After the conference ended, my team and I set up shop at a couple of desks in a far corner of the crowded, kinetic Intelligence Division bull pen.
Although it was early in the morning, everyone already seemed a little haggard. The cops around me were doing their best to hide it, but it was obvious that people were getting scared. A bombing and an assassination were insane even by New York’s standards.
An hour later, I was still on the horn with the department public relations office trying to disseminate stills of the Washington Heights bombers to the news outlets when it started.
I had just tucked the desk phone receiver under my chin when I suddenly noticed the rhythmic, low-toned, almost subliminal buzzing that had invaded the sterile white office space. When my hip vibrated, I realized that the sound was everyone’s cell phones vibrating.
But why would everyone’s phones be going off at once? I thought, hanging up my desk phone and snatching up my cell.
“Mike, did you hear?” It was Miriam Schwartz on the other end.
“No. What?” I said frantically.
“We’re getting reports of a massive blackout on the East Side of Manhattan. But it’s not just that. The cars have stopped. All the cars are in the streets. They’ve stopped working.”
“The cars have stopped?” I repeated stupidly.
“We just got nuked!” someone called out behind me.
My eyes popped wide open. That couldn’t be true. How could that be true? I thought. Yet I remembered from a late-night History channel show that one of the side effects of a nuclear bomb is frozen cars—the bomb fries all their electronics.
A strange numbness invaded my face, my brain. It was a weird sensation that I’d felt only twice before.
The day the doctor told us that my wife, Maeve, had inoperable terminal cancer.
And on the morning of September 11, 2001.
Dear God, my kids! Where are the kids? I thought as Miriam tried to tell me something. The damn bridge! I need to get over the bridge back to Manhattan, then get to Holy Name. But Brian went to school in the Bronx. I needed to figure out how I was going to get him.
“Mike! Damn it, listen to me!” Miriam said loudly. “It’s not a nuke. That’s what everybody is assuming, but it’s not true.”
I let out a breath and did my best to refocus.
“I’m listening, Miriam.”
“ESU reports on scene at the affected region state that there is no radiation being detected anywhere. Though it does look like a nonnuclear EMP-type weapon or something might have been set off. The power is out for a hundred square blocks, and New York State ISO—the organization that manages the electrical grid—said it isn’t a blackout. At eight fifteen, just bam! Everything went off in Yorkville like someone blew out a candle. The FBI’s JTTF is heading up to a staging area near the base of the Fifty-Ninth Street Bridge. I already said you’d meet up with them there.”
“On my way,” I said, and I waved at Doyle and the crew to follow me as I hit the door.