Hastily, Feldman spread the map on his desk.
“They must be going north, right?” He checked his watch. “We know they took off thirty-seven minutes ago. They couldn’t have done more than fifty miles in that time.” He made a quick calculation, then jabbed the map north of Kingston. “They’ve got to be between Spring Valley and here. We’ve got to seal off that Thruway right away. Get police cars to close off every exit ramp. Have the State Police throw up roadblocks at Newburgh and Kingston.
Flood the highway with cars. Stop every green vehicle they see. We’ve got to take these bastards!”
Abe Rosenthal, the executive editor of The New York Times, stared at his deputy managing editor. The usually volatile, animated Gelb had a face on him as grim as a Florentine death mask.
“What the hell is the matter with you, Art?” Rosenthal asked. “Are you sick or something?”
Gelb closed Rosenthal’s office door to be sure that no one could overhear him, then repeated what his Las Vegas stringer had said. This time, it was Rosenthal who paled. He was a disheveled roly-poly man in his late fifties, sometimes described by his subordinates behind his back as a rumpled teddy bear. The description was inept. There was no Winnie-the-Pooh geniality in Abe Rosenthal. Without a word to Gelb he picked up his phone and called Police Plaza.
“I don’t give a damn where he is or what he’s doing,” he snarled at the Police Commissioner’s harassed detective-secretary. “I want to talk to him immediately and I’ll hold on here until you get him.”
It took several minutes to patch the call through the improvised lines to the Sixth Precinct, then to get Michael Bannion into a quiet corner away from the distress and turmoil of the search center.
Rosenthal wasted no time in chitchat when he heard the Commissioner’s voice. “I understand you told one of my editors your people are out looking for a barrel of chlorine gas hidden in this city, Commissioner?”
“Yes, sir, that’s right, Mr. Rosenthal, and I can’t tell you how much we’d appreciate your help at the Times in keeping this from the public until we’ve been able to locate and neutralize it.”
“Hidden by some Palestinian terrorists, I understand?”
“That is correct.” Despite the strain under which he had been living, Bannion’s baritone was as resonant, as commanding as ever.
“Commissioner, you’re a goddamn liar. There’s an atomic bomb in that barrel. There are thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands, of people in this city at risk and you’re refusing to tell them their lives are in danger.
You don’t expect The New York Times to go along with that, do you? To stand by silent, after we’ve been lied to, knowing that thousands of the people we serve are threatened with death?”
A stunned silence followed his words. At the Sixth Precinct, Bannion had clapped his hand over the mouthpiece of his phone. He was waving frantically at an aide. “Get Washingtonl” he shouted. “Get the President! The secret’s out!”
“I don’t believe it! Repeat that again,” Al Feldman roared at the squawk box on his desk.
“One of the toll-gate attendants at the Thruway entry up here just identified your Arabs,” replied the irritated state trooper up in Spring Valley. “But he said they were heading south toward the city, not north.”
By now a dozen men were around Feldman’s desk, all listening. “You absolutely certain of that? He’s sure it was them? Going south?”
“Of course, damn it. The guy only collects southbound tolls.” The knot of people around the Chief returned his astonished air. “They broke a five-dollar bill, and when he gave them back the change he saw the broad was cog.ţ
“Why?” Dewing demanded. “Why in hell would they be coming back to the city when they know it’s about to be destroyed?”
“Because for some reason they’ve got to get to that bomb,” Feldman replied.
“That’s what it’s got to be. They’re heading for the bomb.”
“Sweet Mother of Christ!” Bannion hammered his forehead with the heel of his hand. “If they left Spring Valley at three-thirty they might be here by now.”
The Police Commissioner almost knocked Dewing over lunging for the squawk box. “Patch me through to SPRINT!” he shouted. “SPRINT” was an acronym for Special Police Radio Inquiry Network, the multi-million-dollar core of the Department’s Communication Division that sprawled over two floors of Police Plaza and processed nineteen thousand calls a day on the 911 police emergency phone number.
“I want every available radio motor patrol unit, detective cruiser and emergency service truck routed to the Sixth Precinct immediately. Set up an airtight cordon. Fourteenth from the Hudson to Broadway, Broadway down to Houston, West Houston back to the river. Block off every street into the area with cars. I want every vehicle and pedestrian trying to enter the area stopped and all identities verified. Two of those three Palestinians we’re looking for are going to try to get in there.” Bannion stopped, flushed with excitement.
“Jim,” he told the captain running the center, “tell the precincts to get every available patrolman onto that cordon right away. Tell the West Side precincts to concentrate their men on Fourteenth Street, East Side and Queens on Broadway, downtown and Brooklyn on Houston. Have the barrier shop break out every sawhorse they’ve got. Move, Jim, move!”
Bannion pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and mopped his face. It didn’t occur to him for the moment to check his decisions with Dewing and the FBI. This was his city. Only speed was going to save it, and he wasn’t going to waste time arguing with anybody.
“Mr. Mayor,” he shouted. By the time Abe Stern was at his side he had the Fire Commissioner on the phone. “Tim,” he ordered, “get all your midtown apparatus onto the line Fourteenth-Broadway-West Houston immediately. Let my people use that equipment to block access to the area.”
There was a pause while the Fire Commissioner protested Bannion’s peremptory order. Even on their level, New York firemen regard their colleagues in the Police Department as warmly as a group of South Bronx juvenile delinquents might look on an assembly of Wall Street stockbrokers.
“Don’t fucking argue!” Bannion roared. “Do it! Here’s the Mayor.” He turned to Abe Stern and pointed at the squawk box. “Tell him!” he commanded his superior.
Stern had barely finished confirming his order when Bannion had cut that call and placed another, this one to his Deputy Commissioner for Public Information. “Patty,” he said, “in about two minutes you’re going to be swamped with calls from the media. Feed them the chlorine-gas cover story.”
Seven floors below the Deputy Commissioner’s offices in Police Plaza, Bannion’s first orders were already being put into effect. The SPRINT
complex was broken up into five radio rooms, one for each of the city’s five boroughs. In each, a dozen radio dispatchers controlled all the police cars in the boroughs from televisionlike computer consoles rigged to a keyboard. Through them, they knew what each of their cars was doing, whether its driver was having a cup of coffee or bringing in a murderer, and by flicking a couple of keys they could call and reassign every car in their command.
Almost in synchronization with the flicking of those keys, the undulating wail of police sirens began to rise from every corner of the city as patrol cars wheeled about and started their dash for the Village. Seconds later, their high-pitched chorus was joined by the deep wonk-work of the city’s fire apparatus converging on the police line. Within minutes, all Manhattan Island echoed to those vibrant bellows. The red lights of the oncoming police cars cascaded in the evening darkness down all the great arterial avenues: Ninth, Seventh, Broadway, Fifth. Stunned traffic policemen at the city’s major intersections barely had time to block traffic so that one car could scream past when the next came thundering down on them. From the sidewalks, New Yorkers, usually inured to such spectacles, looked on amazed.