Free Early Warning by Michael Walsh Page A

for the President; supposedly, it was unhackable, but Byrne knew enough about computers and personal digital assistants to know that nothing was unhackable.
    The window was crucial. From this location in Chelsea, the NYPD monitored all its cameras and sensors installed in the wake of 9/11—not just the ones in the subways, but surreptitious monitoring devices at either end of every bridge and tunnel connecting Manhattan either to the Bronx, to Long Island or to Jersey. Not only that—there were also cameras and radioactivity sensors underwater, below river level, on every pier, dock, and jetty. New York had been born a water city and a water city it still was, even if commerce now came by train, plane, and truck. But an island cannot afford to be without its seawall defenses. Pirates had roamed the East River well into the 19th century, and it was up to the NYPD to make sure they never returned.
    Lannie’s brown eyes remained impassive as he completed his readout. “Not good,” he said at last. “Down three, maybe four minutes.”
    “Where?” asked Byrne.
    “Everywhere. City-wide. Somebody just crawled in our ass and shoved a sharp stick up it.”
    “What about overlap?” There was a certain amount of fail-safe built into the system, so that if any one part of it went down, a nearby camera would cover for it. But fail-safe didn’t even kick in until they’d been down for five minutes. A system-wide failure would mean no coverage.
    Command decisions came easily to Byrne; he’d been making them ever since his father was killed and he realized that he, not his older brother Tom, was going to have to be the man of the house. “What do you think, Sid?” he said, requesting the only other opinion that mattered.
    “Think it might be time to liaise with NSA,” he said.
    That did it. If Sid was recommending outside assistance, the shit really must be hitting the fan.
    “We’ve been breached,” barked Byrne. “Go red.”

C HAPTER S EVEN

    Manhattan—late afternoon

    “Mom! Look at this!” Emma Gardner squealed like the child she once was, not the freshly minted teenager she had so recently become. Standing there on Broadway in SoHo, in front of shops she had only ever dreamed about back in Edwardsville, Illinois, she was again her mother’s little girl, the ghosts of her horrible ordeal for the moment cast off, gone.
    “Yuck!” exclaimed Rory. He was about to turn eleven, and still had no use for girls, much less girlish things. But such was his love for his sister that even he managed to feign interest in the latest fashions that almost entirely occupied the minds of girls.
    “Say cheese!” shouted Hope. Rory and Emma struck a mock-pose as she snapped the picture with her cell phone camera. She didn’t care if she looked like a dumb tourist. She was a dumb tourist, in New York City for the first time in her life, and loving it. “Now, who’s for some lunch?”
    “I am!” “I am!!”
    They walked up Broadway to Houston Street. The plastic map she was consulting indicated that the mysterious and wonderful place called Greenwich Village lay to the west, and a brisk walk should bring them into that legendary land of hippies, gays, poets, and painters in just a few minutes.
    “I like New York,” said Emma. “And I’m getting real hungry.”
    “Me, too,” seconded Rory.
    They crossed Seventh Avenue and soon found themselves in the maze of the West Village. The angles of the streets confused Hope. She was determined to show her kids that she was in charge, but when they crossed the intersection of West 4th Street and West 10th Street, she was sure her world had turned upside down.
    “Mom, are you sure you know where we’re going?” asked Rory skeptically, scratching his head. He didn’t know much about Manhattan streets, but he knew what a grid looked like, and this wasn’t it.
    Hope looked at the map in her hands and realized it wasn’t there. Rory had snatched it away and was studying it like