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which I knew through bitter experience would roll quickly in one direction—downhill, straight at me.
    About ten minutes later, I watched from the window as my boss, Miriam, got out of her Honda. Stylish and athleticand irritatingly serene, Miriam looked more like a hot upscale soccer mom than a razor-sharp city cop.
    Despite the fact that she had ordered me back from my vacay, I still liked my feisty new boss. Running the Major Case Squad, the Delta Force of the NYPD, was a near-impossible job. Not only was Miriam’s head constantly on the chopping block with high-profile cases, but she had the added challenge of having to garner the respect and loyalty of the department’s most elite detectives, who were often prima donnas.
    Somehow Miriam, a former air force pilot, managed to pull it off with wily intelligence, humor, and tact. She also backed her people unconditionally and took absolutely no one’s shit. Including mine, unfortunately.
    “What’s the story, morning glory?” my boss said as she sat down.
    “Let’s see. Hmm. Today’s headline, I guess, is ‘Vacationing Cop Gets Screwed,’ ” I said.
    “Hey, I feel you, dawg. I was up in Cape Cod, sipping a fuzzy navel when they called me.”
    “Who’s was it? Anyone I know?” I said
    “A gentlewoman never tells,” she said with a sly wink. “Anyway, hope your shoes are shined. Sander Flaum from Intel is going to be at this powwow, as well as the Counter-terrorism chief, Ciardi, and a gaggle of nervous Feds. You’re today’s featured speaker, so don’t let them trip you up.”
    “Wait a second. Back up,” I said. “I’m primary detective on the case? So now I’m on vacation when? Nights?”
    “Ah, Mike,” Miriam said as the waitress poured her a coffee. “You Irish have such a way with words. Yeats, Joyce, and now you.”
    “For a nice Jewish girl from Brooklyn, you’re not too bad at throwing the blarney around when you have to,” I said. “Seriously, two chiefs? Why all the heavies on a Sunday?”
    “The lab came back on the explosive. It’s T-four from Europe—from Italy apparently. You know how squirrelly the commissioner gets about anything remotely terrorist-related.”
    The new commissioner, Ken Rodin, was a pugnacious, old-school former beat cop who still wore a .38 in an ankle holster above his Italian wingtips. With crime down in the city, his primary directive—some said his obsession—was to prevent another terrorist act during his watch. Which wasn’t as paranoid as it might sound, considering NYC was still terrorist organizations’ Top of the Pops, so to speak.
    “Though it’s still far from conclusive that this is a terrorist thing, we have to go through the DEFCON One motions for the time being. There’s been smoke coming out of my BlackBerry all night.”
    “Is McGirth going to be there?”
    Tom McGinnis, or McGirth, as he was more casually known due to his not-so-girlish figure, was the department’s chief of detectives, Miriam’s boss and perhaps the most egregious power-hungry ballbuster in the NYPD.
    Miriam rolled her eyes in affirmation.
    “What’s up with bullshit internal politics?” I said. “What happened to the commissioner’s pep talk last month about how the mayor wanted a new role for Major Case? ‘Kick ass, no politics, just results?’ Ring a bell?”
    “Yeah, well, the mayor and the commish aren’t going to be at the meeting, unfortunately,” Miriam said. “It’s our sorry lot to deal with the department’s evil henchmen. Why am I saying
we?
It’s your job, Mike, since you’re the briefing DT.”
    “Well, lucky old me,” I said, sipping my coffee as the sun crested over the crushed cars outside the window.

Chapter 11
    THE NYPD’S COUNTERTERRORISM BUREAU was extremely impressive. Outside, it looked like a faceless office building in the middle of a crappy industrial neighborhood. Inside, it looked like the set of
24
.
    There were electronic maps, intense-looking cops at glass