And—this wasn’t his alarm clock ringing. It was his phone.
He stood and shook out of his befuddlement. Felt like he had been asleep for hours, but without the refreshment benefit.
He checked the time. Maybe twenty minutes had passed since he’d put his head down.
He answered his phone just before it went to voice mail.
“Hey, it’s Reg. Great get today.”
Reg was an NYPD detective assigned to the Joint Terrorist Task Force.
Fisk said, “We got lucky. Thanks to the NSA.”
“Nah, I heard you were on this guy from the jump. Which is why I’m calling. We got a look at this bomber’s phone. It’s a domestic carrier, which is weird for a Saudi art dealer. No international plan.”
Fisk said, “He had a cell phone and plan under his name. But the GPS didn’t ping. Must have had the phone powered down. In any event, it wasn’t the one he brought to the U.S.”
Reg said, “He placed a call earlier today, before the inquiry to Saudi Air. Cell to cell. The number is registered to a Kathleen Burnett. We have a Bay Ridge billing address. Giving you a heads-up in case you wanted to hitch a ride over there.”
Fisk absorbed this. “Bay Ridge? Who is she?”
“Don’t know yet. Common name, but nobody under it is listed in Bay Ridge. But we just got this read, it’s that fresh. Had to scan the phone for booby traps first. All developing.”
Fisk said, “E-mail me the address. I’ll meet you there.”
Chapter 56
Back behind the double-locked door of his hotel room, Jenssen drew the heavy shades. He made yet another full sweep of his room, examining lamps, the telephone, the ceiling smoke detectors—anything and anywhere a camera or other recording device might have been installed while he was away. Nothing appeared to have been tampered with.
He opened the room safe and pulled out the bag. They would come for him in less than two hours. Skipping the get-together at the hotel lounge would raise suspicion, inadvisable at this late stage. He could stall them awhile, and he would need to. Time was of the essence.
After months of planning and training, and secrecy that had cost lives and won glory, the hour of action was upon him. Jenssen was the apex of a holy pyramid that had begun when Osama bin Laden initiated a call for victory in the name of Islam and the Wahhabi caliphate. His sacrifice only furthered the mission and the dedication of those called to fulfill it.
Jenssen’s primary concern was to protect the explosives. He first removed the small loaf-shaped parcel, unwrapping the foil and wax. Inside, the TATP explosive was pliable and appeared to be well-prepared. He had trained with the substance and felt familiar with it. With care, it could be molded into any desired shape.
He quickly inventoried the rest of the contents of the Duane Reade shopping bag delivered to him by the woman. He examined a Ziploc bag of gauze impregnated with plaster of paris. When wet, it would be formed into a new replacement cast for his arm.
Next, a box of rolled cotton batting.
Then a sheet of fine plastic a foot square. It could be cut and shaped, forming a partition between the explosive and the gauze. The new cast would be damp for a few hours before drying. But if the TATP became wet, the explosive would have only half its potential force as when dry.
Then the pellets wrapped in tissue paper, from which protruded the vinyl-covered antenna wires. The twin igniters.
And a wireless trigger the size of a can of sardines.
Everything he needed.
He stood and disrobed, throwing the exercise clothes into the corner of the room. He went into the bathroom and turned on the ceiling fan and the shower. He then pulled the sharp steak knife he had purloined from their lunchtime interview from its hiding place beneath the bathroom sink, and went to work cutting his cast. He worked from his arm out. The hardened batting sliced cleanly, but the blue exterior proved a much more difficult task. His wrist ached as he went at it savagely.
One thing they had not accounted for was the color of the cast. Jenssen had requested plain white, but the orthopedist only brought blue. It was an anomaly that would have to be accounted for.
The hard blue casing flaked shavings onto the vanity as Jenssen sawed away, nicking his forearm six or seven times but drawing little blood. When he got half of it cut, he placed the cracked cast against the edge of the vanity and pushed down on it.
The only result was pain.
Jenssen felt the husk give a little, and so grabbed a fresh cotton hand towel and stuffed it into his mouth. He positioned the open seam of the cast against the counter’s sharp edge, and on the count of three thrust down against it with all his weight.
The cast cracked open with a shocking crunch. Jenssen’s scream vanished into the baffling of the towel, which, after a few moments of lingering agony, he then spit onto the floor.
His wrist throbbed. He thought he might have refractured the bone and feared it would swell anew. He held still, holding it, hoping the noise of the cast breaking did not raise any alarms.
Jenssen remembered meeting the doctor in the hours before the departure of Flight 903. A tourniquet was applied to his arm just below his shoulder, rendering it numb in minutes. He remembered the doctor—assuming he was in fact a licensed physician—lifting his dead arm and laying it atop the heavy workbench with his hand dangling over the edge. “Avert your eyes,” said the doctor, with more than a hint of a smile in his bespectacled eyes. Perhaps the man was in fact an experienced torturer. Jenssen had turned away and closed his eyes. He heard the crunch and felt the workbench shudder, but he felt nothing. A local anesthetic was applied by syringe. Again, he felt nothing, and in a few more minutes, with his fingers swollen and red, the tourniquet was released. The dark anticipation of the pain had left him drenched in sweat, but once the pins and needles faded the anesthetic worked effectively. He was given anti-inflammatory medication for the swelling, and had his sleeve rolled back down and buttoned for him. Then he walked out to the car that would transport him to the airport.
When the renewed pain receded, Jenssen grabbed the trash can and dumped the broken cast inside, sweeping the blue shavings off the counter. He stepped into the shower and washed himself gingerly but quickly, the jets painful against his swelling left wrist.
He focused his mind away from the pain by mentally rehearsing the next few hours. He ticked off various potential disasters that might bring down the plan, anticipating them and preparing himself to avoid them.
I am safely concealed, he reminded himself. I will not fail.
Insha’Alla.
Chapter 57
Fisk had spent a fair amount of time as an Intel cop in Bay Ridge. The streets there were as bucolic as any in the five boroughs. A light night breeze off the Verrazano Narrows was the only relief from the lingering heat of the day. This corner of Brooklyn had absorbed waves of Irish, Italians, and Norwegians—and, more recently, Arabs.
The address was only fifteen minutes away with lights and sirens, in a neighborhood that had recently been christened “Little Palestine.” The JTTF called ahead to the Sixty-eighth Precinct station house, which had two units idling at Seventy-ninth and Shore Road, just a block away. No lights, no show. Not sealing off the area, but present and available if needed. Reg arrived with an interdiction team of his own, four SWAT-trained tactical officers in full extraction armor, two FBI agents, and a linguist.
The location was a converted brownstone, lights in the windows on the first and second floors. The front door was unlocked. The listing on the lobby plate for the third-floor apartment in question read “bint Mohammed,” not Burnett.