Scorpion Betrayal

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

Villa Ada, Rome, Italy/New York, United States

“Why didn’t you call?” Moretti said. “We could have had a thousand Polizia di Stato. It would have been finished.”

Scorpion shook his head. It was almost midnight. They were sitting at an outside table in a cafe in the small Piazza di Sant’ Eustachio near the Pantheon. The lights from the cafe spilled out onto the cobblestones.

“He would’ve triggered the bomb with a cell phone before anyone could stop him. Even if we got him, you don’t do this on your own. He has confederates. We wouldn’t have stopped anything. I had no choice. I had to get him and the bomb together,” Scorpion said. He could hear the bitterness in his voice.

“E’ un disastro. Now he knows we know he’s in Rome. Maybe he even knows what you look like?”

“I never got close enough.” Scorpion grimaced, taking another sip of the grappa.

“Is no good,” Moretti said.

“We know that,” Scorpion snapped.

“I told my wife I have work, but naturalmente she thinks I am with my mistress. We lose the Palestinian and I am here with you and not my blond mistress. I lose twice. Is no good,” Moretti said, making Scorpion smile in spite of how he felt. “What if this figlio di gotta changes his plan? All our preparation goes for nothing.”

“He won’t.”

“How do you know?”

“Because he thinks it’s his destiny,” Scorpion said.

Moretti lit a cigarette and studied the American’s face, partially in shadow from the light from the cafe.

“You begin to know him, don’t you?”

“Maybe,” Scorpion said.

“What will you do?”

“Get drunk.”

“Seriously.”

“Alert Langley. After what happened today, he probably sent the signal.”

T he next day, Scorpion got the call from Rabinowich before noon. A half hour later he was sitting next to Moretti looking at a closed-room bank of TV monitors inside Carabinieri headquarters on the Via Romania near Villa Ada Park. It was 6:00 A.M. in Washington and New York, and the FBI Hostage Rescue Teams were fully operational.

Before he sat down, Scorpion verified that his face was blurred on the TV monitor, as he’d requested. Other TV monitors showed Wade Anderson, head of the FBI task force on the Palestinian operation; Dave Rabinowich, viewed at his desk via his Web cam; a heliport by the water in what was clearly lower Manhattan; an apartment building in a run-down New York neighborhood, viewed from a camera in an apartment or on a roof across the way; a two-story building in another New York neighborhood; a subway station; and a tac ops coordination center filled with men in SWAT gear.

As soon as Scorpion sat down, Anderson said, “You’re here at my request. I have a FISA warrant,” and waved a sheaf of papers he picked up from his desk, the shades drawn over the office window glass behind him. “It’s for two individuals whose names were supplied to us on a Special Access Critical basis by NSA and your buddy Rabinowich in Langley. I understand this was done based on information supplied by you. We’ve got multiple HRT teams deployed in Manhattan. Supervisory Special Agent Forrester’s heading that up.” A crew-cut man in a bulky SWAT outfit in one of the monitors nodded. “In fact, we’re using every damned HRT in the country, so this better be right,” Anderson said, glaring at the camera.

“These are people in the U.S. who received cell phone messages last night mentioning al Jabbar,” Rabinowich put in. “There’s also one in Chicago and another in L.A. that NSA is still running down. All the calls were made from a single cell phone in the Portonaccio district in Rome that subsequently went dead, so there’s no GPS track.”

“I assume that has something to do with why you are in Rome, Scorpion,” Anderson said.

“The Palestinian is in Rome,” Scorpion replied. Moretti looked hard at him.

“For our part, Langley’s telling us to focus on New York. Correct?” Anderson asked.

“That’s right,” Rabinowich said.

“Well, we’re not doing it just because Langley says so, but because it matches our analysis as well,” Anderson growled. “But we have critical tactical decisions to make and I wanted your input, Scorpion.”

“Who are the two individuals?” Scorpion asked.

“One’s a woman in her twenties, named…” Anderson squinted at his BlackBerry. “… Bharati Kabir. The family’s from Bangladesh; she came here when she was a kid. Lives in Queens with her brother’s family and works in an insurance office in midtown Manhattan. Frankly, we have concerns. She doesn’t fit the profile. The second is a Pakistani male from Brooklyn. Name is Atif Khan.”

“What about the girl’s brother?” Scorpion asked.

“Name’s Zahid Kabir. Works in a shoestore.” Anderson frowned. “We only got these last night, so we’re still digging stuff up.”

“This Atif Khan, what does he do?” Scorpion asked.

“You’ll love this,” Rabinowich said.

“He works for Prestige Helicopter Services,” Anderson replied, checking the BlackBerry. “They do private tours and charters out of the Pier 6 Heliport in lower Manhattan. This Khan’s a helicopter pilot.”

“Christ,” Scorpion muttered. “That’s how he’s doing it.”

“You mean aerial spraying of the plague pathogen over Manhattan from the helicopter? We thought of that,” Anderson said, frowning again. “Walking and spraying through the streets or in a subway or office building would’ve been too obvious. They want this thing to incubate before we were alerted.”

“That’s not why you’re here, Mister… uh, Scorpion,” Forrester jumped in, sarcastic about the code name.

“No, it isn’t,” Anderson said, taking the meeting back. “Justice,” indicating a man in a suit sitting next to him, “has come up with all kinds of constitutional hoops for us to jump through. These presumed terrorists-and we have concerns; as I said, the woman doesn’t fit the profile-are American citizens. DOJ wants us to take them in, Mirandize them, wipe their noses for them, the usual crap.”

“You’ll never take them in,” Scorpion said.

“Look, we don’t like it either, but if we have to, we know how to do this,” Forrester said, his men stirring.

“The Palestinian makes bombs,” Scorpion said. “He’s a graduate of a world-class technical university and he can control the blast to within a centimeter like he did in Cairo. It takes less than a second to press a button, and while I don’t know whether an explosion will destroy these pathogens or distribute them to everybody in the vicinity including your men, I guarantee that he does.”

One of Forrester’s men came over and whispered something to him. Forrester looked at a monitor and cut in.

“The Kabir woman. She’s on the move,” he said. “We need to decide.”

“Is she carrying anything? A suitcase, a shopping bag, anything?” Scorpion asked.

“Have a look,” Forrester said, and they all looked at the monitor showing a young woman in jeans and a head scarf walking down the street from the apartment building entrance.

“What the hell is she wearing?” Anderson asked, putting on his glasses and squinting at the monitor.

“Backpack. The big kind they use for camping,” one of Forrester’s men said.

“She’s the carrier,” Scorpion said.

“So what do we do? Arrest her now before she gets on the subway?” Forrester asked.

“You’ve got a FISA. Probable cause is a little iffy, but I’m okay if you want to take her in,” the suit next to Anderson said.

“The pilot, Khan, is on the move too, sir,” another of Forrester’s men said.

Another monitor showed the Pakistani, wearing a Prestige Helicopter jacket, coming out of his brick two-story house.

“Is he carrying anything?” Anderson asked.

“Just a briefcase,” Forrester said.

“You can’t arrest her,” Scorpion said. “The second anyone gets near her, she’ll detonate. Once the pathogen is out, it’s out. Everyone who survives will be a carrier.”

“And what’s your suggestion?” Forrester said sarcastically.

“Surveillance. Lots of switch-offs. She’s headed for the subway. Don’t lose her, but don’t keep the same agents on the same subway car with her for more than a few stops. No one looks at her; no one touches her; no one gets anywhere near her. One way or another-maybe she’ll get off and grab a taxi in Manhattan-she’s heading for the helicopter unless we do something stupid that forces her to do something she doesn’t want to do.”

“What happens when she gets to the heliport?” the suit next to Anderson asked.

“The heliport is built out into the East River,” Forrester said. “There’s a building next to the landing pad. We could grab her or take her out there.”

“You need your two best snipers,” Scorpion said. “I mean the best. Guys from Delta or SEALs; guys who won’t miss. There’s a building next to the landing pad, and the monitor shows skyscrapers nearby. They’ll have two or three seconds as she approaches the helicopter.”

“We need a decision, sir. She’s approaching the subway,” one of Forrester’s men said. On the monitor, they saw the woman approach the subway entrance surrounded by other commuters.

“Morning rush. Lots of people,” Rabinowich observed.

“Stand by,” Forrester’s man said into his phone mike.

“Do the surveillance on both, the girl and the pilot,” Anderson said. “No one spooks them, goddammit. Switch off tails, lots of distance, like Scorpion said. It’ll buy us some time while we decide.”

“What if we lose them?” Forrester put in.

“We know where they’re going,” Scorpion said.

Anderson looked directly at the monitor that showed Scorpion’s face as an oval blur.

“I want to be clear. You’re suggesting we terminate both of them on the helicopter pad? Is that right?”

“A bullet in the head. Both at the same time. It has to be instantaneous and you can’t miss. They have to die before they realize something’s happened, so it has to be a clean head shot,” Scorpion said.

“Who the hell is this guy?” the suit asked, glaring at the camera. “Have you ever heard of the United States Constitution? The presumption of innocence? If the media and the ACLU get hold of this, they’ll crucify us. We can’t just kill them!”

“Not even terrorists in the act?” Rabinowich chimed in.

“We don’t know that! You said yourself,” the suit turned to Anderson, “she doesn’t fit the profile.”

“Don’t you get it? Tens of millions of people could die,” Rabinowich said. “There’s no vaccine for this thing. No antibiotic or other medication in the world that’ll stop it. Once she starts spraying, we’ve got a helluva bigger problem than the ACLU. We have no choice.”

“You’re assuming they’re terrorists,” the suit replied, “or even if they are, that they’ve got this spray. That’s all it is, an assumption. What if you got the wrong people? What if she’s going backpacking with her boyfriend? You’re basing this all on two words in a single phone intercept.”

“In my business, that’s usually all we have,” Scorpion said.

“If you’re wrong, it could be a career killer. You realize that, don’t you?” The suit turned to Anderson. “You could be indicted. You need to kick this upstairs.”

“Careers versus the lives of millions of Americans including your wives and kids,” Rabinowich put in. “That’s not a hard decision.”

Anderson looked at the monitors. “They’ll want deniability, upstairs,” he said. “That’s what they pay me for. The buck stops here.” He looked directly at the TV camera. “Scorpion, are you sure about this-what is it-something about the constellation Orion in Arabic?”

“I’ve chased this guy across the Middle East and Europe. With all due respect, you have no idea who you are dealing with,” Scorpion replied.

Anderson looked at Forrester on his monitor. “Who are your best snipers?”

“Sadlock. Him and Pesco. For the record, both were SEAL snipers,” Forrester added, glaring at Scorpion’s blurred image on the monitor. “We’ll have my HRT squad close for backup.”

“Get ’em in position at the heliport,” Anderson said. “Tell them to make sure it’s a head kill shot.”

Forrester held up his hand, listening to his earpiece.

“The Kabir woman. She just got off the train at Grand Central.”

“Don’t lose her,” Anderson said.

“Switching to Grand Central security feed,” Forrester said.

They waited long seconds till one of the monitors showed crowds of people hurrying in all directions past a subway security camera.

“There she is,” someone said, and Scorpion saw the woman with the backpack nearly submerged in a sea of people moving toward the subway stairs, before she moved out of the camera’s range. A few minutes later Forrester reported that she had exited the station and was out on the street. One of Forrester’s technicians put it on a live feed.

“She just got into a yellow cab. Heading west on Forty-second,” the FBI tail on the scene said.

“Air, you got her?” Forrester asked.

“We got her,” a voice said, nearly drowned out by the sound of a helicopter rotor. On another monitor, they were able to watch the taxi from the helicopter camera as it made its way through traffic back toward the East Side and down the FDR Drive. As the taxi approached the Brooklyn Bridge, Forrester told Air to peel off so as not to spook the woman. One of Forrester’s men tapped his shoulder and said something.

“Sniper teams are in position,” Forrester said. “They have their orders. As soon as they see her on the helipad, they take out her and the pilot.” Forrester and his men were no longer on the monitor, although they were still on audio. Scorpion assumed he and his men were moving into position.

“What about the bomb and the spray afterward?” Anderson asked.

“We’re in the basement of a building on South Street. We’ll be on the scene with the robot within forty-five seconds. Anything else?”

“Yeah, don’t screw it up,” Anderson growled.

“The pilot, Khan, has boarded the helicopter,” a technician said, and another monitor showed the Prestige helicopter on the pad, the sun glittering on the East River behind it. The helicopter’s rotor began to turn.

“She’s out of the taxi. Still wearing the backpack,” a voice said as everyone tensed and leaned toward the TV monitors. The seconds seemed to creep by slowly. Scorpion and Moretti looked at each other.

Suddenly she was in view, a young woman with a head scarf walking toward the helicopter. The pilot looked like he was leaning over to say something to her. Do it now! Scorpion thought. What are they waiting for?

She was almost at the helicopter when suddenly she collapsed, the downdraft from the helicopter’s rotor blowing her head scarf across her face. Forrester and his men ran out onto the helicopter pad, their Kriss Super V carbines at the ready, gear bouncing on their hips. One of them pulled the lifeless body of the pilot, part of his head torn away and bloody, out of the helicopter. Another peeled the backpack off the woman and carried it gingerly away from the helicopter, its rotor slowing down and stopping.

Moretti turned to Scorpion, his face grim.

“He’s going to destroy Rome, isn’t he?” Moretti asked.

“He’s smart and absolutely committed. We’ll only have a few seconds to stop him,” Scorpion said. He thought about the two dead women in Campo dei Fiori, the beat-up Englishwoman, Alicia, the bus driver at the Coliseum. And now the dead helicopter pilot and the Bangladeshi woman. Hassani didn’t mind how many people died. Maybe he even liked it.

“You’ll be there tomorrow?” Moretti asked.

Scorpion nodded.