"Tom, listen to me-"
"We are so sorry about Vince-"
I lost the call in the elevator, and I said to Kate, "When we get outside, commandeer an ambulance."
She nodded.
The elevator reached the lobby, and Kate moved quickly toward the First Avenue exit as I redialed Walsh and followed her.
Tom answered again and said, "Kate told me you were resting comfortably and I just want to say-"
"Tom, shut up and listen to me." That shut him up, and I said, slowly and clearly with calm urgency in my voice, "Asad Khalil, when he thought he was going to kill me, told me that there was a bomb planted at the WTC site-"
"What?"
I could hear engine noises in the background, and I asked him, "Are you still there?"
"Yes."
"I think the bomb is in the big semi there-Carlino Masonry Supplies. Do you see it?"
"I'm… standing next to…"
"You might want to move. But before you do that, call the Bomb Squad ASAP. Then get everyone the hell out of there-that is a very big truck."
Silence.
I walked out of the lobby, and the guard at the door said to me, "Hey! Where you goin'?"
Walsh asked, "John… are you sure about this?"
Very good question. And the answer was no, but I said, "Yes."
The guard was speaking to me, but I waved him off. Where the hell was Kate?
Walsh was saying, "The trailer is locked."
By now, Tom Walsh was probably thirty blocks away, so I wondered how he knew that. I said, "Yes, it would be locked, Tom." I hesitated, then said, "I think-think it's set to-"
The guard had another guard with him now, and they wanted me to go inside with them. I said to them, "I'm waiting for an ambulance." I said to Walsh, "It's set to go off at 8:46 A.M."
He didn't ask why I thought that, because that time is burned into everyone's mind.
There was another silence on the phone, and I thought I'd lost him, but then he said, "That's thirty-one minutes… I don't think we can evacuate this area-"
"Try. Meanwhile, evacuate the site and get the area cordoned off. Call the Bomb Squad."
I hung up, and the guards had me by both arms, so I told them, "I'm STP positive."
They backed off, and one of them made a call on his radio.
An ambulance pulled into the pickup lane with Kate in the passenger seat, and I opened her door and said to her, "Get out."
"No. I'm going with you."
One of the guards told the ambulance driver, "This guy is STP positive."
Kate said, "John, get in the ambulance. Now! Or I'm going without you."
She meant it, so I moved as quickly as I could toward the rear doors and climbed into the ambulance and knelt between the two front seats.
Kate said to the driver, "Ground Zero. Liberty Street. Lights and sirens."
The driver, a young black woman, hit the bells and whistles and off we went. She asked Kate, "What are we responding to without EMT personnel, and why are we taking a patient to Ground Zero?"
Kate explained, "It's really complicated, Jeena." She added, "And really urgent."
Jeena knew how to weave and bob and blow the lights, and I estimated we'd be at Ground Zero in about five or six minutes.
I asked, "What time is it?"
Kate looked at her watch and said, "Eight twenty-one."
Twenty-five minutes. I said to Kate, "The second plane hit at nine oh-three, and there are more people around at that time. So maybe-"
She said, "Let's go with eight forty-six."
"Right."
Jeena asked, "What are we talking about, folks?"
I answered by saying, "As soon as you drop us on Liberty Street, you turn around and get out of the area."
She thought about that and said, "Sounds like you might need an ambulance down there."
"Yeah, but…" I tried to think about how big this bomb could be, and like everyone in this business, I compared it to the Oklahoma City bombing. That was a small truck with about five thousand pounds of explosives that did massive damage. This trailer, if it was full of the same stuff, would take out fifteen or twenty city blocks-basically all of Lower Manhattan, from the Hudson to the East River, including the Financial District right down to Battery Park. And how many people lived and worked there? Maybe a quarter of a million, and there was no way to evacuate them in time… Holy shit.
I said to Jeena, "Pull over. I have to drive."
She informed me, "Nobody drives my ambulance."
Kate turned back to me and said, "John, maybe we don't need to be there."
No, we didn't need to be there, but I didn't respond to that logical statement. I looked out the windshield, and I could see we were already on Broadway. Twenty-six Fed and 290 Broadway were right ahead. In fact, we were already well within the blast zone.
I looked at the time on Kate's cell phone: 8:25.
I called Walsh and asked him, "What's happening?"
He replied, "We got all the construction guys out of here, and all the crime scene people, and we've cleared the observation deck and cleared the streets." He added, "There's no way to evacuate this area so we're trying to get people underground."
"Where's the Bomb Squad?"
"I see the trucks coming down the ramp."
"You still there?"
"Where else am I supposed to be?"
"Tom… if that thing goes off, it's going to vaporize-"
"John, I have my hands full at the moment-"
"Did you get the lock cut off?"
"Yes, but the Bomb Squad advised me not to open the doors. Okay, I-"
"We'll be right there," I said.
"What? Where are you?"
"Just speeding past your corner office in an ambulance."
"With Kate?"
He likes Kate. He wants me vaporized. "Two minutes-"
"Get the hell out of here. That's an order. Okay, here's the Squad."
The phone went dead, and Kate said, "Eight twenty-six." She asked me, "Where's Tom?"
"Still there."
She nodded.
Jeena had put it all together and informed us, "You got about twenty minutes."
"Thanks."
Kate said to her, "Pull over, get out, and get into a subway station."
Jeena didn't reply and kept going. Up ahead at Murray Street, Broadway was blocked off with police cars. They saw the ambulance coming, and one of the cruisers moved aside and we shot through.
The streets around the site were nearly deserted, except for police cruisers with their roof lights flashing, and warnings blasting out of their bullhorns saying, "Get off the streets! Go down into the subways and leave the area!"
Another cruiser's bullhorn was blaring, "Get away from the windows! Go into your building basement!"
Well, I wasn't an expert on bombs, but I did know that a massive explosion would suck the breathable air out of underground spaces. Not to mention ruptured gas and water lines, falling debris, and collapsing buildings-again.
I hoped to God this day didn't make three thousand dead look small by comparison.
Jeena snapped a hard right on Barclay, a left on West, and within two minutes we were at the open gates to the ramp and Jeena stopped.
It almost didn't matter what time it was anymore; we were so close to the center of the blast that we couldn't get clear unless we turned around now-and we weren't turning around.
Kate threw open her door and said to Jeena, "Get as far as you can as fast as you can."
I was about to open the rear doors, but the ambulance began moving again and we were on the ramp, heading down into the pit. Jeena said, "Too far to walk."
I moved between the front seats again and said to Jeena, "That big tractor-trailer over there." I added, "Thanks."
As we moved quickly down the ramp, I could see one Bomb Squad truck and two guys in blast suits-which weren't going to help them at all-and Tom Walsh. And that was it. Except for three idiots on the way.
I could also see the yellow crime scene tape that encompassed about an acre around the tractor-trailer, and within the tape was the crane where Vince Paresi had been hanging…