Takedown

Compounding the problem was that someone at the DIA was playing some sort of role in all of this, but until he had a better handle on who and what it was, there was no way Lawlor was going to tip his hand to them. They were a collection of superspooks bound by completely different rules of engagement than the rest of the intelligence community. Theirs were the rules of war, and there wasn’t much they couldn’t do-including locking him up indefinitely without charge for even sniffing around the edges of one of their operations. Call it interagency mistrust or a strong instinct for self-preservation, but until Lawlor got a much better feel for the lay of the land, he was going to stay as far away from the DOD and its Defense Intelligence Agency as possible.

In the meantime, as the director of the Apex Project, he had a host of other resources at his disposal. Logging on to his computer, he accessed the shared intelligence database network and entered the two addresses that Kevin McCauliff had provided Harvath with. When the search results came back, they were more than disappointing-they were downright impossible. According to the database, there was no information available for either address-no utility records, no mortgage or business license information, nothing. Both locations appeared to be operating in a vacuum-a big black one.

Someone had scrubbed both addresses so completely clean that neither offered a single trail leading anywhere. That kind of sterilization normally happened only in covert government operations so deep they were referred to as happening at “crush depth”-a status reserved for issues of vital national security. For one reason or another, these issues were sometimes better handled in the civilian arena, rather than on military bases or at established intelligence agencies, but even so, the crush depth locations Lawlor had known during his career were like mini-fortresses.

Gary still wasn’t any closer to understanding what was going on in New York, though. If the imagery from Kevin McCauliff did indeed show two crush depth locations being hit, what was the reason? Better yet, how in the world could the terrorists have known about them? The operational intelligence would have been Polo Step at the very least. The fact that they had hit not one but two suggested a security compromise so devastating that its repercussions could very well be felt for years, if not for decades, to come.

Lawlor jumped over to the DHS server, pulled up the most current FEMA damage map for New York City and filtered out as much “noise” as possible. He wasn’t interested in casualty estimates or the positioning of emergency equipment. All he wanted to know was where the terrorists had specifically struck. Once that information was isolated, he added secondary problem spots such as reported sniper and RPG locations, apartment building and property fires, as well as any other major events that demanded a large police, fire, or EMS response. With those in place, he added the last layer-the secret Upper West Side and Midtown locations the terrorists had just struck.

He tried to make sense of it, but the harder he stared at the screen the more the questions piled up in his brain. If these were crush depth locations, what agency or group was running them and what was their purpose? With all the chaos in New York, was whoever oversaw those locations even aware that they’d been hit? That was one of Lawlor’s biggest questions.

The only obvious thing in the whole muddled mix was that if the terrorists were pinpointing and hitting actual crush depth locations, then the United States was in even bigger trouble than it thought.

Lawlor realized that he was going to have to go against his better judgment and talk to people outside his immediate circle. Whatever the fallout might be, as long as he could stop the terrorists before they struck again, it would be worth it.

Thirty-Five

NATIONAL SECURITY AGENCY

FORT MEADE, MARYLAND

Mark Schreiber poked his head into his supervisor’s fluorescent-lit office and said, “I think we’ve got another problem in Manhattan.”

“No kidding,” replied Joseph Stanton, jerking his thumb over his shoulder toward the flat-panel televisions on the wall behind him. “Some idiot blogger started a rumor that a bio agent was part of the attack and no matter what Mayor Brown says, nobody is listening to him.”

“That’s not what I’m talking about,” replied Schreiber as he stepped the rest of the way inside and closed the door behind him. “Transcon and Geneva Diamond are unresponsive.”

Stanton stopped what he was doing and laid down his purple highlighter. His bespectacled face was bloated from a diet too rich in sodium, along with too many Hennessy-and-Cokes after hours. His hair was unkempt and his entire wardrobe seemed to be permanently wrinkled. He wore a seersucker suit that should have been retired years ago and a striped regimental tie decorated with coffee stains. “Unresponsive how?”