Hastings was surprised by his honesty. “That’s it?”

“That’s it,” replied Harvath as he turned and walked away to assign Cates and Morgan their positions.

Abdul Ali was beyond angry. Either Hussein Nassir had lost his nerve or his bomb had failed to detonate. Regardless, the Jordanian peasant would undoubtedly choose the latter as his excuse. The man’s involvement had been a mistake, Ali could see that now, but a beggar could seldom choose from whom he received his alms. The operation had necessitated the activation of almost every sleeper al-Qaeda had within the United States and even then additional men had to be smuggled in from both Canada and Mexico.

Martyring oneself, at least in an operation of this nature, did not call for a superior intellect, not even superior courage, but rather a blinding faith that one’s reward would be delivered in paradise.

That said, Nassir was a fool who was putting the rest of the operation in jeopardy by trying to track the team down. How he knew where they were was beyond Ali. All he knew was that keeping the details of an operation of this size quiet was very difficult. Someone must have told Nassir more than he needed to know. The positioning messages didn’t lie. The man had gone to both the Transcon office and the Geneva Diamond Exchange, and now for some reason had situated himself in Central Park. The idiot was going to get himself captured and would compromise everything. Ali had no choice but to go after Nassir and secure him until the rest of their work was done. Then he would find out how he had learned about the rest of the operation.

Though it was going to have a significant and detrimental impact upon their schedule, Ali instructed Sacha to turn around and head for Central Park. He just hoped he could get there before Nassir made any more stupid mistakes and gave them all away.

When Gary Lawlor fed the names Harvath had collected at the two crush depth locations into the shared intelligence database, he once again came up empty-handed. They were ghosts, every one of them-figuratively and, unfortunately now, literally. But while sterilizing civilian backgrounds was one thing, Gary had a feeling that erasing a marine’s life might be a little bit different-especially if his only role had been to provide security.

Picking up the phone, he dialed the number for USMC Lieutenant Colonel Sean Olson. The ropy, five-foot-six Olson was a graduate of the FBI’s law enforcement leadership program known as the National Academy. Conducted on the Bureau’s Quantico, Virginia, campus, the program included courses in law, behavioral science, forensic science, leadership development, communication, and health and fitness. Its expressed mission was “to promote the personal and professional development of law enforcement leaders,” but many argued that the most valuable thing that was formed at the National Academy were the incredible relationships and vast network of contacts among its graduates.

Lieutenant Colonel Olson was head of the Law Enforcement Security amp; Corrections Branch for the entire Marine Corps. If anyone could get Lawlor the information he needed on the mystery marines, it was his fellow National Academy graduate, Sean Olson.

“I’m neck-deep in shit right now, Gary,” said the lieutenant colonel when his assistant put the call through, “so I’m going to save us both a lot of time. What do you need?”

Lawlor appreciated his colleague getting right to the point and he returned the favor. “Sean, we’ve got reason to believe that the bridges and tunnels in New York weren’t the only targets.”

“Jesus Christ,” replied Olson as his attitude shifted from impatience to genuine concern. “You think there’s going to be more?”

“We believe there already have been.”

The man was shocked. “Where? How come we haven’t heard of it here?”

If by here Olson meant the Marine Corps Security Division, it was easily explainable, but if by here he really meant the Pentagon, then Lawlor wasn’t so sure the deep crush attacks hadn’t been heard about. “This is a very delicate situation. The attacks I’m referring to were not civilian targets.”

“What were they? Military? Government?”

“That’s just it. We don’t know. We’ve got two locations in Manhattan that appear to have been involved in some sort of covert operations-there’s nothing about them or their employees that we can pull from any of our databases. The only connections we can find between them are that everyone was well armed and all the work they were doing was via paperless workstations.”

“And how were these locations attacked?” asked Olson as he shifted the phone to his other ear.

“From what we can tell, two assaulter teams hit each location and gunned down everyone inside.”

“What for?”

“We don’t know,” replied Lawlor.

“ Gary, I appreciate the update,” offered the lieutenant colonel, “but why are you telling me all of this?”

“Because three of those killed were U.S. marines. I need to find out who they were and what they were doing there.”

Olson was already running on an unstable fuel of adrenaline and pure hatred of Islamic terrorists, but to now hear that on top of everything else today the terrorists had purposely taken out three marines sent him around the bend. It took all he had to keep his anger under control and craft a professional, un-obscenity-laden response. “Believe me, I would like to help you, but this is way above my purview. You need to get in touch with DOD directly.”

“That’s just it,” replied Lawlor. “I can’t.”

“Why the hell can’t you? You’ve got three marines dead, not to mention a bunch of their civilian colleagues. I’m pretty confident they’ll make this a priority.”

“Just give me five minutes, Sean, to explain. If after that you still don’t think you can help me, I’ll find somebody else.”

Olson reluctantly agreed.

Three-and-a-half minutes later the lieutenant colonel had heard enough. He hung up with Lawlor, called his assistant into his office, and began giving orders. Getting to the bottom of what had happened to those marines was now one of his top priorities.

The Chechens had never met Hussein Nassir. In fact they hadn’t met any of Ali’s bombers, so asking them to find him and bring him in was out of the question. Besides, it was Ali’s mess. It was he who should clean it up.

Changing into street clothes, Ali secreted a nine-millimeter Spanish Firestar pistol inside a copy of the New York Post, tucked it beneath his arm, and had the team drop him on Central Park South.

Though Ali had studied his map well, the park was still unfamiliar territory and made him nervous. He had decided on his way over that this was not going to be a rescue. He was going to put a bullet in Hussein Nassir’s head and hide his body so that by the time it was found it would be too late to make any difference.

From what Ali could tell, the last three messages to his pager placed Nassir somewhere near the Central Park Zoo. At least the fool hadn’t forgotten all of his training. The area was normally well frequented by tourists, many of them foreigners, and if he remained calm, there was no reason he would draw any undue attention to himself. The more disturbing offshoot of that logic was what would a Middle Eastern man, or anyone else, for that matter, be doing at the zoo when New York had just suffered the worst terrorist attack in history? Anyone with any sense, especially a Middle Eastern man, would not be wandering the city but would be off the streets enjoying the safety and concealment of his home or hotel room. Nassir was an even bigger idiot than Ali gave him credit for.