“We need to keep you safe,” said Johnny.
“If we’re under attack, I need to get to work. Get me to the Annex so I can help track him down.”
“Johnny, Bozzone’s been hit,” said Peter Mench, one of the shift supervisors. “A truck hit the front of the building and blew up at the barrier. We need you.”
“Secure it. I’ll be there in a few minutes.” Johnny put his hand to his forehead, as if rubbing the outside of his brain might organize the cells and their thoughts inside. He’d expected something like this, trained for it, prepared, but going from the theoretical to the reality always involved friction — it never happened the way you thought it would.
“The building’s been hit,” he told the others. “Drop me on Cambridge and take Chelsea to the Mountain.”
“I need to be somewhere I can do some good,” protested Chelsea.
Johnny ignored her. “She’s your priority,” he told Bowles. “I can get to the office probably quicker on foot anyway.”
“I’m not running away,” insisted Chelsea.
“You’re not.”
Bowles slammed on the brakes. The traffic ahead had stopped dead.
“Throw it into reverse,” Johnny insisted. His brain hiccup was over — he could see what he had to do clearly and easily. “Go over to Longfellow, get away from the city. Go!”
Bowles veered into a U-turn. The street ahead was clear.
“Drop me here,” shouted Johnny. He unlocked the door and put his hand on the handle as Bowles screeched to a halt.
“I love you,” he told Chelsea as he went out the door, the SUV still moving.
“Me, too,” she said weakly.
It was the first time either of them had said that to each other, or to themselves.
100
The blast of the helicopter striking the external wall of the building threw Massina against the glass at the front of his outer office. He managed to put his prosthetic right arm up as he hit, which absorbed some of the shock and saved him from a concussion. But the blow disabled the mechanics in his arm, bending one of the main “bones” or rods. Rising slowly, he saw his assistant, Teri, fumbling for the door a few feet away.
“Come on,” he told her, pushing it open with his good arm.
The building’s original early-twentieth-century curtain wall had been reinforced with heavy steel, and while not designed specifically to withstand an explosion, it withstood the crash without catastrophic failure. The glass was another matter — the helicopter impaled itself in the office, its nose a few inches from Massina’s desk. Exactly thirty seconds after impact, a timer ignited a bomb located in the rear of the cockpit; the explosion brought down a good portion of the ceiling and floor, along with part of the interior walls and roof above the room, damaging the structural members and starting a mini landslide of material toward the ground. At the same time, it ignited the fuel that had leaked from the aircraft. Flames quickly spread into the building, lapping at the carpet and whatever wood and plastic they could find. Two of the three zones of sprinklers covering the floor had been damaged by the crash and explosion; the fire leaped through those sections, racing toward the elevators.
Massina and Teri struggled down the hall, dazed by the smoke and dust as well as the explosion.
“Stairs,” said Massina. “We need the stairs.”
Finding the door, Massina pushed it open, bracing himself for he knew not what: flames, maybe, or a gaping hole. But instead, fresh air surged into his face.
Safety.
“I’ll be down in a minute,” Massina told Teri, pushing her through the threshold. “I need to make sure everyone’s out.”
Teri started to protest, but Massina stepped back quickly and shut the door. Alarms blared; water whistled through the broken pipes of the extinguisher system. Smoke, heavy with toxins from the carpet and other materials, stung Massina’s face. A spray of water doused him as he turned back to check the other hall for his people; he could feel soot caking on his head and face.
“Out! This way!” he yelled, pushing open the door to the Administrative Functions suite, where personnel and related matters were handled. Smoke seeped through the walls and water sprayed from the ceiling; the emergency lights were on, along with an alarm light that blinked on and off like a lazy strobe. The office and its cluster of desks and cabinets looked empty, and Massina was just about to go back out to the hall when he heard a moan from the back.
Jason Vendez, the head of Finance, lay on the floor, pinned between a desk and part of the caved-in wall. Massina tried to grab the desk with his prosthetic arm, which ordinarily would have had no trouble leveraging the furniture out of the way. But the arm was broken, unable to respond properly — it was an odd sensation, his brain thinking it was moving yet his eyes registering that it wasn’t.
Massina squeezed between the desk and the wall, aiming to lever his feet against the desk. That didn’t work; he swung around, butt against the desk, feet against the wall, and tried again. The desk shifted and he fell to the floor as Vendez crawled free.
“I’m OK, I’m OK,” Vendez repeated as Massina helped him to his feet.
“Who else is here?”
“No one.”
“The smoke is coming in — we have to get out.”
Out in the hallway, flames flickered along the bottom of the wall. A layer of smoke had risen to the ceiling, a poisonous cloud layer dividing the air. The smoke drifted toward them slowly, lowering itself as it went.
“Who’s here! Who’s here!” shouted Massina. “Go to the stairs!”
If anyone answered, he didn’t hear. He pushed Vendez toward the stairs, then went down to the next suite, looking inside. The rooms on this side were farthest from the explosion and appeared intact — and fortunately empty.
Massina pushed open the door to the last office and yelled inside. No one answered.
Water from one of the burst pipes shot down from the ceiling. He stepped into the office, crossing through the spray.
“Anyone!” he yelled. “Anyone!”
The room was empty.
He turned and nearly knocked over Vendez.
“I told you to go down,” Massina screamed, angry.
“I’m not leaving without you, Louis.”
“Come on, then,” said Massina. “Crawl.”
The smoke had sunk so low there was less than three feet of clear air left. Knots of toxins swirled downward, tiny twisters of poison. Water dripped in large drops, springing from the leaks in the pipes above, impotent against the fiery onslaught.
They had just reached the door when the building shook again, the tremor so strong both men lost their balance. As Massina fell on his back, he saw the hallway wall begin to collapse. He held his breath and leaped upward to grab the door handle. As he did, the wall next to it began to crumble. Massina’s fingers touched the handle, then involuntarily pulled back — the fire had warmed the metal to well over a hundred degrees. He fell back to his knees; before he could rise, the ceiling collapsed, knocking him to his stomach next to Vendez, burying them both in a wet spray of mud and Sheetrock.
101
“I need my laptop,” Chelsea told Bowles. “Stop at the Annex.”
“Johnny told us to go to the Mountain.”
“He didn’t say I couldn’t get my laptop. I can work from the Mountain.”
Bowles didn’t answer.
“It’ll only take me a minute,” Chelsea added. “We’re going right past it. There’s no attack there. Take the ramp.”