Andrew Kaplan - Carrie's run

If it was Abu Nazir, he wouldn’t do it simple. Never. That wasn’t his style. There would be more than one attack. It wasn’t just the Waldorf, which could be just a diversion! What was it Julia had said about her husband Abbas’s reaction: “It was the way he said it. . It scared me.” There was going to be a second, separate attack. Something big. Even bigger than taking out the Vice-President. Something Abu Nazir could say to the Sunnis was retaliation for Abbasiyah. If he pulled it off, the Sunnis would flock to him. He could take all of Anbar Province. And it involved Abdel Yassin and the missing truck!

They had to find that missing truck-and fast. And do the same thing they were doing with Dima and the Waldorf: wait till the last second, trap it, and kill it.

She got out of the shower, put on a fresh pair of jeans, a top and jacket. Her hair was still wet and she looked like a drowned rat, but that didn’t matter.

“Come on,” she told Leonora. “We have to go back to the office.”

“What about dinner?” the policewoman said, getting up. “Believe me, it isn’t often the department pays.”

“I don’t care,” Carrie said, heading for the door. “We can order Chinese.”

“Why? What’s up?”

“I think I know how to find that truck,” she said.

Red Hook, Brooklyn, New York

“Back so soon?” Saul said over his shoulder. He and Koslowski and a handful of others were looking at security camera videos from sites around Brooklyn.

“I think I know how to find the truck,” Carrie said, taking off her jacket and sitting at the table. Leonora sat next to her. Saul, Koslowski, Gillespie and a couple of other officers joined them.

“Well, Mathison, you certainly know how to get our attention,” Koslowski said. “What’ve you got?”

“I’m an idiot,” she said. “It was right in front of us. We knew Bassam al-Shakran, the Jordanian pharmaceutical salesman, had been in Iraq, and his brother was killed there. All along, because of Dima, and Nightingale in Beirut, we assumed the attack was coming from Hezbollah or the Iranians. But the Jordanians are Sunnis, not Shiites. Like al-Qaeda. What if the attack is coming from Abu Nazir in Iraq?”

“Suppose it is. So what?” Gillespie said.

“He never does just one attack.”

“Never?” Gillespie asked.

“Listen, I was in Iraq. I studied this guy there and I’ve looked at everything we have on him in Langley. He’s never done anything like a single attack. Not ever,” she said.

“Are you suggesting the Waldorf’s a diversion?” Koslowski said, lasering in on her.

She nodded. “For something bigger.”

“Like what?” Gillespie said.

“You tell me. I’m sure NYPD counterintelligence has a list of potential targets and probabilities.”

“Sure. The Empire State Building, the Chrysler Building, the B of A Tower, the Statue of Liberty, Times Square, Grand Central Station, the UN, the Stock Exchange, the Federal Reserve, Lincoln Center, Yankee Stadium-although it’s out of season-Madison Square Garden, bridges, tunnels. Take your pick. This is New York; the list is endless,” Gillespie said.

“These guys are in Brooklyn. Anything there?” Saul asked.

“The Brooklyn Bridge,” Leonora suggested.

“Interesting,” Carrie said.

“Why interesting?” Koslowski said.

“On 9/11, there was a photograph of people fleeing from Manhattan on foot across the Brooklyn Bridge.”

“Yeah, it was a famous picture. Among others. What about it?”

“It became iconic in the Middle East,” she said. “At the time, Ayman al-Zawahiri was reported to have said, ‘Next time we’ll eliminate their means of escape too.’ ”

For a moment, no one spoke. They were New Yorkers, she realized. She had brought memories of the day back to them.

“What about the truck?” Saul said. “You said you thought of something.”

“Yes,” she said. “Suppose it is the Empire State Building or the Brooklyn Bridge or whatever. They’re not flying planes, so it means a truck filled with explosives. Think. What explosive would they use?”

“Of course,” Saul said, slapping the table. “HMTD. They flew in. Had to go through security. They didn’t bring anything in with them.”

“HMTD,” Koslowski said. “Hexamethylene triperoxide diamine. We’ve always figured that would be what they would use. It’s cheap. Powerful. You can make it from three ordinary household products that are all perfectly legal and that you can purchase anywhere without ever attracting the slightest attention. HMTD and, of course, fertilizer have always been our assumptions.” He looked around the table, where the others of his team were nodding.

“Except it has a drawback,” Carrie put in.

“We know. It’s super unstable. Very volatile. The slightest jar, or if the temperature gets a little too warm, and-pow!” Gillespie said, snapping his fingers. “Dealing with it at room temperature is extremely dangerous.”

“I see what she’s getting at,” Koslowski said. “The only way to be sure it won’t go off until you need it is to refrigerate it.”

“Exactly. We check every refrigerated storage facility in New York City, starting with Brooklyn,” Saul said. “We’ll find the truck nearby.”

“There’s another possibility,” Koslowski added. “The explosive could be in one of their apartments or inside the fitness company building.”

“I thought of that,” Carrie said. “If they’re using a number of refrigerators-and they’ll need a lot because it’ll take a ton of explosives to take something like the Brooklyn Bridge down-they’ll have to be burning electricity like crazy. Check with the power company on the usage at the fitness company and their apartments. If it’s gone up a whole lot recently at one of them, that’s where it is.”

“I’ll get right on it. Wake the bastards up. Everyone hates Con Ed anyway,” Gillespie said, getting up and going over to a phone. Carrie checked her watch. It was after three in the morning. When she looked up, Koslowski was watching her.

“Not bad, Carrie,” he said, grinning widely. “If you ever decide to leave the CIA, you’ve got a job in New York if you want it.”

“I’ll keep it in mind, Captain,” she said, glancing sideways at Saul, who was focused on his laptop screen.

Forty minutes later, one of the male officers jumped up.

“Got it,” he called out, coming over. “The truck’s parked in a lot one block from a refrigerated storage warehouse in Red Hook. We told our guys to look for it but leave it alone. Just drive on by and don’t go back. Rookie patrol officer spotted it. Said they painted over the Petra Fitness company logo on the side of the truck and replaced it with a pizza restaurant, but he said the paint job was easy to spot.”

“Where’s Red Hook?” Saul asked.

“From where that location is you can go up the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway and be on the Brooklyn Bridge in less than five minutes. Manhattan in ten minutes,” the officer said.

Saul looked at Koslowski. “Now what?”

“We’re gonna need more resources,” Koslowski said, getting up and taking out his cell phone. “I need to call the commissioner.”

“Did somebody say ‘resources’?” said a man in a gray business suit who was just coming in, followed by a half dozen men in suits and about twenty men in military-style SWAT gear with the acronym “HRT” in Day-Glo paint on their jackets. “I’m Supervisory Special Agent Sanders,” he said to Carrie and Saul.

“Great,” Gillespie muttered under his breath. “The Feds are here.”

Sanders came over to Carrie.

“You must be Mathison. I guess you’re the little lady who got us all down here. I hope to hell you know what you’re doing,” he said.