For the past couple of days, Capistran had been working into the wee hours with a couple of sympathetic engineering students at Stony Brook University out on Long Island. One whiz kid was from Iran, the other from Afghanistan. They got a kick and a half out of the irony, too: New York-trained college students helping to blow up New York. Land of the fucking free, right? They called their team the Manhattan Project. Another insider joke.
At first they had considered an ANFO, a type of bomb that would blow a crater in a road for sure but was unlikely to topple a large bridge like the Queensboro. The college whizzes told Capistran he could see what an ANFO would accomplish just by setting off a firecracker on a city street. Or imagining it. The explosion would be characterized by “coward forces which always seek the path of least resistance.” In other words, the bomb would make a nasty little burn on the road, but the real destructive power would escape up and sideways into the air.
Not good enough for today. Too benign. Not even close to what was needed.
Then the clever-as-hell college students came upon a much better way to blow up the bridge. They instructed Capistran on how and where to attach several small charges at different points in the foundation. This was similar to the way demolition companies toppled old buildings, and it would work like a charm.
Since he had absolutely no interest in being caught, Capistran had considered sending divers into the East River to set the charges on the supports. He had approached the bridge several times himself. And to his surprise, he found security to be virtually nonexistent.
That’s exactly the way it was early that morning. He and his two associates walked out on the lower supports of the Fifty-ninth Street Bridge and nobody said boo to them.
From a distance, the ornate silver-painted ironwork and finials had made the old bridge look rather delicate. Up close, the real power of the structure was revealed: the massive trusses; rivets as large as a man’s kneecaps.
This sounded crazy, but it would work—his piece would work.
Sometimes he wondered how he’d gotten so sour on everything, so bitter and full of rage. Hell, years ago in the Marines he’d been part of the rescue team that had extracted downed pilots like Scott O’Grady in Bosnia. Well, he wasn’t a war hero anymore. He was just another capitalist working in the system, right? And that was a lot truer statement than most people could let themselves believe.
As he continued to walk out on the support structure, Capistran couldn’t help humming, then singing the words, “Groovy. Feeling very groovy.”
Chapter 55
THE STRANGEST, most puzzling thing happened next.
The deadline passed—and nothing happened.
There was no message from the Wolf, no immediate attacks. Nothing. Silence. It was eerie, but also incredibly scary.
The Wolf was the only one who knew what was going on now—or maybe, the Wolf, the president, and a few other world leaders. Rumor had it that the president, vice president, and the cabinet had already been moved out of Washington.
This thing wouldn’t stop, would it? The news stories certainly wouldn’t. The Post, the New York Times, USA Today, CNN, the networks—they had all gotten hold of some version of the threats against major cities. No one knew which cities, or who was doing the threatening. But after years of yellow and orange alerts from Homeland Security, no one seemed to take the threats and rumors too seriously.
The uncertainty, the war of nerves had to be part of the Wolf’s plan, too. I was in Washington for the Memorial Day weekend, and was asleep when I got a call to get over to the Hoover Building right away.
I looked at the alarm clock, squinting to focus, saw that it was three in the morning. Now what? Have there been reprisals? If so, they weren’t telling me over the phone.
“I’ll be right there,” I said, pushing myself out of bed, cursing under my breath. I showered under hot, then cold water for a minute or two, toweled off, threw on clothes, and got in the car and drove through Washington in a horrible daze. All I knew was that the Wolf was going to call in thirty minutes.
Three-thirty in the morning, after a long weekend, with the expired deadline hanging over our head. He wasn’t just controlling, he was sadistic.
When I arrived at the crisis room on five, there were at least a dozen others already there. We greeted one another like old friends at somebody’s wake. For the next couple of minutes, bleary-eyed agents kept filing into the conference room, nobody seeming completely awake. A ragged line formed at the coffee table as a couple of pots finally arrived. Everybody looked nervous and on edge.
“No Danish?” said one of the other agents. “Where’s the love?” But nobody even smiled at his joke.
Director Burns came in a few minutes past 3:30. He was wearing a dark suit and tie, formal for him, but especially at this time of the morning. I had the sense that he didn’t have any idea what was happening, either. The Wolf was in charge, not any of us.
“And you thought I was a tough boss,” Director Burns cracked after a couple of minutes of silence in the room. Finally, there was a sprinkling of laughter. “Thank you for coming,” Burns added.
The Wolf came on the line at 3:43. The filtered voice. The characteristic smugness and disdain.
“You’re probably wondering why I scheduled a meeting in the middle of th
e night,” he began. “Because I can. How do you like that? Because I can.
“In case you haven’t been able to tell, I don’t like you people very much. Not at all, actually. I have my reasons, good ones. I hate everything America stands for. So maybe this is partly about revenge? Maybe you’ve wronged me somewhere, sometime in the past? Maybe you wronged my family. That’s a part of the puzzle. Revenge is a sweet bonus for me.
“But let me get to the present. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I think I instructed you not to conduct any more investigations into my whereabouts.
“So what do you do? You bust six poor bastards in downtown Manhattan because you suspect they’re working with me. Why, one poor girl was so distraught that she went out a third-floor window. I saw her fall! I suppose that your thinking—such as it is—was that if you took out my operatives there, then New York City would be safe.