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I was actually right there among the firefighters and phone guys and welders in the crowd at the pile down at Ground Zero when he gave the famous bullhorn speech.
It was a pretty unforgettable moment, the president standing on the pile of devastation, his rousing words lost after a moment in the overhead roar of the two F-16 fighter jets flying air cover around the perimeter of Manhattan.
But the fact that I was now here, back in this room, going over that dark rubble-strewn memory, wasn’t exactly boding well. What was adding to my growing worry was what I couldn’t help but notice about the Secret Service personnel. Usually, the Secret Service guys are somewhat laid-back when POTUS isn’t around, but every one of them walking past looked stressed and tense and quite concerned.
After a few more minutes, a conference room door opened, and Neil Fabretti stuck his head out and waved at me.
I thought the room would be packed, but besides Fabretti, there was only one person inside, a stocky redheaded guy sitting at an Office Depot discount conference table talking on his cell. Though he was wearing a suit, he didn’t look like one. His rusty-colored hair was military short, with sidewalls the color of a Carhartt coat.
“Mike,” Chief Fabretti said as the guy got off his mobile. “This is Paul Ernenwein, the new antiterror ASAC at the FBI’s New York office.”
“Pleased to meet you, Paul,” I said as he almost broke my hand with his meaty one.
“Here’s the story, Mike,” Ernenwein said with a Boston accent. “Right when Air Force One went wheels up, we got a credible threat that a hit is going to be attempted here in New York City.”
I almost jumped out of my shoes, then just stood there, stunned and blinking. I knew something was up, but wow. Talk about a sledgehammer to the face.
“A hit? An assassination attempt?” I said.
Ernenwein slowly nodded his large red head.
“It’s a long story, but an extremely reliable Russian mafia informant has provided credible information that a hit is going down now. And I mean right now, perhaps on POTUS’s entry into New York. It’s a long saga, but we actually think Vladimir Putin himself might be involved in this assassination attempt.”
I tried to absorb that. It wasn’t easy with all the alarms still clanging inside my head.
“But why not abort if the president might be in danger?”
“POTUS refuses,” said Ernenwein, biting his lower lip. “Look, all we know is that Putin is trying to start up the Cold War again. The president ran on putting a stop to it, but he needs help, and he has a meeting this morning with some of our shakier NATO allies. Any suggestion of weakness, that he has to hide on our own soil, would be disastrous. He told us to do our jobs and to protect him.”
“If it’s true that there’s a hit team already in New York, we have to find them yesterday,” Fabretti said, staring at me. “I want you as our front man in the task force with the FBI to help track them down.”
“Of course,” I said as another whining corporate jet roared in beyond the window.
I took a breath as I stared at it, trying to ramp up to speed.
A second ago, I was making pancakes, and now we were…what, back on the brink of WWIII?
This was crazier than Cartoon Network.
Chapter 3
Usually, the NYPD takes exclusive care of all air cover on presidential visits, but since such a dire threat was so imminent, it was all-hands-on-deck time, and every police aircraft and tactical team in the tristate area had
been called in to assist.
When I learned about the manpower shortage, I mentioned to Fabretti that I had actually been a spotter on a sniper team when I was in the ESU. He made a call, and I found myself teamed up with a sniper from the Nassau County SWAT team whose partner was out of town. Then, twenty minutes later, I was out on the airport’s cold, windy tarmac with my overcoat collar up as a whining Nassau County PD Bell 412 helicopter touched down in front of me.
Sitting in the backseat behind the pilot was the sniper I was there to assist. His name was Greg something Polish that I didn’t quite catch. Definitely not Brady. He was a slim, cocky, thirtyish guy with a shaved head and lots of tats. He had even more lip than ink, if that was possible. I don’t know what it was, the five-alarm stress or adrenaline or if he was just a natural-born jackass, but he started being a jerk from the very second I strapped in beside the pilot.
“You’re my spotter?” Greg said in the chopper’s headphones. “Where’d you pick it up, Korea or ’Nam? And nice tie. I didn’t know this was dress formal tactical response, or I wouldn’t have left my cummerbund in my other kit bag.”
“Hi, Greg. My name’s Mike Bennett,” I said, smiling back at him where he sat in the chopper’s backseat. “I know this is last-second, for everybody to get chucked together like this. Believe it or not, I worked on a sniper team in the NYPD’s ESU for a few years and know my way around a spotting scope. I’m also pretty familiar with the area around the UN. Let’s say we get the president to where he has to go, okay?”
“Whatever,” my new charming friend, Greg, mumbled in reply.
With that, the chopper’s rotor whine rapidly increased in pitch, and we were ascending up and out over Jamaica Bay to the airport’s south. As we stilled to a hover, beyond the fishbowl canopy I could see a half dozen other hovering police helicopters in a loose string along the airport’s perimeter.
Down alongside the runway beside the Port Authority building, the presidential motorcade was assembling. Even from a couple thousand feet, I could make out the military armor–plated limo they called the Beast, which the president would ride in. There were actually two of them. In front and back of the huge Cadillac limos were over a dozen other black Suburbans that would carry other White House officials and the Secret Service CAT tactical guys. Ahead of the feds was the NYPD-provided sweep team, a highway unit car in front of an NYPD Intelligence Division command car in front of a bomb squad vehicle and a tow truck.
