Terminal Rage (23 page)

A few seconds later, an audio feed came in. “This is Detective Morris Lynch from the NYPD Aviation Twenty-two. We
’
ve established visual contact with the escaped aircraft. It
’
s heading south. Are you getting our video feed?”

“Confirmed, Detective. This is Special Agent-in-Charge Monica Vlasic.”

“All right. I
’
m patching you up for our radio communication with the target chopper as well. What do you want us to do with them?”

“Force them down.”

“Copy that.”

Morris initiated communication with the renegade helicopter.

“Mike-Charlie-Delta-Seven-Niner-Zero, this is NYPD Aviation Twenty-two. You do not have permission to fly over this airspace. Take her down at Juliet-Romeo-Bravo. I repeat, proceed immediately to the Downtown Manhattan Heliport.”

“Aviation Twenty-two, this is Mike-Charlie-Delta-Seven-Niner-Zero. Unable to comply. Flying under gunpoint. The aircraft has been commandeered by four armed men here—the one who hired me and the three we picked up from Manhattan. They
’
ve instructed me to put her down on Staten Island.”

Monica
’
s face was flustered and her eyes protruding like a madwoman.

“What the hell will they do on Staten Island?”

Nishimura pulled up a map of Manhattan on one of the screens and zoomed in on the radar positions of the two choppers.

Blackwell looked at the map and froze for a minute. His mind was overwhelmed by the torrents of data he was trying to process. He scrutinized the positions of the two choppers—two green dots cruising with a safe distance between them. He glanced at his watch. It was nine thirty-nine. Then he figured it all out.

“They
’
re not going to Staten Island!” He pointed to the Verrazano Narrows Bridge on the map. “They
’
re heading for the bridge. It
’
s the New York marathon, and it starts right now.”

“Are you fucking kidding me? Why hasn
’
t the marathon been cancelled? Half of mid-town is cordoned off anyway,” Monica yelled.

“It
’
s been re-routed to avoid the evacuated zone, but not cancelled,” Nishimura responded.

Kendrick
’
s voice came in on the radio from the building across the street. “Vlasic, we
’
ve disabled the motion detectors in the conference room. Decoys again—and you
’
re never gonna believe this.”

“What?”

“It
’
s all bullshit. There is not an ounce of explosives on the entire floor—just props, small bags of sand. The hostages have all been shackled with cable ties.”

“Are they alive?”

“They
’
re all fine, for the most part. Mark Price is just a little beat up, and three hostages are unaccounted for. We
’
ll check the whole floor and report back when we find them.”

“Don
’
t bother, Kendrick. We found them. They
’
re at JFK.”

The hijacked
Manhattan City Dreams
helicopter dipped down and then decelerated its forward flight. Just as Blackwell had anticipated, it came to a complete stop hovering over the Verrazano Narrows Bridge. Beneath it, a massive multicolored swarm of runners was flooding the bridge, heading out to Brooklyn as one of the most celebrated marathons in the world kicked off.

The events unfolded at the speed of light. A thick rope latched to the inside of the chopper was dangled down until it was just a few feet above the heads of the runners. Then one by one, four men dressed in black and wearing ski masks began fast-roping down and merged into the crowd. When all four of them had left the helicopter, the pilot steered his chopper away from the bridge, probably heading to the Downtown Manhattan Heliport as instructed earlier by the police chopper.

The NYPD chopper camera zoomed in to the max on the bridge, but it was too late. There were no men with ski masks to be seen. Just a sea of runners everywhere.

Blackwell didn
’
t have to think too hard to figure out what had just happened. When the four escaped fugitives had touched the ground on the bridge, they removed and discarded their clothes. Underneath their disguises, they were probably wearing marathon outfits to blend in with the crowd, complete with bib numbers. The real runners who were already on the ground would have made way for the descending men. And not one of them would be fazed by the absurdity of four masked men falling from the sky. It could have been a publicity stunt or a viral video in the making. No one would stop to question the men or to notice their faces. Each runner was self-absorbed in the Herculean task ahead of them, and would just elbow away from the four most wanted men in the city.

§

The last of the four men to get off on the bridge looked up at the NYPD helicopter trying to pinpoint him and his men amidst thousands of bodies. But it was too late. He was no longer Seth.

He ran his fingers down the side of his left arm to feel a long scar that went from his shoulder to his elbow. Every time he touched this six-year-old wound he felt a tingling sensation, which reminded him of the slashing pain he had experienced when his skin was cut open. The scar was his anchor point—it rebooted his sense of reality whenever he touched it.

He checked to make sure the small black bag slung around his shoulder was still there. Whatever was inside the bag was the second most important thing he had worked so hard for. His most important prize, however, were the two men waiting for him. Nabulsi and Madi. Free at last.

TWENTY

Sunday, November 6, 2011—2:07 p.m.
Manhattan, New York

N
o matter how exhausted Blackwell felt after a hostage negotiation, he had a tradition he rarely veered from. He always went back to the scene of the crime right after the hostages were released. There was never an obligation to do so—a negotiator
’
s role ends once the crisis is defused. But Blackwell found catharsis in seeing where the hostages had been held. Especially if it had ended well for them.

And there was something instructional about occupying the same space an abductor or a hijacker had used to execute their crime. Sitting in their chair, looking out from their vantage points, and pacing around in the same space where they had confined themselves and their victims. Reliving their final showdown, in pursuit of whatever it was these people coveted so badly. This was about the closest he could get to inhabiting their minds.

If it wasn
’
t for this long-held tradition, Blackwell could have faltered this time. The emotional rollercoaster of his confrontation with Vlasic had overdrafted his energy reserves. When this was all over, he vowed to check himself into a hotel in the middle of nowhere and pass out for many long hours to recuperate. But for now, this was one hostage scene he needed to see.

When the FBI
’
s Hostage Rescue Team had first reported what they found at the scene of the crime, Blackwell realized Seth hadn
’
t just beaten them at their game, he
’
d hustled them like a pro. He
’
d gotten exactly what he came for and in the process challenged everything Blackwell thought he knew about how the terrorist or psychopathic mind operated.

Seth wasn
’
t like the other criminals he
’
d negotiated with before. At no point was Blackwell able to gain the upper hand on him or invade his mind and manipulate him away from what it was he
’
d come to do. And now he had disappeared like a man of smoke leaving behind nothing to shed light on his motives. All that remained in his wake were unexplained vestiges at the scene of the crime.

If Seth was a killer, he hadn
’
t planned on exercising this skill on any of the Exertify hostages. The NYPD bomb squad had swept the entire building and found that none of the bombs he
’
d threatened to detonate were real. Using advanced imaging devices mounted on the window-cleaning elevators, they scanned the external facade of the tower. They also used sensitive mechanical scent detection at the entrance of each floor, and sent in the sniffer dogs for good measure.

But they found no trace of explosives. What Seth and his men had assembled around the perimeter of the thirty-ninth floor were nothing more than fancy decoys. Fake explosives to reinforce terror in the hearts of the hostages. Even the motion detectors and the Nokia C1-01 cell phones that were supposed to trigger the explosives were film-set props.

Even though the NYPD bomb squad was one of the finest in the world, the FBI still had to send in its own explosives experts. If they couldn
’
t actively contribute to an operation, they could at least learn from it. And there was certainly a lot to learn from the elaborate setup Seth had left behind. Deception being the main ingredient. This was a live case study, better than anything taught
at the FBI academy in Quantico.

With little doubt the entire setup was bogus, the Exertify hostages were evacuated to a secure FBI
facility nearby in Jersey, where special agents would interview them for evidence, before handing them over to victim assistance counselors.
And with the building cleared of civilians, preliminary tests for latent chemical or biological agents began. A blind search for anything connected to a delayed release device aimed at ambushing the first responders. But even though they found nothing, they had to wait for a specialized team from the FBI
’
s Hazardous Material Response Unit, on its way from Quantico, Virginia.

During their initial sweep, the FBI Hostage Rescue Team unit found the supply room on the thirty-ninth floor locked, but they didn
’
t try to force their way in. The cardinal rule of the first responders was to keep locked rooms locked until the HAZMAT crew arrived.

The Hostage Rescue Team operators and the NYPD bomb squad had the technology to check from the outside for explosives using remote scent detection. But not for hazardous materials. A shut door could be a trap for victim-triggered pathogens or chemical agents. Without the benefit of the appropriate HAZMAT protective gear, one wrong step and a silent invisible spray could spread devastation to the human body via the skin or the respiratory system.

By the time the HAZMAT team had arrived, the entire building was teeming with various species of FBI personnel. Evidence response teams, latent fingerprint experts, and other special agents assigned to secure the scene.

The HAZMAT unit was made up of three teams working on different sections of the building. It took them a few hours to conclude there was no credible risk of nefarious chemical or biological agents lurking in the building, let alone the thirty-ninth floor. And when they did get around to checking the locked supply room, what they found there left Blackwell even more confounded.

Gagged, tied, and drugged, but not dead, Albert Voss and his three men were found lying amidst the shelves of the supply room. They had been shot with tranquilizer guns and kept incrementally unconscious with intravenous drugs long enough for Seth and his men to escape the building.

The shots Blackwell had heard and assumed had killed these men were all blanks with their shells lying on the floor in compete mockery of the FBI.

When Blackwell and the team found out Voss and his men had survived, there was jumping up and down in the room and screams of elation. Monica broke down in tears as she and Nishimura hugged. The heaviness and despair Blackwell had been feeling since he thought Seth had killed the men was released with a woosh. A wave of relief expanded in his chest. The FBI would have to call their families again, but with starkly different news this time.

Blackwell scanned the small meeting room Seth had used to negotiate with the FBI away from the ears of the hostages. The three Exertify accountants used as decoys and sent to JFK had confirmed this was the space Seth had used. They said he’d started off the night speaking to Blackwell from the conference room, but when his accomplices later joined him, they were able to relieve him so he was free to leave the conference room and retire to the privacy of the smaller space.

The forensic agents standing a few feet away from Blackwell had ignored the Eminem album lying on the glass table in the center of the room. They were busy with the phone, the door handles, and the surfaces. But it was the first thing that had caught Blackwell
’
s attention. Wearing latex gloves, he picked up the CD. It was a brand-new copy of the UK version of
Marshall Mathers: Explicit
, Eminem
’
s third studio album. A sticker on the jewel box revealed the record was purchased along with another title at the Oxford Street HMV in London—two for ten pounds.

The image of Eminem chained to a windowsill on the cover reminded Blackwell of the day he
’
d purchased a copy of that same record at a small music shop in Brooklyn. But there was something odd about the copy he was holding, which he could only assume was left behind by Seth or one of his accomplices. All the tracks were scribbled over with a black marker except the last one, “Kids,” which was marked with a smiley face. Blackwell didn
’
t remember this track being on the original album, so he went online and checked on his phone. His initial instinct was right—there were only eighteen songs on the original version, and “Kids”
was a bonus track for the UK market. His head tingled when he understood why Seth had singled out “Kids,” and why he
’
d left the disc in the first place.

“He only booby-trapped the Detroit daycare as a showpiece,” Blackwell mumbled to himself at first before he remembered the other people in the room. “The only real explosives, the ones in Detroit, were just a decoy, to show his resolve.”

Two female forensic agents who were lifting prints from the
table looked up at him with a measure of confusion and then continued what they were doing.

Vlasic, Nishimura and Slant were standing next to Roger Kendrick, the FBI Hostage Rescue Team lead operator. Natasha Shaker and Eddie Grove were absent. They had been sent to join the team debriefing the released hostages at the FBI
’
s secure facility in Jersey.

Nishimura moved closer to Blackwell to find out more.

“He left an Eminem CD with a track called “Kids” singled out. Here—look. Eminem is originally from Detroit. It all makes sense.”

The swarm of FBI forensic agents dissecting the building was expanding by the minute, so Vlasic convened Blackwell and the rest of her team to the relative quiet of the conference room, along with Roger Kendrick. The space had been the first to be cleared by the Hostage Rescue Team and the HAZMAT, and was deemed neither dangerous nor interesting anymore from an evidence point of view.

Vlasic
’
s shoulders sagged and she looked down at her feet, unable to maintain eye contact with anyone for too long. Because her operation hadn
’
t just been defeated. But utterly humiliated.

The only thing they could do now was to try to wrap their heads around all the unexplained benevolence left behind by Seth. Fake bombs not intended to kill or maim hostages. Spared lives of Hostage Rescue Team operators thought to have been murdered in cold blood. And a final cryptic message that suggested Seth had only wired the Detroit daycare with explosives, but not three others as he had professed.

Knowing what they knew now, it was clear to Blackwell that at least in terms of pure firepower, they could have just sent in a few NYPD rookies right after Seth had first invaded the building. He wasn
’
t armed and didn
’
t have any “explosives” with him yet. They could have taken him down and freed the hostages. But Seth had clearly planned this in advance. Julia Price was his biggest leverage. Without her in the equation, he wouldn
’
t have been able to get this far. And the VitaCull life-perception vest as additional leverage was the touch of genius that sealed his protection.

No one said it out loud, but Blackwell knew the FBI would soon have some explaining to do about how Seth had managed to play them like a troupe of first-class imbeciles. If the White House and Department of Justice didn
’
t shred the Bureau first, it would certainly come up in the next periodic review by the FBI
’
s internal inspection division. Two convicted terrorists were now free somewhere in the world, in total contempt of the victims of the Sharm El Sheikh attacks and their surviving family members.

Nishimura was the first to speak. “Julia Price. That
’
s how he fucked us.”

Vlasic bit her lips and raised her eyes, speaking softly, “But just like everyone else, she
’
s still alive. We
’
re missing something here. I just can
’
t figure out what.”

Seth had gotten exactly what he wanted without so much as hinting at his true identity. And this was the most vexing aspect of the case for Blackwell. The wild-goose chase in Palmdale for the only credible suspect, Mounif Ilham, had yielded nothing. Other than incriminating photos Agent Rodriguez and his men had snapped of Ilham and his lover, the Imam Hassan Ghazawy. Pictures the FBI would surely use against the venomous imam to ensure he would no longer spread hatred within his community. Or else.

Slant was equally confounded by the events of the day. “Well, here
’
s a guy who
must’ve
flunked the terror
madrasa
—he
’
s not willing to kill
anyone
for his cause.”

Vlasic took issue with that. “The threat of violence is a primary implement of any terrorist. The fact that he didn
’
t or couldn
’
t kill
doesn
’
t make him any less of a criminal.”

Monica
’
s words triggered a switch in Blackwell
’
s brain.

“What did you just say?”

“I said this love-fest of fake bombs and saved lives doesn
’
t make him any less of a criminal. He
’
s just a scumbag like the worst of them.”

“A criminal.
That
’
s
what he is—a criminal.” Blackwell knew his excitement must have seemed disproportionate to everyone else in the room.

And it was Nishimura who took the first punch. “Yeah—we sort of figured that one out a little while ago. But thanks for the ground-breaking analysis, former Special Agent Blackwell.”