“Ms. Mayor, everyone, excuse me,” the commissioner said, standing as the lights came back on.
Brooklyn and Arturo and Doyle and I all looked at each other with the same wide-eyed expression.
“Good grief. What the hell now?” Brooklyn said.
“Something has come up,” the commissioner said. “I’ll explain in a minute, but right now I’m going to need everyone to please stand and calmly head for the stairwells and proceed outside.”
He cleared his throat as everyone started freaking out.
“Quiet, now, everybody, okay? Head for the exit immediately. We have a problem. A red terrorist alert has been issued. We need to evacuate the building.”
CHAPTER 59
“I TOLD YOU, you stupid bastard,” Mr. Beckett said from the window, where he looked at the building through binoculars. “They’re coming out now! They’re evacuating! Blow it now!”
“One more minute,” said Mr. Joyce.
“No! Now!” Mr. Beckett cried. He watched as a truck pulled up in front of the building and a guy leaped out with a black Lab in tow.
“It’s the bomb squad! Do it now!”
“One second,” said Mr. Joyce, clicking away at the keyboard like a jazz piano soloist. “Just a couple more adjustments.”
Mr. Beckett tore a schematic in half and kicked the cooler.
“You’ve adjusted it enough! It’s now or never!”
Mr. Joyce ignored him, eyes on the screen, clicking buttons like mad.
Mr. Beckett looked through the binocs again, then started banging his head against the ambulance’s metal wall.
“Blow it,” he whimpered. “Blow it.”
“How many times do I have to tell you?” Mr. Joyce said. “It’s all about the placement, otherwise it’ll do cosmetic damage at best.”
“I don’t give a shit! Blow the damn thing now!”
“Fine,” said Mr. Joyce. “You win. Just so you know, it’s not ready.”
“Blow it!”
“First say that it’s your call,” said Mr. Joyce. “I don’t want you blaming this on me later.”
“It’s my call! It’s my call!” Mr. Beckett cried.
Mr. Joyce set off the detonators on the eighty pounds of plastic explosives with a soft press of his thumb.
CHAPTER 60
WE WERE IN the stairwell, nervous, feeling as powerless as schoolchildren in a teacher-led fire drill. It wasn’t the weird sound we suddenly heard that was that concerning. It was the hard shudder that a moment later came up through the ground and wrenched through the stairs and walls into the marrow of our bones.
Everyone stopped dead on the stairs with a collective gasp as the concrete drunkenly swayed back and forth under our feet. I looked up immediately at the ceiling, along with everyone else, suddenly feeling the hard beating of my heart as I wondered if it was about to drop down on top of us.
“Oh, my God, Mike! Look!” said Brooklyn, elbowing me in the neck as she pointed up at the stairwell window.
I looked.
Behind the courthouses, up on Broadway, about two long blocks away, I saw 26 Federal Plaza, the huge, monolithic FBI headquarters building. Something was wrong. Smoke was rising in the air above it. The smoke seemed to be coming from many of its seemingly blown-open windows.
Emily!
I watched helplessly as more of its windows blew out simultaneously, almost in a left-to-right diagonal line, flashing with a blinding white light.
I looked silently at what happened next.
The top floors of 26 Fed seemed to tremble and waft back and forth. There was a thunderclap crack of concrete and a horrid creak and groan of shearing steel. Then the top stories of the building freed themselves from their blown moorings and slowly slid away into empty air.
“Dear holy God,” I said. The building around us rocked again as most of 26 Fed’s million-pound avalanche of glass and stone crashed down onto the streets below.
When I peeled my eyes away from the mushrooming dust cloud out the window, I could hear somebody crying. It was the mayor, two steps above me. She was bawling her eyes out.
“They’re dead,” she kept saying as she crumpled to the floor. “They’re dead. They’re all dead.”
Every cop there turned and looked at each other as the dust plume rose into the sky. Doyle and Arturo and Brooklyn and Chief Fabretti. The shock was fine. What wasn’t so fine was the fear. The pale and shivering crazed looks of fear.
“Déjà vu all over again,” said Doyle, licking his lips. He had his gun in his hand. I gently helped him put it away.
“This is crazy. This is crazy. This is crazy,” said Arturo hysterically.
I put my arm on Arturo’s shoulder. I opened my mouth, but I was speechless. He was in shock, the same as me. He was also right.
Then I was running down the stairs two by two, speed-dialing Emily as I began to pray that she miraculously might still be alive.
CHAPTER 61