Killer Instinct (Instinct #2)(59)

WE IMMEDIATELY woke up the head of the Manhattan Transportation Authority, who, in turn, woke up his head of security, who then woke up whoever it was whose job entailed archiving all their daily surveillance footage on some MTA server. But not because we needed the footage. We already had that. We needed to know the areas of Penn Station the security cameras didn’t cover. Immediately.

The backpack was missing.

Within an hour, a small army descended upon the station. Over fifty officers from the NYPD were called in to seal the perimeter. It was hardly rush hour at just past four in the morning, but there were going to be news vans for sure. If the busiest transportation facility in the country was about to be evacuated, it didn’t matter what the hell time it was. The press would be there.

“Keep ’em outside,” said Pritchard. “Them and anyone else. No one gets in.”

The press would be told it was a bomb scare. Even if they weren’t told, they’d ultimately see the arrival of the bomb squad. There was no hiding it. There was also no reason to. Staying far away from the building was for their safety, and they would have no argument.

But as I heard Pritchard bark that order down the chain of command, I had a feeling he and I were both thinking the same thing. There was definitely an argument coming, only it was going to be among ourselves. I could smell it. As sure as every bomb-sniffing dog that had been brought into the station.

“They’re not all Vapor Wakes, are they?” my father asked as soon as a dozen of the dogs were led in.

“No, only half of them are,” the chief handler answered. “That’s what I figured made sense when I got the call.”

My father nodded his approval. Years before Diamond, his cherished vizsla, was one of the world’s best hunting dogs, he was one of the world’s best bomb sniffers, deployed with US Special Forces in Afghanistan. After my father inherited Diamond, however, training for a majority of bomb dogs changed. This new breed was called Vapor Wake because they were trained to detect scents in motion, as in a moving suitcase in an airport terminal or a suicide bomber weaving through a crowd. In the modern age of terrorism, the change seemed like a necessity.

Tonight was a reminder, though. Embrace the future but never fully let go of the past. We needed the old-school dogs as much as, if not more than, the Vapor Wakes. Wherever that backpack was, it wasn’t moving.

“Looks like the same tactics they used before Times Square,” said Pritchard, staring at a schematic provided by the MTA’s head of security, who introduced himself as Mac. “They methodically find all the blind spots before planting the bombs.”

Mac was sporting some serious bedhead and a couple of missed belt loops, but other than that he was on the ball. He’d already highlighted the areas the security cameras in the station didn’t cover.

But where there could be one backpack, there could easily be a half dozen. Just like in Times Square. While Pritchard was right about the blind spots, we needed to check every spot there was in Penn Station.

“Where’s the bomb squad?” asked Foxx.

“They take longer than the dogs,” said the police captain on duty for the Midtown South Precinct. He squinted at Foxx. “I’m sorry. Who are you again?”

“He’s with me,” said Pritchard, without looking up from the schematics.

“And you two?” the captain asked, pointing at me and my father. “Who are you?”

“They’re also with me,” said Pritchard, who finally looked up from the schematics to give the captain a death stare. “Any more fucking questions?”

And just like that, the captain suddenly had something else to attend to.

I turned to Elizabeth, fully expecting to see her fighting back a smile. Her new boss certainly had a way with words. Isn’t that right?

Elizabeth? Wait. Where are you? Where did you—?

She was gone.





CHAPTER 83


ELIZABETH HAD walked away from the group. She turned to me the exact moment I spotted her. It was as if she could tell I was searching for her.

She didn’t say anything. She didn’t need to. The look in her eyes, even from fifty feet away, told me everything I needed to know.

I turned back to the group. “Hey, guys?”

My father had moved over to Foxx and Pritchard, who were staring at a tablet screen they’d just been given by an IT guy with MTA security that showed a live feed from every security camera in the vicinity. We could now identify every blind spot in the station simply by looking at the tablet and checking if we could see ourselves as we walked.

“What is it?” asked Pritchard.

“This way,” I said, pointing.

I led them over to Elizabeth, who was standing in front of a large trash bin, the square kind with a door on one side so the actual bin could be removed to empty it.

Pritchard tilted his head. “What are you looking at, Needham?”

“Basic geometry,” said Elizabeth.

It was all she had to say. The bin was a circle within a square, which created four hiding places, all about the size of a backpack. Pritchard glanced down at the tablet before holding it up for all of us.

Does everyone see what I’m not seeing?

We weren’t in any of the security camera feeds. We were standing smack-dab in the middle of a blind spot.

“Dog!” yelled Pritchard. “DOG!”