Then he politely thanked her mother, said good-bye to her son and began to walk out of the house. Georgia, feeling a little chagrined herself now, grabbed her duty holster and gun, gave a quick hug to Richie and her mother and followed Kyle to a blue department sedan parked by the curb. He unlocked her door and opened it. She went to speak, but she was stopped by a grin across his boyish face.
“Now what’s so funny?” she asked.
“You were just about to lecture me about why I’m not supposed to open your door for you.”
“Well…yeah.”
“If I run over you, are we even?”
Georgia smiled in spite of herself. “Okay, I’m in a pissed-off mood. I admit it,” she said as Kyle got in and pulled away from the curb. “I’ve had a tough night. I’ve got no right to take it out on you. Sorry.”
“Uh-uh.” Kyle shook his head. “‘Sorry’ is only for the big things, remember? Proper responses here include any four-letter word, a derogatory and preferably profane comment about my parentage, ethnic background or procreation capacities, or a complaint about the union contract.”
Georgia laughed. “You’re all right, Andy—you know that? A few more years in the FDNY, we’ll have you talking like you actually come from this friggin’ city.”
Kyle got on the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway. Georgia assumed he was taking them to headquarters, but he passed the turnoff and kept heading south.
“May I ask where we’re going?”
“Coney Island, but I don’t know anything else,” said Kyle. “Brennan didn’t want you to drive, I guess, because he thought you’d be exhausted from…” Kyle’s voice trailed off. At the first traffic light, he studied her profile. Georgia could feel his eyes on her. She checked her reflection in the rearview mirror in response. She felt acutely aware of a pimple that was beginning to develop on her left cheek and of having every one of those two thousand calories Marenko spoke about at the diner this morning sitting on her hips.
“How’s Mac holding up?” asked Kyle. “Everybody at base heard about his arrest. You must be going through hell right now.”
Georgia shrugged. She was certain Marenko would be livid with her for discussing anything about him to this rookie.
“Georgia, I know about you and Mac. You don’t have to play dumb with me. Eddie Suarez told me.”
“And how would Suarez know?”
“He says it’s written all over your face every time Marenko enters a room.”
Georgia stared out her window without answering, hoping to hide the flush in her face as the Caprice crawled along in bumper-to-bumper traffic. Rows of houses gave way to industrial lots, junkyards and an open artery of rail tracks. To her right, just across the East River, the skyscrapers of Manhattan shimmered in the early-afternoon heat, sparkling like the Emerald City of Oz.
“Look, I’m not trying to pry,” Kyle told her. “Here’s why I’m asking.” He pulled a slip of paper out of his shirt pocket and handed it to her. The name Bernard Chandler was scribbled across it, along with a phone number in Manhattan.
“Mac’s going to need a good lawyer,” Kyle explained. “Bernie Chandler’s one of the best criminal defense attorneys in New York. At eight hundred dollars an hour, he’d better be.”
“Mac hasn’t got that kind of money,” said Georgia.
“Bernie’s a partner in Berenson, Chandler, Kaufman and Kyle, Georgia. The ‘Kyle’ is my father, Jerome. Best lawyers in the city. If something’s happening—contracts, real estate, high-profile criminal case or divorce—they’re involved. Don’t worry, Bernie will work out a deal with him. It will be very affordable, I promise.”
Growing up, Georgia thought having clout meant that your dad was a desk sergeant who could fix a parking ticket. This was an entirely different level of clout—from a man she hadn’t even treated especially well. She refolded the paper. She didn’t know what to say.
“I appreciate this, Andy. Really. But I know Mac. He’d never accept a handout. He’s too proud.”
“It’s not a handout,” said Kyle. “It’s a hand, and you don’t have to tell him it came from me. That’s why I didn’t write the law firm’s name on that sheet of paper. You can just give him Bernie Chandler’s number and tell him you heard he’s a good attorney. Make up where you got it. Bernie won’t let on. He’s expecting Mac’s call.”
Georgia tucked the slip of paper into her black hip bag. She watched Kyle at the wheel now. With his classy clothes and blandly handsome features, he looked like he should be driving them out to the Hamptons in his father’s Mercedes instead of rumbling along the streets of Brooklyn in an old city-issued Chevy.
“I don’t get it,” she said finally. “With your polish and connections, you could’ve been anything, Andy. How come you joined the fire department?”
Kyle shrugged. “I always wanted to be a firefighter, I guess. Money and power never meant that much to me. The people in my life who had it always seemed to abuse it. I thought, being a firefighter, I could really help people.”
“So how come you switched over to the marshals? People see you with a gun, you stop being ‘helpful’ in most of their eyes.”
“The way I look at it,” said Kyle, “as a firefighter, I could only help one person at a time. As a marshal, I can help a whole community by putting the bad guys out of commission. It’s the big picture that matters to me, Georgia—not the individuals. They come and go.”
“Not all of them,” said Georgia, patting her bag and thinking about Kyle’s efforts to help Mac.
“No, Georgia.” Kyle’s brown eyes lingered on her now. “Not all of them.”
They were nearing Coney Island now. She saw the high-rise projects first. Their boxy façades covered in little rectangular windows loomed like a child’s building blocks over the southern tip of Brooklyn, blocking the ocean. About the only thing Georgia could see beyond them was the latticed steel of the old Parachute Jump rising two hundred and sixty feet in the air—an Eiffel Tower with a pizza on its head. Kyle fished around on the floor for his cell phone and punched in a number.
“Chief Brennan said I should call when we got down here,” Kyle explained.
He got the chief on the line as they turned off Stillwell Avenue onto Surf. Georgia stared through the windows at the massive crossbeams and loops of the Cyclone roller coaster and the Wonder Wheel Ferris wheel. She hadn’t been out this way since she and Rick were still together.
Kyle exchanged a bunch of “yes, chief’s with Brennan, then disconnected. “The chief says I should drop you off at the boardwalk near the pier and he’ll arrange for you to get a ride home later.”
“Did he tell you what I’m supposed to be doing out here?” asked Georgia.
They both caught sight of a truck from the FDNY’s Hazardous Materials Unit—“Mop and Glo” firefighters jokingly referred to it—parked at the foot of the boardwalk. On the beach beyond, men in head-to-toe white hazard suits walked the gray sand. The water that lapped around their feet had the rippled thickness of melted chocolate. When the sun hit it, it gave off a swirling sheen of rainbow colors. Gasoline. But with more of a bite. Jet fuel.
“Looks like whatever the chief brought you down here for,” said Kyle, “I’m pretty sure it’s not a beach party.”
24
This is no fifty-gallon boat leak, thought Georgia as she gazed past the yellow band of tape blocking off Coney Island beach. The water resembled a bottle of salad dressing someone had forgotten to shake. Waves poured over the sand leaving rings like chocolate milk.
Georgia’s eyes scanned the beach, settling on a collection of men. She watched the tall, gaunt figure with the sawdust-colored hair speaking angrily into his cell phone. Then she saw him gesture to the man with the snow-white hair she had also seen in Woodside. What’s going on here, she wondered?
She pushed her way through the crowd of onlookers to a cluster of men at the foot of the pier. Chief Brennan was among them. His silver hair was slick with sweat, and his nose
and cheeks had already turned the color of canned ham from the sun. “We’ve got problems,” he mumbled, taking her aside.
“A leak in the pipeline?” asked Georgia.
“Estimate of the spill is about five hundred gallons,” Brennan grunted. “Hazmat has managed to keep it contained largely to Coney Island’s beach. We’ve got people from Empire here now, repairing the broken valve by the pier.”
Brennan nodded to an unmarked camper on the street. “Gus Rankoff from the mayor’s office has asked for a face-to-face with you,” said Brennan. “He’s over there by the camper, talking to Chief Delaney.”
Rankoff, thought Georgia, squinting at the thickset man with the white hair talking to the FDNY’s chief of operations. Now she remembered where she’d seen him before. It was in a photo in Randy Carter’s newspaper article about the Jets football stadium. Rankoff was in charge of the project.
“Delaney and John Welcastle, Empire’s chairman, will also be in the meeting,” said Brennan, gesturing to the gaunt man on the beach.
“Chief?” Georgia asked. “Does this have to do with Robin Hood?”
Brennan gave her a stony look. “You’re an errand girl, Skeehan. Just remember that.”
He walked her to the camper, which was basically an air-conditioned conference room on wheels. There were charts and graphs of the Empire Pipeline on the walls. A personal computer stood across from a conference table. The blinds were drawn. Rankoff and Delaney were already inside. Welcastle joined them after a minute. From the men’s vague looks, Georgia knew right away that neither Rankoff nor Welcastle recalled meeting her the other day in Woodside. Georgia decided not to bring it up. They probably didn’t recognize her without her helmet.
“You have a very important job to do for this city,” Rankoff said, shaking Georgia’s hand and shooting her one of his dark, penetrating gazes.
“I’m not sure I know what’s going on,” said Georgia. She focused on Delaney now. She knew the chief of fire operations only by reputation, but he was a former rescue company captain, highly decorated. She’d trust him over any mayoral aide. But Delaney said nothing. Instead, Rankoff clapped his hands together.
“Marshal Skeehan,” he said. “We have a situation so grave that nothing we say here must leave this room—understood?”
“Yessir,” said Georgia. She had expected Delaney to be in charge of a pipeline leak emergency. She was surprised to see that the man calling the shots here appeared to be Rankoff. He seemed the least connected to the situation.
“The pipeline did not undergo a stress fracture. It was sabotaged,” said Rankoff. “The valve was blown apart, and there’s evidence that C-four plastic explosives were used. The mayor’s office was informed this morning that some kind of incident would happen today…We don’t know if this will be the only one—or the first of many.”
“Robin Hood,” muttered Georgia. Rankoff offered the slightest nod. Georgia felt as if chipped ice were flowing down her spine. If Robin Hood could sabotage an obscure valve on the Empire Pipeline this easily, then no part of it was safe. This time, it was a fuel spill that didn’t take anyone’s life. But next time?
“He’s a firefighter, isn’t he?” she asked, turning to Brennan and Delaney.
“A and E is looking into that possibility,” said Delaney. “But, Marshal, you must understand, we’re out of that end of the investigation.” Delaney’s posture was ramrod straight—there was no mistaking he was ex-military. But he had a firefighter’s sincerity in his deep voice. Georgia wondered if the rumors Hanlon had told her were true about his being considered for commissioner.
“Chief Delaney is telling you, Skeehan, that the progress of this investigation is not your concern,” Brennan growled.
Rankoff cleared his throat. He didn’t want to get involved in department politics right now. He fixed his gaze on Georgia. “Chief Delaney has obtained a computer simulation that I think will bring home just how serious this situation is.”
Rankoff nodded at the computer screen. Georgia and the others crowded around it. Delaney sat down at the computer, put a CD-ROM into the system and typed in some keys. Someone turned off the lights. Outside, Georgia could hear the rumble of trucks and the crash of the surf. But in here, she could hear only the beeps and clicks of a program powering up.
“I obtained this program from a scientist in the NYPD’s crime lab,” explained Delaney. Georgia didn’t have to be told that it was Ajay Singh. “I asked him to program a hypothetical pipeline explosion, using Empire’s twelve-inch pipe diameter, its pipeline pressure of twelve hundred pounds per square inch and its delivery rate of four thousand gallons of jet fuel a minute. We selected a typical neighborhood that the pipeline might run through—semi-industrial with light manufacturing and a smattering of small, residential buildings and retail stores.”
Delaney pressed Enter and a flat, two-dimensional representation of Delaney’s “typical” pipeline neighborhood came on the screen. It was like looking at an ant farm. There was the “above ground” section—the asphalt streets, the concrete warehouses, the low-lying masonry-sided apartment buildings and wood-shingled row houses. And there was the “below ground” section—a green cylinder representing the pipeline. A random scattering of cars, trucks, pedestrians and streetlights had also been programmed into the setting. A box in the upper-right-hand corner showed time, wind speed and temperature. Delaney had programmed a light wind—five miles per hour—and an ambient temperature of seventy-five. Wishful thinking. It was easily twenty degrees higher today.
“I asked the crime lab to make the explosion equivalent to about a stick of dynamite, just large enough to cause a failure of the pipeline,” Delaney said.
He clicked Run. Immediately, an amoeba-like mass—in shades of orange and yellow representing temperature variations—appeared on the green line below the ground.
“That’s the ignition of the jet fuel,” explained Delaney.
It took only a fraction of a second for it to rip through the asphalt, causing a partial collapse of the street above. But within the first minute, everything changed. Cars caught fire and exploded. Streetlights and windows shattered. The tar-paper roofs of row houses and warehouses lit up like candles on a cake, each feeding the next. The cartoon figures lay dead—the computer not able to simulate the horrible burns that would surely cover their bodies.
Georgia looked at the time and temperature gauge in the corner of the screen. Already the temperature of the flames within a hundred yards of the pipeline failure was almost two thousand degrees—as hot as a blast furnace. But that was only the beginning of the destruction. Every new burn fed the vortex of gases and heat. Wood-shingled buildings a half block away turned bright red on the screen, indicating they had ignited spontaneously from the radiant heat. Georgia watched as pools of fuel oozed like blood along the pavement. Above the pools flickered a wave of orange.
“Is that right?” asked Georgia. According to the simulation, the flames were averaging a height of about a hundred and thirty feet—as high as a thirteen-story building—more than twice the height of the buildings in the simulation.
“That’s average flame height,” Delaney explained. “Dr. Singh at the crime lab said some flame tips could reach a height in excess of twenty stories.”
“How far would the destruction extend?” asked Brennan.
“The spill would fan out in a V shape over an area roughly the size of a football field,” said Delaney. “But the heat damage could extend to twice that area. With something as tenacious as jet-base fuel, a ten-block cone of destruction is not out of the question.”
Georgia watched as the minutes ticked past. Flaming fuel pooled in sidewalk gutters beyond the seat of the explosion. It rolled under cars and ignited them. The vapors found their way into the basements of buildings, presumably making contact with pilot lights from burners and exploding out windows. Temperature spikes climbed to over twenty-one hundred degrees. Georgia knew that that kind of heat could melt aluminum
window frames, brass doorknobs and the asphalt shingles off of roofs. Even surrounding streets showed patches of radiant heat in excess of five hundred degrees. No one could survive that.
“The crime lab ran the simulation for twenty minutes,” Delaney told them. “When it was over, there was nothing left but the brick outer shells of some of the buildings and the pavements. Everything else was gone.”
Delaney shut down the program and switched on the lights. Rankoff’s dark eyes flashed at Welcastle. He stared at Welcastle for a moment until Welcastle pursed his thin lips and looked away.
“You can see why we’ve been urging Empire to do whatever is necessary to prevent this disaster from taking place,” said Rankoff. “The city can’t afford the psychological toll right now—never mind the physical.”
“I don’t understand,” said Georgia, looking from Welcastle to Rankoff. “Is the city urging Empire to pay?” An extortion scheme using explosives would normally be handled in cooperation with the Feds, in this case, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. “Wouldn’t you want the ATF to…?”
“—Marshal,” Brennan growled, “you are not here to render opinions on the mayor’s decisions. You are simply here to receive instructions.”
“As Chief Delaney has so aptly demonstrated,” said Rankoff, rapping a fleshy knuckle on the computer video monitor, “a fire in the pipeline would be an unacceptable risk at this time. The mayor has determined that he can’t afford such a risk. There are projects that could be negatively impacted by the kind of public situation that might occur by calling in the ATF.”
“I gather this has never happened before,” said Georgia.
“In forty years of supplying petroleum products to New York City, we’ve only had one leak,” Welcastle explained.
“When was that?”
“About ten years ago. In Staten Island. It took us a few days to repair back then—our leak-detection system wasn’t as advanced. Now, we’d have the line instantly shut down and the leak fixed within a couple of hours.”
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