A moment later, the smaller man stuck his head out. “The cameras might not be working, but everything else is.”
“Can we get to the roof?” the blond man demanded.
“The ladder goes to the top, but there are security systems and laser eyes on every floor. I’ll have to disable them one at a time, all the way to the roof.”
The blond man sneered. “Then you better get started.”
“It’s a bitch, man,” his partner griped. “We could be here all morning. It’s gonna take us forever just to get to the roof.”
The blond glanced at his oversized watch. “You don’t have forever. The job has to be done in the next two hours.
I suggest you get started.”
Both men climbed through the hatch, and the blond pulled it shut behind them, leaving the screws in a pile on the concrete floor.
“Foy, you still on them?”
“I got ’em,” replied Judith Foy, Deputy Director of CTU
New York. Behind the wheel of her silver Lexus, she’d been tailing the shiny black Hummer since it exited the airport’s short-term parking garage.
On the other end of the comm was FBI Special Agent Jason Emmerick. He and his partner were now tailing the second Hummer. Each vehicle carried a part of a “package” that had arrived that morning on a flight from Montreal. The “package” had turned out to be two Middle Eastern men.
“I know the man I’m tailing,” Emmerick informed her.
“He’s an Afghani, goes by the name Hawk. I’ve got no ID
on the man you’re tailing. Contact us when your mark arrives at his destination.”
“Roger.” Judy continued following her black Hummer to a blighted area of downtown Newark. In University Heights, the vehicle circled a sprawling Federal housing project — a breeding ground for the type of crime that had made the name Newark synonymous with urban violence since the 1967 riots.
Despite her experience, Agent Foy felt uncomfortable cruising these mean streets. A thirty-eight-year-old Caucasian woman behind the wheel of a Lexus was not a common sight in the Central Ward, where police cars were scarce, graffiti and gang markings everywhere. Even with the car’s tinted windows, young men in gang colors, hanging out on every other block, watched her car with predatory eyes. Judith Foy recalled a DEA assessment that came across her desk last year which claimed this section of Newark was the crack cocaine capital of the Northeast.
Foy was a Jersey girl, too, though she hailed from af-fluent Bricktown on the state’s southern shore. That safe, cozy little community was nothing like this blasted strip of urban blight.
She’d gone into the CIA right after graduate school. Her first assignment with the Agency had been in the Middle East. After eight years, she’d come back to the United States. Then the Agency had sent her to New York, to work with Brice Holman.
For the past three years, while red tape was being cut to allocate a fully staffed threat center, she and Brice had been the CIA’s entire counterterrorist operation in New York.
She’d come to know and trust Brice. He had twenty years with the Agency, ten in the field. He had good instincts, and he’d always had her back. So when he came to her with this rogue operation, she didn’t hesitate to back him. If Holman thought something bad was going down today, then it was. Violation of protocol was a small price to pay for stopping what could be another WTC bombing.
As Agent Foy rounded a corner, deftly avoiding a bunch of kids playing in the middle of the street, she saw the Hummer speed up as it raced down the block. She applied the gas, too, and easily kept them in sight.
“Yeah, I’m following you, genius,” she muttered. “What are you going to do about it?”
The Hummer left the projects, moved into an area of decrepit warehouses and shuttered businesses. The vehicle was about half a block ahead of her when it swerved around a lumbering garbage truck, into a narrow alley.
Agent Foy sped up, but by the time she reached the al-leyway, the Hummer had vanished. The narrow street occupied a space between two tall brick buildings that had once housed factories or warehouses. The industry was long gone, and the crumbling buildings were abandoned.
With a resigned sigh, she steered the Lexus into the cramped alley. The road surface was ancient cobblestone, and her tires rumbled so loudly, she feared for her suspension. Finally, she reached the opposite end of the alley and emerged onto a street lined with crumbling apartment buildings.
She spotted the Hummer at the end of that block, waiting at a stop sign for another garbage truck to rumble by.
“Got you,” she whispered triumphantly.
Agent Foy stepped on the gas and pulled onto the street, intent on catching up to the Hummer. Her concentration was shattered when she heard a squeal of tires burning pavement. Her head jerked to the right, just in time to see the rusty grille of a GM pickup barreling down on her.
She pushed the gas to the floor, but it was already too late. The truck flew out of the hidden driveway, slammed into the passenger side of her Lexus. Foy threw up her arms just as the air bag deployed, smashing her backward in the seat. Shards of safety glass rained down on her, then the hood popped and she heard the angry hiss of steam.
The truck continued forward, slamming her car against the telephone pole. Wheels spun, pressing the Lexus until the frame bent, then snapped. Finally, the truck’s front tire popped and its engine stalled. Smoke began to pour from under the hood. After the deafening crash, the quiet was eerie.
Over the hiss of steam from the truck’s ruptured radiator, Agent Foy heard a door open, feet striking the pavement. Next came the sound of another vehicle approaching and skidding to a halt.
She peered through a gap in the wreckage. The black Hummer was back. The driver of the GM pickup that had hit her — a teenager wearing a hooded sweatshirt with the number 13 emblazoned on the back — dived into the Hummer through an open window. Then the Hummer sped away, the teen’s legs still dangling out the window.
Agent Foy tried to move. With one arm pinned by the air bag, she unbuckled her seatbelt with her free hand.
Most of the pressure on her abdomen vanished, but when she took a deep breath, bruised ribs ground together, and she cried out in a rattling gasp.
Every move a Herculean labor, she reached into her torn blazer for her cell phone. Hands slick with blood, she managed to press the speed dial button.
CTU Director Brice Holman’s cell rang three times, before she was connected to his voice mail. From somewhere on the street she heard cries, then a face appeared at the window. The man wore a red ’do-rag over a retro Afro, a pair of gray city sanitation overalls.
“Jesus, lady, you okay?”
“I’m pinned,” she replied weakly.
“Don’t try to move. An ambulance is on the way.”
She tried to reply, but waves of nausea and dizziness suddenly overwhelmed her. Desperate to report to someone, Agent Foy placed a second call, this one to CTU
Headquarters in Manhattan.
Paramedic Darnell Peasley saw the accident scene as soon as he swung his ambulance around the corner. “Damn,” he said. “It’s a bad one.”
A silver Lexus was wrapped around a telephone pole; a faded red pickup truck had smashed into it. Smoke poured from under both hoods.
Darnell noticed a sanitation truck had stopped at the scene. Two workers were waving at him. A third was poking his head through the Lexus’s window.