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“Lincoln.”
“Fred. The cranes. We think the Watchmaker might be placing the device on them with a drone. Mel says you and DHS track them.”
“Oh, yeah. We’re the boys ’n’ gals for you. Our Counterterror folk. They’re lookin’ for birds all. The. Time. I’ll patch you through to a buddy—still hiding out on the other side of the office, by the way. No end of trouble I’m givin’ them for that. Hold tight.”
Rhyme’s eyes drifted to the map of the cranes in the city. He was thinking back to the early hours of the morning. Lyle Spencer had returned from his visits to the towers that they’d decided were most likely to be the next target. He’d reported that the bases of the cranes were all well guarded.
With a drone, those precautions were useless.
Then a baritone voice sounded into the phone. “Mr. Rhyme. Special Agent Sanji Khan, Counterterror. How can I help?”
Rhyme explained that he believed the device used to sabotagethe crane on the Upper East Side was put in place with a drone. “You monitor them, right?”
“We do. FAA and DHS too. We coordinate findings. Radar and RF—radio frequency. If there’s a UAV—unmanned ariel vehicle—anywhere, we get a location. GPS from the RF is best. Radar’s dicey in the city.”
“Have you had any alerts lately?”
“Alert? No.” Khan added, “There’s an algorithm that only scrambles a response if the thing is near a high-profile target—airports, government buildings, embassies, concert halls, parades, that sort of thing. If the flight’s under ten minutes and it’s a low-threat location, we just log the details and don’t go after anybody. Usually it’s somebody gets a birthday or Christmas present and starts playing with it without knowing the law.”
“If I gave you the time and location, could you let me know if a drone was there? And—this is important—if it’s been logged again anywhere in the city?”
“Sure … If he’s flying the same unit. They have unique profiles.”
“Mel, give him the details! Agent, this is Detective Cooper on the line.”
The tech looked up the information and recited it into the speakerphone.
No more than sixty seconds later—the gap filled with Khan’s hard-pounding keyboarding—the agent said, “I’ve got it here. There’s a log report of a flight just where you describe it, Eighty-Ninth Street, early in the morning before the crane came down. Flew over the site, hovered, and then went dark on East Eighty-Eighth.”
Where Hale’s SUV was parked. The box in the back that Helprin had seen would be what he stored it in.
“We profiled it in the Carter Max4000 line.”
“Big enough to deliver a few liters of liquid?”
“Easy.”
“Now, other flights by the same one?”
“Yessir. Three of them. Classified as probably random and not acted on either.”
“Where?”
“One was in the four hundred block of Towson Street, Brooklyn. Another in front of an office building, Manhattan, 556 Hadley, between SoHo and downtown. East. The last one was 622 East Twenty-Third. It’s been quiet since. But it’s on the wire now. If it goes aerial again, we’ll be on it and get tactical involved. You want to be included?”
“Yes,” Rhyme said absently. He was staring at the map. No cranes, that block of Brooklyn. No cranes near Hadley. But East 23rd, there was one. A bright red circle.
“Mel, what’s at that address, on Twenty-Third?”
Rhyme glanced at the clock. Just over a half hour until the next attack.
The tech typed on a nearby keyboard and a crisp picture appeared on the screen in front of Rhyme. It was from a satellite image database.
In the middle of a U-shaped complex of yellow-tan brick buildings sat a massive crane, with a yellow cab and jibs atop a red tower.
The buildings made up the St. Francis Hospital Center.
“Mel, call their security and the local precinct. Evacuate the place. And get Amelia over there. Now.”
