“They’re dead,” she kept saying as she crumpled to the floor. “They’re dead. They’re all dead.”

  Every cop there turned and looked at each other as the dust plume rose into the sky. Doyle and Arturo and Brooklyn and Chief Fabretti. The shock was fine. What wasn’t so fine was the fear. The pale and shivering crazed looks of fear.

  “Déjà vu all over again,” said Doyle, licking his lips. He had his gun in his hand. I gently helped him put it away.

  “This is crazy. This is crazy. This is crazy,” said Arturo hysterically.

  I put my arm on Arturo’s shoulder. I opened my mouth, but I was speechless. He was in shock, the same as me. He was also right.

  Then I was running down the stairs two by two, speed-dialing Emily as I began to pray that she miraculously might still be alive.

  CHAPTER 61

  I HIT THE street and ran as fast as I could up narrow Saint Andrew’s Plaza toward the destruction.

  I couldn’t tear my eyes away from the sky above the buildings. A misty cloud of gray dust was above it. It kept billowing wider and wider. Within the expanding gray cloud was a confetti-like, glittering mass of debris that I realized after a moment was paper.

  I kept trying to call Emily as I ran, but her phone kept kicking into voice mail.

  Maybe she’s just on the phone, I thought with desperate hope. Or her phone needs charging. Or the cell sites are down.

  As I neared Foley Square, the Irish prayer to Saint Michael, the patron saint of cops, which Seamus had made me memorize when I graduated from the academy, suddenly popped into my head.

  Blessed Michael, archangel, defend us in this hour of conflict. Be our safeguard against the wickedness and…something, something…thrust Satan down to hell and with him those other wicked spirits who wander through the world for the ruin of souls.

  “And please let Emily be okay, God,” I whispered. “Let me have this one. You have to let me have just this one, please. Amen.”

  Fire-truck horns blatted and blasted in the distance as I finally sprinted past the row of Corinthian columns fronting the Thurgood Marshall courthouse into Foley Square. I was going at a pretty good clip, but when I glanced up and got my first good look at 26 Fed, I immediately slowed, then abruptly stopped in my tracks and just stood there in the street staring up, completely overwhelmed by what I was seeing.

  Twenty-Six Federal Plaza’s normally perfectly sleek rectilinear forty-one-story glass-and-stone slab now looked like a giant cereal box that had been chewed up by a rabid pit bull. I grimaced at the grid of exposed offices in the horrifically wrecked upper half of the skyscraper. Everything was completely pulverized. Every ruined nook and cranny was filled with smoking wreckage.

  An even harder pulse of dread shuddered through me as I suddenly noticed that what remained of the structure was still visibly swaying back and forth. I gripped down hard on my cell phone, wondering if I was about to watch the rest of it go, about to see it start pancaking down like the Twin Towers on 9/11.

  When it didn’t happen immediately, I started racking my brain, trying to remember the one or two times I had been in the FBI building. I tried to think what floor Emily’s office or morning meeting room might have been on, but for the life of me, I couldn’t remember. All I could do was stand there feeling numb as I stared up at the torn-apart office tower.

  I wasn’t the only one. All over Foley Square, I suddenly noticed people standing silently out on the steps of the courthouses and on the sidewalks in front of the government buildings. The ones who weren’t filming with their smartphones were like me—just standing there frozen, a regiment of jaw-dropped statues staring up.

  Somehow, after a minute or two, I shook myself out of my stupor and continued haltingly up Lafayette Street. When I got to the next corner, at Worth Street, I looked to the left—west, toward Broadway.

  When I saw the devastation up close for the first time, I shook my head. I couldn’t believe it.

  How could anyone?

  It looked like the entire top half of 26 Federal Plaza had fallen into Worth Street, filling it up like dirt in a trench. Through the concrete dust, I could make out a dark, immense, almost three-story mound of debris that completely blocked the street and both sidewalks.

  At its top, a half dozen steel girders stuck up crookedly like a stand of burned, branchless trees. Around the girders, huge folded sections of the office building’s distinctive facade were slumped over on themselves like unspooled bolts of cloth. In the warm breeze that hit my sweating face, I smelled the acrid, industrial stink of burned metal and plastic.

  A falling, flapping sheet of paper suddenly hit me in the temple like a tap, and I began shuffling forward at the terrible mound through the haze.

  CHAPTER 62

  THERE WAS A soft flapping sound as a steady rain of printer-paper sheets fell down around me. The dust above must have been doing something to the light, because everything was tinted with a strange, unreal bluish tinge.

  I walked up the wide sidewalk around a haphazard maze of splintered desks, smashed office chairs, and cracked computer screens. I blinked down at an intact framed bachelor’s degree from Tulane University propped up against the gutter as if someone had placed it there.

  As I continued my approach, a tall, skinny black bike messenger with a scratched face silently staggered past in the street, covered in a pale-gray coating of dust.

  Then I came closer and saw something really amazing.

  People were already up on the mound of debris, a dozen or so people. There were a few uniformed cops, but mostly they were civilians—office workers, a guy in a white doctor’s coat, a loose line of people silently passing down debris and rubble.

  I climbed up over some chunks of concrete, immediately joining them. As the dry, stale taste of concrete and drywall dust filled my nostrils and mouth, I accepted a huge hunk of concrete from a short, Italian-looking guy in a ruined pinstriped suit above me. As I turned to heave it, I saw that a burly uniformed security guard had arrived behind me, waiting to accept it.

  “What happened?” the guard said to me as I passed him the concrete.

  I squinted at him. He was a really distinctive-looking guy. He had longish brown hair under his navy ball cap and bright, light-blue eyes. He must have played football in college or something, because he was jacked.

  “Someone said it was a plane,” he said as I continued to stare at him stupidly. “Was it a plane?”

  After he handed the concrete to the next person down the line, I shook my head and carefully passed him the two-yard length of fractured rebar I’d just been handed.

  “It was explosives,” I finally said. “I saw it. They blew it. Someone took it down with high explosives or something. Demo’d it, like. I didn’t see a plane.”

  That’s when my cell phone went off in my pocket. I crouched down in the wreckage, frenziedly wiping the dust-covered screen to see who was calling.

  I closed my eyes with relief as my heart somersaulted in my chest.

  All was not lost. There was still hope. A tiny drop.

  “Emily?!” I yelled as I put the phone to my ear.

  “Mike! Are you okay?” she said. “We got hit. I just made it out of the building. Someone said you guys were hit as well. Are you okay?”

  Thank you, God. You came through. Thank you. And Saint Michael. You guys came through. I owe you.

  I clenched back my tears of relief. Then I couldn’t anymore.

  “Yes,” I said, wiping dust and tears off my face. “I’m fine. Perfect now. Where are you?”

  “On the west side of Broadway near Worth.”

  “Okay, stay where you are. I’m coming to you.”

  When I stood and turned around again to ask the muscular security guard to take my place in line, I stopped and just stood there blinking.

  Because all of a sudden the guy, whoever he had been, whatever he had been, was gone.

  CHAPTER 63

  THE NEXT THREE days were some of the most tumultuous in New York City’s history.

  Twenty-two people had died in the blast. Eleven special agents (one of them the direct assistant to the head of the New York office), three civilian clerks, and eight maintenance and security people. More than a hundred were still in the hospital, many with internal injuries from being crushed under heavy debris when the building collapsed. Many people were missing fingers, arms, eyes, feet. The fact that half of Manhattan’s hospitals were still out of commission after the EMP blast in Yorkville did not help the situation at all.

  The initial investigation into the bombing showed that it had been as ingenious as it had been devastating. Incredibly, robots had been used. Investigators had found three unexploded robots in the pile. They looked like miniature children’s blocks, but inside they had intricate flywheels and radio receivers and electronics that allowed them to be moved around remotely, like a swarm of insects. In addition to the electronics, the bots had been laden with explosives and had been inserted probably through the AC unit on the roof into the air ducts.

  Experts were speculating that whoever had radio-controlled the bots into position must have been an engineer or a demolitions expert, because each unit had been precisely placed alongside the building’s support struts for maximum destruction.

  As in the aftermath of 9/11, the governor of New York had issued a citywide state of emergency, and the National Guard was called in. Soldiers armed with rifles stood at multiple checkpoints throughout the city, with countersniper teams on various rooftops. There were even rumors that there was a CIA surveillance drone high in the air above New York City 24-7. It was truly unreal.

  But instead of committing the mentally unhealthy act of dwelling on things, Emily and I and my Ombudsman Outreach squaddies busied ourselves by doubling down, trying to shake out everything we could on the investigation. It was all dead ends so far, but something would break. It had to. Or at least we couldn’t stop believing that it would.

  “If they’re terrorists, Mike, then why won’t they contact us, claim credit?” said Noah Robertson, starting up our Friday morning team meeting at the Intelligence Division building in Brooklyn.

  We were all camped around my desk—Emily and Arturo in commandeered office chairs, which were in high demand since about a hundred cops had been reassigned to the case. Doyle and Brooklyn and Noah were actually sitting on the floor against the partition wall among the stacks of paper and coffee cups and pizza boxes that were strewn around the once-fancy office space.

  Everyone was in jeans and hoodies and T-shirts—even Emily, who was usually in her FBI-mandated fancy office clothes. Nonstop sixteen-hour days tend to make everyone a little less formal.

  “Because that would be the conventional thing,” Emily said, picking one of the little bots they’d found in the rubble off my desk.

  “These guys don’t do conventional,” she said, tossing the bot into the air and catching it.

  “They figure it’s even more terrifying to not claim credit, to continue to stay in the shadows being a faceless menace,” I said.

  “I think they might be right,” said Arturo around the straw of his blue Coolatta.

  “But they are terrorists, right? I mean, they have to be, considering how well financed they are,” Brooklyn said. “Only a team of computer experts could have come up with that robot swarm bomb, or whatever the hell you want to call it.”

  “Or built those EMP devices,” said Doyle, yawning. “Hell, we’ve all heard the rumors. It’s most likely being sponsored by a foreign government.”

  “No,” I said as I stared up at the ceiling.

  “Earth to Mike,” Doyle said after a beat of silence.

  “It’s not a government or even a team of terrorists. It’s too…elegant,” I said, snatching the bot Emily was tossing out of the air.

  “For all its destruction, this is handcrafted,” I said. “It’s one or two people. This is being done to precision. The attacks. The head fakes. And if you want something done this right, you have to do it yourself.”

  CHAPTER 64

  “ONE OR TWO people are systematically leveling New York City?” said Arturo as he made an annoying squeaking sound with his drink straw. “How? It’s impossible.”

  “In 2000, there was a famous article in Wired magazine,” I said. “Some computer genius sat down and mapped out how all these new computer-assisted breakthroughs in technology will pan out. The potential pitfalls of things like artificial intelligence and nanotech and robotics and biotech.”

  “I think I read it,” Noah said. “It was written by the guy who cofounded Sun Microsystems and created Java, right?”

  “That’s the guy,” I said. “One of the theories in the article is that as computer tech gets more powerful for regular folks and makes their lives easier, this more powerful tech could also put power into the hands of disgruntled individuals.”

  I rolled the bot in my palm like it was a die.

  “That’s what I think is happening here,” I said. “We’re seeing the pivot where cutting-edge technology, being very well utilized by two or even just one motivated nut job, can kill a massive amount of people.”

  “One guy is doing all this?” Arturo snorted. “C’mon.”

  “You don’t believe me?” I said. “Then what about the Unabomber?”

  “Who?”

  “Ted Kaczynski. For twenty years, this guy went on a nationwide bombing campaign from a cabin in Montana that didn’t have electricity or running water. What he had instead was an extremely keen intelligence that he used to make incredibly intricate letter bombs. And that was in the seventies and eighties. Imagine what he could do today if he was free.

  “What I think we have here is a Kaczynski-level intelligence running amok.”

  “I can’t believe you just said that,” Emily said, suddenly frantically thumbing her phone.

  “What?” I said.

  “Ted Kaczynski. Two days ago, I got an e-mail from the Washington office,” she said, tapping her cell screen. “Here it is. The Bureau of Prisons sent a request from Kaczynski to the FBI. He said he saw the news of the bombing and put in a request through his lawyer to help us.

  “Which I and everybody at the Bureau dismissed as crazy. Until now. I think you’re right, Mike. About the intelligence involved here. It’s very similar to Kaczynski’s. Maybe we should interview him.”

  “Interview the Unabomber?”

  “Yes,” Emily said. “Why not? He’s completely brilliant and crazy. Just like the person we’re trying to catch. Maybe he can give us some insight.”

  “How is the Unabomber still alive?” said Brooklyn. “Didn’t the feds execute him?”

  “You’re thinking of Timothy McVeigh, the Oklahoma City bomber,” said Doyle.

  “Doyle’s right. Kaczynski is alive,” Emily said. “He’s in his seventies now and housed at the fed supermax in Florence, Colorado. So what do you say, Mike? My bosses couldn’t be more ready to do something. This is the worst loss of life in the Bureau’s history. Let’s go talk to him.”

  “When?” I said.

  “Ain’t no time like the present,” she said. “There’s a Bureau plane at Teterboro that flew in the director for all the funerals. I’ll get us on it. What do you say?”

  I rolled the strangely heavy little bot across the blotter of my cluttered desk and peered at it.

  “I say let’s go to Colorado.”

  CHAPTER 65

  IT WAS EVENING when the FBI Gulfstream V bounced down hard onto the tarmac of the Fremont County Airport in Colorado.

  Two young male agents were standing beside a black Ford Explorer outside the aircraft’s dropped door. They speedily helped move us and our files and bags into the backseat before spinning the roof lights as they floored it out of the rural airport and onto the service road.

  As we got onto a highway, outside my window in the distance, I could see the blood-orange glow of the sun that must have just settled behind the dark, serrated peaks of the Rocky Mountains.

  “Well, what do you know?” I said to Emily through a yawn as we looked over the piles of Unabomber case files. “Those mountains actually do look like the ones on the beer cans, huh? Speaking of which, where is the Coors brewery? Close by? Do they give tours? With tastings?”

  “Unfortunately, that’ll have to be the next trip, Mike. The warden is waiting on us,” Emily said as she opened a laptop. “But believe me, when this is over, the first six-pack of Silver Bullets will be on me.”

  Known sometimes as the Alcatraz of the Rockies, ADX Florence is a 490-bed concrete-and-steel hotel that the feds reserve for its system’s most notorious and most extremely violent prisoners. In addition to Kaczynski, it houses convicted foreign and domestic terrorists, spies like the ex–FBI agent scum Robert Hanssen, and leaders of the Aryan Brotherhood and the Gangster Disciples.

  “So, Mike, what do you think? You’ve read the files. You ready to talk to Ted?” said Emily as our SUV went up the long driveway and was buzzed in at the gate, flanked by towers manned with armed guards.

  “I don’t know,” I said as we rolled in past the twelve-foot-high fencing, topped with razor wire. “The guy isn’t your regular perp, is he? I never interviewed a killer who went to Harvard at sixteen or was a Berkeley math professor at twenty-five. Why do you think he wants to talk to us now? He’s never offered his help before.”

  Emily shrugged.

  “I guess we’re about to find out.”

  The assistant warden was a tough, matronly Native American woman named Marjorie Greene. She met us at the administration building’s sally port and helped us get through processing, where we handed over our service weapons.

  The inside of the prison was like no facility I’d ever been to. Everything was made of smooth poured concrete—the floors, the walls, the ceiling. There wasn’t a window in sight. Prisons are usually loud, with slamming gates and people yelling, but here it was quiet and almost bizarrely serene.