I foresaw some tank traps on the foreshore.
Grand Centraclass="underline" Terminal – by Terrence P. McCauley
JAMES HICKS HADN’T PLANNED ON KILLING ANYONE THAT MORNING.
In fact, his schedule was pretty light. Other than his daily check-in with his operatives, the only thing on his calendar was to blackmail a new asset into working for the University. Some finance geek who hadn’t covered his embezzlement as well as he’d thought. Bad luck for him. Good luck for Hicks. The man would either agree to work for Hicks or evidence of his greed would be sent to the client from whom he’d stolen: a nasty warlord in Eastern Europe with a penchant for dismemberment.
Hicks checked his watch when he reached the corner of 45th and Lexington. He’d been trained to be early for his appointments and he was early now. Lateness led to sloppiness and sloppiness got you killed. James Hicks had been in this line of work for a long time and planned on being in it much longer.
The meeting was scheduled to take place at the would-be asset’s office in the MetLife building on Park Avenue, just behind Grand Central Terminal. Plenty of time for Hicks to grab a cup of coffee at a place called Joe’s in the terminal before he ruined yet another man’s life.
He went through the lobby of the MetLife building and rode the escalator down to the main concourse of the terminal. There were plenty of other coffee places in midtown, but Hicks liked Joe’s strong, flavorful brew.
He liked the terminal even more than he liked Joe’s coffee and went there whenever he could. He loved the energy of the place. The hurried people. The connectivity between trains and subways and the buses and cabs outside. Tourists taking pictures of the old building; gawking up at the grandeur of the place while the cops and the people who worked there went about their business.
The agency known as the University had stationed Hicks in New York so long ago, he couldn’t remember living anywhere else, though he’d been posted in several places all over the world. He loved how New York purified old wounds through its energetic indifference to the problems of its citizens. The flow of traffic on busy streets offered instant absolution of past sins because everyone was too busy to care about what you’d done right or what you’d done wrong. The whole city lived in the present with a healthy contempt for the past and a guarded view of the future.
It was James Hicks’s kind of town.
Grand Central reminded him of why he still did this kind of work. It reminded him of the importance of it and such reminders kept him alive.
Hicks got off the escalator and entered the stream of people heading toward the Lexington Avenue entrance when he spotted the man who would ruin the rest of his day.
The man who might make his career.
There was nothing particularly remarkable about the man in question. He was neither good looking nor tall, well dressed nor shabby. He was just another unremarkable man of medium complexion and appearance, not all that different than the thousands of other people who pass through the terminal every single day.
People didn’t notice this man because they weren’t trained to spot him. But Hicks was. He knew this man was known by many names in many parts of the globe, but the one that stuck longest was Khan. He was one of the deadliest men alive and he was twenty feet away from him walking through Grand Central Terminal.
Hicks forgot all about coffee and his appointment in an hour and began following Khan. He noticed he was wearing a t-shirt and jeans, but wasn’t carrying a backpack or anything that might have a high-yield kill ratio. He was probably carrying a handgun, but that was to be expected.
Hicks had a.22 holstered in his waistband, but his most valuable weapon at that moment was his smartphone.
Khan’s common appearance had made it difficult for authorities all over the world to capture him. He could pass for Arab, Latin, Israeli, Italian, or any of the Baltic nations. The fact that he could easily slip into any of those languages made it even more difficult to spot him. He had no tattoos or particular habits that might trip him up and lead to his capture.
The only reason Hicks knew this man was Khan was because Hicks had seen him once. It had been five years ago when Hicks had been part of a team assigned to wipe out a terrorist cell in Kandahar. It was the kind of black bag op that didn’t make breaking news and no one made movies about. The kind of op that never officially happened. The kind of op men like Hicks spent their lives doing.
Hicks had been wounded in the assault, but saw one terrorist escape in the melee; clamoring up a concrete wall of the compound. Hicks’s gun had skidded just out of reach when he fell and the fleeing terrorist spotted him just as he’d reached the top of the wall.
He’d brought his AK-47 around and gauged the distance between them. Shooting the American would be worth it if he could kill him, but taking the shot could cost him his life if he missed. So the two men simply stared at each other – studying each other for what seemed like hours but, in reality was only seconds – until the ops team burst into the yard. By the time Hicks looked back to the top of the wall, the terrorist was gone, but his face was burned into his memory.
In the years following that night, he’d seen that face in intelligence bulletins from all over the world. He saw that face in the terminal now. Ahmed Khan.
He wondered why Khan hadn’t pulled the trigger. Hicks wondered if he himself would’ve taken the shot had his gun been closer. He thought he knew, but thinking and knowing were two different things.
Given Khan’s common appearance, Hicks knew he’d need official confirmation that this man was actually Khan before he killed him. Hence, the smartphone being his most important weapon at the moment.
Hicks walked quickly through the thick crowd, keeping his distance from Khan as he tried to get a decent enough angle to get at least a profile picture of the man. The terminal was always full of people taking pictures at all times of the day, so one more wouldn’t necessarily alert Khan.
But if Khan spotted him – and recognized him – the crowded train station could become a slaughterhouse.
Smartphone in hand, Hicks walked around a group of commuters trudging to work and made like he was taking a picture of the painted ceiling high above the concourse, but snapped a picture of Khan instead. If the terror leader knew his picture had been taken, he didn’t show it. Hicks watched Khan move well past him before he followed.
On the surface, Hicks’s device looked and acted like any other smartphone on the market. He could make calls, surf the web, even download popular apps.
But tapping on one particular app activated the personal camera on his phone, which quietly scanned his face and retina. Once his identity was proven, Hicks was prompted to enter another, longer passcode, which allowed him access to the most secure – and secret – wireless network in the world.
As he followed Khan, a simple screen opened on his phone offering a sparse menu of options. He selected “Identification,” which prompted him to select a file to upload. He selected the picture he’d just taken of Khan. It usually took the face-recognition software a minute or two before it identified a subject. Since Khan was one of the highest priority targets in the world, a section chief – maybe even the Dean himself – would be notified directly. Hicks would then receive one of three plain orders on his phone:
Cease and desist.
Investigate and report.
Terminate.
Hicks waited for one of these three orders to come in as he followed Khan down to the lower part of the terminal. He didn’t waste time trying to figure out where Khan was going or why. He just watched his target and waited for orders.