Then he went back to his target, the coffee cart owned and—today, at least—operated by Bassam Shah.

“Okay,” said Fisk, speaking into a small microphone jutting out of his earphones. “This is ridiculously dangerous. Enough waiting. Time to initiate contact.”

Krina Gersten wandered the square with a map in one hand and a guidebook in the other. Somebody tapped her on the shoulder, an Asian tourist wanting to get a photograph with the mime dressed up as Lady Liberty. Everybody wanted their picture taken with the green-painted lady holding a foam torch. Gersten obliged and took the picture, watching the coffee cart out of the corner of her eye.

Tourists everywhere. Gersten played her part, accepting every flyer offered her for discount pizza and free stand-up and strip club admission and bus tours.

She wore a Bluetooth headset on her ear. The call was open. She could hear Fisk, and he could eavesdrop on her in real time.

In the Y in the insignia on the front of her stiff new New York Yankees ball cap was a tiny pinhole camera, relaying her perspective to Fisk.

“Time to initiate contact,” Fisk said.

“On my way now,” she muttered.

She walked to the coffee cart, waiting behind a hassled office worker on a break who was arguing into his cell phone. Shah worked the carafe, squirting in flavored creamer and two Splendas. The customer slipped him three one-dollar bills and walked away yammering.

Gersten stepped up. She could see the sweat on the Afghan’s brow. He looked at her strangely, distractedly. He looked ill.

“Hi!” she said brightly. “Do you have any hazelnut decaf?”

He appeared puzzled. Then he checked the labels on his own carafes.

“No decaf.”

“Okay, I’ll take the caffeine, I guess. I’m on vacation, right? Probably need it anyway.”

He did not respond or acknowledge. She didn’t believe he even heard her. He lifted a thick paper cup from the tower on the cart spike and filled it.

“Black, please, with two Splendas,” said Gersten, once he finished the pour. She watched him tear open the yellow packets of artificial sweetener. “Sorry to intrude, but . . . are you okay? You don’t look so hot right now.”

Shah looked at her briefly, hard. Part of it was an ethnic predisposition against independent women, perhaps. But part of it was certainly suspicion.

He did not answer, swishing a thin wooden stirrer through her coffee.

“I didn’t mean anything,” she said. “Just concerned. Hey, can I take . . . ?”

She went around the side of the cart, trying to get a full view of it. She was reaching for a coffee lid, but Shah quickly stepped in her way, blocking her with his body.

“I get!” he said. “I get!”

“Okay, jeez. Sorry.”

He handed her the coffee. Gersten juggled her maps and travel guide, taking out a few dollars, which she straightened out and handed to him.

“Thanks,” she said. “Have a great one.”

She walked back toward the TKTS ticket booth, her map tucked beneath her arm. The coffee cup was not warm in her hand. She sipped it immediately and found it tepid—and horrid. The worst cup of coffee she had ever had.

“I think it’s happening,” she said.

Peavy, the sniper, lay atop the third-story theater marquee and watched the coffee vendor through his scope. They had set up overnight, erecting a low, tented roof for cover, draped in the same obscuring fabric as the advertising material that covers transit bus windows. Peavy and his spotter could see out, but no one could see in.

Times Square was a great spot for a high hide. If people looked up, they looked way up. Probably no more distracting location in the world.

Wally, his spotter, had trained in from D.C. the day before, no questions asked. Wally’s talent had been forged in urban situations overseas. The FBI’s Hostage Rescue Team—Fisk said they were possibly perched nearby—was very good at range shooting, famous for their vaunted “aspirin” test, the ability to hit a baby aspirin at one thousand meters. Not so much in urban landscapes.

HRT used .308 sniper rifles. Peavy’s weapon was a Barrett M82A .50 caliber semiautomatic. Fifty-seven inches long, weighing thirty pounds when empty.

It was not empty now. Peavy was loaded and locked over Times Square.

No question Fisk was a dedicated mofo, borderline insane, Peavy thought. But not as insane as posting up for a kill shot in the middle of Manhattan, going up against the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Which made it fun.

He had a nice 240-degree angle. The coffee vendor was far right. Wally kept him updated on wind changes. Buildings made it tough. The BORS ballistic computer on top of his Leupold scope eased the level of difficulty. This computer, the size of a pack of cigarettes, factored distance, trajectory, and barometric pressure automatically, rendering an accurate firing solution in seconds. He had already zeroed for elevation.

Right now the target was out at six hundred yards. Peavy relaxed his shoulders, waiting for Wally to relay Fisk’s order.

Shah unhooked the canvas covering from its grommet on the roof of the cart, draping it over the service side. He eyed Lady Liberty walking past, then the Naked Cowboy on the corner, posing. A person dressed like a 1950s Puerto Rican gang member in skinny jeans and a T-shirt with a pack of cigarettes rolled under one sleeve was trying to interest tourists in a revival of West Side Story.

They all looked suspicious to him. And every customer that morning seemed like a plant. Anxiety was sapping his determination.

No more. There was no perfect time. He had to do it now.

He dropped the canvas covering on the other side and unlocked his wheels. He pulled out the wooden wedges and started rolling the cart, pushing it south through busy Times Square toward the subway entrance.

Fisk saw two male “tourists” fold their maps and start moving in the same direction as Shah moved with his cart. The FBI was stirring, but still not pouncing.

Fisk said to his Intel cops, “Stay close.” He said, “Peavy, you tracking?”

“Don’t worry about me,” came the sniper’s voice.

Fisk had watched the entire exchange with Shah from Gersten’s point of view. He saw the nervous anticipation in Shah’s face. Most of all he wondered what Shah had in the bottom of his cart. What Shah didn’t want Gersten to see.

“Stay close, everyone,” said Fisk, pulling down his headphones. He pivoted too quickly, forgetting his sore ankle, and started off at a limp. “I’m coming down.”

Gersten trailed Shah from a distance, still pretending to be following her map. He was pushing the cart along with his head out to the side to avoid oncoming tourists. He crossed Forty-fourth and kept going south.

She was screened by a cluster of tourists, and just as she got around them, she saw Shah looking back, spotting her looking his way.

Shit. She had no other choice but to own it. Thinking fast, she waved her map and jogged toward him, catching up.

“Hey, hi, this coffee—it’s so terrible. Can I just get a refund?”

He stood very still. His eyes held the most vacant expression she’d ever seen. The brown pupils were glassy, looking dead from the inside out, and she recognized the stare of a true fanatic, someone in a self-induced psychotic trance. She knew then that she was looking into the eyes of a terrorist.

His skin had gone ash gray with blotches of red on his neck, like hives. He struggled to speak.

“Go away,” he whispered.

Gersten hesitated. She waited for Fisk’s order. Shah pushed his cart ahead a few more yards—then abruptly set it down.

He reached into the shelf beneath his cart, removing a gym bag, and started running.

Fisk finally got out of the hotel, dodging tourists and hawkers, and he hobbled across the crowded square. He hustled along on his bad ankle until he spied Gersten and her Yankees cap way down past Forty-fourth standing with Shah. Fisk raised his hand and waved, pointing his men to intervene—but they were already a few steps behind the FBI, closing in from four different directions.