A bomb was technically a police operation, but since the bomb was in the Empire Pipeline and the FDNY had jurisdiction over the pipelines, the ultimate authority fell to Acting Commissioner Edward Delaney. He was standing in the incident command post now, surrounded by dark blue uniforms from both departments, as well as a score of men in suits—engineers from Empire and the city’s Department of Environmental Protection.
For an operation that was supposed to have been quiet, things had spun hopelessly out of control. The engineers were doing some calculations, and it turned out Marenko was right about the fire’s potential. If the pipeline exploded, the residual jet fuel in the line would cause a fire intense enough to spark explosions of the methane at the sewage plant and the storage tanks of gasoline across the street. This, coupled with the seventeen million gallons of gasoline beneath the streets, could generate enough radiant heat in the surrounding area to cause the wood frames and tar-paper roofs on nearby houses to ignite spontaneously and burst into flame—a flashover of sorts on the largest possible scale.
Delaney listened to the engineers and experts, then got on a special red phone linked directly to Mayor Ortaglia. Georgia saw him nodding and speaking gravely into the receiver. His conversation was interrupted by a transmission on the radio. Marenko and Tyrell Davies were inside the sewer line, but they’d come to a fork in the tunnel and they weren’t sure which way to go. Their voices crackled like astronauts in space. They were so near, yet if anything happened, there would be no way to get them out quickly. The engineers and brass from both departments debated whether Marenko and Davies should go left or right. They were at a crossroads. A cross.
“Maybe it’s the cross,” Georgia suggested. “The cross Connie was talking about.”
Brennan leaned over the microphone and relayed the message to Marenko.
“Tell him to look for some sort of marking or a disturbance around the bricks,” said Georgia. “Connie had to go back probably at least once to set the timer. She would’ve marked the spot.”
A minute or two later, Marenko’s voice crackled on the line. “I think we’ve found it. There’s a red spray-painted marking here. It looks kind of like a Maltese Cross.”
A cross. A Maltese Cross. In honor of Bear. It had to be Connie’s. Davies’s voice came on the line now, relaying some of the specifics. The young officer had removed some bricks and could see the bomb. “It’s a shaped charge, all right,” he radioed. But given the tight, high angle of the device and limited access to the tunnel, there was no way to bring a robot down to disarm it. Defusing it by hand was equally unlikely, he explained. The wires were rigged in such a way that excessive handling would likely set it off. “If we could separate the fuse from the blasting cap, we could disarm it. But we can’t do that by hand,” he told Delaney.
“All right,” said the acting commissioner. He looked at the clock. It was 11:47 A.M. “You can’t diffuse it, and you’ve got thirteen minutes to get out of the tunnel. Can you make it?”
A few seconds passed before Davies came back on the line. “Chief?” he said. “Marshal Marenko says these tunnels still hook up to the sewage plant. If the plant could deliver a major release of water through the tunnel, the force of the flow might be able to blow the bomb out of the tunnel and into the Newtown Creek. Even if it didn’t disarm the device, it would allow it to detonate in a safer area. It’s a long shot, but Marenko thinks it might work.”
“Ten-four. Good work,” said Delaney. “Begin evacuation. I’ll see what can be done.” Delaney grabbed his cell phone and began speaking to the engineers. A smile of relief broke across his face. He shot Georgia a thumbs-up. Marenko was right. The plant could release the water as soon as the men were clear of the tunnel. It was 11:50 A.M.—ten minutes to detonation. All Marenko and Tyrell Davies had to do now was get out of the tunnel.
Delaney was still on a cell phone with the engineers when an aide walked up to him and handed him the red phone from the mayor again. Delaney put the engineers on hold and picked up with the mayor. Georgia assumed it was a routine update, but something in Delaney’s face stopped her. She saw the acting commissioner’s eyebrows knit together and his face become chalklike in color. A look of disbelief spread across his sharp, well-chiseled features. He shook his head and turned his back. Georgia crept closer. She could hear Delaney’s end of the conversation now.
“But sir, the two men…If I do that…Sir, I know you want to keep the pipeline intact, but I believe we can go up to the moment of detonation before…I know that’s more of a risk, but…” Finally, Delaney exhaled and said simply, “Yes, Mr. Mayor. Yes, I understand. I will take care of it.”
He turned back to the command post and handed the phone to an aide. He didn’t know Georgia had been watching him, but he caught her scrutiny now. He turned his ashen face toward her and swallowed hard.
“Chief…Commissioner…You can’t flood that tunnel yet.” She spoke the words so softly, they sounded like a prayer. “Those men are still in there.”
Delaney held her eyes for only a moment, then turned and shook his head. “I’m sorry, Skeehan. I have my orders.”
53
Georgia did something she never thought she’d ever do. She put a firm, tight grip on the arm of the most powerful man in the FDNY.
“Five minutes, Chief. That’s all it will take. Those men will be out in five minutes.”
“The bomb could detonate before then, Skeehan. The mayor’s just thinking about the risk to the community.”
“He’s thinking about the negative publicity that could hurt his fucking stadium plans—that’s what he’s thinking about. Damn it, you know that. You’ve known it all along. No one can be certain if flooding the pipeline will stop that bomb. It’s a gamble either way. At least spare those men’s lives.”
“I can’t,” said Delaney. He shook her hand off. “I have my orders.”
“Orders?” asked Georgia. She no longer cared what happened to her after this. If Delaney let Mac and this young cop die, they could bury the FDNY for all she cared. She was beginning to understand how Connie must have felt. “You followed those goddamn orders almost two decades ago and nineteen men died because of it.”
“I didn’t know,” he insisted.
“But you know now. And what have you done about it, huh? What are you doing about this? Is the brass ring worth that much to you that you’d turn your back on your own people?” she asked.
“I’m doing what I have to in the interests of the department.” He reached for his radio to order the water turned on. Georgia’s heart felt like a fist in her chest.
“The department,” she said with disgust. “What the hell is the department? An insignia on a letterhead? A bunch of big shiny red trucks and blue uniforms? It’s the people, sir. It’s the men and women who spill their guts for this job, who give their lives for strangers, who run into the buildings everyone else is running out of. And they don’t do it because someone orders them to. You can’t order courage. Or loyalty. Or pride. Those things come from the heart. What’s in your heart? Is it a lousy stadium? The mayor’s popularity ratings? The next fiscal quarter?”
Delaney’s hand froze around the radio. Georgia looked down at it now. It was a large, solid hand—a firefighter’s hand. He wore a gold fire department ring on his third finger. The job was his life—had been his life for perhaps thirty years. She could see those years flashing past his eyes now—cutting his teeth as a firefighter in Brooklyn, testing his mettle as a rescue captain. Helping his brothers—watching their backs in building collapses, keeping guys like Seamus Hanlon sober. He hadn’t done all that for some politician’s popularity ratings. Slowly, Delaney put his radio back in the jacket pocket of his suit and looked at his watch. It was 11:54 A.M.
“Take one firefighter with you to help open the manhole covers,” he muttered hoarsely. “I’ll give you four minutes to get Marenko and Davies out of the tunnel. After that, the water gets turned on.”
“Yes Chief…e
r, Commissioner,” Georgia corrected herself.
“After this?” He shook his head. “Not likely.”
Lieutenant Prager from Ladder One-twenty-one volunteered to go with Georgia. He brought along a halligan to pry off the manhole covers, and a life rope, in case they had to hoist the men up. He knew what they were up against. So did Marenko and Davies. It would take at least ten minutes to get out the way they had gone in. Georgia and Prager would have to try to reach them via some other manhole cover—many of which were welded shut to prevent people from getting into the tunnels. The men couldn’t open the manhole covers from below and they had only a flashlight to guide them through the darkness, so they couldn’t gauge distances.
“Mac, do you have any idea where you are?” Georgia radioed Marenko now.
“We came in at Provost Street and Greenpoint Avenue,” said Marenko, his voice crackling over the receiver. “My flashlight’s picking up runoff pipes from the sewage plant, so my guess is we’re somewhere between One-hundred-and-ninety-fifth Street and Two-hundred-and-twenty-first Street, ’cause those are the blocks that span the plant.”
“Can you see any manhole covers above you? Maybe if you bang on one, we can find you.”
Prager called out the time. Eleven fifty-five. They had three minutes. Georgia could feel the noonday August sun beating on her back with almost physical force. Even if they got the men to the surface, there was no guarantee that flooding the sewer would deactivate—or even move—the device. They could all die. The whole neighborhood could be torn apart. Greenpoint would be nothing but a crater on the northern tip of Brooklyn.
“There’s a manhole cover above us,” Marenko called out over the radio. “The ladder’s rusted out, so we can’t climb up and bang on it. Tyrell’s throwing loose mortar at it.”
Georgia and Prager walked the potholed pavement. The stench of gasoline hung low in the air. In the distance, Georgia could make out traffic being rerouted off the Pulaski Bridge. And then she heard it. A sound like uncooked rice on tin foil. Stones. Voices. She and Prager looked down at the manhole cover before them. Prager took his halligan and banged on it now.
“Mac—you hear that?” asked Georgia.
“Loud and clear,” Marenko answered. “You’re right above us. We’ll need a rope. The ladder down here is busted.”
“Hang on. We’re coming,” she said.
Prager shoved the curved end of the halligan underneath the manhole cover and pried it off while Georgia grabbed his rescue rope and searched for something strong on the street to tie the end of the rope onto. She settled on the steel base of a street lamp and tied a rescue knot around it. Then she reeled the rope over to the open manhole and peered down in the darkness. Davies and Marenko were at the bottom.
“Tyrell first,” said Marenko. Davies started to object, but Marenko pushed the rope into his hands. Davies grabbed hold and began trying to climb. But his heavy Kevlar bomb gear made it impossible. They both started stripping it off.
“Come on,” Georgia pleaded.
“Delaney to Skeehan,” said a voice on the radio. “It’s eleven fifty-six. I can’t hold off much longer.”
“Chief—two more minutes. You promised,” said Georgia. She heard Delaney’s stark command over the radio now: “Commence flooding of the tunnel at eleven fifty-eight.”
She had two minutes to save Marenko. Just two minutes. After that, water would gush through the tunnel with the same speed and force as a forty-mile-per-hour car. Marenko and Davies wouldn’t stand a chance. The impact would knock them down and sweep them away. They would drown. Then again, that might be preferable. If flooding the tunnel didn’t defuse the bomb, the whole space would act as an airshaft. As soon as the shaped charge exploded the pipeline, a fireball would race through that tunnel even faster than the surge of water. Marenko and Davies would be incinerated. And shortly after, they all would be.
Davies grabbed the rope a second time and hoisted himself to the surface. Marenko stood at the bottom, steeling himself to wait until Davies had completed the climb. He could doom them both if he added his weight at this precarious angle.
“Come on, Mac,” Georgia pleaded. Marenko grabbed the rope and began to climb while Georgia, Prager and Davies began to pull him up. He had almost reached the surface when a roar like a jet plane engine rushed beneath them. It was the roar of thousands of gallons of water, flooding the tunnel. Georgia grabbed Marenko’s arm so tight, she dug her fingernails into his flesh. Prager grabbed the other arm and Davies tried to reach under Marenko’s armpits to yank him up. But the force of the water was so powerful, it seemed to suck him from her grip. She clawed at his arm.
“No, Mac. No!” she cried. Not after all they’d been through. She couldn’t lose him now. Not now. Not this way. Yet holding onto him was like wrestling with a fish on a line. He was wet and slippery. She’d pull him toward her a little, and the water would suck him right back down. But she must have pulled just enough because Davies suddenly was able to reach under Marenko’s armpits and yank him out of the manhole.
The four of them lay on the street, gasping from the effort. They were all wet, but Marenko was soaked head to toe. He tried to get to his feet, yet seemed stuck on his knees. He was shaking badly. Davies and Prager pulled him to his feet. It was noon, and they were on ground zero. No one spoke. The two men each took one of Marenko’s arms and half dragged him two blocks down the street, behind the cordon of engine companies readying themselves for the fire.
They had taken only a few steps when a rumble sounded in the direction of the Newtown Creek. Georgia turned her head just in time to catch the explosion. A block and a half away, a thirty-foot plume of water rose from the creek. It exploded out of the black water like a geyser. It was probably the whitest thing the creek had produced in thirty years. Droplets of oily water rained down everywhere and an eerie silence descended on the command post. Everyone seemed to be taking a moment with the enormity of the blast. Everyone seemed to be bracing themselves for what—if anything—would happen next.
Georgia and the men hobbled over to the command post where ambulances were waiting to treat them.
The crowds and reporters had been pushed back ten blocks. Marenko sat on the edge of an ambulance with a blanket over his shoulders. His T-shirt and sweatpants were dripping. When he moved his feet, his sneakers sloshed. Georgia sat next to him. He reached for her hand and held it tight. His fingers shook.
“It’s okay,” Georgia whispered. “I think we’re safe now.”
“I’m just cold,” he mumbled. It wasn’t true, and they both knew it. Fear is the ghost no firefighter can ever afford to acknowledge. Georgia rubbed the blanket around his shoulders.
“You’ll be warm soon,” she promised. Marenko nodded gratefully. They both knew what she meant: You don’t need to be scared anymore.
“I was wrong,” he choked out in a rasping voice.
“About what?”
“I did need you back there,” he said, then added, more softly, “I do need you.”
The plant had enough clean water to flood the tunnel for ten minutes. They waited as noon passed. Five minutes. Then ten. The water stopped. The bomb squad began to suit up to fish the fragments of Connie’s exploded bomb out of the creek. There would be no more destruction. Cheers went up when the news came over the radio. Georgia broke away from Marenko for a moment and went over to Delaney.
“Chief, that is, Commissioner…I want to thank you.”
Delaney shook his head. “Forget about it.”
“I know you took a risk.”
When he looked at her, there was a glassy sheen in his eyes. “Maybe I haven’t been taking enough.” Then he turned on his heel and walked back into the throng of men who, sensing the crisis had passed, were now talking procedures and paperwork and protocols.
Georgia watched them with a sense of detachment. Already, the panic of the moment was subsiding into a sea of reports and cold, dispassionate phrases that would cover over the mom
ent when Mac Marenko and Tyrell Davies were ready to give up their lives so that others might live. There might be a medal and a ceremony at City Hall, complete with a photo op of them shaking hands with the mayor. Probably Georgia and Lieutenant Prager would be included as well. But the boldness of the act would be buried in bureaucratic blather, in clinical procedure.
Ortaglia would never bring up his premature orders to flood the tunnel. Delaney would never mention that he had overridden the mayor’s command and, in so doing, spared two men’s lives and possibly cost himself the commissioner’s appointment. But Georgia would never forget.
“I’m going to go see my grandmother when this operation is wrapped up,” said Marenko. “Want to come?”
“Sure,” said Georgia. She laughed as she looked down at their clothes. “Seems like we’re always showing up at her door soaked and desperate.”
“Hey, this way, she’ll feed us.”
54
The following Friday, the mayor held a special medal presentation at the Blue Room in City Hall. Marenko, Tyrell Davies, Lieutenant Prager and Georgia got Class One medals, the highest-level honors that can be bestowed on a cop or firefighter.
City Hall and the police and fire departments were anxious to award the medals—anything to detract from the embarrassment of the fallout over the pipeline bomb. The newspapers were having a field day. They couldn’t decide which angle to pursue first. Already, they were lionizing Franco Ortaglia for his “courageous, decisive” actions in thwarting a pipeline disaster. He always did have good PR people. But the media was equally intrigued by Andy Kyle. Terrified of prison, he’d already cut a deal to testify against his father and Rankoff in exchange for leniency. It was likely neither he nor his father would do any jail time, though Jerome Kyle would be financially ruined.
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