The Zero Hour

“Jesus,” Roth said. “If Baumann’s in the Network building and everyone rushes out of there at once, we’ll never find the guy.”

“Roth, my son is in there.”

“Sarah.” It was Pappas. “You’re both right. We have to empty the building at once, but at the same time we have to look over everyone who leaves.”

“Impossible, Alex!” Sarah said.

“No. It’s not impossible. Remember Mecca?”

“Mecca? What are you-”

“1979. The Grand Mosque in Mecca. A textbook example of this.”

“Alex, we don’t have any time for anything complicated.”

“Sarah! It’s not complicated. We need to round up some riot-control buses, that’s all.”

He explained quickly.

“Do it,” she said. “And somebody help me find my vest.”

***

The police car sped down Seventh Avenue, siren wailing and turret lights flashing, turned left onto Houston, then right onto Broadway.

In the backseat, as Roth made arrangements on his cell phone, Sarah watched Broadway go by in a blur.

Oh God oh God oh God, she thought.

Jared. Oh God.

If Baumann had taken Jared hostage, how had Jared managed to make phone calls undetected?

Where was he?

She heard Roth say, “A thousand pounds of C-4. Assume, worst case, the whole load is in the bomb.” He paused to listen, but only for a moment, and then he went on: “That’s enough to bring down the entire building, depending on placement of the device. Possibly kill everyone inside. Definitely do severe damage to neighboring buildings and pedestrians.”

Sarah’s mind raced, her body racked with tension. To save Jared was to stop the incident. This she repeated like a mantra, because she could think only of her son. She knew, but would never admit, that suddenly she didn’t care about the case, didn’t care about her work, didn’t even care about the incalculable damage the bomb was about to do.

The rain had stopped, but it was still overcast, the skies a metallic gray.

Would he kill Jared?

He had murdered-both wholesale and retail, as she thought of it. Retail murders were one-on-one, wholesale the acts of terrorism he’d engineered. In some ways, retail murders were the most chilling, and he was capable of snuffing out an individual life, face to face. Would he really hesitate to kill Jared if he deemed it necessary?

Well, perhaps. He hadn’t killed Jared yet, or so she hoped. Perhaps he planned to use him as a hostage, as insurance, as a human shield. She prayed Jared was still alive.

How had she been fooled so easily? How could she, so suspicious by profession and by training, have been taken in? Why had she been so willing to see him as a warm and likable man? How could he have concealed so well the essence of who he was?

He was a master of disguise, yes, but perhaps it wasn’t so hard to devise a disguise when your face was unknown. But it was his physical awkwardness that had deflected her suspicion. Had she not wanted to see the contradiction, really?

By the time the cruiser turned off Whitehall to Water and swung the wrong way up Moore Street, an immense crowd was already gathered in front of the building. Blue and red police lights were flashing; sirens were screaming from several different directions. Policemen were stopping and re-routing traffic on Water Street back down Whitehall or Broad. The area around Moore Street was blocked off with sawhorses marked POLICE LINE-DO NOT CROSS. Several fire trucks came barreling down Water Street, their sirens wailing. A couple of TV vans were already there, although how they’d been alerted so quickly, Sarah had no idea. So too was the NYPD’s Emergency Services Unit.

As she jumped from the car, she wondered, How could everyone have gotten here so quickly?

Then she saw the answer. The NYPD Bomb Squad had arrived and taken over the scene, as they always did. Someone had called them in, probably one of the cops on the scene. At any moment the NEST teams would arrive and then there would be a turf battle from hell. Unless she stopped it.

She looked up at the building and whispered, “Jared.”

CHAPTER NINETY-ONE

As the hour approached, Dan Hammond began to wonder whether the rich guy would really come through with the hundred grand he’d promised for flying into controlled airspace and landing on the roof of a Wall Street building.

True, the guy had showed up in person and put down five thousand bucks in cash. That was a good sign. The usual procedure was to give a credit-card guarantee on Amex or Visa, and then Executive billed you after the flight.

The company said they charged $825 per flight hour, but you never got into a helicopter for less than fourteen hundred dollars, to be honest. So five thousand bucks was a hell of a lot, but it wasn’t such a crazy amount to put down.

This is probably my last job for Executive Class Aircraft Charter, Hammond reflected. Fitting that it should be in the best chopper they had, the ASTAR.