“I’m glad she changed her mind,” I said.
“Scoot, Coop. It’s like a bunker up there. Safest place in the building.”
“Don’t jinx it for me.”
“See you later. Keep excavating. You’re pulling great stuff from the sister.”
“Where are you going to be?”
Mike threw up his arms as he moved away from me. “Wherever Scully wants me.”
“Stay safe.”
“Have to. I have a hot date tomorrow night.”
“Mr. Blunt. I want you to listen up.” Keith Scully’s voice boomed over the loudspeaker from the stationmaster’s office as Mike walked away from me. “We found your toy bombs, Nik. You’re just upping the stakes every time you do something stupid like that. We know you have a gun, Mr. Blunt. We know you might have several guns. Time for the white flag. Time to surrender so we can make a deal with the district attorney’s office. It’s your best hope.”
I turned in the direction of the elevator that had taken us up to the situation room earlier.
“Not that way, Ms. Cooper. They’ve turned off that particular elevator. Scully and the FBI chief are concerned that Blunt might still have that key. We’re going up on the east side of the building. There’s an elevator in the far corner,” he said, pointing in the direction of the Lexington Avenue exit.
“Are you sure?” I asked, looking over my shoulder to see whether Mike was still in sight.
“Yes, ma’am. There are uniformed cops stationed at the elevator doors on every floor. I promise to get you there just fine.” He smiled at me, and I smiled back, despite my growing case of jitters.
“Lead the way.”
Dogs were guiding their handlers to all points on the concourse. We skirted the information booth in the center of the floor, going kitty-corner toward Lexington Avenue. I kept stride with the officer, passing the newsstand and walking through the arcade of shops that were shuttered tight, with metal gratings like those you see in third-world countries.
“You don’t think any killer’s gonna buy that, Ms. Cooper, do you?”
“What?”
“That your boss is gonna give him some kind of a deal. Doesn’t make sense to me, and I didn’t kill nobody. Kill three people and think somebody’s cutting you a plea bargain? He’d have to be insane. Forget surrender. I’d be so far away from this place you’d never find me.”
There were two NYPD officers stationed on either side of the elevator. Both were armed with shotguns, wearing vests and helmets. My Metro-North police escort held up his key, tin badge in hand, and they nodded to us as we got on the elevator.
The officer hit the button for the sixth floor.
“But it’s on seven, isn’t it?”
“Yeah, Ms. Cooper, but the only way directly to the seventh floor-to the situation room-is that elevator they shut down. We’ll walk up from six. Trust me.”
“Of course.”
The elevator moved at the pace of a machine built a century ago. I was beginning to feel oppressively confined by the time it groaned to a halt.
The small landing onto which it opened-which held the elevator as well as a wide stairwell with steps to the flights above and below-was also guarded by an NYPD officer. It was a desolate space, with chipped and grimy paint, and steam pipes running in every direction.
He held open the door to let us out of the landing. “You know how to get there?”
“Not this way,” the Metro-North cop answered with confidence. “We need to take the stairs one flight up, to the situation room. My partner’s in there with a witness.”
“Go ahead.”
I followed the cop up the double-height staircase. The door at the top of it was locked, and he used some kind of master key to open it and enter. I took three steps in his wake, and then abruptly stopped in place.
It seemed as though I was suspended in midair. There were long windows-with panes of glass more than six feet tall-on either side of me. Most terrifying of all was that when I looked straight down, I could see sixteen stories to the floor of the terminal. The catwalk I needed to cross was made of glass brick.
“What’s wrong?” the cop said, looking back at me.
“I-I feel like I’m going to fall. It actually makes me dizzy to be up here.”
“First time is tough for everyone, Ms. Cooper,” he said, walking back to me. “It seems like nothing’s holding you up, I know that. Grab my hand and you’ll be fine. It’s just an illusion.”
I took baby steps, as though I was moving to the edge of a gangplank.
I was halfway across the catwalk, trying my best not to look down, keeping my eyes on the back of the cop’s head while he guided me across the glass floor. Pellets of rain were pounding against the windows to my left. The storm had started.
Suddenly, there was a new voice on the loudspeaker. The microphone crackled and screeched as whoever was at the controls increased the volume.
“Your turn to listen up, Commissioner. There’s no white flag in your future.”
It was Nik Blunt.
The police officer dropped my hand and pulled his gun. “Get down,” he screamed at me, as he placed himself in one of the windows, looking down over the concourse.
I followed his orders and lowered myself onto the floor, watching as he took hold of a huge metal wheel that was attached to the frame of the window and pulled on it. The glass pane next to me cranked open, almost two hundred feet above the terminal floor.
“Just so you know, Commissioner,” Blunt said. “It’s impossible to shut down Grand Central, no matter how hard you try.”
I was flat out on my stomach, peering through the glass bricks to see what was happening below. The few remaining cops were scrambling for cover, as though they were trying to figure out where this madman was.
“Is he in the stationmaster’s office?” I asked. “Do you think something happened to Scully?”
“No, no,” the cop said. “I can’t quite see him, but I know where the other loudspeaker is. He’s talking from inside the information booth.”
“You want to put cuffs on me, Commissioner?” Blunt’s voice was sharp and angry. “Come and get me, Scully. The shock and awe portion of your evening has just begun.”
The next thing I heard was the rapid-fire repeat of an automatic rifle, spraying bullets onto the floor of the main concourse from the very center of Grand Central Terminal.
FORTY-ONE
The noise stopped abruptly after forty or fifty seconds.
As soon as it did, the deafening sound of return fire coming from four or five police sharpshooters echoed up to the celestial ceiling, very close to where we were.
“Stay down,” the cop said. “Crawl. Go behind me and get over to the far side, toward the situation room.”
I crossed in back of him and then shut my eyes, wiggling my way to the safety of the landing behind the massive wall that stretched above us, as high as the building went.
Now it was Scully’s voice. “Move in, men. If he’s still breathing, bring him out alive.”
The commissioner was challenging Blunt, trying to flush out his position as well as his physical condition.
I sat upright, slightly nauseous from the dizzying view but drawn to the drama playing out below. At least two officers had been wounded in Nik Blunt’s surprise shelling. They were being dragged by other cops across the concourse floor in the direction of the old waiting room.
“Snipers, take up positions.” Maybe a Code Black was in effect, affording Scully a screenshot of the scene, allowing him to give orders to the men on the ground. He shouted to them, a disembodied voice like the wizard behind the screen in Oz. “Move in now.”
Four of the SWAT team members approached the information booth, guns aimed directly at the glass partitions. All were coming from the same direction, obviously to avoid friendly fire.