9:24 A.M.
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY
116TH STREET AND BROADWAY
NEW YORK CITY
Singerman left his town house and cut down to Riverside Drive. Cars, SUVs, minivans, delivery trucks, motorcycles, and throngs of people just walking or running, were moving north toward Harlem and, presumably, out of Manhattan—or at least away from the chaos that enveloped Midtown and below. Traffic was at a standstill. Singerman approached a black Suburban, stuck in the line of traffic. He approached a male driver and got his attention.
“I need to borrow your vehicle,” said Singerman, weapon at his side, though clutched in his hand. “It’ll be replaced.”
The man waved him away, yelling at him from behind the glass.
Singerman raised a submachine gun and aimed it at the driver.
“Get out,” said Singerman.
The driver flipped the middle finger. Singerman fired. The bullet shattered the driver’s side window as it cut in front of the driver then exited through the passenger window, shattering it also.
The driver raised his hands and opened the door.
Singerman carjacked the Suburban and slammed the gas, maneuvering over a low concrete divider and roughing it over thick shrubbery in the middle of Riverside between south and north. Singerman executed a U-turn on Riverside Drive. He swerved into the southbound lanes and gunned it.
Above Riverside Drive, and indeed the upper part of the island of Manhattan, the sky was blue. But clouds of smoke pirouetted into the sky in the distance.
He was at 115th Street and he hit the gas hard. The southbound lanes were mostly clear. Some people, not content to wait in the northbound lanes of Riverside, were driving north in the southbound lanes, and Singerman had to dodge and weave to avoid the oncoming vehicles, though he pounded the gas pedal hard and was accelerating. By the time he reached Ninety-sixth Street, it was barely possible to get by. The road was a logjam as people abandoned their vehicles, or else remained in them trying to push around the vehicles that had already been abandoned. He started using the sidewalks and was not afraid to push aside vehicles by ramming them at the front or back bumper. By Eightieth Street, he was feathering the pedal, moving through whatever small chutes existed in the roadway, sometimes playing chicken with a northbound vehicle. At some point, he started bouncing against oncoming vehicles on the sidewalk, trying to get out of the city. It was chaos, and when he saw a wall of stopped cars above Seventy-second Street, Singerman pounded the gas and cut right, plowing the Suburban to a pedestrian running path that led down into Riverside Park.
Singerman banked right off a brick column with a brass plaque at the top of the stairs and accelerated down a flight of concrete steps, slamming hard at the base of the stairs into tar as sparks shot out and metal scraped. When he grounded out, he slammed the gas and was soon moving fast through the pedestrian park. He kept his foot on the pedal, hard to the floor, honking when necessary to scare people away before he ran them over.
He heard a beep in his ear and reached up.
“CENCOM, identify.”
“NOC 3390 AB2,” said Singerman.
After a few low beeps:
“Aaron, you have Bill and one more person.”
“Aaron, it’s Bill,” said Polk. “You also have Igor, who is a DCIA NO/SEC. Where are you?”
“Riverside Park,” said Singerman as he cut back and forth between pedestrians.
“Hi, Aaron, my name is Igor,” came a deep, crisp voice with a sharp Russian accent. “Bill said you have some knowledge of the United States Federal Reserve?”