Twelve Hours (11 page)

Soroush sat at the conference table and reclined in the mesh office chair. Morgan’s cell phone continued to ring, as it had for the past half hour. He regarded Ramadani, sitting across from him, and his lips broke into a victorious grin. Ramadani sat, impassive, no emotion etched onto his face. But Soroush saw that he was tired, shoulders low, bags under his eyes.

“You haven’t won,” said Ramadani.

“Haven’t I?”

“You are stuck in a train station with the entire United States security apparatus parked outside,” said Ramadani. “How do you think you will fare?”

Soroush grinned.

“Give up, Shir. Turn yourself in. I will fight for extradition and give you a pardon in Iran. The madness can stop here.”

“You are weak,” said Soroush. “And a traitor. It is no wonder you cannot discern real devotion.”

“You can’t possibly survive this.”

“Even if I don’t,” said Soroush, “the Islamic Republic will prevail.” He took up the ringing cell phone and picked up. “Your persistence is touching,” he said.

“We just want to start a conversation,” said Chambers, the FBI man. “Find out if you need anything in there. Maybe get some of the injured hostages out.”

“I am not an amateur bank robber,” said Soroush. “I don’t make conversation. I don’t make compromises. I make demands.”

“And we’d like to know what those are so we can start working on getting you what you want.”

“I want you to send in a representative,” he said. “With a cell phone, nothing more. No guns, no wires. We will open the Lexington Avenue passage for this representative to pass, and we can begin our ‘conversation.’ ”

“Okay, we can work with that,” Chambers said.

“Good. Let me remind you that we have access to all CCTV feeds. If you attempt to come in, we will begin killing hostages, starting with Ramadani. Is that clear?”

The Pershing Square Café was in an uproar, people trying to shout over each other to get the information out to every one of the agencies represented there.

“Give me a list of hostage negotiators!” Chambers yelled out to an NYPD liaison. Lisa Frieze tapped Chambers’s arm

“Let me go, sir,” said Frieze.

“What?” he turned to her in surprise, his blond mustache twitching.

She adjusted her poise toward greater confidence, shoulders back and chin up. “I want to go in. With your permission, sir.”

He shook his head and opened his mouth to speak, but she interrupted him. “I’ve trained for this. I’m close to the situation. I’ve been here at the heart of it from the beginning. I’m the right one for the job.”

He turned to Nolan. “Am I insane for considering this?”

“She makes a strong argument,” said Nolan. “She knows everything that’s going on. It’ll be hard to get an outside negotiator up to speed on all these details.”

Chambers frowned and rubbed his temples. Staring her in the eyes, he said, “I need to know that you’re ready for this.”

“I’m ready, sir,” she said.

“If you break down in there, it’s my ass.”

“Send me in,” she said.

Frieze took timorous steps through the Lexington Avenue doorway to face the thick steel door. She gave an “OK” signal to Nolan, who stood at a distance outside, flanked by dozens of NYPD officers and more than a few sharpshooters. She stood there a few seconds before the door rumbled open, only about waist high. She crouched and passed underneath it into the granite interior of the terminal, and the door rumbled closed behind her.

She hurried past the deserted shops, so eerie in their emptiness. Her footsteps echoed in the silence. A man appeared at the end of the passage, by the looks of him Iranian, holding an HK MP7.

“Arms out,” he said. She complied, cell phone in her right hand. He pawed at her shirt, her breasts and between her legs, looking for a wire. There was no lewdness in the act, just callous disregard. “Turn around. All the way, like a ballerina.” He finished his inspection. “Good. Follow me.”

He took her to the south side, into a service hallway and up to the control room, and into some kind of conference room, all of which she recognized from poring over photographs and floor plans outside. At the conference room table, seated in fancy office chairs, she saw Soroush and a face she recognized.

“Ms. Frieze,” said Soroush. “Meet Mr. Navid Ramadani, President of Iran.”

“It’s an honor, sir,” she said.

“I wish it had been under less strange circumstances, Ms. Frieze,” said Ramadani.

“I’d like you to confirm to your people outside that Ramadani is alive,” said Soroush. He looked like he did in his pictures, with carefully trimmed facial hair, all sharp angles. There was a coolness about him, even in this situation.

Wasting no time Frieze made the call.

“Chambers.”

“This is Frieze,” she said. “I’m inside. Ramadani is alive and in one piece. I’m with him now.”

“Good,” said Soroush. “I would like you now to relay our demands to your people on the outside.” He picked up a clipboard from the table and tilted it toward him. “First, fifty million dollars in unmarked bills. Second, ground transportation to John F. Kennedy Airport. Third, a private jet, fully fueled, and safe passage out of United States airspace.”

She repeated the demands into the phone. “Did you get that?”

“Got it,” said Chambers. “You know what to do.”

“I’ve put through the request with my superior,” said Frieze. “Now we’d like a show of good faith from you. Release some of your civilian hostages—the wounded and the children.”

“This is not a negotiation, Ms. Frieze,” said Soroush. “These are demands.”

“My superiors—”

“I know precisely how your superiors operate,” said Soroush. “They will stall until they get a chance to strike. So we will do this. You will bring the money by four p.m. or I will start sending out the children in pieces. The transport will be arranged by five p.m. or the same will happen—ten children every ten minutes until the demands are met.”

Soroush waited until Frieze relayed this to Chambers.

“Goddamn it,” said Chambers. “Tell him we’ll work on it.”

“He says they’ll work on it.”

“The lives of the hostages are in his hands,” said Soroush, holding up his palms.

The blast door opened once again waist high, and Lisa Frieze bent down to pass under it. She found the two black duffel bags at the entrance, as they had promised. Nolan was there, looking at her as if to ask her,
Are you okay?
She nodded, then turned her attention to the bags. She tried to pick them up, but some quick mental math told her that they weighed about one hundred pounds each. She settled for dragging them through the threshold one at a time. The door closed, shutting out the grayish light that filtered from the outside, leaving only the yellow illumination of the Vanderbilt passage. Two men grabbed one bag each and carried them away, back toward the control room.

Dan Morgan opened his eyes to his daughter saying, “Dad. Dad,” in a persistent and level tone.

“I’m awake,” he said, blinking in the darkened underground hallway.

“Dad, what are we going to do?” she demanded, urgency in her voice. “They have the President.”

“We need to find out what they’re planning,” he said, bracing against the wall to stand, voice thick from sleep. “We’re unarmed. There’s no use coming at this blind, too. You wouldn’t happen to have a mirror, would you?”

“No, I—” Alex began, then remembered she did—she never returned the mirror she’d been lent earlier to fix up her ear. “Will this do?”

“Perfect,” he said, grabbing and pocketing it. He then held her arm tight. “Do I even have to tell you to stay?”

“No, Dad. I won’t budge from here, I promise.”

“Good girl,” he said, hugging her. He then turned to go upstairs. He made his way to the control room, keeping to the service passages. At each turn, he held the mirror around the corner to check whether it was clear. On the hallway leading to the control room, he saw two men, lurching with the weight of the duffel bags they were carrying. They were so heavy that the men needed both hands to carry them, leaving them disarmed, MP7s dangling at their backs.

Like candy from a baby.

Morgan waited for them, flat against the wall. They passed, too concerned with the weight of the bags to spare a glance his way. Once they were ahead of him, Morgan stepped out and grabbed the nearest man’s submachine gun, still attached to the strap, releasing the safety and sending a burst of bullets into his back point-blank. The bullets erupted in a mist of blood. Morgan held on to the man’s sidearm, which he pulled from the holster as the man fell. Morgan raised the gun and shot just as the other terrorist wheeled about to face him. The bullet burrowed in his neck. He gasped and gurgled.

Morgan took this second man’s MP7 and tucked the handgun into his waist.

Then he got the hell out of there.

Soroush was just as surprised as she was, Frieze noted, to hear the gunfire. He and two of his men set off at a run from the situation room toward the door to the service hallways, and he motioned for her to follow. They halted halfway down a corridor, and she soon saw why. The two men who had taken the money were lying dead on the ground. One of the submachine guns was gone.

One of the men, whom she heard called Zubin, turned to her with fury in his eyes.

“It wasn’t my guys who did this,” said Frieze, intuiting his thoughts.

“Liar,” he said in a hushed whisper.

“I’m the only one you let inside, remember?”

“Back to the control room,” said Soroush. “Everyone.”

They brought the bags with them, Frieze walking forward with a gun pointed at her head.

She turned first into the control room to find four more of Soroush’s men inside.

“Two more dead,” said Soroush behind her. “Vahid and Ilyas.”

“Was it Morgan?” asked one of them.

Soroush just glared.

“It no longer matters,” said the man named Masud. “The bombs have been planted along the perimeter of the main concourse.”

“Good,” said Soroush. Frieze had no time to react before the knife pierced her gut just over her right hip. Soroush pushed it deeper and upward, then pulled it out. It was an odd feeling, the knife tearing up her insides. She gasped at the pain and wondered which organ he had breached.

She braced her fall with her arms, hands hitting the carpet. A wave of nausea washed over her and she retched, but nothing came out. She flopped on her back, and the world swam before her eyes. Who would have thought, being stabbed brought no flashbacks. She even felt a strange calm, staring blankly at the ceiling, eyes drawn to a lightbulb, bright and searing.

“Zubin,” she heard Soroush say, as if far away. “It’s time to prepare our escape. Bring the drivers together at the platform. Time to tell them what their part in this will be.”

Frieze didn’t have the energy to turn to see the men file out, taking the Iranian president with them. All she could do was stare at the light as it seemed to become brighter and brighter.

Morgan waited inside a utility closet for the procession of terrorists to pass him by. Noting the absence of the FBI woman, he made his way to where they had come from—the control room, where he found Frieze on the ground, a small puddle of blood thick and almost black on the gray carpet. “Still breathing,” he said to himself.

Morgan further ripped open the tear that the knife had made on her shirt and pressed down on the wound.

“Who are you?” she wondered.

“Dan Morgan,” he said. “Nice to meet you.”

“You’re Dan Morgan?” A faint smile played on her lips. “Peter Conley speaks highly of you.”

“I need to get you out of here,” he said.

“No.” Her voice was breathy and weak. “You need to stop them. They’re taking the trains. That’s how they’re getting out. You need to stop them.”

Morgan bit his lip. “I can’t leave you,” he said.

“Send someone in for me, then. But you can’t let them win. You can’t, Morgan. They’ve planted bombs. They’re not going to leave any survivors. Tell my people. We need to get the civilians out.”

“Hang in there,” he said. “I’ll send help for you.”

Morgan looked around the room until he found a cell phone that had been left behind in a jacket by one of the staff. He then dashed off to get back to Alex, running through service tunnels until he was at the landing of the stairs that led down to the basement.

“It’s me,” he called out to her. “I’m coming down.”

She emerged from behind the steam duct. “Dad, are you okay? Are we leaving now?”

“I’m all right,” he said. “You’re leaving. I’m not. You really wanted to do something? Here’s your chance.”

“Anything, Dad.”

“You remember Peter Conley,” he said. “I want you to call him at this number.” He drew the cell phone he’d taken from the Control Center and dialed in the call function. “Have them come in by any means necessary. All the hostages need to be evacuated, and they need to send in the bomb squad. Do you understand?”

She nodded.

“Then go,” he said.

“What about you?”

“I’m going after them.”

Alex Morgan ran upstairs to the Grand Central catwalk. Panting and catching her breath, standing flat against the corner, she dialed the number her father had given her.

“Conley.”

“Peter! It’s Alex. Alex Morgan.”

“Alex? Where’s your father?”

“He went after Soroush and the President,” she said.

“Are you safe?”

“Safe enough,” she said. “But I need your help. They’ve wired the main concourse with hidden bombs. I don’t know where they are. But I know the Iranians plan to blow all the hostages up when they leave. Peter, there’s more than a thousand people in here.”

“Wait a second.”

It wasn’t one, but forty seconds, all of which Alex spent drumming her fingers on the reinforced glass of the catwalk window.

“Okay,” said Conley. “We’re going to blow the doors open. I need you to talk to the people inside. Can you get to the PA system?”

“I think so.”

“Tell everyone to stay clear of the doors until after the blasts, and only then start evacuation.”

“Okay,” she said. “Peter, there’s one more thing. There’s a woman in here. Her name is Lisa Frieze. She’s been stabbed. She’s in the control room, bleeding out.”

“I know her,” he said. “I’ll send someone for her as soon as we get inside.”