Manhattan Lockdown

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

THEY STOOD IN the middle of the pastel-painted hallway. Each of the four Secret Service agents was in a corner, one as close to the oak door as possible to make sure it was secure and stayed that way.

Andrew Carter spoke first. “She’s a remarkable woman.”

“She has balls.”

“Apparently more than that, Roland. How else can you explain this Garafalo guy? He couldn’t have been interested in her balls.”

“It’s her personal life, Mr. President. I knew about her and him.”

“Did you tell her it didn’t show good judgment for the commissioner of the biggest police department in the world to be the playmate of a Gambino family member who’d served several years in a federal prison?”

“No, I didn’t. And she didn’t give me advice about my personal life.”

“Well,” Carter said, “the personal is now political. Lazarus has a great deal of power.”

“Is that so? He hasn’t done much to impress that on me in the last four days.”

“He has many friends in the courts and the justice department. There is already a grand jury investigating her, and Garafalo, and the tape that crazy doctor made, and the murder of a New York Times reporter. Who knows? I’m not a lawyer. She could be indicted and arrested in an hour. All Garafalo has to do is talk.”

“Mr. President, he went to jail for years because he wouldn’t talk.” Roland was so close to the president that he smelled the man’s rancid, fear-tinged breath. “Let me make it clear,” Roland continued, “I’m not firing her. And we have more important things to talk about. There are millions, probably billions, of people in the world who think you are dead. It was the explosion heard around the world. Whoever those people are-Boko Haram, ISIS, the evil spawn of Timothy McVeigh-billions of people saw on Twitter what was happening half an hour ago on First Avenue.”

“My people,” Carter answered, “are setting up a press conference right now, in the dining room. There will be a curtain hanging behind me, with American flags all over it. Roland, you should be flattered. I’m taking a cue from your stage acting when people thought you were dead at the Met. The only difference is that no one will know where my broadcast is coming from.” He stopped, as if deciding whether to say what was on his mind. Then he said, “I admired you, by the way, when you went to the Museum the day of the first explosions. It took courage. I admired that.”

“Or,” Roland answered, “it was just stupid. I didn’t imagine at the time that these attacks would continue.”

Carter’s expression changed, from near admiration to something more somber. “You had no authority to order the lifting of the lock-down. That’s my authority.”

“It is? Really, the silence from D.C. was stunning. You and Lazarus and that bizarre general talked a great deal. But nothing happened. You don’t know this city. Garbage piles up quickly here. Millions of people move around all the time. They’re not really obedient. There’s more and more chaos. I knew that. You didn’t. And you still don’t. A ride in a motorcade from the UN building along scenic First Avenue is not going to reveal much to you.”

“Roland, you knew about the plan for a lockdown almost from the day you became mayor. My sources told me you never once voiced an objection.”

“The people, including Lazarus, who briefed me about this always seemed to be living in a fantasy land. He was always with these anonymous, white, obsessed men and women from Tulsa, Oklahoma, or outlandish places like that. I listened and said nothing. They knew less about Manhattan than they know about Neptune.”

“Why didn’t you say that? Leaders ask questions, they probe, they ask, what if?”

“Are you telling me, Mr. President, what leaders do?”

“I’m telling you that this lockdown will continue until I decide it will end.”

Roland said, “We barely know each other. You learned how to play basketball at Stanford. I learned on a cracked tar court on 106^th Street that had hoops but no nets. I learned that if some guy elbowed you, you elbowed him back. You learned that when gentlemen played every elbow throw was accidental and called for an apology. So what I know from what I learned as a kid is that in this city if this lockdown continues several hundred thousand people will start to move and overwhelm the tunnels and the bridges.”

“I’ve ordered General Foster to place Marines and Special Forces troops to take over all exits and entrances to Manhattan.”

“I can’t tell you how idiotic, dangerous, that is, Mr. President. You’re living in the world of Alice in Wonderland.”

At that moment a heavy hand, forceful and persistent, slammed against the closed door. One of the enormous agents pressed the earpiece more deeply into his ear. He listened intently. “Mr. President,” he finally said, “it’s Judge Lazarus. He says it’s essential that he see you.”

Without glancing at Roland Fortune, Carter said, “Unlock the door and let the scarecrow in.”

Lazarus carried an iPad. Without speaking, he held the iPad between the president and the mayor. On the screen was the image, as clear as a Hollywood production, of an Arabic-accented man speaking perfect English saying that ISIS had just exploded to infinity the president of the United States. And next on the screen was the stunning image of the extraordinarily handsome, troublesome Gabriel Hauser, in a wire cage, as he was immolated above the Hudson River.

Wordlessly, Carter watched the whole scene as transfixed as a teenager by a horror movie. With the scene unfolding, Roland first wondered if he too was watching a Hollywood movie scene. And then he dwelt on how Gabriel Hauser didn’t make a sound. As a teenager in high school studying modern American history, Roland had seen a film of saffron-dressed Buddhist monks on fire in Saigon to protest the Vietnam War. What had struck him most about the newsreels was that, in all-consuming flames, the monks, too, had never made a sound. Now, in this horrific image, Gabriel Hauser also was silent even as his body first became a torch entirely on fire and then diminished. It soon became a smaller and smaller mound of ash as the flames had less and less to consume.

Roland, squeezing with both index fingers the corners of his eyes so as not to cry, said, “Just four days ago I wanted to meet this man to thank him for his bravery.”

“The gods of fortune,” Lazarus said to Roland, “were on your side that that meeting never took place. The Angel of Life worked with the people who just torched him.”

Carter, who had no visible reaction to the video, said, “And, Mr. Mayor, this just happened in the very city you now want to open, is that right?”

“You don’t know very much,” Roland answered. “What you just so calmly saw didn’t take place in Manhattan. This island’s borders are broken. These men took this doctor to a blockhouse in the Hudson River hundreds of yards from the Manhattan waterfront. It’s equally accessible from New Jersey. You’ve never lived here, so you’ve never noticed those blockhouses in the river near the Holland Tunnel and the Lincoln Tunnel.”

“At the moment, Mr. Mayor, I’m more concerned about my authority to act. I will not let you take that away from me.”

“That’s crap, Mr. President. People are dying. What are you going to have General Foster’s soldiers do when hundreds of thousands of men, women, and children begin to walk and drive to the exits at the Triboro Bridge, the 59^th Street Bridge, the Queens Midtown Tunnel? Push them back? Fire warning shots? Use tear gas? Why not just shoot some? Hosni Mubarak thought that was good strategy.”

At that moment, Lazarus held his iPad aloft between the two angry men. “Are you two worried about authority? Take a look at this. We have a rogue woman who is showing the world she has more authority than either of you.”

The iPad’s screen displayed Gina Carbone while she spoke, standing at the curved iron railing that ran along the high edge of the esplanade of Carl Schurz Park. Behind her was the gleaming light on the surface of the East River. Much further beyond her were the dense, dark, low-lying expanses of the Queens waterfront.

Surrounded by high-ranking uniformed NYPD police officers, she said to the dozens of reporters who were kept behind an impenetrable barricade ten feet in front of her, “The first point and most important by far is that the president of the United States is alive and completely unharmed. For obvious reasons he is at an undisclosed location in Manhattan.”

Even though her face was in intense sunlight, Gina neither blinked nor squinted. She spoke and bore herself steadily with the utter repose of a news broadcaster.

“Elite snipers of this great police department were put in place on First Avenue as soon as Mayor Fortune and I learned that terrorists had information that President Carter was making an unannounced visit to Manhattan to witness firsthand the steady, lethal degradation of the evil forces that have terrorized this besieged city since Sunday.”

“I want to arrest this woman,” Lazarus said to Carter and Fortune as he steadily held the iPad for them, “right now.” Gina was speaking no more than one hundred yards from where they stood in the foyer. “This,” Lazarus said, “is treason. Who does she think she is?”

Gina continued, “What I can tell you at this moment is that suicide bombers, a man and a woman who we believe were experienced U.S.-grown ISIS terrorists, stood directly opposite each other on First Avenue waiting for the decisive moment when the unmarked presidential convoy was to pass between them. At that point, at that moment, their tactical plan was to detonate enough explosives strapped to their ankles, legs, stomachs, and chests to create an inferno.

“One of our snipers, when the convoy was just a block away, dispatched a single round that struck the female in the head, killing her instantly and without igniting the weapons of mass destruction she wore. Our second sniper, who as a Navy SEAL in Iraq had made at least ninety long distance kills, fired at the male suicide bomber on the east side of First Avenue. For reasons that are not entirely clear to us, that kill shot also hit the bomber, delivering a mortal round, but the remarkable quantity of explosives he wore somehow detonated.”

A shrill voice rang out from beyond the barrier: “When will we see the president?”

“That is the president’s decision.”

The same insistent voice called out: “Then, Commissioner, how do you know what you’ve just told us?”

“I saw him. He’s a remarkable man. Calm, determined, undisturbed. He’s a consummate leader.”

Gina paused. Confidence and beauty radiated from her, a powerful presence. “I have more information for you, for the world. But first, as a former soldier myself, and because at the outset of these awful days I promised you only truth, I do have to report that at least four brave men who were part of the motorcade were killed. We know who they are and will give you that information when their families are notified.

“And there are other truths I’ll share with you. When the second suicide bomber, a human death machine, exploded, there were also severe losses in a popular playground near where these animals were standing. Dozens of innocent children and their parents were killed and maimed. I will have more information for you on that when, as I’ve assured you from the start, I have the truth about this unspeakable, cowardly brutality.”

Gina then gripped the stem of the microphone as if it were a weapon. “Cowards make mistakes. You all witnessed the brutal immolation of Dr. Gabriel Hauser just minutes ago. Immensely brave elements of the NYPD’s Special Forces know who these killers are and are incapacitating them even as we speak. This is not Syria. This is not Iraq. This is not Yemen, Libya, Nigeria. We now have these people in our sights. They will face swift and certain justice. The nightmare is coming to an end.”

She paused. The cameras tightened on her powerful face.

“That is the truth I promised you.”