Herrington studied the scene for several moments and then said, “Maybe this has to do with why they were trying to draw off the cream.”

Harvath wasn’t following him.

“The hostage crisis in the Bronx, the fire at the Emergency Command Center in Brooklyn, the sniper targeting aircraft at LaGuardia? All of it served to tie up high-end tactical assets in those boroughs and potentially draw more away from Manhattan. Then the bridges and tunnels go, and every available local, state, or federal law enforcement officer rushes to the scene of the nearest attack, rolls up his or her sleeves, and starts helping pull people out. They’re heroes-don’t get me wrong-but one of the things you rarely hear talked about when people discuss what went wrong on September eleventh is that too many people wanted to be a hero that day.

“It wasn’t like New Orleans after the hurricane hit and the levees broke and cops abandoned their posts. In New York, all of the police, fire, paramedics, and everyone at 26 Federal Plaza rushed to the World Trade Center on 9/11 to help. They saw it as their duty, and right or wrong, they ignored their commanders and ran down there as fast as they could. What if somebody was counting on that happening again?”

Harvath looked at his friend. “Are you telling me you think the attacks on the bridges and tunnels were diversions?”

Bob shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t know. You tell me. Why shut down the air traffic control system? Why have snipers target boats and helicopters around Manhattan?”

That had been troubling Harvath as well, and there was only one answer he could come up with: “To prevent it from being reinforced.”

“And why wouldn’t you want the island reinforced?”

“Because having to engage reinforcements would either hinder your escape or-”

“Prevent you from accomplishing your primary objective.”

Harvath shook his head. “That’s where this thing loses me. We’ve been saying for years that another attack is not a question of if, but when, and now it’s happened. The death toll from the bridge and tunnel attacks is easily going to exceed 9/11, so how can that not have been their primary objective?”

“That’s the problem with the way we look at these ass-hats,” replied Herrington. “Too often we give them credit for being a lot smarter than they actually are. It makes us feel better that way when they beat us. But I’ll tell you something, taking out those bridges and tunnels isn’t really an issue of smarts, it’s an issue of manpower. You throw enough manpower at any problem and you can solve it, especially when your manpower is willing to die to achieve your goal for you.”

“But we’re talking about a lot of manpower here,” replied Harvath. “The shitbag we interrogated at the First Precinct proves they had some sort of redundancies in place.”

“Two backups, three backups, so what? Look at the London bombings. Look at Madrid. They just took Manhattan and threw more manpower at it, that’s all. Even if we never know exactly how they did it, they did it, and that’s all that matters at this point.”

“Okay,” said Harvath, playing devil’s advocate for a moment. “Suppose everything you’re saying is correct and the bridges and tunnels, the snipers, RPGs, and ATC site bombings are all intended to isolate Manhattan and prevent reinforcements from interfering with the terrorists’ primary objective. From what we can tell, they hit this location and then moved to Midtown to hit the other in the diamond district. What are they after?”

“That’s the hundred-thousand-dollar question,” replied Herrington. “If we can figure that out, we might have a shot at stopping them. If you want my opinion, I vote we go back and convince the NYPD to turn over your pal with the overactive salivary glands so we can take him somewhere and interrogate him properly this time.”

Herrington had a point. The surviving terrorist was the only concrete lead they had.

As a plan began to form in Harvath’s mind he suddenly wondered if maybe dead men could tell tales.

Three,” replied Kevin McCauliff as Harvath readied his pen to take down the information. “Each from a different phone in the group, but all to the same number.”

Harvath had chastised himself for not thinking of this earlier. If they knew which phones the suicide bombers had been using, it made sense to check on their call records. It was McCauliff’s mention of a contact at Nextel that had planted the seed in the back of Harvath’s mind.

“And what were you able to find out about the number?” asked Harvath.

McCauliff drew in a deep breath and said, “You’re not going to like this.”

“Unless you’re going to tell me that these guys were dialing the front desk at the Defense Intelligence Agency, I think I can handle it.”

“The calls went to an alphanumeric pager purchased two weeks ago which was paid for in cash along with upfront local service.”

“One-way or two-way pager?”

“One-way,” answered McCauliff. “VHF frequency with really no way to trace it.”

“You’re right,” replied Harvath. “I don’t like it. The guy could be anywhere.”

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s not your fault. Thanks for checking into it for me.”

“That’s what friends are for, right? Listen, if you need anything else call me back, but if I’m away from my desk, do me a favor and don’t leave a message, call me on my cell or send me a benign text. Okay? I’m still pretty keen on keeping my job here, and I never know when Big Brother is looking at my communications.”

With those words, a series of tumblers clicked in Harvath’s head. Excited by the idea that had just flashed across his mind, he gripped his cell phone tighter and said, “If I asked you to, could you send a text message to that alphanumeric pager and make it look like it came from the cell phone I liberated from the NYPD?”

“Sure,” replied McCauliff, “but why?”

“Because I think maybe we can make Mohammed come to the mountain.”

THE WHITE HOUSE

Jack Rutledge looked up as Carolyn Leonard entered his office. “What’s going on?”

“We just got an update from Amanda’s detail agents in New York,” said the Secret Service agent.

“Is she all right?”

“She’s at Beth Israel Hospital now. We’ve got agents en route from the Manhattan field office as we speak.”

“That’s not what I asked, Carolyn. I asked if Amanda’s all right.”

“We don’t know, sir. Apparently she stopped breathing on the way there and Agent Delacorte had to give her mouth-to-mouth.”

“Oh, my God.”

“They’re prepping her for surgery, and we hope to have more information soon.”

“Inform the hospital that I’ll want to talk with the doctors myself as soon as they know something. In fact, Dr. Vennett is somewhere in the building. I want her to be in on the call as well.”

“Yes, sir. I’ll have someone find the Surgeon General right away.”

“Thank you, Carolyn.”

Once she had left the room, the chief of staff said, “Amanda’s a strong woman. She’ll pull through. Don’t worry.”

Rutledge laughed. Don’t worry? How could he not worry? This was his twenty-one-year-old daughter they were talking about, for God’s sake.

Bringing the conversation back to what they’d been discussing when Carolyn Leonard had come in with her update, Charles Anderson asked, “What about Secretary Driehaus?”

“Let him wait. Maybe he’ll get bored and go back to his office.”

“He’s the Secretary of Homeland Security, Mr. President. You can’t not see him.”

“He shouldn’t be here, Chuck, and you know it. Not now. He should be back at DHS running his part of the operation.”

“I agree with you one hundred percent, but the fact is he’s here, and more importantly, the press knows he’s here. If you snub him, it’s going to make people question how well this administration is handling this crisis.”