The Zero Hour

“The plain fact is, a nuke would destroy much of the city, and that’s not what the intel intercept seems to be hinting at. They’re talking about a targeted attack on a bank, not on the entire city.”

Sarah nodded. “Makes sense. We can’t rule anything out, but in some ways a giant conventional bomb is scarier, because it’s much harder to detect. Much harder.”

“Right.”

“So what are my options?” she asked.

“Obviously you can’t order a bomb sweep of the entire city. But you can order sweeps of every Manhattan Bank branch office. That’s certainly feasible. We have the personnel for that right here in the New York office.”

“NYPD Bomb Squad?”

“They only get called in when you have a bomb ticking right in front of you. Otherwise they don’t move. They’re good, but you’ve got to have a bomb.”

“And if we do have a bomb?”

“Then it’s your call,” Pappas said. “But you’re not only going to have an emergency on your hands, you’re also going to have an ugly turf battle. The NYPD Bomb Squad is one of the oldest and most experienced in the country, but they’re experienced mostly with relatively low-tech stuff, homemade bombs and the like. Then you’ll have ATF, which has the responsibility for all crimes involving explosives. They have the bomb capability, and they’re going to want to play. And then there’s the Army, which is responsible for bomb disposal over the entire continental landmass of the United States, other than in the sea or on the bases of other military services. They’re going to want in, and they’re going to argue-quite rightly-that they’re substantially better equipped than the NYPD.”

“And there’s NEST,” Sarah said.

“Right,” Pappas said. “And ever since Harvey’s Casino, they’re going to want to play too.”

NEST is an acronym for the Nuclear Emergency Search Team, the best bomb squad in the United States by far and, naturally, the most secretive. It is part of the U.S. Department of Energy, but is actually managed by a private contractor. Charged with searching for and rendering safe all suspected nuclear explosives, NEST is based in Las Vegas, Nevada (the Nevada nuclear weapons test site is ninety miles away). A portion of its equipment is also located at Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland, and its East Coast facilities are based in Germantown, Maryland.

The incident involving Harvey’s Casino in State Line, Nevada, near Lake Tahoe, will not soon be forgotten by those in NEST. In 1981, a man who owed the casino a gambling debt of a quarter of a million dollars decided to liquidate his debt in the best way he could think of. He placed a complex, though not sophisticated, bomb in the casino, consisting of a thousand pounds of dynamite, and made an extortion demand: forgive the debt, or the place would blow up. Either way, he figured, he couldn’t lose.

The bomb, which had six different fusing systems, sat there ticking for three days while everyone argued about whose responsibility it was. No one was avoiding responsibility; on the contrary, quite a few different parties wanted to take charge of defusing the bomb.

There was the city-which really meant two guys from the fire department who’d gone through a rudimentary three-week training program at hazardous devices school. They had the backing of the politicos. Then there was the Army, which announced that it had the legal responsibility for the bomb. NEST showed up, did a careful study, and declared, this is one complex bomb; why don’t you let us handle it? But the city told both NEST and the Army to take off; its two firemen would take care of the bomb.

Both NEST and the Army were faced with a dilemma: if the city handled the bomb and anything went wrong, they’d both be held responsible, legally and morally. So they came to a decision. Throw us out of town, they declared-in writing. Otherwise, we’ll move in and attempt to render it safe.

The city did as they asked and told the Army and NEST to leave town by sunset.

The explosion that resulted caused some twelve million dollars’ worth of damage and left a huge gaping hole in Harvey’s Casino. The firemen who had insisted on rendering the bomb safe unfortunately did not have much of a grasp of elementary physics. Never again would NEST give up control to the locals without a fight.

“Okay,” Sarah said. “I’m going to hold out the possibility it’s a nuke.”

“What?” exploded Pappas. “There’s no goddam reason to believe it’s a nuke, and if you want to scare half-”

“I know, I know,” Sarah said. “But it’s the only way DOE will be willing to call in NEST, and we’re going to need the resources of the best. And when we need them, we’re going to need them fast.”

CHAPTER SIXTY-SEVEN

Dressed in a European suit, Baumann fit right into the throngs of Wall Street businessmen swarming to work this morning. He might have been a cosmopolitan banker, an Anglophilic bond salesman.