Davidson’s men then took out of the sealed vans the hidden supplies of ISIS-style weapons, primarily AK-47 rifles and Ruger pistols. They placed those weapons and spent bullet casings from them in the inert hands and near the bodies of the dead. As his people worked methodically through the well-rehearsed ruse of Plan C, Davidson ran down the corridor through which he had, less than forty-five minutes earlier, calmly walked with Gabriel Hauser. At that time Davidson had known exactly what would happen to Hauser.
Davidson walked deliberately to Silas Nasar’s body. He shot Nasar seven times. Wearing plastic gloves, Davidson put the Russian-made AK-47 in Nasar’s right hand.
All that remained of Plan C was for the man known as Roger Davidson to disappear, to slip into anonymity. He was in the back of one of the windowless vans when it emerged from the Holland Tunnel. He was in plainclothes. All of his other special team members were in the uniform and helmets of the NYPD Counterterrorism Unit.
No one on Canal Street, that southern border of Chinatown now teeming with oblivious Chinese immigrants, noticed Roger Davidson as he stepped quickly from the rear door of the van.
Andrew Carter stood in his exquisitely tailored suit in the middle of the stage in the small press room in Gracie Mansion. The stage was covered in black carpet, and behind him was a big, vivid American flag. He had rejected the idea of standing behind a podium with the presidential seal or a desk with the seal. He was now perfectly composed, convinced that the simple act of standing would convey better to the world that he was well and unhurt by the horrific explosion on First Avenue. And he had no notes and no prompters. A tiny microphone was attached to his lapel. Reporters were excluded from the room, just as they had been excluded from the mansion itself.
The president began, “As you can see, I am alive and well. I came here to see for myself the condition of this largest and most important urban center in the United States.
“Obviously the route of my travel was discovered by the ever-contracting remnants of the people who have been attempting to carry out a reign of terror here. Because of my presence, the brave men and women who traveled with me were the targets of yet another cowardly attack. But it was a desperate one, a man and a woman strapped with explosives. One was killed by a highly skilled sharpshooter. That was the woman. The man, too, was shot at the same time by another sharpshooter, but unfortunately the massive amount of explosives strapped to his body detonated. The cowardliness of this attack is demonstrated by the fact that he had placed himself next to a playground.
“My heart goes out to the brave men and women on motorcycles who accompanied me on this trip. Five of them are dead. The sixth is in a nearby hospital, where her condition is critical, but she is expected to survive her wounds. I know well all of these brave people. They protected me and the office I hold for years. More important, they were my friends.
“At the same time, my deepest sympathies are with the children and their parents, all of them totally innocent, who were trying to bring this city to its vital normalcy. We will soon release the count of the dead and wounded in the playground.”
Andrew Carter as he spoke moved slightly with the grace he had learned as a college and professional basketball player. They were slight movements, but fluid, natural. It was a Steve Jobs performance, unadorned, confident, and direct. He intended the movements to reveal that nothing had harmed him, that he was healthy and intact. “There is positive news. Thanks to the efforts of United States Homeland Security agents, thousands of brave United States soldiers, and the heroic counterterrorism tactics of the New York City Police Department, the tide has immensely and successfully turned against these terrorists. They have been weakened immeasurably, and, as to the few who are left, we know where they are and are hunting them down. They will soon pose no threat.
“Along with Mayor Roland Fortune, we will soon announce that this essential, and successful, lockdown of Manhattan is coming to an end. The mayor, although severely injured during the first explosions, has led this city through this crisis with his characteristic charisma and care.”
Andrew Carter paused. “Thousands of brave men and women have met and thwarted these attacks. Much of the credit for that goes to Gina Carbone, the commissioner of the police department of this great city.”
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
THE METROPOLITAN DETENTION Center was a surprisingly small building with a brown brick exterior. The MDC was built in the 1970s and it was anonymous, with no signs announcing its name or purpose. Only its narrow and widely spaced windows with wire meshing suggested from the outside that it might be a prison.
Internally it was an extraordinary building. Its official purpose as a prison was to act as a short-term and secure facility for three hundred men and as many as fifty women who were federal prisoners and who, because a judge had determined that they posed a risk of danger or a threat of flight, were denied bail. Anyone who was in MDC was not guilty; men and women were held there, often for months, because they had been indicted on serious federal crimes and not released on any form of bail while waiting for their trials.
MDC was attached by an intricate series of tunnels, suspended walkways and other outwardly invisible avenues to the three closely adjacent federal courthouses and to the adjoining building, the office of the United States attorney for the southern district of New York, so that the prisoners could easily and secretly be moved to the courthouses for appearances before judges or trials. As soon as a person was convicted, he or she was bundled out of the MDC and sent to one of the more than seventy regular prisons around the country that kept the thousands of people convicted of federal felonies.
There were traditional conference rooms in the MDC where lawyers could meet with their inmate clients. They were not comfortable rooms but they were well-known to the lawyers who used them. But there were a few other, entirely unknown rooms, even more medieval than the rest of the prison. They were known as the “rubber hose rooms” and only a few of the federal marshals who ruled MDC knew where they were. They were only the size of large closets.
And they were nothing like the more conventional conference rooms in the adjoining, far more comfortable U.S. Attorney’s office where Tony Garafalo had one day earlier met with the two government lawyers and the six or seven bemused federal agents. Instead, in this secret room, Tony Garafalo stood against one of the walls, his hands and feet shackled to the wall.
He waited in the almost total darkness for two minutes. Nothing like this, not even several weeks in solitary confinement at the Supermax prison in Colorado, had ever happened to him. And, in these two minutes, probably for the first time in his life, he felt fear.
Tony heard the three iron locks to the door slide in quick intervals from left to right. Gina Carbone entered the cell. He knew that only because for the briefest moment her tall shape formed a black silhouette against the empty dim hallway. She slid the iron door closed.
Gina turned on the small halogen flashlight she carried. She trained the beam, which was as bright as the sun, into his eyes.
Tony said, “Hey, babe, didn’t know you were into S and M.”
“Once a wiseass always a wiseass.”
“You talk too much.”
“Think so? I never said a word to you about my company business,” she answered. “Somehow you got into my cell phone and computer. Where did they teach you to get to be a computer genius? Not at Supermax, right?”