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But those few were plenty for somebody who’s very pissed off at me.
Ernest Hollister.
I get up, spare a glance at the gently rolling fairways and little flapping triangular golf flags stretching into the distance.
A number of cops—some in SWAT battle rattle—are stretched out in a line, coming my way.
I take out my borrowed iPhone, start punching in numbers.
It’s 10:31 a.m.
Chapter101
IT’S Abeautiful May morning and Lisa Bailey is madly, deeply in love. She’s in the right-hand pilot’s seat of a Bell 429 helicopter, call sign Aviation 19, and with her copilot and fellow New York Police Department officer Joe Woods, she’s flying near the southern end of Manhattan, with the best view in the world.
At six thousand feet in this crisp weather, it’s CAVU—ceiling and visibility unrestricted—and Lisa’s love affair is with this gorgeous flying machine. Its latest police surveillance and tracking equipment includes radiation-monitoring devices, a TrakkaBeam searchlight, and the MX10 EO/IR camera system, which can zoom in and read the numbers on a license plate or the logo on some perp’s baseball cap, day or night.
Through the helicopter’s intercom, Joe says, “Stop smiling so much, Lisa—you’ll ruin your resting bitch face.”
Lisa laughs, her left hand on the collective lever and her right on the cyclic stick, both booted feet on the control pedals. “Can’t help it. This beauty beats that flying Greyhound bus I’m used to.”
That “bus” is the heavy-lift Chinook CH-47 helicopter, old and clunky, prone to leaking hydraulic fluid but otherwise a solid workhorse that Lisa flew many times when she was active duty U.S. Army, performing missions in Iraq and Afghanistan: most of the time delivering troops and supplies through the Chinook’s rear ramp, sometimes getting shot at, a couple of times seeing the smoky trail of an RPG wavering up to her.
“Center to Aviation 19,” comes a message from dispatch, audible through her heavy crash helmet.
She toggles a switch. “Aviation 19, go.”
“Hold one,” the woman’s voice says.
As Lisa takes in this gorgeous view of south Manhattan—the tall firm buildings, the water of New York Harbor and nearby Governors Island—she thinks of the desert, jagged empty mountain peaks, the small villages of huts and poverty and—
“Aviation 19, Center,” the voice goes on. “Switch to Channel 99. We have an incoming telephone message for you.”
She looks over at Joe, who shrugs beneath his heavy flight jacket. Channel 99 is encrypted, meaning scanner snoopers can’t overhear sensitive traffic. It feeds in only to the pilot’s communications system.
“Roger that,” says Lisa. She goes to the cluttered dashboard and makes the necessary adjustment, then says, “This is Officer Bailey, NYPD Aviation. Go ahead, caller.”
And a voice from the past and the harsh desert slips right into her ears.
“Hey, Fly Girl, this is Captain Cornwall, so glad I caught you.”
“Amy!” she answers. “Captain? Heard you went over to the dark side—that agency beginning with the letterC.”
Lisa’s happy and surprised to hear from Captain Cornwall, and she’s expecting a hearty laugh and an explanation for why Amy’s calling her at this time and place. So her hands tingle with apprehension at what she hears next.
“Lisa, I need your help,” Amy says, voice low and firm. “There’s an emerging terrorist threat coming from a railway on the other side of the Hudson, south of the Hoboken Terminal. Bombs have been set on two trains that will cause a cloud of poison gas. I don’t have time to go through channels. I…I’ve got less than half an hour. In thirty minutes, there’s going to be a terrorist attack that will kill tens of thousands. I need you, Lisa. I need you bad.”
She keeps quiet. Talk about the goddamn bolt from the blue.
Amy says, “You’re the best I knew back in the ’stan. Anywhere and anyplace you’d fly, no matter the mission. Lisa…this is irregular, I’m putting you in a world of hurt, but please…trust me. I need you.”
Lisa looks over at south Manhattan, sees the shining spire of One World Trade Center, remembers her now-dead uncle—also a helicopter pilot in the Aviation Unit. Whenever he got drunk at family get-togethers, he would sit in a corner and quietly weep, recalling the desperate people leaning out of the shattered and smoking windows of WTC One and Two, waving at him, beseeching him to help.
“You got it,” she says. “Where are you?”
Amy says, “Bayonne Golf Course…near the eighth hole. In a line of trees.”
Lisa says, “There’s a helipad on the river’s edge.”
