Tracy Hastings spoke into the microphone hidden beneath her collar and said, “Contact. Probable target thirty yards and closing. Mid-forties, dark hair, wearing dark trousers and a black button-down shirt.”
“Is this our guy, Tracy?” asked Harvath from his position on the other side of the Denesmouth Arch.
“He doesn’t look very Middle Eastern-maybe Spanish or Italian, but I can’t say for sure.”
“Is he carrying anything?”
“Just a newspaper.”
“How’s he carrying it?” said Harvath.
“Under his left arm.”
“Can you see his hands?”
“Negative. They’re folded across his chest. One looks like it might be actually inside the paper.”
That was enough for Harvath. He signaled Herrington and said into the radio, “I need you to tag him for Bob and then see if he’s got any trailers. You know what to do. Be careful.”
“Roger that,” replied Hastings. Getting up from the bench she had been sitting on, Tracy headed south on the Wien Walk toward the suspect. With a concerned look on her face, she removed her cell phone from her pocket and began sweeping it through the air as if she were trying to get a signal.
As she neared the man in the dark shirt and trousers, she stopped and did a complete three-sixty, holding the phone high in the air. Though she pretended to be too wrapped up in finding cell service to notice, she could feel the man’s eyes all over her. It wasn’t the same feeling she got when people stared at the scars on her face. This was something completely different. It gave her chills, but she had tagged him, and right now Herrington would be tracking him with his rifle.
She kept walking, and once she was convinced no one was following the man, she cradled the cell phone against her shoulder and spoke into her collar, “He’s alone.”
Hastings waited for a confirmation that Harvath had received her message and when none came, she repeated it again. Still, there was nothing. “Scot, can you read me?” she asked. When there was still no response, she knew something very bad had happened.
“Drop your weapons and keep your hands where I can see them,” said a voice from behind.
Both Harvath and Cates did as they were told.
“The man on the bench,” the voice said. “Your buddy in the space blanket. Tell him to come over here.”
“Take it easy,” replied Harvath. “We’re legit.”
“Do it,” commanded the voice.
Harvath heard the unmistakable click of a pistol hammer being cocked and so he signaled Paul Morgan to get up and join them.
When Morgan approached, their captor ordered him to drop his weapons and get his hands up. Harvath nodded his head and Morgan reluctantly complied, dropping his machine pistol.
There was a crashing through the brush ten yards away and they all turned to see Bob Herrington forced onto the path by a second NYPD mounted patrol officer who had found him on the arch.
The cops had ruined their ambush. Their target had picked up on the commotion and was now walking away in the other direction. Harvath had to do something. “I’m with the Department of Homeland Security. We’ve got a potential terrorist subject nearby-”
“On the ground-now,” replied the cop.
The man was very jumpy. Stumbling upon a bunch of heavily armed, plain-clothed people hiding in Central Park right after a string of devastating terrorist attacks was extremely serious. Harvath needed to tread very carefully.
“I’ve got my badge in my pocket,” he said. “Nobody wants any trouble here, okay? I’m just going to reach for my wallet.”
“You’re not reaching for anything. This is the last time I’m going to say it,” commanded the officer as his partner radioed for backup. “Everybody on the ground-now.”
“You’re interfering with a highly sensitive counterterrorism operation.”
“I don’t know what the hell we’ve stumbled onto here and until I do, you’re going to do as I say.”
Harvath had no choice but to comply. “Listen,” he said as he lay down on the ground. “There’s a man retreating along the pathway-dark hair, mid-forties, with dark pants and shirt. He looks Spanish or Italian. That’s who we were waiting for. He may be connected to today’s bombings. We need to apprehend him for questioning. Please.”
The officer looked down at Harvath and then over at his partner. “Frank, you wanna take a look?”
“Sure,” replied the partner. “Why not?”
Before Harvath could object, the officer’s horse crunched through the brush and clattered out onto the paved walkway, its hoofbeats echoing like machine-gun fire off the stone walls of the Denesmouth Arch.
“You see anything?” yelled the first officer.
“Nope,” replied the partner, who then said, “Wait a second, yeah I think I do. Wait here. I’ll be right back.”
Spurring his horse into a trot, the partner rode along the pathway and disappeared beneath the arch.
“You’re making a mistake,” said Harvath.
“First you want us to apprehend the guy, and now we’re making a mistake?” said the cop in his thick New York accent. “What’s wrong with you? You retarded or something?”
“He didn’t want you to go, dumb-ass,” replied Herrington. “He wanted us to.”
“Watch your mouth, smart guy.”
“Your partner’s going to scare him off,” said Morgan.
“Or worse,” added Cates.
“Okay, everybody shut up,” demanded the mounted patrolman. “You. Homeland Security,” he said as he pointed his pistol at Harvath. “I want you to very slowly use your left hand to remove your creds from your pocket. Remember, very slowly.”
Suddenly, there was a burst of activity over the officer’s radio as his partner yelled, “The suspect is fleeing. West towards Fifth Avenue and the Sixty-fourth Street exit. One-Baker-Eleven in pur-”
The transmission was cut short by the unmistakable crack of gunfire.
The officer who had remained behind to watch Harvath and the other three men radioed shots fired to his dispatcher and then said, “One-Baker-Eleven, come in. Frank, talk to me. What the hell is going on?”
“Here,” said Harvath as he flipped open his wallet and revealed his ID. “We’re legit. Let us up.”
The cop was torn. On one hand his partner could be in grave danger, and on the other all he could think about was how Timothy McVeigh had been captured by an alert highway patrolman shortly after the Oklahoma City bombing. While everyone had been looking for Arabs, that officer had been smart enough to realize that McVeigh and the circumstances under which he was stopped warranted a closer look. It was just as true here. The cop couldn’t let these people go, ID or no ID. “No dice. Everybody stay where you are.”
Harvath couldn’t believe it. “Our suspect’s getting away and your partner could be dying or dead, for all you know.”
“One-Baker-Eleven, this is One-Baker-Twelve. Talk to me, Frank, God damn it. Talk to me.”
Harvath was about to appeal to the officer again, when a voice came over the earpiece attached to his Motorola. He listened to it for several seconds and then said to the patrolman, “I’ve shown you my ID and I’m going to stand up now. If you want to shoot a fellow law enforcement officer, that’s up to you, but I’m not going to lose that suspect.”
“I swear to God,” said the cop, “if you move I will shoot you.”
“I don’t think so,” replied Harvath as he slid his hands off his back and placed them palms-down like he was about to do push-ups.
“This is your last warning!” barked the patrolman as he steadied his weapon and took aim.
Suddenly, the well-trained police horse reared up on its hind legs. The officer was taken completely by surprise as Tracy Hastings’s deftly wielded tree limb connected with his chest and knocked him from his mount. To the man’s credit, he managed to hold on to his weapon, but it made little difference.
Cates got to the patrolman before he could find his feet and quickly stripped him of his gun.
“Cuff him,” said Harvath as he approached the startled horse, grabbed the reins, and swung up into the saddle.
“What the hell are you doing?”
“I’m going after our suspect.”