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Chapters (49)
  1. Title Page
  2. Acknowledgements
  3. ONE - THE KREMLIN, MOSCOW SEPTEMBER 24, 1999
  4. TWO - SAN JOSE, CALIFORNIA OCTOBER 6, 1999
  5. THREE - CAUCASUS REGION NEAR THE CASPIAN SEA, RUSSIA, OCTOBER 10, 1999
  6. FOUR - THE WHITE HOUSE WASHINGTON, D.C. OCTOBER 26, 1999
  7. FIVE - KALININGRAD, RUSSIA OCTOBER 26, 1999
  8. SIX - KHABAROVSK TERRITORY NEAR THE RUSSIA-CHINA BORDER OCTOBER 27, 1999
  9. SEVEN - KALININGRAD, RUSSIA NOVEMBER 2, 1999
  10. EIGHT - WASHINGTON, D.C. NOVEMBER 5, 1999
  11. NINE - KALININGRAD REGION NOVEMBER 16, 1999
  12. TEN - BROOKLYN, NEW YORK NOVEMBER 28, 1999
  13. ELEVEN - NEW YORK CITY DECEMBER 23, 1999
  14. TWELVE - NEW YORK CITY DECEMBER 28, 1999
  15. THIRTEEN - VARIOUS LOCALES DECEMBER 31, 1999
  16. FOURTEEN - SAN JOSE, CALIFORNIA DECEMBER 31, 1999
  17. FIFTEEN - NEW YORK CITY DECEMBER 31, 1999
  18. SIXTEEN - SAN JOSE, CALIFORNIA DECEMBER 31, 1999
  19. SEVENTEEN - NEW YORK CITY JANUARY 1, 2000
  20. EIGHTEEN - BROOKLYN, NEW YORK JANUARY 1, 2000
  21. NINETEEN - NEW YORK CITY AND SAN JOSE, CALIFORNIA JANUARY 1, 2000
  22. TWENTY - WASHINGTON, D.C. JANUARY 2, 2000 FROM THE
  23. TWENTY-ONE - NEW YORK CITY JANUARY 3, 2000 CALVARY CEMETERY, QUEENS
  24. TWENTY-TWO - MOSCOW JANUARY 6, 2000
  25. TWENTY-THREE - WASHINGTON, D.C. JANUARY 6, 2000
  26. TWENTY-FOUR - SAN JOSE, CALIFORNIA JANUARY 7, 2000
  27. TWENTY-FIVE - SAN JOSE, CALIFORNIA AND NEW YORK CITY JANUARY 8, 2000
  28. TWENTY-SIX - NEW YORK CITY JANUARY 16, 2000
  29. TWENTY-SEVEN - BROOKLYN, NEW YORK JANUARY 16, 2000
  30. TWENTY-EIGHT - BROOKLYN, NEW YORK JANUARY 16, 2000
  31. TWENTY-NINE - BROOKLYN, NEW YORK JANUARY 16, 2000
  32. THIRTY - NEW YORK CITY JANUARY 20, 2000
  33. THIRTY-ONE - BROOKLYN, NEW YORK JANUARY 26, 2000
  34. THIRTY-TWO - WASHINGTON, D.C. JANUARY 26, 2000
  35. THIRTY-THREE - WASHINGTON, D.C. JANUARY 28, 2000
  36. THIRTY-FOUR - NEW YORK CITY JANUARY 29, 2000
  37. THIRTY-FIVE - KALININGRAD, RUSSIA JANUARY 30, 2000
  38. THIRTY-SIX - THE KREMLIN, MOSCOW FEBRUARY 1, 2000
  39. THIRTY-SEVEN - ANKARA, TURKEY FEBRUARY 7, 2000
  40. THIRTY-EIGHT - CAPPADOCIA, SOUTHEASTERN TURKEY FEBRUARY 9, 2000
  41. THIRTY-NINE - KALININGRAD REGION FEBRUARY 9, 2000
  42. FORTY - KALININGRAD REGION FEBRUARY 10, 2000
  43. FORTY-ONE - NEW YORK CITY FEBRUARY 9, 2000
  44. FORTY-TWO - KALININGRAD REGION FEBRUARY 10
  45. FORTY-THREE - SAN JOSE, CALIFORNIA FEBRUARY 10, 2000
  46. FORTY-FOUR - MOSCOW FEBRUARY 11, 2000
  47. FORTY-FIVE - MOSCOW FEBRUARY 12, 2000
  48. FORTY-SIX - DAGOMYS BLACK SEA COAST, RUSSIA FEBRUARY 12, 2000
  49. FORTY-SEVEN - NEW YORK CITY KENNEDY INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT FEBRUARY 17, 2000

Harrison forced himself to move. The grate of complaining metal overhead had become louder and more ominous, jolting him with a fresh sense of fear and dismay. He rolled over stiffly toward his wife, groaning her name again, afraid to ask himself why she had not yet answered.

“Rosie, are you—”

His sentence broke off as he saw her lying on her back, one eye closed, the other one staring blankly upward from a face that was covered with blood and cement dust, giving it the appearance of a ghastly Kabuki mask. Her hair was in disarray and there was a dark, murky puddle of wetness around the back of her head. Except for the arm he was clinging to, she was buried under a dune of jumbled wreckage from her neck to her waist.

He couldn’t see her breathing.

“Honey, please, please, we’ve got to get out of here, find Tasheya. You have to get up ...”

She didn’t move. The dead expression on her face didn’t change.

Frantic, knowing in his heart that she was gone, that any human being would have to be crushed under a pile of rubble that huge, Harrison climbed up on one knee and tugged at her arm, tugged at it almost savagely, tugged at it with sobs choking his throat and tears streaming down his cheeks.

It came away from her body on the fifth tug, severed above the elbow, leaving a jagged shoot of bone protruding from her buried shoulder.

Harrison stared down at her, his eyes feverishly wide in their sockets.

It took a moment for his unwilling mind to fully absorb what had happened.

And then he began to scream.

In every explosion, there is a violent outward rush of air, followed by a rapid compression as the hungry vacuum draws the displaced air back toward its center. This is the principle by which demolition experts will set off charges of HMX, TNT, and ammonium nitrate inside buildings to make them collapse upon themselves. The larger the initial release of energy, the more significant this effect can be, and the suction after the Times Square blast was enormous—blowing out windows, tearing doors off their hinges, bringing down steel scaffoldings, toppling walls, lifting motor vehicles off the ground, and pulling human beings into its monstrous throat as if they weighed nothing at all. Eyewitnesses to the catastrophe would later compare the sound of the inrushing air to that of a train moving toward them at top speed.

Above the VIP platform on Forty-second Street, the tortured groan of metal grew louder with each passing moment as the Astrovision display’s structural supports, badly damaged from the force of the detonation, and further weakened by the subsequent vacuum effect, continued to bend and twist past their tolerance.