Quake (4 page)

The earth settled. Nick Dykstra stood on the concrete steps he'd stood on only hours before. Only this time as he looked out at the scene in front of him he saw not a mob of protestors and journalists but a panorama of death and destruction. Bodies lay bloodied in piles under rubble along Pearl Street. Squinting against the storm of dust, he spotted some movement, but most of the block remained motionless. The street itself had opened along its center, creating a horrific gash that had swallowed dozens of protestors. Car alarms and building alarms screeched like a murder of dying crows, while police and fire and ambulance sirens sounded helplessly in the distance.

Nick took the first step down and leaned over to examine one of the fallen U.S. marshals who had led him through the gate that morning. The marshal's face was horrifically bruised and bloodied, his body surrounded by glass that had shattered and showered him from the upper floor windows of 500 Pearl. Nick knelt and placed his right thumb in his mouth and bit down until he could no longer bear the pain, then he reached for the marshal's neck and felt for a pulse. As Nick suspected, the marshal was already dead. His assault rifle was nowhere to be seen.

As he rose to his feet, Nick felt the concrete tremble beneath his feet and a fresh wave of fear and nausea washed over him. Gazing up, he saw the windows of the buildings across the street shedding more glass, watched the roofs shake back and forth and begin to crumble. Above the alarms and sirens he heard screams of terror rise from the shadows.

Unlike the tremors before, this one shot up in intensity in seconds and knocked Nick down the cracked concrete stairs. At the bottom of the steps he rolled to a stop and buried his head beneath his arms.

As he waited out the tremor, Nick tried to remember everything he'd been taught about surviving earthquakes while growing up in California. He'd already covered his head and face with his arms to protect himself from the shards of flying glass from blown-out windows. If it weren't for Lauren, he'd have been safer staying inside the courthouse and standing in a doorway or ducking under a sturdy desk or into a closet. But he had no idea where the epicenter was, and he had to do whatever it took to get to his daughter as quickly as possible. He had to know she was safe. And more important,
she
needed to know that
he
was.

Now that he was outside, Nick needed to move as far out into the open as possible to remain clear of falling material. No easy feat on a New York City block crowded with skyscrapers. And there was a tremendous fissure in the center of the street. If he got too close to the middle, he'd be sucked in and swallowed like the dozens of other people who'd been outside the courthouse when the first tremor hit.

As the ground shook beneath him, Nick chanced a glance up at the street. He'd be safer in a car, of course, but only if he kept the car glued to one spot, and he had no intention of staying downtown. Not while Lauren was helpless somewhere on the Upper West Side.

The tremor suddenly stopped.

Nick tried to discern how long each quake had lasted. No more than a minute or two apiece, he was sure.

All right
, he thought,
what else was I told as a kid?

Earthquakes were psychologically devastating. It was crucial to remain calm and composed. Panic led individuals to take unnecessary and dangerous actions. Panic during an earthquake got people killed.

Nick waited a few extra moments before rising to his feet. He didn't know whether these tremors were aftershocks or the real thing. Hell, for all Nick knew these tremors could merely be a preface to the Big One.

He looked at his hands and saw that they were covered in dried blood. He wiped them as best he could against his suit jacket and then felt along his forehead. When he stared down at his hands again they were colored with fresh blood. He was bleeding and already feeling light-headed. He needed to stop the flow before he lost too much blood and passed out.

Nick quickly undid the knot in his tie and yanked it out from under his shirt collar. The tie was red; it was one of his favorites. His wife, Sara, had given it to him for his birthday back in 2000. It was one of the last presents he'd ever received from her.

He placed the tie across his forehead and pulled it tight before tying it off at the back of his head. That would at least staunch the blood flow, he thought, and keep the blood from streaming into his eyes.

He was sweating and wanted to remove his suit jacket. But he had no idea what hell lay before him; the jacket might come in handy later so he decided to hold on to it. He dusted himself as best he could. As he did he felt around in his pockets. He carried no handkerchief and knew that his search was in vain, but he needed something to cover his nose and mouth, to keep out what dust and debris that he could. Finally, he turned up his collar and pulled it up over his face as far as possible.

Visibility was next to nothing so he listened intently for sounds. He could hear cries for help, but they were either far away or muffled by the rubble.

Limping, he moved in the direction of the closest sound he heard. As badly as he needed to get to Lauren, if there were survivors here he had a duty to stay and help them.

As he moved, gravel crunched under his feet. At several points the crunching ceased and he knew he was traversing over poster-board signs protesting the U.S. attorney general's decision to try Feroz Saeed Alivi in a civilian court in the United States.

He looked down. Beneath his tired feet was a mammoth sign with big, bright and bold red letters:
NOT ON AMERICAN SOIL
.

The terrorist's face again flashed in his mind and Nick again wondered whether Alivi had been killed in the quake or somehow, in the utter chaos of the courthouse, managed to escape.

Nick suddenly sensed movement to his left and swung his head in that direction. The dust cloud made it impossible for Nick to see anything; it was as though he were standing in the middle of the Mojave Desert during a sandstorm. He shielded his eyes with his right arm and staggered toward the faint sound of moving rubble.

After a few moments, he heard a groan emanate from the rubble a few feet in front of him and he immediately dropped to his knees. Blindly, he reached forward and when his hand hit something solid, he began digging, slowly at first, then faster as the groans became louder and clearer. His pulse raced. The rubble scraped his hands and he grimaced but kept digging and digging. Until, finally, he felt flesh. Felt the fingers of another survivor close around his hand and squeeze tightly.

Nick tugged gently upward on the bloodied arm and the groans became louder. He set his foot against a pile of rubble for leverage and then pulled harder. He heard a cry of pain and immediately stopped but didn't let go. A voice emanated from the rubble....

“
Pull harder! Please. It's gonna hurt like hell and I'm gonna scream. But you have to keep pulling. You have to get me the hell out of here.”

Nick dug a little deeper, then gripped the arm with both hands and pulled. Finally, the shape of a body started to materialize through the cloud of dust.

Nick could make out that it was the body of a man but nothing else.

The man leaned on Nick for support and hacked violently until he finally doubled over. He needed oxygen, but there was nothing Nick could do about that just now.

The man pushed himself away from Nick and attempted to stand on his own. His face was covered with a thick layer of brown dust. Blood spotted him from head to toe.

It wasn't a protestor. The man was wearing a suit very similar to Nick's. It may have been navy at the start of the day but now there was no way to tell. The suit was shredded beyond recognition.

The man slowly opened his eyes and Nick thought he recognized him.

The man looked back at Nick and recognition washed over his face as well.

“Francisco,” the man said. “Special Agent Francisco Mendoza, Federal Bureau of Investigation.” He held out his hand.

“Frank?” Nick said.

Mendoza nodded. “AUSA Dykstra, right? I was told by your office to be here this morning. That you were going to call me as your first witness.”

Nick sighed. “Hate to be the one to break it to you, Frank, but you're a day early.”

Mendoza stared at him for several seconds before his mouth finally cracked into a mirthless grin. “You goddamn lawyers,” he said.

Nick allowed himself some deep breaths but the air was stale and dirty and he coughed. “I was going to phone you during the first recess,” he rasped. “Have you come down to the office this evening to go over your testimony.”

Mendoza seemed to have tuned him out; the cop was turning his head a hundred and eighty degrees each way, taking in the destruction.

“You injured?” Nick said.

Mendoza chuckled. “Does it matter?”

Nick pursed his lips, and turned to gaze up the road. The intersection was blocked by rubble and an overturned bus. “I guess not.”

Mendoza patted himself down, finally reached into his pants pocket and pulled out a BlackBerry. Nick watched as Mendoza dusted it off with the tail of his shirt, then punched the ON button. The cracked screen came to life and Nick felt a momentary rush of optimism.

Mendoza pulled up his contacts and hit a button and then put the phone to his ear. After a moment, he shook his head. “Nothing,” he said. “You got yours?”

Nick glanced back at the courthouse. “They take your phone at the door.” He swallowed hard and turned the corners of his lips up at the irony. “Safety concerns.”

“You the only one to make it out of the courthouse?”

Nick shrugged. “Maybe. But that doesn't mean there aren't survivors.”

Mendoza started toward the courthouse steps. “Let's go take a look, then.”

Nick's strained voice echoed through the lobby of 500 Pearl Street. The voice sounded entirely alien to him and he hesitated before calling out a second time. “
Hello . . . can anybody hear me?
”

Mendoza was kneeling next to a fallen court officer. He checked for a pulse, then crossed himself the way Nick's grandmother had every time she'd gotten into a car. Mendoza stood, turned to Nick, and shook his head. “Can we get upstairs?”

Nick glanced in the direction of the door he'd squeezed through just twenty minutes earlier. More of the ceiling above the doorframe had collapsed and helped the pillar seal the door shut. “There's another stairwell in the rear of the building,” Nick said. “Just past the elevators. We can try that one.”

“Careful,” Mendoza said, as they crept toward the back of the lobby. “Listen for anything. Not just calls for help but for complaints from the structure. If more of the ceiling decides to fall, we might be crushed. And even if we're not crushed, there's a good chance we'll be trapped.”

Nick and Mendoza stepped around the corpse of another uniformed court officer and stepped over a fallen light fixture to reach the red metal door that opened into the rear stairwell. The door itself was clear of obstruction and opened easily. But when Nick stepped inside he stopped short, his breath caught in his throat.

“What is it?” Mendoza said quietly.

Rather than answer, Nick simply stepped aside to reveal the lifeless body of Helen Healy, a court stenographer who'd worked at least half of Nick's trials over the past two years. Before that, Helen had worked in the state criminal court at 100 Centre for thirty-plus years.

Now her skull was dented, her neck bent at a grotesque angle. The heel of her left foot rested on the second step, while most of her body lay on the first floor landing. Clearly, she'd been heading up the stairs when the first tremor hit.

Nick had seen plenty of bodies in his career as a federal prosecutor. Just last year he'd prosecuted a key figure in the Tagliarini crime family, and the three soldiers who had turned against the defendant described murders so heinous Nick wasn't able to eat or sleep the night after they testified. There were plenty of photographs of previously unsolved homicide victims to corroborate the testimony. But this was somehow different, so different that Nick had to be steadied when his knees suddenly turned to rubber and he thought he might faint.

“You okay?” Mendoza said.

Nick replied with a nod of the head and stepped over Helen's body. As he climbed the steps, one at a time, pain shot up his left leg. He paused for a moment when he reached the second landing and pulled up the left leg of his suit pants to the knee. He shuddered when he saw the bruise, but was grateful that he could still walk. His adrenaline had masked the pain up until this point, but now he began feeling it everywhere. In the shoulders he'd repeatedly thrown into the crash bar to escape the front stairwell. In the left arm he'd landed on when he leapt over the human heap trying to flee Justice Gaydos's courtroom. His forehead throbbed where the skin had split open and he touched his fingers to the tie he'd placed around his head. His scraped fingers burned from digging at the rubble to rescue Mendoza. The base of his neck ached like hell, as it typically did during periods of great stress.

Mendoza stepped around him and started toward the next landing. Nick followed, his gaze inadvertently falling back down to Helen Healy's ruined body on the lower level. Something lurched in his stomach and he dry heaved.

This time Mendoza didn't say anything, just placed a gentle hand on Nick's shoulder and waited for him to stand up straight.

Mendoza pushed through the door on the second floor and together they entered the marble hallway. The darkness momentarily surprised Nick because the emergency lights in this stairwell had apparently been operating on auxiliary power. The dark stairwell he'd been in just an hour or so earlier now felt as though it was weeks behind him.

“Stay here,” Mendoza said. “If there's a hole in the floor or the ceiling comes down, no reason both of us should get killed.”

“Frank . . .” Nick started.

Mendoza placed a firm hand on Nick's chest. “No, I'm serious, Nick. If something happens, I want you alive and well to try to save me.”

Nick nodded in the darkness.

Mendoza moved slowly forward, Nick listening to the agent's footfalls on cracked tile. Suddenly, those footfalls ceased and Nick experienced a spark of panic.

“You all right, Frank?”

“I'm fine,” Mendoza called back. “But we've reached the end of the line here. The ceiling's collapsed. There's no way through.”

“Hear anything over there?” Nick said when he felt Mendoza at his side again.

“Not a peep.”

Nick pushed open the metal door and stepped back into the stairwell, thankful for the splash of light.

“What now?” Mendoza said.

Nick started slowly down the steps, bracing his left leg against the pain.

“I need to get uptown,” Nick said.

“Uptown?”

“My daughter's there.”

“If she's uptown, she's probably fine.”

Nick shook his head. “We don't know where the epicenter is. Could be beneath this courthouse, but it's doubtful. May be somewhere in midtown, may be somewhere uptown.”

“Could be under Hoboken, New Jersey,” Mendoza said.

“Could be.”

“How you planning on getting uptown, Nick? I didn't even see a way off this street.”

Nick stepped over Helen Healy's body a final time and pushed through the door into the lobby.

“There's got to be a way,” Nick said.

“And if there isn't?”

“There's got to be.”

Mendoza stopped as they neared the glass doors leading back outside. “Where uptown?” he said.

“North end of the Upper West Side,” Nick said, turning back to face him. “Columbia University. She's a high school senior. She's visiting the campus today.”

Mendoza nodded. “My wife, Jana, she works as a nurse at St. Luke's-Roosevelt on West Fifty-ninth Street.”

“You saying you want to come with me?”

Mendoza shrugged. “Sure. I got nothing better to do.”

Nick turned and pushed through the door.

“You know,” Mendoza said, “even if we do make it up there, my wife and your daughter are not going to be happy that we risked our lives to make sure they survived.”

Nick held the door for him, and said, “This isn't just about me making sure that Lauren's safe. My daughter lost her mother in the World Trade Center twelve years ago. She needs to know that I made it out of this courthouse alive.”