Michael Ledwidge - Alert

I wasn’t really in the mood for eating, but it was Chrissy’s favorite dinner. After what I’d seen today, I wanted to make my baby happy for some strange reason.

“Corned beef? Is it Saint Paddy’s Day again?” Seamus said when he peeked into the pot.

“’Tis,” I answered as I poured a measure of Wild Turkey into a tumbler for him. “And lucky you: you’re just in time for the parade.”

He took a sip and smiled and rolled his eyes. He looked good. Still kicking, which was good, because I loved the old man.

“Ye can stop with the eagle-eye treatment, ya know.”

“What do you mean?” I said.

“I see you watching me like I’m going to fall over and die. That little incident was a one-off. I’m fine.”

“I wasn’t worried about you, Father, so much as the glass you’re holding,” I said as I patted him on his white-haired head. “That Waterford crystal is a family heirloom.”

“Little early for the bar to be open, eh?” Seamus said. “Was it that thing in Queens?”

Boy, was the old codger still on the ball.

He hugged me then. Wrapped me in his frail arms like I was five years old again, though I was twice his size. As he did it, I could see the woman lying there in her meat-case coffin. I tried not to cry about it, but I failed.

“God bless you, Mike. It wasn’t your fault,” Seamus said.

“God bless us all,” I whispered through my falling tears.

At four minutes past 3:00 a.m., the image appeared on the tablet’s touch screen with the light press of a finger.

It was a live video feed, a grainy picture of a dimly lit downtown alley. With a flick of the touch-screen controls, the camera moved forward, zooming in on the dark face of one of the alley’s shabby apartment buildings. Then, with another flick, the image teetered suddenly as apartment building windows began to scroll vertically, as if the camera were attached to a crane and someone were raising the boom.

The screen showed a window with a yellowed lace curtain, then, on the floor above it, a window covered by some old broken blinds. The next floor’s window was shadeless and showed a bedroom in which a lean Asian woman was in the process of unbuttoning her blouse in a lit bathroom doorway.

The camera went up to the next dark window for a moment before it reversed itself to the disrobing woman.

“Mr. Beckett, please,” Mr. Joyce whispered harshly. “We have a schedule, you know. If you can’t resist distractions, then promptly hand over the controls.”

“Fine,” said Mr. Beckett, smiling sheepishly as the camera-equipped drone returned to its ascent.

They were wearing EMT uniforms now and were standing in the back of an idling ambulance parked in a little alley off Worth Street in the heart of downtown Manhattan. They needed to be in the area overnight, and, after some research, they realized that no vehicle was less suspicious or more ubiquitous than an ambulance waiting for a call.

Mr. Joyce nervously wrung his hands as Mr. Beckett piloted the large quadcopter drone over two blocks of buildings and lights. Down at the far end of the alley, across Worth, was some kind of underground dance club. It must have been ’70s night or something, because there was a constant muffled thrum of disco music.

He massaged his temples as the drone approached the imposing, almost industrial-looking square office building that was their target. All they would need was some fool spilling out of the club to take a piss and see the drone.

He knew their attack plan was unprecedented and therefore almost impossible for the enemy to guard against. He’d thought of it himself after much deliberation — had gamed it twenty times, looking for every possible glitch. He knew in his well-informed gut that it would work. But still. Any damn thing could happen in this city. There was knowing it, and then there was actually doing it.

With the drone finally alongside the target, Mr. Beckett swung it right until it was around three feet away from the building’s northeast corner, the best route for avoiding detection from the windows. It continued to ascend. Five more floors scrolled past, then ten, and then a few more, and they were finally there. They were finally up on the roof!

“There it is,” said Mr. Joyce, pointing at the top left corner of the screen.

“All over it,” said Mr. Beckett as he piloted the drone over to the teal-colored metal box that housed the air-conditioning unit.

He pressed a button, and the image on the screen shifted to the camera at the bottom of the drone, beside the power screwdriver they’d installed.

Mr. Joyce held his breath as Mr. Beckett took the drone down slowly toward the edge of the grate covering the AC unit’s fans. He maneuvered it carefully, hovering over the first of the Phillips-head screws holding the grate in place. Closer and closer, and then... yes! He was there. The tip of the drone’s magnetic screwdriver was snug in the groove of the first screw.

“The Eagle has landed,” Mr. Beckett said happily as he hit another button.

Forty minutes of meticulous maneuvering later, seven of the eight screws were off, and Mr. Beckett engaged the drone’s small grabber, hooked it on the grate, and began shifting the grate little by little. Five minutes after tugging it millimeters at a time, he disengaged the grabber and hovered the drone up to take a look.

Mr. Joyce smiled through the streaks of sweat dripping off his face.

About a third of the AC unit’s intake opening had been exposed.

They were in. The door was open. They now had access to the entire iconic building through the HVAC ducts. Every floor and every room!

Mr. Joyce looked away from the screen at the other four large quadcopter drones on the floor of the fake ambulance. Attached to each one of them were the four corners of a dark plastic tarp. Inside the bulging tarp were hundreds and hundreds of cubelike mobile minibots.

Each one of the bots had been filled to capacity with several ounces of the precious plastic explosives, along with a radio-controlled detonator. Once the bots were poured into the AC ducts, they would distribute and maneuver the eighty pounds of explosives to appropriate areas of the building’s most vulnerable struts and trusses.

Then, tomorrow morning, just as the enemy sat down at their cubicles with their no-whip nonfat cappuccinos, the two men were going to press a button and blow it up. They were going to blow up the building with everyone in it in the most spectacular way possible.

Mr. Joyce opened the rear doors of the ambulance, then powered up the four big drones using another tablet. He and Mr. Beckett took a step back as the swarm of drones began spinning their quietly whirring blades. It took another thirty seconds, then slowly, with incredible coordination and precision, they began lifting the payload out of the back of the ambulance and upward into the air.

His sweat cooling in the rotor wash, Mr. Joyce giggled as he realized that he actually recognized one of the disco songs that was playing from the other end of the alley.

“I love the nightlife,” he sang, bopping his head.

Then he and Mr. Beckett were both laughing as the drones ascended through the dark alley toward the night sky.

Up and at ’em at 7:00 a.m., I saw from my e-mail that another massive VIP emergency meeting had been called, this time at One Police Plaza.

Though I had snagged an invite, I hadn’t been asked to speak at the meeting for some strange reason. Actually, I knew the reason all too well. My boss, Miriam, had called at dawn and told me that I’d been taken off as lead in the case and would now be taking orders from and reporting to Lieutenant Bryce Miller.