THE WAVE: A John Decker Thriller (37 page)

The housing was empty. Not a trace of fuel. They were reading residual radioactivity.

Warhaftig hovered next to Jerry Johnson. He looked down at the jukebox, then back up at Johnson once again. The SAC felt his eyes burn a hole in the side of his neck. Somebody flipped a switch and the lights burst on. “Go on, say it,” Johnson spat.

“Say what, sir?”

Johnson raised his shirt cuff to his mouth. “Eighty is secure,” he said. “Close in on the vehicle. I repeat. Close in.” Then he stepped into the elevator, adding, “Well, come on. Doesn’t the Agency want to interface?”

Warhaftig followed the SAC into the elevator. He found it difficult to keep from laughing.

As soon as they got downstairs, they slipped through an emergency exit and hovered in the shadows only a dozen yards away from the loading dock. The ambulance was still parked in front. The engine was still running, sending a white cloud of exhaust aloft into the snow-filled air.

Johnson watched as a homeless man, dressed in a dirty black jacket and torn blue jeans, staggered up the street. He approached the loading zone casually, oblivious. The vehicle’s engine roared as Hammel gunned the accelerator. But the ambulance didn’t move. It was in neutral still. And the stranger didn’t turn. He continued to saunter over, not even looking at the ambulance. He crossed directly in front, and swung his arms, and pointed his weapon at the windshield, directly at Hammel. “Raise your hands,” he screamed. “Now!”

Hammel ducked, the agent fired, and the ambulance jumped forward, pitching the man high into the air like a matador on the horns of a bull. A moment later the agent fell and struck the pavement with a nauseating
crack
, and rolled into the street. The ambulance banked right, then left, almost as if the driver were aiming at the figure rolling in the road. The vehicle bumped over him. The body wriggled for a moment, strangely inverted, and grew still. The ambulance roared on.

Johnson discharged his weapon but it appeared to have no effect. The vehicle rattled through a phalanx of policemen, by special agents, by counter terrorist SWAT teams and marksmen on the roof. Somehow, miraculously, despite the shower of lead, Hammel remained unscathed. The cab seemed reinforced. The ambulance burned west on Thirty-fourth, as a pair of police cars closed the block. They came together, nose to nose, but Ali Hammel never slowed. He charged right through the narrow gap. There was a loud crash as he struck the cars, punched them aside, and kept on going.

Johnson ran to his car with Warhaftig close behind. He started her up. With a squeal, the car peeled out into the street . . . followed by a second, a third, and then a fourth police car. Sirens wailed. Lights flashed. Within minutes, the Cabrini ambulance had made it to the West Side Highway. There was no traffic and Hammel had little trouble swinging north. The police cars hurtled close behind, their cherries flashing – bright crimson and turquoise bubbles floating through the falling snow. Their sirens howled against the night. One minute the ambulance was charging up the highway, the next it swerved against the steel divider, showering sparks. A helicopter dropped out of the sky. It struck the ambulance. Hammel continued to swerve and weave along the highway, trying to avoid the helicopter skids. Suddenly, a blazing spotlight illuminated the ambulance from above. “Pull over,” a voice boomed through a loudspeaker. “Pull over now!”

Without warning, Hammel jammed on the breaks, and the ambulance slalomed on the snow. The helicopter over-shot the road. It banked and climbed. It looped around. The police cars skidded in behind. One crashed into the rear right fender of the ambulance. The ambulance was blasted up the road. It turned. It spun about. It bounced against the outer guardrail and somehow ended facing uptown once again.

The rear wheels screamed. The ambulance exploded forward, barely avoiding SAC Johnson’s car, barely avoiding the guardrail as it shimmied to the left on Forty-sixth Street, then off the West Side Highway. It was heading for The Intrepid – Sea, Air and Space Museum.

The ambulance crashed through the metal gate. Sparks flew up all around it like a fireworks display. The massive light gray flank of the great aircraft carrier was suddenly illuminated. The ambulance kept going. A piece of the fencing was stuck under the axel. The ambulance kept showering sparks the entire length of the museum pier, as it paralleled the aircraft carrier, from prow to stern, as it kept churning up the night, with Hammel still at the wheel, still clutching it with all his might, until it ruptured through the wooden fence at the far end of the pier, and rose into the snowy air, and flew above the dark and inky waters of the Hudson River. It seemed to hang against the cloudy sky, against the bright face of New Jersey – with its train-set-sized high-rises – seemed to hover for a moment longer, before plunging with a mighty crash into the waves.

Police cars poured through the opening in the fence. Their engines panted in the frigid air, swept in off the river. Steam rose, illuminated by bright blues and vibrant reds. The sirens faded. The police cars came to a stop at the very lip of the pier, their headlights lancing at the waves. Agents and policemen leapt out of their vehicles, amongst them Johnson and Warhaftig. They stepped up to the water’s edge. They looked out as the ambulance tipped over onto its side, illuminated by the helicopter spotlight. In seconds it had sailed a good ten yards downstream, then twenty. Then it began to slide, to slip under the water, and was gone. Nothing remained. No sign. No marker, even. The waves rolled back upon themselves, covered in snow, erasing everything.

Thursday, February 3 – 2:16 AM

The airplane shimmied through the sky, buffeted by winds. The flight attendants were having a hard time serving drinks, including the sour old crone who had spilled half a virgin Bloody Mary over Decker’s shirt. Heads lolled from side to side, against innumerable headrests bobbing all about them. Decker ate another nut. And then another. He relocated his legs – once again. He stared at Emily beside him. Her eyes were closed. She was still awake; he could tell. But she was trying to sleep.
I should do the same
, he thought, but he knew it was impossible. Decker went back to reading the book by Jamal ben Saad about Islamic architecture and design. That’s when he felt a jolt of recollection, like an electric current, hit him. He reached into his jacket pocket. He was still carrying that list of prisoners Warhaftig had given him, the men with whom Miller had associated back at Ansar II in Gaza. He began to scan the pages. It took him only a few seconds to confirm Warhaftig’s story: El Aqrab’s real name – Mohammed Hussein – wasn’t on the list. But something else had caught his eye. He flipped back through the pages. There. On page sixteen. At the very bottom. The name Jamal ben Saad. He’d been arrested once, it seemed. He’d spent three days in Ansar II directly under Miller’s supervision. Three days in jail was like a lifetime to some men.

Decker checked the book on Islamic architecture. The biography of the author revealed Jamal ben Saad had died in 1982, during the Israeli invasion of Lebanon – the same year El Aqrab had gone to Kazakhstan for the first time. Decker laid the photographs of El Aqrab and Jamal ben Saad beside each other on his tray. They could be brothers, he thought. Isn’t that what Emily had said? He looked up and noticed her staring at the photographs. Then she glanced over at him, and caught herself, and blushed.

Decker caught himself. “The dates are compatible,” he said. “The men look strangely alike. They both share an intimate knowledge of Islamic architecture and design. It all seems too much of a coincidence. It isn’t . . . natural.” But Swenson was right, he thought. He didn’t have anything concrete to hold onto. It was all circumstantial evidence. It was he who was acting unnaturally.

Without warning, the air phone in the seat before him started ringing. Decker stared at it, wondering if he had heard correctly. He had never heard an air phone ring before. He didn’t know they did that. Then it rang again. They were about halfway through the flight and most of the passengers were asleep. The gentleman across the aisle from Swenson began to stare at him, then at the phone. Soon others turned and looked his way. Decker reached out and picked up the phone. He put it to his ear.

“All that means is that we’re facing a bigger problem. If El Aqrab sets off that mega-tsunami, it won’t just be New York in trouble; it’ll be the whole damned world. Every financial system will go down – some temporarily, some permanently crippled. All industry on the eastern seaboard – gone. All the intellectual capital in New York, in Boston, Philly and D.C. – gone, washed literally away. Our countries oldest and most treasured universities. All of those global corporate headquarters in New York. The United Nations. Media networks. Museums and libraries too. All gone. Wiped out. Destroyed.”

“Look, John,” said Warhaftig. “We’re all working toward the same goal, aren’t we? We want to stop that bomb.” He sighed. “So why operate independently, at odds? I understand why you may not trust me, but I’m asking you to anyway. Take me on faith, John. Here, let me give you something. A token. Some beads. A peace offering.”

“I’m listening.”

“Gulzhan Baqrah – the guy whom El Aqrab trained with in Kazakhstan – had a young lieutenant named Uhud, wanted by the Israelis in connection with several suicide bombings in the West Bank. He was also suspected of executing a half dozen bombings in Iraq, primarily against Iraqi security forces using IEDs at M and Ms. You know: Mosques and markets. Police recruiting stations. That sort of thing.”

“And?”

“According to Egyptian Intelligence, Uhud was killed in the raid that Baqrah mounted when he stole the HEU. Seems he got a little greedy.”

“How so?”

“Well, after you told me about your mega-tsunami theory, I did some checking. According to Interpol, a number of bank accounts controlled by Uhud were recently used to initiate some significant stock transactions in the U.S., so-called ‘Puts’ on a whole series of companies. He shorted them. They only have one thing in common. I ran it through the Company computers.”

“Don’t tell me,” Decker said. “They’re all either in, or based on the East Coast.”

“Bingo,” said Warhaftig. “You
are
a fast study.”

“He was on that list of prisoners you gave me. His name is Jamal ben Saad. He was some sort of adjunct professor at the Arab University in Beirut in the early ‘80s, an expert on Islamic architecture and design. Find out whatever you can and fax it to me at Dr. White’s hotel on La Palma. It’s called the Parador, in Santa Cruz. I want to know if Jamal ben Saad and El Aqrab knew each other.”

“El Aqrab and his father did work for a guy named Hanid ben Saad, some wealthy real estate developer. Of course, ben Saad may be a common name. Is it important?” Warhaftig asked.

“It may be.”

“You got it. By the way,” Warhaftig continued, “you won’t be alone on this. I sent a couple of agents along to La Palma two days ago: Nick Thompson and Colin Strand.”

Decker smiled. “Otto, you surprise me,” he said. “I thought you didn’t have any faith.”

“Never hurts to hedge your bets,” Warhaftig answered blithely. “Look, I’ve gotta go. My station chief put in a call to Assistant Director Gammon. That may be him right now, on the other line. Director Kennick has a meeting scheduled with the President tomorrow morning. I wish it could be earlier but, frankly, no one believes you, John.”

“If the bomb’s not in New York or Israel, where do they think it is? What about the missing HEU?”

“The consensus is that Gulzhan Baqrah sold it. He’s a mercenary, after all. Most people think it’s in Iran. The Iranians have been trying to get their hands on a nuke for years. Or in Iraq, God help us. Or hidden in some cave deep in Afghanistan.” He sighed. “I mean, this whole volcano thing is a little crazy. The President’s science advisors don’t believe a tsunami can be manufactured. They conferred with some famous oceanographer named Dubinsky. A real star. Anyway, Dubinsky said it couldn’t be done.”

“Mega-tsunami,” Decker said. “And I wouldn’t necessarily believe what E.J. Dubinsky says. She and Emily know each other. They have a history.”

“Regardless, John. Everyone thinks the crisis is over, at least temporarily. All three of El Aqrab’s mules are dead. And we’re getting intelligence reports that El Aqrab himself is still in Lebanon.”