“No, thank God. My brother got Olivia out of school, and they’re at Costco stocking up,” she said glumly.
Emily’s face lit up suddenly as she got a text.
“Mike, get up! C’mon!” she said, grabbing my hand.
“What?”
“Arturo and Doyle are at the scientist meeting on six. They say they might have something.”
Chapter 81
“They know where the bombs are!” said a wide-eyed Arturo, grabbing my shoulders as I stepped into the doorway of the sixth-floor conference room.
“Where?” I said.
“Árvore Preta,” said Doyle, looking every bit as pumped as Arturo. “It’s Portuguese for ‘black tree.’ It’s a volcanic island just south of the Cape Verde archipelican.”
“Archipelago, you mean, moron,” said Arturo.
We all backed out into the hallway.
“Slow down, fellas,” said Emily. “Where is this island?”
“The Cape Verde island chain is off the coast of Africa,” said Doyle. “They said it’s roughly three hundred and fifty miles to the west.”
“Why do they think this particular island is where the bombs are?” I said. “Didn’t they say there’s a bunch of different island chains in the area?”
“Well, these two rock scientists were in there arguing endlessly,” said Arturo. “They kept looking at the video, and this guy from UC Berkeley—”
“Cut to the chase, Arturo,” I said, trying to be patient.
“All of a sudden, this little guy, a Brit, in the corner of the room stands up and points at the screen and says, ‘Excuse me, but are those petrels?’”
“Petrels?” I said.
“They’re freaking birds!” said Doyle. “Those little birds you see in the video when the guy pans the camera down the cliff. They’re an endangered seabird that nests on this Cape Verde island, Árvore Preta.”
“That’s when Larry Duke and Dr. Bower went bonkers,” said Arturo. “Árvore Preta has an active volcano that last erupted in 1963. They actually knew all about it. They’d listed Árvore Preta in a paper they did in the late eighties about potentially unstable volcanoes.”
“Bottom line is they think this is it, Mike,” said Doyle. “We know where the bombs are.”
Chapter 82
Four hours later, at a little after 11:00 p.m., Emily and I came out the OEM building’s side entrance alongside the dark Hudson River with Larry Duke and Dr. Bower. A moment later, a loud roaring sound drew our eyes upward, and we watched as a huge helicopter appeared over the lip of the building.
“Oh, my! It’s like from that movie. What’s it called? Black Hawk Down?” said Dr. Bower as we ducked back from the whining turbo-rotor wash.
“Yeah, well, let’s hope this one stays up,” I said as it touched down on the concrete pad twenty feet in front of us.
The imposing military chopper, bearing an emblem of a rearing winged white centaur, was from the army’s elite 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment, known as the Night Stalkers. The 160th worked hand in glove with the Navy SEALs and had actually been on the mission that had killed Osama bin Laden.
All stops were now officially pulled out. After a tense closed-door teleconference with the US president himself, the mayor had pulled the trigger. We had only one option left on the table, and the mayor was taking it.
The Night Stalkers were here to give us a ride to the airport. We were heading to Cape Verde, off the west coast of Africa, with the military to find the explosives.
Though it was probably a buzzer-beating long shot that we would find them before the terrorists’ deadline, it was definitely the right move, I felt.
Because what if the three billion dollars were paid? What was to stop them from blowing up the cliff anyway? Or charging another three billion next week?
Though it wasn’t announced, the mayor had also decided that, deadline or no deadline, she wasn’t going to give them a single penny of her or the city’s money. Which, again, was exactly right, in my humble opinion. Terrorists needed to be dealt with head-on. Whoever was doing this to us needed to be found and stopped, not negotiated with.
After a quick strap-in by the Black Hawk’s crew chief, the chopper took off and stayed low as we headed north up the Hudson. Through cold air blasting in my face from a half-open window, I stared out at the glittering strings of Manhattan’s lights on my right.
The glittering, unmoving strings of Manhattan’s lights.
Despite the mayor’s directive not to drive, it was obvious that the streets were completely impassable because of traffic.
Staring at the sea of dead-stopped cars, I thought about Martin and the kids. The last message I had received from them, about an hour and a half ago, was that they were all together and crossing into Westchester.
Were they far enough away? I wondered, looking north up the lightless river. They had to be, right? Or at least they would be far enough away by the deadline tomorrow.
At least that’s what I was going to keep telling myself, I decided, as I took out my phone again.
“Mike? Hello? Are you there?” said Seamus as my call, surprisingly, went through.
“Yes, Seamus. It’s me,” I said straining to hear over the engine whine. “Where are you? Did you get out? Where are you?”
“We’re—”
Then the signal went screwy.
I ripped the phone off my ear and stared at the screen. It was still connected.
“Seamus?” I said. “Seamus?”
Then I looked at the screen again and cursed.
The line was dead.
Chapter 83
“Mike? Are you there, Mike?” said Seamus as he lifted the phone off his ear and stared at its screen.
“It cut off,” he said.
“Ah, the cell sites are just melting, Father. Must be millions trying to get through now,” Martin said as he let out an extra-large breath.
Martin’s glance went from the standstill traffic to the needle of the gas gauge, which was at the halfway point now, then back to the traffic again. He wiped his sweating forehead. He’d give it another minute, then turn off the engine to conserve gas, he decided.
They were on Broadway in Yonkers. It was a sketchy part of town — run-down houses and buildings and stores. They’d been stopped for almost five minutes, which meant God only knows what was happening up ahead. In the last hour, they had probably traveled less than a mile.
As Martin watched, two stocky young Hispanic kids zoomed past on a Kawasaki dirt bike. The one on the back was seated backwards, and he gave Martin and the good Father the finger as his buddy threaded between the cars.
“Did ya see that, Father?” Martin said. “That wasn’t very neighborly, now, was it?”
“We’re not on the old sod anymore, Martin,” Seamus said, shaking his head. “It’s probably best to pretend you’re blind.”
Martin turned to his left and looked beyond an empty parking lot as the Metro-North Hudson Line train went slowly by. It was incredibly packed with people in and even standing between the cars. On the last car, there were several people sitting on the roof!
It was like something out of news footage from the Great Depression or a science fiction film, Martin thought. This crazy country. He’d just wanted to make a little pocket money with the nanny job, and now look where he was. Wandering the set of The War of the Worlds 2.
When the train finally passed, he could see the Hudson River. Great, he thought, drumming his fingers on the wheel. They were right next to water, the one place Mike had specifically told them not to be.