by Mark Joseph
Rudy listened and weighed the risks. He was thinking he was about to have heart surgery and might never wake up. Did he want to leave behind a city in chaos, or a city that gleamed in the night, alone and proud? It was a hell of a chance to take and he might never know the result.
“Okay,” he said. “I’ll do it. Then this Aztec asshole friend of yours is going to cut out my heart.”
15
The eleventh hour. D minus sixty and counting.
At 10:00 the bug had crashed into Brazil and Venezuela, mowing down oil wells, pipelines, and refineries like blades of steel wheat. Supply chains were broken at the source. Mines, railroads and chemical plants, the basic industries on which an economy is built, teetered on the brink of ruin across the plains and mountains of South America. The first systems to crash were often pollution controls. When date-sensitive sensor controls failed, gaseous and liquid effluvia either spewed into the air and water, or backed up the operation and shut it down before other computer systems had a chance to go haywire. In South America, as in most of the Third World, the millennium bug savaged the coastal cities and industries, with minimal if not positive effects up-country in the hinterlands. No doubt the rain forests would benefit as logging and industrial expansion ceased when trucks ran out of fuel.
Now, in the penultimate hour, the millennium bug struck the far northeastern provinces of Canada. The invisible alien had arrived in North America and was slipping across the frozen tundra at a thousand miles per hour, a silent arrow pointed at the most heavily industrialized, computerized, automated concentration of machinery in the world, New York City.
The residents of the outer boroughs had seen blackouts and riots from Vladivostok to Dublin all day on TV. At the last moment thousands decided their neighborhoods were not where they wanted to be when the millennium bug slammed into New York like a freight train. Afraid of their city, panicky New Yorkers from Brooklyn and Queens migrated east on Long Island, where few were prepared to welcome them with open arms. From the Bronx, people headed north into Westchester County and Connecticut, overwhelming the suburbs, cleaning out convenience stores and emptying fuel tanks at every gas station within fifty miles of the city limits. Few of the locusts exiting the city had a destination or adequate supplies for a cold night in the open. By nine o’clock, desperate authorities in towns around New York were calling on the governor and state police for help, but the phones lines were overwhelmed and useless.
In Manhattan many chose this hour to pray. From Harlem to the Bowery, churches, mosques, and temples opened their doors and filled with fearful worshippers. Since it was the Sabbath, Friday night services had concluded in the city’s many Jewish synagogues, with far larger congregations than usual. Many of the suddenly devout remained for hours in the temples to offer more prayer and discuss how to deal with the coming hardship. The millennium and the event that marked its passing transcended Christianity and the two-thousandth anniversary of the birth of Christ. The catastrophe touched everyone, rich and poor, believer and nonbeliever. The bug knew nothing of sacred writing, prophecy, original sin, reincarnation, or a Messiah, but in every neighborhood men and women of all faiths sought the wisdom of holy writ. They read the Torah, the Gospels, the Koran, the Tibetan Book of the Dead, and in the ancient texts found the courage and strength to see them through the night.
A miracle was happening in the Millennium Religious Sanctuary of the 24th Precinct. The flow of people flocking to the houses of worship overflowed into this now famous haven. Thousands of religious seekers arrived seeking solace in the community of their brethren. Whole congregations arrived with their ministers, who quickly organized a communal mass prayer to commence a minute before midnight. After walking miles from faraway places like Rye and Yonkers, people who’d struggled all day and night to be part of the sanctuary were not about to let rowdy drunks spoil the most significant religious experience of their lives. By sheer numbers, the righteous pushed the revelers downtown toward Times Square.
Ed Garcia didn’t know which way the wind would blow next. One minute he had an Irish civil war, then a riot, then a mystical convention. What was that old adage? Be careful what you wish for; it may come true.
He was pacing around his office, drinking coffee and worrying himself sick over what he was supposed to do if the lights went out. What would happen to all these people? What would happen to everyone in Times Square? There were three or four million New Year’s Eve lunatics down there. He had at least fifty thousand in his precinct, maybe more. He couldn’t get an accurate count. Garcia had never seen the city this crazy, and he’d seen a lifetime of crazy. What passed for normal in New York would be crazy anywhere else, and he’d seen political mêlées, race riots, Superbowls, violent labor strikes and police brutality, but not all at once. The prisoners in his overcrowded jail were frightened, traffic had the city in a death grip, TV was fucked up, the phones were fucked up, and it wasn’t yet midnight.
He pulled open a desk drawer, fondled a bottle of good single malt scotch, sighed and put it back.
The phone rang and he jumped, staring at the device as though it were an inanimate object that suddenly had come alive. Gingerly, he picked it up.
“Two-Four precinct,” he said. “Captain Garcia.”
“Hi, Ed. Copeland here.”
“Donald. Jeez. I mean, I’m surprised the phone rang. All day it never shuts up, but tonight, well, you know.”
“You think you got problems? I’m locked in my house.”
“You’re what?”
“Yeah, I’m locked in. The fucking computer won’t let me out.”
“That monster in your basement? That’s pretty funny, Donnie, considering everything. You bettah off anyway. It’s nuts outside.”
“Look, Ed, I need a favor. I need a cop I can trust. I want you to call this number I’m gonna give you, and you’ll recognize the voice at the other end.”
“Oh, yeah? You’re sounding kinda mysterious, Donnie, and I’m busy. I got every religious nut in New York up here. My jail is full. My cops are half out of their minds. Cut to the chase, boy.”
“Ed, you’re gonna call the mayor, and he’s going to order you to go to the Con Edison command center on 65th Street and West End and pick up a computer disk that you’re gonna take to my building on Nassau Street.”
“The mayor?”
“Yeah, Giuliani himself.”
“You’re puttin’ me on.”
“No, sir. Lemme give you the number.”
“Wait a minute. Suppose this is true, how do I get there? The city is a parking lot.”
“The mayor will send a motorcycle and the guy will take you on his bike.”
“How’m I gonna make a call if the damned phone doesn’t work?”
“It’ll work.”
“How d’ya know it’ll work?”
“It’ll work. God damn.”
“You got a magic phone wand?”
“I’m callin’ you, right?”
“Right.”
“Okay. It’ll work.”
“Gimme the number.”
“It’s Bill Packard’s number at Bellevue. You got it?”
“Yeah. Why would I call the mayor there?”
“Because that’s where he is, Ed. He had a heart attack.”
“Rudy?”
“He’s the only mayor we got.”
“Is he dead?”
“How could he talk to you if he was dead? C’mon.”
“He wants me to be a messenger boy? No wonder I hate the son of a bitch.”
“Leave politics out of this, Ed. This is more important.”
“What’s this about, anyway?”
“Rudy can tell you if he wants. Just call him, and maybe later you can come by and get me out of my house.”
Garcia laughed at that. “Nah,” he said. “I’m gonna leave you there. You can’t get into trouble that way.”
“Jonathon is with me and we’re both locked in. Shirley is across the street a
nd doesn’t know he’s here. She’s probably gone bananas.”
“If your phone is workin’, why can’t he call her?”
“Jesus Christ, Ed. I can call you, I can call Packard, but I can’t call just anybody.”
“Why not?”
“Stop with the questions and just call Bill’s number, all right?”
“Give me a hint. Give me a reason to remember you ever called me.”
“You think this is a New Year’s Eve prank?”
“It crossed my mind, yes.”
“Ed, we’re trying to keep the lights on in New York. For God’s sake. The clock is ticking.”
After forty years, Garcia knew when a guy was bullshitting and when he wasn’t, and in his inimitable, overblown, melodramatic way, he knew Copeland was telling the truth.
“The lights,” Garcia said.
“You got it. We’re staring at a blackout with only one chance of avoiding it.”
“How the fuck…?”
“Don’t ask. I don’t have all night to explain. Call the mayor. Now.”
“Okay, I’ll call.”
Click. Dial tone. Never had that hum sounded friendlier. Garcia looked up Packard’s number and punched it in.
“Packard.”
“Bill? This is Ed. Copeland says you got the mayor there.”
“Hold on. Heeeeere’s Rudy.”
* * *
“You’re diabolical, you know,” Jody said to Doc.
“I told you I liked Mephistopheles.”
“You lucked out having the mayor in captivity at Bellevue.”
Doc shrugged. “Maybe, but I knew he’d be stuck someplace like Gracie Mansion, or City Hall, or in his car. His security is useless, so he’s easy to track. Politicians aren’t very bright, as a general rule. They’re just like everybody else.”
“So you planned to get him involved no matter what?”
“This is Plan B. It would’ve been cleaner to get the overrides from Sarah, but as it is, we might have better cooperation from ConEd. Maybe. Maybe maybe maybe. I hope so.”
“Were you planning to spring this on Copeland all along?”
He winked and chuckled and put on his Ignatius J. Reilly hunting cap with ear flaps. “Yep,” he snorted. “That was Plan A. You can always count on greed as a motivator. Works like a charm. I locked him in his house so I’d know where he was if I needed him. I didn’t want him to get lost.”
* * *
After 11:00, people in Times Square started to count down the minutes. The buzz and clamor grew ever more intense, the ululation of millions of voices swelling in volume to tribal levels. Car horns never ceased. No traffic moved on the north–south avenues, with very little movement on the side streets. Firecrackers exploded nonstop from one end of the island to the other. Home-made rockets and black-market Roman candles lit up the sky with streaks of flame and bursts of pyrotechnic rainbows.
Throughout the city, shopkeepers and merchants prepared to defend their business from looters in case the lights went out. In heavily ethnic neighborhoods, among the Greeks, Hassidic Jews, and West Indians in Brooklyn, Koreans, Indians, and Italians in Queens, middle-class blacks in Harlem and the Bronx, activists organized neighborhood patrols to protect their enclaves from anarchy. Spread dangerously thin, overwhelmed by rowdy drunks, traffic snarls and poor communications, the police deployed as many officers as possible in commercial districts, and looked the other way when confronted by shopkeepers with shotguns.
The city trembled with fear and anticipation.
At 11:13 Doc played Johnny Cash’s “The Midnight Special” and then was banished from music duties by Carolyn who wanted The Last Poets.
The Big Apple is outta sight.
But you ain’t never had a bite.
Wake up, niggers, or you’re all through.
A million clocks ticked over, minute by minute. At 11:14 Ed Garcia climbed aboard a Kawasaki police special behind a veteran sergeant biker cop, one of the mayor’s elite messengers.
“You know where you’re going?”
“Just hang on, captain,” cautioned the driver.
The sergeant started slowly, winding through stalled cars and crowds in front of the station, and headed west toward the Hudson with spurts of speed, heavy brakes and delicate balance. West End Avenue was jammed as far south as the eye could see, so the sergeant continued to Riverside Park and zipped down a bicycle trail, scattering startled pedestrians with blaring siren and lights for 35 blocks to 65th Street. To Garcia, the park was a blur, the ride a psychedelic roller coaster, the night a deluge of sensory overload. Fireworks like magical hallucinations lit the sky, their booms lost in the racket from the city and the shriek of the motorcycle engine. To his right, the lights of pleasurecraft filled the river, serene and marvelous in the sparkling night. Ahead, open pavement stretched in the headlight’s beam and the bike accelerated like a catapult. Garcia gripped the driver’s waist with one hand, glancing every few seconds at his watch as it bounced in front of his eyes. He was transported to a dreamlike trance. His mind stopped processing the surge of data and just let it all in, the city, the noise, the wind and cold, the smell of the driver’s leather jacket, the motorcycle throbbing between his legs like a controlled chain reaction.
The bike wheeled onto 65th Street and back into traffic, the sergeant expertly weaving around cars and vans. Firecrackers, horns, men in tuxedos, the whole New Year’s Eve chorus of people doing extraordinary things: standing on top of cars, pissing in the gutter, drinking champagne from a shoe.
Wearing a white supervisor’s hardhat, Sarah McFadden was waiting on the sidewalk in the middle of a crowd of revelers.
“Are you Ms. McFadden?” Garcia asked.
“Yes, sir.”
“Lemme see some ID.”
Sarah flashed a photo badge on a necklace and leaned close to the motorcycle. “You give this to Doc Downs and nobody else. It took a phone call from the mayor, but here it is. I hope.”
“Save it,” Garcia snapped. “Gimme the disk. Doc’ll call you when he gets it.”
They spurted away into the traffic. The driver tried the West Side Highway, 11th and 12th Avenues, but the lanes between the lanes were blocked. People were out of their cars, drinking and singing in the street. Lights, sirens, driving on sidewalks, they inched downtown. At 42nd they caught a glimpse of the video screens and giant marquees in Times Square. Inside his helmet Garcia could hear nothing over the whine of the engine and the siren, but he could feel the city trembling under the wheels. At 11:30 they made it to 34th Street.
At 11:32 an anesthesiologist rendered Mayor Giuliani unconscious.
At 11:39 the President of the United States met with the members of the National Security Council who could make it to the White House.
At 11:42 Eastern time, 8:42 on the West Coast, the associated utilities of the Northwest grid agreed to isolate themselves from one another and deconstruct the grid. Elsewhere in the nation, including the Northeast, the grids determined to stand or fall together.
At 11:44 Ronnie and Judd went into the bedroom and shut the door. Doc fired up a joint, Carolyn danced, Adrian played with his trains, Bo fidgeted and paced, and Jody, having become one with her camera, shot everything.
At 11:45 on 85th Street, Copeland and Spillman watched Barbra Streisand belt out a love song to New York City live and direct from Madison Square Garden.
Across the rivers, America waited and watched the clock.
The congestion thinned below the Village, and the motorcycle got up to speed on Lower Broadway. At 11:46 Garcia arrived in front of the building on Nassau Street with fourteen minutes to spare.
Doc and Bo were waiting in the street. Bo immediately rushed upstairs with the disk while Doc stayed to invite the police captain to come in.
“I really can’t. I have to get back and take care of my precinct,” Garcia said.
“You can probably do that better from here,” Doc told him. “Come on.”
The driv
er twisted his throttle and said, “What’s it gonna be, captain?”
“I gotta go back, Doc. I’m gonna let Copeland out of his house. Did you know he was locked in?”
Doc laughed and waved and went inside.
Upstairs, Bo inserted the Zip disk into the drive, checked the directory on the screen, and loaded seven files into seven systems that would run simultaneously on the IBM, one for each of five power plants, one for the command center on 65th, and one for the grid interconnect switching station at the East River plant. Then he linked the IBM to the seven locations. When Doc walked in, Bo was ready to take over the system with the push of a button.
One small screen in Bo’s console was wired into ConEd’s security and surveillance system. Doc saw fifty people on the verge of panic in a huge room reminiscent of Houston’s Mission Control. Sarah was in the foreground, sitting at the master operator’s station, wearing a headset and looking anxiously up at the big screen above the security camera.
Doc put on a headset and called her.
“Doc here.”
“You got the disk?”
“Yes, ma’am. The codes are installed and we’re ready to go.”
“You have some heavyweight friends, Doc. I never suspected that.”
“Sarah, the only friend I need now is you. I expect you have a lot of anxious people there,” he said without stating directly that he could see them.
“You might say that,” Sarah replied. “They heard me talk to the mayor and Peter Wilcox because I put the calls on the speakers, and they know I gave the override codes to a police captain on Wilcox’s orders.”
“Do they understand your system will crash and burn unless we do this?” Doc asked.
“Some do, some don’t. Most of them think I’m out of my mind, and maybe they’re right. I am out of my mind, but I’m going through with this anyway.”
“I, for one, am extremely grateful,” Doc said. “Now, I’m going to turn you over to a young man named Bo Daniels. It was Bo who found the Y2K solution for your load factor applications. He found the bad chips in the feeder valves at Waterside that I told you about. Most of the data I’ve given you in the past two years came from Bo. All right?”
