“Adele, your services are, as usual, much appreciated,” Frieze heard him say.
The woman noticed Frieze, and looking her up and down, turned with a “Ta-ta!” Conley turned to face Frieze. She shot him a quizzical look and shot a glance at the woman as she swayed up Park Avenue. Then she shook her head. Nothing mattered at that moment except the crisis.
“We need to warn my people. Whatever these guys’ plan is, we need to be waiting for them.”
“Tell me who to call,” he said.
“Chambers,” she said, and gave him the number. He handed her the phone. Straight to voicemail.
She looked down the length of Park Avenue in the direction of Grand Central Terminal. The whole street had been sectioned off by police and was nearly deserted between there and the Met Life building. “I can’t wait and hope the call gets through,” she said. “It’s only half a mile or so. You keep trying.”
She took off running, glad that she had chosen to wear flats that day.
10:53 a.m.
Soroush checked his watch in the dim light as Hossein and Paiman carried the case containing President Ramadani up the rusting steel steps from the subbasement, the metallic clanking of their footfalls echoing in the tight quarters. Three of his men had already reached the upper landing, and Zubin was at his side. Now that they were not as deep underground, Soroush tried to hail his man on the radio communicator.
“Touraj,” said Soroush. “Come in.”
“This is Touraj.” The voice came faint and distorted. “I hear you.”
“Status.”
“You have a clear path to the control room. Enemy communications are jammed.”
“We are coming to you,” he said. He checked his watch again. “Ten minutes. Have the others stand by for my signal.”
The box containing Ramadani hit the steel steps with a clatter. Soroush saw that Hossein had let it slip, and the box had fallen on Paiman’s hand, pinning it against the step. Wincing in pain, Paiman managed to keep it from tumbling down.
Zubin walked down three steps to Hossein and backhanded him across the face.
“Idiot.” He turned without another word. Soroush looked down on him. “We have come too far to be done in by incompetence.” He turned forward once more and resumed walking. “Zubin, run ahead and take the lead,” he said. “Remember, we wish to avoid firing before we are ready to take the terminal. Sanjar?” This last he called to the man below Hossein and Paiman. “Get ready. You know what to do.”
11:01 a.m.
Frieze pushed her way through the crowd of onlookers to reach the perimeter that the NYPD had formed around Grand Central at the corner of Vanderbilt Avenue and East Forty-sixth Street. She flashed her badge at the officer, who let her through the barrier. She turned back just long enough to see Conley, out of the corner of her eye, gaining admittance behind her.
No time to wait for him. She ran down Vanderbilt Avenue, which was empty of pedestrians except policemen enforcing the cordon. When she had traversed a block down to Forty-fifth, she saw that, along the Grand Central building, cars had been left abandoned on the street by people escaping sniper fire. She caught sight of a dark bloodstain on the pavement and chills ran down her spine.
She turned onto East Forty-second Street to find a cluster of first responders, some thirty in total, not only wearing NYPD uniforms but black suits and dress shirts, under the Park Avenue overpass, which provided at least partial protection in case the snipers returned. She searched the crowd, circling it until she saw who she was looking for.
“Chambers!” she called out. He was conferring with Nolan, who was speaking into his phone at the same time.
“Frieze? Jesus Christ, the Waldorf is still an ongoing terror scene. I need someone—”
“Sir, this couldn’t wait,” she said, panting. “The Iranian president’s been abducted. They’re coming here.”
“What are you talking about?” he said, motioning to a man carrying a rolled-up piece of paper some three feet long. He unrolled it on a table that had been dragged out of the Pershing Square Café. It was a floor plan of the terminal.
“To Grand Central! The terrorists are bringing him here. We need people on the inside to intercept them.”
That got his undivided attention. “How do you know this?”
“Head of security for the Waldorf says he saw them go down to an underground track that runs between the Waldorf and Grand Central.”
“Why am I only hearing this now? For God’s sake, Frieze, why didn’t you call?”
Frieze motioned to his cell phone, still in his hand, with a call still active.
Chambers stabbed the phone with a meaty finger to disconnect. “Our teams are tied up searching the buildings for the snipers,” he said. “Nolan,” he called out, and Frieze noticed that he was standing against the window of the café, texting on his phone. “Update on tactical.”
“Sir,” said Nolan. “The snipers haven’t been found.”
“Divert the teams,” he said. “I need word sent to the officers inside. All resources need to be on finding those kidnappers.”
“What about the people inside Grand Central?” asked Frieze.
“We can’t risk letting the Iranians slip out,” said Chambers. “They stay inside until our people inside get a grip on the situation.”
11:06 a.m.
Soroush’s ten-man team invaded the Grand Central Control Room bearing MP7 submachine guns, spreading through the elongated chamber with its two rows of desks facing giant monitors built into the wall, reminiscent of Mission Control at Cape Canaveral. Masud and Paiman raised their firearms to the two security guards in the room. “Guns on the ground!” yelled Masud. “Now!”
Seeing themselves outgunned, the guards placed their semiautomatics on the ground.
“Hands on your desks,” Soroush yelled out. “Do not attempt to fight back and do not attempt to contact anyone, or you will die. Is that understood?” Then, in a measured tone, he said, “Touraj.” A young man sitting at the back desk, about three-quarters of the way to the far end of the room, stood up and walked to face Soroush. His hair was close-cropped and he wore a short-sleeved pale yellow shirt. People watched him as he stood, astonished. “Is everything in place?” asked Soroush.
“The communications jammers are in trash cans around the terminal,” he answered in Farsi. “They are ready for deployment.”
“And the other device?”
“It is ready to be triggered,” said Touraj.
“Good,” said Soroush. “Contact security. You know what to do.”
11:16 a.m.
Standing against a shuttered ticket booth, Alex Morgan watched the MTA policemen. There’d been a marked change in their mood. The tension had transformed into urgency in the past five minutes. And now, she noticed, they had all gotten the same piece of information. Around three quarters of them seemed to be heading in the same direction, toward the western end of the terminal.
“Clark,” she said to the distracted boy, sitting with his back against the wall next to her. “I’ll be right back.”
He nodded without pulling out his earphones.
She made her way through the crowd, careful to make it seem like she wasn’t following them, although it hardly mattered. All were too preoccupied to pay her any attention.
She walked to the edge of the throng, which spilled a few yards from the main concourse into the corridor, and sat down, pretending to belong to a group of young women. Out of the corner of her eyes, she watched the policemen pass.
“The subbasement power plant,” she heard one of them say. “Looks like we’ve got hostiles.”
So that was it. Terrorists were in the building.
She knew she should stay with everyone else. She knew they were trained professionals, and she was just a kid. She knew that she would probably get hurt if she got involved.