“Hello, my love, I am fine. We are all fine! Carry on! I’m going to change out of my ruined suit. You carry on!”
The first lady was encircled by Russian and U.S. security agents. She smiled at the good news, nodded big nods to the Mykrekistan president’s wife and the two women hugged each other in tearful relief.
Word was immediately passed to the officials that the Bryant Park event was to continue as planned.
The metal police barricades separated Jeff from the news crews but from his side he’d gotten near enough to see a woman in an intense cell phone conversation.
“Do we go to Battery Park, or stay here, Gilroy? Wait! Len’s got something.”
A man stepped out of their news van, the words and logo for
“NBC’s reporting that the Battery Park protestors tossed balloons filled with stage blood at the Russians to represent the bloodshed of the unrest in Mykrekistan. They’re shaken up but no injuries, nothing more.”
“Okay, Gilroy?” the woman said into the phone. “Did you get that? What’s Len got from NBC? We’re going to stay at Bryant and cover. Okay.”
The woman hung up.
“Excuse me!” Jeff said, removing his ball cap and glasses. “I need some help fast.”
After a moment, recognition dawned on the faces of the seasoned newspeople.
“Hey, you’re…”
On the opposite side of Bryant Park on Forty-second Street, two uniformed NYPD officers approached other officers posted at the barricade. They nodded to the woman with them with the press tag, notebook and worried look on her face under her sunglasses and ball cap.
“She’s late for this thing,” Bulat Tatayev told the young officers. “We’re taking her in.”
The two cops looked the woman over.
“She’s with you, then?” one of the cops said to Tatayev.
“Unfortunately.”
“Who’re you guys with? We got a lot of new faces down here.”
“The Forty-sixth.”
“The Forty-sixth in the Bronx? You have our sympathies. Be our guest.”
The officers stepped aside and Tatayev and the other “cop” escorted Sarah through the crowd, positioning her in center front of the platform just as the event resumed, with the dignitaries taking their designated seats near the podium.
At a Fortieth Street entrance to Bryant Park, two NYPD uniform officers were instructing police to open the barricade so the idling white EMS ambulance they were escorting could enter.
“Whoa, whoa, hey, what is this?” one of the officers guarding the entrance asked the newcomers.
“We got orders to get this vehicle inside and close to the platform?”
“Who authorized that?”
“Our Lieu. We’re beefing up after Battery Park. This event is getting started. Come on, buddy, open up!”
The ambulance was edging forward to emphasize the point.
After a few seconds the officer and his partners relented and opened the barricades, allowing the ambulance entry into the park not far from the platform.
It was filled with equipment and an array of small monitors. While Jeff talked with King and Lustig, another crew member was working remotely, communicating through a headset to their cameraman, who was providing images of the Bryant Park ceremony as it got under way.
“Let me get this straight,” Lustig said to Jeff. “You think your wife and son are here somewhere with the terrorists?”
“Yes.”
“And you’re part of that thing going on in the Bronx right now, in Purgatory? We’ve got a crew there, right, Joyce?” King was on a cell phone to their desk, and nodded to Lustig. “Christ, this is a helluva thing,” Lustig said. “Okay, tell us what we need to do to help you?”
“Can you search the crowd with your camera? I know it’s a long shot but everything tells me they’re here.”
Lustig tapped the shoulder of the technician.
“Tell Sonny to take a lot of long cutaways and pan the crowd, get faces and anything unusual.” Then to Jeff, Lustig said, “You’ll see what the camera sees on the monitors. If we need to zero in on something, tell me.”
Sarah was terrified.
Standing in front of the platform, gripping her notepad, she wanted to scream out to the real police who were nearby.
She didn’t. She couldn’t because of Cole.
The threat they’d made against Cole prevented her from doing anything that would put her son’s life in further danger.
The event commenced with a few opening words, then a performance by a Russian dance group. As it ended with applause, Tatayev spoke into Sarah’s ear.
“We want you to faint and not move!”
Sarah didn’t respond.
“You will go down in five seconds if you want to see your son!”
Sarah took a deep breath and started counting. When she reached five she collapsed. Tatayev and his partner feigned an attempt to catch her as she fell on her back.
People near her gasped.
A woman knelt down and took Sarah’s hand.
“I’m calling 9-1-1….” A man reached for his phone.
“We’ve got it.” Tatayev stepped into their view, raised his radio and called for medical help. “We’re right here.”
Two paramedics from the white EMS ambulance responded quickly, bringing a stretcher and bag to the front of the platform where they began working on Sarah. The TV cameras in front of the platform turned to the medical emergency. The incident caused some confusion among the other emergency crews at the event.
They radioed to each other.
“Who are those guys? What’s going on? Did we miss something? Somebody should check this out.”
After tending to Sarah, the paramedics lifted her onto a stretcher, then one made a radio call for his ambulance.
“We’re going to need our rig in here,” he said.
“Wave it in!” Tatayev nodded.
People shuffled aside as the white EMS ambulance began inching through the crowd to where Sarah was in front of the platform.
Medical crews and security officials were puzzled as to why the paramedics were disrupting the event. Why not transport their patient to their ambulance, why waste time moving it to the platform? As the vehicle crept forward, a befuddled official knocked on the driver’s window.
“Hey, hotshot, what’re you doing?”
The driver ignored him and continued inching the ambulance forward. Inside, the driver checked a cell phone keypad. It was secured on the overhead console in a motherboard that was linked to a detonation system and a nest of wires, duct-taped to the ceiling, as they flowed throughout the interior.
The ambulance was equipped with reinforced suspension because it weighed nearly three times more than a standard EMS ambulance.
The rotating emergency light mounted on the dash of Detective Juanita Ortiz’s unmarked Impala painted her face red.
