BALTIMORE, MARYLAND
Baltimore-Washington International Airport was the second embarkation point for the four Sikorsky UH-60M Black Hawk helicopters designated for the mission. The first was a closely guarded heliport at Marine Corps Base Quantico, which encompassed almost 75 square miles of forest in Prince William County, Virginia, and was also home to the FBI Academy, where the Bureau’s elite Hostage Rescue Team was stationed as a major tactical component of the Critical Incident Response Group. Optimized for rapid force delivery capabilities, each of the choppers had been boarded by twenty heavily armed HRT personnel in full combat garb. A pair of MH-6 Little Birds had then accompanied them to BWI for final deployment; these nimble, lightweight choppers would provide aerial recon and fire support when the Black Hawks reached their target.
Only 9 miles south of downtown Baltimore, BWI was an ideal staging point for the second-front unit, the official order for which was issued by FBI director Charles Cluzot under the direct authorization of the president. The SWAT teams were officially designated first front because they were already on-site. However, their sweep-and-secure ingress would take time. If they met resistance, they might not be able to provide the kind of RTA-Rapid Target Attack-ordered by the commander in chief.
Honed and practiced in a realistic city mock-up constructed deep in the Prince William County woodlands, the HRT’s swarm and penetration techniques relied on multiple elements acting in tight coordination: flooding the site with assault teams while snipers on adjacent rooftops-and gunners in so-called monkey harnesses riding the skids of the Little Birds-covered them from all sides.
The helicopters’ arrival at the convention center was logged at 6:23 p.m. EST. Within a minute of that time, the lead Black Hawk had already banked in low over the building, delivering a stream of CS powder to clear it of hostiles who might be on the rooftop, a necessary precaution even though none had been observed by the AW139 already on-site. The windless conditions were favorable for use of the CS, limiting dispersal to the target area and thus making it unlikely that civilians would be affected.
After a brief interval the chopper returned with the others, all four lowering to stationary hovers above both the new and old sections of the convention center complex. Then hatches opened, rope lines dropped from their hoist brackets, and the rappel teams made their descent onto the rooftops, eighty of them sliding down one after another in swift succession.
Using safety handrails as anchor points, they straddled their ropes and began their descent with a springing hop-skip, their backs straight, legs spread, bodies leaned outward from the sides of the building.
Meanwhile, radios crackling, the teams raced across the tar to previously identified access doors, breaching them with their rams.
In their dark gray uniforms, body armor, vests, helmets, and face shields, bristling with M16s and combat shotguns, tacs almost resembled warrior beetles to the pilots of the departing choppers as they packed into the service stairs and then hurried down toward the building’s fourth floor to begin their sweep.
Kealey was facing the window as the top-rappel team came sliding down in their harnesses, their boots flat against the side of the building. Kicking jagged edges of broken glass from around the steel window frame, a half dozen of them poured into the conference room in their tactical gear, machine guns leveled.
One of them shouted, “Toss your weapons onto the floor in front of me. Then put your hands up over your head!”
“We’re unarmed,” Kealey said. His hands were raised, and he used his toe to point to the MP5K on the floor. “Your sniper team in the church took this guy out. They can confirm.”
“Everyone in the room, raise… your… hands!”
The man had drawn the last three words out as a way of giving them added emphasis. He couldn’t have said them louder, since he was already yelling.
Kealey hadn’t expected his pronouncement to change ingress protocol. Nor this: “I’m Ryan Kealey. We sent the messages that brought you here.”
A man picked up Kealey’s gun. His face was invisible behind the black, skintight balaclava, which covered his face from the bridge of his nose down, and the goggles, which concealed the rest. He kept his weapon trained on Kealey.
With a reverse chop of his upraised forearm, one team leader signaled the other that this room was clear. He chopped forward to indicate to his unit to assume a file formation beside the door. The team leader who was staying behind had been talking into his throat mike. Finished, he walked over to Kealey. He did not remove his amber goggles or raise his balaclava.
“Who are you?” he demanded.
“Ryan Kealey-”
“Who are you with? ”
“She’s Company. I’m former,” Kealey said. He had forgotten, for a moment, the priorities in securing a hot zone. It didn’t matter what indigenous occupants were called, but where their loyalties lay. “We were here to attend the nursing dinner,” he said. “Look, there may be more gunmen in the room across the hall. These guys and some of the dead men on the steps are Eastern European. I don’t know why they’re here or who they work for. I do know they’ve threatened to kill all the hostages-”
As he spoke, he heard the familiar sizzle of flash-bang grenades. Not only was the M84 designed to blind and deafen the enemy, but it also sent the equivalent of an electric shock through the eyes and into the brain, scrambling all thought, while simultaneously hammering each side of the skull with what felt like a mallet. The fluid of the ear was so severely compromised by the explosion, it was almost impossible to remain upright. The result was that if any of the hostiles in the vicinity of the blast had been holding a gun to a hostage’s head, they would have been debilitated before they could fire. It would also have floored most of the hostages, keeping them below incoming gunfire. The two blasts were followed by the equally familiar pops of the M4 carbines the assault team had been carrying.
Six shots. There was no other gunfire. The ordeal was over.
“Please let us go there,” Allison said. “Our friend Julie Harper-”
“I’m sorry, ma’am. You have to remain here,” said the team leader.
“Or what?” she demanded.
Kealey answered before the team leader could. “Or they’ll cuff and book you.” He regarded the HRT officer. “The exhibition hall,” Kealey said. “I’m sure the SWAT team has reached it by now.”
“I can’t provide you with any information-”
“I’m not asking for any. I’m telling you,” Kealey said. “You’d be on your way down there if they hadn’t.”
The man shifted uncomfortably but said nothing.
“The president will want to know about the woman who was running the show there, Mrs. Julie Harper. Would you please get us clearance to check ASAP? It’ll make our lives a helluva lot easier-mine now and yours later.”
The tac studied Kealey for a long moment, then said into his throat mike, “Command, this is Griffith. I need a check on a Ryan Kealey. K, kilo…?”
Kealey spelled it for him, and the team leader spelled it back, adding the appropriate radio jargon for clarity.
Kealey didn’t blame the man for checking. But it reminded him why he had always been a solo operator and believed that looking into a person’s eyes told you everything you needed to know, and more than any file could possibly tell you.
Before turning to organize triage, the young man identified himself to Kealey as Special Agent London Griffith. Kealey didn’t ask about the name. Maybe over a beer one day he would. Right now he didn’t care. Griffith had finally removed his goggles, and he left Kealey and Allison standing where they were while medics arrived to check on the former hostages. Colin went with them.
He gave his aunt a hug and Kealey a handshake before going to the cots that were being brought into the corridor. The dead men had been covered with black vinyl sheets, but they could not be moved until a postmortem team arrived to photograph the scene and-for purely tactical reasons-analyze the effectiveness of the steeple takedown and the flash-bang assault. It was felt that providing care for the hostages would be better accomplished where there were no dead bodies and where the air didn’t smell of oily silica gel.
Kealey and Allison stood there in silence, holding hands. It was only an hour before that they were acting like tourists, chatting about fish, and looking forward to a relaxed evening and a little social triumph for their friend.
Now they didn’t know whether or not she was even alive.
Griffith returned after a few minutes. He was an African American, about thirty, with soft brown eyes and a scar across his right cheek. He wore a strange, uncomfortable look that Kealey recognized.
“Mr. Kealey, sir, you and Ms. Dearborn are cleared for escort to the exhibition hall,” he told them.
“Any word on casualties?” Kealey asked.
“They were described as considerable, sir,” Griffith said. “If you’ll follow Agent O’Neill, she will take you to the exhibition hall. After that, she will escort you outside the convention center.”
A young woman had walked up behind them. At Griffith’s command, she headed for the door. Kealey and Allison followed, still holding hands. Obviously, the matter had been booted up several levels-possibly to Jon Harper himself. They were to be permitted access and then gotten the hell out. Not for their safety, Kealey knew, but because he’d single-handedly done the job the FBI was supposed to have been handling. He was both a hero and an embarrassment. Kealey saw that in Griffith’s expression.
They crammed hastily into the stairwell, Kealey and Allison entering behind O’Neill, other tacs in her detachment falling in at the rear as the group made their way to the next floor, moving as one, a multi-headed organism, their footfalls striking a rapid, unechoing beat on the concrete steps.
The air had cleared somewhat, leaving a thin layer of white powder on the floor. It wasn’t ash; it was matter that had been pulverized by the blast. The heat inside the convention center had caused it to rise, forming the tester Kealey and Allison had passed through earlier. But now that power was being restored and the air-conditioning was back in various sectors, now that gravity was overcoming the thermal lift, the particles were dropping.
There were probably fragments of human beings in the powder.
On the upper landing, O’Neill halted briefly by the metal fire door. Kealey heard Allison snatch in a breath and tried not to betray his own apprehension, but he could feel it tighten his chest from the inside like an expanding metal ring. O’Neill shouldered open the door, Kealey following her through, into what he guessed was the pre-function room.
Kealey felt his stomach slide as he realized the damage up here was as bad as anything he’d glimpsed elsewhere. He heard Allison groan behind him. It was too late to tell her to turn away. Every sickening piece of the tableau was seared instantly into memory. The odor of charred plastic, rubber, and flesh would never be forgotten.
They stood side by side, looking at the blasted walls; the collapsed, dripping ceiling panels; the light fixtures dangling from scorched and blackened clumps of electrical wire; the broken glasses and bottles and pieces of tables, chairs, and other smashed and overturned furnishings that had been scattered around the cocktail area and ballroom. The microphone had melted on its stand and looked like ice cream that had pooled and been refrozen.
Kealey saw people lying on the slick, wet, debris-strewn floor, many of them dead, some with their bodies burned in spots to stiff, charred bone. From just inside the entrance it appeared the survivors outnumbered the fatalities, but whatever measure of comfort that gave Kealey was tempered by the sight of all the wounded: they were everywhere, bleeding, moaning, ripped apart. Many had probably been deafened, permanently, by the blast.
Crouched over them, their clothes torn and soiled, dozens of men and women were tending to the injured. FBI tacs were circulating throughout the room, after having made their entries through the windows and stairs. They were trying to assist as best they could. O’Neill’s detachment joined them.
Kealey felt Allison clutch his arm.
“Ryan, I see Julie,” she said, pointing.
The horror had so overwhelmed him, he had forgotten why he was here. It was one thing to see destruction abroad, in the third world, among people you didn’t know. This was a waking nightmare.
He followed her finger to a woman stretched out on the floor against one wall. A man was kneeling over her.
They made their way around O’Neill, quickly picking their way over and around the wreckage covering the floor. Partway over Kealey stepped on something soft, something that gave under his step-a hand. Just a hand. He kept going.
The man crouching beside Julie turned as he heard their approach, but he did not stop working.
Kealey crouched next to him. “She’s a friend,” he said. “We’re here to help.”
The man tilted his head sideways to the right. “Can’t hear on that side!” he said.
Kealey shifted to the man’s left, repeated what he had said.
“I’m Jose Colon, a doctor.” He snickered mirthlessly. “Good thing those SOBs attacked a medical dinner.”
Allison shuffled to his left. “You need to get it treated.”
“I will,” Colon said. “People who are bleeding go first.”
Allison offered him a strained approximation of a smile, while Kealey looked at his patient. Her eyes were shut, her blouse was shredded, and her arms and chest were a patchwork of slashes and puncture wounds. The side of her head was matted with blood from a long gash that ran from behind her ear to the top of her head. Colon was treating that now with bottled water and dabbing it with a piece of Julie’s blouse. There was a bloody length of material tied tight below her knee; two long, ragged wooden boards bracketed the leg.
The last two fingers of the woman’s left hand were gone. Colon had tied off the wound with another piece of blouse. It was saturated with blood, but the stain did not appear to be increasing.
“Mild concussion?” Allison asked, kneeling at the top of Julie’s head.
“I think so,” Colon said. “Are you a doctor?”
“Psychiatrist,” she replied.
“I gave her a GCS before I started on the leg,” he said. “She’s at two.”
“The Glasgow Coma Scale registers neural activity,” Allison explained to Kealey as she watched the doctor clean the wound. Two means reacts to painful stimuli and makes sounds.”
“That’s good?” he asked.
“Better than a one,” she replied.
“I treated the hand and leg first because of the bleeding. She’s got a compound fracture, but her vitals seem stable.”
Allison reached around and carefully lifted Julie’s wrist, feeling for a pulse. After a moment she laid it down. “Strong, all things considered.” She said to Kealey, “Obviously, you can’t know about internal injuries.”
“But we do need to find out,” Colon said. “I just wanted to stabilize her before they take her away. Can’t do much for this without suturing.”
“Look, I can finish here,” Allison told him. “Please go and get yourself seen to.”
Colon leaned back on his heels and nodded. With a final glance at his handiwork, he rose silently, like a wraith.
“Thank you,” Allison said after him.
He did not appear to have heard.
“I’m going to have to stitch this up,” Allison said. “See what you can get from the medics.”
“Give me a minute,” Kealey said, climbing awkwardly to his feet. His muscles were cramped and tired. The rest of him wasn’t too hot, either.
Allison waited, cleaning the wound as best she could. She used the tips of her fingernails to pluck splinters of glass from Julie’s flesh; they appeared to be the remnants of a faceted crystal goblet from someone’s table. It took some doing to work them out; they’d hit with force that was sufficient to penetrate, but not pierce, her skull. Fresh blood pumped from the wound as she pulled them free. Allison applied gentle pressure to the cuts as best she could, laying a ribbon of blouse fabric across them and placing her thumb across it.
A minute or so later, Kealey returned with the pack she’d seen an FBI man remove from his vest. The large white print on its black outer fabric read FIELD TRAUMA.
“I need an antiseptic and a fresh dressing, Ryan,” she said in a quiet voice.
Kealey crouched beside her. He unzipped the case, reached in, and produced a dressing roll and a packet labeled CELOX.
“I don’t see any thread, just-”
“What you’ve got there will work for now,” she interrupted. “Tear open the hemostatic packet.”
Kealey pulled off the top and handed it to Allison, who applied the granulated agent to the wound after carefully brushing away Julie’s hair. Hair that had been so carefully done earlier that day at the hotel salon. That was the last time they’d spoken. Julie had been anxious but excited about the way things were coming together…
The Celox had the effect of cauterizing the cuts without heat. As soon as the bleeding stopped, Allison pressed the gauze to the wound. It was self-adhesive and large enough to cover nearly the entire side of Julie’s head.
“It’ll do for now,” Allison said.
She looked up, and Kealey followed her gaze. O’Neill was standing behind him with two men and a collapsible gurney.
“We’ve been ordered to medevac her to GW,” she said.
“I’m coming with her,” Allison said.
“Yes, ma’am,” O’Neill replied. “In fact, we’ve just received instructions to that effect.” She regarded Kealey. “You too, sir.”
“I’m a civilian-”
“The president has requested it personally,” O’Neill replied. She grinned. “I was instructed to say that when you said what you did.”
Kealey grinned back. It felt good to smile, even at something stupid. “I’ve got a car in the garage here-”
“It will be taken care of,” O’Neill replied.
While they were talking, the gurney had been assembled and Julie carefully lifted onto it. Kealey excused himself to have a few words with Colin, who had made his way to the hall, and ten minutes later they were on board an FBI chopper, an intravenous saline drip in Julie’s arm, and a transfusion bag feeding blood into the other from a separate line. Although she’d experienced no respiratory difficulties at any point, oxygen was being provided through a breather as a routine precaution. The techs had gone through the checklist of vital signs and had determined her to be in serious but stable condition.
As the helicopter rose smoothly into the night, Kealey looked back at the spotlit disaster zone that had once been the Baltimore Convention Center. Smoke was still curling from several areas as firefighters pumped water into sections from which personnel had been evacuated. Crowds of locals and tourists were gathered beyond the extensive police barricades, and Kealey could see the reds of braking lights, and the glare of headlights, as traffic was backed up for miles.
The ripples of disaster, he thought. Whether the disaster was natural or man-made, the impact came in waves, short term and longer term, keeping people physically and psychologically destabilized. The effect on the individual and on society was aggressively exponential, far surpassing the destructive force of the event itself.
Kealey sat back in the fold-down seat, let his head lean back against the gently vibrating headrest. There was nothing he could do about the big picture. His job had always been to focus on the triggers. Even now, his forensic soul was sifting through the rubble. As Allison looked down at the men who were redressing Julie’s leg, he shut his eyes and replayed everything he knew.
The hostiles had been composed of Eastern European and Middle Eastern personnel. Probably the bombers as well. These were suicide attacks, from the look of it. Kealey had noticed what appeared to be the remnants of a body near the scorched epicenter of the ballroom blast. The dark blast radius and destructive swath suggested the attack had come near the entrance, not near the podium. Someone was hanging to the rear, probably near the open bar, where a suitcase or shopping bag could have been concealed.
How many people were involved? he wondered. The entire event had consisted of two waves of coordinated attacks: three bombings followed by the hostage taking. There were at least three bombers, multiple hostage takers, and who knew how many people in support roles, individuals who had not been apprehended.
It was big-at least the size of the September 11 attacks. How did something of that magnitude, with so many moving parts, get past the many watchful eyes of United States intelligence?
He didn’t want to contemplate the logical answer. It was one of those worst-case scenarios that had always troubled his bosses at the Company.
What had scared them most was not the foreign jihadists or the homegrown terrorists, but what they had come to refer to as the Fort Hood scenario, named after the attack that killed twelve and injured twenty-nine in November 2009, when an army psychiatrist turned a. 357 Magnum and an FN Five-seveN semiautomatic on his fellow soldiers.
An inside job.
Kealey was keen to know what the president and his team had uncovered. But he knew from experience that it was probably nothing that would bring them close to understanding the magnitude of the support system that was responsible for Baltimore.
And was probably planning something else.