Ian Slater - Asian Front

While most others had been heading home when the power went out, some had been on their way back to work in the New York Port Authority’s convoy-coordinating center in Trade Tower One when the power went out, and found themselves trapped on an elevator between the sixtieth and sixty-first floors. All telephone lines were out, the only news being relayed by the emergency-generator-run radio stations, the mayor’s assurance sounding thinner by the minute, with one station reporting heavy gunfire in Flatbush between blacks and “Little Seoul,” and several shootings in the Midtown Tunnel.

By 8:17 p.m. the New York radio stations operating on their own power had grown to half a dozen, their lights, like those of the hospitals, pinpoints of illumination in the canyons of darkness, several more stations broadcasting unconfirmed reports of sabotage against the feeder lines coming through Westchester County and from the East Rockies mountain grid. The mayor did what he could to disavow these rumors as well, and indeed several of the stations refused to run them, but those that did were no longer relying on the unconfirmed reports of ham radio operators but on FM “Radio du Canada” broadcasts out of Montreal and CBC stations in Toronto, picked up by truckers on the interstates from Chicago to the Adirondacks. The mayor again appealed for calm. “Now’s the time,” he told the population of eleven million, “for New Yorkers to stick together.”

For the most part they did, but the widespread random acts of violence had not yet abated, and by the time the mayor returned to City Hall he was already trying to compute the political costs to him of having told a barefaced lie earlier on, having dismissed the rumors of sabotage as “patent nonsense.” One of his aides told him that he was wanted on the phone.

“Better be the president of Con Ed!” His Honor snapped.

“No, sir. It’s the president of the United States.”

The mayor held his hand over the receiver for a moment to compose himself. “Mr. President?”

The president’s voice was competing with static on the radio telephone. “Mr. Mayor. I’m sending Al Trainor up to see you.”

The mayor wasn’t sure what to say. What he needed was electricity — and fast — not presidential aides. “Well, Mr. President, he won’t be able to…” His voice disappeared in the sound of an enormous explosion and a ball of crimson flame curling in on itself, followed by the sound of crashing glass. A chopper, all but out of gas, had tried for a last-minute landing atop one of the skyscraper pads, but instead, buffeted by wind shear into the darkness, the pilot momentarily disorientated in the pitch black night, a rotor had hit the water tank.

“We don’t want to get in your way, Jim,” the president was telling him, switching to an informal tone, impressing the mayor’s media aide who was close enough to pick up the conversation. He could hear Mayne cough briefly, then continue. “I ordered Fort Dix to give all possible assistance.” The mayor knew he was alluding to the riots but was being nonspecific as they were on an open line. “Al Trainor’ll fill you in with the details of assistance. I want him to be with you to see at first hand, then report back to me. Help you coordinate recovery efforts. We don’t want Washington bureaucrats standing in your way. He’ll be bringing the Apple Two contingency plan with him. Get rid of any red tape.”

“Thank you, Mr. President.”

Putting down the receiver, the mayor seemed even more puzzled by the president’s last comment. He turned to the clutch of aides. “What in hell was that all about? Contingency apple — two? What the hell was that? Marvin?”

“That’d be the emergency response plan, Mr. Mayor. ‘Apple’ for New York.”

“We’ve got our own contingency plans,” the mayor replied tartly. “What we need is electricity and money, not goddamned—”

“It’s not just for New York,” the aide explained. “It’s a plan that ties in New York with the feds. With the rest of the country. Ah — you signed it, Mr. Mayor.”

The mayor raised an eyebrow. “You mean we’re only going to get what’s left over — after Washington gets finished allocating it to—”

“No, sir,” Marvin said. He liked the mayor — had worked for him for five years — but His Honor had a tendency to see the whole world in terms of political clout and money. “No, sir. Apple Two means that it’s not just us involved. It’s all over the country. The West Coast has been hit, too.”

“Who the hell else is going to get in on it?” the mayor pushed. “We don’t need Trainor up here to tell us that. I don’t want Jersey and the rest of them riding on our coattails. New York’s my priority. My responsibility. If Trainor’s coming up here to slice up the pie I—”

“Until Trainor gets here, Mr. Mayor, we won’t know.”

The mayor took a breather and relaxed as much as the situation would allow before turning to another of his aides. “What d’you think, Frank?”

“Well, Mayne’s fresh from reelection. No cause for him to go grandstanding with us to win votes — long as he doesn’t send us a Quayle.”

For a moment the mayor thought his aide meant a bird. “Trainor’s no Quayle,” put in the mayor’s stenographer, a petite redhead who up till now hadn’t said anything, preoccupied with worry that her parents had been caught in the tunnel. “Trainor’s very well thought of in Washington.”

The mayor grunted. He was always skeptical of Washington — no matter what the situation, Washington always wanted something in return. If he wasn’t careful, the mayor of the Big Apple knew that the president would get all the glory. “Jennifer,” he said, looking across at the stenographer, “I want air time booked — prime time. Soon as Con Ed’s got the power back on.”

“Can’t right now, Mr. Mayor. Phone lines are down again.”

“What — Jesus! Well, send someone by car. Send a smoke signal — anything. If we’re not on the tube first Washington’ll steal all the bases.”

Jennifer dispatched messengers — some by bike. For some strange reason in the flashlight-lit hallways her voice seemed to echo more than it ever did in the bright night light.

When the messengers returned an hour later, one of them bleeding badly from a fall, they apologized to Jennifer that though they’d booked time for the mayor, the White House had already requested air time ahead of them.

“Damn it! I knew it,” the mayor thundered. “Washington wants all the glory. It’s a grandstand play.”

It wasn’t.

Electrical-distribution networks right throughout the United States had been hit, including and especially the West Coast ports, where sabotage throughout the Rocky Mountain grid caused a “back jam” of ships urgently needed to resupply Second Army over five thousand miles away.

It was the president’s decision in the face of such overwhelming sabotage to once again broadcast a reintroduction of the Emergency Powers Act of the kind that had allowed them to pick up the likes of La Roche, though in that instance their timing had been all wrong.

To assure the nation that the government was still intact, the top Washington bureaucrats were already en route to Mount Weather, forty-nine miles west of Washington, its hub a massive bunker dug into the mountain that was operated by EM A — Emergency Management Agency — with four-foot-thick, blast-proof, reinforced steel doors, a complex that had its own underground water supply, cafeterias, hospital, TV and radio communication center, and, particularly vital in such situations as that created by the blackouts, its own power plant and sewage facilities.

That evening as Washington’s bureaucratic convoy moved through Virginia’s Loudoun County along County Route 601, slowing near Heart Trouble Lane to no more than ten miles per hour, they saw the barbed wire atop a ten-foot cyclone chain fence that ringed Mount Weather’s four hundred acres. Above the bunker, amid the rich Virginia foliage, barracks and microwave relay antennae were already alive with activity. It might take only several days for the total power failure to be put partially right, but until then Mayne was playing it safe. What Mayne desperately needed for the American people was not to give them any more humiliating communiqués from a superhardened bunker but a victory — the feeling that despite their trials and tribulations at home, at least America was winning.