People were already up on the mound of debris, a dozen or so people. There were a few uniformed cops, but mostly they were civilians—office workers, a guy in a white doctor’s coat, a loose line of people silently passing down debris and rubble.
I climbed up over some chunks of concrete, immediately joining them. As the dry, stale taste of concrete and drywall dust filled my nostrils and mouth, I accepted a huge hunk of concrete from a short, Italian-looking guy in a ruined pinstriped suit above me. As I turned to heave it, I saw that a burly uniformed security guard had arrived behind me, waiting to accept it.
“What happened?” the guard said to me as I passed him the concrete.
I squinted at him. He was a really distinctive-looking guy. He had longish brown hair under his navy ball cap and bright, light-blue eyes. He must have played football in college or something, because he was jacked.
“Someone said it was a plane,” he said as I continued to stare at him stupidly. “Was it a plane?”
After he handed the concrete to the next person down the line, I shook my head and carefully passed him the two-yard length of fractured rebar I’d just been handed.
“It was explosives,” I finally said. “I saw it. They blew it. Someone took it down with high explosives or something. Demo’d it, like. I didn’t see a plane.”
That’s when my cell phone went off in my pocket. I crouched down in the wreckage, frenziedly wiping the dust-covered screen to see who was calling.
I closed my eyes with relief as my heart somersaulted in my chest.
All was not lost. There was still hope. A tiny drop.
“Emily?!” I yelled as I put the phone to my ear.
“Mike! Are you okay?” she said. “We got hit. I just made it out of the building. Someone said you guys were hit as well. Are you okay?”
Thank you, God. You came through. Thank you. And Saint Michael. You guys came through. I owe you.
I clenched back my tears of relief. Then I couldn’t anymore.
“Yes,” I said, wiping dust and tears off my face. “I’m fine. Perfect now. Where are you?”
“On the west side of Broadway near Worth.”
“Okay, stay where you are. I’m coming to you.”
When I stood and turned around again to ask the muscular security guard to take my place in line, I stopped and just stood there blinking.
Because all of a sudden the guy, whoever he had been, whatever he had been, was gone.
CHAPTER 63
THE NEXT THREE days were some of the most tumultuous in New York City’s history.
Twenty-two people had died in the blast. Eleven special agents (one of them the direct assistant to the head of the New York office), three civilian clerks, and eight maintenance and security people. More than a hundred were still in the hospital, many with internal injuries from being crushed under heavy debris when the building collapsed. Many people were missing fingers, arms, eyes, feet. The fact that half of Manhattan’s hospitals were still out of commission after the EMP blast in Yorkville did not help the situation at all.
The initial investigation into the bombing showed that it had been as ingenious as it had been devastating. Incredibly, robots had been used. Investigators had found three unexploded robots in the pile. They looked like miniature children’s blocks, but inside they had intricate flywheels and radio receivers and electronics that allowed them to be moved around remotely, like a swarm of insects. In addition to the electronics, the bots had been laden with explosives and had been inserted probably through the AC unit on the roof into the air ducts.
Experts were speculating that whoever had radio-controlled the bots into position must have been an engineer or a demolitions expert, because each unit had been precisely placed alongside the building’s support struts for maximum destruction.
As in the aftermath of 9/11, the governor of New York had issued a citywide state of emergency, and the National Guard was called in. Soldiers armed with rifles stood at multiple checkpoints throughout the city, with countersniper teams on various rooftops. There were even rumors that there was a CIA surveillance drone high in the air above New York City 24-7. It was truly unreal.
But instead of committing the mentally unhealthy act of dwelling on things, Emily and I and my Ombudsman Outreach squaddies busied ourselves by doubling down, trying to shake out everything we could on the investigation. It was all dead ends so far, but something would break. It had to. Or at least we couldn’t stop believing that it would.
“If they’re terrorists, Mike, then why won’t they contact us, claim credit?” said Noah Robertson, starting up our Friday morning team meeting at the Intelligence Division building in Brooklyn.