Tick Tock (Michael Bennett 4)

“Yeah, well, the mayor and the commish aren’t going to be at the meeting, unfortunately,” Miriam said. “It’s our sorry lot to deal with the department’s evil henchmen. Why am I saying we? It’s your job, Mike, since you’re the briefing DT.”

“Well, lucky old me,” I said, sipping my coffee as the sun crested over the crushed cars outside the window.

Chapter 11

THE NYPD’S COUNTERTERRORISM BUREAU was extremely impressive. Outside, it looked like a faceless office building in the middle of a crappy industrial neighborhood. Inside, it looked like the set of 24.

There were electronic maps, intense-looking cops at glass desks, and more flat-screen TVs than in the new Yankee Stadium. Walking through the center behind my boss, I felt disappointed that we hadn’t been able to enter through a trick manhole and down a slide, like James Bond or Perry the Platypus.

I began to realize why there was so much heat on the library threat. The last thing the commissioner wanted was to have his big, new, expensive initiative to protect the city fail in some capacity.

The meeting was held in a glass fishbowl conference room next to something called the Global Intelligence Room. I immediately spotted the assistant commissioner and the Counterterrorism chief. Though they wore similar golfing attire, their physical contrast was pretty comical. Flaum was tall and thin, while Ciardi was short and stocky. Rocky and Bullwinkle, I thought. Laurel and Hardy.

Unfortunately, I also spotted Miriam’s boss, McGirth, who, with his puffy, pasty face, looked like a not-so-cute reincarnation of Tammany Hall’s Boss Tweed. Beside him were Cell from the Bomb Squad and the two superfit Feds who had been at the library the day before. Intelligence briefings about the most recent terrorist bombings across the globe were stacked at the center of the long table. I took one as I found a seat.

“Why don’t you start with what you’ve got, Mike?” Miriam said the second my ass hit the cushion.

“Uh, sure,” I said, giving her a dirty look as I stood back up. “Basically, sometime yesterday afternoon, a bomb was left in the main reading room at the main branch of the New York City Public Library. It looked like a Macintosh laptop wired to plastic explosives. It was a sophisticated device, capable of killing dozens of people. A cryptic electronic note left on the laptop stated that the device wasn’t intended to go off, but the next one would, sworn ‘on poor Lawrence’s eyes,’ whatever that means. There were no witnesses, as far as we can tell at this point.”

“Jesus Christ. On whose eyes? Lawrence of Arabia’s?” said Chief McGinnis, making a spectacle of himself as usual.

“Who found the device?” asked Flaum, the tall, professorial-looking Intel head.

“An NYU student pointed out the unattended laptop to a security guard,” Cell said, jumping in. “The guard opened it, saw the message, ordered an evac, and called us.”

“Don’t they have a security check there?” Ciardi said.

“Yeah, some summer kid checks bags,” I said, looking at my notes. “But that’s just so people don’t steal books. Patrons can take laptops in. He said that white Apple laptops are all he sees every day.”

“What about security cameras?” said the stocky Counterterrorism chief.

“Deactivated due to a huge ongoing reno,” I said.

“Any threats from your end that might be relevant to this, Ted?” Assistant Commissioner Sander Flaum asked the senior FBI rep.

The taller of the two Feds shook his head.

“Chatter hasn’t increased,” he said. “Though Hezbollah likes to use plastique.”

Hezbollah? I thought. That was crazy. Or was it?

“You always seem to be in the middle of this kind of crap, Bennett,” the chops-busting chief of detectives, McGinnis, said. “What’s your professional opinion?”

“Actually, my gut says it’s a lone nut,” I said. “If it were Hezbollah, why not just set it off? An attention-seeking nut with some particularly dangerous mechanical skills seems to be a better fit.”

There was a lot of grumbling. The idea that the bomb might not be terrorism wasn’t a particularly popular one. After all, if it was just a lone, sick freak, then why were we all here?

“What about the explosive?” the Intel chief said. “It’s from overseas. Maybe the whole nutcase note thing is just window dressing in order to get us off balance. Are nuts usually this organized?”

“You’d be surprised,” Mi

riam said.

“If there aren’t any objections, I say we keep it in Major Case until further notice,” said the Counterterrorism head as he glanced impatiently around the table.

I was thinking about voicing an objection of my own about how I was supposed to be on vacation, until Miriam gave me a look.

“And try to keep your face from appearing on TV, huh, Bennett? This is a confidential case,” McGirth said as I was leaving. “I know how hard you find that at times.”