Truth or Die (33 page)

Authors: James Patterson,Howard Roughan

BOOK: Truth or Die

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An hour later, I was deep underground ten blocks south in full-face breathing apparatus and a Tyvek suit as I toured the devastation that had been the 168th station with FBI bomb tech Dan Dunning, from the Joint Terrorism Task Force.

“This is unbelievable,” he said, swinging the beam of his powerful flashlight back and forth over the vaulted ceiling.

“Which part?” I said.

“This was one of the grandest stations of the whole subway system, Mike. See the chandelier medallions next to the cave-in, and the antique sconces in that rubble there? This used to be the station for the New York Highlanders, who went on to become the New York Yankees. A part of history. Now look at it. Gone. Erased.”

“Could it have been a gas leak?”

“Not on your life,” Dunning said. “Gas and electric are surface utilities. These are the deepest stations in the system. Ten stories down. Whatever blew them up was intentionally put here. I can’t say for sure yet, but you ask me, these goddamn bastards set off a thermobaric explosion.”

“A what?”

Dunning pulled off his mask and spat something.

“Thermobaric explosions occur when vapor-flammable dust or droplets ignite. They rely on atmospheric oxygen for fuel and produce longer, more devastating shock waves. As you can see, when they occur in confined spaces, they are catastrophic. They pumped something down here and lit it up. A gasoline mist maybe, is my guess. Just like in a daisy cutter. I mean, look at this!”

We hopped down off what was left of a platform and walked over the incinerated tracks toward a blackened train. As crime-scene techs took pictures, I could see that one of the train’s plastic windows had melted and slid down the side of one of the cars like candle wax. Inside, the driver was burnt pulp, the two other bodies in the front car skeletal and black like something from a haunted house.

“Look at that,” Dunning said, pointing his light at a charred sneaker in a corner.

“Wow, the shock wave must have knocked them out of their shoes,” I said.

“Worse, look at the sole of it. It’s almost completely ripped off. That’s how powerful this bomb was. It separated the sole off a sneaker! Think of the incredible violence that would take.”

I shook my head as I thought about it, breathing in the sweet gasoline smell of burn that the respirator couldn’t filter out.

What is this and where is it going?

THREE HOURS LATER, our command post shifted four blocks north to the NYPD’s new 33rd Precinct building at 170th and Edgecombe Avenue.

When I wasn’t answering my constantly humming phone, I was busy upstairs in a huge spare muster room helping a couple dozen precinct uniforms set up a central staging area for what was obviously going to be a massive investigation into the explosion.

Everywhere I looked throughout the cavernous space were stressed-out, soot-covered MTA engineers, FDNY arson investigators, and FBI, NYPD, and ATF bomb techs talking into phones as they tried to get a grip on the scope of the disaster.

The biggest development by far was the discovery of shrapnel in two separate sections of the tunnel. Preliminary field reports seemed to indicate that the metal shards were from some sort of pressure-cooker bomb placed at the two main blast sites. We hadn’t released anything to the press as of yet, but it was looking like this was in fact a bombing, a massive and deliberate deadly attack.

At 6:05 a.m., the mayor had made the call and canceled the city’s subway service system-wide. It was a huge, huge deal. For the first time since 9/11, eight million people now had to find a new way to get to and from work and school. A mega meeting at the precinct command post had been called for nine-thirty. The mayor and commissioner were on their way as well as head honchos from the city’s federal law-enforcement agencies and the MTA bosses who ran the subway.

I’d managed to get ahold of my first coffee of the morning and had just declined a third call from some annoyingly persistent
New York Times
reporter when I looked up and saw Chief of Detectives Neil Fabretti come through the command post door. I almost didn’t recognize him in his stately white-collar uniform. At his heels was a tall, clean-cut white guy in a nice suit whom I didn’t recognize.

“Detective, I can’t tell you how much I appreciate you being all over this since this morning,” Fabretti said, giving my hand a quick pump. “I already spoke to Miriam. NYPD has the ball on this, and I want you to head up the investigation. The rest of Major Case is now at your disposal as well as any and all local precinct investigators as you see fit. How does that sound? You up for it?”

“Of course,” I said, nodding.

“Do you know Lieutenant Bryce Miller? He’s the new counterterrorism head over at the NYPD Intelligence Division,” Fabretti said, introducing the sleek, dark-haired, thirty-something cop at his elbow. “Bryce is going to be involved in this thing from the intelligence angle, so I wanted you guys to meet. You’re going to be working together hand in glove, OK?”

I’d actually heard about Miller, who was supposed to be something of a hotshot. He’d been an FBI agent and Department of Justice lawyer linked closely to the Department of Homeland Security before being hired splashily to show the new mayor’s seriousness in fighting the terrorists who seemed to love NYC for all the wrong reasons. But hand in glove? I thought as I shook Miller’s hand. I was in charge, but I also had a partner or something? How was that supposed to work? And who was to report to whom?

Miller quickly took back his hand as if he didn’t want my soot-stained jeans and windbreaker to muss his dapper, streamlined gray suit.

“Hercules teams have been deployed to Times Square and Wall Street,” Miller said in greeting. “The helicopters are up, and there are boats in the water. Just got off the phone with the Commissioner. We’re going full court press in Manhattan, river to river.”

I assumed Miller was talking about the Intelligence Division’s tactical units used to flood an area to show any potential attackers the NYPD’s lightning-quick response capability. But weren’t such shows of force supposed to be used to prevent attacks?

“Now what is this thermobaric-bomb stuff I keep hearing?” Miller continued. “That’s crazy speculation at this point, isn’t it? Something like that would take an incredible amount of technical know-how and meticulous planning. We would expect a blip of chatter activity from surveillance before such a large-scale attack, and my team and my contacts in Washington are reporting exactly nada. Couldn’t this just have been a utility screwup?”

“I don’t know about any of that, Bryce,” I said eyeing him. “I was actually just with the bomb guys and saw the shrapnel from what looked like pressure-cooker bombs in two separate locations.”

My phone hummed again as I took a black piece of something out of the corner of my eye with a pinkie nail.

“No matter how little anyone wants to say or hear it, this was definitely no accident. We just got hit again.”

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