When I stood and turned around again to ask the muscular security guard to take my place in line, I stopped and just stood there blinking.
Because all of a sudden the guy, whoever he had been, whatever he had been, was gone.
Chapter 63
The next three days were some of the most tumultuous in New York City’s history.
Twenty-two people had died in the blast. Eleven special agents (one of them the direct assistant to the head of the New York office), three civilian clerks, and eight maintenance and security people. More than a hundred were still in the hospital, many with internal injuries from being crushed under heavy debris when the building collapsed. Many people were missing fingers, arms, eyes, feet. The fact that half of Manhattan’s hospitals were still out of commission after the EMP blast in Yorkville did not help the situation at all.
The initial investigation into the bombing showed that it had been as ingenious as it had been devastating. Incredibly, robots had been used. Investigators had found three unexploded robots in the pile. They looked like miniature children’s blocks, but inside they had intricate flywheels and radio receivers and electronics that allowed them to be moved around remotely, like a swarm of insects. In addition to the electronics, the bots had been laden with explosives and had been inserted probably through the AC unit on the roof into the air ducts.
Experts were speculating that whoever had radio-controlled the bots into position must have been an engineer or a demolitions expert, because each unit had been precisely placed alongside the building’s support struts for maximum destruction.
As in the aftermath of 9/11, the governor of New York had issued a citywide state of emergency, and the National Guard was called in. Soldiers armed with rifles stood at multiple checkpoints throughout the city, with countersniper teams on various rooftops. There were even rumors that there was a CIA surveillance drone high in the air above New York City 24-7. It was truly unreal.
But instead of committing the mentally unhealthy act of dwelling on things, Emily and I and my Ombudsman Outreach squaddies busied ourselves by doubling down, trying to shake out everything we could on the investigation. It was all dead ends so far, but something would break. It had to. Or at least we couldn’t stop believing that it would.
“If they’re terrorists, Mike, then why won’t they contact us, claim credit?” said Noah Robertson, starting up our Friday morning team meeting at the Intelligence Division building in Brooklyn.
We were all camped around my desk—Emily and Arturo in commandeered office chairs, which were in high demand since about a hundred cops had been reassigned to the case. Doyle and Brooklyn and Noah were actually sitting on the floor against the partition wall among the stacks of paper and coffee cups and pizza boxes that were strewn around the once-fancy office space.
Everyone was in jeans and hoodies and T-shirts—even Emily, who was usually in her FBI-mandated fancy office clothes. Nonstop sixteen-hour days tend to make everyone a little less formal.
“Because that would be the conventio
nal thing,” Emily said, picking one of the little bots they’d found in the rubble off my desk.
“These guys don’t do conventional,” she said, tossing the bot into the air and catching it.
“They figure it’s even more terrifying to not claim credit, to continue to stay in the shadows being a faceless menace,” I said.
“I think they might be right,” said Arturo around the straw of his blue Coolatta.
“But they are terrorists, right? I mean, they have to be, considering how well financed they are,” Brooklyn said. “Only a team of computer experts could have come up with that robot swarm bomb, or whatever the hell you want to call it.”
“Or built those EMP devices,” said Doyle, yawning. “Hell, we’ve all heard the rumors. It’s most likely being sponsored by a foreign government.”
“No,” I said as I stared up at the ceiling.
“Earth to Mike,” Doyle said after a beat of silence.
“It’s not a government or even a team of terrorists. It’s too…elegant,” I said, snatching the bot Emily was tossing out of the air.
“For all its destruction, this is handcrafted,” I said. “It’s one or two people. This is being done to precision. The attacks. The head fakes. And if you want something done this right, you have to do it yourself.”
Chapter 64
“One or two people are systematically leveling New York City?” said Arturo as he made an annoying squeaking sound with his drink straw. “How? It’s impossible.”
“In 2000, there was a famous article in Wired magazine,” I said. “Some computer genius sat down and mapped out how all these new computer-assisted breakthroughs in technology will pan out. The potential pitfalls of things like artificial intelligence and nanotech and robotics and biotech.”
“I think I read it,” Noah said. “It was written by the guy who cofounded Sun Microsystems and created Java, right?”
“That’s the guy,” I said. “One of the theories in the article is that as computer tech gets more powerful for regular folks and makes their lives easier, this more powerful tech could also put power into the hands of disgruntled individuals.”
I rolled the bot in my palm like it was a die.
“That’s what I think is happening here,” I said. “We’re seeing the pivot where cutting-edge technology, being very well utilized by two or even just one motivated nut job, can kill a massive amount of people.”