New York City
February 2
Eli moved forward in purposeful strides. Head down, he wore dark glasses, gloves, and a black beret. The collar of his black wool overcoat was turned up to ward off the frigid air. A stiff leather messenger pouch hung at his side, the contents given to him by Benny Goldsmith, the Israeli Ambassador to the United States.
An experienced agent of Mossad, Eli never questioned orders. Questions were a luxury for naïve idealists and dreamers. That was not Eli. He was a warrior fighting for the survival of his people, his homeland. It was not his job to make policy, to decide what course of action should be taken. Rather, he was an implement of action to ensure the desired results were achieved.
Sometimes, that meant exporting the violence, so that others would understand.
Everything Eli did this night, from the way he dressed, to the locations he scouted and ultimately selected, to the timing of his actions—everything—was coldly calculated to send a message.
It was 3:00 am, and the sidewalks were all but deserted. He turned the corner into an alley behind Langan’s Pub, just off West 47th Street and a half block from Times Square. He passed a homeless man pressed tight against the brick wall, burrowed under a filthy blanket with the remains of a large cardboard box for cover. The rank odor of vomit, stale urine, and rotten food assaulted his senses.
Ahead, the mechanical rumble of heavy machinery announced the approach of a garbage truck a few seconds before its lights appeared at the opposite end of the alley. The truck was just turning off West 46th, right on schedule.
Eli jogged to a commercial refuse bin behind the pub. He only had a minute, maybe two, to complete his task without arousing suspicion from the truck driver. Plunging his hand into the messenger pouch, he retrieved a yellow-green object. It filled his hand as his fingers wrapped around the device, obscuring it from view of the security camera aimed from the far side of the alley toward the steel dumpster. With his free hand, he removed first a safety tie and then a metal ring attached to a pin. Then he carefully stuffed the grenade against a front wheel of the dumpster so that when the bin was pulled forward to be emptied, the lever would pop off and ignite the chemical fuze.
His task completed, Eli turned and swiftly exited on West 47th Street. As he crossed Times Square, the sharp report of the explosion was proof his mission had succeeded. He strode down another alley, placing three more grenades, before vanishing into the night.
The sanitation department driver was on autopilot. He’d been working this route for close to three years, long enough that the motions were more muscle memory than deliberate thought. With the diesel engine rumbling in idle, he hopped out of the cab and wrestled the dumpster forward about six feet. When the fragmentation grenade detonated, the driver was in the process of climbing back into the cab. The blast slammed the open cab door into his body, knocking him to the pavement. The dumpster cartwheeled into the air, landing with a clang 20 feet away. Dozens of steel fragments pierced the front of the garbage truck, including three that penetrated through the door and lodged in the driver’s thigh and shoulder.
Almost immediately, passersby appeared from nowhere, drawn in the alley by the sound of the explosion. Soon, sirens blared and two police cruisers arrived on scene, their flashing colored lights adding to the chaos. A civilian was applying pressure to the worst of the driver’s leg wounds, stemming the flow of blood.
One of the officers was holding back the onlookers, whose ranks had grown to nearly a dozen, while the other was speaking over his radio to dispatch. “We have one victim, male, he’s conscious with multiple wounds. Request emergency medical help; this guy is bleeding pretty bad.”
“Dispatch. Roger request for med―”
The sharp crack of two nearly-simultaneous explosions drowned out the reply from dispatch. Reflexively, the two police officers ducked, but quickly it became apparent they were not in imminent danger. As the officer called in the report, one thought was prevalent—It’s going to be a long night.
With a 20-block area surrounding Times Square evacuated and sealed off, New York’s police along with agents from BATF and the FBI, scoured the area for clues as well as additional explosive devices. The security tape from the video camera by the first bomb had been reviewed, and law enforcement knew their prime suspect was male, with short black hair—possibly Middle Eastern—but it was not possible to pull many facial details from the images.
By noon, they had found only one unexploded device, a military hand grenade also placed at the base of a commercial trash bin close to Times Square. Fortunately, there was a surveillance camera nearby, and it showed images of the same suspect as from the first bombing. Declaring the streets safe, the evacuation order was lifted.
Considering the nature of the recovered device, plus evidence that the three exploded devices were fragmentation bombs, possibly hand grenades, the investigative lead was turned over to the FBI. Before the day was over, an explosive ordinance expert from the U.S. Army confirmed the unexploded grenade was of Iranian manufacture.
“You guys are lucky no one was killed,” the expert explained. He was video conferencing with FBI agent in charge, Special Agent Wilhelm. “That’s a fragmentation grenade. Killing radius is 8 meters.”
“We don’t often see military explosives in domestic bombings,” Wilhelm said. “Usually it’s homemade IEDs. You sure it’s Iranian?”
“Absolutely. The markings are distinctive, as is the overall design. It’s a rough copy of the older pineapple-style hand grenade popular during the mid-twentieth century.”
Wilhelm was studying the photograph displayed over the video link. “This is the condition of the grenade when it was found?”
“That’s right. Apparently, a patrol officer found it at the base of a dumpster about a block away from the second explosion. The pin was still in place. It was completely safe.”
“That’s odd. Why would the bomber place three grenades, pulling the pin and setting each to explode when the trash bins were moved, and yet fail to arm the fourth device?”
The Army expert shrugged. “Can’t help you there. Anyway, that’s all I have. Let me know if any other questions come up during your investigation.”
“Yeah, sure. Thank you.” And then a moment later, just before the expert hung up, “Oh one more question.”
“Sure, what is it?”
“Any idea how someone in New York would come into possession of Iranian hand grenades?”
“Well, the obvious answer is your suspect is connected to Iranian military, maybe the Revolutionary Guards.”
Wilhelm had already thought of that possibility. “Yes, but how does he get the grenades—let’s say there were four of them—into this country? It wouldn’t be easy to get hand grenades through airport security; I don’t care what country you’re in.”
“Like I said, beats me. Maybe he’s a diplomat?”
“Iran and the U.S. don’t have diplomatic relations.”
“Sorry, I can’t help you with that one. Give me a call if you have questions of a military nature.”
Special Agent Wilhelm eased back in his chair, deep in thought. How would I smuggle grenades from Iran into New York? If the answer involved secure diplomatic pouches, it would have to be through a government friendly—or at least sympathetic—to the Islamic Republic of Iran. I don’t even know how to begin investigating that angle.
He decided to see what forensics came up with. Maybe the facial images captured by the security cameras would return a positive ID after running through the many data bases maintained by U.S. and European agencies.
Wilhelm sighed. He was a realist, and he knew that short of a miracle, if the facial recognition software came up empty, this case would go cold within a week.