“You keep watch for a little while. I’m going to try and sleep.”

105

IN THE AIR

MOSCOW

The rotors of the chopper picked up discernibly, then the wheels bounced and they rose into the sky.

“Where to?” asked Stihl.

“Doesn’t matter. Just get us up.”

Dewey turned back to the cockpit. His eyes met Chalmers’s, who stared back with a blank expression. He looked down at Cloud, then out the window. Within moments of takeoff, they were several hundred feet in the air.

Dewey reached to the wall and hit a button. Suddenly, the side doors slid open. The roar of the rotors burst into the cabin. Wind and rain came in, dousing the cabin and everyone inside.

Dewey reached down and grabbed the front of Katya’s jacket.

“Dewey!” yelled Chalmers as, in the same moment, Katya screamed.

With one hand, he lifted her up and carried her toward the open door as she screamed, punched, and kicked at Dewey, but he held her—like a doll.

With his left hand, Dewey grabbed a strap above the door so he wouldn’t fall out with her as, with his right hand, he clutched her jacket and thrust her out the open door. Dewey stood, holding the strap, dangling Katya out the side of the chopper. She grasped at his forearm, trying to hold on, then looked below at the buildings rushing by. Then her mouth opened again in panic and she tried to scream, but no noise came out. She was hysterical. Her hair whipped in a chaotic swirl, the slapping at Dewey’s arm as she tried to hold on the only sound, and it blended darkly with the rain and wind and roar of the rotors, and the voice of Chalmers.

“Don’t do it, Dewey!” he called. “She’s innocent.”

Dewey held Katya there for a dozen seconds, then turned and looked into Cloud’s eyes.

“You have exactly five seconds to tell me where the bomb is going,” Dewey said, a calm look on his face. “Then I drop her.”

Cloud shut his eyes. He rocked his head back and forth.

“Five,” said Dewey, beginning the countdown, “four … three…”

Katya tried to say something to Cloud, but she was so panic-stricken that no sound came out as her mouth moved in silent terror.

“Two…”

Cloud stopped moving his head. His eyes blinked rapidly, as if he was calculating something. He struggled to move his lips, ushering the last remaining strength he had left. He looked at Katya, his eyes finding hers across the mist.

“New York City,” he said in his dying breath, blood seeping from his mouth and nose. Then, his last words: “The Statue of Liberty.”

106

THE CARLYLE

MADISON AVENUE

NEW YORK CITY

At 5:30 A.M., the CIA Sikorsky helicopter touched down at Haverstraw Airport just north of Manhattan.

Calibrisi had a pair of Catch-22s on his hands.

The first: a nuclear device was in a boat headed for the Statue of Liberty. Assuming the terrorists hadn’t switched boats, the U.S. government knew the precise make and model of the vessel the nuclear bomb was now on. But if the terrorists suspected anything, they would simply detonate the bomb. Cloud had coveted the idea of hitting one of America’s most sacred and important historical structures. But a nuclear bomb detonated anywhere along America’s coastline would do damage no less dramatic and permanent.

The second conundrum was his own government. They needed to pinpoint the boat, then move without being noticed. It would require patience, subterfuge, and utter secrecy. Any inkling that they were being watched would cause the terrorists to act preemptively.

Calibrisi had little faith in the ability of law enforcement to pull off a delicate covert mission. He had more confidence in the Navy. Greer Ambern was the in-theater commander of the Navy team. The week before, in anticipation of what might come, Ambern had moved the Navy’s newest combat vessel, the USS Fort Worth, into the mid-Atlantic.

But even knowing and trusting Ambern as he did, Calibrisi still felt uneasy.

Calibrisi, Katie, and Tacoma were met at the Haverstraw helipad by a black Suburban, which took them to a private entrance at the Carlyle Hotel. They boarded an elevator to the tenth floor, where there were two private apartments. Standing outside one of them was Igor.

Igor’s hair looked as if he’d just stuck his finger in a plug. He was barefoot and was wearing jeans. His white tank top had AK-47 embossed in gold across his chest, and sewn beneath the lettering was a figure of the rifle in pink thread.

“Nice shirt,” said Tacoma as they stepped through the door.

“This shirt cost me eight hundred dollars,” said Igor.

“I’ll sell you mine for a hundred,” said Tacoma.

They stepped inside and followed Igor to an office. On the desk was a panel of six plasma screens, three on top, three on the bottom, all attached. The two side screens on the bottom showed aerial maps of New York harbor. Every few moments, a small red circle appeared, then shot down to a vessel, highlighting a boat. The middle screen was computer code, black text on a white screen. The three screens on top all showed people. The left was the operations room aboard the USS Fort Worth. The second screen was a conference room at the FBI’s New York field office. The last was the White House Situation Room. The audio was turned off.

Overnight, the president had ordered a multiple-layer approach to the management of the government’s military and law enforcement assets. The first level of coverage and preferred method of stopping the terrorists would be with snipers, managed by the FBI. The second layer would be provided by the Navy, using SEALs in SDVs beneath the water around the statue. The Fort Worth would also be prepared, if necessary, to fire RIM-116 missiles, or simply let loose with its 57mm cannons.

NYPD’s marine units would patrol as usual. It was important to maintain normal appearances.

“Do you want to start the call?” asked Igor.

“Not yet,” said Calibrisi, pointing at the video feeds from the harbor. “Tell us what you have. First, any police or Coast Guard reports of missing or stolen boats?”

“Nothing from Maine to Florida.”

“Tell us about the software.”

“I did as you suggested,” said Igor, nodding to the screens. “The two shots of the harbor are live. The cameras are scanning the water. What you’re seeing is, for lack of a better expression, the world’s first boat recognition software.”

“How often does it run the scan?”

“Ten times a second. When the software finds a vessel close to the dimensions of the Talaria, it locks, rescans, then runs the photo against the database.”

“Whose video are you using?” asked Katie.

“It’s actually a feed from a Google satellite. I was able to call in a favor, although the person I called it in from isn’t aware of it yet.”

“Does it work?”

“Yes, maybe a little too well. It will find the Hinckley Talaria if it comes into the harbor. The problem is, it also captures boats of the same length and width of the Talaria, and there are quite a few. It’s six A.M. now. The program has already cataloged thirty-one boats of the same size.”

Calibrisi glanced at his watch: 6:10 A.M.

“Fire up the call,” he said.

Igor hit a few keystrokes, and suddenly the voice of President Dellenbaugh came on the line.

“I want a status,” said Dellenbaugh. “What assets do we have in or around the statue?”

“We have snipers in four places, sir,” said someone from the FBI. “Ellis Island, Governors Island, Liberty State Park, and in or around the statue itself. That’s fifty-two in all. In addition, we have another two dozen in boats. We’re using a combination of commandeered tour boats and civilian vessels. Everyone is in plain clothing.”

“Captain Ambern,” said Dellenbaugh. “What were you able to do overnight?”