“There may not be time to visit him and do a whole conference thing. Will he listen to me over the phone?”
“I think so,” Gentry said.
“And will he listen tome?”
“He asked for you by name,” Gentry said. “Look, I know Gordy Weeks only by reputation. He doesn’t let bureaucracy, red tape, ego, or gender get in the way of fixing problems. He also doesn’t have a lot of time to screw around here. They’ll probably have to close the harbor, the Hudson air lane into LaGuardia-can’t afford to have bats sucked into jet engines. He’ll listen and you’ll get a quick yea or nay.”
“How much clout does he have?”
“In a crisis, Weeks reports directly to Taylor. And I don’t think the mayor has ever gotten in the way of anything he wanted.”
As they entered the apartment and Gentry punched in the phone number, Joyce quickly assembled her facts. Robert was right. A manager in the middle of an unprecedented crisis wouldn’t have much time to listen-or to argue. She would have to make her point fast.
It was clear to her that the Russian female had had at least twin offspring, possibly more. The same bat could not have attacked the ESU team in New York and killed those sheep in New Paltz. And a male bat would not have come ahead, alone, to prepare a new home for another male bat. But a male bat would have come ahead for a female. He would have found a nest, settled in, and then relayed his signature cry from bat to bat-a distinctive series of bleats that would have told her exactly where he was.
He also would have gathered food for her arrival.
If a she-bat were on her way to New York, if she’d left New Paltz a few hours before, then she would be arriving very soon. Especially with an honor guard or a protective wall of drones already gathering. They, too, must have been summoned by the male.
If all that were true, it was important that Joyce be able to spot the female coming in. It was imperative that she watch where the female went so they could find the male. And she could do that most efficiently from the air.
When Weeks got on the phone, Joyce told him all of that. When she was finished, Weeks informed her that Al Doyle was in the command center with him helping to monitor and assess the situation. Doyle’s contention was that the bats were here as part of a massive migration. Doyle said they would probably move on, since-like the subway bats-they were vespertilionids that didn’t eat fruit and preferred flying insects to crawling insects.
“But,” Weeks said, “Al can’t explain what a night watchman just reported from the World Trade Center. The guard entered a bloody elevator carriage, shined his flashlight through the open hatchway, and saw a woman being hauled up the cable. He said that whatever was holding her was dark, about the size of a bull, and had wings.”
The veteran watchman had never been drunk or stoned on the job. And the sighting corroborated what Lieutenant Kilar of the ESU had dutifully noted in his report on the subway killings: that bat expert Dr. Nancy Joyce of the Bronx Zoo believed there might be “an abnormally large specimen” of bat inhabiting the NewYork subway system.
“I’m having trouble signing onto this,” Weeks said. “But people are dying and I’ve got to explore every possible lead. You can have your chopper.”
Weeks told Joyce that he needed his helicopters for reconnaissance and transportation. His office would arrange with the police commissioner to have an ESU helicopter pick her up at the pier in fifteen minutes. The OEM director had only two requests: that she stay in constant radio communication with his assistant, Marius Pace, and that she not fuck up.
Joyce promised.
She kept the binoculars and grabbed her camera. Gentry went with her to the pier to wait. He had only one request: that she come back safely.
Joyce promised.
Ten minutes later, she and two ESU fliers were airborne in an Aviation Unit Bell-412.
Twenty-Eight
In all her years of bat hunting, Nancy Joyce had never had the opportunity to ride in a helicopter. Within five seconds of lifting off from the pier, she realized she’d have been happy to postpone the experience indefinitely.
The chopper ascended, which wasn’t the same as taking off. Not to her. As it arced steeply from the pier, the sense of motion up and away and then forward was pronounced. It was like being in a bumper car that had suddenly added a third dimension of mobility.
But that wasn’t all. The helicopter was incredibly loud. Even though Joyce was in the seat directly behind the pilot, she would have had to yell if she wanted to converse. Fortunately, as soon as they were airborne, the copilot handed back a headset. It fit entirely over her ears. That not only deadened the clapping-loud drone of the rotors, it enabled Joyce to communicate with the fliers and Mr. Pace without shouting.
The chopper was also fast. Joyce was accustomed to cabs picking and weaving their way through New York traffic. The helicopter was above the bats and just about ten blocks away before she even had a chance to adjust the mouthpiece of the headset and sit back.
All of that went through her mind in moments. She forced herself to concentrate on the horizon. On the bats.
The pilot said, “Dr. Joyce, all I was told is that you want to observe the bats. You’re going to have to tell us from what height and where.”
“I want to be able to watch the river facing north,” she said. “How high are we now?”
“Seventeen hundred feet.”
“How high would you say the bats are?”
“Maybe six hundred feet. Six fifty tops.”
“Does your propeller cause any kind of downdraft?”
“It does,” he said. “If we get on top of the bats and go much lower than above twelve hundred feet, we’re gonna stir them up like a blender.”
“Then make it twelve hundred feet,” she said. “But the bats might ascend. If they do, we should be ready to get out of their way.”
“Understood.”
“Dr. Joyce?” said a voice with a gentle British accent. “This is Marius Pace.”
“Hi,” she said. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to ignore you.”
“You didn’t,”he assured her. “You were busy. Gordon advises me that what you’re watching for is a very large bat.”
“That’s correct.”
“How large is large?”
“I’m not sure,” she said.
“Eagle? Condor?” he asked.
“More like a Cessna,” she replied.
“You mean as in the private airplane?”
“Yes.”
Pace said,“ That’s large, all right. And if and when you see this bat, is it your intention to pursue?”
“Only to watch where it’s going,” she replied. “If possible, I want to get close enough to see what it looks like, take some pictures.”
“I understand,” Pace said. “All right, then. From now on I’ll just be listening in. If you need anything, ask.”
She looked out as the helicopter reached the shifting carpet of bats. They were bottom-lit, twenty or thirty thousand of them swimming back and forth on a bright and luminous sea. It was majestic, mesmerizing, and inexplicable. Worse, she didn’t know exactly where it was all going. If and when one of the big bats arrived, would these smaller bats go or stay? And if they stayed, would they stay peaceably?
Joyce hadn’t really thought about the personal danger until now. If these bats became territorial like the others, things could get very bad. She also realized, suddenly and belatedly, that when she took off Gentry had really been worried about her. Joyce hadn’t had anyone except her assistant feel that way for a long time. It felt nice.
Joyce wondered what Professor Lowery was making of all this. He would have a perfect view of the river from his apartment window. She also wondered what the bats were making of them. What they might be thinking, feeling. They’d be picking up the movement of every bat, every bird, every insect, the choppers, the people. The input had to be overwhelming.