Day One: A Novel (10 page)

Jesus Christ.
How could that be possible? Terrorists had blown up the George Washington? For what reason? Hawke couldn’t imagine what might be happening behind the walls of the building they were hiding in, what kind of scale they were actually facing—and what might be coming next.

This was huge, a story to end all others, and he was one step away from it.

Weller
. Weller had let him in for a reason, and the things the man had said this morning made it seem as if he’d known something was coming. Hawke wanted to shake the man until something came loose. His wind was up, he was hungry to chase leads, and he hated himself for thinking about that instead of the reality of their situation. The city was falling apart around them, and his wife and son and unborn child could be in terrible danger. But even as Hawke’s skin crawled with the need to run, to fight, to get home, his instincts made him want to figure out the answers and get at the truth.

The helicopter, the explosions, the madness on the streets. The SUV, and the OnStar voice recognizing him. And Weller’s invitation in his office, like a ticket to the dance. Hawke had the pieces in his hands, and now he wanted to fit them together.

You use technology to tell a story. I want you to tell a story now. The biggest one of your life.

“Gone?” Vasco stared at Hanscomb, shook her once and then released her and slowly stepped back, stunned. “The GW? That can’t be right.”

She nodded, her face crumpling again. “The radio said it was a coordinated attack. All the bridges—some kind of missile strike or other weapons, I don’t know—at the same time…” Something like a whimper escaped her mouth before she bit it back. “They said it was happening all over the place. Wall Street is a war zone. People are trapped and panicking, going at each other like animals. My husband, he’s never even had a fistfight in his life. What is he going to
do
?”

“All the bridges?” Young said. She had remained sitting next to Weller on the floor. He was still unconscious, head leaning against her shoulder. “Are you sure?”

Sarah Hanscomb nodded. “That’s what they said, before the broadcast stopped. Then it was just a recorded loop, telling people to get to the security checkpoints.” She wiped at her running nose, smearing more makeup. “All those people on the bridge, there were hundreds of cars.…”

“You tried to run us over,” Vasco said. Hawke could feel the violence rising up in him, the heat and sweat and crackling energy. “I saw you swerve right into us.”

“I didn’t, the car just jumped, I’m telling you—it went crazy, all my lights going on, tire pressure, engine, oil light, and then … I—I wasn’t even touching the wheel!”

Vasco was on the verge of losing control. He moved back toward Hanscomb, and Hawke stepped in between them before anything else could happen, putting a hand gently on Vasco’s chest, just enough to stop his momentum. The touch released something in the other man and he grabbed Hawke by the collar with both fists, his arms trembling and rigid, his mangled finger bleeding again and wetting Hawke’s shirt.

“What the fuck are you doing, huh?” Vasco said. “Protecting this crazy bitch?”

“Don’t,” Hawke said. “We all just want to get home—”

“My wife is in Jersey,” Vasco said, his eyes shimmering now, and Hawke could see his panic about to spill over, could smell it on his breath and skin. “I went through this before, September eleventh. My brother was in the city; I was home with my mother. It took him six hours to get back. I had to watch her waiting.… I thought he was dead. I can’t do that to my wife, you understand? I can’t.”

“I get it,” Hawke said. His legs nearly buckled as an image of Thomas as a baby flashed through his head, little round face all squeezed up and red, a squalling mass of infant fury. “I have a family there, too. I know how you feel, but we have to stick together here, because one wrong move could get us killed.”

“Talking to this crazy…,” Vasco said. He shook his head. “We should throw her back out there to fend for herself. Hell, I don’t even know you people. No job is worth this. Who the fuck are you to tell me what to do, anyway?”

Hawke glanced at Hanscomb, who made another small, helpless noise. “Look, it doesn’t matter how we all got here,” he said. “What’s important is what we do now. We need to put our heads together.”

Vasco stared at him, looked at Hanscomb. “Security checkpoints,” he said. “You said they were on the radio. Where’s the closest one?”

Hanscomb nodded. “Yes, right, there was … I don’t know; I’m trying to…” She started trembling, tears starting again, glancing back and forth between them.

“Lenox Hill Hospital,” Hawke said. “I heard it on the radio. That’s the closest one to where we are.”

Vasco looked at Hanscomb, who nodded again. “I … think that’s right,” she said. “It’s hard to remember. Everything was so crazy.”

A noise from behind the closed inner doors made them all freeze. Someone was inside.

Before Hawke could say a word, Price turned the handles, swinging the doors wide.

*   *   *

The main sanctuary was deep and filled with flitting shadows, paneled in dark wood and carpeted with a deep red Berber, with rows of simple pews marching in straight lines toward the reader’s platform and curtain that hid the Torah Ark. Low ropes ran along inset portions of the walls, and narrow vertical lines of windows let in a little watery light. Candles flickered from candelabras on both sides of the bimah, where a group of people had gathered.

A man was talking in a low voice; Hawke thought it might be a reading from the Torah. The man wore a tallith draped over his shoulders. None of the people acknowledged their arrival.

Vasco spread his arms out and walked up the aisle. “Hello!” he shouted. “You know what’s going on outside? Wake up, people. We’re all looking down the barrel of a gun! You want to wait around until it goes off?”

The words were explosive in the quiet room. But the small group at the front didn’t seem to react, the man in front of them still droning on as if nobody had spoken. Vasco continued up the aisle, wheeling around and walking backward for a moment, then spinning to face the front again, arms still spread wide: a welcoming, open gesture sharply at odds with the barely contained rage held in his body and quivering voice.

“
Hey,
” Vasco said. “Are you people deaf? Or just stupid?”

He’s going to lose it,
Hawke thought again, and he wondered how it would come, an all-out lumbering assault or a more carefully designed, surgical attack.

A man stepped abruptly in front of Vasco just before he reached the front. The man was short, bespectacled, wearing a
kippah,
his olive skin partially hidden by a thick black beard. He held a copy of the Torah in his hands.
Uh-oh,
Hawke thought.

“I’m sorry, this is a house of God,” the man said. “Please be respectful—”

Vasco didn’t even slow down, just shouldered past the man on his way to the bimah. “Who’s in charge?” Vasco said, addressing the man in the tallith. “You? This your temple?”

Hawke moved down the aisle, following the action. He saw the small group part and turn as the man sighed slightly, set down his readings and finally looked at Vasco, like a patient father at an interrupting child. Candlelight flickered across his face. “I have come here to welcome anyone who feels the need to pray,” he said. “The house of worship belongs to no one except God.”

“In case you haven’t noticed,” Vasco said, gesturing toward the front doors, “while you’re all sitting in here staring at the Torah, the world is going to hell, and that includes this place. You might want to consider finding an escape route.”

“God will decide who lives and who dies,” the rabbi said. He was taller than the rest, in his fifties, with salt-and-pepper hair cropped short and a close beard streaked with gray. His voice was calm, but it held a commanding power that filled the large room.

“When Gog Umagog arrives,” the man who had stepped in front of Vasco said, “we must repent and pray and release our fears, give ourselves to God. Redemption will come to those who do.”

“Gog
what
?” Vasco was smiling now, but his face looked pained, like he was humoring a mental deficient.

“The war to end all wars,” the rabbi said. “Armageddon. The end of days.” Several others murmured in agreement. “The Ba’al Shem Tov teaches us to believe with complete faith, so that we may find joy and peace. Our redemption is at hand along with the coming of the Mashiach, and we shall be received with kindness and mercy.”

As Vasco got closer, the men around the reader’s platform shifted to form a half circle in front of the rabbi. Hawke sensed it was done passively, purely for protection, but it punctuated the divide between the two groups.
Us against them.

Vasco stopped suddenly, eyeing them all as if discovering a threat. “Armageddon, huh?” he said. “The Mashiach? I thought Jews didn’t believe in Jesus.”

The murmuring grew louder, several others shaking their heads, but the rabbi didn’t seem to mind. “Our Mashiach is not the Christian Messiah,” he said. “But the coming of a savior, one who will lead the way to heaven for those who believe, is understood by anyone who has heard the power of prayer, who understands redemption.” He looked around at the people gathered before him. “That time has come.”

“Give it a rest,” Vasco said. “We’re dealing with terrorists, and people are dying outside, and they’re going to start dying in here.”

“Our world has finally reached its end, our hubris, our pursuit of power before God, our worship of progress at any cost.”

“What the hell are you talking about—”

“You haven’t seen what’s happening out there? You haven’t noticed that the things attacking us are all of our own making? They are using our own creations against us.”

“Whatever’s going on has human beings on the other end of it, I can promise you that,” Vasco said. “They want to scare the shit out of us; that’s the goal. We need a plan to get out of the city, find some open space.”

The rabbi studied him for a moment, as if considering whether to squash a bug under his foot. “There is no plan,” he said. “Not one for
us
to make, anyway.”

“What about the people who are still out there?” Sarah Hanscomb had come up behind Vasco and Hawke. “My husband is a good man,” she said. Hawke thought of Bluetooth and his uncle who had skipped the country after destroying Hawke’s parents’ lives, leaving nothing but ruin in his wake. “He … he might be hurt; he might need help. Don’t you have anyone? Loved ones who are missing?”

She looked around at the people watching her. The rabbi gestured for her to move aside. “Are you hurt?” he said, looking at Price, who had remained near the door. In the shadows, the blood on his shirt looked black.

“I’m okay,” Price said. “The friend who bled out all over me is not.”

A woman who stood at the front, her head covered, her body draped in a modest floor-length dress, spoke up. “Maybe we should talk about this,” she said, her voice soft but clear. “They may have news. There’s no harm in that.”

For the first time, the rabbi seemed off balance. “No harm?” he said, his voice cracking slightly. “Ana, you surprise me. There is great harm in letting in those who come from a dying world, who bring that stain with them. If they enter our sacred space with no fear, if they embrace their faith and accept the Mashiach with kindness, they are welcome. If not…” He waved a hand toward the door. “They must leave us.”

“We’re not going anywhere,” Vasco said.

“What about Mother?” the woman said, ignoring him. She was younger than Hawke first thought, as he caught a glimpse of her face. Maybe late teens or early twenties.

“She made her choice,” the rabbi said. His slightly furrowed brow had relaxed again, smooth and clear.

“We don’t
know
that,” the woman said, edging closer to him. “She wasn’t home. She didn’t know where we’d go—”

“Enough, Ana.” The man looked at her, and the woman stopped speaking abruptly. “These people don’t need to hear about our personal lives. None of that’s important anymore.” He gestured at the open space, toward the outside walls. “It doesn’t matter where we are when the time comes. What matters is our expression of faith and our willingness to accept God’s will.”

“This isn’t your building,” Vasco said. He looked like someone who had just figured out a riddle. “You’re squatters, am I right? Came here and took over, just like that?”

The rabbi sighed again, like he had before, the sound of a patient person dealing with someone unstable, a nuisance he’d rather forget. “This house belongs to no man,” he said. “Now, if you’ll allow us to return to our prayers—”

“We’ve got as much a right to be here as you do,” Vasco said. “Who the fuck are you to say otherwise?”

The rabbi stared daggers, and Hawke saw something behind his calm demeanor, something unbalanced and furious—a man not used to having his authority questioned, and one who might react in unexpected ways.

“Profanity has no place in a house of God,” he said. “Please leave us to our prayers.”

As Vasco shook his head, smiling again in a way that was anything but friendly, Hawke’s cell phone chirped in his pocket. Momentarily stunned, he stepped away and slipped back toward the entrance to the building and into a deeper darkness, passing Young and Weller, who seemed to be coming around. The phone had been bricked back in the Conn.ect office, completely dead. How could it be back on now? Hawke turned his back to the others and dug it out with trembling fingers, hoping for something from Robin, anything that would reassure him she was okay.

The message was from Rick, the words bright and clear on his screen:
I LIED. I AM ADMIRAL DOE.

CHAPTER TWELVE

12:10 P.M.

HAWKE STARED AT THE PHONE
, his head spinning. How had it booted itself up again and come to life? He was certain it had been bricked. Devices didn’t just reanimate themselves.

Maybe Rick had done it somehow, sent Hawke a worm that worked in this way. But why would Rick text him now, on an unsecured line, to admit to something like this? During their chat session Rick had begged Hawke to help him find out who Doe was and claimed he was being set up.