Then there was the eighteen-wheeler on fire in the middle of the Verrazano Bridge. The whole thing—the cab and the trailer—just blazing along. It would continue to do so, I knew, until it burned out, because a fire truck had as much chance of getting through the stalled traffic as I had of becoming the starting power forward for the Knicks this season.
No one was listening about not panicking, and who could blame them? It was every man for himself now, as hard as that was to believe.
From time to time, I looked away from the sickening screens to just stare at the items on the desk I was sitting at. I blinked at a bottle of hand sanitizer, a LEGO Movie mouse pad, a tube of ChapStick. All of it was going to be underwater in a few hours?
Beside the computer was a framed picture I couldn’t stop staring at. Two coltish girls and a tall blond mom smiling as they waded among the rocks of a river.
It looked like it was taken in New England somewhere, with autumn-yellow leaves on the trees. The girls were adorable, with braces, and the smile on the mom’s face was room-brightening. It looked like an old Coca-Cola ad or something. Americans being happy. It was time to say sayonara to that now?
Squinting angrily at the photo, I suddenly didn’t want to just catch the sons of bitches responsible anymore. I wanted to hunt them down and kill them with my bare hands.
When I called Martin for the twentieth time in the last twenty minutes, it kicked into voice mail. Martin was on the road now. Everyone was with him except Brian. They were in northern Manhattan, trying to get across the Harlem River to meet up with Brian at Fordham Prep. The problem was that Brian wasn’t picking up his phone, which meant he had forgotten to charge it. But Martin had called the school and left word to have Brian stay there for pickup, so maybe all was still good.
I balled my hands into fists as they started to shake.
Who was I kidding? I felt completely helpless.
I looked up as Emily came in.
“Did you g
et your kids out?” she said.
“Almost. How about you? Are you near the coast in Virginia?”
“No, thank God. My brother got Olivia out of school, and they’re at Costco stocking up,” she said glumly.
Emily’s face lit up suddenly as she got a text.
“Mike, get up! C’mon!” she said, grabbing my hand.
“What?”
“Arturo and Doyle are at the scientist meeting on six. They say they might have something.”
Chapter 81
“They know where the bombs are!” said a wide-eyed Arturo, grabbing my shoulders as I stepped into the doorway of the sixth-floor conference room.
“Where?” I said.
“Árvore Preta,” said Doyle, looking every bit as pumped as Arturo. “It’s Portuguese for ‘black tree.’ It’s a volcanic island just south of the Cape Verde archipelican.”
“Archipelago, you mean, moron,” said Arturo.
We all backed out into the hallway.
“Slow down, fellas,” said Emily. “Where is this island?”
“The Cape Verde island chain is off the coast of Africa,” said Doyle. “They said it’s roughly three hundred and fifty miles to the west.”
“Why do they think this particular island is where the bombs are?” I said. “Didn’t they say there’s a bunch of different island chains in the area?”
“Well, these two rock scientists were in there arguing endlessly,” said Arturo. “They kept looking at the video, and this guy from UC Berkeley—”
“Cut to the chase, Arturo,” I said, trying to be patient.
“All of a sudden, this little guy, a Brit, in the corner of the room stands up and points at the screen and says, ‘Excuse me, but are those petrels?’”