Threat Level Black - Страница 60

Probably another bird, he thought.

He waited for it to disappear from the screen.

It didn’t.

Chapter 6

Blitz nearly jumped when the phone rang. He glanced across the room at the President, then picked it up.

“Nothing new,” said Brott, the NSC military aide who was monitoring the situation from the Pentagon. “Civilian plane, false alarm.”

“Right,” said Blitz.

The Secret Service had asked — demanded, really — that the President leave the city when the alert came through three hours before. The President had folded his arms across his chest, listened patiently to their arguments, and looked at Blitz.

“I think you should go,” Blitz had told him. Even as the words left his mouth, he knew D’Amici wouldn’t.

“With due respect, gentlemen, fuck yourselves,” said the President. It was the only time in his life that Blitzcould remember the President using that particular profanity, at least since he had been elected to office. “The people of the United States did not elect me to run away and hide from terrorists,” continued the President. “And if something horrible does happen here, then this will be exactly where I should be.”

He was a stubborn son of a bitch. That’s what it came down to. It wasn’t the fact that he thought his place was here; it wasn’t that he thought the political ramifications of running from a rumor of danger were immense. The real reason he was staying was that he wouldn’t back down from any confrontation. In his heart of hearts, he probably wanted to go down on the streets and work with the details trying to catch these jerks.

Blitz admired that instinct, even as he questioned the wisdom of it.

“Keep me informed,” he told Brott.

“Yes, sir. Mozelle wanted to talk to you.”

Blitz pushed down the button on the receiver and called his aide at the White House.

“You okay up there?” she asked as soon as she heard his voice.

“Not a problem here,” he said.

“ Lot of calls. One in particular I thought you’d want to know about,” said Mozelle. “Your friend Kevin Smith called. He was mad that you didn’t tell him you were coming into the city.”

Smith was an old friend; they often got together when Blitz was in New York or he was in D.C., but security and the press of business had prevented him from calling this time. Blitz made a mental note to call Smith later on and tell him he was sorry.

“He said he had tickets to the NCAA championship game tonight,” Mozelle continued, “and he would have taken you instead of his brother-in-law.”

“Oh,” said Blitz softly.

Tempted as he was to call Smith’s cell phone — he knew the number by heart — he realized he couldn’t. Instead he hung up and rose, looking out the nearby window at the brilliantly lit Manhattan skyline.

“I hope you’re okay, Kevin,” he told the glass. “I hope to God we’re all okay.”

Chapter 7

Fisher walked up along the track about a hundred yards, slowing as the light from the station faded behind him. The problem wasn’t the darkness; he could see fairly well. But the schematic of the tunnel system he’d seen earlier had shown a passage here to his left, and he couldn’t find it now.

Fisher took another two steps. There should be a little work light along the narrow walkway that flanked the tracks here somewhere.

As he stared at the wall, the light appeared about ten yards to his right. But it was dark. The socket was empty.

Fisher glanced down the tracks. The light bulb had been unscrewed and thrown on the tracks. He could see the glass shards quite clearly.

Which was a problem, actually. All of a sudden there was plenty of light flooding into the dark tunnel: A train was approaching.

Rather quickly too.

The door he was looking for stood next to the light. He made it with something like three seconds to spare, pulling himself up onto the ledge as the train’s brakes squealed and the tunnel shook.

When the train passed, Fisher took his pistol from its holster and opened the door.

Chapter 8

Howe steadied Iron Hawk on its course toward the contact, riding over the rooftops of Bergen County, New Jersey. He had the UAV now, the computer boxing it in the upper right corner of his screen.

“Zoom on Unidentified 1-3-1,” Howe told the computer, using its tag for the contact. The image blossomed in his screen. It was as if Howe were hovering just in front of its nose. The UAV was moving at just over three hundred knots, skimming above the waves at about eight feet roughly forty miles from the tip of Manhattan, across Brooklyn in the Atlantic due south of Long Beach, Long Island.

“Viper Two to Iron Hawk. Colonel, is this it?” asked the pilot in the second F-16. He was approximately twenty miles beyond the Statue of Liberty, just about ready for an intercept. Viper One was north, escorting Qual-Air back to Boston because of the earlier threat.

“Affirmative, I have the target on my screen,” said Howe. He read off the UAV’s location, heading, and speed, pulling back on the magnification level so he could better direct the F-16.

The fighters that had just taken off checked in. One peeled off to back up Viper Two; the other took up a patrol position in case this, too, was a ruse.

It wasn’t. Howe felt his heart beating steady now, the rhythm familiar. His fingers felt heavy, his eyes almost hollow.

He’d flown in combat before, but this time it was different: This time there were people he knew on the ground, in harm’s way. This time his own people were in the crosshairs.

The contact tucked left, adjusting its course. There were thirty-five miles between it and New York.

As Viper Two approached, it quickly became apparent that he would have to get very close to the UAV to shoot it down. The UAV’s extremely small radar profile protected it against a longer range shot by the AMRAAM missiles; the pilot’s best bet would be to choose either heat seekers or his cannon. Howe could see him sizing up his strategy and preparing for it: He had a parallel track to the UAV’s course that would allow him to turn and get on its tail as it approached; the F-16’s superior speed would make the terrorist craft an easy target.

Not easy, exactly. Viper Two still had no idea where it was. In the dark night, moving at hundreds of miles an hour, the world was a flashing blur. The airplane and its target moved through four dimensions — three spatial, one of time — in a complicated dance. It was man against machine, and the jock at the stick of the F-16 was now in a confrontation where the slightest error, the wrong twitch at the wrong moment, might mean disaster. The pilot had trained for countless hours, but no simulation, no drill, could come close to duplicating what he was flying against now.

Howe had been there himself. You reached down at that moment and found what you had.

He watched the display. Viper Two couldn’t find the UAV, even as he closed.

“Turn,” snapped Howe. “Now.”

The F-16 stuttered in the display. Then it moved downward toward the water, pirouetting on its wing, 18,000 pounds of metal and machinery transformed into a graceful ballerina. The wings straightened and the dancer became a linebacker blitzing unmolested toward the fleeing quarterback.

“Range is five miles,” said Howe. “You’re dead on. Dead on and steady.”

“Roger that.”

Howe told the computer system to zoom in on the target. The screen blinked — and then went back to the large-area scan.

He started to curse, then saw the change was not due to a malfunction: A second contact had been spotted, this one behind him, only five miles south of the Statue of Liberty.

Chapter 9

The only person in the room whose face wasn’t a mask of worry was the President’s. Blitz watched him from the other end of the suite, still working the phone as he talked to congressional leaders about an amendment to the Medicare Prescription Bill. Each call began the same way: Senator, how are you? Did you catch my speech? We need your support on this legislation.

It was impossible to tell from the President’s reaction whether the man or woman on the other line was for or against the proposal. Only when the call ended and he signaled one of his aides with a thumbs-up or — down could one judge the success of the call.

Meanwhile, the Secret Service detail, chief of staff, and military aides were walking back and forth, trying to appear calm. They had formulated and reformulated and formulated once again plans in case the alert proved real. They had flashlights, night-vision goggles, flak vests — everything they needed, Blitz thought, which only made the situation seem even more impossible.

The President finally put down the phone and got up from his chair.

“So, what do you think, Professor?” he asked. “Should we head over to the Garden?”

The Secret Service people began to protest en masse. The President raised his hand to shush them.

“What do you say, Doc? We getting over there or what?” asked the President.

“I wouldn’t want to get in the way of the professionals while they were doing their work,” said Blitz.

“Neither would I,” answered the President. “Come on. We’re not cowering in a hotel room.”

“Sir…” started the head of the Secret Service detail. “With all due respect, your safety—”