After all the political speeches and public outpouring of support and relief, New York was beginning to get back to normal. Special Agent John Gallagher of the FBI cursed the traffic as he sat gridlocked on Broadway, trying to head uptown during the morning rush. Then he thought back to the terror they had all felt that morning, popped another Ho Ho into his mouth, and was grateful to be driving through Manhattan today.
Gallagher was part of an elite counterterrorism unit. On the evening of the attack, he’d taken the ferry out to Staten Island to conduct an investigation into chatter on a popular social networking site, chatter that seemed to be targeting the Statue of Liberty. It turned out it was just some kids trying to improve their rep at a local high school by co-opting the term terrorist, much like wanna-be rappers used to throw around the word gangsta to build their street cred. Still it was his job to check it out.
He was older than most of the other agents in his unit and probably exceeded them in weight by at least fifty pounds. That was the price of riding a desk for most of the last ten years. They kept him on the unit for his local expertise. But the truth was—and deep down he knew it—he was little more than glorified set dressing. It looked good to have a bona fide hero on the team.
The recent missile attack wasn’t his first experience with real terror in New York. On the morning of 9/11, he’d taken the PATH train into the World Trade Center, with the intention of walking the few blocks up to 26 Federal Plaza, to the New York field office of the FBI. But just as he came out of the Port Authority train station, the first plane hit the North Tower. He spent the next hour trying to get as many of the injured to safety as he could.
By 9:59 a.m., he was crossing the plaza in front of the towers, helping an injured office worker, when the South Tower came down. That’s the last thing he remembered of that day. But he was lucky. He woke up in a hospital bed with a broken back, a broken arm, and several cracked ribs, not to mention all the toxic dust he ingested. But he was alive, more than could be said for over three thousand souls.
He received the FBI’s Medal of Meritorious Achievement and an honorary Citation of Valor from the New York City Fire Department and the City of New York.
After 9/11, when the FBI was looking to beef up its Counterterrorism Unit in New York, he was the first on the list. But after a couple of years his injuries began to get the better of him, and he had to curtail his fieldwork. Out of necessity he’d become somewhat of an expert in using the Internet to track terrorist cells since it didn’t require him to leave his desk.
But every so often he would be called out from behind his desk, usually for something unusual, like this Statue of Liberty threat. He was en route to Staten Island when the news broke about the incoming nukes. Though there was panic on the boat at first, a semblance of calm came over the passengers when the captain headed out to sea—away from Manhattan—at full speed. Gallagher spent the whole time staring at the skyline from the back rail of the ferry, unable to help this time, wondering whether this would be the last time he’d ever see his beloved skyline.
The fact that America hadn’t immediately leveled the entire country of North Korea in retaliation surprised Gallagher. The 9/11 attack on American soil had launched two wars. But this time the leader of the Free World was playing things more cautiously. Back when he was a senator from Iowa, Virgil Corland had tacitly supported the War on Terror. But now, as president, he was weighed down by indecision and a devastated economy that became more indebted to foreign nations each year.
The U.S. could have wiped out the little dictator with the push of a button, but President Corland hesitated, fearing it would plunge the world into a global conflagration. The United Nations counseled restraint, and after Kim Jung-un’s government indirectly seemed to admit that the attack may have been caused by a communications error, the U.S. backed away from any type of action against North Korea.
Gallagher thought they should have at least tossed a couple of nukes over there for good measure, but the country had bowed to cries of “One World, One Peace” emanating from the new power centers of Europe and Asia. The time to act had been the first seventy-two hours, yet an ailing and increasingly ineffectual President Corland had faltered. And America had taken yet another giant step backward in the eyes of much of the world.
Within an hour after the destruction of the North Korean vessel, rumors began to spring up like mushrooms on the Internet that the Korean ship hadn’t actually launched the two nuclear missiles at all but had been on the receiving end of a first strike by the United States. Most of this web chatter was silly ranting from the alien-abduction conspiracy crowd, but it kept the media bloodsuckers yakking and had the potential to fuel extremists around the world, feeding their hatred toward America.
As soon as the nukes had been deflected, Gallagher, still on the ferry, got a call from the field office on his cell phone. There would be a new assignment…this one tailor-made for him. Dozens of people had been killed in the panic on the streets of New York that evening and nearly a thousand more injured. Someone high up in the government had leaked information to the media. That was tantamount to premeditated murder, or at the very least, reckless homicide—considering the resulting death and destruction it caused. One of the first rules everyone learns is you don’t yell “fire!” in a crowded theater. Someone yelled fire, and now it was up to Gallagher to find out who.
The first person to go live with the news was a shock jock named Ivan Teretsky at WFQL Radio. “Esteemed” for his bombastic political pronouncements and on-air stunts, which once included the playing of a tape-recording of a prominent governor and a prostitute while they were going at it, he was best known to New Yorkers as “Ivan the Terrible.”
Gallagher was now winding his way through miserable traffic to interview the radio host at his station on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. He steered through Columbus Circle and drove along the park to 66th, then pulled into an underground parking garage a block before the street turned onto Riverside Drive.
In the elevator, Gallagher steeled himself for the interview. He was well aware of the kind of stunts this nutcase could pull. Teretsky might try to put him on the air, turn the whole thing into one big joke. But Gallagher wasn’t laughing. People had died, and somebody was responsible.
He gave his name to a pretty receptionist at the front desk and was told to wait. “Mr. Teretsky is just finishing up his show.”
Good, thought Gallagher. At least I know this interview won’t be going out over the airwaves. He sat down on the couch to wait. A television hanging from the ceiling played silently overhead. It was flashing images from Washington, D.C., with a heading underneath that read, “Joint Congressional Committee Probes Return-to-Sender Weapon.”
The camera landed briefly on Joshua Jordan and his wife, Abigail, as they made their way up the Capitol steps flanked by a swarming army of reporters. Gallagher was hit with a sudden wave of anger.
This guy was an American hero, and now these idiots on Capitol Hill were going to barbecue him for their own selfish political agendas. Why? Because he’d single-handedly saved New York with a weapons system they hadn’t approved. Were they crazy? They should be giving him the Congressional Medal of Honor, a Nobel Peace Prize, an Academy Award, maybe even the Heisman Trophy—anything he wants.
Yes, Gallagher was ticked off. The receptionist told him to go in; Mr. Teretsky was ready for him. No, he isn’t, thought Gallagher, not even close. He was in no mood for Teretsky now; in fact, he almost felt sorry for him. “Ivan the Terrible” was about to have a very bad day.