by Mark Alpert
But Jenna noticed something surprising about this radio. Its electrical cord was plugged into the wall, and so was its antenna cable. Another cable ran from the radio to an old-fashioned microphone mounted on a desk stand.
She bent closer to it and studied its switches. Then she flicked one of them, and a blast of static came out of the radio’s speakers. She quickly found the dial for volume and lowered it.
“Goddamn it!” DeMarco stomped toward her. “What the hell are you doing now?”
Jenna ignored him and turned to Tamara. “This radio still works. And it’s connected to an external antenna. Which probably goes up to the mansion’s roof.”
Tamara shrugged. “But what’s the point? Radios are useless. Didn’t you say the Feds were jamming us?”
“We don’t know how powerful their jammer is. Its noise is definitely loud enough to block signals from cell phones and handheld radios. But this radio is different. It runs on AC current instead of batteries.” Jenna pointed at the electrical cord and the antenna cable. “It can send a lot more power up to that antenna.”
“That old thing?” Tamara gave the radio a skeptical look. “Jesus, it’s ancient.”
“Doesn’t matter. If the antenna is large and mounted high up on the roof, the transmitted signal will be a lot stronger. Maybe strong enough to cut through the noise.”
That got Sergeant O’Connor’s attention. He bent over the table to give the radio a closer look. “You know, my dad used to have a ham radio like this one. It was powerful as hell. He used to talk to people in Africa and Australia with it.” Frank started adjusting one of the dials. “Okay, I’m setting the frequency to the police department channel. Give me that mic.”
Jenna reached for the desk-stand microphone. But as she handed it to Frank, she heard an unwelcome noise coming from the corridor outside the office. It was the clomping of boots, two pairs of them. A moment later, someone banged a fist against the office’s locked door. “Open up!”
The mayor jumped at the noise, and Tamara aimed her revolver at the door. But Frank calmly flipped the switch on the microphone and held it under his nose. “This is Sergeant O’Connor at Gracie Post! Ten-thirteen, ten-thirteen, we need immediate assistance!”
“Hey!” The soldier banged against the door again. “I hear you in there! Open up NOW!”
“Any unit, please respond! The Feds have attacked Gracie Mansion, and the mayor’s life is in danger!”
There was no response. But then Jenna remembered that she’d turned down the radio’s volume a minute ago, so she reached for the dial and turned it back up. Then a voice rose above the static and blared from the speakers: “O’Connor, this is Dispatch at the One-Nine Precinct. Can you hear me?”
Frank let out a whoop. “I hear you, One-Nine. And I’m hoping like hell you can send some patrol cars to Gracie Mansion, because we’re in a fuckload of trouble here.”
“We just sent six cars to the riot on East Ninety-sixth Street. Is that what you’re talking about?”
“Negative, this is different. The FSU landed helicopters outside the mansion a few minutes ago and assaulted the mayor’s security detail. There was heavy gunfire and multiple casualties. Now the Feds have cornered the rest of us in an office in the basement.” Frank paused, and the soldiers in the corridor banged the door so hard that the file cabinets shook behind it. “DeMarco is here, standing right next to me, and he’ll be in plenty of trouble if the Feds get to him. I’m guessing they’ll either arrest him or shoot him.”
The room fell silent. The mayor turned pale and backed up against the wall. Even the FSU men outside the office stopped their banging. After five long seconds, the dispatcher for the 19th Precinct finally responded: “O’Connor, I’m contacting headquarters. We have to inform Commissioner Hayes about this.”
“Sure, great, but in the meantime you gotta send some cops to help us!”
“Look, first I have to—”
The dispatcher’s voice was drowned out by a loud metallic clang, followed by three more clangs in quick succession. Jenna turned toward the noise and saw a silvery glint at the edge of the office’s door. The soldiers in the corridor had wedged the sharp end of a long steel tool between the door and the doorjamb. With each metallic clang, they hammered the tool a little farther into the gap. They were prying the door open.
“No more time!” Jenna rushed at Frank and grabbed the microphone from him. Then she turned to Tamara and DeMarco. “You have to send out a message!”
The mayor didn’t react. His eyes were fixed on the clanging door, his face frozen in horror. The crisis had paralyzed him, and now he was useless. But Tamara stood firm. She stepped over to the conference table and stared at the mic in Jenna’s hands. “What kind of message?”
Jenna pointed at DeMarco. “The Feds are gonna arrest him. There’s no way we can stop that. But we can stop the FSU from taking over the city.” She offered the microphone to Tamara, holding it out as far as its cord would allow. “The mayor should send a message to the police commissioner, a final order to all the officers in the department. He should order them to resist the takeover.”
Tamara nodded. It was civil war. Now there was no way around it.
Three more clangs echoed across the room. The soldiers pounded their steel tool deeper into the gap between the door and the jamb. Then they pivoted the tool and used it as a lever, wrenching the door’s edge. The gap widened. The dead bolt began to pull away from the jamb.
“Bob, get over here!” Tamara glared at DeMarco. “You know what you have to do!”
The mayor didn’t budge. He just stood there with his back against the wall, staring at the failing dead bolt. After a couple of seconds, his knees buckled and he slid down to the carpet.
“Jesus Christ, Bob! If you don’t—”
The steel door groaned, and the dead bolt suddenly tore away from the jamb. The door started to swing open, but a moment later it hit the file cabinets with a thud. One of the soldiers in the corridor yelled “Shit!”
Tamara turned away from the mayor. She gave her revolver to Jenna, practically shoving it into her hands, and grabbed the microphone. “This is Tamara Carter, senior advisor to the mayor. I have an urgent message from Mayor DeMarco to all the officers in the New York Police Department. The FSU has attacked Gracie Mansion and is about to arrest the mayor and his staff. This is an unconstitutional—”
The soldiers on the other side of the door hurled themselves against it. The door slammed into the file cabinets again, hitting them so hard this time that they tilted and fell over. As the cabinets toppled, Sergeant O’Connor raced toward the mayor and stood in front of him, shielding his crumpled body. Frank raised his pistol and pointed it at the half-open door. “Stay where you are, assholes! You better not step inside!”
“This is an unconstitutional attack by the federal government, so all New York police officers are duty-bound to oppose it.” Tamara bent over the microphone. It was shaking in her hands, but her voice was loud and clear. “DO NOT turn over your weapons to the FSU. Repeat, DO NOT surrender your service weapons or vehicles to the federal authorities. You must honor your oath to protect New York City by resisting this unlawful takeover!”
Then the pair of FSU officers charged into the room and started shooting.
Jenna threw herself to the floor, but the soldiers didn’t aim their assault rifles at her. As soon as they ran into the office, they fired at Sergeant Frank O’Connor. He fell back against the mayor as the bullets hit him, his body jerking grotesquely. But somehow he managed to fire his pistol three times, and the third shot hit one of the Federal Service officers in the face.
The soldier collapsed, tipping forward. His partner hesitated for a moment, then unleashed another barrage at O’Connor, firing at least a dozen more bullets. Half of them struck the sergeant and half struck the man he’d tried to shield.
Frank stopped writhing. He was dead, and so was the mayor. Their corpses sprawled in the corner of the office, Fran
k’s body draped over DeMarco’s. So much blood ran from their wounds that the carpet couldn’t absorb it all. It puddled under their bodies and spread across the floor.
Tamara stared at them, horrified, but only for a fraction of a second. Furrowing her brow, she bent over the microphone again. “Mayor DeMarco has just been assassinated! Federal officers shot him dead, in cold blood, right in front of my eyes! They—”
Jenna saw it all happen, looking up from the floor. The FSU officer spun around and pointed his assault rifle at Tamara. He braced the rifle’s stock against his shoulder and started shooting.
At the exact same moment, Jenna fired the revolver at him.
The noise was deafening. Jenna dropped the gun and closed her eyes and waited for the soldier to shoot her too. But the gunfire stopped and the room fell silent. There were no sounds at all, and no more bullets streaking overhead. There was only a strong, metallic odor in the air, the scent of fresh blood.
When Jenna opened her eyes, she saw both FSU officers lying on the carpet, facedown and motionless. She’d shot the second one between his eyes. There was a big, gory wound at the top of his head, where the bullet had exited.
Tamara lay on her back a few feet away. Although she wasn’t dead yet, she clearly wouldn’t live much longer. The gunfire had torn three holes in the front of her tank top, and the blood had darkened her jeans from her waistband down to her crotch. Her eyes had rolled up into her sockets and she was shivering all over, fighting the pain from her wounds and the shock from blood loss. But her hands remained clamped around the microphone. The vintage radio was ruined—the bullets had smashed its rectangular case and antique workings—but Tamara didn’t seem to notice. She looked like she was struggling to find the words for another message.
Jenna crawled over to her. Blood gushed from Tamara’s chest and stomach. There was nothing Jenna could do to save her, but she gripped Tamara’s shoulder and squeezed it tight, just to let her know that someone was there. And Tamara felt it. She instantly dropped the microphone and clutched Jenna’s arm instead.
“Allen … oh Jesus … just get out of here!”
She looked right at Jenna but didn’t see her. Her voice was a halting, frantic whisper.
“Take your phone … and go out the service door … go on, Allen!”
Tamara shut her eyes tight, obviously in agony. She arched her back and flailed her legs against the floor and let out a scream. She was raving, out of her mind, seeing her dead boyfriend beside her. But after a moment she opened her eyes and reached for the iPhone in her pocket. She clawed at the thing until she got a good grip on it, and then she thrust it at Jenna.
“Go down the hall … past the storage closets … run like hell, you hear?”
Jenna took the phone. It didn’t matter that Tamara thought she was someone else. The important thing was to honor her last request. Jenna silently made a promise: she was going to escape Gracie Mansion and deliver Allen Keating’s video to someone who could make it public. She wanted it broadcast across the whole country. In this war, their best weapon was outrage, so she was going to make sure that everyone saw it.
“I’ll do what you want, okay? Just relax.” Jenna slipped the phone into her own pocket. “I’ll do all of it. I swear.”
Tamara shut her eyes again and lay still. Her breath rattled in her throat, but at least she wasn’t writhing anymore. She’d done her final duty. The war would go on without her.
The muffled noise of more gunfire came through the mansion’s walls. Jenna heard footsteps on the floor above, probably Federal Service officers running from one part of the building to another. The battle outside Gracie Mansion had resumed. Maybe the New York Police Department had responded to Tamara’s distress call and dispatched reinforcements to the scene. At least that’s what Jenna hoped. She had no chance at all of escaping the mansion unless something else distracted the FSU men.
Jenna picked up the revolver from where she’d dropped it. Then she bolted out of the room and ran down the basement corridor.
* * *
She followed Tamara’s directions. She raced down the hall, dashing past a long row of closet doors, each marked with a brass number. But her mind was in so much turmoil that she couldn’t focus on why the doors were numbered, or anything else for that matter. Jenna carried a horrible new fact on her conscience: just two minutes ago, she’d shot someone to death. She’d killed a human being.
She never got a good look at the soldier’s face. She’d glimpsed it when she aimed her revolver at the FSU officer, but that fleeting sight was strictly for the purpose of targeting, and it hadn’t stuck in her memory. Now she couldn’t recall what his eyes or nose or hair looked like. The only thing she remembered was that the officer was young. Probably in his early twenties.
But that fact alone was enough to make her nauseous. She stumbled down the hallway and had to stop next to one of the closet doors. My God. He was barely out of his teens. His whole future ahead of him. And I took it all away.
Jenna leaned against the door, dizzy and sweating. She took a deep breath and tried to clear her head. She’d shot the boy in self-defense. The soldiers had killed everyone else in the room, and they would’ve killed her too if she hadn’t acted. So why was her head spinning so badly now? And why, when she tried to picture the boy she’d killed, did she see Raza’s face instead?
Then she heard footsteps again, the boots of the Federal Service officers. They were closer now. More FSU men had come down to the mansion’s basement, at least half a dozen by the sound of it. A moment later, the men started shouting. They’d discovered the bodies in the office.
Jenna fought down her nausea and forced herself to keep moving down the corridor. She turned left and right, looking for the service door that Tamara had mentioned. She needed to find it before the soldiers reached this part of the basement.
She finally saw it at the far end of the hallway, beyond all the numbered closets. This door was taller and wider than the others and completely blank, no identifying number or label. But when she gripped the brass doorknob, it turned. She stepped into a dark room and swiftly closed the door behind her.
She stood in a vestibule, five feet wide and ten feet long. It was the mansion’s service entrance, for bringing furniture and appliances into the building without messing up the beautiful parlors upstairs. The walls were unfinished plywood, and the only light came from a glowing red EXIT sign. Below the sign was another door, locked from the inside by an antique dead bolt. Jenna rushed toward it and gripped the bolt, which slid open with a rusty squeal.
At the same time, she heard the soldiers march into the hallway she’d just left. One of them shouted an order at the others. There was a flurry of banging and shuffling as they searched the closets.
Frantic, Jenna cracked open the service door and peered outside. The door was underneath the mansion’s porch, so the darkness here was very deep. She couldn’t see much outside, but the noises were everywhere: helicopters hovering, a megaphone blaring, and gunshots echoing across the neighborhood. And beneath it all was the sound of a large, angry crowd, hundreds of voices yelling and chanting and cursing.
She opened the door a little farther and glimpsed the leading edge of the mob, less than fifty feet away. Although there was a security fence around Gracie Mansion, people were streaming through a jagged gap in the barrier, which must’ve been blasted open by the FSU assault team when they’d attacked the mayor’s residence. It looked like the rioters had marched down from East Harlem and converged on the mansion, expecting to confront the mayor, but instead they’d run straight into the Federal Service men who’d taken over the building. One of the officers was shouting into the megaphone, probably from one of the mansion’s upper-story windows.
“Go back! Turn around and leave the area IMMEDIATELY!”
Jenna opened the door all the way and stepped outside. She had to stoop to avoid banging her head against the boards of the porch, but she was glad to be underneath it.
She was safe here, hidden in the shadows. Just ten yards ahead, the mansion’s security lights illuminated the driveway in front of the building, which was packed with shirtless young men. Most of them had wrapped bandannas around their faces, concealing everything but their eyes, and quite a few carried bricks or chunks of concrete. They seemed unimpressed by the FSU officer with the megaphone. Instead of turning back, they edged closer to the mansion’s entrance.
“I said GO BACK! This is your FINAL WARNING! We’re authorized to use DEADLY FORCE!”
One of the shirtless men yelled something in Spanish, and then the whole crowd surged forward. In the same instant, Jenna heard a shout behind her. She looked over her shoulder at the vestibule and saw an FSU officer rush into it from the corridor. He was another kid barely out of his teens, cradling an assault rifle. He headed straight for her. “Hey, you! Stop right there!”
The revolver was in Jenna’s hand, but she couldn’t bring herself to shoot the boy. Instead, she threw the gun at him as hard as she could. Then she raced out of the shadow of the porch and into the crowd.
TWENTY-ONE
Lieutenant Frazier stood at attention in his commander’s office, nervous as hell. He needed to ask Colonel Grant a question, and he was very worried about how the colonel would answer.
Grant was making him wait. The colonel sat behind his desk, on the phone with the secretary of defense, who’d called just a few seconds after Frazier stepped into the office. So now Frazier had to stand there in front of the desk while Grant lied about the situation in New York City. The defense secretary had been Grant’s commander at one time, but their roles were reversed after the colonel started working at the White House, and now Grant clearly enjoyed bossing around his old boss.
“General, this isn’t a request. This is an order. I received it two minutes ago from Keller, and he got it directly from the president.” Grant leaned back in his chair and smiled. “You need to send three more helicopter squadrons to New York and put them under the Federal Service Unit’s control. And we want you to transport an infantry brigade to Rikers Island within the next twelve hours. Is that understood?”