Andrew Britton - The Operative

“They’re headed to One West Street,” the agent said. “That’s at the corner of West Street and Battery Place.”

“Thank you,” she said and hung up.

Muloni had been walking south along Broadway as she placed the call, getting herself below the traffic jam. But traffic was backed up in all directions. She knew she would never get into Penn Station, so she walked four blocks to Twenty-Eighth Street then back west to Seventh Avenue to catch the One train downtown. She had a feeling that people would be leaving the city after an event like this, not coming into it. The One terminated at the bottom of Manhattan. Few people would be going there. They’d be going to Penn Station, or else uptown to Grand Central to catch a train to Connecticut, or to the Port Authority Bus Terminal to head for New Jersey.

Muloni was right. Within five minutes she was on her way downtown in a near-empty subway car.

Watching Fox News and pacing anxiously in the lab, Hunt glared at the phone when it beeped. It was Shrevnitz.

“Go!” Hunt said, almost angrily. He did not like waiting under ordinary circumstances. And these circumstances were not ordinary.

“She saw them,” reported the driver, who was also the team’s eyes on at Penn Station. “Everyone is in motion.”

“Details.”

“The men are in a cab headed down Broadway. Muloni is in the subway, the One downtown.”

“The subway?” Hunt said.

“That’s right,” Shrevnitz replied. “Traffic up here is hell.”

Jessica Muloni obviously knew where Bishop and Kealey were going. That had been the plan, of course. Shrevnitz had timed everything so she would be in the area when the gunfire began. She would look over, of course, and couldn’t miss them. Recognizing Bishop, knowing there was a mole, knowing how absurd it was for a grieving father even to be there, she would have done what she was trained to do: suspect him. Follow him without making contact. She must have taken the subway to circumvent the traffic. That meant she’d be getting off at either the Rector Street or the South Ferry stop. She might even beat the other two down here.

“Thank you.” Hunt hung up. He’d have to arrange for her to regain sight of the targets.

He turned to Dr. Gillani. “Where is Yasmin?”

“She phoned while you were talking,” the woman replied. “She is in position.”

“Tell her to hold,” Hunt said. “This is going to take a little finessing. I’ll call you when it’s time.”

Hunt decided to go downstairs and wait for them, see if he could spot Muloni. He couldn’t start without her. The best place for her to observe would be from Battery Park, across the street. He didn’t think there would be a lot of tourists headed for the Statue of Liberty right now, but there were trees and kiosks she could lurk behind. She wouldn’t have to see Bishop’s face; a good agent would have noticed what he was wearing.

And Jessica Muloni was a good agent, he thought, which was one of the reasons she had been selected for this important task. Handpicked by Mr. Trask.

As Hunt waited for the penthouse elevator, he thought back to his own meeting with the industrial juggernaut two years before, when he underwent a psychiatric evaluation after expressing his disappointment with Muslims to a Muslim coworker. It was in response to an alert received by the NYFO that the NYPD was providing 24/7 police protection to the so-called Ground Zero mosque.

“They didn’t do that for the Jewish museum around the corner when someone painted swastikas on the wall,” Hunt had noted.

The coworker was offended. Hunt was forced to undergo sensitivity training. The two-week course turned up a general attitudinal problem toward Muslims. Not enough to require further attention, but enough to bear watching.

Trask was one of those who was watching. He requested that Hunt be part of a team that was evaluating new electromagnetic vests, designed to slow the velocity of incoming projectiles. Satisfied with Hunt’s worldview and his trustworthiness, Trask had taken him into his confidence. Put him in charge of what might prove to be the most important operation in American history since D-day.

Hunt still got chills down his spine when he thought of the honor he had been accorded. It was humbling. And nothing was going to derail it.

Within minutes he was standing in the sunshine outside the building. The streets were eerily empty, the loudest sounds coming from helicopters that were circling six and a half miles to the north.

Leaning against the brass handrail that ran down the center of the short flight of steps, his cell phone in his hand, he saw a woman walking across the street. She stopped to study a poster around the Pier A restoration project that showed Lower Manhattan early in the twentieth century. She looked back toward the building, then back toward the poster. She turned away. She moseyed as if enjoying the day. Never once did she look across the harbor, where most people looked, toward the Statue of Liberty.

That had to be Muloni.

A single cab made the right turn from Broadway, which was three blocks away. It moved along an empty street toward his building. It was moving slowly, as if looking for a number.

That had to be Bishop and his ex-CIA companion.

The cab pulled up to the curb. Hunt speed dialed upstairs. Dr. Gillani answered.

“It’s time,” Hunt said and hung up.

NEW YORK, NEW YORK

The UPS truck was parked on South Street, just below Catherine Slip. The driver was dead in the front, from a knife wound through the right eye and into his brain.

There was nowhere a young, attractive woman could not go.

She had taken the taxi to exit 2 of the FDR Drive. There Yasmin had discarded her flight attendant’s jacket and donned a red blazer she had in the wardrobe bag. There was a Realtor’s logo on the front. She had approached the coffee-breaking driver, cell phone in one hand, knife hidden up her sleeve, pretending to ask for directions. He didn’t even feel the hot thermos as it spilled over his lap.

Yasmin removed the man’s shirt and trousers and changed into them in the back. This time, it didn’t matter if the front was bloody. All that was important was that she blended in, briefly, with the top of the truck. She noticed the bracelet as she was changing, the one with the marble. She knew it, knew it so well, but she could not recall why. Nor did it matter. She had a job to do.

She lay down with her rifle in front of her, looked through the 4X telescopic sight at the Brooklyn Bridge. These weren’t like the last ones, rats smoked from a hole and picked off, pop, pop, pop, like she used to do in Cairo. These were bottles on a wall, heads moving across the walkway. A lot of heads, all leaving New York. Ironically, they were probably eager to get away from the city after that morning’s attack.

No, not bottles, she thought without knowing why. Invaders. At the moat.

Her phone pinged. She looked at the text message.

Go.

She slipped her finger over the trigger, picked a head at random, watched until it cleared the meshwork of wires that distinguished the sides of the stone edifice, then fired.

Walking home across the wooden planks of the bridge, June Furst never got used to the incessant wobble caused by the automobile traffic passing below. Or the bicycles shooting by in lanes that ran alongside the too-narrow pedestrian walkway. With most of the traffic moving in one direction-east, away from Manhattan-the bridge almost seemed lopsided. But that might have been just a visual response to the solid mass under and beside her and the relative emptiness to the south.

If the traffic was a constant hum and shudder, the people around her were always different. In two years, the twenty-five-year-old fashion designer couldn’t remember ever having seen the same person twice on her walks to and from work…