Wednesday's Child (25 page)

Henry had heard the end of that exchange.  He ran out the front, looking for the lead cop, as the whine of the helicopter engine increased in pitch.  I saw Henry gesticulating, and the cop spoke into his phone.  Just then, the helicopter left the ground, and took off to the south, climbing to a few hundred feet.  He’d be over the Atlantic in a couple of minutes.  Henry slapped his phone against his leg in frustration and started back toward the building.

“How can I get hold of his flight plan?” I asked the attendant.

“Helicopters don’t have to file them,” she said.  “If it’s not a scheduled service like ours, only the pilot and the passengers know where they’re going.”

Henry ran up just in time to hear her answer, again. 

“We’re fucked!” he said.

The cop arrived a few seconds later, still talking into his radio.

“I’m talking to the tower,” he said.  “They’re tracking him on radar.  I told them there’s a suspected terrorist on board and requested that they order the pilot back to the pad.” 

We waited, feeling precious seconds tick by.  The helicopter would have reached its maximum speed by now.  It could be almost three miles further away every minute we waited.  Given the upside-down-wedding-cake shape of the radar controlled airspace around the airport, if they stayed close to the water, they’d soon be out of radar range.  The cop’s radio squawked.

“Shit!  ATC says the pilot turned off his transponder.”

“What the fuck does that mean?” Henry demanded.

The cop handed him the phone, setting it on speaker so we could all hear it, and Henry asked the same question to the Air Traffic Control supervisor, in different words.

“It means we can’t see him on our screens any more,” the controller replied.  “The radar’s still tracking him and continuously recording his position, but we don’t see raw radar data on our screens.  We only see computer images based on the transponder signals.”

“You mean we can’t track them?”  Henry sounded like he was about to blow.

“Not in real time.  We’ll have to pull the radar tapes and review them later.  It’ll take a while.”

I checked my watch.  It was 12:06.  The helicopter had lifted off at 11:57.  It was more than twenty miles away, by now, and invisible to JFK’s radar.

Henry was still on the radio. “What do we do now?” he said, then stopped to listen. “How long will that take?  Okay, I’ll send an official request as soon as I’m back in the office.”

41.

Wednesday afternoon, we were all in the Agency conference room.

“Would it be fair to say harm has been done now?” William glared at me.

“I still don’t see what there is to gain by blasting the analyst at Langley.”

“I agree with Dylan,” Henry said.  “It’s not worth wasting time on. Besides, our first priority is fixing this.”  Henry didn’t take failure well.

William had arranged a conference call with the Port Authority and the Federal Aviation Administration office at JFK.  “How the hell is this possible?” he demanded, when the call was connected.  “Are you telling me a helicopter pilot can do anything he wants to and there’s no way to hold him accountable?”

“Those are two different issues,” said Philip Patella, the FAA rep.  “There’ll be consequences when we catch up with him.  We can pull his pilot’s license, fine him, or prosecute him if he did anything criminal.  But there’s no way to stop a pilot from doing something if he’s willing to take the heat afterward.  That’s the way most regulatory violations are handled.”

“What about post-nine-eleven flight restrictions?” William demanded.

“They generally only apply to scheduled airlines and cargo carriers.  General aviation and helicopters are still relatively unregulated.”

“You mean a terrorist could load a helicopter or a small plane with explosives and fly it into any target he chose?”

“Pretty much, unless he entered a heavily-patrolled area like lower Manhattan, and we intercepted him first.”

“Unbelievable!” William snorted. 

“We propose new regs every year,” Patella said, “but we’ve had anti-regulatory Administrations since 1981. They talk a lot about domestic security but don’t do much.”

Henry made eye contact with William, who quickly deferred to him. 

“It’s more important that we find these guys than point fingers,” Henry said. 

Rafe Rodriguez, the Port Authority supervisor at JFK, spoke for the first time.  “I talked to the tower a few minutes ago.  You have a couple of problems.  We ran the FAA identification number the pilot gave us.  It was phony.”

“Phony?”  William was still livid from before.  “You mean a helicopter landed and took off from the JFK heliport with a faked ID and no one checked?”

We heard an intake of someone’s breath on the line.  Then, Rodriguez said, “ID verification isn’t standard procedure.  The tower’s a busy place.  Its job is traffic control, preventing mid-air collisions, getting everyone safely into the air and on the ground.  We can’t have our people distracted with non-essential issues.”

“He’s right,” Patella said.  “Providing a false aircraft ID is a law enforcement matter.  The tower doesn’t have enough staff to handle things like that.”

“So anyone could land and take off and you wouldn’t know?”

“Airliners, freight carriers, and corporate aircraft have no reason to misrepresent themselves.  Neither do scheduled helicopters, charters, or law enforcement.  This sort of thing doesn’t come up much.”

“Most drivers don’t hand cops fake driver’s licenses,” William retorted.  “When they do, they’re nailed on the spot.”

Rodriguez said, “Look, we’re trying to help you track this guy.  I don’t have time to argue about FAA policy.”

“Right,” Henry said.  “We can address those concerns later.  What’ve you got?”

“The pilot turned off his transponder fifteen miles off shore.  He could have flown in any direction, but chances are he went east to avoid air patrols.  They completely blanket the area between JFK, La Guardia, and Newark, the harbor, and the financial district.”

“Does that mean we can’t identify his flight path?” Henry asked.

“Theoretically, we can track him from radar images, but it’ll be difficult. Every experienced pilot knows where the controlled airspace boundaries are.  If he was trying to avoid detection, he’d have been invisible for most of the flight.”

“So once they’re off JFK’s radar, we’re dead?”  William broke in.

“Not necessarily.  There are radars all around New York City.  If their destination is in the metropolitan area, they’re bound to fly close enough to be seen by some of them.  The question is whether we can identify the right images from different radar records and piece them together.  And since we don’t know his ultimate destination, we’ll have to collect tapes from every radar in the area and get someone to analyze them.”

“How long will that take?” Henry asked.

“Could be several days, and there’s no guarantee we’ll find anything useful.”

“All right, thanks,” William said, seeing no point in antagonizing them further.  “I’m assigning our in-house science geek as liaison with you.”

That was me, of course.  He introduced me, and they invited me to participate in the radar analysis.  Rodriguez said he’d call me when they were ready to start.

The mood in William’s office was dark after the conference call, until William, his anger spent, went back to doing what he did best, leading and infusing people with confidence.

“All right everybody, we have work to do.  There’s no time to waste brooding.  Mary, you’ll keep monitoring email and cell phone traffic.  Have you set up the trace on Rod’s phone in case Husam al Din’s people call?  Sam, we need to go all out interrogating the people we have in custody.  See what the Jersey Police have on the guys who used the submersible.”

“They’re going through all the cell phone records for the number your friend at APL gave us.  They’ll call us when they have something.”

“I think it’s time to revisit the two seamen from
Al Khalifa
,” William went on.  “It’s a long shot, but you never know.  And stay in touch with Henry’s team in Baltimore.  Rod, I assume you’ll tap into all your sources.  If we don’t stop them here, no one’s safe, anywhere.”

“You might also monitor hospitals between here and Washington,” I added, “to see if anyone turns up with symptoms of radiation sickness.  One of the canisters may have leaked, and they might have been careless preparing the smoke bombs, last week.”

William told me to handle that myself.  “Anything else?” 

Henry said his New York field office had authorized him to draw on the additional manpower he’d requested.  William drew a deep, dramatic breath. 

“Track every lead back to its source.  From here on, we do whatever’s necessary.  Anyone have a problem with that?”

No one did, but his fierce expression and dogged tone intensified the morbid urgency I’d felt all morning.  I’d barely spoken since before the conference call.

Rod noticed my unease when he and I met with Henry, later.  “Why so glum, Dylan?”

Henry said, “He’s just in a funk because his winning streak’s broken.”

He’d nailed me.  I’d been getting used to winning every round.  After flying high for weeks, my confidence in the crazy mission I was on was flagging. 

“It’s more than that,” I said.  “I’m scared.  You’re right, Henry.  I’ve been kidding myself.  I was actually believing I could turn things around all by myself.  What if we don’t find Husam al Din and the next attack succeeds?   You know what’s at stake.  You heard the President after Union Station.  This isn’t some idiotic television show. He threatened to nuke Iran’s military bases and research facilities.  Did either of you doubt that he meant it?  Has he ever backed down once he’s made up his mind?  That kind of thinking scares the shit out of me. 
He
scares the shit out of me.”

“You think the Joint Chiefs would support a nuclear strike?” Rod asked Henry.

“With sufficient provocation, they might, but he doesn’t need their approval.  They’re military and he’s the Commander in Chief.  Their only options are to follow orders or resign in protest, assuming any of them had the balls and integrity that required.  In the end, they’ll do their jobs, because if the strikes were launched they’d want to maintain continuity in the chain of command.  Short of staging a coup, there’s no way they can stop him.”

“We’ve seen it happen before,” I said, “a President with a limited world view rushing off to war against all logic, as mindlessly driven as the jihadists he’s fighting against. Only this time, it won’t stop there.  We’re dealing with people who believe mutual annihilation is an acceptable outcome.  The nightmare we’ve worried about for years might come true, suitcase nukes planted all over Europe and the United States.  Once we let the genie out of the bottle, there’ll be nothing to deter them. Iran would use a nuclear strike by us as an excuse to annihilate Israel, and the Israelis might act preemptively and take out half of the Middle East.”

“You really believe that?” Henry said.

“He’s right, Henry,” Rod said, with no trace of irony.

“What really scares me is that it’s not just the President and his macho advisors,” I said. “Remember the weeks after nine-eleven?  Almost everyone in this country was bursting with righteous anger, eager to kill anyone named Mohamed. What if Husam al Din pulls off something worse?  The President won’t be the only one who wants to wipe Islam off the map.”

“Jesus, Dylan.  You really think your screwed-up time stream is the work of some super-being who expects you to use it to head off Armageddon, don’t you,” Henry said.  “You think it’s up to you to save humanity from itself?”

“When you put it that way, it sounds like megalomania.  What should I believe?  I’m the one who’s living this way and I just happen to be in the center of this mess.  I can’t believe this is all some cosmic accident.  Either it’s what you said, or there’s really a God up there toying with us.  What if God exists and He’s a psychopath?”

“That’s way beyond my pay grade,” Henry said.  It was time to get back to work.

I’m not a trained investigator, so I told Henry I’d be at his disposal in any way he needed me.  I’d said the same thing to him on Thursday, but, of course, he didn’t know that. 
Some things don’t change
, I thought, and Rod proved my point.

“Maybe you can explain something to me.  When you were with us on Thursday, Henry and I were doing something quite different from what we’ll be doing tomorrow.  How does that work?  What happens to the Henry and Rod you knew on your Thursday?”

“You asked me the identical question on Thursday, when I told you my plans for today.  Let’s talk about it on Friday, when you have a different perspective.”

42.

Friday, Henry and Rod experienced what Ilene had been living with for the first time.  They both retained dreamlike glimpses of that nonexistent day, while feeling like they’d mislaid something.  After a while, they could only sense it when they focused their attention, and by late morning, they’d lost it completely.  When I brought it up, later, Henry said he remembered remembering the other Thursday, but not the memories themselves.

“Is this what you meant by the tension in the trampoline forcing reality back to where it’s supposed to be?”

I nodded, but I wasn’t into the game the way I’d been with Ilene, partly because neither of them was Ilene, but mostly because a dark cloud had settled over me.  An insidious, toxic cloud, laced not with radioactive cesium, but with anxiety and impending doom.  I needed to be active, doing something productive, but I felt like a fifth wheel.  The investigators and agents did their things, and as it had always been in the past, I waited in the background…until William told me to get lost.  I was stressing everyone out.

I’d brought Ilene up to date that morning over breakfast, but I’d omitted my dread of looming devastation.  Now, alone in my head, it intensified as the odds against our efforts to intercept the terrorists seemed to multiply.  Weeks of accumulated stress had unraveled my veneer of calm.  I called Ilene and told her I was in trouble. 

She reminded me that we were meeting Jerry at 5:00.  “Can it wait till then or should I leave work and meet you somewhere?”

Suppressing the reflex to tell her that wasn’t necessary, I said, “I don’t think it’s good for me to be alone right now.  I need help.  I’m drowning.”

As usual, she knew exactly what I needed.  I took the train back to New Jersey and we drove to Liberty State Park.  Everyone associates Liberty Island and the Statue of the same name with New York City, but they’re actually in New Jersey, and the park is the closest you can get to them on the mainland.

We sat on a jetty, a quarter mile of wind-swept water between us and the island.  The brisk breeze cutting into the humid August heat reminded me of the salt air rushing past the Harbor Patrol boat as we sped toward the Statue a few Saturdays ago. I’d silently mocked William’s cornball patriotism, wondering if he’d planned the route as a way to inspire us, but William knew what he was about.

I almost regretted not telling him the truth about me; almost, but not quite.  I didn’t have energy to spare on regrets.  I was using all I had to keep from floundering in the waves of horror that rushed over me.

Ilene understood what was happening.  “You’re really letting this upset you.”

“I don’t seem to have any control over it.  Sometimes I feel like I can’t breathe.”

“You’re convinced we’re heading toward nuclear war if you don’t stop the terrorists?”

“You think I’m wrong?”

“It’s possible, even plausible, but it’s hardly a certainty.”

“I know, but it’s the only possibility I can think about.”

She cradled my head against her, pressing her cheek against my forehead.  We sat motionless, not saying anything, as her calming energy filled me.  After a while, I got up and took her hands, letting our eyes speak for us.

Ilene checked her watch.  “Let’s go see Jerry.”

We met in the lounge of the Hyatt Regency in Jersey City.  Since it wasn’t quite happy hour yet, we managed to find a table with a view of New York and the Hudson that was as spectacular, in its way, as that of the Statue from the park, but to me, it was haunting.  We talked quietly, Jerry and Ilene sipping wine while I nursed an iced tea.  I told them how Husam al Din eluded us on Wednesday, and that I’d been with Henry, earlier, thirty-six hours after William made his all-out-effort speech, but so far, we’d come up empty. 

Jerry listened, watching me carefully.  “You’re in quite a state, Dylan.”  He reached for my wrist.  “Do you mind?  Your pulse is racing, your eyes are like sparklers; you’re so on edge you’re almost twitching – your blood pressure must be up thirty points.  I could prescribe something for you, a mild sedative to take the edge…” 

“No!  I don’t want to be tranquilized.”

“All right.  You want to tell me what’s got you so worked up?”

When I didn’t say anything right away, Ilene answered for me.  “Dylan believes the only way to prevent a nuclear holocaust is to stop the terrorists before they carry out another attack.  And he’s convinced it’s up to him to stop them.”

“I wouldn’t want that responsibility,” Jerry said.  “Is she right?”

“It’s not that I actually believe that, literally.”

“What is it, then?”

“It’s a feeling driving me, a mindless conviction that I have to be on alert every second.”

“Why?”

“That’s just the way it’s been the last few weeks.  Something bad happens and I’m in a unique position to fix it.”

“I thought that only happened on Wednesdays and Thursdays.  You’re anxious over what might happen next week?”

“Yes, very.”

“There’s something else.” Ilene said.  “Our kids’ll be here next week.”  She looked straight at me.  “Ever since I reminded you, you’ve been wired.  Is that what this is about?”

“Oh, God,” I moaned, clamping my hands over my ears, feeling like I was suffocating.  A premonition of grief overwhelmed my senses. 

“Dylan, what’s happening!  Look how pale he is.”

Jerry was already at my side.  He pushed my head down to my knees, imploring me to take deep breaths.  The episode passed quickly but it had marked me.

“Tell us what just happened,” Jerry said, maintaining his professional calm.

“It was like a vision.  My sons, their wives, right in the middle of everything.  Death and destruction all around them.  It was so intense, so real.”

“It looked like a classic panic attack,” Jerry said.  “Understandable, under the circumstances.  We all have a breaking point, and you’re stretched pretty thin.”

The attack had sapped what was left of my energy.  I must have looked and sounded like an automaton.  “It didn’t feel like panic.  It was more like anguish.  Panic starts in your gut and expands.  This felt like something imposed on me from outside.  It started in my head and spread to my diaphragm like a wave of paralysis passing through me.  I felt growing background apprehension, like the way the air feels before an electrical storm or when the pressure below ground is about to erupt in an earthquake. You must think I’ve lost it.”

“Don’t worry about that.  Just let it out.”

“It isn’t me doing it, Jerry.”  I trembled, shivering in the air conditioned room.  “I think the Übermensch is manipulating my feelings, warning me.”

“Warning you that something’s going to happen to your kids?”

“Warning me about something terrible, forcing me to face that it’s coming if I don’t stop it. He let me supply my own imagery, and I superimposed my concerns about the kids.”

“Why don’t you let me give you something so you can stay functional?”

“But what if…”

“What if what?”

“What if I can’t hear Him any more?”

“Do you remember what you just did?  You covered your ears with your hands.  Is there a voice telling you all this?”

“I don’t hear voices, Jerry.”

“Look, Dylan.  The fact that the other things you described seem demonstrably true doesn’t mean you didn’t create this crisis in your head.  You know what I think?  You’ve convinced yourself that everything rests on your shoulders, and you’re afraid you won’t be able to handle it.  You’re anticipating the guilt you’ll feel if you fail and punishing yourself to preempt what you think is in store for you later.”

I stared at him for a few seconds.  My trembling stopped and I experienced a sudden, unexpected clarity. “I know what this is.  It’s stress in the fabric of space-time.  The Übermensch messed with my time stream, trying to change the probability of a future catastrophe.  He’s manipulating forces that are unfathomable.  Imagine you’re in a place where violently opposed forces capable of destroying you instantly are everywhere, and you’re at the only point in the continuum where they all balance each other.  Imagine the terror of knowing that the slightest misstep will crush you.  He’s caused a snag in my trampoline that places impossible stresses on the strands that hold it together.  If I can’t find a way to free it, it’ll snap and destroy everything.”

Jerry looked at Ilene.  “Do you have any idea what he’s talking about?”

“Not really, but he apparently does.  Look how much better he seems.”

I did feel better. 

I don’t cope well when things are in flux.  I need something solid to hang on to, or I lose my bearings.  I’d found a logical construct in which the terrible foreboding that had been choking me made sense.

At home, later, Ilene said, “I’m concerned about how you included the kids in your apocalyptic vision.  Do you want to cancel next week?”

“Part of me does, but I feel strongly about living our lives, not sacrificing what’s most important.  Remember when the Government told us to live normally after nine-eleven?  We knew it was bullshit, but there was a point to it.  If we give up the things that matter most, they win without firing a shot.”

“I know Dylan, but maybe He’s sending you a warning to keep them safe.  You’ve been relying on your feelings all along.  Why not now?”

“Trust me about this.  We know iconic events and places like Yankee Stadium are targets. Security will be airtight.  The cops’ll have radiation detectors at every turnstile and anyone wearing concealing clothing in this heat will be thoroughly searched.  If we were concerned enough for me to tell the kids not to come, we’d have to consider canceling the games.  Where would it stop, then?  Besides, what would we tell them?  They have no idea about any of this.”

Ilene still worried, but we decided to move ahead with our plans unless something changed.