Rick Mofina - The Panic Zone

They resumed their long walk on Fifth Avenue.

Sirens wailed and helicopters whomped overhead as they neared Central Park. The traffic and crowds increased and charter buses crawled along, diesels chugging, brakes hissing. Mounted patrols stood by as, even at this hour, vendors hawked pretzels, ice cream, nuts, soda and Human World T-shirts to people streaming toward the park. All were wearing the required orange wrist bands that came with the tickets.

As Sutsoff and the baby disappeared into the crowds, she saw him playfully touching people who brushed against them. She smiled as she watched the people he touched touch others.

Thirty minutes to go and Robert Lancer’s stomach knotted.

The size of the crowd was sobering.

The number of people gathering on the Great Lawn, the huge midpark expanse where Pope John Paul II had celebrated Mass, was estimated at 1.3 million.

Is Sutsoff out there? Lancer wondered as he looked through his binoculars from the police command post on West Drive, at the Eighty-third Street level. Other command posts were located around the park.

The air crackled with sound checks from the huge stage flanked by massive video screens. Other giant screens and speaker towers ascended from the tranquil sea of humanity.

Squadrons of emergency vans, ambulances and police trucks were strategically parked in and around the park. NYPD Communications trucks monitored the crowd via video cameras on speaker towers.

So much was in play; there were metal detectors and X-ray machines, K-9 explosives teams and chemical sensors to analyze the air for gases and toxins. The stage and VIP areas had been swept, then triple-checked by the Secret Service. Lancer exhaled. So far paramedics and first-aid stations had reported no unusual or alarming medical problems.

Organizers refused to consider shutting the event down at this stage.

All officials agreed that to make any sort of announcement of a potential threat would create chaos. The White House was clear: the president would attend. The first lady and vice president would remain in Washington. Oval Office staff told the Secret Service that the president would not cower. No group would dictate his agenda through threats. The president’s stance was firm: he would be with the people at this major event. Facing threats was part of his job.

The pleas for cancellation by Lancer and other security officials were in vain. That left them few options. Yes, events like these were often subject to threats, but this one had a horrific blood trail that led straight to it.

Teams of undercover police and cadets were threading through the crowd, looking for anyone who matched Sutsoff’s photo, the new one obtained by police in the Bahamas.

As the MC took to the stage to start the day’s program, Lancer looked hard at the images filling the nearest big screen.

He had an idea.

The show started.

Gannon was with Emma on the east side, near the obelisk behind the Metropolitan Museum of Art. They were patrolling the edges of the crowd, scrutinizing every person they saw who had a child in a stroller. Emma’s heart raced each time she spotted someone who looked like Sutsoff or Tyler.

Gannon called the WPA and learned that the WPA’s lawyers and NYPD were urgently finalizing use of the WPA’s photos. TV news helicopters circled overhead. The Times, Daily News and Post had reported online that security was heightened at the event because of the president’s visit, amid rumors of an increased threat level.

So far, no news organization knew what Gannon and the WPA knew. The wire service had assigned eight reporters and six photographers to the event. As music filled the air, Gannon and Emma scanned the ocean of faces. The size of the crowd was overwhelming.

It was futile.

“I feel so helpless,” Emma said. “Did they find them?”

Again, Gannon called the WPA newsroom where Mike Kemp, a seasoned crime reporter, was monitoring emergency scanners.

“Anything happening, Mike?” Gannon asked Kemp, hearing the clatter of the scanners in the background.

“Nothing out of the ordinary for a crowd this size,” Kemp said. “Some guy in the southwest sector had an asthma attack, a seventy-two-year-old woman in the north section had a fainting spell and a teenage girl got stung by a bee.”

“What about arrests? Does it sound like they found Sutsoff?”

“Two gang bangers were fighting with knives near the Guggenheim and a drunk was exposing himself near the Museum of Natural History. I’ll let you know if we pick up anything.”

Gannon hung up. “Nothing,” he told Emma. “Let’s keep moving.”

They headed south in the direction of Turtle Pond.

At the west side of the park, at the Eighty-third Street police command post, Lancer had his cell phone pressed to his ear.

“We’re all clear?” he asked.

“It’s a go, Bob, just ahead in the program.”

“Good. Alert every cop out there. This might be our only hope.”

Sutsoff and the baby had been sitting on the grass northeast of the Delacorte Theater.

She had decided enough time had passed.

The program had now been going for over two hours with short concert performances punctuated by brief speeches from celebrities, Nobel laureates and politicians. The weather was ideal-everyone was upbeat.

As she removed her laptop from her bag to run a status check, a long, loud roar rose from the Great Lawn. For an instant, she was pulled back to Vridekistan, but her medication dulled her anxiety as the president started to address the crowd. With his tie loosened and shirtsleeves rolled to his elbows he told the conference how “for every one of us, being human in today’s world means bearing enormous responsibility…”

Sutsoff paid little attention to him.

She concentrated on her work. She saw that of her operation’s seventy couples, thirty-one had succeeded in administering Extremus Deus Variant 1 to the “delivery vehicles” and were currently present somewhere on the Great Lawn.

That number was in keeping with what she’d anticipated. She was pleased with her rough calculations as to how many people had been touched by the children and how many of those people would have touched someone, who then touched another and so forth.

At least 50 percent of all the people who’d gathered here.

A touch was all it took.

And given the scale of the victim pool, with people coming and going and touching others, the variant would be carried beyond the park and the numbers would grow and grow.

All Sutsoff needed to do was submit the range.

“How about everyone, except for me and little Will?” She smiled to herself.

She entered the parameters, ensuring it excluded her and the baby.

No harm will come our way.

Entering the activation code would require about five minutes.

As Sutsoff was about to start, another loud cheer floated over the crowd and people around her got to their feet. The president had called for everyone to “rise up, show your human side. Reach out to your neighbor.” He had formed a human hand-holding chain on the stage. It stretched into the crowd which swayed as people joined a soloist in the chorus of “Give Peace a Chance.” Sutsoff declined to hold anyone’s hand but encouraged others to hold the baby’s hand.

When the song ended, the crowd sat down to wait for the next rock band to perform, leaving Sutsoff enthralled. She had not expected this hand-holding exercise. She estimated that 90 percent of the people here now carried the variant.

All she had to do was submit the activation code and press Enter.

She looked at her keyboard and listened to the sounds of happy families talking and laughing, then lifted her face to the sky and swallowed.