London Bridges - James Patterson [37]
“I know you have. If Shafer’s in there, we’ll get him. Maybe you’ll get him.” Yeah, maybe I’ll blow that creep away after all.
And then, amazingly, we got the order to go. Green light! Five minutes of panic and thrill.
First thing, I heard the snipers breaking windows across the street.
Then we were running toward the hideout building. Everybody was strapped up for war, all in black flight suits and armed to the teeth.
Two eight-passenger Bell helicopters suddenly appeared and veered in toward the roof of the brick building. They hovered and assault specialists began to “fast-rope” down.
One team of four was climbing up the side of the building, an amazing sight in itself.
Another of HRT’s “go to war” slogans flashed through my head—speed, suspense, and violence of action. It was happening just like that.
I heard explosive entry charges blasting out doors, three or four different blasts within seconds. There would be no negotiating as part of this assault.
We were in. This was good—I was in.
Gunshots echoed through the dark halls of the building. Then machine-gun bursts came from somewhere above me.
I made it up to the second floor. A male with wild, bushy hair came out of a doorway. He had a rifle.
“Hands in the air!” I yelled at him. “In the air. High.”
He understood English—he put his hands up and let the rifle drop.
“Where’s Colonel Shafer? Where’s Shafer?” I screamed at him.
The man just shook his head back and forth, back and forth, looking dazed and confused.
I left the prisoner with a couple of HRT guys, then hurried upstairs to the third floor. I wanted the Weasel so badly now. Was he in there somewhere?
A waif of a woman in black suddenly ran across a large living-room area at the head of the stairs.
“Stop!” I bellowed at her. “You—stop!”
But she didn’t—she went right out an open window in the living room. I heard her scream, then nothing after that. Sickening to watch.
And finally I heard “Secure. The building is secure! All floors secure!”
But nothing about Geoffrey Shafer, nothing about the Weasel.
Chapter 50
THE HRT AND NYPD SWAT TEAMS were swarming around the building. All the doors had been blown off their hinges, and several windows were shattered. So much for “knock and announce” protocol, but the plan seemed to have worked well from what I could see so far. Except for finding Shafer. Where was that son of a bitch? I’d missed him like this a couple of times before.
The woman who’d gone out the top-floor window was dead, which is what happens when you plunge headfirst three stories down onto a sidewalk. I congratulated a few HRT guys as I made my way through the top floor; they did the same for me.
I met Michael Ainslie on the stairs. “Washington wants you involved with the interrogations,” he told me, not seeming too pleased. “There are six of them. How do you want to handle it?”
“Shafer?” I asked Ainslie. “Anything on him?”
“They say he isn’t here. We don’t know for sure. We’re still looking for him.”
I couldn’t help feeling a letdown about the Weasel, but I sucked it up. I walked inside a workspace that had been turned into a quasi-apartment. Sleeping bags and a few stained mattresses were strewn across the bare wooden floor. Five males and a woman sat together handcuffed like prisoners of war, which I suppose they were.
I stared at them without saying a word at first.
Then I pointed to the youngest-looking male: small, thin, wire-rimmed glasses, scruffy beard, of course. “Him,” I said, and started to walk out of the room. “I want that one. Bring him now!”
After the young male was taken from the main living area to a smaller adjoining bedroom, I looked around the main room again.
I pointed to another youngish male with long curly black hair and a full beard. “That one,” I said, and he was also escorted out. No explanation.
Next I was introduced to an FBI interpreter, a man named Wasid who spoke Arabic, Farsi, Pashto. We entered the bedroom next door together.
“He’s probably Saudi, possibly all of them are,” the interpreter told me on the way in. Wherever