They Disappeared

69

Bryant Park, Manhattan, New York City

Jeff’s mind was racing when he got to Bryant Park.

The property sat in the heart of midtown on ten treed acres of beautiful green lawn behind the New York Public Library’s main branch.

The urban oasis was surrounded by glass-and-steel skyscrapers, including the Bank of America Tower, whose height rivaled the Empire State Building.

A crowd of nearly fifteen hundred people had gathered for an event to take place on a platform raised at the rear of the library overlooking the great lawn.

Russia’s first lady and the wife of Mykrekistan’s president were leading an outdoor cultural presentation of newly discovered archived manuscripts by Russian masters such as Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Chekhov and Mykrekistan’s literary greats.

The dignitaries who would accept the donation were the wives of New York’s mayor, New York’s governor, the head of the New York Public Library and several other officials. The public would be allowed an exclusive viewing of the documents immediately after the event.

However, the ceremony was late getting started. A man in a suit approached the podium. His face was grim.

At that point, Jeff had arrived on the Fortieth Street side of the park, which was ringed with barricades, uniformed officers and security agents wearing earpieces and dark glasses. Emergency vehicles were positioned everywhere at Fortieth and Forty-second Streets, Fifth and Sixth Avenues.

At the periphery there were pockets of protestors displaying placards that were anti-Russian and called for an independent Mykrekistan. Jeff walked by them just as the air split with an announcement over the public-address speakers from the lone man on the stage.

“Our apologies, ladies and gentlemen,” he said. “We have to delay just a bit longer. We ask for your understanding, but we may be forced to postpone today’s event. We’ll get back to you shortly. Thank you for your patience.”

Groans rose from the crowd with ripples of questions.

“Postpone? Why? What for? What’s going on?”

Jeff noticed a cluster of news vehicles a distance away just inside the barricades not far from the platform. Crews were on cell phones or radios, some were anxious, yelling questions into their phones, while others were packing up.

Maybe they know something?

Jeff hurried toward them.

Behind the stage, out of public view, the Russian first lady, her face taut with concern, was talking on a cell phone to Nikolai Vlasik.

“He’s all right, ma’am,” Vlasik shouted over sirens and uproar. “We’ve got everyone out!”

“Put him on the phone, Nikolai!”

There was commotion.

“Hello, my love, I am fine. We are all fine! Carry on! I’m going to change out of my ruined suit. You carry on!”

The first lady was encircled by Russian and U.S. security agents. She smiled at the good news, nodded big nods to the Mykrekistan president’s wife and the two women hugged each other in tearful relief.

Word was immediately passed to the officials that the Bryant Park event was to continue as planned.

The metal police barricades separated Jeff from the news crews but from his side he’d gotten near enough to see a woman in an intense cell phone conversation.

“Do we go to Battery Park, or stay here, Gilroy? Wait! Len’s got something.”

A man stepped out of their news van, the words and logo for 99 NewsLine blared across the panels.

“NBC’s reporting that the Battery Park protestors tossed balloons filled with stage blood at the Russians to represent the bloodshed of the unrest in Mykrekistan. They’re shaken up but no injuries, nothing more.”

“Okay, Gilroy?” the woman said into the phone. “Did you get that? What’s Len got from NBC? We’re going to stay at Bryant and cover. Okay.”

The woman hung up.

“Excuse me!” Jeff said, removing his ball cap and glasses. “I need some help fast.”

After a moment, recognition dawned on the faces of the seasoned newspeople.

“Hey, you’re…”

On the opposite side of Bryant Park on Forty-second Street, two uniformed NYPD officers approached other officers posted at the barricade. They nodded to the woman with them with the press tag, notebook and worried look on her face under her sunglasses and ball cap.

“She’s late for this thing,” Bulat Tatayev told the young officers. “We’re taking her in.”

The two cops looked the woman over.

“She’s with you, then?” one of the cops said to Tatayev.

“Unfortunately.”

“Who’re you guys with? We got a lot of new faces down here.”

“The Forty-sixth.”

“The Forty-sixth in the Bronx? You have our sympathies. Be our guest.”

The officers stepped aside and Tatayev and the other “cop” escorted Sarah through the crowd, positioning her in center front of the platform just as the event resumed, with the dignitaries taking their designated seats near the podium.

At a Fortieth Street entrance to Bryant Park, two NYPD uniform officers were instructing police to open the barricade so the idling white EMS ambulance they were escorting could enter.

“Whoa, whoa, hey, what is this?” one of the officers guarding the entrance asked the newcomers.

“We got orders to get this vehicle inside and close to the platform?”

“Who authorized that?”

“Our Lieu. We’re beefing up after Battery Park. This event is getting started. Come on, buddy, open up!”

The ambulance was edging forward to emphasize the point.

After a few seconds the officer and his partners relented and opened the barricades, allowing the ambulance entry into the park not far from the platform.

It was filled with equipment and an array of small monitors. While Jeff talked with King and Lustig, another crew member was working remotely, communicating through a headset to their cameraman, who was providing images of the Bryant Park ceremony as it got under way.

“Let me get this straight,” Lustig said to Jeff. “You think your wife and son are here somewhere with the terrorists?”

“Yes.”

“And you’re part of that thing going on in the Bronx right now, in Purgatory? We’ve got a crew there, right, Joyce?” King was on a cell phone to their desk, and nodded to Lustig. “Christ, this is a helluva thing,” Lustig said. “Okay, tell us what we need to do to help you?”

“Can you search the crowd with your camera? I know it’s a long shot but everything tells me they’re here.”

Lustig tapped the shoulder of the technician.

“Tell Sonny to take a lot of long cutaways and pan the crowd, get faces and anything unusual.” Then to Jeff, Lustig said, “You’ll see what the camera sees on the monitors. If we need to zero in on something, tell me.”

Sarah was terrified.

Standing in front of the platform, gripping her notepad, she wanted to scream out to the real police who were nearby.

She didn’t. She couldn’t because of Cole.

The threat they’d made against Cole prevented her from doing anything that would put her son’s life in further danger.

God, please help us get through this. Please, I’m begging You.

The event commenced with a few opening words, then a performance by a Russian dance group. As it ended with applause, Tatayev spoke into Sarah’s ear.

“We want you to faint and not move!”

Sarah didn’t respond.

“You will go down in five seconds if you want to see your son!”

Sarah took a deep breath and started counting. When she reached five she collapsed. Tatayev and his partner feigned an attempt to catch her as she fell on her back.

People near her gasped.

A woman knelt down and took Sarah’s hand.

“I’m calling 9-1-1….” A man reached for his phone.

“We’ve got it.” Tatayev stepped into their view, raised his radio and called for medical help. “We’re right here.”

Two paramedics from the white EMS ambulance responded quickly, bringing a stretcher and bag to the front of the platform where they began working on Sarah. The TV cameras in front of the platform turned to the medical emergency. The incident caused some confusion among the other emergency crews at the event.

They radioed to each other.

“Who are those guys? What’s going on? Did we miss something? Somebody should check this out.”

After tending to Sarah, the paramedics lifted her onto a stretcher, then one made a radio call for his ambulance.

“We’re going to need our rig in here,” he said.

“Wave it in!” Tatayev nodded.

People shuffled aside as the white EMS ambulance began inching through the crowd to where Sarah was in front of the platform.

Medical crews and security officials were puzzled as to why the paramedics were disrupting the event. Why not transport their patient to their ambulance, why waste time moving it to the platform? As the vehicle crept forward, a befuddled official knocked on the driver’s window.

“Hey, hotshot, what’re you doing?”

The driver ignored him and continued inching the ambulance forward. Inside, the driver checked a cell phone keypad. It was secured on the overhead console in a motherboard that was linked to a detonation system and a nest of wires, duct-taped to the ceiling, as they flowed throughout the interior.

The ambulance was equipped with reinforced suspension because it weighed nearly three times more than a standard EMS ambulance.

The rotating emergency light mounted on the dash of Detective Juanita Ortiz’s unmarked Impala painted her face red.

The car’s siren died when she braked on the Fortieth Street side of Bryant Park and got out with Detective Klaver.

They’d been ordered to locate Jeff Griffin, who was not answering their calls. Upon discovering that he’d left the scene at the factory in the Bronx, Ortiz got the name of the cab company Jeff had used from a cop at the scene. Klaver had reached the driver through his dispatcher for the location where he’d dropped Jeff.

Investigators were concerned that Jeff may again have had contact with the suspects, or come upon new information.

“This guy.” Klaver held up his phone showing Jeff’s photo to several uniformed officers at one of the entrances.

“That’s the Montana guy whose wife and kid were abducted,” said one of the young cops.

“That’s correct,” Klaver said. “We’ve got to blast this photo to everyone working the park now. He’s here somewhere. We need to find him now!”

“Hold on,” said one of the officers, checking his phone. “We just got an arrest-on-sight alert for this guy, Bulat Tatayev.”

Officers had been provided color front and profile photos of a bald white man with a wild black beard that emphasized the fierce intensity of his dark eyes.

Inside the 99 NewsLine van, Jeff studied the TV monitors and the images of the crowds before the camera cut to the woman on the stretcher who was being treated by paramedics.

He didn’t recognize her.

Then the camera pulled back and Jeff’s breathing stopped.

“Hold it!”

“What is it?” Lustig asked.

“Tell your cameraman to zoom in on the woman on the stretcher, her shoes.”

“Tell Sonny to get tight on her feet,” Lustig said.

The woman’s sneakers filled the monitors.

“How’s that? Is there something there?” Lustig turned to Jeff but saw only his ball cap and sunglasses on the chair.

Jeff had left the van to charge into the crowd toward the stretcher.

As the dance group took bows on the platform, the library official hosting the event was mindful of the apparent medical incident a few feet below them.

The VIPs seated on stage behind her were still whispering small talk about the Battery Park incident. The Russian delegation was anxious, something underscored by the ambulance inching forward.

The library official was about to announce a pause in the program but became distracted by a disruption at the periphery of the terrace.

“Sarah!”

Jeff called for her, consumed with one thought.

I can’t lose her again!

“Sarah!”

Pushing through the crowd Jeff’s entire being had become a driving force bent on saving his family. He didn’t think of getting help or alerting police, not even when he slammed into the back of the NYPD officer who was talking to Ortiz and Klaver.

The detectives turned.

“Hey, Jeff!” Klaver yelled. “That’s our guy!”

Ortiz and Klaver pursued him as the uniformed officer shouted alerts into his radio.

Jeff advanced far ahead of them and fought his way to the stretcher.

“Sarah!”

Hearing her husband’s voice, Sarah opened her eyes.

“Jeff! Oh, God! Jeff!” Sarah’s voice broke. “They still have Cole!” She pointed to Tatayev, dressed as an NYPD officer. “Stop him!” Then she pointed at the two paramedics. “Them, too, they’re the killers! There’s a bomb in the ambulance!”

In an instant Tatayev reached into his breast pocket for a cell phone and began entering the call code to activate the detonator. Before he could complete the call, Jeff tackled him, knocking his cell phone from his hand. Tatayev, Jeff and the paramedics struggled for it as onlookers, thinking Jeff was dangerously disturbed, debated intervening while yelling for more police to back up the cop and paramedics.

Others screamed about a bomb. Terror, panic and confusion spread through the park. Jeff was overpowered and Tatayev recovered the phone. Without getting up he resumed entering the code.

Sarah smashed her foot on his hand before he could complete the call.

Ortiz, Klaver and several other NYPD officers arrived. They subdued and arrested Tatayev and the paramedics.

Jeff and Klaver rushed to the ambulance, coming first to the rear and opening its doors. There was no trace of Cole. Instead, Jeff and Klaver saw the wires and the driver begin to press numbers on the mounted cell phone keypad.

Klaver drew his weapon.

“NYPD! Freeze!”

The driver continued pressing keys and Klaver fired two bullets into his head, killing him instantly. More people screamed at the sound of gunfire as police battled to take control and clear the park.

“Everyone get the hell away from the ambulance! Get out of the park!” officers yelled as people ran in all directions. Security details moved instantly to evacuate the delegation.

As Tatayev, his hands cuffed behind his back, was taken by police from the park, Jeff and Sarah confronted him.

In the mayhem in front of news cameras, they implored the warlord to tell them where Cole was.

“We will exchange his life for the lives of the Russian criminals.”

Sarah slapped his face.

“Where’s my son, you bastard?”

“On his way to heaven.”