon of smoke with distinct funnels of darker smoke.
He tapped his earbud. He waited for voice recognition but there was nothing. He tapped it again—but all he heard was a faint metallic beeping noise. He tapped again, knowing full well something was going wrong with his comms.
As he sped up the Queens shoreline, Dewey scanned the area around the UN along the Manhattan shoreline, from south of the UN to the Queensboro Bridge above it. He didn’t see anyone or anything suspicious—but it was all suspicious. The waterfront offered a multitude of places where someone could easily hide out.
He registered several gunmen along the UN Plaza that overlooked the river. It was impossible to tell if they could see him. He knew by staying with the shoreline just behind him he would blend in to a certain extent. He was at least two thousand feet away, too far for anything but a skilled marksman and a very well-made long-range rifle. He couldn’t assume they didn’t see him. In fact, for the purposes of his coming approach, he assumed they did.
He passed a small rock jutting out of the water, then the river split on both sides of Roosevelt Island, just offshore from Manhattan’s East Side. He went to the right of the island, still moving the boat along the shoreline.
Roosevelt Island sat between Manhattan and Queens, in the middle of the East River, a quarter mile above the UN.
The city had become more chaotic than before. Sirens and alarms screamed from every imaginable place and people were running, some even leaping into the river itself, believing it offered a better chance for survival. But Dewey saw bodies occasionally float by. The fast-moving, turbulent currents of the river harbored no allies; it was a vicious river with a hard, unpredictable undertow.
Dewey came to a piling at the very southern tip of Roosevelt Island, a wall of steel pilings sticking up and surrounding walls of granite rock. He tied the Hinckley off to an old steel piling support and stepped to the aft of the boat. He found the duffel bag he’d packed on Jenna’s boat, from her father’s weapons room.
He pulled the fins on his feet as an errant wave splashed against the pilings and drenched him. He didn’t seem to notice.
Dewey took an optic and studied the perimeter of the United Nations from the shallows of the water near the island. There was a line of gunmen. He counted six, then saw another. As he suspected, the gunmen were indeed scanning the river in front of the UN, looking for intruders.
The current was running rapid; he guessed it was five knots.
He hated water.
Dewey took a deep breath and dived beneath the surface. He fell into the tumbling current and it took all he had to stay just beneath the water, staring up at daylight from below the surface. He swam until his lungs hurt, then surfaced just barely, as quietly as he could, and only for long enough to exhale and take a breath, then he descended again, even as the current swept him quickly downstream.
He repeated this several times, each time taking a breath only when necessary, praying he wouldn’t be seen, for as he got closer, he swam beneath the wall of gunmen looking for anything to shoot.
Beneath the water, he kicked furiously toward shore.
Dewey kicked as hard as he’d ever kicked. He finally reached the bank of the river. He found a jagged edge of mortar jutting out. He pulled himself to it and held on. He coughed out water and caught his breath. He treaded water, against a hard current, but his grip on the slight notch of the wall kept him close as he breathed hard and remembered why he was there.
A pair of black helicopters slashed low overhead. The air riffed with the wind from the rotors. Dewey watched as the two choppers moved toward Manhattan, and then up the river, splitting up at the crest of the city and moving into a vertical attack pattern, toward the United Nations. This was the recon.
Dewey tapped his ear as he studied the flight path. This time, his comms were working.
“I see choppers,” said Dewey. “Is that the extraction?”
“Yes,” said Calibrisi.
“What about manpower inside the building?” said Dewey.
“The Iranians are close to taking over the lobby or they already have,” said the CIA director.
“Who the hell was guarding him?”
“There’ll be plenty of time for blame afterward. Right now, we need to get him out,” said Calibrisi.