Target Manhattan

by Brian Garfield

  At what time did this take place?

  He reached the garage, where he made the switch, at approximately four fifteen. He left the garage at four twenty-three.

  Was he in communication with Craycroft throughout that time?

  Yes. We’d brought a radio up to the bank; we were monitoring their communications. They kept it very brief—maybe they didn’t want us homing in on Ryterband’s transmissions. Anyhow, he simply reported the successful conclusion of each step of his operation. He’d say something like, “Step two, completed.” Craycroft would say, “Affirmative.” That was about the sum of it.

  At what time did Ryterband reach his destination?

  The bleeper stopped moving at four fifty-six.

  Grofeld (Cont’d)

  Captain, you’ve made a thorough study of Harold Craycroft—his background, to some extent his motivations. In the course of this detective work have you interviewed psychiatric experts?

  Yes, I have.

  Now, as the time drew close to the five ten deadline on that Wednesday, May twenty-second, the most crucial question in your minds must have been, “Will he drop those bombs, or won’t he?”

  That’s it in a nutshell, yes.

  The ransom had been paid, not much more than a half hour late, as it turned out. You then had to use your best judgment as to whether Craycroft would accept that or whether he would bomb the city anyway. Now, you’ve just stated that you’ve obtained psychiatric opinions on Craycroft. You must have asked these experts whether in their judgment Craycroft intended to drop the bombs.

  I did, naturally. But it was like the parable about the blind men trying to describe the elephant. I talked to four shrinks and got four opinions. They could have been talking about four different guys. I’d expected that, actually. When you go to trial, you can always find experts to give testimony on both sides of the case. It doesn’t mean anybody’s lying. They have different opinions, that’s all. Nobody except a clairvoyant could have told us what was actually going on inside Craycroft’s head at that particular time.

  Then you really had no way to be absolutely certain of his intentions?

  None at all.

  You had to rely on judgment and intuition, then.

  You could put it that way.

  Is there some other way you’d prefer to put it, Captain? I’d like to be as clear as possible on this point.

  Look, we’d been monitoring conversations between Ryterband and Craycroft for several hours that afternoon. We hadn’t heard Craycroft say, “I’m not going to drop the bombs.” Everything we heard led to exactly the opposite conclusion. Add to that the fact that Ryterband himself was obviously afraid of Craycroft’s intentions—he didn’t seem to know either, any more than we did. But he knew Craycroft a lot better than the rest of us did, and if Ryterband was scared, we had to be scared, too. Add to that the fact that Craycroft was obviously deranged. I mean, nobody ever really questioned that. The point is we knew just one thing for certain: that he was unpredictable. He couldn’t be depended on to do the sensible thing or the logical thing or the compassionate thing. He was listening to the sound of his own private drummer; we couldn’t hear the beat of that drum, and we had no way of anticipating his moves.

  Therefore, I take it, you reasoned that you had to assume the worst.

  Mr. Skinner, if a stranger points a loaded gun at you, you don’t know for sure that he’s going to pull the trigger. But if you get a chance, you’ll sure as hell duck out of his line of fire. Or, given the chance, you’ll shoot him first.

  The law of self-defense.

  I’m not talking about the law. I’m talking about natural reaction—common sense. He had a loaded gun pointed at us. And we couldn’t get out of the way. If we could be sure he wouldn’t shoot, that would be one thing. But all we knew was what we could see. We took steps designed to remove the threat. Defend ourselves. Whatever you want to call it. We had to try. Craycroft had a screw loose. He might let fly at any time. We had no guarantee he’d wait until ten minutes after five. We had no guarantee of anything. The sooner we tried to neutralize him, the better—in terms of odds.

  Mr. Toombes acquiesced to that line of reasoning?

  Yes. But I was the one who talked him into it. If you’re looking for someone to pin the blame on.

  I’m not, Captain. I’m only trying to get the facts.

  You’ve got to remember, I think, that we had Adler and the FBI chief breathing down our necks, too. They wanted to blow him out of the sky regardless. The difference between our scheme and theirs was at least we were trying to insure that innocent bystanders wouldn’t get hurt.

  Yes, I think the record makes that abundantly clear.

  And actually there wasn’t much point holding off until the deadline. Suppose we’d waited until ten after five? What were we supposed to do? Let him drop the bombs and then go after him? It was pointless, really. We had to go after him. It was best to do it as fast as possible.

  Doesn’t this contradict your earlier statement that you’d decided to wait until the last possible minute in order to feel out Craycroft’s intentions before taking action?

  Maybe it does. All of us were rattled. I imagine a lot of people said and did contradictory things that day.

  What changed your mind?

  The passage of time. Don’t forget, we started talking about neutralizing him quite early that afternoon. At that point it would have been premature to try and shoot him down. I don’t know, maybe we should have tried to get to him before three o’clock. We never had that choice, though. We didn’t have enough time. But the five ten deadline gave us time to set things up, or at least time to try. It was a very simple proposition, actually. Craycroftwas going to do one of two things. He was going to fly away harmlessly at five ten, or he was going to bomb New York City.

  And you’d been trying, as we said before, to feel out his intentions?

  Absolutely. We’d been on the horn with him constantly, trying to get a rise out of him, trying to prod him into giving us a clue to his decision.

  But he gave you no clues.

  He gave us nothing at all. He never answered us. Once Ryterband left the bank and drove away with the money, we never heard another word out of Craycroft. I’m sure he could hear us if he wanted to, but it was quite possible he’d simply switched his receiver off. There was another transmitter aboard Ryterband’s boat, of course, and probably around four thirty or four forty-five Craycroft would be listening to pick up Ryterband’s signal that he’d made his getaway clean with the money. But between three thirty and four thirty, he had no reason to be listening to the radio. We probably were talking into a dead phone. But we did try.

  Very well. Now, as to the attempt to neutralize the threat, as it was carried out in the air, you’ve indicated that the idea for the scheme came from Sergeant O’Brien and Mr. Harris and that you concurred in the plan, and you then approached Mr. Toombes with it. What was his first reaction?

  I had to do a little talking. Finally he saw it was the only chance we had. He agreed we had to try it.

  By this time you’d already made arrangements to put some of the plan in motion on your own initiative?

  I’d issued orders to obtain the items Harris and O’Brien needed, yes. I hadn’t authorized the actual execution of the plan. But we were fighting against time. We could always decide not to use the stuff. But if we didn’t have it at hand, there’d have been no point trying to get authorization to go ahead. I sent for the chopper, the radio transmitters, the crop duster, and the paint. Then I talked to Toombes.

  And Mr. Toombes agreed it was worth a try. What happened next?

  Well, we didn’t have the authority to put the thing into operation. We had to go to the higher-ups.

  By that you mean, mainly, the military.

  Yes. What we were faced with wasn’t a police operation. I don’t suppose there’s an official designation for that kind of thing, but you could call it a counterinsurgency. It required a pol
itical decision and a military decision. Several departments were involved.

  Did you seek authorization from the FBI?

  No.

  Why?

  Two reasons. First, there wasn’t time to argue with Azzard. Second, the FBI was out of it by that point. Their job was to track Ryterband. They had no jurisdiction in the air. We had to go to the military for that.

  To whom in the military? To General Adler?

  No. He didn’t have command authority. What happened was we had an open line to General Hawley of the Air National Guard. He had his Starfighters in the air, of course, keeping tabs on Craycroft from a distance. He had been in communication with the Pentagon. I got on the phone with him.…

  At what time?

  About ten minutes to four, I think. I got on the phone with General Hawley and asked him who had the authority to commit his planes to action. He said that order had to come from the Air Force Chief of Staff at the very least, and he was at that moment trying to get through to that office on another line. I explained very briefly what Harris and O’Brien had in mind.

  How did General Hawley react to the idea?

  He didn’t at first. He’s a cautious type. Evidently he needed to think it over. He said he’d get back to me after he’d talked to the Air Force Chief of Staff in Washington.

  But time was getting very short, wasn’t it?

  It was nearly four o’clock, yes. We had a bit more than an hour to the deadline. At this time Ryterband was on the highway in Queens, being tailed by Mr. Azzard’s radio triangulation vans. Our own people were assembling the materials Harris and O’Brien had requested. The crop-duster aircraft was on its way from Teterboro to Newark Airport, where we planned to fill its tanks. Several police officers were obtaining the radio transmitters and the electromagnet. The Port Authority helicopter was at the Wall Street heliport pad, warming up. A few minutes after four—just after I’d talked to General Hawley—I sent O’Brien and Harris down to the heliport. I believe they arrived there at about four twenty. In the meantime the paint we’d requisitioned—eighty gallons—had been delivered to Newark Airport by a second helicopter from the Wall Street pad.

  This sounds extraordinarily intricate. I’m amazed you were able to coordinate it.

  Well, I think it sounds more complicated than it was. The materials were fairly simple. We didn’t require any specially made equipment. That was what was so brilliant about the idea—it made use of fairly common ingredients and put them to extraordinary use.

  Now, you’d commandeered most of these materials on your own initiative and authority.…

  Some of it was on Mr. Toombes’ authority, and the fact that he knew the people he was dealing with at the Port Authority. It was the Port Authority people who arranged for the crop duster, through the New Jersey Mosquito Control Commission.

  But as you’ve said, neither you nor Mr. Toombes—nor, in fact, anybody at all inside the bank office that you were using for your headquarters—was authorized to give orders to the military.

  Well, we just had to hope for voluntary cooperation.

  At what time was contact resumed between you and General Hawley of the Air National Guard?

  He called me back at about four ten, four fifteen.

  What did he say?

  He’d managed to reach the Air Force Chief of Staff in the Pentagon. He’d received a conditional go-ahead to take action on his own initiative if it seemed appropriate. Those are more or less his words to me.

  What did he mean by “conditional”?

  Under no circumstances were his planes to use air-to-air missiles.

  Because that could endanger the city?

  Yes. They’re heat-seeking missiles.…

  We’ve had that explained to us. In other words, the Starfighters could employ cannon or machine guns but not missiles.

  That’s right.

  What about the risk of striking Craycroft’s armed bombs with cannon or machine-gun fire?

  Well, in theory that was covered by Harris and O’Brien’s plan.

  In theory.

  We didn’t have any precedents, did we?

  Now, at this point in time—you must have concluded your conversation with General Hawley at about four twenty—

  Yes. I immediately went to the police-band radio and made contact with Harris and O’Brien. They were at the heliport, they’d just arrived there.

  And you told them?

  I told them I was issuing the go order. They were to execute the plan.

  O’Brien (Cont’d)

  I’ll use my notes here, if you don’t mind. All right, it was about twenty after four. Here’s the time-out on everything. The Starfighters were already airborne—had been, for hours. The banana chopper from PA was at the heliport. Another helicopter had delivered the eighty gallons of white paint to Newark Airport, where they’d poured it into the spray tanks of the MCC crop duster. The pilot was a guy named Williston. According to my notes, he took off from Newark in the crop duster at four seventeen. It only took him a few minutes to fly across the Hudson—he just flew straight over, there was no other air traffic in the area.

  Except for Craycroft.

  Except for Craycroft. All right, Harris and I were going aboard the banana helicopter with the three transmitters and the electromagnet apparatus. It took six men to load the gear on the chopper, and our pilot was worried we might not be able to take off with that much weight on board. Then we got a call from Captain Grofeld.

  What time?

  Four twenty-five. He said he’d been authorized to issue the go order. We were to establish direct air-to-air radio contact with Williston in the crop duster and with the Air National Guard pilots in the Starfighters. General Hawley and Captain Grofeld would be on the same frequency. Of course we were taking a hell of a risk using open radio channels, but there wasn’t any other way to do it.

  What risk?

  Well, if Craycroft happened to be monitoring that particular frequency, he’d know every thing we were planning. We’d done our best to fool him, but we had no way of knowing whether it was working.

  How did you try to fool him?

  Ordinary contact was maintained between the air elements and the ground on the standard Air National Guard frequency. We figured if Craycroft was monitoring anything, he’d be on that band. We kept up intermittent chatter on that band. In the meantime the real orders were being delivered on a different frequency, one we’d designated by coded instructions that Craycroft couldn’t follow. Or at least we assumed he couldn’t. It was the Air National Guard code book, and he wouldn’t have had access to that, since the codes are changed frequently.

  So you maintained a deception on the regular frequency, and executed the real plan on another frequency.

  That’s right.

  Very well. Now, at four twenty-six, approximately, you took off?

  Our pilot revved up the two rotors. For a minute there it didn’t look like we were going to get off the ground at all, but finally we got off the pad. There wasn’t much breeze; otherwise I think we might have drifted against some goddamn building before we had enough altitude to clear them. It seemed to take forever to get above the buildings with that weight aboard. Anyway we established our radio contacts on both frequencies—

  With the elements in the air and on the ground?

  Right. The Starfighters, the crop duster, General Hawley, at Floyd Bennett Field, and Captain Grofeld at the bank. Williston’s crop duster was circling over Astoria, Queens, by the time we took station above midtown Manhattan. The Starfighters were circling at about five thousand feet—just below the bellies of the clouds. Now, we had established with General Hawley that Harris and I would call the shots from the helicopter, since we were in visible contact with what was going on. He’d agreed to that, with Captain Grofeld.

  Go on, please.

  We flew north at about forty miles an hour, moving uptown. We were holding to an altitude of seventeen hundred feet in the helicopter. That p
ut us a couple of hundred feet higher than Craycroft’s bomber and some distance inside the oval of his flight path. He was traveling at about three times our speed, and he passed outboard of us on the way north.

  The timing of your scheme was precarious, wasn’t it?

  Very touchy. Very. The crop duster and the Starfighters had to coordinate their moves. The jets had to hit him immediately after the crop duster, If they were even a few seconds too late, it wouldn’t work because Craycroft would have time to react.

  Describe the events, please.

  We all had visual contact with one another, of course, and that made it easier. The technical problem was to get the crop duster out of the way of the jets.

  Yes, I understand that.

  You know it’s damned hard to describe the action when five things were going on simultaneously.

  You’re doing very well so far, Sergeant.

  I’ll try, anyway. The Starfighters were to come in from the west—from above the Palisades, on the Jersey shore. They had to fly straight at Craycroft. Collision course. At the same time, the crop duster had to come in from the east—behind Craycroft, because he had to be moving parallel to Craycroft. Now, the way we’d set it up, the crop duster would make its pass and then break right, turning north and dropping down a few feet. Then two of the Starfighters would make their passes and turn left—also north, but climbing away so they wouldn’t knock the crop duster around in their afterwash.

  Right. Go on.

  At the same time our helicopter had to be south of Craycroft’s plane. Our exact position didn’t matter, but we had to be within about a half mile of him when the planes made their passes at him. Our transmitters were pretty weak—that was on purpose—and we had to be in close range to make sure we were jamming his radio reception at that point.