“Any sign of him yet?” I asked Mike. “Any response to Scully’s ‘give it up’ message?”
“Yeah, there’s a sign of him all right. They just found two pipe bombs, planted directly underneath Big Timber. That fancy old private varnish was about to be blown to bits.”
FORTY
I left Zoya Blunt with Yolanda Figueroa, the Metro-North policewoman, and hurried out of the office with Mike, jogging down the staircase to the lower concourse. All the shiny black wrought iron departure gates were closed and locked, except for the one farthest off to the eastern end of the terminal.
The officers were from so many different commands that the mixes of uniforms and military outfits and agents in suits was almost overwhelming.
Rocco Correlli and Keith Scully were standing with several men I didn’t recognize. Mike elbowed through the group, and I followed in his wake.
“I thought she went home,” Scully said to Mike, pointing at me.
“May I speak for myself, Commissioner? I’m working for you.”
“Coop’s good,” Mike said. “She’s getting nuggets out of the Zoya girl.”
“Pipe bombs,” Scully said. “Now I’ve got to clear cops out of here while the dogs nose around to see whether there are any more.”
Pug McBride was walking around the circumference of Big Timber. “I think it was just a subterfuge.”
“Big word, Pug.”
“I don’t even know what it means, Chapman. It’s what the Bomb Squad guys said.”
“Are they here?” I asked.
“Been and gone. Took out the first two bombs that were under this train and they’re being bused up to Rodman’s Neck,” Rocco said. “We’ve obviously engaged Mr. Blunt, but he planted blanks this time.”
“Blanks?”
“Al-Qaeda has an online program. ‘Build a Bomb in the Kitchen of Your Mom.’”
“Seriously?”
“I’m afraid so. Blunt must have downloaded the instructions, Alex, but didn’t have time to make these operative. It would have been pretty tough for him to get past all the devices inside the terminal that sniff for explosives, not to mention this slew of dogs we’ve assembled.”
“How did you find these,” I asked, “if not dogs?”
“Trainmen were readying to move Big Timber on its way. Spotted them on the tracks.”
Pug pulled up a snapshot on his cell. “Bits and pieces from old clocks, a rope line of Christmas tree lights, scrapings from match heads, and leftovers from a hardware store. My tenth grader’s more dangerous than this with his chemistry set.”
“Let’s hope so.” Scully looked grim as he turned away from the platform. “I’ve got too many men inside there to take chances that Blunt’s not luring us in towards bombs that actually work. We’ll clear some of the guys out to the street for a while and leave the K-9 patrols to go through the place.”
Mike and I started to retrace our steps as I told him what Zoya Blunt said about Nik after he left the room.
“I can buy the lone-wolf thing,” he said. “I’ve just spent a month studying terrorists and this doesn’t fit any of the patterns.”
“But the feds-?”
“The FBI defines terrorism as having political motivation. That’s it. It’s the Arab Spring; it’s Hezbollah; it’s what’s happened in Syria. Domestic terrorism,” Mike said, “is more likely a result of psychopathology than politics.”
“I never thought of it that way.”
“John Hinckley tried to assassinate a president of the United States, not because of Reagan’s political views, but to impress Jodie Foster. Think of the Boston Marathon bombers.”
I couldn’t remember any day, since 9/11, that I had been so heartbroken and felt so helpless as when I watched the aftermath of the bombing on television. Many of my Vineyard friends were running that race, and I scoured the crowd looking for familiar faces. The random loss of life-and the horrific injuries-were devastating.
“The Russian-born brothers who thought they were jihadists?”
“There’s not a shred of evidence that they were, Coop. They were rampage killers, is all. Losers. Mega-losers. They could have just as easily targeted a shopping mall or a crowded movie theater as they did the marathon.”
Mike still wore his Boston Strong T-shirt to Yankees games and cheered the great victory-despite his fierce spirit of rivalry-of the Red Sox winning the pennant the year of the bombing.
“And we don’t have many shopping malls in Manhattan,” I said.
“So why not Grand Central Terminal?” Mike asked. “The world’s sixth-greatest tourist attraction. That ought to call a bit of attention to himself.”
We had crossed the lower concourse and mounted the staircase, headed back to the stationmaster’s office. At the top of the steps, we came to a standstill.
Scully must have given orders to move scores of the officers back out onto the streets while the K-9 teams sniffed for traces of explosives. Cops were trying to find their partners, National Guardsmen were looking to regroup with their teams, military men and women were using walkie-talkies to communicate. The terminal floor looked like rush hour on steroids.
“So Scully doesn’t want to alert Nik Blunt that he’s worried about the possibility of more bombs,” Mike said, shaking his head. “He’s not announcing the orders to evacuate on the loudspeaker. He’s just creating a little chaos.”
“You don’t approve.”
“I don’t. My bet is Blunt is in a position to be watching all this from some secluded vantage point that he knows far better than we do.”
I scanned the enormous space. I took in the entire concourse, which was slowly emptying of its uniformed crowd. I looked above us, both east and west, to the massive walls of windows-towering sixteen stories over the terminal floor-and remembered the walkways that connected them to offices in each corner of the building.
“Bombs?” I asked.
“I don’t think there are any more. I think it’s part of Blunt’s mind game with us.”
“But the Boston Marathon brothers-”
“They actually had a mother with a kitchen, Coop. A place to put their bombs together. This hump lives on the street. Or in a tunnel, right near the mole he killed.”
“So what are you worried about?”
“Guns. How many guns Blunt has with him. Handguns, like his sister saw. Automatic rifles,” Mike said, also eyeballing the enormous terminal from top to bottom.
“But he slit the throats of his victims,” I said. “He didn’t shoot them.”
“Yeah, and you don’t work for NorthStar unless you can hit a moving target from a speeding vehicle.”
We were waiting for the scattering troops to clear.
“You’ve got to think of the catalysts for radical behavior,” Mike said.
“War College stuff?”
“Yeah. There are obvious triggers that incubate this kind of behavior. On the economic side, a guy without a job and no means to support himself. Socially, a guy with the perception that he’s alienated from everyone else. Personally, the death of someone very close to him-and Blunt’s witnessed the death of his younger brother and the father he idolized, as well as his mother’s mental deterioration.”
“And he knows he’s got the same disease that ravaged her,” I said. “So he’s a poster boy for being radicalized, even if it isn’t political.”
“But every bit as dangerous as if his cause was a jihad.”
We turned the corner behind the staircase and I saw Yolanda Figueroa’s partner standing outside the stationmaster’s office. He spoke first.
“Ms. Cooper. I’ve been waiting for you. Commissioner Scully wants me to take you back upstairs to the situation room.”
“What about Yolanda?”
“She’s already gone up there with Ms. Blunt.”
I looked at Mike.
“The sister was refusing to leave until her brother’s in custody. She’s afraid because he knows where to find her. The commissioner figures she might be useful in coaxing him out.”