They Disappeared

53

Somewhere in New York City

Bulat Tatayev gazed into the jaws of disaster.

A troubled warlord on his throne, he sat in a swivel high-back executive chair, left elbow propped, fist supporting his chin as he watched one minute melt into the next on the digital clock of the worktable.

Still no word from Alhazur on whether they’d received the component.

We need the microdetonator.

Alhazur was one of his best men.

Without the component we fail.

At every step, circumstance had conspired to thwart his mission. Zama, the passionate fighter, proved himself a fool by losing the critical detonator, then drawing attention with the murders and kidnappings. And now Russian agents were closing in on their backup plan.

Then the boy escaped. Only by luck was he recaptured.

We cannot fail. Our blood cries out.

Bulat drew upon the horror of the tanks mashing his mother’s and father’s corpses in the blood-soaked snow and mud and pulling the bodies of his wife, Leyla, their son, Lecha, and Polla, their little girl, from the rubble after the bombings. He remembered all the innocents who’d been murdered, the brave fighters who’d sacrificed their lives for freedom. Everything Bulat did, he did for those martyred before him.

I will not fail them.

Throughout his life Bulat had learned to turn adversity to advantage. Instead of killing the woman and the boy, as he’d planned, he would incorporate them into his new plan, which had a new fail-safe element.

Yes, it’s a much better plan.

One of the cell phones on the table vibrated. It was Alhazur.

“Yes,” Bulat answered.

“Success.”

Bulat stood, cupped his hands to his face, letting relief wash over him until it gave way to concentration and he summoned some of his men to the table. Again, they studied computer and paper maps, calculating distances, travel times. They scrutinized scores of photographs taken by the advance teams. A good number of his men were U.S.-born and had come from New York, Philadelphia, Boston and Chicago cells. They examined aerial maps and reviewed range, structures and crowd size.

Bulat produced a classified agenda obtained through threats made on the family of a member of a VIP security agent. The agenda provided invaluable security details, locations, dates and times.

Less than forty-five minutes after Alhazur called, he’d returned with his team and presented Bulat with the ballerina music box. Bulat stared at it, then opened it to hear Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake. The tiny dancer pirouetted.

“Like Pandora’s box,” Alhazur said, “opened by the first woman, unleashing all the evils to plague humanity.”

“Leaving only one thing inside,” Bulat said. “Hope.”

Bulat placed the box on a clear section of the worktable where his engineering expert, trained at MIT, was poised to dissect the item with only Bulat and Alhazur watching.

The engineer adjusted his magnifying lamp and set to work. With the precision of a surgeon he meticulously disassembled the box, piece by piece, examining each one until he found the tiny wafer detonator. Holding it between the tongs of his tweezers, he placed in on a slide and set it under his microscope.

He took his time inspecting it.

He admired its construction-similar to a ceramic element glazed with polyimide but reconstituted with near-invisible radio static chips the diameter of a human hair. It was designed to use a dedicated current pulse, activated by a preset or dialed-in frequency.

Nothing could jam it or stop it.

That was why it was critical for this time. Across New York City, security for the United Nations General Assembly was at the highest levels. National security agencies would be using state-of-the-art detection and jamming technology, but this rare microdetonator would defeat any detection or jamming effort.

It was unstoppable.

The rumors held that the device had been created in a North Korean lab by perverting technology stolen from Japan. In other circles, the story was that the device was born in a secret military installation hidden in Syria.

“Well?” Bulat asked.

“It’s in perfect condition.”

“How long to install it?” Bulat checked the time. “We need to make final preparations. We’re down to a few hours at best.”

“It will be close,” the engineer said.

“Get going.”

Bulat needed more coffee and something to eat. He dispatched one of the men to get an order of food. Then Bulat walked across the factory floor.

Sarah and Cole were bound with extra chains and under the watch of three guards. Bulat stood over them, staring down at them for nearly a full minute before lowering himself.

“Soon your names, our names, will be used to rewrite history.”

Sarah and Cole said nothing.

“In Montana you have lived a quiet and free life. It is what we want for our people, too.”

“You’re murderers! Terrorists!” Sarah said.

“As were your American forefathers. How does it go on the license plate? ‘Give me liberty or give me death’?”

Bulat waited for an answer that never came.

“We are all freedom fighters, we are all terrorists. And sooner or later, we will all die,” he said before returning to the table to review the time and the agenda as his men continued their preparations.