Someone had scrubbed both addresses so completely clean that neither offered a single trail leading anywhere. That kind of sterilization normally happened only in covert government operations so deep they were referred to as happening at “crush depth”-a status reserved for issues of vital national security. For one reason or another, these issues were sometimes better handled in the civilian arena, rather than on military bases or at established intelligence agencies, but even so, the crush depth locations Lawlor had known during his career were like mini-fortresses.

Gary still wasn’t any closer to understanding what was going on in New York, though. If the imagery from Kevin McCauliff did indeed show two crush depth locations being hit, what was the reason? Better yet, how in the world could the terrorists have known about them? The operational intelligence would have been Polo Step at the very least. The fact that they had hit not one but two suggested a security compromise so devastating that its repercussions could very well be felt for years, if not for decades, to come.

Lawlor jumped over to the DHS server, pulled up the most current FEMA damage map for New York City and filtered out as much “noise” as possible. He wasn’t interested in casualty estimates or the positioning of emergency equipment. All he wanted to know was where the terrorists had specifically struck. Once that information was isolated, he added secondary problem spots such as reported sniper and RPG locations, apartment building and property fires, as well as any other major events that demanded a large police, fire, or EMS response. With those in place, he added the last layer-the secret Upper West Side and Midtown locations the terrorists had just struck.

He tried to make sense of it, but the harder he stared at the screen the more the questions piled up in his brain. If these were crush depth locations, what agency or group was running them and what was their purpose? With all the chaos in New York, was whoever oversaw those locations even aware that they’d been hit? That was one of Lawlor’s biggest questions.

The only obvious thing in the whole muddled mix was that if the terrorists were pinpointing and hitting actual crush depth locations, then the United States was in even bigger trouble than it thought.

Lawlor realized that he was going to have to go against his better judgment and talk to people outside his immediate circle. Whatever the fallout might be, as long as he could stop the terrorists before they struck again, it would be worth it.

NATIONAL SECURITY AGENCY

FORT MEADE, MARYLAND

Mark Schreiber poked his head into his supervisor’s fluorescent-lit office and said, “I think we’ve got another problem in Manhattan.”

“No kidding,” replied Joseph Stanton, jerking his thumb over his shoulder toward the flat-panel televisions on the wall behind him. “Some idiot blogger started a rumor that a bio agent was part of the attack and no matter what Mayor Brown says, nobody is listening to him.”

“That’s not what I’m talking about,” replied Schreiber as he stepped the rest of the way inside and closed the door behind him. “Transcon and Geneva Diamond are unresponsive.”

Stanton stopped what he was doing and laid down his purple highlighter. His bespectacled face was bloated from a diet too rich in sodium, along with too many Hennessy-and-Cokes after hours. His hair was unkempt and his entire wardrobe seemed to be permanently wrinkled. He wore a seersucker suit that should have been retired years ago and a striped regimental tie decorated with coffee stains. “Unresponsive how?”

“Nobody’s answering e-mail.”

“Did you try calling them?”

Schreiber nodded his head. “The phones don’t seem to be working.”

“How about pinging the servers?”

“I did that and it comes back A-Okay. Still processing.”

“So what’s the problem?” asked Stanton.

“If we can ping the servers via satellite and get a response, then why isn’t their e-mail working? It piggybacks off the same system.”

“ New York ’s in chaos right now. We don’t know what the damage is or what services have been interrupted. Let’s not worry about it.”

“You don’t find it a bit odd that we can’t connect with two of our substations?”

“Considering everything that’s going on up there, not really. The servers are still churning, right? You said so yourself. So, someone has got to be processing data.”

“Yeah, but I just have a bad feeling about it,” replied Schreiber.

“We’re under attack, so having bad feelings is understandable. Give it a little while longer. I’m sure we’ll hear something.”

“And if we don’t?”

Stanton didn’t have time for this. “Then we’ll have a friendly neighborhood beat cop stroll by and give us a report.”

“You’re joking, right?” said the young man.

Of course he was joking, and if this kid spent a little more time interacting with real live people and a little less time at his computer, he might know it. Picking up his highlighter and turning his attention back to the stack of paperwork on his desk, Stanton replied, “It’s going to be a very long night, Mark. Why don’t you take a few minutes, relax, and then see what kind of sourcing help they’re going to need upstairs.”

“Fine, but if we still don’t hear anything from New York?”

“Then we’ll dig a little deeper. But for now, I want you focused on helping the people here who need it the most. I’ve been to Transcon and Geneva Diamond. Believe me, those folks know how to handle themselves.”

NEW YORK CITY

Navigating through the traffic as best he could, Fiore kept the Secret Service Command Center apprised of their status, while Marcy fed him updates from the backseat. The bottom line was that their progress was horrible and their patient was getting worse.

With the FDR completely impassable, Tim was forced onto side streets, most of which were jammed.

At 7th Street near Tompkins Square, Marcy yelled, “Tim, she’s crashing! We’re losing her!”

Rapidly scrolling through the iQue’s options, Tim found what he was looking for. “I’m going to cut through this park. Hold on…”

Jumping the curb at Avenue B, Fiore raced through Tompkins Square and came out again at 10th Street and Avenue A. He barreled through a police barricade at First Avenue and, after hanging a tire-screaming right turn, pinned the accelerator and raced for Beth Israel Hospital. His only hope was that they’d be able to make it there in time.

The lone NYPD officer standing guard outside the battered Geneva Diamond and Jewelry Exchange storefront was relieved when Harvath appeared and flashed his DHS credentials. The fact that he had pulled up on a dirt bike along with four other rather hard-looking individuals didn’t faze him a bit, not with everything else that had already happened that afternoon.

The officer had been waiting for backup since stumbling onto the scene forty-five minutes earlier while en route to another location. With every pair of professionally trained hands in the city needed to help search for survivors in the rubble of the bridge and tunnel bombings, random lootings weren’t on the patrolman’s priority list. But when a group of 47th Street merchants flagged him down and told him what had happened, the officer immediately changed his mind.

After moving onlookers away from the front of the store, he ventured a few feet inside. What he saw had caused him to remain there until help arrived. He was just about to reluctantly abandon the post, when Harvath showed. Now, he was more than happy to turn things over to someone with more authority and greater jurisdiction. In all his years on the job, nothing had prepared the patrolman for the carnage he’d seen inside.