“Here, give me a hand with these radios,” she said, pulling some out of her bag. “We’re definitely going to need them with all the cell sites fried.”
“What brings you here?” I said to Emily after I introduced her to my guys. “I thought you were back down in DC.” Emily worked there for the Bureau’s Violent Criminal Apprehension Program and lived in suburban Virginia with her daughter, Olivia.
“That’s just my luck,” Emily said. “I came up this morning on the Acela and was starting a VICAP presentation to some junior agents when the bells went off. You know the drill. Now it’s all hands on deck until further notice. With the roads blocked the way they are, they’re going to chopper the entire New York office up here from lower Manhattan if they have to.”
“Have you heard anything?” I said.
“I was about to ask you the same question. One of the agents with me, John Bellew, was on the horn with some State Department think-tank guy. The initial read is that this was caused by one or several NNEMPs.”
“The whosiwhatsits?” said Arturo.
“Nonnuclear electromagnetic pulse weapons. It’s a weapon that creates a massive electromagnetic field and then pulses it in a given area, creating an energy wave so powerful that it erases magnetic computer memories and welds closed the microscopic junctions in sensitive transistors and computer chips.”
Arturo looked befuddled. Agent Parker had that effect on people, I knew.
“That seems pretty high-tech. Who could pull this off??” asked Brooklyn.
“NNEMPs aren’t impossible to build, but it’s very difficult. You need someone with high-level technical expertise. Basically, this isn’t a homemade pipe bomb. This is the result of a highly intelligent operation that’s probably well funded.”
&nbs
p; “Which points to terrorism—but as of now, there are no demands,” I said. “And no claim of credit. The subway explosion, the assassination, and now this. Why keep doing all this? What’s the motive?”
“The same as all terrorism,” said Emily. “To inspire fear, to cause pain and injury, and induce psychological torture. The rapidity of each act seems to be an attempt to crash the system, to overwhelm our ability to respond.”
“They’re doing a damn good job,” said Arturo.
“Is it Islamic?” asked Doyle. “Al Qaeda? Like nine eleven?”
“They’re certainly on the list, but it could be anyone. Iranians, North Koreans.”
“Hey, Mike, you hear that? Iranians again,” said Brooklyn.
“Why, what’s the Iranian link?” Emily asked.
“The mayor’s shooter is actually Armenian,” I said. “It could just be a coincidence, but he traveled home recently, and Armenia is next door to Iran.”
“Or maybe it’s some ramped-up American nut job,” said Doyle. “A smart one with a real hard-on for the people of New York City.”
We all turned as a big NYPD Harbor Unit boat suddenly roared past out of the fog on the river, heading north.
“Whoever it is,” I said, “we need to find them. Fast.”
Chapter 31
Half a mile southeast of the FBI’s staging area, the wake of the speeding sixty-foot blue-and-white NYPD Harbor Unit boat washed up a broken neon-yellow kayak paddle and a Clorox bleach bottle covered in old fishing line onto the rocky shore of southern Roosevelt Island.
Sitting in the rain on an empty bench above the island’s garbage-strewn shoreline on West Loop Road, Mr. Joyce looked at the junk and then out at the water. New York was rarely thought of as a coastal city, but it actually had 520 miles of coastline, more than Miami, LA, and San Fran combined.
His reddish goatee was gone now, and he wore his hoodie up over a Knicks ball cap and a reflective orange traffic vest over his black denim construction coat. Beside him on the bench was some construction equipment as well as a fluorescent yellow construction tripod along with a surveyor’s graduated staff.
He turned as a car pulled up. It was a big, bulky old ’76 Cadillac Calais, a two-door hardtop that was nineteen feet long with a 7.7-liter V-8 and a curb weight of more than five thousand pounds.
Mr. Joyce did not have to look at who was behind the wheel to recognize it immediately as one of Mr. Beckett’s many cars. Mr. Beckett, who was a bit of a gearhead, was obsessed with American cars, with a particular and peculiar soft spot for Cadillacs from the 1970s.
“You’re late,” said Mr. Joyce as Mr. Beckett emerged from his metallic-brown barge, putting on his own traffic vest.
“How is that possible?” Mr. Beckett said, smiling, as he extended his hands playfully. “The boss is never late.”