Michael Ledwidge - Alert

Blessed Michael, archangel, defend us in this hour of conflict. Be our safeguard against the wickedness and ... something, something... thrust Satan down to hell and with him those other wicked spirits who wander through the world for the ruin of souls.

“And please let Emily be okay, God,” I whispered. “Let me have this one. You have to let me have just this one, please. Amen.”

Fire-truck horns blatted and blasted in the distance as I finally sprinted past the row of Corinthian columns fronting the Thurgood Marshall courthouse into Foley Square. I was going at a pretty good clip, but when I glanced up and got my first good look at 26 Fed, I immediately slowed, then abruptly stopped in my tracks and just stood there in the street staring up, completely overwhelmed by what I was seeing.

Twenty-Six Federal Plaza’s normally perfectly sleek rectilinear forty-one-story glass-and-stone slab now looked like a giant cereal box that had been chewed up by a rabid pit bull. I grimaced at the grid of exposed offices in the horrifically wrecked upper half of the skyscraper. Everything was completely pulverized. Every ruined nook and cranny was filled with smoking wreckage.

An even harder pulse of dread shuddered through me as I suddenly noticed that what remained of the structure was still visibly swaying back and forth. I gripped down hard on my cell phone, wondering if I was about to watch the rest of it go, about to see it start pancaking down like the Twin Towers on 9/11.

When it didn’t happen immediately, I started racking my brain, trying to remember the one or two times I had been in the FBI building. I tried to think what floor Emily’s office or morning meeting room might have been on, but for the life of me, I couldn’t remember. All I could do was stand there feeling numb as I stared up at the torn-apart office tower.

I wasn’t the only one. All over Foley Square, I suddenly noticed people standing silently out on the steps of the courthouses and on the sidewalks in front of the government buildings. The ones who weren’t filming with their smartphones were like me — just standing there frozen, a regiment of jaw-dropped statues staring up.

Somehow, after a minute or two, I shook myself out of my stupor and continued haltingly up Lafayette Street. When I got to the next corner, at Worth Street, I looked to the left — west, toward Broadway.

When I saw the devastation up close for the first time, I shook my head. I couldn’t believe it.

How could anyone?

It looked like the entire top half of 26 Federal Plaza had fallen into Worth Street, filling it up like dirt in a trench. Through the concrete dust, I could make out a dark, immense, almost three-story mound of debris that completely blocked the street and both sidewalks.

At its top, a half dozen steel girders stuck up crookedly like a stand of burned, branchless trees. Around the girders, huge folded sections of the office building’s distinctive facade were slumped over on themselves like unspooled bolts of cloth. In the warm breeze that hit my sweating face, I smelled the acrid, industrial stink of burned metal and plastic.

A falling, flapping sheet of paper suddenly hit me in the temple like a tap, and I began shuffling forward at the terrible mound through the haze.

There was a soft flapping sound as a steady rain of printer-paper sheets fell down around me. The dust above must have been doing something to the light, because everything was tinted with a strange, unreal bluish tinge.

I walked up the wide sidewalk around a haphazard maze of splintered desks, smashed office chairs, and cracked computer screens. I blinked down at an intact framed bachelor’s degree from Tulane University propped up against the gutter as if someone had placed it there.

As I continued my approach, a tall, skinny black bike messenger with a scratched face silently staggered past in the street, covered in a pale-gray coating of dust.

Then I came closer and saw something really amazing.

People were already up on the mound of debris, a dozen or so people. There were a few uniformed cops, but mostly they were civilians — office workers, a guy in a white doctor’s coat, a loose line of people silently passing down debris and rubble.

I climbed up over some chunks of concrete, immediately joining them. As the dry, stale taste of concrete and drywall dust filled my nostrils and mouth, I accepted a huge hunk of concrete from a short, Italian-looking guy in a ruined pinstriped suit above me. As I turned to heave it, I saw that a burly uniformed security guard had arrived behind me, waiting to accept it.

“What happened?” the guard said to me as I passed him the concrete.

I squinted at him. He was a really distinctive-looking guy. He had longish brown hair under his navy ball cap and bright, light-blue eyes. He must have played football in college or something, because he was jacked.

“Someone said it was a plane,” he said as I continued to stare at him stupidly. “Was it a plane?”

After he handed the concrete to the next person down the line, I shook my head and carefully passed him the two-yard length of fractured rebar I’d just been handed.

“It was explosives,” I finally said. “I saw it. They blew it. Someone took it down with high explosives or something. Demo’d it, like. I didn’t see a plane.”

That’s when my cell phone went off in my pocket. I crouched down in the wreckage, frenziedly wiping the dust-covered screen to see who was calling.

I closed my eyes with relief as my heart somersaulted in my chest.

All was not lost. There was still hope. A tiny drop.

“Emily?!” I yelled as I put the phone to my ear.

“Mike! Are you okay?” she said. “We got hit. I just made it out of the building. Someone said you guys were hit as well. Are you okay?”

Thank you, God. You came through. Thank you. And Saint Michael. You guys came through. I owe you.

I clenched back my tears of relief. Then I couldn’t anymore.

“Yes,” I said, wiping dust and tears off my face. “I’m fine. Perfect now. Where are you?”

“On the west side of Broadway near Worth.”

“Okay, stay where you are. I’m coming to you.”

When I stood and turned around again to ask the muscular security guard to take my place in line, I stopped and just stood there blinking.

Because all of a sudden the guy, whoever he had been, whatever he had been, was gone.

The next three days were some of the most tumultuous in New York City’s history.

Twenty-two people had died in the blast. Eleven special agents (one of them the direct assistant to the head of the New York office), three civilian clerks, and eight maintenance and security people. More than a hundred were still in the hospital, many with internal injuries from being crushed under heavy debris when the building collapsed. Many people were missing fingers, arms, eyes, feet. The fact that half of Manhattan’s hospitals were still out of commission after the EMP blast in Yorkville did not help the situation at all.

The initial investigation into the bombing showed that it had been as ingenious as it had been devastating. Incredibly, robots had been used. Investigators had found three unexploded robots in the pile. They looked like miniature children’s blocks, but inside they had intricate flywheels and radio receivers and electronics that allowed them to be moved around remotely, like a swarm of insects. In addition to the electronics, the bots had been laden with explosives and had been inserted probably through the AC unit on the roof into the air ducts.

Experts were speculating that whoever had radio-controlled the bots into position must have been an engineer or a demolitions expert, because each unit had been precisely placed alongside the building’s support struts for maximum destruction.