Ground Zero

He nodded. “Don’t ask me who because I don’t know.”

If Goren was telling the truth—and Jack believed he was—then Weezy was right: Something more than Islamic fanaticism hid behind the fall of the Towers.

Conspiracies everywhere.

“Maybe I can find out—if you tell me what you saw. Nothing you say will be recorded anywhere. Only one other person besides myself will know, and we won’t be talking.”

“But what value—?”

“It may furnish a missing piece to the puzzle, it may be useless. The fact that someone tried to kill you tells me it’s important. So what do you say?”

Goren hesitated.

“You never know,” Jack added. “We might bring down whoever torched your place. Give you a chance to get right with the law.”

Though Jack doubted very much that would happen, it wasn’t impossible.

Goren finally nodded. “All right. Maybe somebody should know. But I gotta warn you: Some of what I’m going to say will be hard to swallow. You may think I’m crazy.”

“Don’t count on it.”

He turned to his daughter. “Wait for me down at the parking lot, Alice.”

“I want to hear this too.”

He shook his head. “It’s better if you don’t. I wasn’t supposed to see what I saw, and someone tried to kill me because I did. You’re safer not knowing. Go. Wait by the cycle.”

She hesitated, then started to walk off. Jack didn’t like the thought of her hanging out alone down there. He pulled out his keys.

“Here.” He tossed them to her. “Sit in my car.”

She made a two-handed catch and stared at him with a confused expression. He understood. She’d tried to shoot him a moment ago, now he was offering his car.

“Yeah,” he said. “Ain’t life screwy?”

She entered the tu

“Let’s talk over there.”

They found a couple of neighboring boulders and seated themselves. High on a hillside far off to his right, he could see the famous Hollywood sign. And directly before him, a familiar cave mouth.

“Ro-Man’s spot! And the place where the Blood Beast hid!”

“Yes-yes.” Goren looked a

“I do. It’s just—”

“Well then, let’s get to it. I want this over and done with so I can get back to Alice.”

Jack sighed. So much film history . . . he’d have to let it go for now.

“Okay. I know the basics. You were part of a team of four—”

“Right. Alfieri, Lukach, and Ratner. Good guys, all of them.”

“And I know that Lukach called up and said you heard voices. ‘Experts’ later wrote that off as some acoustical trick, but I’ve got a feeling you’re going to tell me different.”

His expression was grim as he nodded. “Oh, yeah. Ohhhhh, yeah.”

3

“There!” Lukach said, his voice muffled by the half-face respirator. “I heard it again. Listen.”

Ernie tried but couldn’t hear much past the roaring in his ears.

What was wrong with him today? This was his fourth trip into the foundation of WTC-4 and he’d been fine the first three. But today . . .

Sweat oozed from every pore, soaking his hair under the hard hat, darkening his shirt, fogging his goggles. His heart pounded like a wild animal against the cage of his chest. He felt shaky inside and out, and didn’t seem to be able to draw a full breath. He fought the urge to pull off the respirator mask. The dust down here could be toxic.

Something else was toxic as well . . . something he couldn’t identify, couldn’t smell or touch, but he could sense it. It hadn’t been here yesterday, but sweet Jesus, it was here now.

Or maybe it was because they’d never been this deep—seventy feet below street level now. Like the towers, WTC-4, the nine-story building that had squatted next to the south tower, had six underground levels. No one had wanted to trust the weight of the Trade Center to the sediment and landfill at the site, so they’d excavated down to bedrock for the foundation. That’s where Ernie and the crew were now—level one, the very bottom.

He’d never had a panic attack, but he sure as hell felt panicky now.

Why?

It had started as soon as they’d reached this new search area. A little jittery at first, then building and building until . . .

“It’s coming from over there,” Lukach said, pointing to a pile of rubble. “And—damn! Turn off your lights.”

Alfieri and Ratner doused theirs along with Lukach, but Ernie left his on. He did not want to be in the dark down here. Not today.

“Hey, Goren,” Lukach said. “You deaf? Put it out.”

Ernie couldn’t tell them that, at age fifty-one, he was suddenly afraid of the dark, so he took a breath, held it, and hit the off switch.

Lukach’s voice floated out of the blackness. “See? See what I’m talking about? There’s light on the other side of that mound.”

Light? Any light would be welcome. Ernie squinted through his fogged goggles and saw it. Faint as could be, a dim, barely visible glow lit the upper edge of that pile.

“Got to be another team,” Ratner said.

“Yeah? Last I looked, that’s east of us, and we’re just about as far east as you can go in the foundation.”

“Then who’s there?” Alfieri said.

Lukach turned on his light. “Good question. Especially since there ain’t supposed to be any ‘there’ over there. Let’s go take a look.”

No-no-no, Ernie thought. Let’s not. Let’s not go near there. Let’s turn around and get back up to clean, pure sunshine.

But he couldn’t say that, because he couldn’t tell them why they shouldn’t go there. He didn’t know.

“Maybe we should wait for backup,” he said, holding back as the others moved ahead.

“ ‘Backup’?” Lukach said without turning. “You’ve got to be kidding.”

Ernie forced himself to follow, but trailed a good dozen feet behind. When they reached the pile of crushed masonry and began to climb, he hung back, watching, waiting, trembling. He saw Lukach reach the top first and motion the others to join him. Ernie saw them pointing, heard them babbling but couldn’t understand what they were saying.

Finally Ratner turned and waved him up.

“C’mon, Ernie. Y’gotta see this. It’s some sort of tu

Tu

Steeling himself, he made the climb. When he reached the top he saw what had excited them. Below, on the far side of the mound, near the floor, part of the foundation wall had fallen away, revealing an irregular opening, maybe half a dozen feet across. Light flickered from within.

The fires of Hell. No, not Hell . . . something worse.

What was he thinking? Where were these ideas coming from?

He tried to shake them off but couldn’t . . . right now he wanted nothing more than to turn and run. But he was part of the team. He couldn’t leave these guys.

“Let’s go,” Lukach said.

“No-no-no!” Ernie said. “We should get backup!”

“Fuck backup. I’m going down.”

With Ratner and Alfieri on his heels, Lukach quickly descended the far side of the pile and picked his way to the opening. When he reached it, he stopped and stared, then stepped through, shouting, “Hey!”

Ratner and Alfieri followed.

Raised voices echoed from the opening, one of them unfamiliar. Had they found someone?

Fighting the fear, he eased down the pile and crept to the opening. Every step was an effort. He felt as if he were struggling against a hurricane-force wind roaring through that opening. When he reached it he dropped to his knees and peeked around the corner.