The Prince of Risk

86

Thirty minutes before the opening, the floor of the New York Stock Exchange was a scene of ordered pandemonium. The floor was spread over three cavernous high-ceilinged rooms covering a total of 40,000 square feet, with electronic trading posts situated in a rambling fashion like bumpers on a pinball machine. A balcony encircling the floor provided tight quarters for media outlets such as CNN, Fox News, CNBC, and others that maintained mini broadcast studios and kept reporters on call from dawn to dusk. Overlooking it all was the terrace where dignitaries stood to ring the opening bell.

Alex stood restlessly at one of the two main entries to the floor, from which she could see outside the building to Exchange Place and the old headquarters of J. P. Morgan across the street. “Mintz,” she said into her lapel microphone. “Come back.”

To protect against the bad guys listening in, she’d demanded access to a military bandwidth reserved for national emergencies. It wasn’t foolproof, but it was the best they could do at a moment’s notice.

“All clear,” said Mintz, his voice plumped with pride at his newfound status. He was no longer Deadeye in jest. He was the real thing.

Alex checked in with her agents who were patrolling the streets surrounding the Exchange. None had sighted any of the mercenaries whose dossiers she had found in James Salt’s home, or numbers 1 to 23, as she thought of them.

She’d read Palantir’s report and passed it on to Janet McVeigh, along with all she’d learned from Michael Grillo. From there the information had traveled to the police commissioner, the mayor’s office, and of course FBI headquarters in Washington, D.C. There was no question that the New York Stock Exchange was the target. The mayor was adamant in his wish that the Exchange remain open for business as usual. The law enforcement authorities agreed, though their reasons had nothing to do with pride, and everything to do with tactics.

It was also decided not to publicly broadcast the nature of the threat. A plan was fielded to block off all vehicular traffic in a 1-square-mile radius of the Exchange building. That, too, was vetoed. Alex pointed out that it was probable that a secondary target had been chosen and mapped out. The idea of an attack against a department store, a government building, or, God forbid, a school by so many heavily armed, battle-hardened mercenaries was too terrible to contemplate.

There was really only one choice, and that was to capture the terrorists. To achieve this, two hundred policemen and FBI agents, most from the local Joint Terrorism Task Force, had been called in, briefed, and assigned a sector to patrol. All wore plain clothes. They were dressed as Wall Street traders, secretaries, tourists, and city workers. All had been provided with photographs of the mercenaries. The last order was the most important: no one was to engage a suspect until being given the green light from Alex. The only visible sign of the beefed-up security was an additional Hercules brigade positioned at the corner of Wall and Broad, but this was hardly out of the ordinary. The New York Stock Exchange was a hard target in the best of times.

As Alex peered out to the street, it appeared to be a normal midweek summer morning.

What could go wrong?