Manhattan Lockdown

CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

IN ALL HIS forty-seven years of living in the Bronx and Manhattan, Roland Fortune had never walked on the Triboro Bridge. In the past, as he drove either on his own or, more recently, surrounded by black SUV police vehicles for his protection, he had always gazed out the window at the immense view of the island of Manhattan, that Emerald City, and its extraordinary skyline, as extraordinary in daylight or at night, in rain, fog, snow, or clear sunshine.

And in the three years he had lived in Gracie Mansion, with its unobstructed view of the bridge’s almost two mile long expanse, it had taken on an almost totemic significance for him, from the sunrises that seemed to originate from and through and under the bridge’s structure as he sat quietly for a few minutes on the flagstone outdoor patio to the nighttime views when thousands of lights etched the bridge’s fantastical curved outline.

Today, toward the center of the bridge with only the president of the United States, the day at noon was awash with full sunshine, as it had been since Sunday. Both Andrew Carter and Roland Fortune were in business suits. Carter wore a colorful tie. Roland’s white shirt was unbuttoned at the neck.

Behind them, at a distance of thirty feet, were the symbols and objects of America’s awesome military power, tanks, armored personnel carriers, unsmiling Marines in full battle gear. On the long, bridge-spanning walkways that Roland had never seen anyone use, rows of New York City police officers, also completely armed, stood like the Praetorian Guard. Helicopters were suspended in midair over, above, below and at the sides of the bridge. The East River waters were dazzling.

Fifteen feet ahead of the handsome WASP president and the equally handsome Hispanic mayor as they waved, smiled, and nodded were the five television vehicles with cameras broadcasting to billions of people this scene of two jubilant and confident men walking across the major bridge that linked Manhattan to Queens and to the rest of the world. Behind the television vans and their cameras was another dense phalanx of armor and soldiers. The surface of the bridge quaked slightly beneath the feet of the two smiling men as they waved at the cameras.

On the inbound side of the bridge leading into Manhattan was an endless stream of empty white city garbage trucks. All of them had been inspected for explosives and cleared. Not a single Arabic man or crew member was in the trucks. The mayor and the president had decided hours earlier that the first and most important steps in the restoration of the stricken city was to remove the mountains of black garbage bags and strange, often inexplicable other debris that had filled the sidewalks for days.