The Panic Zone

71

Gretchen Sutsoff heard an old melody on Fifth Avenue.

She stopped the stroller in front of a coffee shop. Its open door was leaking music, a song that her little brother had cherished.

Will.

The memories flooded back. Will was such a good boy.

To hear his song on this day pleased her until she was jerked from her reverie.

“Lady, would you get outta my freakin’ way?”

A sweating, grunting delivery man balancing a steel handcart loaded with soda nearly grazed her, forcing her to move. Sutsoff came to another storefront and saw a TV inside broadcasting the fugitive alert.

The report showed the older photos that bore no resemblance to her.

As a precaution, she entered a Fifth Avenue shop, bought a summer dress, a sun hat and dark glasses. She took the baby with her and changed in the washroom of a fast-food restaurant. She also put on a new wig that was a different color and length. She tested her laptop. The signal was strong, she had full battery power and she had spares.

Good.

Finally, she checked the baby. His signs were fine. He’s in perfect health, she thought, taking a couple more pills to help her contend with the crowds before wheeling the stroller back to the street.

They resumed their long walk on Fifth Avenue.

Sirens wailed and helicopters whomped overhead as they neared Central Park. The traffic and crowds increased and charter buses crawled along, diesels chugging, brakes hissing. Mounted patrols stood by as, even at this hour, vendors hawked pretzels, ice cream, nuts, soda and Human World T-shirts to people streaming toward the park. All were wearing the required orange wrist bands that came with the tickets.

As Sutsoff and the baby disappeared into the crowds, she saw him playfully touching people who brushed against them. She smiled as she watched the people he touched touch others.

Thirty minutes to go and Robert Lancer’s stomach knotted.

The size of the crowd was sobering.

The number of people gathering on the Great Lawn, the huge midpark expanse where Pope John Paul II had celebrated Mass, was estimated at 1.3 million.

Is Sutsoff out there? Lancer wondered as he looked through his binoculars from the police command post on West Drive, at the Eighty-third Street level. Other command posts were located around the park.

The air crackled with sound checks from the huge stage flanked by massive video screens. Other giant screens and speaker towers ascended from the tranquil sea of humanity.

Squadrons of emergency vans, ambulances and police trucks were strategically parked in and around the park. NYPD Communications trucks monitored the crowd via video cameras on speaker towers.

So much was in play; there were metal detectors and X-ray machines, K-9 explosives teams and chemical sensors to analyze the air for gases and toxins. The stage and VIP areas had been swept, then triple-checked by the Secret Service. Lancer exhaled. So far paramedics and first-aid stations had reported no unusual or alarming medical problems.

Organizers refused to consider shutting the event down at this stage.

All officials agreed that to make any sort of announcement of a potential threat would create chaos. The White House was clear: the president would attend. The first lady and vice president would remain in Washington. Oval Office staff told the Secret Service that the president would not cower. No group would dictate his agenda through threats. The president’s stance was firm: he would be with the people at this major event. Facing threats was part of his job.

The pleas for cancellation by Lancer and other security officials were in vain. That left them few options. Yes, events like these were often subject to threats, but this one had a horrific blood trail that led straight to it.

Teams of undercover police and cadets were threading through the crowd, looking for anyone who matched Sutsoff’s photo, the new one obtained by police in the Bahamas.

As the MC took to the stage to start the day’s program, Lancer looked hard at the images filling the nearest big screen.

He had an idea.

The show started.

Gannon was with Emma on the east side, near the obelisk behind the Metropolitan Museum of Art. They were patrolling the edges of the crowd, scrutinizing every person they saw who had a child in a stroller. Emma’s heart raced each time she spotted someone who looked like Sutsoff or Tyler.

Gannon called the WPA and learned that the WPA’s lawyers and NYPD were urgently finalizing use of the WPA’s photos. TV news helicopters circled overhead. The Times, Daily News and Post had reported online that security was heightened at the event because of the president’s visit, amid rumors of an increased threat level.

So far, no news organization knew what Gannon and the WPA knew. The wire service had assigned eight reporters and six photographers to the event. As music filled the air, Gannon and Emma scanned the ocean of faces. The size of the crowd was overwhelming.

It was futile.

“I feel so helpless,” Emma said. “Did they find them?”

Again, Gannon called the WPA newsroom where Mike Kemp, a seasoned crime reporter, was monitoring emergency scanners.

“Anything happening, Mike?” Gannon asked Kemp, hearing the clatter of the scanners in the background.

“Nothing out of the ordinary for a crowd this size,” Kemp said. “Some guy in the southwest sector had an asthma attack, a seventy-two-year-old woman in the north section had a fainting spell and a teenage girl got stung by a bee.”

“What about arrests? Does it sound like they found Sutsoff?”

“Two gang bangers were fighting with knives near the Guggenheim and a drunk was exposing himself near the Museum of Natural History. I’ll let you know if we pick up anything.”

Gannon hung up. “Nothing,” he told Emma. “Let’s keep moving.”

They headed south in the direction of Turtle Pond.

At the west side of the park, at the Eighty-third Street police command post, Lancer had his cell phone pressed to his ear.

“We’re all clear?” he asked.

“It’s a go, Bob, just ahead in the program.”

“Good. Alert every cop out there. This might be our only hope.”

Sutsoff and the baby had been sitting on the grass northeast of the Delacorte Theater.

She had decided enough time had passed.

The program had now been going for over two hours with short concert performances punctuated by brief speeches from celebrities, Nobel laureates and politicians. The weather was ideal-everyone was upbeat.

As she removed her laptop from her bag to run a status check, a long, loud roar rose from the Great Lawn. For an instant, she was pulled back to Vridekistan, but her medication dulled her anxiety as the president started to address the crowd. With his tie loosened and shirtsleeves rolled to his elbows he told the conference how “for every one of us, being human in today’s world means bearing enormous responsibility…”

Sutsoff paid little attention to him.

She concentrated on her work. She saw that of her operation’s seventy couples, thirty-one had succeeded in administering Extremus Deus Variant 1 to the “delivery vehicles” and were currently present somewhere on the Great Lawn.

That number was in keeping with what she’d anticipated. She was pleased with her rough calculations as to how many people had been touched by the children and how many of those people would have touched someone, who then touched another and so forth.

At least 50 percent of all the people who’d gathered here.

A touch was all it took.

And given the scale of the victim pool, with people coming and going and touching others, the variant would be carried beyond the park and the numbers would grow and grow.

All Sutsoff needed to do was submit the range.

“How about everyone, except for me and little Will?” She smiled to herself.

She entered the parameters, ensuring it excluded her and the baby.

No harm will come our way.

Entering the activation code would require about five minutes.

As Sutsoff was about to start, another loud cheer floated over the crowd and people around her got to their feet. The president had called for everyone to “rise up, show your human side. Reach out to your neighbor.” He had formed a human hand-holding chain on the stage. It stretched into the crowd which swayed as people joined a soloist in the chorus of “Give Peace a Chance.” Sutsoff declined to hold anyone’s hand but encouraged others to hold the baby’s hand.

When the song ended, the crowd sat down to wait for the next rock band to perform, leaving Sutsoff enthralled. She had not expected this hand-holding exercise. She estimated that 90 percent of the people here now carried the variant.

All she had to do was submit the activation code and press Enter.

She looked at her keyboard and listened to the sounds of happy families talking and laughing, then lifted her face to the sky and swallowed.

After today, the world will never be the same.

She positioned her laptop to enter the complex code.

“Ladies and gentlemen!” A man’s voice boomed through the sound system. “May we have your attention please for a very important announcement?”

Sutsoff stopped typing and stared at the nearest large screen.

It filled with pictures of her and the baby, images showing them exiting the Tellwood hotel. There were several photos that changed every four seconds in a slide show. Crisp head-to-toe color shots credited to the World Press Alliance.

Sutsoff was stunned.

“We have a serious medical situation,” the voice boomed, “for Mary Anne Conrad who is traveling with her grandson William John Conrad. We need to locate them immediately. We believe they may be here, so please look around you. If you see her, please point her out to the nearest security or medical official. Please, do it now.”

Waves of mild concern rolled through the park as people looked around them and back at the giant screens displaying Sutsoff’s photos, now being enlarged to show details of the stroller and the baby’s shoes.

Still wearing her large hat and dark glasses, Sutsoff turned to the group of teenaged boys on the lawn beside her.

“I think she’s right over there.” Sutsoff pointed to the east.

“What?” a boy with metal rings in his nose said.

“The lady they’re looking for-see, by the man with the flag?”

“Big deal, whatever.”

Sutsoff paused her work, closed her laptop, gathered the baby and her things then headed west to the nearest exit. She remained calm. All she needed was to find a safe place for five minutes to enter the code. She had to get out of the park now and get as far away as possible.

Gannon and Emma stared at the screen, then each other.

“That’s pretty good,” he said.

In the vicinity of the southwest quadrant, an NYPD detective locked onto the woman pushing a stroller among the crowd. He compared the stroller shown on the big screen to the stroller he saw a short distance away. They were the same blue color, and the same dancing elephant patch and the same wheels. Then he focused on the baby’s shoes.

It was them.

He lifted his radio to his mouth.

Gannon and Emma were not far from the Delacorte Theater when Gannon’s cell phone rang.

“Jack, it’s Mike. We just heard on the scanner that they spotted them near West Drive not far from Seventy-ninth.”

“We’ll head there now. Alert the photographers.”

Gannon and Emma started running.

Lancer and several NYPD officers bolted from the police command point on West Drive, at the Eighty-third Street level. They navigated their way through the park toward Central Park West, while above them a police helicopter rolled into position to offer support. Radios crackled with updates from the breathless detective who was now running.

“She’s on foot on Central Park West, north of the museum. She’s moving fast, I could lose her if she gets in a cab. Goddammit, am I the only one watching her? Wake up, you guys!”

Gannon and Emma worked their way from the park. Mike Kemp called as a chopper thudded above them.

“Give me your location,” Kemp said.

“Uh-” Gannon looked around quickly “-Central Park West, around Eighty-first.”

“Okay, go south, Jack. You’re close! Keep the line open.”

Gannon could hear Kemp crank up the scanner volume.

At that moment, he and Emma saw a CBS news crew running to a parked news van, a reporter with a phone pressed to his ear, just ahead of a camera operator.

Kemp was shouting in Gannon’s phone.

“She’s crossing from the east to the west side of Central Park West!”

As Gannon and Emma crossed to the west side and ran south, they saw flashing emergency lights several blocks away. Two parked NYPD patrol cars had swung into the street, their tires squealing as they headed north toward them.

Closer to them but a few blocks away, Emma glimpsed a woman pushing a stroller across the traffic lanes of Central Park West.

“I see her! I see Tyler!” Emma screamed.

Two blocks ahead, Sutsoff, pushing the stroller, heard the sirens and saw the chopper. Her ears were ringing from the blood rush of her racing heart.

Her medication was wearing off.

All she needed was five minutes.

“NYPD, freeze!”

A man behind her was running, gaining on her. She saw the badge on a chain around his neck. Police cars were roaring toward her. She glimpsed a hotel entrance a block ahead. If she could make it, then get up the elevator in time to hide for five minutes.

She just needed five minutes.

“NYPD. Freeze or I’ll shoot!”

Gannon and Emma, racing south, were a block away when they saw Sutsoff, who was approaching them, throw a look over her shoulder at the man chasing her.

From her position, Emma saw the stroller, saw the little face of the baby strapped in it and saw the shouting cop behind Sutsoff draw his gun.

“No! Don’t shoot!” Emma screamed.

Emma thrust her palms out just as Sutsoff pushed the stroller into the street against the red light and the chrome grill of a ten-ton Brooklyn Gravel Service dump truck catapulted Sutsoff thirty feet, onto the windshield of a Mercedes, before she bounced into the middle of Central Park West.

Her bag with her laptop tumbled down the street.

The impact had clipped the stroller, sending it toddling into Central Park West traffic and into the path of the two pursuing NYPD patrol cars, their sirens wailing and lights flashing.

Jack moved toward the stroller, but Emma, her arms, hands, reaching, was quicker, seeing the fear in the baby’s eyes as wig-wag lights and bumpers roared toward him.

“Noooo!”

Emma’s fingers clamped the stroller handle and pulled it to her just as the officers braked, skidding to within inches of the baby’s foot.

The child was unharmed.

“Tyler!”

Emma thrust her face to his, gasping as his eyes brightened with recognition. She lifted him from the stroller, sat on the street and sobbed.

“Mommy’s got you! I’ll never let you go, never!”

Adhering to training and using their doors as shields, the officers put their hands on their weapons.

“Don’t move, lady! Don’t harm the baby. My partner’s going to approach you slowly. You give her the baby.”

“No!”

“Lady, you have to give us the baby!”

Gannon tried to help. “She’s the mother.”

“Back off, sir!” one cop said, taking in the gathering crowd. “Back off, everybody!”

Other officers took charge of the scene and one shouted into his shoulder microphone for an ambulance as the smell of burning rubber, the wail of more sirens and the hovering helicopter filled the air.

When Lancer and the other NYPD officers arrived, Gannon pleaded to him.

“Lancer, tell them it’s her baby!”

Lancer held up his ID and slowly defused the situation.

Police gathered around Sutsoff, while others rerouted traffic and sealed the scene, clearing the way for the ambulance as spectators and other reporters arrived.

Lancer picked up Sutsoff’s bag, pulled out her laptop and took it to a patrol car. Gannon nodded to a WPA photographer to get pictures.

“I didn’t see them,” the truck driver said. “I swear. I had the green!”

His rig was deep into the intersection. Sutsoff was a few feet away.

Her neck was broken, rib shards had speared her heart and she didn’t hear the paramedics working to save her. They slid an oxygen mask over her nose and mouth. Her head lolled and she met the eyes of Emma Lane, rocking her baby.

Emma stared at her.

As Gretchen Rosamunde Sutsoff lay in a growing pool of blood staring at the sky, a warm wave rolled over her.

Project Crucible no longer mattered to her.

Extremus Deus no longer mattered to her.

Gretchen was a happy little girl again flying above old London at night.

Flying like Peter Pan and Wendy and dreaming of living in London forever with her mother, her father and little brother, Will.