The Zero Hour

It was awful good timing when some crazy rich guy called yesterday to charter the American Euro-Copter AS350B ASTAR, formerly known as the Aerospatiale ASTAR 350B. So what if his request had been peculiar, even illegal?

The rich guy wanted to be picked up in the Wall Street area, but not at the Downtown Manhattan Heliport. No, the guy was either too lazy or too self-important to get in his limo and drive a couple of blocks to Downtown.

He wanted to be picked up at a rooftop heliport-on the roof of his building. He was trying to impress some friends.

Hammond had told the guy that you just couldn’t do that anymore, not since the city ordinances changed after that horrible accident on top of the Pan Am Building when a chopper broke up landing and pieces went everywhere and even people on the street were killed. Anything outside of the four Manhattan heliports was controlled airspace. You violated that and the FAA would serve your balls for canapés.

“But what would the penalty be, really?” the rich guy wanted to know.

“A fine and suspension or revocation of my airman’s certificate,” Hammond had replied.

“Tell the FAA you had to make an emergency landing,” the rich man said.

“Emergency landing?”

“Say you were having difficulty with your controls. Say there was a flock of birds in front of you. Then they won’t revoke your airman’s certificate.”

“They’ll still fine me.”

“I’ll pay it.”

“I might lose my job,” Hammond said, though the prospect of that didn’t exactly sicken him.

“I’ll make it worth your while,” the rich man said.

Hammond had accepted the offer. All you really needed to land safely was an area one hundred feet by one hundred feet that was clear of power lines.

The rich guy had made a down payment of five thousand bucks, with the rest payable upon arrival at Teterboro Airport.

A hundred thousand bucks would be enough for Hammond and his wife to make the down payment on the bed-and-breakfast in Lenox, Massachusetts, they’d been eyeing for years.

A hundred thou would spring Dan Hammond from a job that he was about to lose anyway.

It was not a tough decision to make.

CHAPTER EIGHTY-NINE

The man from FBI Technical Services arrived twenty minutes later with a steel case of equipment. He unpacked a notebook computer and hooked it to a high-frequency ICOM receiver, an IC-R7100 with a specially designed antenna that filtered out all signals except those in the 800-to-900-megahertz range. Most cellular telephones broadcast in the 870-megahertz range.

Whenever a cellular phone broadcasts its signal, there really are two transmissions being emitted. There is the one you hear-the voice-and there is the carrier signal, which broadcasts at 4.5 MHz above the primary signal. The carrier signal gives a listening receiver the phone’s identification number, the frequency it is transmitting on, and the “cell,” or area, in which the caller is located.

All the technician had to do now was to wait for Jared to call again. Once the call came in, he would monitor the signal 4.5 MHz above the frequency of the call, thereby zeroing in on the cellular identification number.

That number would next be programmed into the linked computer, which was equipped with special law-enforcement software and had been preprogrammed with all existing cellular frequencies, provided by the FCC.

Cellular telephone calls constantly jump frequencies as the caller moves between cells, so the cellular phone tells the receiving cell-by means of the carrier frequency signal-when to do the “hand-off,” when to switch frequencies, and to which one, depending on which cell is strongest.

Knowing which cellular identification number to look for, the computer can tune the receiver, ever scanning, ever running its search program. That way it can quickly identify which cell the call is being made from.

With Jared inside a building-i.e., stationary-the task would probably be easier. That meant he was located within one “cell,” presumably somewhere in Manhattan.

If, that is, he called again.

Seven minutes after the technician arrived at Operation MINOTAUR’s headquarters, he did.

Sarah picked up the phone and heard Jared whisper: “Mom-”

“Jared, oh, thank God. You’re all right?”

“Yeah.” He said it with a trace of his usual petulance, which made Sarah smile with relief.

“Now, Jared, listen carefully. Don’t hang up, whatever you do. What does the building look like?”

“It’s-it’s a building, Mom, a modern building, I don’t know!”

“What’s the name of the bank?”

“It’s only on the first floor-”

“Which bank?”

“I think it’s Greenwich something-”

“Greenwich Trust! Jared, can you get out of there?”

“The room’s locked. It’s like totally dark in here.”

“Where is he? Jared, what’s he doing right now?”

“He’s-” Jared lowered his voice to a whisper that was almost inaudible. “He’s coming toward me. I can hear him right outside the door.”

Sarah’s heart drummed in her chest like a hummingbird’s. “Oh, God, Jared. Be careful.”