by Bart Gauvin
After a few seconds the firing stopped, and the two occupants of Wanderer’s wheelhouse tentatively pulled themselves off the deck and peeked back portside at the hostile fishing trawler. About two hundred yards away, the gunman watched them warily. The pilot reached for his radio hand mic while at the same time another barrel-shaped object rolled off the trawler’s stern, entering the water in a splash of white foam.
Peering over the bottom lip of his shattered wheelhouse window, he called breathlessly, “Sandy Hook, this is Wanderer, over.” The man with the rifle aboard Trogg was still watching them, the weapon at his shoulder now pointed down at the water. The other two continued to labor at the rear of the trawler, and were soon joined by a fourth man.
“Wanderer, this is Sandy Hook, over,” came the response.
“Sandy Hook,” the pilot said, trying to keep his voice under control as his own vessel opened the distance from the Trogg, “we just approached Bulgarian flagged trawler SS Trogg and observed them depositing several large objects into the water. They were unresponsive to radio hails and when we hailed them audibly one of the crew picked up a rifle and started shooting at us, over!”
There was a pause on the Sandy Hook end of the net.
Then, “Say again your last, Wanderer?” crackled the obviously surprised response from the Coast Guard Station.
Wanderer’s helmsman, who was now up and peering back at the trawler as well, said quietly, “They just dumped another one of those things into the water. If I didn’t know any better, I would say those were mines.”
Mines? thought the pilot. Naval mines? In the channel? Why would Bulgarian fisherman be doing that?
“Are you sure?” he asked the helmsman.
“I was Navy ordnance disposal before I got out,” explained the crewman, “and—there! There goes another one!” Yet another barrel-like object rolled off of Trogg’s stern and into the water. “They’re mines for sure.”
The pilot depressed the talk button on his mic again, his voice now slightly shaky. “Sandy Hook, Wanderer. I say again, we approached SS Trogg, and its crew fired at us with a rifle.” he said by way of explanation. “My helmsman says they’re dumping naval mines into the channel! He’s former Navy and says he’s sure about that. We’ve seen about ten of them go into the water.” The pilot watched as another barrel rolled off the trawler, “and there’s no oil slick or trash that we can see. Drug dumping is unlikely here, over.”
There was a pause on the other end of the radio net as the watch crew at the Coast Guard Station processed Wanderer’s report. The pilot could see the crewman with the rifle on the trawler watching them from three hundred yards away, his weapon at the ready.
0817 EST, Sunday 13 February 1994
1217 Zulu
US Coast Guard Sandy Hook Station, Ft. Hancock, New Jersey
“Roger, Wanderer. Remain as close as you can and observe. We’ve got help coming your way, over,” Commander Ingalls spoke into his radio mic.
Confusion was growing among the members of the Coast Guard watch staff. Commander Ingalls had not expected any trouble from the Trogg, so the report of shots fired was a complete surprise, What the hell was that last call? Naval mines? the Coast Guard officer wondered, bemused. An overactive imagination over on the pilot boat or something to do with this DEFCON 4? Ingalls wondered. The Coast Guard patrol ship Adak would be en route to the scene any minute from her station off Staten Island. That old Bulgarian rust bucket of a trawler couldn’t make it far before an armed vessel got there. This lazy Sunday morning had certainly gotten interesting in a hurry.
The watch office telephone rang, Ingalls answered “Sandy Hook Station.”
The call was from Coast Guard Headquarters in Washington. Ingalls listened for a moment to the voice at the other end, then his hand tightened around the phone involuntarily. Interesting indeed.
“You’re serious?” Ingalls asked, “DEFCON One?” Other heads in the watch office turned in his direction at this phrase. “What does that mean for us?” He listened a little longer, then concluded unhappily with, “Understood.”
The watch commander hung up the phone, stunned. War?
Commander Ingalls raised his voice and addressed the other men in the room. “Gentlemen, uh,” He couldn’t believe he was about to say this. “That was Coast Guard HQ and…we’ve been ordered to assume DEFCON One. Apparently, the Russians have—” Suddenly it all came together for Ingalls. The trawler. The gunplay. The dumping. Naval mines!
“Call Adak!” he almost shouted. “Tell them they need to stop that trawler, now!”
As the surface ops officer grabbed a radio to call Adak, Ingalls asked the room, “What vessels do we have transiting the channel in the next hour?”
The other man looked at his computerized radar display for a moment, then said, “Sir, the dry bulk carrier Jiffy Blue just cleared the narrows ahead of Trogg. Coming behind is the tanker Delta Pioneer, three miles out, and behind her the car carrier Cape Lambert, all outbound. Nothing inbound over the next hour.”
“Get on the horn to Delta Pioneer and Cape Lambert,” ordered Ingalls. “Tell them to halt immediately! Then call the NYPD and tell them we need help from their patrol boats to make sure no one wanders into the channel. The harbor is closed until further notice.”
Several miles away, inside the Outer Harbor, the crew of the small cutter USCGC Adak, on patrol off Staten Island, brought their ship about and pushed the throttles forward, bringing the vessel up to its full thirty knots of speed. With the report of shots fired arriving from Wanderer via the Sandy Hook watch staff, the dark-skinned, dark-haired, Brooklyn-born captain of the Adak, Lieutenant Jackson, ordered his small crew to man the ship’s weapons, which consisted of a Mk38 twenty-five-millimeter cannon, a derivative of the weapon carried by the US Army’s Bradley Fighting Vehicle, along with several .50 caliber machine guns and a Mk19 automatic grenade launcher. Below decks, the chief of the boat was issuing small arms to a seven-man boarding team, who would soon move topside and begin readying the ship’s boat.
Jackson looked out over the gray, choppy waters of the Outer Bay to where the rusty hull of the hostile Trogg continued to churn southward in the broad channel. Wanderer was keeping a respectful distance about a quarter mile to starboard. Briefly, the officer’s mind registered a sharp sound from behind him in the city, something that sounded at this distance like the slamming of a dumpster lid. He ignored it, focusing instead on the Bulgarian ship.
CHAPTER 54
0818 EST, Sunday 13 February 1994
1218 Zulu
Brooklyn Bridge, New York City, USA
JACK YOUNG’S SUBARU Outback idled amid the other cars stalled on the ascent ramp to the Brooklyn Bridge. As was customary here in New York City, many of the stationary motorists with whom Jack was waiting took turns laying on their horns to express displeasure at the delay. It was an action the New York Times reporter, who hailed from the rural Lake Huron shore of Michigan, had never understood. As if blaring horns are suddenly going to remind the drivers up ahead to step on the gas and clear the way, he thought, half annoyed by the sound but also half amused. He kept his own hands safely away from his vehicle’s horn.
Not that he didn’t sympathize with the plight of his fellow motorists. Traffic like this is unusual for a Sunday. If this doesn’t clear up soon I’m going to have to cut the hike short. Jack was on his way up to the Harriman State Park in the Hudson Highlands for some easy hiking, just a quick day trip up the Palisades to get out of the city and see something other than gray concrete and dirty snow.
Looking over the hood of his station wagon, Jack could see the Gothic arches supporting the span over which he and the others around him were waiting to cross. Traffic was definitely still moving. He could see cars jockeying into a single open lane on the right side of the bridge. An NYPD police cruiser had just worked its way forward on the shoulde
r past the idling cars, and Jack could see the blue flash of the cruiser’s lights where the rest of the traffic flow should have been moving.
Jack settled back into his seat. This might take a while, he thought. Reaching down to his center console, he twisted the dial to turn on his radio, hoping that the NYPD would be quick about clearing whatever it was that was slowly destroying his Sunday leisure plans.
The traffic around Manhattan this cold Sunday morning shouldn’t have been as bad as it was, the officer thought as he stepped out of his patrol car and onto the bridge’s asphalt surface. Traffic on Sunday mornings was usually steady but light; today, however, the calls had started to come in over the traffic net of backups at key choke points all over the city, including the Lincoln Tunnel, George Washington Bridge, and the bridges here on the East Side.
Here on the Brooklyn Bridge the officer could see the problem was a stalled box truck in the left-hand lane on the Manhattan-bound side of the bridge, the lane closest to the pedestrian walkway at the bridge’s center. Looking through the span’s scaffolding and out to his right, the officer could see the blue and red flashing lights of a fellow traffic police officer’s patrol car over a quarter of a mile away, on the nearby Manhattan Bridge, both bridges crossing the East River. The other officer appeared to be dealing with a similar issue on that double-decked span.
What are the odds? The officer thought in passing as he started to walk forward to the truck, another stalled delivery truck on the Manhattan Bridge. Stalled vehicles weren’t unusual impediments to traffic in this or any city, but two of them on two of the usually-congested bridges at the same time was terrible luck for anyone trying to get around this Sunday morning.
Walking along the truck’s driver side, between the vehicle and the barrier, the officer arrived at the truck’s cab and pulled himself up to window level and peered inside. Where’s the driver? He wondered. Next the officer tried the door. Locked.
The police officer was walking around to try the passenger-side door when a huge white flash to his front, five hundred yards away on the Manhattan Bridge, suddenly filled the space that a millisecond before had been occupied by the stalled truck on the other bridge. He barely registered what had just occurred before the silent white flash of the explosion turned into gray smoke and dust within an expanding hemisphere of flying vehicles, bodies, and jagged chunks of the suspension bridge’s support structure. After a moment the blast wave reached the police officer, compressed atmosphere tugging at his blue uniform as the thunderous CRACK of the explosion washed over him. Only then did the officer’s brain send the belated signal to his body to flinch, and he did so, staggering backwards.
Bomb, he realized almost immediately. Truck bomb.
The officer continued to watch as the dirty gray smoke a quarter mile away begin to dissipate. He didn’t even realize that traffic on his own bridge had stopped, commuters stepping out of their cars to peer at the wreckage being revealed up-river. The police officer could see jagged pieces of what had been steel support beams hanging down from beneath the long span, while several of the bridge’s massive suspender cables either hung loose or twisted grotesquely outward from the blast site.
He was still collecting himself when a low rumble began to force itself into his racing consciousness. Looking across the water at the twisted metal, the officer saw an approaching subway train, a B-Line. It hurtled onto the span’s lower deck at the eastern end of the bridge, its conductor realizing his peril too late. The train’s breaks sent cascades of squealing sparks out into the air. The police officer watched the catastrophe unfold in slow motion, unable to tear his eyes away.
The train reached the area where the explosion had left a jagged, gaping hole in the lower deck. The front wheels of the lead car jumped off the twisted ends of the damaged track, the car tilting downward briefly before the momentum of the rest of the train began to jackknife the following cars in all directions in a bedlam of screaming metal and crashing glass that drowned out the terrified cries of the passengers within. A railcar exploded out the side of the double-decked bridge, taking with it several more support beams before tumbling the hundred feet to the river below. A second followed.
This last event sounded the death knell of the enormous, proud structure that had stood connecting the two boroughs of the great city for nearly a century. The police officer on the Brooklyn Bridge, along with a growing crowd of motorists, now unconcerned with getting to their respective destinations, watched in horror as the center of the Manhattan Bridge’s nearly seven-thousand-foot span began to sag. As if in slow motion, and amid the popping of snapped suspension cables and the low groan of bending steel, the central span of the bridge broke in half, the two newly-created ends gaining speed as they rotated downward until they struck the roiling waters of the East River, one-hundred and thirty-five feet below, sending up a tremendous dirty white splash. Train cars, automobiles, and debris all spilled into the cold waters, creating a cascade of water that made the river appear from a distance as if it was boiling.
Belatedly, the officer recovered his senses enough to bolt for his patrol car. There was a radio there, and someone needed to report this, and fast! People were milling about among the idling vehicles around the officer, gasping and letting out anguished cries at the horror unfolding before them. The police officer arrived at his vehicle in a moment and reached in through an open window for his radio’s hand mic. As he did so he looked up over the hood of the patrol car and realized: White truck. Stalled. Center of the bridge. No driver, his thoughts raced. The officer opened his mouth to warn the people around him, but the shout was still forming in his throat when the white flash and rapidly expanding blast wave of the ten-thousand pounds of high explosive in the rear of the white truck blew him and everyone around him, into eternity.
Jack flinched, his hands tightening on the steering wheel as the second, much louder CRACK washed over his car. The honking from the other motorists had stopped at the sound of the first explosion. Jack was surprised to register that it was an explosion, he knew because he’d heard them before just not in New York City. The sound rolled over them from their front right, like an angry god ordering them to be silent. Jack had been fiddling with the knob on his radio, trying to find his favorite local news station for a traffic update. Everyone’s heads turned to look in the direction of the Manhattan Bridge, past a conglomeration of square, gray office buildings. Jack couldn’t see the other bridge, but the god-awful metallic screeching and grinding sounds were enough to tell the veteran reporter that something terrible had happened. His reporter’s mind instantly knew what it had been: bomb.
Now the gothic arches of Brooklyn Bridge directly ahead had vanished in a dirty yellow flash that almost instantaneously morphed into an ugly gray cloud of expanding dust and debris, cars, asphalt, and people cartwheeling outward like matchsticks tossed into a stiff breeze. The pressure struck with on overwhelming BOOM. Jack felt it in his chest more than he heard it, and his station wagon rocked on its suspension, the cab filling almost instantly with the smell of spent high explosives. Two bombs, Jack thought, almost subconsciously. Two bombs on two bridges. In that instant, Jack knew that this wasn’t just a run-of-the-mill terrorist attack. This was something bigger. Bridges were strange targets for terrorists.
Small bits of debris rained down like hail on the stationary cars around Jack. He saw a nick appear in his windshield as ruble clattered off glass and metal. A second nick appeared after a particularly large piece of asphalt struck the windshield with a startling bang. Then eerie, oppressive silence settled upon a world enveloped in gray smoke and dust.
The silence didn’t last long, however. Terrified motorists were opening their doors and scrambling out, running, stumbling back down the incline, away from the dissipating gray cloud. “Oh gahd, oh gahd, oh gahd,” Jack heard a middle-aged woman wail as she sprinted past his driver’s side window. It was so absurd he almost laughed until he saw
a man dragging a teenage girl by the wrist, a gash in her head bleeding down over her wildly panicked eyes.
Reaching over the passenger seat, Jack opened his glove compartment and pulled out the first aid kit he always kept in his vehicle. Then he leaned back, opened his door, and stepped out right in front of the pair.
“Stop!” Jack called as the man tried to slither around him. “I can help, I’ve got a—”
“Out of my way!” the man shrieked, shoving his shoulder into Jack’s car door and nearly pinning the reporter against the vehicle. Jack had been in a lot of bad places in his career, but never during the catastrophe, or war. It was always after the tragedy, after people had begun processing the violence that was upending their lives. Now, in the moment, in the unfolding brutality around him, the sheer animal fear of the man pushing past him, dragging the bleeding girl, frightened Jack more than whatever carnage lay ahead. All around, more people were abandoning their trapped cars, streaming rearward.
Standing there between the half-open door and his still-running Subaru holding the tiny first aid kit, Jack suddenly felt silly. What do you think you’re going to do for these people, Jack? He asked himself. Everyone who can run is running, and you’re not qualified to help anyone who can’t.
He looked forward into the churning gray smoke and knew what he needed to do. Whatever had just happened here, it was important. Jack had no idea what was going on in the world beyond the bubble of his own rattled senses, but something told him that the bombs he’d just witnessed were part of something much bigger. It was a momentous story that would need to be told.
