The Doodlebug War

by Andrew Updegrove

  It wasn’t much of a relationship, to be sure. But Frank eventually got used to it. After all, he’d had worse.

  * * *

  9

  (Don’t) Take the A Train

  Frank walked off the D.C. to New York air shuttle and hurried away from the gate. As usual, the flight was late, and naturally, the line to get a taxi was endless as well. When he eventually fidgeted his way to the front of the queue, he jumped in the cab and slammed the door. A minute later, the taxi was winding endlessly through the Byzantine exit pattern of the airport, and Frank was once again immersed in preparing for the meeting.

  A half hour later, a rising tide of honking penetrated his concentration.

  “Where are we?”

  “Brooklyn. Traffic is messed up like I never see before. Nothing is moving on BQE, so I take side streets.”

  “To where?”

  “I figure Williamsburg Bridge is best bet. We know in a minute when I turn up ahead.”

  The driver started speaking rapidly into his headset in a language Frank didn’t recognize; he looked at the driver’s picture and name on the license hanging on the seat back and guessed it was Arabic.

  But nothing was moving when they reached Roebling Street either. So much for arriving on time at the first meeting of the combined Tiger Teams he’d flown in to attend.

  The cabbie looked over his shoulder. “What you want I try next?”

  “Give me a minute,” Frank said, opening a traffic app on his laptop.

  “Wow!” He pushed the map around with his finger. “Everything heading into Manhattan is solid red—there’s nothing moving anywhere.”

  The light changed, and the cab driver crossed the intersection. “So?”

  “Give me a minute.” Frank studied his traffic app again. “Take your next left, and when you get to South 3rd Street, take a right. That street should take us all the way to the riverbank. Maybe we can see what’s going on from there.”

  Damn it. He was sure to be late now. He’d better let someone know. He pulled out his phone, and as soon as he entered his password, it began rapping out a series of emergency news alerts.

  Ping! NYT 9:39 AM: Section of lower deck of George Washington Bridge fails; scores of cars fall into Hudson River

  Ping! NYT 9:45 AM: Flooding abruptly closes Lincoln Tunnel

  Ping! NYT 9:48 AM: Explosion in the Holland Tunnel stops all traffic; flooding reported

  Ping! NYT 9:55 AM: Explosion on L Line subway may leave hundreds stranded below ground

  Ping! NYT 10:05 AM: Mayor declares state of emergency; asks all New Yorkers to await instructions

  Frank looked up in confusion at the quiet, neighborhood street they were following to the river; the driver was holding a rapid-fire conversation again over his headset. There was a muted TV on the seat back, and Frank saw the picture cut to video of the president’s helicopter rising rapidly from the lawn of the White House. It barely cleared the trees before it leaned into a tight turn and roared off. Marine Two and Three took off a moment later, departing just as quickly. Two of them would be decoys, so no one would know which chopper carried the president. What the heck was happening?

  Frank turned the sound up on the television just in time to hear a loud boom; the news camera swiveled up and around to catch a squadron of F-16s decelerating over the Jefferson Memorial before diverging to follow the helicopters off in three different directions. The announcer was saying something about trying to make sense of contradictory reports coming in from New York City.

  At the end of the street, he and the cab driver got out. All up and down the river, helicopters darted and hovered, disappearing and reemerging like dragonflies over a forest pond, as they flew between buildings and over bridges. Along the FDR Drive, red and white lights on squad cars and emergency vehicles rebounded between the windows of the high-rise apartment buildings that lined the river, and countless sirens competed with the horns of stalled cars in a cacophonous din of impatience and fear.

  As he tried to make sense of what he was seeing, Frank realized that the helicopters in the air weren’t traffic and commuting aircraft but police and military choppers. On the river, police, Harbor Patrol, and Coast Guard Zodiacs were roaring up – and downstream to no immediately obvious purpose. And something seemed strange about the Brooklyn Bridge off in the distance; he thought he understood the angle that he was viewing it from, but it still didn’t look right.

  It took him several seconds to realize that one of its two towers was missing.

  They got back in the car.

  “What do they say on the television?” the cab driver asked.

  “Nothing useful so far.” He went back to fiddling with his laptop. “There’s a restaurant on the corner a couple blocks back that’s open all day. They probably have a couple of TVs in the bar we can watch. Let’s go back there and try and find out what’s going on.”

  Minutes later, they were entering one of the gentrifying neighborhood’s trendy new establishments. The dining room was empty; a few tables displayed half-eaten meals. But they could hear a news broadcast coming through a doorway that led them into a bar room lit by dusty sunbeams streaming through a band of windows set high in one wall. The missing restaurant staff and customers were inside, staring up at the large screen TVs mounted on the wall behind the bar.

  * * *

  There was something surreal about sitting in a hipster saloon in Brooklyn as the first details of the horrors that had just occurred began to emerge. And yet there was no point in leaving. Every New York airport, and every subway, bus, and train station, was now shut down.

  Just as on 9/11, employers everywhere in the metropolitan area were starting to send their employees home—if they could get there. The bar room gradually grew more crowded as released workers looked for a place to wait for the hopelessly gridlocked streets to clear. On the screen Frank was watching, the local network affiliate cut to a news team that was still setting up to broadcast from a riverside park in Hoboken, New Jersey. The skyline of lower Manhattan behind them provided a jarringly calm backdrop.

  The reporter took the handoff and began to speak.

  Chet, things are eerily quiet on this side of the Hudson. As you can see, it’s a spectacular fall day—just like 9/11. The sun is out and the temperature’s unseasonably warm. But underneath the Hudson and the East River, we’re told there could be as many as ten thousand commuters drowned in their cars. And that’s before you take the subway and train tunnels into account—they’ve been hit, too. We don’t have any good figures yet on how many trains were targeted—all of the communications lines in the affected train tunnels were knocked out by the blasts.

  We also can’t guess yet how many may have been killed on the bridges leading into Manhattan. All of them have gaping holes in their traffic decks, and some have far worse damage. People stuck in cars near where the truck bombs went off never had a chance. It’s just awful.

  What about rescue crews, David? Have they been able to do anything?

  I can’t answer that, Chet. But I’ve got Irving Mandel from the New York City Office of Emergency Management Watch Center standing by, and he’ll be able to bring us up to date. Mr. Mandel, can you hear me?

  The screen switched to an archival still picture of the face and shoulders of a city worker.

  Yes, I can.

  Mr. Mandel, what can you tell us about the rescue operations that are underway? Have many people been saved from the tunnels?

  Unfortunately, very few. We assume that everyone that was below water level who wasn’t killed outright by the blasts died before they could figure out what happened or what to do about it. The only ones that had a chance were in cars near the ends of the tunnels opposite where the blasts occurred.

  Do we know anything more about how the attacks were carrie
d out?

  Yes. The first stage of the attack began about 9:00 AM, when the terrorists drove dump trucks filled with explosives into the tunnels heading in both directions. These were the biggest explosions by far—the trucks might have held as much as six tons of explosives apiece. When they got close to the end of one of the tunnels, but while they were still under the river, they turned the trucks sideways to block both lanes. Then they waited for the traffic to back up. We can’t be sure, but we’re investigating whether they used spotters, or maybe even small drones, at the other ends of the tunnels to let them know when the cars were packed in tight all the way back. At about the same time, other trucks performed similar maneuvers on the main bridges connecting Manhattan to the other boroughs and New Jersey, and the traffic backed up there, too.

  At rush hour, that wouldn’t take long, would it?

  No, traffic was already pretty slow in each tunnel to begin with. Same thing with most of the bridges.

  Then what?

  They detonated the explosives everywhere at close to the same time. Using dump trucks in the tunnels was obviously a deliberate choice: they have very heavy steel floors and sides, which helped direct the force of the blasts straight up, blowing through the tunnel casing overhead and the riverbed above that. Then the water rushed in.

  The video cut to a shot of the New Jersey entrance to the Holland Tunnel. Huge emergency lights had been set up to illuminate the traffic lanes until they disappeared underwater. Divers were suiting up in an almost certainly vain effort to rescue survivors.

  How many people would have had a chance to get out?

  It probably varied. The Holland Tunnel seems to have filled very quickly—it could have been as little as ten minutes. The Lincoln Tunnel took longer, maybe twice as long. I don’t know what anyone could have done to save themselves in either of those tunnels. The Queens Midtown Tunnel didn’t flood at all—although it is completely blocked by the rubble created by the explosion. For most of the people in that one, it wouldn’t have made much difference, though. In an enclosed space like that, the blast wave from the explosion must have been horrifyingly lethal for most of the way back to the other shore. And then it would still have shattered every windshield, as well as peoples’ eardrums. The lights would have gone out immediately, too.

  How about in the subway tunnels?

  The video feed began sampling subway entrances around the five boroughs. Some were blocked by yellow police tape. At those near the river, teams of first responders wearing aerators and carrying stretchers and medical supplies were hurrying down stairs.

  Those are a different story. The terrorists couldn’t carry enough explosives onto a train to flood a tunnel without being noticed, so their goal was to block the tunnels and kill as many people as possible. Tragically, it appears that the bombs were also incendiary devices; we’re getting reports that many of the subway and train cars were totally incinerated; it must have been horrible for the people packed into those trains with no way to escape.

  That’s terrible—were any of the trains able to evacuate before the bombs went off?

  No. Again, all the bombs went off at almost the same time, and in any event, the explosions wiped out all means of communication. It took a while before the transit authority had any idea what had happened. And once again, the terrorists timed things for maximum effect. First, they detonated bombs on trains that were just about to arrive in Manhattan. We’ve only reached one of those trains so far, but the explosives on that one were powerful enough to derail the front car and turn it into a hash of metal blocking the tunnel. Then they detonated bombs on the rearmost cars of trains that had just left the last stops in Queens, Brooklyn, and the Bronx. Those bombs had the same effect, so both ends of the tunnels are clogged with wreckage. Until we can get that cleared away, we can’t easily reach anybody or any other trains that are trapped in between.

  How many commuters do you think are on those trains?

  There are twelve trains unaccounted for. I don’t have the exact number of cars yet, but trains typically have eight to eleven cars.

  Okay, so let’s say a hundred twenty cars. About how many people would that be?

  Most of the trains would have been packed at that hour, so it could be ten, maybe even twelve, thousand people in all. Everything’s an ungodly mess down there. We have no idea how many people were killed or injured or how long it will take us to reach all of them. We’re trying to put crews together equipped with acetylene torches to cut a passage through the wreckage at each end of every tunnel, but that’s going to take time; it’s not the kind of situation we’ve ever trained to deal with at this kind of scale. It could be twenty-four hours or more before we’re able to get to some people down there. I’m afraid that by then it may be too late for some of the injured. And we haven’t even talked about the commuter trains and tunnels yet.

  Frank tried to imagine the screaming terror and chaos reigning below ground. Some or all of the cars in the trains that had been bombed would have lost their emergency lighting, leaving wounded and unharmed passengers alike in total darkness, surrounded by the dead, with no idea how long it would take to be rescued. How many of them would die in the dark before they were?

  This was beyond anything Frank had ever imagined—dwarfing even the carnage of 9/11. He glanced away from the screen. It was completely silent except for the voices coming from the televisions and someone sobbing quietly in the back of the room.

  That’s terrible. Things are hopefully better on the bridges though, right?

  The video cut to live aerial footage, showing huge holes in the decks of bridge after bridge; on some, there was only a tangle of steel beams and cables where a supporting tower had stood only a couple of hours before.

  Well, our ability to get to those who could be helped is better there, yes. But we have no idea how many cars went into the river, and these rivers are deep; we have to assume that everyone in those vehicles drowned immediately. That said, we believe the main goal behind all this may have been to cut off Manhattan as completely as possible.

  Why do you say that?

  We can’t know for sure unless whoever is responsible tells us. But if they wanted to show what they could do to the strongest nation in the world, well, I think they’ve made their point.

  Frank felt his skin grow clammy; if his flight had been on time, he could have been one of those wretched souls heading into the city who were talking on the phone or reading the news one minute and the next suffocating in a taxi in the pitch-black depths of the East River with no idea what had just happened.

  Will it take long to get the bridges operational again?

  It’s too early to tell. We’ll need to do a detailed engineering study of each one. On the suspension bridges, they stopped the trucks right next to the towers that hold up the roadways. We think they may have shaped the force of the explosives in some way there, too, so that most of the force this time would go to the side. The Brooklyn Bridge could be unsalvageable, and that may be the case for some of the others as well. I don’t see any of them reopening for months.

  Some of the people surrounding Frank began murmuring over that revelation; it was beginning to dawn on them that it could be a very long time before people could get on or off Manhattan in any normal way.

  We’ll let you go now, Mr. Mandel. Thank you. I’m sure you must be needed elsewhere.

  You’re welcome.

  I see that we’ve just gotten through to Jules Olafsson, the medical disaster coordinator at Bellevue Hospital. Mr. Olafsson, can you hear me?

  The camera cut to a grainy Skype feed of a man wearing a headset.

  Yes, I can.

  Thank you. Did I pronounce your name right?

  That’s fine.

  Can you tell me, sir, what’s being done to evacuate and treat the injured?

 
Well, as you know, we’ve made lots of progress preparing for disasters since 9/11. But it’s hard to plan for every type of attack. One thing we never anticipated was that such a high percentage of our first responders and hospital staff might be unable to reach Manhattan, or heaven forbid, even be among the dead and injured. When current personnel come off shift, there won’t be nearly enough trained staff to replace them. We’ll have to ask anyone that can reach their hospital, firehouse, or ambulance station to keep working as long as they can stay on their feet.

  What have you been able to do?

  We’ve gotten to almost all of the injured on the bridges and started to move those most in need of care to hospitals. We’ve been able to do very little so far for anyone that may be injured in the subway and train tunnels. The mayor has asked that all cabs and private vehicles stay off the streets so that emergency personnel can get the injured to hospitals as quickly as possible.

  Is that working?

  For the most part, people on Manhattan are being pretty good. But it’s still a challenge. We don’t have enough ambulances, so we’re transporting the ones first that won’t survive without immediate care.

  Will you have more help soon?

  How? Manhattan’s cut off! The terrorists hit every single one of the major bridges and tunnels that link Manhattan to the rest of the world! We don’t have enough open beds in Manhattan to treat those we need to evacuate from this side, so we’re starting to medevac patients out to surrounding hospitals, especially where they require special care. But there are only a few helipads on the island. Our disaster plans call for the Coast Guard to take charge of setting up additional landing areas in Central Park, but I don’t have any information on how that’s proceeding.