BUCHANAN, NEW YORK
It was called the Indian Point Energy Center because nuclear power plant had an unfashionable connotation that summoned images of Chernobyl and Fukushima. In operation since September 1962, the facility had undergone many upgrades since then, some in response to geological concerns, others as a result of terrorism 38 miles to the south, in New York City.
The red buildings with their yellow-golden domes were a familiar and inherently ominous sight to local residents. Despite assurances from Entergy Corporation, which owned the facility, the truth was that no nuclear power plant could ever be made entirely safe.
Though the plant had received the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s top safety rating, and there was a National Guard base a mile away, Alexander Hunt had read the reports from the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation and Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory findings that the power plant was nonetheless vulnerable to earthquakes and megaton-level attacks. With the sophisticated radiation detection systems attached to any nuclear plant, no one was anticipating anyone being able to smuggle even a well-protected nuke into the vicinity.
Hunt had also read a 2003 report prepared for then governor George Pataki, which noted that radiological response systems were inadequate to protect the citizens of three states from radiation that could be released from Indian Point in a worst-case scenario. Yasmin’s mission was to be a one-time hit. This one would be a lingering and constant reminder that the Muslim world represented an ongoing and inevitably catastrophic danger. The sooner they were dealt with, the quicker the world could move from the present Dark Age.
The runabout entered Haverstraw Bay, which carried them northwest around the promontory that preceded the plant. There were other boats moving through the area, some of them pleasure vessels, others patrol ships on alert because of the events in New York. As long as Hunt kept them moving north, they would be fine. No one would think to stop a vessel that had already passed by the facility.
The facility was on the northeastern side of the large outcrop of land; the first part of it that became visible was the white smokestack with its distinctive red bands. It sat between the three domes.
Like an ace of clubs, Hunt thought as the entire complex rolled past. He had instructed Samson to take them to the western side of the river, where 202 broke off from Old Ayers Road, the route that ran along the Hudson. He would fire the rocket from that point, and they would move farther up the river to West Point. That was where Dr. Samson would leave and a heroic FBI officer would shoot the monstrous Dr. Gillani. She was sitting placidly beside him, playing absently with a drawstring on the Windbreaker she had donned against the brisk river breeze. A cloud cover had rolled in, and the wind had a bit of a nip. The scientist was probably trying to figure out how things had gone wrong with Yasmin Rassin. Maybe they hadn’t. It was possible that Bishop or Kealey had caught up with her at One West, prevented her from completing her mission. That was why they needed two nukes. As with the rest of her mission, Yasmin was there to keep the authorities moving, distracted, focused on someone who was more or less a sideshow. The irony was that all those people she had chased from Manhattan with her sniping- all of them would be even more vulnerable to the radiation cloud that would spew from the reactors. Most of them were closer now, in their suburban homes.
“Any place in particular suit you?” Samson asked.
Hunt looked over at the shore. “That cluster of trees,” he said, pointing to a row of oaks along the shore. “We’ll tie up there.”
He needed the cover of the canvas top, but Hunt wanted the boat to be secured when he fired. There were yachts and motorboats moving mostly north along the river, along with the private security boat hired by the plant, which ran by every ten minutes or so. He didn’t want the wake of one of those to cause him to miss one of the domes. The blast was guaranteed to kick down the door, but only if it landed squarely.
Samson maneuvered the runabout toward the shore.
“Wait until the security boat has passed,” Hunt said, watching as the black and white speedboat sliced by, close to the opposite shore. He didn’t catch the glint of sunlight off binoculars, but that didn’t mean the men on board weren’t watching. If something had happened to Yasmin, the NYPD might have put out an alert to watch out for another nuke. They might even be told to watch out for a rogue FBI agent, though he wouldn’t be expected to announce himself. A crew of three agents would probably get a pass.
If not, then a security unit would die, Hunt thought.
Samson powered down the runabout as he nosed toward shore. The current carried it sideways, and he brought them to a low sandstone cliff. Branches hung over the water. Samson took the towline that was attached to the bow ring and slung it over a limb. Hunt went to the back of the cockpit.
Excitement burned in his belly.
While Samson took the spare fuel and filled the tank for a rapid getaway-and to provide a reason for them being there, in case anyone looked over-Hunt went to the open area of the cockpit and picked up the rocket launcher. He knelt, as if in prayer, as he raised it to his shoulder.
“Let me know when you’re ready,” he told Samson.
“It’ll be a minute,” the scientist told him.
There was no one near enough to stop him. He smiled. They had done it.
This was going to happen.
Kealey was a restless, unhappy passenger.
It was a rule of the field that, in the absence of intel, staying put was a good idea. The operative got a chance to know his or her immediate vicinity, find the strengths and weaknesses, plan a quick-exit strategy if necessary. Even though the enemy might know where to find him or her, so did allies or extraction teams. For Kealey, it wasn’t the chopper sitting over the George Washington Bridge that gnawed at him. It was not having intel flowing in.
He had contacted Andrews, who had the National Reconnaissance Office turn their space eyes on the river. They could see boats in the breaks of cloud cover. But the angle of the Taurus 9 geosynchronous satellite gave them only the east side of the river, the side with the power plant. It would take time to move another set of eyes into place. The sporadic cloud cover didn’t help.
“What about the plant?” Kealey asked Perlman. “They’ve got to have cameras on the river.”
“They do,” the intelligence officer replied. “Access code changes daily. I’m trying to get it, while my tech team is working to hack it. One way or another, we’ll get in. Just may take some doing.”
Kealey shook his head. Goddamn bureaucracy. It was one reason he got out of this game. You hire people to do a job, let them do it. Meanwhile, one of their trusted insiders, Assistant Director Alexander Hunt, had turned rotten and was about to blow them a new “mole hole,” as the CIA called it. The big damage radius caused by someone with an all-access pass.
Kealey looked out the windshield, saw moisture rippling from the middle to the top of the sloping glass. It was condensation from the clouds just above.
“Is rotor wash doing that?” Kealey asked.
“No, sir,” Sagal replied. “That gets deflected around us. That’s a southeasterly air movement.”
Kealey’s heart was running at full throttle. You hire people to do a job, let them do it, he thought again. “Mr. Sagal, let’s head up to Indian Point.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah. The wind is blowing toward the city. Toward Newark. Toward all of Westchester County and part of Connecticut. If I were a bad guy, I’d want killer doses of radiation riding that stream.”
“If we do that-”
“We leave the city open. I know.”
Nothing more was said. Sagal nosed into the wind and headed north.
Kealey watched the river on the monitor next to his station. There was a built-in mouse so he could scroll the nose camera, zoom in or out, look ahead. He had the printout of the boats in his lap, watching for any of them. He thought he saw one of the yachts, checked it on the monitor, did not see anything that suggested either great haste or a weapon. He did not see Hunt on deck, or a porthole that would accommodate a rocket launcher without blowing out the inside of the vessel. He didn’t think the AD was prepared to die for this.
“I’ve got you into the IP security camera,” Perlman said. “Not legally, but we’re in. Sending it over.”
“Thanks.”
Kealey was looking at a view of the river from a slightly elevated point. The camera was either on one of the domes or the smokestack. It was slowly panning north to south, then back again.
“I don’t suppose we’ve hijacked the zoom capability,” Kealey said.
“Afraid not. But if you see something you want to look at, we might be able to do that from here.”
Kealey watched the screen. Perspiration was dripping into his eyes. He blinked it away, bent closer to the screen. “Slow” had never been so frustrating. He saw trees. He saw rust-colored rocks. He saw river and boat traffic, a security vessel…
“Whoa. Can you grab this image?”
“Yes.” Perlman hit a button, froze the screen. “Enlarge it?”
“Yeah. You see-”
“The blue runabout tied to the branch.”
“FBI jackets,” Kealey said. “Magnify on the woman sitting in the cockpit.”
Perlman did so.
“Her torso,” Kealey said.
The picture blurred, then sharpened. It wasn’t perfectly clear, but it was enough to see what he wanted: she wasn’t wearing a holster, shoulder or hip.
“She’s not FBI,” Perlman said. “And that canvas top… perfect cover.”
Kealey did not have to give the order. Sagal pushed the helicopter ahead as Kealey and Perlman went back to the live view.
“I’m going to call this in,” Perlman asserted.
“No!” Kealey barked.
“Mr. Kealey, they have people on-site-”
“If anyone approaches him, he will fire. He has to think he’s safe until we’re in range.”
“HQ is going to ask where we’re racing. We’re not exactly off the grid,” said Sagal, stating the obvious.
“Don’t answer,” he said.
“That’s not going to work,” Sagal told him.
“We don’t have a choice! ” Kealey insisted. “You tell them, they tell Indian Point, and hired-hand security charges in. Unless they’re going to gun this guy down, he-”
The conversation was cut short by a dinging sound.
“That’s him,” Perlman said gravely. “The weapon’s been activated.”
There was no more talk. Kealey had a sense of motion like nothing he’d ever experienced, not even in an F-16. The cockpit of a fighter was aloof from the air, the elements. This helicopter was pushing against that barrier, slamming it hard, not letting the air roll around a streamlined design.
“I need the OICW,” Kealey said.
Perlman looked at him.
“We’ve got seconds, not minutes,” he said. “Please.”
The officer handed him the weapon. Kealey threw off the safety, kept it pointed down. The contours of the Hudson shores were winding past, like separately undulating snakes. He saw the domes of the plant. The western bank curved in a way that did not allow him to see the site from the surveillance camera.
“Take us down,” Kealey said.
The chopper dived forward. Kealey put a hand on the door. The power plant was coming into view.
That also meant Hunt couldn’t see them, though he’d hear them approaching. Hopefully, he would be too focused on his target, on waiting for the go-ahead signal from the rocket launcher…
“As soon as that boat comes into view, you’re going to have to hit the brakes and turn me toward it,” Kealey said.
“Don’t open the door till I do that,” Sagal said.
“Yeah.” If Kealey thought that by flying from the chopper, he could stop Hunt, he would gladly take the flier.
“He’s hot in ten… nine… eight…,” Perlman said.
They were about a half mile downriver and 1,000 feet too high.
“ Push it! ” Kealey shouted.
“Seven… six…”
Kealey felt the harness dig into his chest as the helicopter screamed forward. It didn’t matter if Hunt knew they were there. He couldn’t fire for another few seconds…
“Five… four…”
The chopper came out of the half-parabolic dive, just skimming the Hudson.
“ Brake, now! ” Kealey yelled.
Kealey grabbed the door handle hard. The turn was so sharp that Kealey was thrown against the left side of the harness, but he retained his grip. As the chopper leveled, he yanked the handle, popped the harness, and put his foot to the door.
“Three… two…”
As he kicked open the door, he raised the 20mm and fired. He was short, raised it, peppered the canvas roof of the runabout.
“One!”
Kealey continued firing at the covering, turning the ivory-colored surface black with holes and smoldering fringe. Flaps fell away as he emptied the clip. He saw a man in the cockpit move toward the back; Kealey cut him down. A woman in the front seat had dropped to her knees with her hands raised.
Kealey was out of ammunition.
“Take us down,” he said and drew his handgun.
Sagal was on the loudspeaker system. “NYPD antiterror action. Stand down!” His voice rang across the river, and he repeated the announcement several times. That was for any security forces who might not notice the big NYPD on the side of the chopper and opened fire. Hourly security was like that.
The chopper lowered itself directly above the runabout. Kealey leaned out. Hunt was lying facedown, a mass of red splotches. The other man was on his back, with blood running from the top of his head. Kealey climbed onto the landing strut. The woman was looking out. He motioned toward the shore with his handgun. She nodded and made for the shore with her hands raised.
The black and white security boat was racing over.
“Put down your weapon!” someone shouted.
Sagal said, “You gettin’ off?”
Kealey grinned back and nodded. He glanced back at Perlman. “We’re gonna need bomb guys from the National Guard station.”
“Already called it in.”
Sagal turned the chopper around so Kealey was over the shore. He jumped from the chopper and landed near the train tracks that ran between the river and the road. The woman was standing there with her hands up.
“I said drop your weapon!” the voice from the boat repeated.
“I’ve got this,” Sagal said into the mike. He moved the chopper sideways and dropped it between the security boat and the runabout, a few yards above the water. The black-and-white had to make a hard turn to avoid a collision. “I said stand down,” he repeated.
The security boat stayed where it was.
Kealey told the woman to lie facedown on the track bed. She listened. He knew Perlman would be watching her, and he went to the runabout.
Hunt was dead. So was the other man. The nuke was active, alive. He didn’t want to read too much into that, but that had been the state of the world since Hiroshima: the players changed, died, and were replaced. The threat remained the same.
He called the update in to Andrews as he walked back to the train tracks.
There were cries of relief on the other end.
Kealey said he’d call when he was en route. Then he phoned Bishop.
“Ryan…?”
“We got him,” Kealey said.
“Jesus Christ.”
“With time to spare. What’s going on there?”
“Bomb squad shut down the nuke. I’m giving them a report.”
“Well, smoke ’em if you got ’em.”
“Can’t,” Bishop said. “Made someone a promise.”
Kealey understood. Good man, he thought. “Can you meet me at the Thirtieth Street helipad in an hour?”
“Probably. What’s up?”
“I’m going to get these boys to give us a lift to LaGuardia.”
“Debrief hell,” Bishop said.
“Yeah, but not yet.”
“What do you mean?”
“We have a stop to make first,” Kealey said. “I’ll tell you about it en route.” He clicked off, walked over to the woman. “Who are you?” Kealey asked.
“I will not answer your questions.”
Kealey went to the runabout, found her shoulder bag, retrieved her wallet. She was Dr. Ayesha Gillani. Affiliated with universities, hospitals, high-powered organizations.
He threw it back in the bag and looked back at her. Behind him, local police choppers and maritime units were converging. The NYPD chopper found a spot to set down.
Kealey was going to sit this one out, let them work out all the who did what and why.
A psychiatrist. A medical doctor. Obviously, World War II didn’t teach some members of the profession a damn thing about morality. Or maybe it was just a percentage of the general population itself that had corrupted data files in their head-Hunt and his dead companions included. Fortunately, there’s more of us than them, he thought. Un fortunately, all it took was five or six of them to let loose the dogs of destruction.
Well, at least there were fewer. And soon-very soon-there would be fewer still.