Flashover

by Suzanne Chazin

  Georgia looked up. She never thought she’d be so happy to see Chris Willard. He squatted on the edge of the platform and grabbed at her outstretched hands. “We heard the whole thing over Kyle’s Handie-Talkie,” he told her as he yanked her up. “We just collared Kyle in the steam tunnel. We’ll get a warrant on his father and Gus Rankoff. EMTs are on their way for Ruiz.”

  “Is she alive?” asked Georgia.

  “Barely,” said Willard. He squinted at the train not fifty feet down the track. “And now we’re gonna have Metro North kicking our asses, too. Looks like you screwed up the whole Harlem line.”

  50

  Georgia ran back to the storage room off the maintenance platform. The EMTs hadn’t arrived yet.

  “I’m here, Con,” she whispered, stroking her friend’s face. “Help is on the way.”

  “You’re all right,” Connie sputtered. A crooked smile played at the edges of her lips. Her skin was cold.

  “You’re going to live, Con. Let others do the same. Tell me where you put the bomb on the Empire Pipeline.” Georgia glanced at her watch. Ten-ten A.M. They still had a fighting chance.

  Connie reached up a bloody hand and pulled Georgia’s face closer to her lips. Georgia’s necklace dropped from inside her blouse onto Connie’s chest. Connie fingered it now. “Apache’s tear,” she mumbled, feeling the stone between her fingers. “I want…to go…the same way.”

  “You’re not going anywhere,” Georgia insisted. “Please, Con. Think about those innocent people. Where did you put the bomb?”

  “Flags…” Connie choked out. “…Cross.”

  “What flags? What cross?” Connie’s chest cavity was filling with blood. Georgia could hear the thick, gurgling sound.

  “Greenpoint,” Connie mumbled. “It’s…gonna be…gone.”

  Georgia reared back. “How many explosives did you use?”

  “It’s…where you…put them…that…counts.”

  The EMTs came into the room now, ushering Georgia out of the way. Connie stretched out a hand. Her voice sounded like she was gargling. Georgia couldn’t even make out what she was saying.

  “Connie,” Georgia pleaded, her voice ragged with choked sobs and exhaustion, “be strong. Hard as a rock. Sharp as a razor—remember, girl? Remember?”

  Mary Constance O’Rourke Ruiz closed her eyes. Her lips parted, and a soft breathy name came out. Not Georgia’s or Joanne’s or even Mac’s. Her last word didn’t even sound like a word at all. It sounded like a greeting. A welcome release.

  “Bear.”

  51

  Chief Brennan didn’t even recognize Georgia when he first saw her. She was sitting in the back of an ambulance, smeared with grime and the blood of Connie Ruiz. She heard an EMT tell Brennan she was in shock. She felt so numb and detached, it was as if the EMT were talking about someone else.

  “Skeehan,” said Brennan. He had to call her name twice to get her attention. His beady blue eyes looked a little softer than usual. “I have to speak to you now. Do you understand?”

  Georgia stared at him as if he were being lip-synched in a bad foreign film.

  “Did Ruiz tell you about the bomb?” he asked.

  “Ruiz” it was now, thought Georgia. Not “Officer Ruiz” anymore. Just Ruiz. Already, they were vilifying her memory.

  She squinted at him. Words and thoughts felt glued to her tongue, trapped there like insects in honey. Finally, she managed to utter one word.

  “Flags,” she told him.

  Brennan frowned. “Flags?” he repeated.

  “And a cross,” said Georgia.

  “Jesus Christ,” said Brennan, throwing up his hands. “Every goddamn government building, church and cemetery in this city could be a target.”

  Georgia massaged her forehead. She tried to put her grief over Connie out of her mind and make sense of what she had told her. The only specific Connie had given her was…

  “—Greenpoint, Chief. Connie said the bomb was in Greenpoint.”

  “That’s it?”

  “Someplace with flags and a cross in Greenpoint.”

  Brennan got on the department radio. “This is Chief Brennan. Transmit a nine thousand box to all units in Greenpoint.” Fires were coded according to the number of the nearest alarm box, even if the fire was telephoned in. All fires and emergencies on the Empire Pipeline were given alarm box numbers in the nine thousands to identify them as pipeline emergencies. “Have the fire companies manually shut off all valves in Greenpoint and proceed with standard evacuation guidelines in the area,” he added. “And let the PD know we need Bomb Squad there, too.”

  Georgia tried to wipe off the grime on her watch and see the time. Ten-thirty A.M. The fire companies in Greenpoint had an hour and a half to shut down the pipeline in their response areas and evacuate occupied structures adjacent to it. With the pipeline temporarily shut down, the only material that could be ignited would be the residual fuel left in the pipe. So why am I not more relieved? thought Georgia.

  Because Connie set the bomb. Connie would’ve foreseen the procedures. It’s where you put the explosives that counts. Isn’t that what she had said?

  “Chief?” Georgia said to Brennan. “When Connie told me the bomb was in Greenpoint, she implied that it was going to be a very, very big explosion—enough to take out a lot of the neighborhood. I think she picked a very specific place to create the largest possible explosion.”

  “Holy…” Brennan hit the side of the ambulance. “How the hell are we going to find the right set of flags and crosses in Greenpoint? Even the fire companies wouldn’t know something that obscure. You’d have to have walked every inch of that neighborhood—above and below ground—to find something like that.”

  “I know someone who probably has walked every inch of that neighborhood, sir.”

  “Who?”

  “Mac Marenko.”

  Brennan blew air through his teeth and thought about it. “It’d take the mayor himself to get Marenko processed out of Riker’s in half an hour,” he said.

  “I’m not just asking because it’s Mac, sir. You know he’s the right person for this.” The chief knew Marenko well enough to be familiar with his Greenpoint childhood and his years as a fire marshal in the borough. No civilian, however knowledgeable about the neighborhood, would be allowed into a fire department operation. And no fire investigator was likely to know Greenpoint quite as well as Marenko.

  “All right.” Brennan sighed. “Let me see what I can work out.”

  Georgia waved off any further treatment by the EMTs and a few minutes later followed Brennan into the Met Life Building above Grand Central Station. To save time, Brennan had requested a police helicopter to Brooklyn.

  Georgia had never ridden in a helicopter before. As the Bell 407 lifted off the roof of the eighty-story Met Life Building, she strapped on her belt and gazed over Manhattan as if seeing it for the first time. Just to the north, she caught the silver, wedge-shaped tip of the Citicorp Center, and beyond it, the Fifty-ninth Street Bridge across the East River. She thought New York would seem smaller from up here, but instead, she felt the immense grandeur and power of the city far more acutely than when she was in it.

  Brennan leaned over and shouted above the pulsating chopper blades. “Mayor Ortaglia made the call himself to release Marenko. They’re going to helicopter him to Greenpoint ASAP. We’ll sweep the area first, get our bearings, then rendezvous with him at the staging site on Bridgewater.”

  Georgia nodded. She didn’t have the energy to shout. Yet in her heart she felt an undeniable lift at the thought that Mac would soon be out of Riker’s. It would have taken another twenty-four hours to get him released through normal channels.

  The helicopter crossed the East River now and Georgia saw the flat, tar-paper roofs of row houses in Greenpoint, the granite spires of churches, the low, boxy stores and restaurants, the cars backed up on the Kosciusko Bridge. It was as if she’d spent a lifetime stitching a very small portion of an enormou
s tapestry, and suddenly, she got to stand back and see the entire work. So much life. So many stories. Georgia wondered if Connie would have set that bomb if she could have seen Greenpoint the way Georgia was seeing it now.

  Off to her right, she noticed a gathering of fire trucks and police cruisers by an empty lot near the waterfront. Their lights flashed red and blue like sparklers on the Fourth of July. The staging area. Just a couple of blocks away, Georgia noticed a large group of people gathered around the steps of a church and in a park across the street. It was the church near Mac’s grandmother’s house. She recalled now that a saint’s feast was planned for today. Some flower name—Lavender…Hibiscus…Hyacinth. Saint Hyacinth. It looked like they were setting up the festivities, maybe getting ready for a parade. Georgia prayed Ida had decided to stay home. The thought of that bubbly old woman caught in the middle of something like this filled her with dread.

  The pilot angled the helicopter a little lower, then banked into a turn. Sunlight glinted off the boxy warehouses that anchored much of Greenpoint. Down there, the area seemed so much bigger. But it had been psychological, Georgia realized now. Connie was right: one good-sized explosion really could damage a big chunk of the neighborhood. Georgia just hoped Marenko knew the area as well as he claimed to.

  After several passes overhead, the helicopter touched down at Kowalski’s lot on Bridgewater Street. Above, the commotion had seemed dreamy and distant. Down here, it was hot, chaotic and scary. Emergency vehicles from both the police and fire departments were double-parked on the streets. Dozens of residents and reporters were crowded behind a barrier.

  Brennan walked Georgia through the throngs of uniforms to the command post a block and a half away. Marenko was already there. He was dressed in a gray T-shirt and black sweatpants. His face was tired and pale, but the old gleam was back in those blue eyes. Next to him was John Welcastle, his thin lips moving between Mac and a cell phone he had plastered to his ear. Acting Commissioner Delaney was on another cell phone on the other side.

  “Hiya, Skeehan,” said Marenko. He wouldn’t use “Scout” in front of anyone, but he gave her the barest wink when no one was looking.

  “Welcome back to the living,” she said, striving for a casualness she didn’t feel.

  He shook his head. “Don’t say that ’til this is over.”

  Brennan smiled a rare smile. Despite the tension of the situation, Georgia could see the chief was glad to see him. He spread the map of the pipeline out on the bumper of a fire truck. Marenko, Georgia, Delaney and Welcastle gathered around.

  “All right, Mac,” said the chief. “We’ve got very little to go on. Ruiz said it’s in Greenpoint. There are flags and a cross and it’ll take out a chunk of the neighborhood. Any ideas?”

  “Flags, huh?” Marenko squinted as if he were trying to picture something. He ran a hand nervously through his hair. “I’ve been thinking about it on the way over,” he said. “I knew where I’d plant this baby if I wanted to take out the neighborhood.” He pointed a finger at the map, at a spot a few blocks north of where they were. A nearly rectangular object bordered by Greenpoint Avenue and Provost Street, just a block from the Newtown Creek. Georgia read the words on the map now: Greenpoint Sewage Treatment Plant.

  “Methane gas,” Georgia muttered. A by-product of sewage treatment given off by decaying organic matter. Highly flammable. Even with the pipeline shut down, there was always a chance that the residual jet fuel would be sufficient to spark a fire that would cause a rupture of the methane storage tanks in the sewage plant, and the methane would feed the inferno.

  “There are three blue-and-white flags on top of that plant,” said Marenko. “Those could be the flags she was talking about.”

  “How about the cross?” asked Georgia.

  “You got me there,” Marenko admitted. “But I think if Connie really wanted to take Greenpoint out, she wouldn’t have just relied on methane to do the job—not when she had other stuff available, too.”

  “What do you mean?” asked Delaney.

  “You know what’s right here?” asked Marenko. He pointed to the west side of Provost Street on the map. “Right here, across from the sewage plant, are three Exxon storage tanks filled with gasoline.”

  Georgia heard Brennan curse loudly. “What asshole city permit allowed a pipeline full of jet fuel to run between a sewage plant and gas storage tanks?”

  “It gets worse, Chief,” said Marenko. “Floating right below Provost—below the pavement we’re standing on—is a seventeen-million gallon gasoline spill. Stuff’s been here since World War Two. If you couple that with a pipeline leak, gas tanks and methane vapors—forget a standard two-block evacuation. You’ll take out fifteen blocks, easy.”

  Marenko looked at his watch. It was 11:25 A.M. “There’s a goddamn saint’s feast going on two blocks from Provost Street. My grandmother’s there. She’s eighty-nine, for chrissakes. We can’t get all these people out in thirty-five minutes. It seems to me we’d be better off trying some kind of controlled detonation of a portion of the pipeline ourselves—sort of a contained burn that we smother with high-expansion foam—just to get rid of the fuel.” High-ex foam is used to put out jet-fuel and chemical fires that would be spread—rather than extinguished—by water.

  Brennan looked at Delaney.

  “I’d have to talk to the PD’s people on bomb squad,” said Delaney. “But that might be our only option at this point.”

  “No,” Welcastle insisted. “Absolutely not. No one is blowing up the pipeline because they think it might blow up.”

  “This isn’t conjecture,” said Georgia sharply. “Connie Ruiz had the technical expertise to blow up this entire neighborhood. So the bomb is here—without a doubt.” She held his stony gaze for a long moment. “This is one fuel spill you won’t be able to cover up, Mr. Welcastle.”

  Welcastle turned away from Georgia. His composure was gone. His hands were trembling. He searched for allies in the group and settled on Brennan. “Chief, my men have been over every inch of this area,” he insisted. “There’s no evidence the pipeline was dug up or breached in any way. We’ve sent sensors through the pipe, and they haven’t picked up any trauma. I will virtually guarantee you—the line has not been compromised.”

  “It might not have to be,” a voice piped up behind them. Georgia and Marenko turned. A young, black cop in a T-shirt that said BOMB SQUAD was standing before them. He had sunglasses on and he lifted them now, revealing a pair of dark eyes that seemed to pop out a little from their sockets, giving him the impression of always being surprised. Or maybe he was surprised. He seemed to know he’d been speaking out of turn.

  “What do you mean ‘It might not have to be’?” asked Marenko.

  “You could bury a shaped charge pointing to the pipeline without actually touching it, and it would work just as effectively,” said the young cop. Beads of sweat glistened across his shaved head.

  “Shaped charges—those are used in the military, right?” asked Georgia.

  “Yes, ma’am,” said the cop, his voice picking up more confidence as he continued. “We used them in the army when I was in the combat engineers. They are also used in oil and gas exploration. You point one at a steel pipe, tack on a blasting cap and a timed fuse and it’ll shoot a perfect hole right into that baby. The bomber wouldn’t need to dig up the pipe or rig anything touching it. A shaped charge just needs to be on a clear path, pointed in the right direction. It works on the same principle as an R P G rocket.”

  “That’s why Empire’s engineers never found a device on the pipeline and never found any dug-up ground,” said Georgia. “Because the bomb’s not on the pipeline.”

  “All right, smart guy,” said Welcastle to the young bomb-squad cop. “Where is this shaped charge, if it’s not on the pipeline?”

  “That I don’t know, sir.”

  Marenko bit his chapped lips as he studied the concrete towers of the sewage-treatment plant and let his eyes wander to a small in
let leading to the Newtown Creek. “Uh, Mr. Welcastle?” said Marenko. “I think I do.”

  52

  “Right along Provost Street, there’s an old water tunnel,” explained Marenko. “Before the sewage-treatment plant opened, the tunnel was used to dump raw sewage into the Newtown Creek. It’s empty now—just used as a storm drain mostly. Me and my brothers used to dare each other to go into it. When I was a marshal, I chased a perp in there once.”

  “You think Connie got into the tunnel?” asked Georgia.

  “Absolutely,” said Marenko. “It basically runs next to the pipeline. She could’ve buried a shaped charge in the tunnel and pointed it at the pipeline.” Marenko looked at the young black cop from the bomb squad. “What’s your name?”

  “Tyrell Davies, Marshal.”

  “Call me Mac,” said Marenko, shaking Davies’s hand. “You up for finding this thing with me?”

  “You bet.”

  “I think I should go as well,” said Georgia.

  “No,” said Marenko. “You stay here.”

  “But I can help you find that cross. Connie mentioned a cross, and we haven’t found any cross yet.”

  “If there’s a crucifix or something down there, Davies and I will find it,” said Marenko. “I don’t need you.”

  Georgia straightened up. She knew what he meant—that it was an extremely dangerous undertaking. He was trying to spare her. Still, after all they’d been through, the words stung. She watched Marenko and Davies get suited up with thick Kevlar arm and chest protection at the command post. Twice, Marenko looked in her direction as he was being strapped into gear. Georgia didn’t return his gaze. Part of it was anger that he didn’t want her along. And part of it was simple fear. It was 11:32 A.M. They had twenty-eight minutes to find this bomb and figure out how to defuse it. If they failed, Marenko might never come back.

  Their plan was to drop into the tunnel along Provost Street by the sewage plant and gas storage tanks. They would be in constant radio contact with the incident command post, two blocks away. Georgia would be able to monitor everything.