Hostage Taker (13 page)

1:19 p.m.

For our viewers just tuning in now, we’re bringing you the mayor of New York with an urgent update on the emergency response effort under way to contain a hostage crisis at Saint Patrick’s Cathedral…

O
ne witness down. Four to go.

Haddox punched Cassidy Jones’s name into the database next. With a name like Cassidy, he bet she would be young and interesting.

He waited as the computer whirled through DMV records. Tax files. Arrest records. Visa applications. Social Security numbers.

Meanwhile, he ran a search on the Web, including Facebook, Instagram, ask.fm, and other sites. And immediately saw that he had a problem.

Stumped.

There were too many Cassidy Joneses. The New York area had them in spades. Maybe not quite as bad as results would be for Joe Smith or John Doe—a name for which, surprisingly, there were plenty of the genuine article around.

Without information to narrow his search, he didn’t know how to proceed. Guess Eve was going to have to ask the Hostage Taker for clarification. And unless he happened to call her, she was probably going to have to do it herself the old-fashioned way: in front of the Cathedral with a sign or a bullhorn. Because so far, the Hostage Taker hadn’t called from the same cell number twice. He was cycling through burners.

Haddox glanced at the cellphone the Hostage Taker had used to communicate—first with the boy, then with Eve. And his thoughts snagged on a half-remembered conversation. Despite the throbbing pain that the Advil had yet to quell, he grinned with anticipation.

Maybe there was a different way.

It was a long shot that he would be able to do anything. Of course they had identified the original number the Hostage Taker had called from, using the phone Luke Miller had used. Both burner phones had been manufactured by Nokia and were part of a batch sold in the Netherlands. Both operated on GSM—the Global System for Mobile Communications—and thus were able to work anywhere in the world. Both had been purchased with cash, so no personal data was exchanged. And if the Hostage Taker were anything like Haddox, he would have purchased a store of these—procured not just from the Netherlands but from around the world.

Based on something he’d once learned from an NSA hacker named Shadow Fox, Haddox knew that it was possible to gather information on a target who routinely cycled through random cellphones. You looked for phone numbers on the network that had been used for single, unique contacts—and you focused on the time each call started and ended. Basically, you looked for a sequence of calls that had distinctive characteristics. Shadow Fox called them
lonely calls.
Onetime calls from onetime numbers that were never used again. Each call would be short, lasting a limited amount of time—and after it went dead, another unique, lonely number would come online. If the analysis worked out right, you could identify a whole series of burner phones that—taken together—created a portrait as unique as a fingerprint.

This was going to be a challenge.

A completely irresistible one.

And the only place to start was with what he already knew.

Haddox’s screen refreshed with the details of the burner phone they had recovered from the boy.

Its first call was received at 10:12. That was the Hostage Taker on the line with the boy, giving him instructions. Its last call was made at 10:23. That was Eve reverse-dialing the Hostage Taker after the NYPD negotiator was shot. Giving them two cell numbers in the sequence.

The key question now was: Could he identify the other burners in the Hostage Taker’s control?

Every cellphone identified itself less by its mobile identification number—the number assigned by the service provider that was similar to a landline number—than by its electronic serial number. Called the ESN, that number was a thirty-two-bit binary number assigned by the manufacturer. Unlike mobile numbers, it could never be changed. And when manufacturers sent phones to suppliers, they tended to sell them in large blocks. So if the Hostage Taker had bought more than one phone from each supplier—which seemed likely—Haddox would be able to track him down by running all the ESNs in that shipment.

Assuming the Hostage Taker had left the batteries inside—charged up and ready to go, of course. Because even if a cellphone was turned off, so long as its battery was present, it emitted a signal looking for base stations within range. That signal—a “ping”—lasted less than a quarter of a second. But it contained both the mobile identification number and the ESN.

Haddox focused his attention on the monitor and called up a new search. It yielded a screen covered with numbers.

His fingers raced over the keyboard, typing in the parameters for two different searches. One was designed to search for any ESNs that were close enough to the cellphone they had in hand, so as to be part of the same supply shipment. The other was designed to search for any ESNs within close range of the cell tower nearest Saint Patrick’s Cathedral that were active but had never been used. Primed for action but not yet in the field. The screen split in two. Each contained a string of numbers that flashed by fast, blurring into green psychedelic lines.

Eight minutes later, he gestured for Eve to join him. “You want to call the Hostage Taker—or should I?”

She frowned. “I don’t follow.”

“We need to ask him
which
Cassidy Jones. Because there are currently forty-seven Cassidy Joneses in Manhattan, never mind Brooklyn, Queens, Long Island, or Connecticut.”

“And you found the Hostage Taker’s number? So you can just dial him up whenever you want?”

“Better than that. I’ve got a whole series of numbers he’s either already using or is just about to use. In other words, luv, I’ve given you the upper hand.” With a wink, he passed her the phone. “You can thank me later.”

M
ace wiped off a park bench and sat, eating two double cheeseburgers and slurping a mega-size strawberry milkshake. The rain had finally stopped, but the sun hadn’t pushed through the clouds and the temperature was dropping fast. Behind him, the dollars were flowing as the chess hustlers ran their games. He watched a homeless man with gray hair resembling an overgrown shrub push a grocery cart along the path, peering into one garbage can after another for discarded cans and bottles. An NYU student tour, led by a tall, perky blonde, made a wide semicircle to avoid him. The kids in the tour continued chatting and sloshing through puddles. A handful of parents—probably visiting for the first time from some flyover state—gawked.

His bench was near the center of Washington Square Park. The heart of Greenwich Village. Bordering NYU. A lot of real estate that you had to be LeBron James to afford. And right next to the East Village, which still had some of the city’s best watering holes. Mace usually came around when he was heading to a pickup game at the Cage—a public court on West Fourth Street where some of basketball’s best talent cut their teeth. Today he’d come to meet Sweet Pea. She was a former Knicks City Dancer. Twenty years ago, she’d had a dancer’s body—lean, loose-limbed, and damn…he still remembered those legs. When her dancing gig ended, she’d opened her own East Village bar. Except hers wasn’t filled with wannabe punks sporting tattoos and piercings. Hers attracted two kinds of guys: NYPD’s finest and guys deep in the game. That meant she had her ear to the ground when almost anything happened. White Hat or Black Hat side, didn’t matter.

“Hey, baby.” She sidled up behind him. Planted a kiss on his head before coming around to join him on the bench. It groaned in protest.

Mace flashed her a wide smile. Sweet Pea might’ve traded a size six for a size sixteen, but that meant only that her style was less Tyra Banks, more Oprah Winfrey. A fine woman either way. “You’re lookin’ good,” he said, and meant it.

“Don’t you know it.” She gave him a sly smile, then edged a few inches closer. “How’s things at the Bull Pit?” She meant No Bull Pit, the organization Mace had started up a few years back when he’d found himself rescuing one dog—then another, and another—from the fighting rings. He healed them, rehabilitated them, and trained them to be working canines: detecting explosives and drugs. Someday, it might be a living. Meanwhile, he was having fun.

“Same old. How’s things at the Blue Parrot?”

Sweet Pea took a bottle of water from her tote bag, swallowed a gulp. “Business is good. No complaints.”

“You still shoot the shit with Freddy and the boys?” Some of Mace’s former contacts in the black-market trade. They dealt in all kinds of contraband and stolen goods. But especially weapons.

“Most every night.”

“They talk recently about somethin’ interesting?”

“What interests you these days, darlin’?”

“Anything involving concertina wire and explosives. The kind you might use to make an IED.”

“Sounds military to me.”

“Yeah, but the military ain’t in the resale business. Least, not to regular guys.” He leaned in a little closer. Caught her scent: something lemony and lavender. It made him remember the night they’d met. She’d stopped by the Cage to watch her boyfriend—and witnessed one of Mace’s best moments ever. He’d gone one-on-one against his namesake—the original Mace-in-your-Face—and won. Later that night, she’d said goodbye to the boyfriend and let Mace buy her a drink. She’d chosen him that night. And then kept coming back for more. ’Cause Mace’s skills didn’t end on the basketball court.

She tipped her head back and laughed. “Regular guys don’t buy military-grade stuff.”

“But supposing they did?”

“You wanna know where. This have anything to do with what’s goin’ on today at Saint Patrick’s?”

Mace put a leg up on the bench. “Maybe…assuming you heard people talkin’.”

“Freddy and the boys are quiet. If they got anything goin’ on, they ain’t runnin’ their mouths.”

“But?”

She let out a noisy breath, like the weight of the world was escaping her. “The fuzz is another matter. Drug Enforcement guys were in last night.”

“I’m not lookin’ for missing drugs.”

“Will you shut up and listen? Stuff’s been goin’ missing from their evidence locker for a few months now. Meth. Coke. Ecstasy. Even outright cash. But last night, they were talkin’ ’bout a different kind of theft. Few months ago, they chalked up a huge bust. High fives all ’round, special commendations, ’cause it was a big, influential dealer. Took a lot of manpower, too. Drug dealer had partnered with guys just come off a private security detail in Iraq to guard his stash. So in addition to the drug haul, they took in all kinds of shit. Military-grade stuff—including explosives, barbed wire deterrent, the works.”

“Shit that got stolen.”

She nodded sagely.

“Which precinct division?”

“Midtown West logged it in. And here’s the kicker: It’s the same locker where the drugs got stolen, too.”

“They know who did it?”

“They got a line on somebody, but who the hell really knows?” Sweet Pea heaved herself to her feet. “I gotta get back. New staff learnin’ the ropes today.” Her smile flashed. “You know where to find me. And if you do, you won’t be disappointed.”