One Reporter’S Eyewitness Account Of A Nightmare
by Chris Turley
I am not a hero. I’m just not the type. I have lived thirty-two years without displaying any physical courage at all. So let’s get that straight going in.
But I was across the street from the medical center this afternoon when it exploded. The force of it, even from a distance of a hundred feet, was unlike anything I have ever experienced. And very much unlike anything I want to experience again.
Because I was so close, even as I write this I know very few particulars of what happened and why. I reacted in the moment, with no real understanding of what was going on.
The left side of the building, as I faced it, crumpled to the ground within seconds. The right side, perhaps even sixty percent of the building as a whole, remained, stubbornly refusing to give in.
It was from that area that I thought I heard screams, though because the explosion had dulled my hearing, I couldn’t be sure that the voices were not from people with me on the street.
Never having been in war, and war is the only comparison I can make, I was not prepared for the chaos around me. But I had to do something, even though every instinct told me to run away.
I went to the building and confirmed that the terrified screams were coming from inside. I ventured in, going through a front door and façade that remained perfectly intact, as if it had not gotten the memo that the rest of the building was . . .
IT’S RARE THAT A story comes out just right the first time; usually it’s a process of rewriting and editing. But Chris’s story was approved almost without any changes at all, such was the vivid power of his words. Of course, stories are almost always written to match up with available space, but that was not a consideration this time. For a first-person account of such an enormous event, Chris would have all the space he needed.
Eleven people died in that building and another seventeen were injured. Chris wrote about five of them in his story, the five he rescued, but ironically didn’t even know their names. In a way, their anonymity was appropriate for the story; Chris’s rescue efforts were a human reaction to other humans in trouble. Personal knowledge of who they were, or a personal connection to them, was not necessary in any way.
When the story was put to bed, Lawrence called Chris into his office, where he poured him a drink. To Lawrence, a drink was scotch, and the only choice offered was for it to either be on the rocks or with water.
Chris hated scotch, but saying no to Lawrence was not a consideration, so it presented him with a dilemma. If he took it with water, it diluted the taste, which was a good thing. However, it increased the size of the drink and made it last longer, which was quite a bad thing.
On this particular occasion, he opted for the scotch on the rocks, mainly because he needed something to calm his nerves quickly. He had acted instinctively after the explosion, but the enormity of what had happened was finally starting to hit him hard. As he drank from the glass, his hand shook.
“You sure you’re okay?” Lawrence asked.
“I’m fine. Why?”
“You look like you’re enjoying that scotch. Usually you drink it like it was medicine.”
Chris laughed. “So why do you always give it to me?”
“Because when I die, I don’t want your father coming up to me and saying, ‘Why the hell did you give my son a fucking Kahlua and cream?’ ”
“I like Kahlua and cream.”
“Quiet,” Lawrence said, looking skyward. “He can hear you.” Then, “But I’ll bet he’s proud of you today.”
Talk of his father often made Chris uncomfortable, especially when it was Lawrence doing the talking. Lawrence had an uncompromisingly positive view of Edward, a view which much of the rest of the world did not fully share. Edward had taken a scorched earth approach to journalism, and his unwillingness to take his foot off the throat of his “victims” often provoked fear and hatred, albeit with a healthy dose of grudging admiration.
“I was in the right place at the right time.”
“That’s what good reporters do,” Lawrence said. “They make sure they’re in the right place at the right time. That’s what your father did with Hansbrough. You did good, but your life will never be the same again.”
“Why?” Chris asked.
“Because the world is about to know your name. It’s not going to be easy to handle.”
“Then can I have another scotch?”
Lawrence laughed. “That’s a good start.” He got up to pour the drink when his phone rang, and he answered it. “Terry.”
He listened for a moment, frowned, and held the phone out for Chris. “Shit. Here it goes,” he said.
“Who is it?” Chris asked.
“The Today show.”
FOR THE MAN WHO would soon be known as “P.T.,” things were going perfectly.
He had arrived at Simmons Crystal and Glass, a large factory in Edison, New Jersey, an hour before closing time. He had pretended to be a vendor, hyping a new type of glass-making machine that produced a more durable product than the kind they were using.
It was the fourth time he had been in the building; the first three amounted to crucial scouting missions. Nobody paid him much attention, since vendors wandered in and out of there all the time. But none had ever been there for a reason anywhere close to this important.
Of course, all he knew about glass he had learned in the last two months, through the magic of Google. And the wondrous machine he bragged about did not even exist. But it got him in the door, and though his halfhearted efforts were brushed off by the purchasing manager, he couldn’t have cared less.
P.T. hid in a storage room until a full hour after closing, then carefully made his way onto the factory floor. He knew from his research that there would be no one around, and that the security guard made his rounds every half hour. That would give him twenty-five minutes to do what he had to do, which was more than enough time.
The first thing he did was disable the security cameras, which for P.T. was the easiest part of the operation. He did it in such a way that they would restart when he left and no one would ever know they had been off .
P.T. then quickly went to the enormous crystal ball being assembled in its own room near the back of the factory. It was an extraordinarily impressive piece, twelve feet tall and six hundred pounds of fine crystal. He detached four of the panels, then opened his briefcase and took out four clear, odorless packets, each weighing more than three pounds. They were connected by remarkably thin, clear fiber-optic wires to a device no larger than a small computer chip.
The difficult part was in attaching the packets to the inside of the detached crystals without damaging the elaborate laser lighting mechanisms inside. He had to be incredibly careful; he was placing them where they could virtually never be detected, yet if he made the slightest mistake it would be immediately noticeable to everyone.
P.T. knew that even with all that was to follow, with all the precision maneuvers he would conduct, this would be the most difficult. In fact, it was the only thing that...