Twelve Hours (4 page)

Alex put her tablet into her black Targus backpack to the familiar whine of the brakes as the train rolled into Grand Central Terminal. Passengers around her shuffled, at least three quarters of them getting to their feet before the train came to a complete halt. This wasn’t the normal commuter crowd, but rather the Black Friday shoppers whose moods ranged from antsy to bloodthirsty.

The doors slid open and cool air streamed in. Alex waited while people elbowed each other to get off. Clark hung back, waiting for her to make the first move. Once the aisle had cleared, they followed the slow-moving crowd onto the platform, walking a few paces behind the crowd to avoid the tumult. It also gave her room to look around as she emerged into the elegant marble concourse. No matter how many times she walked into it, Alex always had to stop and wonder at its beauty. The sun’s rays filtered in from the stories-high east windows, casting pools of light that reached the information booth with its four-faced brass clock.

“It’s really something, isn’t it?” she said, turning to Clark to see that his attention was immersed in his cell phone. She scoffed under her breath and surveyed the crowd, opting to take the main exit and leading her distracted friend across the concourse.

Alex’s instincts told her that something was wrong before she was aware of it. At first, it was an unconscious uptick in the number of ringing cell phones, and then in the buzzing of several people in the crowd. Something about it was disconcerting, even if she couldn’t put her finger on what. And then, as they were passing the clock in the center of the concourse, Clark spoke, playing out a conversation that was happening in minor variations throughout Grand Central terminal.

“Alex,” he said. “There’s been an attack.”

“Where?” she asked. Clark had his eyes glued to his smartphone.

“It’s all over Twitter,” he said, holding up his phone so she could see the screen. The same message appeared in the familiar telegraphic style, shared by several people, celebrities alongside Clark’s personal friends.
Bombs in Penn Station.
She pulled out her own phone and checked the news, but only one of the news outlets had reported on it, and all it did was refer to the now-viral tweet.

“We need to find my dad,” she said. Policemen, she now saw, were fanning out, and she saw two K9 units walking out onto the concourse.

“Was he staying near there?” Clark asked.

“No, he—”

She was cut off by a man’s voice on the PA. “This is an emergency. We are beginning immediate evacuation. Please remain calm and make your way to the exits in an orderly fashion.”

Jesus,
Alex thought as people began swarming to the exits. A terrorist looking for maximum damage couldn’t hope for a better situation than this funneling of the crowds. Alex pulled Clark by the arm. “Come on!”

People were streaming out of the heavy wooden doors, so many that the sidewalks couldn’t hold them all and they were spilling into Forty-second Street under the Park Avenue overpass. Alex was knocked side to side by the crowd and lost touch with Clark. The heat and crush of the mass of people knocked the wind out of her.

“Clark!” she called out, but there was no hope he’d hear in all the commotion.

Then, the first bullet hit.

Adele picked through what was left of the silver platter of fresh fruit and plates of patés, smoked salmon, and caviar delivered by room service. Morgan rolled his eyes as she popped a grape into her mouth, grinning at him as she chewed. Looking out the window, Morgan saw that the motorcade had come in through the garage, leaving only curious onlookers and the police cordon outside.

He heard a beep in his earpiece.
Conley.

“Did you get the news?” Conley asked.

“What do you mean?”

“You haven’t heard?” asked Conley. “Bombs in Penn Station.”

“When?”

“A few minutes ago,” said Conley. “It’s all over Twitter. No way I’m getting inside the hotel now. They’re taking extra precautions because of the Iranian president. Doors are locked and security’s turning everyone away.”

Morgan shot a glance at Adele, who was looking at him as she bit into a pear. “What do you know about the attack?”

“Nothing yet. I’ve made contact with Bloch at headquarters, but it’s going to be bedlam for at least a couple of hours.”

“Bomb in New York City, on the day of the Iranian President’s visit.”

“It’s a hell of a coincidence,” said Conley.

“I don’t like coincidences,” said Morgan. “I’m going downstairs to see what I can find out.”

Alex didn’t hear the shot, just the screaming some ten feet ahead of her, its source and cause concealed by the throng of people. A movement like a riptide dragged her backward toward the station doors.

The next bullet came seconds later, a stream of bloody mist erupting from the back of a freckled-faced woman right in front of her. The woman slumped back, and Alex nearly fell onto the asphalt of East Forty-second Street in an attempt to hold her up. The woman tumbled onto the pavement, blood gushing out right at the bottom of her ribcage, near her spinal column.

The crowd opened up around the fallen woman, giving Alex a refreshing breath of cool air. She saw the entry wound at the woman’s chest and made an instinctive calculation that the bullets were approaching from a high angle.

She looked up at the buildings that surrounded them, but there were too many windows to even count, let alone find a single shooter. She cast her gaze down at the woman, who stared up at the sky in wide-eyed, uncomprehending terror. Alex moved toward her to administer first aid or at least offer her a measure of solace. But the crowd closed in again as people scrambled for cover, and Alex was swept along with it. It was no use trying to get back to her.

Cover,
she thought.
I need cover.
But it was useless—she was now moving with the mass of people around her, whether she wanted to or not, toward the doors to Grand Central Terminal. She was tossed and squeezed and her mind grew foggy with panic.
Focus,
she told herself. But the crowd heaved, and her knees couldn’t keep up. She stumbled and fell.

She curled up into a ball as feet hit her back, her shins, her head. She heard another surge of screaming, she didn’t know where from. A shoe scraped her ear, and it seared with pain, feeling like it was half torn off.
I’m going to get trampled. I’m going to die.
She screamed
.

“Alex! Alex!” Her name was reaching her as if from a distance. “Alex, get up!” A hand on her shoulder. “Come on!”

Clark Duffy pulled her to her feet, with the help of a beefy man with a scraggly black beard who was holding back the crowd as much as he could to give her space. She staggered to her feet and moved, led by Clark, toward the door. The rest of the way was a blur of movement and shoves until she was panting inside the main concourse, surrounded by marble and under the green-painted ceiling. Around her, families and friends drew close to each other, looking around in alarm. She turned to Clark.

“Thanks,” she said, giving him a hug. “And thank you,” she told the bearded man who had followed them inside. She wrapped her arms around him.

“It’s, uh, no problem,” he said, flustered. “Bud,” he said, awkwardly extending a hand. “Bud Hooper.”

“Alex.”

“Are you okay?” asked Clark.

She touched her ear, half-expecting to find it dangling from a thin strip of skin. It was wet with blood, but otherwise seemed intact. “Yeah, I’m fine.”
So far,
she said. But now, they were trapped inside Grand Central Terminal. Whatever was going on, she had a feeling it was just beginning.

Lisa Frieze pounded the pavement in her uncomfortable dress flats. She hit redial on her phone for the fourth time as she wove around a yellow cab on Park Avenue. Traffic was at a standstill and angry drivers leaned on their horns. She heard the plastic click of the receiver being picked up off its cradle.

“Chambers.”

“This is Frieze.” She stayed on the street, avoiding the hordes that were plugging up the sidewalks.

“Frieze who?” came the brusque response, then, before she had time to respond, “The rookie. Right. Take it you’ve heard the news.”

“I just caught wind of it on the radio, sir,” she said, reaching the small crowd that had gathered around the Waldorf, drawn by the arrival of the motorcade. She tried to plunge in through the outer layer and failed. “I need to know if there’s something I should be doing. I’ve studied the emergency response procedures, I can—”

“Are you at the hotel yet?”

“I’m right outside.” A woman in a green jogging suit elbowed her, nearly knocking the phone from her hand. Frieze elbowed her back but couldn’t budge the mass of people blocking her way.

“Get me the report I asked for,” he said. “And stay out of everyone’s way. I can’t spare anyone to hold your hand today.”

“Sir, I’ve got experience with forensic—” He hung up before she could finish. Adding to her frustration was the solid wall of bystanders that stood before her.

“FBI!” She yelled out. “Out of my way!”

The crowd parted, finally, and she pushed through to the police cordon. A young man in aviators wearing the black uniform of the NYPD and holding a Styrofoam cup of Dunkin’ Donuts coffee stepped forward to meet her.

“Special Agent Lisa Frieze,” she said, flashing her badge. “I need to get inside.”

“I can let you through, but the hotel’s locked down,” he said, lifting and pulling the steel barrier one-handed with a grunt, opening a crack just wide enough so she could pass. “No one’s going in or out. There was a bomb, you know. At Penn Station.”

“Yeah, I heard.”

“Emergency procedures,” he said and sipped his coffee. “To protect the president of Iran. Although if you ask me, I don’t know why we’re trying to protect the bastard, anyway.”

“I didn’t,” she said.

“Didn’t what?”

“Ask you. I just need to get inside.”

“You can try,” he said, shrugging.

She walked up to one of the glass double doors to the Waldorf lobby and knocked on the glass, holding up her badge. A man in a suit who was standing guard, blond and bony-faced, either Secret Service or Diplomatic Security, mouthed
locked down.
She raised her badge higher and raised her eyebrows, but he just shook his head.

She turned back and looked up and down Park, running her fingers through her drawn-back hair. She pulled out her cell phone and dialed. No signal.

“Looks like you and I are late to the party.”

She wheeled about to find the man who’d spoken. He was tall and wiry with a strong chin and nose, in khakis and a blue button-down with rolled up sleeves despite the cold. Handsome, in a sort of professorial way. But he was no professor. The faint scars on the back of his hand pegged him as a man of action. And if he was on this side of the police barriers, he was no mere civilian.

“Peter Conley,” he said, holding up his ID. “State Department.”

“FBI. Agent Frieze. Lisa.” She held out her hand and they shook. “Can you get me inside?”

“No can do,” he said, “Secret Service is running point, and they get territorial.”

She looked back at the hotel and the stolid agent at the door. “Are you the one in charge here at the scene?”

“I’m way down in the totem pole, sugar,” said Conley. “Plus, no one’s in charge at the moment, as far as I can tell. But one of the cops had radio contact with someone on the inside. Come on, I’ll introduce you.”

Dan Morgan walked out into the colonnaded lobby of the Waldorf Astoria. He was glad to see plenty of guests had come down to complain of the lockdown, tripping over each other to scream at a couple of harried hotel employees at the front desk. He counted seven Secret Service agents posted at the doors and corners, solemn and more tense than usual—no guests dared approach any of them. Four others Morgan recognized by their beards as belonging to President Ramadani’s security team. One eyed him with suspicion, and Morgan made for the disgruntled swarm until he spotted what he was looking for—a bald man in a cheap suit whose bearing told Morgan he was not a Fed or used to dealing with guests. He was walking across the lobby, keeping his distance from the crowd.

Morgan approached him. “Excuse me.”

“Get back to your room, sir,” he rasped without making eye contact. “The lockdown will be over when it’s over.”

“You don’t understand.” Morgan flashed his Homeland Security badge—one of many fakes issued him by Zeta Division, whose friends in high places guaranteed the credentials checked out against official records. “Dan Morgan,” he said. “You work security here at the hotel?”

“Head of,” he said without slowing down. “Shane Rosso.”

“Spare a word?”

“You wanna talk to me, you gotta walk with me.” Morgan liked this guy already. “Now, I’ve spoken to your people already.”

“They’re not my people,” said Morgan. “I’m here as a guest. Just making myself useful.”

“If you say so.” Rosso pushed open the door into the service hall and held it for Morgan. “Come on.” The hallway was a little small for the two of them to walk abreast, so Morgan let Rosso take the lead. “So what’s your question?” He asked without turning back.

“Did anything strange happen between yesterday and today?”

“What, you mean besides a bunch of Bahrainis coming in to take over my hotel? Or the fact that it turns out they were Iranians, and I had their goddamn President arriving right under my nose, making them that much more of a pain in my ass?” Heat wafted out as they passed the door to the kitchen. “Maybe you mean the bomb at Penn Station, and the fact that the Secret Service is shutting up my hotel because of it. Or maybe you mean the fact that the good-for-nothing manager decided not to show up.”

“Who’s your manager?” asked Morgan. They walked together into a small office with Rosso’s name on the door. In it were steel files and a scratched and bent cheap office desk. Rosso hunched over at a computer station without sitting down and pecked at the keys with his two index fingers, navigating some sort of database.

“Angelo Acosta,” said Rosso. “He was supposed to come in and help with this crap, but no one can reach him. Fat bastard probably couldn’t drag his ass out of bed in the morning.”

“Has he missed work like this before?”

“Nah,” said Rosso. “Now that I think about it. Not without calling in. Probably going to get fired over this, especially today of all days.” The printer on the desk next to the monitor whirred, and then stopped. “Of course, our general manager didn’t manage to come in this morning with all the ruckus.” Rosso slapped the printer twice with an open palm. “These goddamn things, am I right?”

“Any chance I could take a look at the security tapes between yesterday and today?”

“I got no problem with it,” said Rosso, fumbling with the mouse. He double clicked, and the printer started going again. This time, it spat out printed sheets, tables with short words and numbers—guest data, Morgan figured. “But between the Iranians and the Secret Service, I don’t even have access to my own hotel’s cameras.”

“What if I ask them?”

“I gather the Iranians won’t take too kindly to it,” said Rosso. “Better chance with the Secret Service, if you wave that fancy badge in their faces.”

“I know how to deal with them. Meanwhile, can you show me the guest and employee manifests? I need to get them out to my people ASAP.”

Rosso grunted. “It’s the second time in an hour someone’s asked me to do that. You government types really need to learn to share.”