ROOFTOP
309 EAST 48TH STREET
What do you mean, you can’t get a helicopter in here?” demanded Mike Jaffe as he gripped his encrypted satellite phone so tight it threatened to crack. “That’s bullshit. I’m telling you right now, if you don’t find a way, then our angel’s feet are going to end up touching the ground.”
Jaffe listened for several moments to the yelling on the other end of his phone and replied, “Negative. They can come in black after nightfall and lift us out. If not, I’m going to make other arrangements. Do we understand each other?” With that, Jaffe hung up and tossed the sat phone to his number two in command, a tall, ruggedly built, twenty-five-year-old Marine sergeant named Brad Harper.
“No go on the evac?” asked Harper as he tucked the sat phone into the back pocket of his jeans.
“Apparently, they’re not yet one hundred percent convinced that the attacks are connected to our pal downstairs.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me. They’re the ones who informed us about the intercept in the first place. Al-Qaeda knows he’s here.”
“They know he’s in New York, we don’t know that they know he’s in this building.”
“So what are we supposed to do?”
“For the time being we stay put. An NYPD helicopter was just brought down by sniper fire, so now the air space above Manhattan is officially frozen until further notice.”
“Let’s go out by water.”
Jaffe shook his head. “NYPD, Port Authority, and Coast Guard craft have all come under heavy-caliber sniper fire as well on both the East River and the Hudson. They’ve also been ordered to pull back until further notice.”
“Then we’re not going to get any reinforcements.”
“It doesn’t look like it.”
“So what’s the plan?”
“We run this just the way we rehearsed it,” replied Jaffe. “Full battle dress and weld the doors shut on our floor.”
“And then?”
Jaffe looked at Harper and said, “And then we turn up the heat on our prisoner and get the information we need out of him before it’s too late.”