Manhattan Lockdown

CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

“I HAVE AN important announcement,” Gina Carbone, dressed in her customary black pants and shirt on which the traditional patch of the New York City Police Department was sewn with only the word commissioner on it to differentiate her from the 40,000 other cops who wore the patch, stood at the simple wooden podium in the small press room at One Police Plaza.

“We believe that we have eliminated, either through capture or deaths in firefights, all the significant terrorists who through the last several days created as much chaos and death as they could.

“Within the last half hour elite and courageous members of the NYPD have killed as many as eighteen of the fanatical jihadists who somehow gained access to the Holland Tunnel. These were the people who, in a despicable display of cowardice, burned to death Dr. Gabriel Hauser in a cage on top of the building that for years has served as the most visible part of the ventilation and emergency escape route of the tunnel.

“To anticipate a question one of you is likely to ask, and I will take some questions, we do not at this moment know when and how these eighteen members of what we believe to be ISIS gained access to the tunnel’s interior system. There is some evidence that they were members of a sleeper cell that in the three days before the attacks began had steadily gained access to the intricate and very large and almost never used or patrolled ventilation and escape system.”

Deftly, Gina adjusted the slender and flexible microphone. “We do not yet know why ISIS selected Dr. Hauser for this horrible display. In fact, to be completely direct, we are investigating how Dr. Hauser came to be in the tunnel in the first place. His presence may have been voluntary. It may have been involuntary. Let me say this as well. Although the doctor was originally praised for his courage, we have, as you know, developed and are investigating his possible involvement in the planning or prearrangement of the attacks. And his familiarity with some of the people who participated. All of this, of course, is not meant to detract from the horror of his murder.”

She stared into the camera’s glowing orange eye. “More important than anything else I’ve said is this: the president and the mayor will soon lead a march over one of the city’s bridges. Traffic will begin to flow into and out of Manhattan, all in an orderly way. No one will be hurt, no one injured. The lockdown which has inconvenienced so many of you has been a success. As difficult as it has been, the people of this city have sustained this hardship and it has allowed us to hunt down, isolate, and incapacitate murderers. Within hours the streets in all parts of the city will be clean, traffic will flow, bars and restaurants will be open, as will schools, hospitals, all those things that have made this city the vital center of the world.

“But for a time, and it will be a time that the president and the mayor will decide with me and my people’s assistance, there will be soldiers and armed NYPD officers on the streets and in the subways and in almost every public space. If a person means no harm, there will be no harm to you or to him or her. We are not vigilantes, we are not racists, we do not profile people because of their ethnic or religious status. We are law enforcement officers. But if you do mean harm, you will be stopped by any means necessary.”