Saturday, 2:15pm
It was policy to always have someone in the office, watching over the incoming messages, and ready to react to any developments. Special Agent Artemus Knox didn’t mind working the Saturday shift. There was no telling when some vital information might arrive, and the relative quiet of the weekend gave him time to think and piece together patterns that he might otherwise have missed.
The New York City dispatchers knew Knox, and knew that always wanted to hear the strange calls, and they knew to contact him whenever something odd came in.
Knox was sitting at his desk in lower Manhattan when his cell phone buzzed. He clicked the earpiece he habitually wore.
“Yes?”
“Artie? Got a 9-1-1 for you. It came in about five minutes ago. There’s something odd about this one. A few things, really. Here’s the audio… hang on for a second.”
While the caller set up the playback, Knox fished out the small pad and pen from his pocket he habitually carried in his back pocket and prepared to take notes.
“9-1-1 emergency dispatch. This line is recorded. What is your location and emergency?”
“This is the Coast Guard rescue helicopter from Station Eatons Neck. There’s something wrong with the helicopter radio so I’m calling on my cell phone. My service code is 82783 bravo sierra. Please check that. We are inbound with an unconscious seven-year-old female with a fractured temporal bone and brain swelling.
“What is your location? Who is this?”
Please page Dr. Dedi Perlman at Bellevue Hospital; we need her. She is not on duty this morning, but she is on call. We will be at the heliport at East 34th Street in thirty minutes. We will need EMT transport to Bellevue when we land.”
“What’s your name, sir? I need to know your name.”
“What? Hello? Hello? I’m losing the signal. Hello?”
The call ended.
“And that’s all. He never called back.”
“Traced the call?” Artemus asked.
“Yes, back to Long Island, a cell tower near Eatons Neck. The service code does belong to a crew member there; Charles Jones. But it didn’t change towers during the call. If the helicopter was moving quickly, it probably would have, but maybe not. Doesn’t mean much, probably. Tried to call back; no answer.”
“Sound quality was awfully good.”
“The new 9-1-1 systems; they’re really something. Cuts down on lawsuits if the jury doesn’t have to argue about what they’re hearing, you know.”
“I mean, it was awfully good quality for a cell phone call from a helicopter. Aren’t helicopters noisy? Come to think of it, I didn’t hear anything in the background at all.”
“Yeah, I told you it was a funny one. I’ve got the number, if you want it.”
Knox took down the number, thanked the caller, hung up, and scribbled down a few notes on his small pocket notebook. Then he slouched back in his chair, laced his hands behind his head and stared at the ceiling for ten seconds.
Knox reflected that this one was strange. A cell phone call from a coast guard helo crew member with a broken radio, bringing in an injured girl. That was somewhat out of the ordinary, but the fact that the caller had requested a specific doctor and planned to land at an unusual hospital–there were several closer emergency rooms with helo pads–was very strange. Perhaps it was a prank?
Knox turned and idly typed the service code from the call into his terminal. It was a valid code, but it didn’t belong to a helo crew member. It belonged to Charlie Jones, an engineer on a Coast Guard utility boat, currently assigned to Station Eatons Neck. At least that part made sense, even if nothing else did.
If this was a prank, someone was going to be in very hot water about misusing their service code. The station was correct, but something didn’t feel right. He felt sure that there was something he was overlooking.
Knox brought up a satellite image of the Coast Guard station. He zoomed in until he could easily make out the individual buildings and short docks, but he couldn’t see a helo pad.
Thirty seconds later, Knox punched the number for the switchboard at Station Easton Neck into his cell phone. After a long wait for someone to answer, Knox had a brief conversation with the incredulous crew chief, who clearly expressed his opinion that Knox was pulling his leg. No, they didn’t have a helicopter; they weren’t in the middle of rescuing anyone; everyone on the crew, including Charlie, had been at the station all day.
Knox thanked the chief and hung up. Perhaps it was a prank, but something still felt wrong.
Knox remembered a briefing he’d attended, a few years earlier, on likely terrorist attack scenarios in the wake of 9-11. The presenter had highlighted FDR drive on the lower east side. At first Knox thought he was going to talk about the United Nations Plaza, but he had been mistaken.
“If you want to hurt a city, not just hurt it but inflict lasting pain,” the speaker said, “One way to increase the suffering is to disrupt the support system for the first responders. The first responders themselves are usually dispersed throughout the city, so they can be near their areas of responsibility, which makes them easy to target individually, but hard to target as a group or as a capability. Many of the support systems, in contrast, are highly centralized. For example,” the speaker went on, highlighting the East Side with his laser pointer, “here we have a high percentage of the emergency rooms, operating rooms, and critical care facilities in the city, all within a few blocks of each other, centered around the NYU medical campus. And this is an easy target, for a serious attacker, because, most of these buildings have easy access and a clear field of fire from the East River.”
Knox wondered how many unaccounted-for large helicopters there might be in the world. It would certainly be easy to load one on a container ship, and then launch it from the deck from just offshore. It could reach anywhere in the triboro area in a few minutes. Paint it orange and white, and it could get even closer to any target before anyone thought twice about it.
Knox next throughts were about how much static weight a Sea King helicopter could carry. Four tons at least, he thought; perhaps more in an emergency–or if the helicopter was stripped, or if it was a one way trip.
How much of Bellevue would be destroyed by four tons of Semtex or C4? Knox was certain that he didn’t want to find out.
A minute later, Knox was running for the elevator. He didn’t have a clear plan, but he had already decided that he was going to be at East 34th Street in fifteen minutes. There was something oddly compelling about the record 9-1-1 call he’d heard; even though he couldn’t understand exactly why, he wanted to be there when the helicopter arrived.
His cell phone didn’t work in the elevator. Knox waited for the doors to open again, with his finger over the call button, poised to call the Westbury TRACON. As he waited, he had a moment to think.
If it’s a terrorist attack, he wondered, why did they call to say that they were coming? It wasn’t really tip-off; it was too vague for that. There were other channels for such things. And why did this attack differ so much from the usual profile: afternoon instead of morning, weekend instead of weekday? This wasn’t the best time to catch a lot of doctors and nurses at the hospitals–a weekday morning would have been much more effective… unless, of course, the whole point was to be unpredictable.
But the most unusual detail puzzled Knox more than the rest, and he suspected that it was the key to the entire mystery–or prank. Why did the caller ask for a specific doctor? Who is Dedi Perlman?
Knox debated with himself about whether to call Bellevue or Westbury until the elevator door opened again. As he rushed across the lobby and into the waiting car at the curb, his phone dialed Westbury.
