Saturday, 2:35pm
When Knox arrived at the 34th street heliport, there were already two squad cars and an ambulance waiting in the parking area. He had no idea who had summoned the police units, and was half-surprised to see the ambulance. Apparently someone did not believe that this was a hoax and was taking the phone call seriously.
“Wait here,” Knox told the driver, and emerged from the car. He waved to the policemen to follow him, flashed his badge at the guards at the entrance to the fenced-in landing area, and skirted the northern-most pad until he reached the fence that marked the eastern border of the heliport, overlooking the East River.
Knox had always questioned the sense of having a heliport that was nearly beneath the FDR. Early one autumn morning he had been driving along the FDR and had been astonished to see a helicopter hover next to the highway for a moment, and then slowly descend until it was entirely out of sight. As he stood here, on the side of the heliport that was farthest away from the highway, he could only conclude that it was insane. Three of the five pads were occupied, and the helicopters in those pads, which were not particularly large as far as Knox could tell, seemed to nearly fill the pads. It would take great skill–and an absence of unpredictable gusts of wind–to land safely in such a narrow space, with only yards separating the approach path from roaring traffic.
Knox considered his options. He still had no firm plan about what he was going to do if a helicopter appeared, but he felt that it was important nevertheless. His conversation with the Westbury TRACON had been unsettling–mid-way through explaining who he was and that he was interested in the presence of any emergency flights or other flights without filed flight plans through the controlled space between Islip and Manhattan, especially anything resembling a helicopter, the admin he was speaking with interrupted him to say that there was a high priority situation that all the controllers needed to attend to, and had abruptly hung up. Knox wondered whether his situation might be linked in some way to whatever crisis the Westbury aircraft controllers were suddenly facing.
Knox hoped that a Coast Guard helicopter would appear and land. It was the most benign outcome he could imagine; if the 9-1-1 call had been a practical joke, then he would probably be given the task of tracking down the prankster as a reward for overreacting, and if the 9-1-1 call had been a diversion from some sort of terrorist incident, he suspected that he would be blamed for not have acting more aggressively on his hunch.
The more Knox thought about what he planned to do, the more he realized that the reason he was at the heliport was because ever since he had heard the recording of the 9-1-1 call, he had had a profound desire, which competed with his job priorities, to do whatever he could to help the injured little girl mentioned in the call. If there was a helicopter coming that was filled with explosives, he had done nothing to impede it from approaching the city. If there was a terrorist attack coming, he was in the wrong place, doing the wrong things, making the wrong decisions.
He was only here to help the girl, and he didn’t understand why.
Knox’s phone rang, and he answered it reflexively. It was his office. All agents were immediately summoned to the office–something that hadn’t happened since 9/11. Knox acknowledged the message, but remained. He couldn’t bring himself to leave immediately.
Knox’s phone rang again before he had a chance to replace it in its holster. It was a response to a message he’d left earlier, and the caller wasted no time. There were no Coast Guard helicopters operating in the area, none had been involved in a rescue or medevac that day, and certainly none inbound to Manhattan, with or without injured passengers. All helicopters from Maine to Norfolk were accounted for; any helicopter he saw with Coast Guard colors flying over Manhattan would be an impostor. Knox thanked the caller and hung up.
Knox knew that all the evidence was that he was being a fool, but he couldn’t resist the urge to make one last scan of the horizon, looking for any aircraft coming toward the heliport.
As he looked to the northeast, he saw a helicopter approaching, fast and low. It seemed to take only seconds from the time that Knox could see it until he could see it clearly. It wasn’t one of the large Coast Guard helicopters; it looked like one of the mid-sized patrol craft. Knox could not make out any markings, because it was coming nearly straight for him, but the front appeared to be the same orange pattern as a standard Coast Guard aircraft.
There was no question that the helicopter was coming straight toward the heliport, but it was coming in much too quickly to land. For a moment Knox thought that perhaps the helicopter was planning to overfly the heliport and crash into the buildings on the far side of the FDR, but at the last minute the pilot made a maneuver that startled Knox both its consummate skill and apparent disregard of safety. The helicopter pivoted so that it was flying backwards, and then the pilot dipped the nose at full power, bringing the helicopter to a full stop in less length than Knox would have believed possible. The skids hit the pavement and didn’t slide an inch as the pilot leveled the helicopter and cut the power to the main rotor. The helicopter came to a complete stop in the exact middle of pad four, between two other helicopters and at the far end of the landing area.
Knox was amazed to the point of immobility when he realized that the pilot had flown the last seventy-five yards backwards, under full power, without being able to see where he or she was going, without any apparent correction, to land perfectly.
“Crazy motherfucker can fly that thing,” said the policeman standing next to Knox, perfectly expressing Knox’s impression and providing him with the words he would later use as his own to describe that aspect of the incident.
Knox approached the helicopter at a dead run, but by the time he had reached the pilot’s side, the pilot was already standing on the pavement. Next to him stood a woman who was carrying an unconscious girl wrapped in a blanket. The woman looked stunned and frightened, but hopeful. Knox thought that she looked as if she was glad to be back on the ground.
The pilot, a middle-aged man incongruously dressed in a long-sleeved canvas shirt, cargo shorts, and sneakers without socks, addressed Knox immediately and with urgency.
“This girl needs medical attention. She must be taken to Bellevue hospital for immediate treatment.”
Knox motioned to the policemen. One of them took the girl from the woman and carried her quickly to the waiting ambulance. Knox watched as the EMTs loaded the girl and the woman into the ambulance, almost forgetting the pilot for a moment. His attention was drawn back to the helicopter when he heard the loud thump of the helicopters doors swinging closed. When he heard the doors close, Knox had expected that the pilot had locked himself in the helicopter and was about to try to fly away again, but he was surprised to find the pilot standing in front of him instead.
“I suppose you will introduce yourself in a moment, with your credentials,” said the pilot. “I will begin. My name is Victor Denebola, and I expect that you have many questions for me.”
