“Plan?” he says. “Jesus, Caleb, we didn’t have time for any planning after Morgan briefed us. Every cop in that room started yelling out offers to help, however they could. Anything the feds needed, the NOPD would give ’em. Resources, manpower, equipment, intel, you name it. And that’s why you’ve seen those additional faces on the street.”

Up the street two young girls are jumping rope, their cheery little voices reaching us here, these two older and wiser men talking about hundreds—hell, maybe thousands!—dead in just over a week. Those little girls. My friends. Neighbors. The tourists coming here, looking for a good time.

Now they’re all just targets.

“And what else?” I ask.

“Hah,” he says, weaving back on his heels. “That’s an excellent question. ‘What else?’ Everyone in that room with a crescent badge demanded that we do more, flood the streets, start cracking down on our street sources and other informants to see what we could squeeze out. But you know what happened, right?”

Right, I thought, remembering my senior year in high school, right after 9/11, and learning later that the information and intelligence was out there about the impending attack, but bureaucratic inertia and turf battles let al-Qaeda proceed unmolested, sending nearly three thousand innocents to their graves.

“They said screw you, stay out of our way.”

Another sigh from my overwhelmed and overworked former boss. “That’s about it. Morgan said we should keep our damn mouths shut and stay the hell out of it. Let them handle the situation.”

“Christ, that doesn’t make any sense, Chief,” I say. “The FBI always coordinates with the locals with something like this. We know the city better than anybody. What’s different this time?”

“Way above our pay grades, Caleb,” he says. “Some big-time meetings are taking place in DC. Apparently, there’s international security implications, too. Unbelievable, isn’t it?”

He shakes his head with disgust and dread, and right now, I’m so angry I feel like punching a hole into the side of my truck.

“After the agent and his team cleared out,” he continues, “Superintendent Fontaine took the floor. Everyone—and I mean everyone!—thought he was going to say to hell with the feds, that we have to save our city, and do what has to be done. Instead, the ass-kissing bastard doubled down on Morgan’s orders. You can imagine the response that got … but he wouldn’t say anything different. Even said that under threat of immediate termination, everyone in the department would follow the FBI’s lead. Or else.”

I’m disgusted but not surprised. “Sure, from Fontaine’s perspective, doing that makes sense,” I say. “He follows the FBI’s lead and nothing happens, he’s gained a lot of favors with the feds. And if something does happen, well, his hands are clean. How could a department like us win out against the big bad feds from DC?”