The Watchmaker’s Hand

“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.”

38

Amelia Sachs arrived at the hospital and skidded to a stop, the crane looming in front of her.

It was in the middle of a jobsite, the jib hovering over the main building — the north side of the U that the complex was configured in. The hour was not yet ten, but the device was tilting and the counterweights were shedding bits of concrete and drips of liquid — the HF acid was already at work.

Moment had been compromised.

Her eyes were drawn upward. The bright red color, the shade of fresh blood. When the thing fell it would strike the middle of the top floor, about eight stories up. The front jib was eighty or ninety feet higher than the crest of the building. Upon impact, the many tons of metal would accelerate as they fell and slam into the structure with incredible force, slicing through at least the top three or four floors.

This was a crane that Lyle Spencer had checked last night. He had found guards at the base of the mast and the entrance to the site. But Rhyme’s text a few minutes ago explained why his efforts had been a waste of time; Hale was using a drone to plant the acid.

Sachs looked at the oxygen tank on the seat beside her. Without the mask on, she inhaled deeply.

Some sting, some coughing.

Was the goddamn stuff eating away at more and more parts of her lung, like the counterweights in front of her?

A hit of oxygen.

Glancing around the scene that was, like the first collapse, a circus of vehicles and lights and people in uniforms of all shades and styles.

She closed her eyes and lowered her head as she inhaled from the tank a half-dozen times.

Good enough for now. Go.

Climbing from the Torino, she spotted the NYPD incident commander, a gray-haired uniformed captain of about fifty. He was as thin and pale as the man beside him was dark-complected and stocky, the FDNY battalion chief, who was in black slacks and a white shirt under a fire department jacket, dark with yellow stripes. The firefighters didn’t need hard hats, of course, they had their own helmets, in classic firefighter shape, yellow. His had a crest of a badge on the front topped with a large CHIEF and his number below. His name was Williams.

She tilted her belt badge toward them. “Sachs. Major Cases. I’m one of the leads on this one.”

“Oh,” the police IC said, O’Reilly on his breastplate. “You’re with Lincoln Rhyme?”

She nodded, her preferred response to a question that could be answered several ways.