She laughed. Young Ron Pulaski had come into his own under Rhyme’s tutelage. A moment later he was back with her. ‘I don’t know what the problem is, Amelia. They’re— Wait. I’m getting something now.’ The voice faded again. ‘Okay, okay.’
Looking around the streets. Innocence, she thought again. Businesspeople, shoppers, tourists, kids, musicians, hawkers, hustlers, street people — the astonishing, unique mix of humanity that is New York City.
And under their feet, somewhere, one of the worst terror attacks in New York City history was being carried out.
But where?
‘Okay, Amelia, DEP has something for us. They’ve cross-referenced flow rates — I don’t know. Anyway, I have a location. An access room a quarter mile south of the Tunnel Three valve station. It’s at Forty-Fourth and Third. There’s a manhole about fifty feet to the east of the intersection.’
‘I’m close.’
She was already popping the clutch and skidding away from the parking space in the same way she’d arrived, though this time leaving the blue smoke behind her. She cut off a bus and a Lexus. They might have collided, avoiding her. She kept right on moving, headed south. Insurance issue, not her issue.
‘I’ll be there in one minute.’ Then corrected: ‘Okay, two.’ Because she was forced up onto the sidewalk again and braked to nudge a falafel cart out of the way.
‘Fuck you, lady.’
Unnecessary, she thought, since he’d escaped light; she might’ve knocked the cart on its ass. Had considered it.
Back on the street with a grind of metal versus curb. Then she was speeding on once again.
After Lincoln Rhyme had concluded that the unsub and his domestic terror group were planning on blowing up the water mains, he’d grown thoughtful. Then dissatisfaction bloomed in his face.
‘What?’ Sachs had asked, noting his eyes straying out the window, his brow furrowed.
‘Something doesn’t feel right about this whole thing.’ He zoned in on her. ‘Yes, yes, I detest the word “feel”. Don’t look so shocked. The conclusion’s based on evidence, on facts.’
‘Go on.’
He’d considered further, in silence, and then said, ‘The battery-bombs are packed with gunpowder. You know guns, Sachs, you know ammunition. You think that’d blow up iron pipes the size of the water mains?’
She’d thought about this. ‘True. If they’d really wanted to rupture the pipes they’d use shaped charges. Armor piercing. Of course they would.’
‘Exactly. He wanted us to find the bombs. And — with the Bible verses — wanted us to believe the target was the water mains. Why?’
They’d answered nearly simultaneously. ‘To shut down the supply.’
Shutting off the water flow by closing the main valves would be only temporarily disruptive.
‘Who cares? That couldn’t be the motive,’ Rhyme had said.
Then he’d offered: But what would make sense was to trick the city into shutting off the supply to lower the pressure. Which would allow their unsub to drill into the pipe and introduce a poison into the line. He’d then plug the hole; Rhyme had reminded the team about the welding material evidence found at the Chloe Moore crime scene.
And the poison, Rhyme had concluded, would be botulinum — since they’d found traces of the material from cosmetic surgical supply houses and the Botox syringes. Rhyme had thought the plastic surgery evidence meant their unsub was planning on changing his appearance. But it was possible too that the purpose of the break-in was to steal botulinum, whose spores were maintained by medical operations specializing in plastic surgery products and supplies. He’d decided botulinum had to be the poison; no other toxin was powerful enough to cause widespread devastation.
Rhyme had called his FBI contact, Fred Dellray, and City Hall and explained what he suspected. The mayor and police chief had in turn ordered the DEP to announce that it was shutting down the water supply for a few hours. In fact, they kept the system fully operational — which because of the pressure would prevent anything from being introduced into the pipes. The DEP would use the grid sensors to pinpoint any leaks, telling the NYPD exactly where the unsub had cut into the line.
As she sat impatiently behind the wheel of her car, the engine growling, Sachs’s phone rang once more. It was Rhyme. ‘Where are you, Sachs?’
‘Almost at the spot DEP gave us.’
‘Listen to me.’
‘What else would I be doing?’ she muttered. And concentrated on avoiding an idiot of a bicyclist.
Rhyme continued, ‘I’ve just been on the phone with the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta. We conferenced — forgive the verb — with Homeland Security and the bio-chem weapons people at Fort Detrick. It’s worse than I thought. Don’t go into the access room. We’re getting a tactical hazmat team together.’
‘I’m here, Rhyme. Now. I can’t just sit around and wait. The unsub’s right underneath me.’
She pulled the muscle car up on the sidewalk, scooting pedestrians out of the way. They complied; she looked far too fierce to argue.
Rhyme continued, ‘I just realized that this isn’t ordinary botulinum.’
‘Now, that’s a phrase you don’t hear every day, Rhyme.’
‘It’s been modified to be chlorine-resistant. That’s why we found the undiluted hypochlorous acid — what he was using to alter the strain. We have no idea how potent it is.’
‘I’ll be wearing face mask and coveralls.’ She ran to the back of her car, popped the trunk and yanked out her crime scene kit.
‘You need full biohazard gear,’ he protested.
She hit speaker, set the phone down and called, ‘The unsub knows we haven’t cut the supply yet — the water’ll still be spurting out of the hole he drilled. He’s waiting for the valves to close but he’s not going to wait very long. He’ll rabbit, with who knows how much of that shit.’
‘Sachs, listen. This isn’t arsenic or snakeroot. You don’t have to drink it or eat it. One ten-thousandth of a gram in a mucous membrane or wound’ll kill you.’
‘Then I won’t pick my nose or scrape my knee. I’m going in, Rhyme. I’ll call when I’ve cleared the scene and got him in metal.’
‘Sachs—’
‘For this one I need to go in quiet,’ she said firmly and clicked disconnect.
CHAPTER 65
Amelia Sachs easily found where the unsub had gone underground: the manhole on 44th Street, near Third, which Pulaski had told her about.
She dug the tire iron out of the trunk of her Torino and used it to muscle the heavy metal disk up and then managed to push the cover to the side. She aimed her Glock into the pitch-black hole. She peered down, hearing a powerful hissing noise — the leaking pipe, she assumed. She holstered her weapon.
Well, let’s get to it. Go and go fast.
When you move, they can’t getcha …
Thanks to the recent medical procedures, she now felt lithe as a thirteen-year-old as she turned and began down the ladder.
Thinking: I’m in bright white coveralls, lit from above and behind.
A perfect shooting solution for him.
One way to put it. The other was: sitting duck.
Climbing into hell. Practically sliding down the rails as she’d seen sailors do on some TV submarine movie, going from deck to deck.