"They didn't tell you everything? The primary server and its backup were hit by a secondary explosion linked to the first. The investigation from this end has been wiped clean. Someone really wanted to put Task Force Scorpion out of business," Garrity said.
"What? The servers were hit too?" Shelby said, glancing up at Hafferty, who shrugged his shoulders.
"What about Ryan Sharpe? Was he on the floor?"
"No. He was found unconscious in his office. He's been evacuated from the facility," Garrity said, amidst yelling in the background on his end of the phone.
Garrity interrupted the call to yell something back. When he resumed the call, he sounded defeated.
"The entire catwalk just collapsed on some of my people. Look, I'll get back to you right away with more information. We're trying to salvage something from the server rooms, but it doesn't look promising."
"One more thing! The woman that was shot. Who was it?"
"I think it was Callie Stewart. One of the DIA's liaisons," he replied.
"Listen carefully, Joel. I need you to interview anyone that is still conscious there. I need to know what happened on the watch floor right before the bomb detonated. This is critical. I'm sorry to push this on you given the circumstances. We've both lost a lot of good people tonight," Shelby said.
"A lot of good people. I'll be in touch shortly."
Shelby handed the phone back to the analyst and took the nearest seat at the conference table, pondering what Garrity had said about the digital camera feed. Mendoza had presumably shot the bomber before he could detonate the bomb. Callie Stewart happened to be close enough to drop down onto the bomber and was subsequently shot by another agent. Why, at that very moment, had she been close enough to intervene? Sharpe had told him this morning that she steered clear of the watch floor, rarely descending the stairs unless summoned. Shelby didn't believe in coincidences. Her convenient appearance could only mean one thing.
Marianne Templeton approached him from the opposite side of the table.
"What happened, Frederick?" she said.
"We've been played."
Chapter 49
Ashraf Haddad sat in one of the institutionally painful chairs placed against the wall of the hospital's intensive care unit waiting room. He'd spent the past two days living in this room, punctuated by visits to the cafeteria and the occasional walk around the common areas of the hospital to keep from going crazy. General Sanderson had asked him to keep an eye on Castillo and Sayar, to make sure their best interests were represented and that they were afforded the best possible care available for their recoveries. Castillo's situation had been touch and go for thirty-six hours, but as of this morning, ICU doctors had upgraded her condition from critical to serious. Sayar remained in serious but stable condition and was expected to make a full recovery. The hospital staff seemed reluctant to give a long-term prognosis for Castillo, who had suffered multiple gunshot wounds. The hesitance tempered Haddad's optimism about her status upgrade.
He glanced at his watch. One hour remained until he would check on them again and close up shop at the hospital. He had a queen-sized bed at the nearby Sheraton hotel calling his name. After spending the past three years in training with Sanderson's Middle East group, he wasn't about to pass up the opportunity to spend some quality time with one of the Sheraton's Sweet Sleeper beds. Now that both of his friends were out of immediate danger, Sanderson had suggested that he get some rest. He wasn't about to argue with the general's assessment.
Haddad noticed a group of three men wearing suits approach from the west corridor, walking purposefully toward the waiting room lobby. Their presence immediately raised his internal alarm. A more hurried group of men emptied into the northern hallway, just beyond a set of double doors, and turned in his direction. He recognized two of the men walking briskly toward him from the west wing as FBI special agents that had previously visited the hospital. He started to weigh his options carefully, not that he had many. When the first agent pushed through the swinging double doors holding an MP-5 submachine gun, he decided against anything drastic. He reached onto the small table to the right of his chair and pushed his Starbucks coffee out of the way to retrieve his Blackberry phone. He thumbed several buttons and replaced the phone, picking up his coffee.
He took a long drink of his thick, extra-shot cappuccino. He had a feeling he wouldn't be drinking good coffee again for a while. He placed the cup on the table and read the return text message before all hell broke loose.
"Rcvd."
Chapter 50
Daniel Petrovich had just turned their Jeep Grand Cherokee onto Terminal Road from Interstate 81 when his phone illuminated the minivan's center console.
"Can you see who that is?" he asked Munoz.
Munoz grabbed the phone and examined the screen. "Sanderson," he said and answered the call.
Daniel listened to the terse exchange.
"Understood. We'll be standing by," Munoz said, ending the call. "Get us back on the highway. We might be compromised."
Daniel scanned the upcoming street signs and saw that they would have the opportunity to turn off Terminal Road directly onto a northbound ramp.
"Compromised by whom?"
"The feds. Sanderson doesn't have all of the details yet, but the rules have changed in a big way. Something happened."
Daniel turned the SUV onto the northbound ramp and accelerated to match the sparse interstate traffic.
"Is this related to Atlanta?" Daniel asked.
"He's not sure. All he knows is that one of our operatives at the Brooklyn Center Hospital transmitted the federal arrest code, and he can't get through to his liaison at the National Counterterrorism Center. The cyber team tapped into NCTC called him at 8:17 to report that they had been dropped from the system. He's trying to reach some of his other contacts within D.C. Nobody's picking up."
"This isn't good. What's our exposure here?" Daniel said.
"Minimal. Fayed and Paracha are ghosts. Everything they arranged is sanitized. This car. The house. The FBI can trace us to this airport, but no further than that."
"I thought Sanderson and this guy Sharpe had agreed on this under the table?" Daniel said.
"They did. Maybe the director discovered the collaboration and pulled the plug on Sharpe. Any of a dozen things could have gone wrong, leaving us exposed."
"We have to assume the FBI knows that we're headed to Honesdale. Sharpe has no reason to keep that a secret if he's been relieved or incarcerated. For all we know, Sharpe fucked us over and the president is planning a full-scale invasion of the city. All I know is that we're not going anywhere near that airport, and we're sure as shit not setting foot in Honesdale until this is resolved."
"I'm not going to argue with that logic. There's a Walmart right outside of Scranton that should be open twenty-four hours. We can pick up new phones there," Munoz said.
"God bless Walmart."
Daniel's phone illuminated a few minutes into their drive north. He snatched it from Munoz.
"What the fuck went wrong?"
"One of these True America lunatics somehow gained access to the NCTC Operations Center and detonated a suicide vest," Sanderson said. "Pretty much wiped out the entire task force. A secondary bomb destroyed the servers. The FBI thinks Callie Stewart helped the bomber."