second generator, and stuffed another blanket into the intake.
He climbed down as Lucinda set the flashlights up, turning them on and pointing them at the circuit breakers in the brightly lit room.
'Thirty seconds,' he said, his voice tight with tension. 'Start cooling down the handles.'
Lucinda began to spray the ice-cold carbon dioxide gas from the fire extinguisher onto the handles of the circuit breakers. Ice crystals began to form.
On the Rim, Steve Israel came out of his office to supervise the changeover from the NFL remote broadcast of the Game of the Week to their regular network programming, The Nightly News with Dale Hellinger.
Dale was behind the anchor desk, slipping his ear angel in as they were getting set to go into the forty-five seconds of black. The camera operators adjusted their shots.
Rick Rouchard settled into his director's chair in the control room and pushed the 'God button' that let his voice boom out over the set. 'Okay, Dale, we're in black in fifteen seconds. Coming out of black in a minute. Everybody stand by, we're fifty-nine, forty-nine to straight-up.'
They all watched the clock in the control room tick down.
'We're in black,' the director said. 'Coming out of black in forty-five seconds. .' And then the entire room, including all of the monitors and cameras, went dark. 'What the fuck?' the director said as Steve Israel grabbed for the computer phone-the only thing on the Rim still working.
'Gimme Engineering,' he shouted into the phone.
The operator was sitting in the dark on the third floor of the Tower. 'Do you know what extension Engineering is, sir? I don't have any light down here.'
'Jesus H. Christ, ginune a break,' the VP of The Nightly News screamed to a much higher authority.
The phones went dead as Ryan threw the fourth circuit breaker in the basement.
Then Steve Israel uttered the worst phrase imaginable in a network control room:
'We've lost the signal. We're off the air,' he said.
In the basement, when Ryan and Lucinda threw the last power circuit, they could hear the airflow starters struggling to get the backup generators going. Both generators turned on for one rotation, then fell silent as the blankets were sucked deep into the intakes.
The basement was dark except for the battery flashlights that threw their beams on the wall. Ryan continued to bang away at the ice-cold power lever handles. Lucinda had been right, the cold had hardened the viscosity of the metal and the first handle snapped off with the third or fourth blow from the sledgehammer. It flew across the room and clattered against the far wall.
Ryan closed his eyes to increase the effort as he swung the heavy sledgehammer, occasionally missing his target in the dim light. Lucinda stood to his right, aiming the nozzle of the fire extinguisher at the base of the steel levers while he swung.
'What's going on down here?' a man's voice called.
They turned around but couldn't see him. 'Engineering,' Ryan said. 'Trying to get these damn levers back on.
'Stay where you are. I'm Security. Drop that.'
Ryan and Lucinda were dimly lit by the flashlights and they couldn't see the security man standing in the blackened doorway. 'I got a gun. Drop it.'
Ryan wasn't about to stop. The guard could reverse everything by just putting the remaining three circuit breakers back up. They'd gone too far. He wasn't convinced the man had a gun, or would use it, so he kept swinging the sledgehammer. The second handle broke off, snapping halfway up the arm, and flew across the room. When the security man fired, the noise was deafening in the enclosed concrete space. The bullet hit near Ryan's head, chipping out a piece of the wall and blowing concrete dust into his eyes. For a moment, he couldn't see. Then Lucinda turned the nozzle of the fire extinguisher toward the sound of the gunshot and filled the doorway with cold, white carbon dioxide gas.
In the truck, Cole was waiting. The network was off the air, but the local stations didn't know it because they still had ten more seconds of local airtime before the network was scheduled to take the signal back and come out of black. John had already done a cross-check on the polarity to guarantee they were solidly on both the East and West coast transponder.
'Okay,' John said. 'Uplink. . in ten we're coming out of black.'
Cole started the tape and John hit the Transmit button, shooting the signal up onto the bird. 'We're on in five. . four. . three. . two. . one. .' he said, as the network news break bulletin music led the tape. John had found the Special Report music in the sound caddy in the truck. John opened the 'announcer's pot,' and Cole leaned in toward the mike: 'This is a UBC Special Report,' he said sternly.
The tape they had made at Madison Junior High came onto the screen, but without the Special Report bulletin card which would normally precede a break-in. Then Cole's image filled the screen.
'This is Cole Harris with a late-breaking story,' he said into the camera with professional reporter ease. He was sitting at the desk in the small video lab in his tie and paisley suspenders. They had pulled a school bookcase in behind him to create an office set. To both Cole and John, it looked cheesy, but they hoped it would get past the local station directors. John knew that they would become suspicious shortly, so he was going to send them a 'network alert.' Normally, when a special bulletin hit the airwaves, it was preceded by a network alert, warning the local stations it was coming. For obvious reasons, they had not been able to do that, but in emergencies, the network alert could come a few minutes into the news break. John could type the special-frequency message onto the transmission and it would appear at the bottom of the screen so that only the local program director and his staff could see it. He decided to send it a minute or two into the broadcast, just as the news directors were becoming concerned and reaching for their phones. It would be part of a familia r p attern and should calm them. Meanwhile, Cole was doing his preamble on the line monitor. The story was raining out from Galaxy Four all across the United States: 'Governments are fragile,' Cole started, importantly. 'They exist by virtue of the whims and passions of their populations. Power is, indeed, a heady perfume, so it is not surprising that in this decade, we have seen governments fall to political insurrection and intrigue.'
Naomi had pushed the small Trinitron camera in the Madison Junior High School video lab in slowly, tightening the shot to give Cole's words more impact.
'Normally, these coups d'etat take place in third world countries. So it is doubly surprising when one is attempted here, at home in the United States of America.' He stood and walked around and sat on the corner of the desk. 'We will show proof that the Democratic nominee Haze Richards entered into a contract with Mafia kingpin Michael Alo in New Jersey. The goal of the alliance between these men was to put Haze Richards into the White House. Before this broadcast is complete, we will show you tapes and film connecting these two men with the late underworld financial boss Meyer Lansky. More importantly, we will prove that the New Jersey Alo crime family, working through Meyer Lansky, financed C. Wallace Litman's purchase and control of the United Broadcasting Company. These men used this powerful electronic communications network to influence, control, and script the events of the primary campaign. . To influence public opinion for the purpose of hijacking next week's national election for the presidency of the United States.'
John started to type his 'network alert' into the transmission.
'Attention Stations. . This Special Report will conclude at 6:14.' He signed it: 'Air Control, New York.'
On the roof of the Lincoln Plaza, the printout flashed on Red Decker's GPS Sony hand unit. He scribbled the latitude and longitude on a piece of paper.
'Get the helicopter going,' Mickey yelled.
The pilot, who was already in the Bell Jet Ranger, started to turn the blades.
Red Decker looked at the map in front of him and found the latitude and longitude: 4(047'1' north, 73deg48'8' west. He tracked his fingers on the map until he found the exact location. 'Gotta be a mistake,' Red said.
'Why? What's wrong?' Mickey yelled over the noise of the helicopter.
'This is our own dish. It's right here.' He pointed on the map to the block where the UBC parking structure was located. 'That's where we have our main C-band uplink. This is our own signal.'
Mickey looked at him, trying to understand. 'Whatta you talking about?'
'That's our uplink,' Red said, trying to get Mickey to understand.
Babbling John Baily had hoped to create confusion by broadcasting right next to the UBC ten-meter C-band dish. He hoped it would buy valuable time. It did. It bought fifty-three seconds.
