Hidden Order

CHAPTER 58

A circle of cobblestones with a star carved into the center was all that marked the location of the Boston Massacre. It sat embedded in a downtown sidewalk, almost directly beneath the east balcony of the Old State House. It was one of the least glamorous but most important stops along Boston’s “Freedom Trail,” a two-and-a-half-mile-long red stripe that runs through the city and connects sixteen historically significant sites in the run-up to the Revolutionary War. On that spot, five Bostonians became the first to give up their lives for the cause of American liberty.

Waiting for a group of tourists to pass, he looked at Cordero and her partner and said, “The symbolism here is pitch perfect. Right up their alley. This has got to be where the next one is going to happen.”

“What do you think, Sal?” Cordero asked.

“My smartphone isn’t so smart when it comes to predicting what people are going to do. I don’t know.”

She looked back at Harvath. “Do you think they’d stage something from inside the Old State House? Another hanging maybe? Have the body come out over the balcony?”

Harvath looked up and considered it. “We know they like to operate late at night. It gives them cover. They also like to limit their exposure. That’s why the Liberty Tree and Hutchinson sites were done inside. It’s pretty hard to kill somebody out in public.”

Cordero’s partner looked up at all the office buildings surrounding them. “Maybe not. What if they used a sniper?”

It was a good point. Harvath hadn’t thought of that and now looked up as well. There were plenty of places a sniper could be positioned. It would be dramatic and draw a lot of attention. It also felt like something the people he believed they were dealing with would be capable of.

Playing devil’s advocate, he said, “If they did use a sniper, how would they get the victim to walk right up to where they wanted?”

“If it were me,” Cordero mused, “I’d put a cop there.”

“You would?”

She nodded. “I’d call something into 911, wait until the cop was right where I wanted him, and then I’d turn the victim loose.”

Harvath thought about that. “Make the victim think you were setting him free?”

“Or her free,” she clarified. “Remember, we’ve got one man and one woman who are still missing.”

“That’s correct. So you’d let him or her think they’re being set free, you’d dump them on the street someplace close, and then tell them to run for the cop.”

“Then when they get to the cop,” Sal said, mimicking a sniper with an invisible rifle, “end of story.”

It was an excellent theory, but just that — a theory. He looked up again at the buildings. It was a base worth covering. “How much of a SWAT presence could we get?”

“We can reach out to the state guys to augment what we already have,” said Cordero as her eyes scanned the area. “But not knowing precisely what these people have planned, we also need to flood this entire zone with plainclothes cops. If the victim makes it to that historical marker, it could be too late.”

Harvath agreed. “The Boston Massacre was all about British soldiers mowing innocent people down with muskets, so if they do go the sniper route, they’ll have the victim in the crosshairs the entire time. Nevertheless, we need to cover our other bases.”

“Such as?”

“We definitely want to have officers positioned inside the Old State House,” he said, as his mind sifted through the countless possibilities. When you had a location, particularly one out in the open, you learned how to defend it by envisioning how the bad guys would likely attack it. Looking down at the historical marker, he added, “Is there anything running underneath here? Sewers? The subway system?”

“Probably. Why?”

“Just in case this historical marker isn’t really on the site of the Boston Massacre, but actually above it, we’ll need cops down there covering it as well.”

“That shouldn’t be too hard to find out,” Cordero replied. “What else do we need?”

It was odd to have her suddenly defer to him, and it took a moment for him to realize that the shift had happened. Maybe it was because she knew that he had been a Secret Service agent, though she had no idea it was on the President’s detail, but somehow she sensed that this was in his wheelhouse and was something he was good at.

He thought through all the other things he would like to have, knowing they’d never get there in time, and settled on the one thing they needed more than anything else. “If you can find us a whole busload of luck, that’d be all I’d ask for,” he said, forcing an optimistic laugh.

Harvath heard Cordero’s partner laugh, but as he looked up, he couldn’t tell if the man was laughing with him, or at him.