Carrie's run

CHAPTER 14

Lexington and Forty-Ninth, New York City

The call came at 9:46 P.M. A voice message left on the answering machine at the Petra Fitness Equipment Company in Brooklyn.

“Hada ho Jihan. Mataa takun baladiya aneyvan gahiza?” Dima’s voice saying, “This is Jihan. How long will my order take?”

They captured the number of the calling phone from the cell tower in Brooklyn nearest the fitness company that handled the call. It took Koslowski’s team only fifteen minutes to track it to a prepaid cell phone Jihan had purchased at an AT amp;T store on Thirty-Seventh Street. The store was only minutes by cab from the hotel. They had two female Counter-Terrorism Bureau officers working undercover as hotel maids in the Waldorf and three male officers acting as hotel security. They confirmed with the on-site team that Jihan was not in the hotel at that time. When it was forwarded to Koslowski, Carrie translated it for him.

Koslowski nodded.

“We have lift-off,” he said.

When one of the undercover maids inspected Jihan’s room, she reported that the cello was standing against the wall and its case was empty. She said she saw no weapons or explosives or anything suspicious.

“When do you start surveillance on the suspects?” Saul asked Koslowski.

“A little after midnight,” he said, checking his watch. “We’re totally passive. Two hidden cameras. One on the roof of the building across the street from the fitness company, the other across from the Jordanian salesman’s cousin’s apartment in Gravesend. Two of the Hercules teams go into the hotel at oh three hundred hours. They’ll stay in suites until we decide to move.”

“You’ll take them in Jihan’s room just before they go operational?” Saul asked.

“That’s the plan,” Koslowski said, pouring himself a cup of coffee.

Less than an hour later, the whole thing began to unravel. It started with a call from NYPD Counter-Terrorism’s Queens headquarters. Koslowski came over to Carrie and Saul, looking grim.

“We had a helicopter do a fly-by to do an infrared scan on the Jordanians. Just to cover our asses before we put in the surveillance cameras. The college kid, Abdel Yassin, isn’t in his apartment. We don’t know where he is.”

“College kid my ass. He’s thirty years old,” Gillespie growled.

“That’s not all,” Koslowski said, putting two satellite photographs on the table. They were of the same location: the Petra Fitness Equipment Company building and parking lot. “Do you see it?”

Saul and Carrie studied the photos. Then she saw it.

“Shit,” she said.

“What’s shit?” Saul said.

“One of the trucks is missing.”

“All right, but what does it mean?” Gillespie asked. “We always assumed the guns would be fitted inside some fitness machine and delivered to the hotel. So they use another truck. What’s the problem?”

“The problem is that we don’t know what’s going on or why they would do that. The problem is that there’s an unknown operating here. It obviously has something to do with Yassin and the truck,” Carrie said.

“What are you doing about it?” Saul asked.

“We wanted to run it by you two. See if you had any ideas,” Koslowski said. “We’re thinking of doing an APB on Yassin and the truck with a ‘Do Not Approach or Attempt to Apprehend.’ ”

“Don’t,” Carrie said sharply. “You have ordinary cops who don’t know what this is about and if they get too close, even inadvertently, they’ll spook Yassin. The situation goes from unknown to uncontrollable in a nanosecond. I repeat, we don’t know what this is about yet.”

“She’s right,” Saul said.

“It’s my fault,” she said.

“How’s it your fault?” Koslowski asked, looking at her.

“There’s something else going on here. I’ve sensed it all along because the pieces don’t fit. If Dima-sorry, Jihan is GSD or Hezbollah, I can see Syria involved, I can see Hezbollah, I can see Iran, but for the life of me, I can’t see the Sunnis in this. And it has nothing to do with Abbasiyah. I should have figured it out,” she said, shoving the laptop away from her. She looked out the window at the lights of the buildings on First Avenue. This is where September 11 happened, she thought, not far from here.

“Don’t beat yourself up. None of the rest of us figured it out either,” Koslowski said.

“What are you going to do?” Saul said to Koslowski.

“Start the surveillance on the three sites: the cousin’s apartment in Gravesend, the factory and the college guy’s apartment. We know where they’re going. The Waldorf. We’ll be waiting,” he said grimly.

Carrie got up. “I need to change, shower. I can’t stay here. I need to think,” she said.

Saul looked at her, concerned. “You’ve been going nonstop for days,” he said. “Take a breather.”

“We booked rooms for you guys at the Marriott,” Koslowski said. “On Lexington and Forty-Ninth. You can walk from here. Clean up. Grab a bite.”

“Saul, I’ll see you later,” she said, grabbing her jacket.

“Wait,” Koslowski said. “I’m sending Sergeant Watson with you. Leonora,” he called over to the young black woman officer who had spoken to him earlier.

Carrie made a face. “I’m a big girl, Captain. I won’t get lost in the big bad city.”

“It’s not that,” he said as the woman, Leonora, came over. “You’re critical to us. Out there”-he gestured at the window-“anything can happen. You could accidently run into Jihan on the street. I can’t let you go without one of ours. Besides,” he said, smiling, “she can keep you company. You can both grab a bite on the department. When you’re ready, come back.”

She and the policewoman, Leonora, walked to the hotel. The night was cool, crisp, people on the streets hurrying along, traffic normal for a weekday evening in Manhattan. Carrie checked in to the Marriott. They went up and after Leonora checked out the room, Carrie undressed. Leonora turned on the TV.

“He seems like a good guy, Koslowski,” Carrie said, heading for the shower.

“He’s one of the good ones.” Leonora nodded. “Don’t be fooled. He never does things simply.”

It was while she was taking her shower, letting the warm water run over her, eyes closed, feeling everything that had happened over the past few weeks since Beirut start to drain away, that she found herself thinking about what Leonora had said about Koslowski. Not simple.

Simple.

And then she had it. Son of a bitch! The thing that had been bothering her all along. The thought jolted her so much she nearly ran out of the shower naked. She stood under the water, forcing herself to breathe.

Take it easy, she told herself. Think it through. She was good. Her mind was clear, meds okay. She was onto something.

He never does things simply. Abu Nazir. Damn him! What if the thought she’d had on the train was right? All along they’d assumed because of Dima and what had happened to her with Nightingale in Beirut that it was a Hezbollah or an Iranian operation. But what if it wasn’t? What if it was AQI?

If it was Abu Nazir, he wouldn’t do it simple. Never. That wasn’t his style. There would be more than one attack. It wasn’t just the Waldorf, which could be just a diversion! What was it Julia had said about her husband Abbas’s reaction: “It was the way he said it. . It scared me.” There was going to be a second, separate attack. Something big. Even bigger than taking out the Vice-President. Something Abu Nazir could say to the Sunnis was retaliation for Abbasiyah. If he pulled it off, the Sunnis would flock to him. He could take all of Anbar Province. And it involved Abdel Yassin and the missing truck!

They had to find that missing truck-and fast. And do the same thing they were doing with Dima and the Waldorf: wait till the last second, trap it, and kill it.

She got out of the shower, put on a fresh pair of jeans, a top and jacket. Her hair was still wet and she looked like a drowned rat, but that didn’t matter.

“Come on,” she told Leonora. “We have to go back to the office.”

“What about dinner?” the policewoman said, getting up. “Believe me, it isn’t often the department pays.”

“I don’t care,” Carrie said, heading for the door. “We can order Chinese.”

“Why? What’s up?”

“I think I know how to find that truck,” she said.