Massive Attack (A Guy Niava Thriller Book 1) by Dana Arama (e reader for manga .txt) 📗

“Did they find the suspicious car?” He spoke to the camera, but his head was faced backwards, so he sounded fragmented. When he turned back to the camera, he had a wide grin on his face. “Most probably. yes… We have found it! I repeat, we have found it!”

“Great news! Dismantle the explosives carefully.” Gordon smiled and signaled to one of the men, saying, “What’s happening in Atlanta?”

“Do you remember he mentioned a penthouse was for sale? Have you managed to use that information to narrow your search?” I asked.

“They are on top of it. They are trying to cross-check the ‘for sale ads’ and rentals from the last few months and a specific radius around the consulate.”

“We don’t have any results yet,” the guy answered. There was tension in his voice. “But we have narrowed down the search from a hundred options.”

“Boston has reported a success in dismantling the bomb,” said the field officer. “We are still maintaining a red alert situation until you inform us otherwise.”

Gordon said, “Thanks, Boston,” as if he were refereeing some sort of competition. Then he turned me and said, “I haven’t updated you yet. The coffee house in the Park Plaza building has been shut down. The building has been evacuated and because the parking space opposite the building was very limited, they also found the car quickly.” Then he turned and spoke to the room. “People, listen to me: we haven’t managed to successfully locate all the snipers and it is almost noon time.” Everyone glanced at their watches. “If civilians start falling in the streets,” Gordon continued calmly, “the instructions to the security forces must be that they collect the wounded and get out of there as quickly as possible. Under no circumstances are they to treat the wounded on site.”

On all the screens, the field officers nodded their heads in agreement. Their faces were dead serious, and no one made a move to object. “Now all that is left is to minimize damages.”

I felt a light tap on the shoulder and turned around. The guy with the nice smile, the one I’d sent to check on the car rental agencies had returned. He said, “I have results. Come and see.”

I disengaged myself from the clock, which showed we had ten minutes, and hurried after him.

“I ran the program with all the faces of those who rented vehicles from a number of agencies from this last week. Look what I found.” He showed me the same face, in screen grabs from what must have been security footage from different agencies. “This guy was at a few agencies and rented about ten cars under different names. At first, I could only find three rental agencies he had visited. In the first two he managed to avoid the cameras, but then I found out that one of the agencies had two cameras and one of them was in high definition. I ran the picture through the highest quality filter in the biometric program, then I managed to pick up that he had been to a few more agencies. In some of the agencies he put on a mustache or a beard, or glasses, but the biometrics wins.”

“Are you telling me that there are more than ten cars with explosives in them?” I asked in alarm.

“Or maybe some of them were used to help the snipers get to their destinations.”

“Do you have the details of the cars he hired?”

“I have all the details. I have their GPS device records and the program is locating the addresses as we speak.”

“Every address you manage to locate please pass it on immediately to the field officers. We have ten minutes, max, to prevent a disaster.”

He answered me, “Yes, ma’am!” and returned to look at the screen. Two agents stood behind him, waiting in anticipation for the details to unfold on the screen. “Take these details and run them on the other computers,” he instructed them.

In a matter of minutes, the location points were on the screen, each row of numbers turned into a picture and each picture into an address. The instructions were passed on to the local forces in the field, who were waiting for the cue. There was a palpable yearning for good encouraging news -- doors cracked open, locks broken, forces raiding the hideouts and snipers arrested.

Nine cities, one of which had been neutralized; twelve rental cars, two of them found; but only eight men arrested. Nobody knew when the sniper who’d managed to slip through our fingers might reappear in a city somewhere in the United States, go up into a hotel room, and shoot at innocent passers-by, killing them on the spot.

We didn’t know and despite that, we knew that we had worked hard. We had given all of ourselves, all that we had and a bit more, and at the end of the day – we’d beaten evil. But could we prevent the next wave of terror attacks?

Guy Niava,

December 2015

The atmosphere in the pub I had arranged to meet her in was especially jovial. The perfumed pianist was playing blues music and all the young patrons were happily rocking to the lugubrious tempo. I looked around and asked myself which of these people were supposed to have been on one of the flights destined to blow up a month ago? If we hadn’t managed to break Yassin Graham, who would have been buried deep in the earth and who would have toasted a lost friend? A wave of laughter round one of the tables in the middle caught my attention. Two of them stood up, swaying to the rhythm of the music. The others cheered them on, clapping their hands. It seemed as if this wasn’t the first time they had danced together. Their chemistry was magnificent.

The door opened and a woman swathed in a coat and a woolen hat entered the pub. I recognized the blond ends of her hair peeking between the scarf and brim