by Mark Alpert
Jenna took a deep breath. She couldn’t stay here. If she wanted to help Abbu and Raza, she had to keep moving. She dashed away from the church and ran west another block on 88th Street.
At the next corner, she saw the biggest crowd yet. A horde of thousands trooped down Park Avenue, overrunning the northbound and southbound traffic lanes as well as the median strip of grass between them. The rioters swarmed around the grand apartment buildings on the avenue and shattered all their ground-floor windows. They stormed into the buildings’ courtyards and ransacked their lobbies, smashing chandeliers and mirrors and concierge desks. And they climbed to the upper floors and banged on the doors of the penthouse apartments, terrifying the corporate lawyers and financiers who’d paid millions and millions of dollars to live there.
Jenna crouched behind a battered Mercedes near the corner and looked up and down the avenue. She could see silhouettes in the windows of the fancy apartment buildings, the rich and famous gazing anxiously at the riot below. A window opened on the top floor of the building across the street, and an elderly man poked his head out, his glasses and bald scalp reflecting the moonlight. At first Jenna thought he was so petrified that he was going to jump, but when she looked closer she saw that his lips were moving. Although she had no chance of hearing him—the mob on Park Avenue was way too loud—she felt certain that the old man was calling for help.
Then something else caught her eye. A bright light appeared in the night sky all the way to the south, just above the massive MetLife Building that stood astride Park Avenue. The light was spectacularly radiant, twice as bright as any star, and coming closer. After a few seconds Jenna realized it was actually a string of lights, half a dozen in all. They were moving in a line, speeding uptown, flying less than a hundred feet above Manhattan’s skyscrapers.
They were helicopters. A moment later Jenna could hear them. She assumed they were military aircraft, designed to transport soldiers to battlefields, probably the same kind of helicopters that had carried the FSU assault team to Gracie Mansion.
She reached into her pocket and pulled out Allen Keating’s iPhone. Then she typed in the password—“Tammy,” or 82669 on the phone’s keypad—and tapped the camera icon. It looked like the FSU was going to land its helicopters on Park Avenue, and Jenna planned to record whatever happened next. Because the avenue sloped downward to the south, she had an excellent view of the crowd of rioters, which extended at least a quarter mile ahead. If any of the soldiers fired on the mob, she was going to get video of it.
Soon the helicopter at the head of the line swooped over the roof of the MetLife Building. It descended into a man-made canyon, flanked by the Midtown skyscrapers on either side of Park Avenue, and then zipped uptown at a blistering speed, just fifty feet above the median strip. The other choppers followed close behind, their rotors thumping the air. Jenna expected the helicopters to slow down and land on the traffic lanes, or at least hover above the avenue to allow the soldiers to jump out, but instead the aircraft accelerated. They raced past 60th Street, then 70th, then 80th, looming ever larger on the iPhone’s screen.
Then the helicopters flew over the mob and opened fire.
Each chopper had four machine guns, mounted on stubby racks on either side of the aircraft, and all of them spat tracer rounds at the crowd. It was like a scene from a war movie, the glowing bullets streaking down from the helicopters in a thunderous shower, but now the ammunition wasn’t aimed at the Vietnamese jungles or the Iraqi deserts or the Afghan mountains. The soldiers were firing on American citizens. Jenna’s hands shook as she held the iPhone and watched the killing machines zoom across its screen.
The avenue was so densely packed that nearly every bullet struck at least one of the rioters. They fell in long lines that matched the paths of the helicopters, leaving trails of corpses that ran down the street. Each chopper killed dozens, and together they slaughtered hundreds. And once the helicopters flew past the mob, they climbed into the night sky and made wide banking U-turns, returning to the airspace over Midtown so they could descend to Park Avenue and strafe the crowd again.
At first, most of the survivors cowered on the pavement, staring in shock at all the dead bodies around them. But when they saw the helicopters make those U-turns and fly south to Midtown, they staggered to their feet and started running in the opposite direction. Although no one gave them any orders, the rioters moved north in frantic synchrony, like a herd chased by wolves. They abandoned their invasion of the Upper East Side and retreated uptown, stampeding back to East Harlem. Screaming in fear, they hurried past Jenna’s hiding place on 88th Street, where she recorded video of their retreat and all the bodies they had to step over.
The helicopters swooped down again into the man-made canyon and this time they concentrated their fire on the tail end of the fleeing crowd. They cut down the wounded and the stragglers, shooting hundreds in the back. The rioters in the thick of the mob redoubled their speed, knocking down and trampling the people in front of them. The smarter ones fled down the side streets, and half a dozen dove behind the same Mercedes that Jenna was using for cover. In response, one of the helicopters shifted course and aimed its guns at the corner of Park and 88th.
Jenna dropped the iPhone and scrambled under the car. She flattened herself on the asphalt and slid beneath the chassis, snagging the back of her shirt on the exhaust pipe. Then the Mercedes clanked and shuddered as the large-caliber bullets pounded its hood.
She heard a shriek, very close, but the noise of the machine guns drowned out everything else. Jenna closed her eyes and covered her ears, but she could still hear the guns blasting. It was hideous, unbearable. She was losing control, going mad, going batshit crazy. Desperate, she started counting in her head, slow and silent. She tried to shut out all the horrible noises by focusing on the numbers in her mind.
She counted to ten. Then to twenty.
Then she took her hands off her ears and opened her eyes. The gunfire had stopped. The helicopters had flown off. The bullets had punctured one of the car’s tires, but Jenna was unhurt. She gave herself a few more seconds to catch her breath. Then she slid out from under the Mercedes.
Most of the crowd had already fled past 88th Street. She looked uptown and saw the rioters sprinting north, but the avenue behind them was littered with bodies. It was like the pictures she’d seen of the killing fields in Cambodia, where the corpses covered the ground like a ghastly carpet. Within twenty yards of Jenna there were at least fifty bodies sprawled on the pavement, all of them torn and scythed by the machine guns. Even worse, the helicopters were climbing into the sky again, getting into position for another strafing run. Their strategy was to chase the mob back to East Harlem, and it was working. When Jenna looked south, she saw a convoy of armored vehicles on Park Avenue, a second wave of FSU troops barreling uptown to finish the job.
She didn’t have much time, but she took a couple of seconds to consider her options. If she went north or south on Park Avenue, the FSU would get her. There were helicopters to the east too, chasing the rioters up Lexington and Third Avenue. But to the west, the sky was empty and the streets deserted. And Central Park was less than a quarter mile away.
Jenna bent over, picked up the iPhone from the pavement, and stuffed it into her pocket. Then she turned away from the killing fields and ran west.
* * *
She raced into Central Park and dashed under the trees near the reservoir. She could still hear the FSU helicopters firing their guns in the distance, so she was glad to find a place where no one could spot her from the air. But soon she realized she should’ve gone somewhere else.
Thousands of rioters had already streamed into the park from the surrounding neighborhoods. Many of them had just escaped from the helicopter assault, and they wandered in a daze across the moonlit jogging paths and softball fields. But others gathered in feral groups and rampaged through the park, attacking anyone who was lost or alone. As Jenna hurried along one of the gravel pathways she
saw brawls and beatdowns and even uglier things in the shadows. She heard screams and whimpers and hysterical weeping. The riots had unleashed the worst impulses in everyone. The strong were preying on the weak.
Jenna broke into a run. She was horrified, but not surprised. It was a sad rule of human behavior: violence breeds more violence. It was written so indelibly in our DNA, Jenna doubted that even CRISPR could erase it.
She found another pathway and veered north of the reservoir, trying to avoid contact with anyone else in the park. After a couple of minutes, though, she heard a clatter of footsteps and looked over her shoulder. Four men crashed through the bushes and started jogging on the path behind her, about thirty feet back. She couldn’t see their faces in the darkness, but they were big, burly guys in jerseys and basketball shorts, and they all carried beer bottles. One of them laughed and pointed at Jenna.
“Hey, girl. Wanna party?”
She faced forward and ran faster. But the men sped up too, keeping pace with her. They laughed louder.
“Why are you running, baby? Come on, slow down. We’re not gonna hurt you.”
The men sped up a little more and started to catch up to her. Soon they were only twenty feet behind, close enough that Jenna could hear them breathing. She was panting, already breathless, but her pursuers weren’t winded. She couldn’t stay ahead of them much longer.
Panicking, she left the path and bounded down a wooded hill. She zigzagged between the trees and bushes, feeling her way through the dark, trying like hell not to trip on the rocks and tree roots. But the men stayed right behind her, whooping and thrashing as they followed her downhill. She had no doubt about their intentions—they planned to rape her—and she felt a new surge of horror, as thick and heavy as the darkness. She bolted out of the shadows and ran toward a grassy field that glowed in the moonlight.
A group of men stood in the field, at least a dozen of them. Jenna couldn’t see their faces either, but she raced toward them anyway. They couldn’t be any worse than the men behind her. But as she got closer, she noticed that these men were armed. Instead of beer bottles, they held switchblades and baseball bats. They turned their heads toward Jenna as she approached, and then the biggest man in the group stepped away from the others and pulled a pistol from the waistband of his pants.
The four men behind Jenna gave up the chase when they saw the gun. They dropped their bottles and ran headlong in four different directions.
Jenna wanted to run too, but she stood her ground. She stepped right up to the gunman and gave him a careful once-over. He was tall, at least six-foot-four, and wore a shiny tracksuit and a baseball cap. She could barely see his eyes because the brim of his cap blocked the moonlight, but she got the feeling that he was studying her just as carefully. To be specific, he seemed to be staring at her chest.
After a few seconds, he pointed at her. “Where did you get that?”
Jenna realized her mistake. He wasn’t staring at her chest. His eyes were fixed on her bead necklace.
She squinted at him. It was hard to tell in the darkness, but it looked like the guy’s tracksuit was black-and-gold. She gripped her necklace and lifted it to eye level. “Hector Torres gave this to me. You know him?”
“Amor de Rey!” The guy raised his hand and made the Latin Kings gang sign. “I’m one of Hector’s enforcers. What can I do for you, chica?”
TWENTY-THREE
By the time Vance Keller arrived at Citi Field, twenty thousand people had been waiting in the stadium for almost an hour. They were here this afternoon to see the president, who’d come to New York to celebrate his decision to place the city under martial law.
Vance’s helicopter touched down in the parking lot outside the stadium, which was in the borough of Queens, not far from Rikers Island. Citi Field was the home of the New York Mets, but the baseball season had been suspended after Superstorm Zelda hit the East Coast. The Federal Service Unit had taken over the stadium and chartered two hundred buses to deliver the president’s supporters to the rally. Most of them had come from upstate New York and central Pennsylvania, rural counties that were full of Republicans. Colonel Grant had arranged military escorts for the buses so they could safely travel through Manhattan and the Bronx and the other areas that had been overrun in the riots the night before.
A team of FSU officers saluted Vance as he stepped out of the helicopter. He nodded and followed them across the parking lot, feeling upbeat and energized. It was a gorgeous September day, warm and cloudless, seventy-five degrees at noontime. There was a slightly unpleasant smell in the air, the odor of the fires still burning in Harlem and sending plumes of smoke eastward. But other than that, the weather was perfect.
As Vance and his escorts approached the stadium, he heard a rumbling overhead. Looking up, he saw a Number 7 train on the elevated tracks a hundred yards away. It pulled in to the Citi Field station, and another thousand supporters emerged from the train cars, accompanied by several dozen men in black uniforms. The FSU had seized control of New York’s subway lines, as well as its water, sewer, sanitation, and power systems. Federal officers patrolled the streets and operated checkpoints at the bridges and tunnels. Normal deliveries of food and fuel had resumed, and loyal citizens were returning to work. Meanwhile, the rioters and criminals had retreated to their slums, defeated. They’d seen the deadly might of the U.S. Army, and they wouldn’t challenge it again anytime soon.
There was a crowd outside the stadium’s main entrance, but it was quiet and orderly. The latecomers stood in line in front of the metal detectors, waiting for the FSU men to frisk them and check their bags. At the end of the line, some of the people had turned around to watch the helicopter land, and they pointed at Vance as he came near. He and his security team headed for the VIP entrance, but he got close enough to the crowd that he could hear them shouting. They broke into applause. They were cheering him. Most of them were overweight, he noticed, and all of them were white.
“Yo, Vance! Way to go, man!”
“That’s right! Give ’em hell, Vance! Lock ’em all up!”
“Yeah, waste those motherfuckers! Send ’em back where they came from!”
Reluctantly, he stopped and waved at the crowd and winced when they cheered even louder. He hated this part of the job. He couldn’t stand to look at them. They were so ugly and needy, so criminally stupid. This was why Vance usually stayed in the background and worked behind the scenes. Unlike his father-in-law, he got no pleasure from performing for these idiots.
What’s more, he didn’t trust them, especially the New Yorkers who’d taken the subway to the stadium. The president never had many fans in New York City, and the number had surely plunged after the helicopter assault the night before. Vance suspected that a large fraction of the people at Citi Field—maybe a quarter, maybe even a third—were really political opponents of the president. They were just pretending to be his supporters until they went inside the stadium and POTUS came onstage. Then they’d start booing and hissing and doing everything they could to disrupt his speech. The same thing had happened at nearly every rally during the reelection campaign; in fact, the protests in 2020 were so predictable that the president had actually looked forward to them. He used to taunt the protesters and encourage the rest of the crowd to attack them. It was all part of the show.
Vance winced again. He didn’t like thinking about the reelection campaign. It triggered too many bad memories. Even now, as he waved at the idiots in front of the stadium, he felt a stab of horror in his stomach. For the ten thousandth time, he remembered what happened to Princess.
And along with the memories came the self-recrimination and second-guessing. He’d made so many mistakes. There were the obvious ones, of course: the policy failures that allowed a teenager to become radicalized by the internet, the security lapses that enabled the brainwashed kid to smuggle a suicide vest into the arena where Princess was speaking. But the more painful errors were Vance’s personal misjudgments. He should’ve nev
er let his wife go on the campaign trail. He should’ve resigned from the White House staff and convinced her to do the same. They should’ve escaped Washington while they still had the chance.
He stopped waving at the crowd but didn’t lower his hand. He was sick with regret. He stood there in the parking lot for so long that one of the FSU officers edged toward him. “Sir? Shouldn’t we, uh, get going?”
Vance nodded. He turned away from the crowd and marched briskly to the stadium’s VIP entrance.
He couldn’t change the past, but he could change the future. Today’s rally was going to be different from all the others. Vance was glad that so many of his opponents were in the stadium this afternoon—they would prove the effectiveness of his strategy and the righteousness of his cause. He was going to finish the task of reconciliation that his wife had started.
He and his entourage passed through the gate and walked into the stadium’s entrance hall, a grand rotunda with escalators and curved stairways going up to the Promenade Level and skyboxes. Hundreds of people were packed into this space, their progress slowed by all the security barriers and checkpoints. The air in the rotunda was stuffy and humid, despite all the newly installed ceiling fans whirring overhead, and Vance felt greatly relieved when he saw Colonel Grant standing in front of a glass door marked PRIVATE. The colonel opened the door for Vance, and the two men walked down a hushed, carpeted corridor, followed by half a dozen FSU bodyguards.