Inside Federal Plaza I got a quick, thorough briefing about a terrorist cell that was staying in a small brick building near the Holland Tunnel. It wasn't clear whether Shafer was still inside. He had entered at nine the night before and no one had seen him leave.

"The others are clearly members of al-Jihad," I was told by Angela Bell, the information analyst assigned to the counterterrorism squad in New York. She said that the decrepit, three-story structure where the cell was holed up was shared by a Korean import-export business and a Spanish-translation business. The terrorist cell was posing as a relief charity called Afghan Children Assistance.

Based on the surveillance reports we had in hand, there were several indicators of terrorist planning and activity around New York. Chemicals and mixing apparatuses had turned up in a self-storage space in Long Island City. The place had been rented by an occupant of the property near the Holland Tunnel; a pickup truck owned by a cell member had been modified with heavy-duty springs to handle a very heavy load. A possible bomb? What kind of bomb?

That morning plans were being coordinated for raids on the Long Island storage facility and the walk-up near the Holland Tunnel.

Finally, about four in the afternoon, I was driven to TriBeCa to join the strike team.

Chapter 47

We had been warned not to do this. But how could we obey? What's more, how could anyone expect us to obey when so many lives were in danger? And maybe we could argue that the raid was solely a hit on al Qaeda and had nothing to do with the Wolf. Hell, maybe it didn't.

The apartment where the terrorists were staying, and where Geoffrey Shafer might still be, was a fairly easy one to monitor. The front of the redbrick building had only a single entrance. The rear fire escapes emptied onto a narrow alley where we had already put closed-circuit wireless cameras. One side of the building abutted a textbook printer; the other opened onto a small parking lot.

Was the Weasel still inside?

An HRT assault force and a SWAT team from the NYPD had taken over the top floor of a TriBeCa meatpacking plant a couple of blocks from the Holland Tunnel. We assembled there, fine-tuning the assault, waiting for word to come about whether the attack would happen or not.

HRT wanted a go, and they were pushing hard for an assault between two and three in the morning. I didn't know what I would do if it were my call. We had a cell of known terrorists, and possibly Shafer, in our sights. But we'd been warned about the consequences. It could also be a setup, some kind of test for us.

At a little before midnight word began to circulate that HRT surveillance had turned up something else. About one in the morning I was called in to a small bookkeeping room that was serving as headquarters. It was getting close to put-up-or-shut-up time.