Conte received a text saying: Search continues in New York Harbor and all adjacent waters for target ship. Threat level remains high.
Well, I thought, that was one way of saying to everyone, “Stay awake.”
It was like a stakeout where the hours pass and what you’re looking for and waiting for doesn’t happen. You start to second-guess the information you acted on, and you start to wonder if the bosses got it wrong again. And with each hour that passes, your mind goes from hypervigilance to a sense that this isn’t real anymore. And it’s at that moment when the shit hits the fan.
If I could put myself into the heads of everyone in the White House Situation Room, I’m sure that a bunker mentality was taking hold. Some people would be arguing that the threat was either overhyped, or had passed, or it had never existed.
Also, someone would point out that New York Harbor was blocked, as were the East and Hudson Rivers, and all waterways were being patrolled, and there was no sign of the target ship. Plus, police patrols had checked out all docks and piers in Manhattan, Brooklyn, and New Jersey. More importantly, someone would argue, there had not been a single radioactive hit since this operation began. And that was the real problem. Though I hoped everyone had gotten the word about The Hana’s flooded garage and they understood why The Hana was not emitting radiation.
But when you get tons of negative information, that causes a false sense of security, not to mention a comfortable sense of denial.
There’s not a lot to do in a small ship’s cabin while you’re standing around waiting for a nuclear explosion—or hopefully an alert that the target has been spotted—so Conte and Andersson played with their electronics, monitored their instruments, and pulled up New York Harbor on Google Earth. Tess scanned the water and shorelines with binoculars, and I stared out at the Manhattan skyline, and the Statue of Liberty, and the Twin Beams. Now and then Tess, Conte, or Andersson would offer some theories about the whereabouts of The Hana.
The possibilities were reduced to four: Petrov had long ago aborted the mission and The Hana was on its way across the Atlantic. Or two, it was under the Atlantic, scuttled. Three, there never was a mission or a nuke, and Petrov was aboard The Hana having a party with the prince and the prostitutes, probably off the coast of Atlantic City. The fourth possibility was that The Hana with Petrov and the nuke had found a good place to hide, either in the harbor or out on the ocean, and we would be seeing the yacht and/or the fireball very soon.
Conte pointed out, “We’re not contributing much to the operation.”
I replied, “We don’t know that yet.”
Conte shrugged, then smiled and said, “Hey, I’ve never seen a nuke detonate. I can tell my grandkids about it someday.”
Cops, as I said, have a sick sense of humor.
So we waited.
At 4:15 A.M. Nikola Andersson informed us, “We now have a low-fuel situation.”
I asked, “How long can we idle?”
Andersson replied, “Maybe… fifteen minutes. Then we need to head out.” She added, “We have a five-gallon gas can onboard.”
“Kill one engine,” I suggested.
Conte said, “I’ll kill both. We’ll drift out with the tide, then restart if we get an alert.”
He shut down both engines, and the night became very quiet, except for the sound of helicopters overhead.
We began to drift south, away from Manhattan Island.
Conte said, “We’re doing maybe three or four knots, so it will take over an hour to reach The Narrows.”
Well, we were still in the game, but backing out slowly—though with enough fuel to charge back in if we got the word.
The cabin was getting claustrophobic, so I exited and climbed along the gunnel onto the bow. Ms. Faraday decided to join me, and we sat cross-legged on the foredeck. Behind us the skyline of Manhattan was retreating, and ahead, about five or six miles away, I could see the lights of the Verrazano Narrows Bridge on the horizon. The old fort on Governors Island was passing by on our left, which reminded me that the entire harbor and the entrance to the harbor were covered with radiation detectors and none of them had lit up, and none of them would if I was right about the nuke being submerged in The Hana’s flooded garage. And if everything went wrong tonight, this place would be radioactive for two or three decades.
Tess asked, “What do you think?”
“About?”
“The Hana. Petrov.” She asked, “Did we get this wrong?”
“I hope so. But I don’t think so.”
“Then where is he? How do you hide a two-hundred-foot ship?”
I looked at the long piers sticking out from the coastline of Brooklyn. I knew there were about forty or fifty of them, some abandoned and derelict, and some hidden in basins that were formed by breakwaters.
The New Jersey waterfront was also lined with piers, active and inactive, over a hundred of them, running from Bayonne near The Narrows up the Hudson River for about fifteen miles.
There was lots of revitalization construction along the shorelines that made up the Port of New York, so there were lots of places for a two-hundred-foot yacht to hide along the waterfront on a dark, foggy night. And even with an air, sea, and land search of this size and intensity, there was so much ground clutter on the radar screen that a stationary ship along the waterfront might well go undetected. Plus, the harbor itself was huge—maybe close to thirty square miles.
I never met Vasily Petrov, but I felt, after watching him for months, that I could get into his head. And if I were Vasily Petrov, I would have made a high-speed run to the goal line before anyone else knew there was a game in progress. I said to Tess, “He’s here. In the harbor.”
She wasn’t so sure and said, “What I think is that The Hana is out on the ocean, electronically silent, ready to make its run through The Narrows.” She added, “I remember you said it would be difficult to stop a big ship that was going full speed ahead from entering the harbor.”
I didn’t reply.
She continued, “Assuming Petrov is prepared to give his life to accomplish this mission, all he has to do is plow through those security vessels around the bridge, and he’s in the harbor. Then he keeps going full speed ahead and within… what did you say? In less than twenty minutes The Hana is at the tip of Manhattan.” She added, “There are not many security vessels inside the harbor.”
“Correct. But the vessels at The Narrows will pursue and carry out a boarding.”
“I’m sure Petrov has the ability to detonate the nuke anytime.”
“Right.”
She stayed silent, then asked, “So why are we here?”
I hate when people ask questions like that.
“John?”
“We are here to let Petrov know we are here. We are here to force his hand and make him detonate the nuke prematurely, before he gets close to Manhattan. We are here to remove any thought he has of escaping the blast or escaping a bullet.” I added, “But mostly we and everyone else are here because this is our job.”
“And maybe we’re here to pray.”
So we sat there on the bow of the SAFE boat, knowing that any second could be our last. Well, there are worse ways to make an exit.
Tess was looking up at the sky, which was clear and starlit. The moon was low on the western horizon and moonlight sparkled on the bay.
In fact, it was a nice night. The harbor was calm, the shore lights reflected on the water, and the misty fog was… well, romantic.
Tess took my hand.
Neither of us spoke for awhile, then she said, “Will you buy me a drink tonight?”
“Of course.”
“You can bring your wife if you’d like.”
“And you can bring Grant.”
She laughed softly, then said, “If you bring Kate, I’ll bring Buck.”
“Is that a threat?”
She squeezed my hand. “I’m frightened.”
“We’re all frightened. It’s okay.”
r /> “What’s your favorite bar?”
“All of them.”
“I’ll take you to the Yale Club if you promise to behave.”
“I’ll take you to a Russian nightclub in Brighton Beach if you promise not to behave.”
“It’s a date.”
She put her arm around me and I did the same. I could only imagine what Pete and Nikola were thinking.
Well… what difference did it make at this point?
Conte opened the front window of the cabin and said, “I hate to interrupt, but for what it’s worth, a helicopter just got a radar blip moving on the water near the Thirtieth Street Pier… but no radiation. So maybe it’s an outbound cargo ship.”
I knew the Thirtieth Street Pier, because the NYPD had once used that Brooklyn pier to store vehicles that had been towed, abandoned, or stolen and recovered. But now it was being converted into a modern recycling facility—so there shouldn’t be any ships using the pier.
Last time I saw this facility, a huge steel boathouse bigger than three football fields was being constructed to enclose the pier. On the land side of the project was construction equipment and material, surrounded by a twelve-foot chain-link security fence. It occurred to me that an NYPD patrol car checking out the waterfront could not possibly see the far end of the enclosed pier, which was nearly three hundred yards from the fence. And it was very possible that an NYPD Harbor vessel, even with a searchlight, might not see a ship sitting inside the huge, unlit enclosure, especially if construction barges were moored at the end of the pier. To add to all this, the roof of the steel structure was covered with photoelectric cells that would confuse any helicopter’s infrared devices or penetrating radar. Maybe I should have thought of this sooner.
I said to Conte, “Let’s check this out.”
“Right.” He fired up both engines and reminded us, “We are relying on choppers in the harbor, and almost all the security vessels on this operation are blocking The Narrows or are on the Hudson and East Rivers—so it appears on radar that we are the only sea vessel in this immediate area.”
“Our lucky day.” I pictured in my mind the Google Earth image and said, “Buttermilk Channel is the most direct route from the Thirtieth Street Pier to the tip of Manhattan.”
Conte turned the SAFE boat and headed for the mouth of Buttermilk Channel, which ran between Governors Island and the Brooklyn waterfront. If the radar blip was The Hana, Petrov would be heading toward us from the opposite direction.
As we approached the mouth of Buttermilk Channel, Conte called out to us, “I see it on radar—target is gaining speed… on a course for Buttermilk.”
Tess knelt on the bow of the SAFE boat, staring straight ahead. She glanced at me and I put my hand on her shoulder. “If this is him,” I said, “he won’t detonate in this enclosed channel.”
She nodded.
The SAFE boat continued at about twenty knots through the channel, which was widening as it neared the end of Governors Island.
Ahead was a gray wall of fog spanning the thousand-foot opening to the channel, and as we approached, the huge bow of a gleaming white ship suddenly cleaved through the fog bank, followed by the rest of the towering ship, coming straight at us.
We had found The Hana.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
We were on a collision course with the ship and Conte cut hard to starboard. Tess and I flattened ourselves on the bow and clung to the rail as the SAFE boat heeled sharply to the right. I yelled into the cabin, “Come around!”
Conte continued his turn and within a minute we were behind The Hana, which was making about ten knots as it continued through the channel toward Manhattan Island. We closed the distance quickly, though we were now riding in the big ship’s wake and bouncing badly.
I shouted to Conte and Andersson, “I’m going to board!”
They both acknowledged and Conte increased his speed.
Tess said, “We are going to board.”
Right.
We were less than twenty feet from The Hana’s stern and I got up on one knee, holding on to the rail and calculating my jump from the bow to The Hana’s swimming platform. My float coat was heavy, but it might come in handy if I misjudged.
As we got closer, I could see the glass doors at the far side of the swimming platform, which I assumed were locked. Every police vehicle carries a Halligan tool—a multi-purpose crowbar to pry open doors and smash glass—and I called into the cabin, “You got a Halligan?”
“Right here!” said Andersson, and she passed me the tool through the open windshield.
She also grabbed a bulletproof vest and an MP5 submachine gun with an extra magazine and passed them to me. I flung the vest to Tess and aimed the MP5 at The Hana. I fully expected hostile fire from the yacht, but I couldn’t see anyone on the darkened ship. I wanted to think that Petrov and his pals didn’t know they were about to be boarded, but whoever was captaining this ship must be watching us on their rear video camera.
The bow of the SAFE boat was a few feet from the swimming platform, and as I waited for the bow to drop, I called to Tess, “Cover me!”
“No, you cover me.” She stood, flung the Kevlar vest onto the swimming platform, then jumped.
I called into the cabin, “When I jump, get out of here!”
Conte called back, “Good luck!”
I slung the MP5 over my shoulder, and as the bow dropped again I saw Tess kneeling on the platform, gun drawn, facing the doors. My turn. I might get shot, but I wouldn’t drown. I jumped and hit the wooden platform and shoulder-rolled toward the glass doors, then sprang to my feet and swung the Halligan tool at the door, but the security glass didn’t shatter. I thrust the tapered end of the Halligan between the double doors, rotated the tool inward, and the door popped open. I drew my Glock and dropped to one knee, then glanced over my shoulder and saw the SAFE boat heading south, out of the harbor. We were on our own.
Tess came up beside me carrying the bulletproof vest and I said, “Put it on.”
“Swap you the vest for the MP5.”
“Put it on!”
She slipped off her float coat and put on the vest, and we scanned the interior of the ship.
This was the float-in tender garage and I saw that it was indeed flooded, and it took me a second to realize that the source of the illumination was underwater lights. To the left and right were staircases that rose to the main deck, and also to the left was a catwalk running along the hull connecting the two docks. At the closest dock I could see the amphibious craft that I last saw heading out to sea with Petrov and his friends. Well, we were on the right boat.
We moved in a crouch farther into the ship. Across the flooded garage, near the opposite dock, I noticed something dark under the water, and as my eyes adjusted to the light I recognized it as a submerged boat. I whispered to Tess, “You got that PRD?” She took the radiation detector from her pocket and I could hear a faint beep, followed by another, and I saw the red light flash intermittently, indicating a weak reading, which I’d expect if the nuke was submerged and had a lead shield. So there was little doubt in my mind that we were in the presence of a radiant angel.
Tess said, “That’s got to be it. But how do we—?”
“Get down!”
We dropped into a prone position and I pointed my Glock at where I’d seen movement on the opposite dock.
A man was sitting on the dock with his legs dangling over the side, and even in the dim light I recognized him as Arkady Urmanov.
Tess and I exchanged glances, but before we could decide on our next move, Urmanov called out, “Help me!”
That wasn’t what I expected to hear, but I replied, “Okay. Where—?”
“I am tied. You must free me.”
So if I could figure this out, Urmanov had done his job of arming the device and he was now one witness too many, and for some sick reason Petrov decided that Urmanov should die by his own creation. Petrov was a tough boss.
“You must
pump out the water! To your left. On the walkway. The switches for the pump.”
I looked at the catwalk and I could see control panels on the hull.
“Untie me!”
One thing at a time, pal. I said to Tess, “Stay here and cover.”
She got into a kneeling position, and I rose to one knee and was about to make a dash for the catwalk, but another movement caught my eye. The door on the far side of the tender garage had swung open, and I saw a figure crouched in front of the door. But before I could swing my Glock toward the figure, I saw muzzle flashes, but heard no sound. Well, I know a silenced weapon when I don’t hear one, and I hit the deck and shouted to Tess, “Down!”
Arkady Urmanov let out a loud cry, followed by a moan.
I aimed my Glock at the place where I’d seen the flash of the automatic weapon and popped off five rounds, which echoed in the huge space.
Tess did the same, and we rolled away from our firing positions and popped off the rest of our magazines, then rolled again as we reloaded.
There was no flash of return fire, so whoever was shooting was not giving away his position. Or maybe we hit him. I glanced at Urmanov across the flooded garage, and I could see that he was slumped forward. I was pretty sure he was dead, and so were my chances of Urmanov disarming the bomb.
Tess was about twenty feet away, flat against the deck, pointing her Glock downrange, but maintaining fire discipline until a target presented itself, as was the guy who shot at us. Petrov? Gorsky? In either case, they were both trained killers, and killers know when to play dead. Meanwhile, the nuke was sitting about thirty feet away in a sunken boat that I could see but couldn’t get to. And I was sure the timer was no longer set for 8:46 A.M.
I looked up at the catwalk where Urmanov said the pump switch was located, and I would have made a dash for it, but standing there was Viktor Gorsky, who shut off the underwater lights, throwing the garage into total darkness.
I knew he was already gone but I fired anyway to draw his fire, and a second later Gorsky returned the fire and I could hear the rounds smacking into the wooden deck around us as Tess and I shot at the muzzle flashes.