Operation Hell Gate - Marc Cerasini [81]
1:01:03 P.M. EDT
Houston Street, Lower Manhattan
Jack Bauer watched the entrance to Wexler Storage from a recessed doorway across busy Houston Street, waiting for Caitlin to make her move. Around him the bohemians of the West Village — women in black dresses, stacked shoes, and wide-rimmed glasses; men with shaved heads, tattoos, and multiple body piercings — crowded the sidewalks, the shops, the sidewalk cafes. Jack ignored the locals, focused attention on the police car parked at the curb, the lone officer inside.
When the fire alarm wailed, Jack was ready. He burst out of hiding, into the street. Dodging cars, he watched the policeman hurriedly report the fire on his radio, then climb out to offer assistance.
A large black woman stumbled out of the store-front, collapsed with a coughing fit on the sidewalk. Caitlin appeared a moment later, screaming her head off. She spotted Jack and the cop at the same time.
Thinking fast, the woman literally jumped into the young policeman's arms.
"There's smoke and fire! The building is burning."
As she babbled, Caitlin swung the cop around so Jack could race past the man unseen.
The waiting room was already filled with black smoke. Jack blinked against the burning haze. Through the window behind the counter, he saw orange flames racing through the inner office. The plasterboard wall around that window began to smolder; beige paint bubbled and curled from the tremendous heat.
He'd wanted Caitlin to set a small fire with enough smoke to empty the building. Clearly, she had gone overboard. Jack thought about escaping the building, too, but a sudden noise changed his mind.
Jack heard a clang as a steel door burst open. A Hispanic man in a gray uniform stumbled out of a stairwell, choking against the billowing smoke. Jack pushed the man toward the exit, then ran into the stairwell and slammed the door behind him.
The stairwell was relatively free of smoke. There was no way down; the stairs ended on the ground floor. So Jack climbed the stairs to the second floor. He found another steel door, this one locked from the other side. Cautiously Jack peered through a small wire-lined window in the center of the door. He saw long rows of storage bins, each with its own door and padlock — none of them large enough to hold a North Korean missile launcher.
At the opposite side of the room Jack saw sliding metal-mesh doors blocking an empty elevator shaft. Smoke was beginning to penetrate the second floor through the floorboards and elevator shaft. It hung in the air.
Jack climbed to the third floor, the fourth, then the fifth. On each floor the steel doors were locked, the floors themselves seemingly deserted — just row upon row of storage bins, and an empty elevator shaft on the opposite wall. No sign of a terrorist cell, no trace of the Long Tooth missile launchers.
Finally Jack reached the sixth floor and the top of the stairs. Only a ladder climbed higher, leading up to a hatch in the ceiling. As he approached the steel door, Jack wondered if he was on a wild goose chase, if he'd trapped himself inside a burning building for nothing.
* * *
1:06:15 P.M. EDT
Sixth floor, Wexler Business Storage
Houston Street, Lower Manhattan
When the fire alarms began to sound, Tarik dropped his hammer, barked instructions in Pashto for the others to stay where they were and to keep working. They had to pack up the precious cargo in wooden crates, for transport to the airports, no matter what else was going on around them.
Tarik opened his cell, dialed up Taj. He cursed when his call was rerouted to a voice mail system. He left his leader a warning in Pashto, then ended the call.
He turned, found the men struggling under the weight of the missiles; the launchers had not yet been sealed in their boxes. He wanted to curse these men, goad them into action with kicks and insults. But he did not. These men were old, some with missing eyes, hands, limbs — their legacies of the war against the Soviets.
Tarik reminded himself that these men