Brian Freemantle: The Watchmen

Schnecker said, “Make sure you see where you’re going before you move. And when you do, do it slowly.”

Neil Hamish, the team’s ballistic expert, looked up from the manual he had been comparing with the TV pictures and said, “Nothing like it here. Looks like a double delivery. Binary principle, maybe.” He looked sideways at Cowley and in a molasses-thick Tennessee accent said, “You make out the writing on the side?”

“The word’s definitely poison . And agent,” replied Cowley.

“Like to know what I’m asking the meters to detect,” complained the third scientist, Richard Pointdexter. He had two devices with calibrated dials tethered by individual straps to his wrist.

“Me, too,” said the fourth man, Hank Burgess, attaching a matching detector to his arm.

“All we can do is play the field for the obvious,” judged Schnecker.

“Jesus George Christ!”

The pilot’s voice brought them away from their protective preparations and the picture-split television monitor. New York was on the absolute horizon. Between them and the faraway view was a surreal, tidal-wave imagery of vehicles of every type and description surging along every road and highway but all in the same direction, away from the jagged-toothed Manhattan skyline. In too many places to count, as they flew over and against the one-way movement, there were jams and bulged blocks of collided cars and trucks, the obstructions swollen by the frantic but failed efforts of following drivers to detour through adjoining fields and properties.

Hamish said, “Like Orson Welles and War of the Worlds all over again.”

Schnecker asked, “What’s the current wind direction?”

The pilot said, “Southeast, tending northerly. Slow.”

Schnecker said, “None of them down there are in the slightest danger. If it’s been released, it’s going over Brooklyn.”

“What about Brooklyn?” Cowley asked.

“Until we identify what it is, we won’t know how containable it is,” the leader of the microbiological team replied.

“The only man in the bomb disposal team to be showing any respiratory affect is asthmatic,” Burgess, a qualified doctor, reminded them. “They were in the proximity of the warhead for precisely three minutes and forty seconds; that’s long enough to have picked up something,”

“We don’t know the warhead: how it’s programmed to operate,” Hamish pointed out.

“Or who launched it,” said Cowley.

“Your problem, buddy, not ours,” said Schnecker.

“We get the easy part,” said Pointdexter.

“Will you look at that!” demanded the pilot, who had flown far to the west of New Jersey to skirt any airborne contamination, finally approaching Manhattan from the north, from upstate New York to keep the wind behind them.

Cowley decided he was perfectly dressed for the sterile moonscape that was his immediate impression of the city below them. There was movement-there were emergency units at the island side of the Triboro and the Brooklyn bridges and a swarm of media helicopters infesting the sky overhead-but the gridlocked streets below appeared as eerily deserted but as haphazardly traffic-blocked by panic-abandoned vehicles as any Hollywood depiction that Cowley had ever seen of a nuclear attack. And then as Cowley gazed down more intently-continuing the Hollywood script-he picked out more isolated pockets of people, presumably playing out the end of their world.

A group were dancing in what appeared to be a street party by Columbus Circle, and there was another partying gathering outside the Tavern on the Green in Central Park. Tables had been pulled out from a restaurant or cafe and set up in a gap of abandoned traffic on Broadway. Cowley counted twelve people sitting around bottles of looted wine, apparently determined to die drunk. One man was already lying full length and motionless in the gutter. As they passed overhead, two women looked up and waved. One inexplicably lifted her sweater to expose her braless breasts. Some still-burning movie and theater lights added to the party atmosphere. A lot more looting was visible as they finally turned to cross town, although most of the loot-from Macy’s in Times Square and along 42nd Street-seemed quickly to have been discarded outside the stores from which it had been stolen. One man was determinedly pushing a cart loaded with television sets and microwave ovens up Lexington Avenue, whirling his free hand in dismissal to the fluttering machines overhead.

Schnecker checked William Cowley’s suit and said, “Everything OK?”

Cowley nodded without replying, conscious of other helicopters coming in on them as their own slowly descended. He was surprised there was sufficient space to land directly in front of the UN complex.

Looking at the other camera-sprouting helicopters swarmed above them, Hamish said, “Here’s our fifteen minutes of fame.”

Schnecker said, “Let’s keep the conversation to its regulated essentials. Count-off time. Cowley?”

“Ready.”

“Hamish?”

“Ready.”

“Pointdexter?”

“OK.”

“Burgess?”

“Let’s see what we’ve got.”

Although also protectively suited, the pilot didn’t turn off the rotors, so they left the machine bent forward and in single file, Schnecker leading. Everyone except Cowley carried various pieces of equipment, some unseen in oddly shaped containers. Directly out of the downdraft they stopped, at Schnecker’s gesture. Pointdexter and Burgess stared down at the dials of the calibrated meters held in front of them, like temple offerings. Pointdexter said, formally, “The time is nine of ten. There is negative register at ground level.”

Burgess said, “I confirm.”

Cowley hadn’t expected to be able to move so easily. His sweat, he supposed, was nervousness, not a malfunction of the suit’s temperature control. He didn’t consciously feel nervous. Neil Hamish moved slightly to one side, operating their own shoulder-held television camera to track their every movement. Cowley acknowledged that their film, as well as their every verbal comment-like the earlier footage and remarks of the NYPD bomb disposal unit-was for corrective assessment if the five of them were overcome and died. He wished he could think of something profound to contribute; so far his only sound had been noisy breathing of his oxygen. He wondered if Pauline was watching a television relay from one of the overhead helicopters. The voices of the others were distorted, with a metallic echo, and he didn’t expect she’d recognize his if he spoke. He certainly wouldn’t be identifiable encompassed in his moon suit and didn’t expect the bureau to name him. They would, if he died.

They huddled around Pointdexter and Burgess directly inside the Secretariat Tower vestibule. Maintaining formality, Pointdexter said, “Nine-fifteen. Still negative register.”

“Confirm,” said Burgess, bent over his meter.

“Let’s take our time,” coaxed Schnecker. “Repeat the full check.”

Both monitoring scientists did so without protest. Pointdexter said, “I repeat, nothing.”

There was a moment of uncertainty before Schnecker said, “Electricity’s still on, so let’s use the elevators,” and then at once raised a warning hand. “Too many for one car in these suits and with all this equipment. Me, Hamish, and Pointdexter in one, Burgess and Cowley in the other.”

Cowley didn’t feel himself sweating anymore. Hamish filmed their exit from the second elevator. The first three men weren’t waiting as a courtesy gesture, Cowley guessed; procedure probably required confirmation of no chemical or biological agent from Burgess’s meter, which the man gave at once.

Schnecker said, “I’m beginning to think everyone’s been lucky.”