Andrew Britton: The Operative

“Is this DoD ordnance?” Perlman asked.

“Yes.”

“Well, that’s a break,” he said. “We’ll watch for the Y-code.”

“Which is?”

“It’s an encryption sequence designed to prevent spoofing-mucking with military signals,” he said. “The normal satellite-to-earth signal is a P-code, a precision code. That’s used to piggyback a modulated W-code, which creates a Y-code.”

“Can you block the Y-code? That will shut the weapon down.”

“No,” Perlman said. “The W vacillates, so you can’t pin a tail on that donkey. But the W is about fifteen times slower than the five hundred kHz of the P. Not a lot of those footdraggers bouncing about. We can watch for that. Narrows the field to a manageable number.”

“Do it,” Kealey said.

“We going to circle or pick a direction?” Sagal asked.

“Not sure,” Kealey said. There was a pair of binoculars in a case at the side of the seat. He took them out and looked at the river, some 2,000 feet below. There was still a lot of traffic going to New Jersey, upriver, out of Manhattan. He looked south, hoping to catch sight of the boat Bishop had described.

“Shit,” he said.

“What is it?” Sagal asked.

“South, by the marina. There’s a launch just sitting there.”

“The one you’re looking for?” the pilot asked.

“Possibly,” Kealey said. It was empty. He looked around the area. A man with a rocket launcher would not be inconspicuous, especially in a city on high alert.

So where the hell would he go?

The freight elevator opened next to the mechanical room, the housing for the elevator equipment. Bishop stepped out, followed by the short, elderly handyman. He was dressed in a blue janitorial uniform splattered with white paint. There was, indeed, a putty knife in his back pocket.

“Is that door locked?” Bishop asked.

Bunuel tried it, nodded.

“Where’s the apartment with the lab?”

“This way,” the handyman said, pointing around a corner.

“I need to get in. Hurry.”

Bishop drew his gun as he followed Bunuel. He had no idea what he would find there. And then he saw the bloody footsteps on the hall carpet. They went in the opposite direction a few paces before vanishing.

“Sweet Jesus Christ,” the handyman cried.

“Where do those footprints in the hallway lead?”

“To the stairwell, it looks like,” Bunuel replied.

“Up as well as down?”

“Yes.”

Someone opened their apartment door, peeked out. “Is everything all right, Michel?” the young woman asked.

“It’s fine,” Bishop answered, waving with the gun. “Back inside, please.” The door slammed.

The two men hurried, then stopped by the lab door. Bishop held up a hand before the handyman could use his master key. He listened. There was no sound inside. He looked along the jamb. He couldn’t see any wiring, smell any putty. That didn’t mean there weren’t plastic explosives on the other side. It just meant he couldn’t detect any.

“Okay, Michel. Open it. Then get behind me,” Bishop said.

Bunuel did so and stepped back. Bishop tapped the door with the base of his toe, allowed it to swing in. He immediately saw the body on the floor, the empty room. He stepped in cautiously, took a quick look around. He noticed the open crate with a Trask Industries stencil on the outside. He saw the garment bag with a distinctive outline pressing against the vinyl. He went to the latter.

A sniper rifle. Fired fairly recently, from the smell of it. He took another look around. There was a window, a gurney, a booth…

What the hell were you doing up here, Hunt?

There was no time now to try and figure that out. He looked out the window, saw the Hudson. At the edge of the window he saw the western corner of the World Trade Center site. He looked up at the ceiling. The roof was above them. He looked back at the Hudson, thought for a moment. Then he swore as he grabbed the rifle. He ran into the hallway.

“Michel, call nine-one-one,” Bishop said. “Tell them we need a bomb squad, and tell them to go to the roof.”

“Sir?”

“Just do it. Inform them we’ve got a dead body in the penthouse. Make sure you tell them to take the stairs, not to come in by chopper, and to hurry like hell.” He started down the hall, then stopped. “Also, tell them not to take out the guy with the rifle. That will be me. I’m on their side.”

Bishop turned to his left, and followed the bloody footprints to the stairwell. He had no idea what the configuration of the roof was like, where she might have positioned herself. If seconds mattered, he wanted to have the range of a rifle.

There was only a single flight of concrete stairs between the thirty-sixth floor and the roof. He opened the door quietly; he didn’t want her to hear him and fire prematurely. He peered out. From where he stood, he could see most of the roof to the north. It was covered with cement tiles 3 feet square, and it was empty. He took a few steps out, looked around, and cleared the dormer-like exit that blocked the view to the south.

That was when he saw the shadow of the water tower before him, and an irregular shape on top of it. Such an unusual contour was what snipers referred to as “tree cancer,” an abnormal growth on an otherwise ordinary object. Bishop crouched, looked up, peered through the telescopic sight at the tower itself. He recognized the assassin instantly. His heart beating thick and fast, he put her in the crosshairs.

“Yasmin! Put down the weapon!”

He watched her shoulder. There would be a slight flexing if she intended to shoot. He started to squeeze the trigger…

The woman looked back. He relaxed his grip on the trigger, but slightly.

“Yasmin, raise your right hand now, or I will shoot!”

“Who are you?” she asked.

“Agent Reed Bishop. We met at the Quebec airport,” he told her. “Come down now. You can’t get away!”

She hesitated. “The airport?”

“I was there with another agent,” he said. “We went to a room, talked about your daughter.”

She shook her head. “You’re wrong. I have no…”

Yasmin didn’t bother to finish. She looked away, resighted the rocket launcher, hunkered into the rocket launcher.

Damn you, Bishop thought. Her head, in profile, filled the circular scope. He dropped the site very slightly; a head shot could still cause a reflex action in her finger. He remembered that much from basic weapons training. He aimed at her shoulder and squeezed the trigger. There was a pop, a recoil, the gun site exploding in red before it kicked up toward the soft blue sky.

Bishop lowered the rifle just in time to see her jerk toward the tower. He laid the weapon down, took out his handgun, and ran to the base of the water tower. He could hear her groaning, see her feet kicking at nothing, like those of a wounded animal, as they hung over the edge. He couldn’t see her hands or the rocket launcher. He hurried up the ladder, gun at the ready. When he reached the top, he saw her lying on her side, the rocket launcher at an angle beneath her. She was trying to reach the trigger, but her right arm was hanging on by sinewy strings, the flesh ripped and the shoulder shattered, the side of her face coated with blood. The blood on her face was not from her shoulder: the bullet had glanced hard from her temple upon exiting. It was still there, nestled in a raw hole in her skull.

Bishop tasted bile, swallowed hard as he walked over and carefully moved the tube from under her. He did not want to touch anything. He laid it gently beside her and knelt, called for an ambulance. He was told there would be a wait of forty minutes or more. He didn’t think that would matter.

He kept the phone out. “I’m sorry, Yasmin,” he said.