Fisk waited while Reg and the FBI agents went around with the linguist, rapping on the doors of the three ground-floor apartments, then the two on the second floor. The only person who gave them trouble was an elderly woman who refused to be forced outside unveiled. She took her place sullenly on the sidewalk in front of the stoop with the other families, pointedly turning her back on the FBI agents and police detectives.
Reg said to Fisk, “What do you think? Pick it or kick it?”
Fisk said, “If she’s home, there’s a good chance she knows we’re here already. Bin-Hezam wanted suicide-by-cop and got his wish. So kick it. Hard.”
Reg gave the signal, and the four-man interdiction team then went up the stairs in close-quarters combat formation, advancing and covering two-by-two. Boots soft on the wooden floor, commands mimed in silence. Fisk and Reg and one of the FBI agents went up one floor behind them, the linguist remaining on the stoop with the other FBI agent.
At the third-floor apartment door, one of the tactical officers unslung the heavy-weighted steel tube from his back, gripping its handles. Another man aimed a 12-gauge shotgun at the door hinges as backup, counting him down in silence.
The officer swung the breach tube hard, striking the dead bolt above the door handle. The lock plate and the door frame splintered and the door whipped open.
The other three men flooded inside. In a matter of seconds, they cleared the tiny apartment. The fourth officer signaled Reg. There was no one home.
The team flipped on light switches. The main concern now was booby traps. They cleared the place for trip wires, and only then were Fisk and Reg allowed inside.
Reg went immediately to a stack of mail upon a small corner desk. Fisk went straight to the bedroom.
There, draped over a straight-backed chair next to a single bed covered with a paisley spread, he found a deep blue burka. The room was monastically tidy. At the foot of the bed, a worn red prayer rug was neatly folded.
Fisk brought out his phone, dialing Intel. He realized he needed the spelling of her name, and walked out to join Reg.
“I need you to access the city records database,” he told the agent who answered. He spelled the names “Kathleen Burnett,” confirming it from her cell phone bill, and, reading from a catalog label, “Aminah bint Mohammed.” “Assuming it’s a name change, but need to confirm they are the same person. I need a photograph ASAP.”
He hung up and went looking for photographs. The single bed and Spartan appearance said single occupant, and those people rarely put out pictures of themselves.
In the front room, between a pair of overstuffed chairs facing a small flat-screen television on a rolling table, he scanned a single bookshelf. Korans in English and Arabic, and a single photograph of a man and woman dressed for something formal standing next to a 1980s Buick sedan. Parents. Probably deceased.
Two windows, one left open approximately eight inches. A stack of newsletters in Arabic, and some newspapers. Reg booted up a small netbook plugged into the wall.
Reg said, “What do you think? Girlfriend? Handler?”
Fisk turned in a slow circle, taking it all in. He moved to the kitchen. No dishwasher, a drying rack in the sink. A short refrigerator.
The interdiction team rigged up a bungee cord, opening the fridge from around the wall. No bang. Fisk went in, wishing he had gloves on. He tugged his sleeve down over his fist and moved containers of low-fat yogurt and a deli tub of dates.
Two empty glass mason jars. He got down low, trying to see up through the wire shelf rack. He saw what looked like white crust residue in the lid threads.
He moved everybody back. To Reg he said, “Get a dog over here stat.”
Chapter 58
Applying a cast to the arm of another person was a relatively straightforward procedure. Applying a cast to one’s own arm was as difficult as one-handed surgery. But Jenssen had trained for this repeatedly. Though only once with real explosive. And never with a broken wrist.
He sat near the table. His swollen arm looked pinkish gray, like dead skin abraded with a square of fine sandpaper. He rubbed it gently, indulging himself in a moment of itch relief, tempered by the tenderness of his wrist and the clotting cuts where he had punctured his skin with the tip of the steak knife.
The new cast would take three hours to fully harden. The first time he attempted this, he had applied the plaster gauze too snugly and could not tolerate the pain for even one hour before ripping it off. Now with his wrist and forearm swollen and already tender, he knew he had to be careful.
On the other hand, he would only have to stand the throbbing ache for a few short hours.
Jenssen addressed the moment of greatest peril first. He unwrapped the roll of TATP and held it in his good hand. In practice, he had used ordinary putty of a similar consistency, and once a professionally firm slab of the real thing. This substance was gummier and stickier. It clung to his fingers.
He cleared his mind and went to work. A mistake could ruin months of preparation and devotion by many people in a fiery instant.
Using both hands, though generously favoring his left, he began to work the half-pound roll of whitish-gray explosive. He stretched the substance to roughly the distance from his thumb joint halfway to his elbow. Too much squeezing with his left hand produced a stabbing pain, and he stopped, calmed himself, focused, and continued.
With the heel of his good hand, Jenssen gently and patiently flattened the explosive to a thickness of about a quarter inch. He had seen what the TATP could do, detonated by a gunshot in an abandoned barn in a field in Sweden. The image of the structure splintering in a dynamic blast of flame still made him flinch, his body remembering the shock wave from 250 meters away.
Halfway done.
The explosive clay sweated moisture as Jenssen manipulated it. He had not anticipated this. The mixture was damper than expected, weeping a substance that smelled like chemical sweat.
Did this mean that the mixture was no good? More unstable? Less effective? He wondered: Was the woman in Central Park the chemist? Had she prepared this like shortbread in her kitchen, and mismeasured an ingredient?
He couldn’t concern himself with that. He continued to mold the TATP, using bathroom tissues to soak away the moisture. What had been a loaf no larger than the cardboard tube of a roll of toilet paper was now a trim sheet that would cover the heel of his hand, his wrist, and his lower forearm.
Jenssen took a break to clean up the tabletop. In the bathroom he splashed cold water on his face.
Next, he removed the cotton batting and wound a thin layer over his tingling arm, securing it with a small steel clip at the end. He had almost forgotten the fabric softener sheets, and rose to remove them from his luggage. They were to aid in masking the scent of the explosive, in case of dogs. He then laid his cotton-clad arm on the table, palm down, and with his good hand slowly peeled the sheet of explosive dough from the tabletop. It did not come off as smoothly as expected. He molded the TATP onto his left forearm, feeling it compress the cotton. Then he patched and repaired with bits left on the table.
He was sweating but had nothing handy to wipe his brow. At one point he shook his head violently, spraying sweat around him. Jenssen took the two igniter pellets from the messenger bag. He made sure that their antenna wires were laid cleanly on the edge of the explosive, then embedded one near the heel of his hand, the other at the opposite edge. He pressed them gently but firmly, ensuring they wouldn’t chafe, but also flattening them against his arm as much as possible.