Operation Hell Gate - Marc Cerasini [73]
Glancing up, Jack's gaze traveled across the river and up the gleaming glass walls of the World Trade Center. Those towers, the city around them — it all seemed so massive and permanent. Was this city, this country really in mortal danger? Could this enormous city, this entire nation, ever really be hurt by a haphazard cadre of individual terrorists? As he gazed at those twin towers, so solid, so substantial, the concept suddenly seemed absurd. Yet Jack knew from experience the kind of acts such men as Taj and Khan Ali Kahlil and the Lynch brothers were capable.
Jack reached for his cell phone to check back with CTU. With Khan Ali Kahlil dead and his brother Taj missing, Jack had run out of options. Then remembered he'd given the phone, ID, PDA, and even his .45 to Caitlin — and right now he didn't even know where she was.
* * *
10:19:45 A.M. EDT
Aboard the Manhattan-bound R Train
A battered Liam immediately left the scene of the lethal explosion. Delivery was impossible, and he still clutched the silver attache case. The first time he'd made a delivery to Taj, several weeks ago or more, Shamus told him that if something happened and he couldn't make the delivery, he was to return the case to the Lynch brothers' Green Dragon store in Forest Hills. With no other plan, Liam now followed those same instructions.
Unfortunately, the blast and subsequent rupture of a water main had forced the closure of the 2 and 3 train routes, so it took him nearly forty-five minutes to walk across downtown Brooklyn to the nearest working subway, the Manhattan-bound R train.
Now, as he sat in a corner seat in the crowded subway, the attache case on his lap, his sister Caitlin's words from the night before came to mind. Was this delivery on the up-and-up? If it was, then why did the police, the FBI, raid Kahlil's store? Was Taj some kind of crook?
And what if I'd been inside when the FBI charged the building? Liam thought. Then I'd be dead, too. What is in this case that's so bleedin' important that it had to be delivered in the middle of the night? Am I carrying what the FBI and the police were looking for?
Liam fingered the case, noting for the first time that one of the clasps had already been broken and hung loose — probably by the fall onto the subway tracks. He touched the other latch and it sprung open. Liam paused, looked around.
If the case was full of money or cocaine or something, he didn't want anyone else in the packed subway to notice. But everyone was minding his own business, reading the paper or dozing or listening to music on their Walkmans so he decided to risk it.
Taking a deep breath, Liam opened the case.
Inside he found sponge packing material and a black plastic device lying in a formed depression. Long and thin, the black plastic object seemed innocent enough. Liam touched it, picked it up. On the smooth unbroken surface he saw a serial number, a plug-in port of some kind, and nothing else. Obviously the object was just what Shamus said it was, some bloody part for a computer.
Liam placed the device back into the depression, lifted the sponge packing. Under it he saw two black squares, each the size of a pack of coffin nails. They were completely covered with electrical tape. More tape held the squares to the side of the case. Liam figured it was just more packing material. He closed the case and leaned back with relief.
In another hour or so he'd be in Forest Hills. He could return the case to Shamus, go back to The Last Celt and catch some zeds at last...
* * *
10:34:40 A.M. EDT
CTU Headquarters, Los Angeles
Jamey was following Nina Myers's sole lead — the identity of Felix Tanner. Using state, federal, and local databases, banking information, tax records, and corporate registers, she found some interesting connections.
For one thing, according to tax records from the Lynch brothers' Green Dragon franchise, most of the shop's income was generated by a vaguely worded contract Griffin Lynch had signed with