Terror Machine Read online

  Usually his breaks were quick, but sometimes Murad would walk or drive for hours at a time. The longer he was gone, the more he didn’t like what he saw and the deeper his aspirations would become. However, at the end of every sojourn, with a cigarette or two or three absorbed into his lungs, Murad would always find himself looping back down Steinway again. He knew every crack of the sidewalk and each crooked shopkeeper’s sign. This was his terrain. If a new store was opening up, he’d track its progress on a daily basis. If a bum showed up on the stairs of the mosque, he’d take a mental note. If a trash can had fallen onto the street, he’d call the sanitation department to have it fixed up. It might be ugly, but this was his place and his people. He paid attention, and he took pride in knowing and seeing everything.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  “BREACH, BREACH, BREACH,” NYPD SWAT Captain Markle screamed over the radio.

  After a night of waiting for Dr. Borin to reappear from Best Middle Eastern Diner, the decision had been made to go kinetic. The restaurant had been the target of twelve hours worth of multi-agency surveillance and research operations with a few schools of thought as to the next steps. Susan had toed the line, standing in the middle of the issue, because any other position would make her less supreme. Pete Mack and the FBI continued to support a wait-and-see approach. But like a magician, Mr. White had pulled satellite footage from the past, which appeared to show the loading of explosive materials into the back of the restaurant. His evidence cemented the need for a raid as soon as possible. As Mr. White had put it, it was time to shock and awe those bastards into submission.

  Listening to Markle announce the breach, Jake sat side by side with Pete Mack and Mr. White in the back of an unmarked white van three blocks from the target location. Fong was driving, with Tony and Moseley manning the communication equipment on the other side of the van. No one in this vehicle was particularly risk averse, especially Jake. He was tired of sitting in vans and wanted to be in on the action. Although they ought to have waited a full five minutes, it was only thirty seconds before Jake spoke up.

  “Let ’er rip, Fong,” Jake said.

  No one disagreed.

  Fong yanked the van into gear and it began to scream towards the front door of the Best Diner. Within seconds, the generally quiet street had descended into absolute law enforcement mayhem. And soon hundreds more police vehicles would descend upon the scene.

  “Think the whole cell’s here?” Jake asked Pete Mack while they ripped into the belly of the beast.

  “Neighbors said they saw Hayat around the building. Owner knew him. This is the place. With some luck, we’ll get the doctor and the owner, this guy Ali Hanafi, all in one.”

  “I don’t like luck, because it hates me.”

  “I’m with you, Rivett,” Mr. White said. “But sometimes when it’s your turn to ask a girl to dance, you gotta buck up and do the damn thing before you lose her.”

  The van arrived in front of Best Diner with just feet separating it from the front door. All of the men unloaded quickly and barreled into the broken-open door of the restaurant, following on the heels of the last SWAT team member.

  ▪

  “Clear!”

  Jake sprinted through the ground level of Best Diner, steps behind the SWAT team. He was witnessing it all as they were, and what he was seeing wasn’t good. There was no one in the restaurant and no one in the kitchen. He began to hear radio reports from the second and third floors. Besides the tenants, there was nothing—nothing suspicious and no weapons. And worse, there was no Hanafi and no Dr. Borin.

  The more Jake heard SWAT scream the word “clear,” the worse he felt. He could tell where this was going already, even as he watched one of Markle’s lieutenants spread plastic explosive over the lock of a reinforced door in the back of the restaurant. After a brief moment, the lock blasted open, and the team descended the stairs into darkness below.

  Once in the basement, SWAT operators alternated to the left and right throughout the hallway, banging open doors and covering angles. But, again, the place was completely empty.

  Jake observed the basement. The first space was a religious room. A series of prayer rugs lay on the floor. There was a cheap fold-out table with some food on it. Against the wall were filing cabinets and a bookshelf that was lightly stocked with religious magazines and books and not much else. Jake glanced around, but the room wasn’t giving up anything.

  “We’ll have to look at all the documents.”

  “My people will be on it within the hour,” Mr. White confirmed, walking up behind Jake.

  The second space, further down the hallway, resembled a storage room. It also doubled as an overflow pantry for the restaurant above. Filled with old kitchen equipment and dry goods, there was no sign of the two large containers that Mr. White’s satellite footage had recorded being carried into the restaurant.

  “Inspector will come down here. If there’s anything he can cite, he will,” Pete Mack added while examining the boxes of food that were piled against one side of the room.

  “Think we were all wrong?” Tony asked.

  Rivett didn’t reply. He was deep in thought.

  “Whole place was covered,” Pete Mack added. “Half the block’s been under waterfall . . . How can we have missed them? Only thing I can think is maybe they rolled out the back the second the doctor went in, an hour or two before we were set up. Maybe they slipped us right off the bat . . .”

  Perplexed, the men stepped out of the storage room and walked back towards the basement’s prayer room. As they were about to turn up the stairs, Jake glanced into the prayer room a second time.

  “The bookcase,” Jake said.

  “What about it?” Tony asked.

  “Same as the one in the supply room, but nothin’s on either of them.”

  Jake took a few steps towards the bookcase situated against the far side of the prayer room. He ran his fingers against the edge of it, where the metal met the wall. He attempted to push the bookcase, which was practically empty, but it wouldn’t slide easily. Rivett backed up and slammed his shoulder into it with all his might. At first heave, it didn’t budge. The second time, Jake only succeeded in causing the side panel of the bookcase to collapse into itself. Stepping back, Jake realized that he’d ripped the edge of the bookcase about two inches from the wall. He stuck his fingers into the crack and could feel a half-inch gap between the wall behind the bookcase and the room’s visible wall. The seam was carefully fabricated—designed on purpose.

  “Get me my crowbar,” Jake said.

  Within moments, a handful of the brawniest SWAT operators in the city were in the basement with multiple crowbars—working on the secret doors that existed behind not just the prayer-room bookcase, but also the one in the supply closet. After a few careful levers, they finally managed to open the hidden door in the prayer room. They discovered that it had been locked and was controlled by a hydraulic system.

  “It’s a clean room,” Jake said as he stepped into Dr. Borin’s laboratory.

  The lab appeared ransacked. All sorts of computer peripherals, electronics, and manuals were strewn across the floor. There was nothing in the center of the space, except for four square steel panels that were bolted into the ground. Against the walls were shelves and cabinets, and there was even a small stainless-steel sink and counter built into one side of the room.

  “The fuck was going on in here?” Jake asked.

  Everyone could hear him, but no one had an answer.

  Jake picked up one of the books on the floor and turned it over in his hand.

  “Diagnostic MRI: Sixth Edition,” Jake read out loud. “This is probably all Borin’s stuff. At least now we’ve got cause to shut the whole building down and check out every square inch.” Jake tossed the book on the floor.

  “Rivett! You got to see this!” Pete Mack yelled from the hallway.

  Rivett stepped out of the lab and into the basement hallway to see Pete Mack waving wildly. As he r
ounded the corner into the supply closet, he saw that SWAT had also successfully pulled away that room’s bookcase.

  But instead of a hidden room behind it, there was a subterranean passageway.

  Somewhere between a hallway and a tunnel, the space was about six feet wide and existed outside the foundation of the building itself. It seemed to be a channel in which gas, water, and power lines, along with additional plumbing and wiring conduits, could run. Perhaps used in the initial construction of the structures along the street, the passageway was a forgotten underground relic. It reminded Jake of the tunnels that he and Mona explored when they met. Interestingly, the passageway didn’t seem to end at Hanafi’s building. Instead, it ran down the entire block, consisting of a hodgepodge of property lines, building systems, and structural retrofits.

  Jake and Pete Mack sprinted down the passageway, using their cell phones for illumination—with their guns out and at attention. The men passed by multiple crumbling building foundations before finding their path blocked. A new-construction cinder-block wall stopped up the tunnel completely and a steel door was closed in front of them.

  Rivett tried the handle—it opened. Whoever had come through last had not locked the door.

  Stepping through, Jake and Pete Mack found themselves inside another supply room in another basement, except this time everything was sanitized and utilitarian. The building seemed to have been built within the last ten years. Jake realized it must be the new mixed-use building that occupied the corner of the street, about three hundred feet from Best Diner. The two men sprinted up the stairs towards a door marked with an exit sign. Once out of the basement, they raced down another hallway with half a dozen unmarked doors. At the end of the hall was a pair of prominent double doors. Jake pushed open the double doors, leading with his gun. He found himself in . . .

  A gym.

  The doors opened to a large room filled with high-end gym equipment. Up-tempo pop music was blasting. A couple dozen trendy but sweaty men and women exercised on ellipticals, treadmills, and the like. They stared back in shock at Jake and Pete Mack—and their weapons.

  After a brief pause, the patrons began to scream and flee in a wild and fearful pandemonium. Jake quickly lowered his gun and pushed it into his holster. Pete Mack did the same while pulling out his badge.

  “FBI! Don’t worry! We’re law enforcement!” Pete Mack yelled to absolutely no avail.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  DARAB WAS STILL IN THE machine. Behind a curving rack of dress shirts deep within the Amin family’s dry-cleaning establishment, Darab sat on a chair. The MRI tube above him hummed, with various parts of the machine pulling power from multiple outlets surrounding it. Darab was largely motionless. He wasn’t unconscious. Instead, he was just locked in. The electric pulses and audio content of Dr. Borin’s machine was designed to stimulate Darab when he needed to be stimulated and placate him when he needed to be placated. Like a toddler in front of a screen, the machine kept Darab happy.

  Omer watched from halfway across the store with macabre fascination. Hanafi and Murad hadn’t explained specifically what was happening, but Omer wasn’t stupid. He’d picked up on everything. His brother had discovered that their invention was in danger. They’d spent the entire night moving out of the Best Diner building, sneaking through an underground tunnel to avoid being detected. This time around, Hanafi had accepted Omer into the group without a second thought. Perhaps he was desperate. Omer wasn’t sure. Anyway, Murad had implied that Omer didn’t really have a choice in the matter. The safest place for their small crew to assemble was in the back of Moradi’s business—Steinway Cleaners—so that’s where they had gone. Murad had ushered them in just fifteen minutes after the store had closed for the day. At this point, Moradi had no idea what was happening. Hanafi, Murad, and Dr. Borin sat on plastic folding chairs in a small circle, watching feedback from the machine. Omer stood behind them, unable to look away from Darab. While he had only caught a glimpse before, now he was afforded a full view of the science experiment that was taking place. Omer could hear Hanafi and Dr. Borin bickering as they observed the process. He also knew another member of the club, Ataullah, was working inside one of Moradi’s two vans that were parked in the small lot behind the business.

  “Timeline’s moved up, obviously,” Hanafi said.

  “Darab’s compliance instructs our timeline, obviously . . .” Dr. Borin replied.

  “Doctor, this is about much more than your science experiment.”

  “One enables the other.”

  “What you do is a means to an end. The end’s what matters.”

  “The greater the means, the better the machine, the more impressive the ends.”

  “We’re done experimenting,” Hanafi said.

  “Maybe,” Borin nodded, his attention still firmly focused on the screen monitoring Darab’s vitals. “But you’re not in charge.”

  This statement caused Hanafi to flare his nostrils. “Watch yourself, doctor,” he said.

  “Don’t get indignant. The man from Dubai writes your checks,” Dr. Borin said. “He wants the technology perfect, and that’s what he’ll get. I’m not rushing just so you can go blow up Times Square and get us all caught. The goal is bigger than that. I know it. You know it, too, but you won’t admit it.”

  “Times Square?” Omer asked nonchalantly, but no one replied to him.

  “In case you are actually this incredibly, unbelievably dense, doctor, I’ll lay out our situation.” Hanafi raised his voice. “There is no more grand plan. We’re in the back of a fucking dry cleaners. We are fully exposed. I don’t see anyone from Dubai here right now. I make the decisions, and you can either go along with it or—”

  “Or what? You can’t do anything without permission.”

  “Or I’ll have Murad break your neck.”

  “Happily,” Murad added.

  “You guys have nothing without me.”

  “Your machine,” Hanafi said as he gestured to the tube above Darab, “is about to have its final test. But we’re not sending Darab by himself. Too risky. Once the cycle is over and the van’s ready, we’ll all go with him. He’ll drop us off a few blocks away and we’ll observe to make sure he is successful. All I need from you, doctor, is to make sure that your man does his one and only job and presses the button.”

  “He’ll press the button.” Dr. Borin nodded in affirmation.

  ▪

  That evening, the group stood in the back of the business next to one of the Steinway Cleaners vans. The back doors were open. Ataullah had completed his work, and the massive fertilizer container had been transformed into nothing less than a weapon of mass destruction.

  “Where’s the other one?” Omer asked Murad.

  “The other what?”

  “The second container. We picked up two . . .”

  “Less questions,” Murad replied.

  Omer was pissed. He hadn’t asked for any of this. But he felt he was in deep—too deep.

  “Then why do you need me?” Omer asked.

  “We don’t,” Hanafi jumped in, having overheard Omer. “You’ve done enough. It’s time for us to part. You should go home and take care of your family.”

  “But . . .” Murad began to speak. “Taking care of our family means that you keep all of us safe. Right, brother? Not a word to anyone.”

  Omer turned to his brother. “What about you, Murad? Are you keeping us safe?”

  “I have a long journey ahead. It doesn’t end here. Tell them I love them.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “I’m finding my place in the world.”

  “You’re going into the machine?”

  “No, no.” Murad shook his head. “The alim and I are taking the machine to those who need it most. The machine is our message. As it spreads, so does our power. Goodbye, Omer.”

  Omer thought better than to ask any questions. His brother was obviously going crazy. All of them were, including the tall white guy. Nothing
made any sense, and in this moment, Omer had a huge desire to do as Hanafi instructed and go home. That was perfectly fine—inspired, in fact. He would do what they asked. He wouldn’t say a word. With some luck, doing nothing might help Murad disappear from his life forever. Without a look back at his brother, Omer padded away from the parking lot and into the night.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  THE SPOTLIGHTS WERE SET TO maximum glare. The brightness would scare most mortals, but Susan Herlihy was well-suited for the pressure. Susan took a deep breath as she glanced down at her notes. Pete Mack didn’t want to do what she was about to do, and Mr. White wouldn’t have touched something like this with a ten-foot pole. But they had both agreed it was the right thing to do. The Bryant Park investigation was officially unsolved and unofficially a disaster of epic proportions. That morning’s failed raid was the cherry on top. The most frustrating part, to Susan, was that it wasn’t the police department’s fault. Not really. The terrorists, the cell, or whatever you wanted to call them—they were extremely good. They were many notches above anything the city had seen since 9/11. But there was one more tactic the joint task force had not tried. That was why it came down to Susan, the tiniest of all the women in the brutal land of the cop man, to face down the press corps all by herself. She would put the joint task force out there with the hope that someone, anyone, might be able to help them. She arranged her notes on a podium, hastily set up in front of a blue banner printed with NYPD and FBI insignia, and then began to speak.

  “There have been media reports of a police action this morning in Astoria, Queens,” Susan began. “The reports are correct. There was a raid. The NYPD, working with the FBI and other federal, state, and local authorities, identified a potential meeting place of individuals who are suspected to be involved in the Bryant Park bombing. Unfortunately, the suspects we were seeking managed to escape. That’s why I’m here now. This investigation has reached the point where we need your help. There are at least two armed and extremely dangerous individuals loose on the streets at this very moment. We know their names and have their pictures. They are the prime suspects in the Bryant Park bombing, and they are likely responsible for many other crimes. Should you come across these individuals, do not be a hero. Simply call nine-one-one or contact your local authorities. We will take care of the rest. I address you with the deep regret that we haven’t been able to find them yet. But the best way to further our mission of serving and protecting the citizens of New York, and America, is to tell you exactly who they are. Make no mistake, they are running. They are afraid. And after tonight, with the help of the public, I hope their free time is severely limited.”