Authors: Nathan Goodman
52
The small boy grinned ear to ear, proud to have won the race against his dad. They squeezed their way down the thin center aisle, holding onto seat backs against the train’s rocking motion, and plopped into the empty seats—mom and child across from Mike and dad next to him.
Mike looked at the small boy still beaming over his victory and panting for breath. “Wow, just made it, huh? Did you race your dad?” said Mike.
“Yeah, and beat him too! I always beat him. Johnny says it’s ’cause he lets me win, but it’s a really ’cause I’m so fast,” said the boy.
Mike leaned in, his brow raised in full attentiveness to the boy. “So, where are you going in such a hurry?”
“We’re goin’ to the Men-hatten. It’s a big place with big buildings and stuff. S’pose to be an island, but Dad says we won’t hardly know it.”
Both parents looked relieved that their overly precocious child didn’t seem to be disturbing Mike.
“Well, my name’s Mike.”
“I’m a Mike too! But Mom calls me Mikey. I’m six.”
The train coaxed itself into motion and rocked back and forth as it pushed its way past the Union Street Dog Park and underneath an overhead roadway, shadows blinking throughout the car.
“Six! Wow,” said Mike. “You’re big for six. No wonder you beat your dad.”
A voice came over the train’s PA system, garbled and only half intelligible.
“This is the—stbound train. South—nd train. Next stop—anhattan—ext stop, Man—attan.”
Picking up speed, the passengers settled into their ninety-minute commute with all the excitement of a summer siesta—newspapers and smartphones in hand, reading up on the morning’s news, getting ahead on the usual slog of e-mail cramming their inboxes, and hoping the soaking rains had ended.
The train settled into its top speed of sixty-seven miles per hour. The multi-ton locomotive hurled itself down the decades old tracks, slicing the dense morning air, steel on steel. Vehicles on parallel roadways slogged through stop-and-go traffic, making their way southwest to the various New York boroughs. The train’s slight rocking left and right elicited little response from sleeping passengers whose heads perched between the headrests and grimy outer windows.
As the train crossed over a bridge spanning the swollen West River, Big Mike looked down.
“Wow, hey, Mikey, look at all that water. That river is raging. I’ve never seen it like that.”
“Why it’s so much water, Big Mike?”
“It’s just from all the rain we’ve been having. There was just so much of it, it’s all rushing down that river. Hey, wouldn’t it be fun to be on a river raft down there! It’s like white water rafting!”
Somewhere deep down inside, Big Mike wondered if someday he’d be a dad. He wasn’t ready for any of that now, but he had always known himself to be different from his friends. Scoring with girls and partying was all fun and good, but Mike wondered what the future would hold. This kid Mikey was cute. He was a bundle of energy, and his parents loved him; that much was obvious.
The train was eleven miles away from a span of track that stretched across the Housatonic River. The river waters were also raging in a torrent that had not been seen in decades. The wide river, which had snaked its way between the Upper Peninsula and the Long Island Sound for thousands of years, withstood countless seasonal floods. However, this spate of four days of torrential rains was different. One thing that concerned river authorities was the Millstone Nuclear Power Station that hugged its edge. The plant drew cooling capacity from the Housatonic’s cool flowing waters, and authorities worried over the possibility of flooding at the plant.
The plant was massive. It spanned six football fields in length. Its twin nuclear cores were water cooled. The cooling towers themselves were over one hundred yards wide and so tall they cast a thick morning shadow across both the I-95 bridge and parallel train bridge.
During the plant’s construction seventeen years prior, there had been a huge outpouring of protests. Environmentalists feared a potential catastrophe so close to such a densely populated section of the upper northeast. The facility even predated the construction of the highway. I-95 had not expanded this far north until five years after the facility first fired its reactors. When the eight-lane highway bridge and adjoining train track were under construction, no one envisioned any reason the facility’s proximity to the planned bridges should be of concern. But that was before the word
jihad
had become a staple within the North American vernacular.
53
“Hey, Shakey, yous goin’ to lunch today?”
“Paul, it’s six thirty in the morning,” he replied. Shakey’s real name was Shakhar Kundi, but everyone at the plant called him Shakey. He was born in the United States, but grew up in Pakistan until it was time for his upper education. Shakey and his younger brother were raised in the Pashtun region in a mountainous area known as the Khojak Pass. His childhood taught him one thing: Westerners were not faithful to Allah. But it wasn’t until he was twelve that his uncle brought him out of the mountains and into the sprawling city of Lahore near the Indian border. Being separated from his brother and father weighed heavily upon his mind, but both his father and uncle wanted him to concentrate on his education and mature in the ways of Islam. Shakey was an excellent student with a sharp mind. Both men knew he had a gift, and that gift must be fostered and developed.
Shakey’s uncle was tough on him and demanded a rigorous study schedule including both schoolwork and study of the Koran. At the age of fourteen, teachers said he had a gift for engineering and that one day he should emigrate to the West where the best universities were located. Even though he spent most of his life in Pakistan as a Sunni Muslim, it wasn’t until Shakey arrived at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in upstate New York that he experienced what Westerners call “true radicalization.” Very few people at the university were Islamic, and only one, a university professor, was a true radical. His name was Waseem Jarrah.
Shakey graduated with a degree in nuclear engineering. The university was ranked in the top twenty in the United States in that discipline, and Shakey had taken to it well. Jarrah’s insistence that he pursue a nuclear program had a strong influence on him. Waseem Jarrah returned to the Middle East sometime after Shakey’s graduation, but he always stayed in touch, counseling Shakey on the finer points of his beliefs. Later, Jarrah would encourage Shakey to apply for work at a very particular nuclear facility. And although Shakey didn’t know why, he knew there was a deeper purpose in Jarrah’s request.
And so it came to be. Shakey applied for and was easily hired to the Millstone Nuclear Power Station on the Housatonic River near Stratford, Connecticut. Being a US citizen, no one questioned him about his nationality. Even when they ran a check on his background, nothing seemed out of order. Since he was accustomed to the northern winters, he did not mind the move, nor did he question Jarrah about it. There was one thing he was sure of though. One day, the phone would ring, and Jarrah would be on the other end. It would be then that Shakey would prove his worth in the service of Allah.
54
Jana was deep in the middle of a nightmare. In the dream, she was in the center of a stairwell, dangling hundreds of feet above the ground floor. She was flailing but couldn’t pull herself up onto the side of the staircase. Just as she lost her grip, Kyle lunged forward and grabbed her, his vice-like strength nearly crushing her wrist. He was sprawled out across the stairs, reaching over the edge, yelling something to her. Jana could see his lips move, but there was no sound coming out. Then she could hear him, but only faintly. It sounded like he was yelling from inside of a large glass bottle. He was screaming to her,
Hang on, hang on. If you go, I go!
Then gunfire erupted, and Kyle was killed. His grip released. She fell and fell and fell . . . yelling back up the stairwell,
Noooooo! Kyle! Nooooo! . . .
She startled herself awake only to hear Cade crying out the same words.
“No! No, Kyle! Nooooo . . . !”
She grabbed him by the shoulder and shook. “Cade, Cade. Wake up. You’re having a dream. It’s just a dream. Wake up.”
Cade was covered in cold sweat. The temperature in the car was above eighty, and Jana struggled to orient herself. Then everything from their horrific night came rushing back: seeing Kyle die right in front of her, shooting their way out of the building, the terrifying face of William Macy leering at her as the military helicopter screamed past, stealing the Explorer, driving off, and then parking in this back alley. Everything in between was a blur. She wasn’t even really sure where she was. The nightmare wasn’t just a dream. It was real, and she was living it.
She had done a great job yesterday of holding it together and being the toughest agent she could. But now her throat tightened and that little frightened girl from her childhood burst forth. She wanted her mother to hold her. She wanted to ask her father what to do. She wanted her grandfather’s reassuring hug. But then she realized something. The terrorists were not going to cry to their mothers; they were going to carry out their assignments. Jana wiped her eyes, checked herself in the mirror, and then started the Explorer’s engine. It was 8:05 a.m.
Whatever happened, she was not going to bail out of this one. No regrets.
55
The firefight at the Thoughtstorm building had raged into the early morning hours, and every available agent had been deployed. In the end, over two hundred FBI agents had been involved in raiding the Thoughtstorm building. There were eleven agents who had died in the line of duty. Fourteen CIA officers were killed before the rest threw down their weapons.
The building sustained heavy damage. City building inspectors on the scene investigated the damage and called for structural engineers. Concern rose over the stability of the structure’s southwest side, which had sustained a heavy blistering from automatic weapon fire coming from the Apache.
Much of the Buckhead area had been cordoned off. Cars, buses, trains, and even people on foot could not enter the area. Reporters screamed for answers. Local businesses demanded to know how they were going to get their people to work. Even the mayor’s office was demanding to know the situation.
Finally, at 8:15 a.m., a press conference convened. The FBI spokesperson was brief and did not allow questions. In her statement, she indicated only that a terrorism investigation was ongoing and that a raid on the building last night had resulted in a prolonged firefight. When she revealed the number of agents lost, even the blood-sucking reporters went silent.
In the chaos of that previous night, one thing had slipped through the cracks. As all available agents were called to the scene, surveillance on one Waseem Jarrah had lapsed. It wasn’t an oversight. The team whose priority had been to surveil one of the most dangerous terrorists in the world had simply responded to the call—the firefight took priority. Jarrah vanished. Not since the espionage case of Robert Hanssen in 2001 had the subject of such an important investigation slipped out of sight.
When Stephen Latent was told that terrorist Waseem Jarrah was nowhere to be found, he went apoplectic. The news just didn’t get any worse than this. He hadn’t slept in thirty-two hours, he had lost eleven dedicated members of the elite Hostage Rescue Team, another agent and the key material witness were missing, and now he didn’t even have eyes on the key suspect. On top of that, his presentation to the Senate Oversight subcommittee regarding Executive Order 2213, the Baker-Able scenario, had not resulted in an indictment of the president.
56
He had sealed his fate. The third cell call had been the final signal. The train was on its way. Maqued’s answer to the coded phone call was an affirmation of his readiness. They were the last words he would speak to any human that was not a part of the beast. It wouldn’t be long before he met Allah. Without another thought, he thumbed the lever to slide down the drivers’ window of the bus and hurled the still connected cell phone over the guard rail and into the Housatonic River below. No one on the bus noticed as it disappeared without a sound. They were too distracted, busying themselves with their various concerns. And although they couldn’t have known, their bus driver would soon be held in highest honor amongst jihadists.
There were to be no other signals, no other communications. Maqued looked at his wristwatch—7:59 a.m. He had exactly forty-four minutes until he would complete his final objective. Every bomb pack would detonate on its supporting beam, and at the front and rear of the train bridge, a triple charge of explosives would slice the bridge like a surgeon’s scalpel through an artery. 8:43 a.m. exactly. 8:43 a.m. The timing had to be perfect.
Traffic was moderate as the minutes ticked by—8:08 a.m. The bus would have time for four more passes back and forth across the bridge. In his preoccupation, Maqued looked at the old Timex watch so many times that twice he had to slam on the brakes to avoid a minor collision. On the fourth run across the bridge, it was 8:39 a.m. Three minutes left.
He pulled to the roadside pumping the brakes, feigning mechanical trouble. He brought the bus to a stop, turned towards the seven remaining passengers, and raised his hand as if to say just a minute, but didn’t utter a word. Only one person was close enough to see his eyes. They were filled with chilling deadness. The only sign of life in them was a lone stream of tears that trailed down the left side of the clean-shaven, darkly tanned face. Old Mrs. Aubrey, as she was known by the children of her block, would later describe an intuition she felt. It was something in those eyes that decried the most pure sorrow she had ever seen. There was no regret, only sorrow. And she would use one word that she said was written on the bus driver’s face. The word would be imprinted on her sharp mind for all the rest of her days. It was the word
intent
.
8:41 a.m.
The other riders on the bus were surprised to watch him simply shuffle down the embankment off the side of the bridge and disappear. Where was he going? If there was something wrong with the bus, what’s he doing?
The Manhattan-bound train was a hundred yards away at the time, barreling forward at sixty-seven miles per hour.
“Okay, Mikey,” said Big Mike, “here comes the next river. See it? Man, look at the water! Wow, it’s moving so fast!” The nose of the train hurled forward and cut into the crosswind high above the river torrent.
8:43 a.m.
The shockwave from the detonation was so strong, people on the streets of Manhattan sixty miles away felt the vibration as it emanated through the leather soles of their Johnston and Murphy shoes, up through their ankle bones, and into their palms. Traffic-monitoring surveillance cameras gazed across the horrible scene. The bridge exploded one to two seconds ahead of the train, which was just entering the bridge. Eighty percent of the length of the bridge detonated simultaneously, collapsing the superstructure. The mass of hulking, rusted steel hurled into the unforgiving abyss below. The train engineer didn’t even have time to register a problem, much less apply the braking system. The first car leapt into the abyss, disappearing into a smoky, watery oblivion. Train cars moving at sixty-seven miles per hour flung forward. It was like watching a snake strike a victim in slow motion. The hungry river swallowed the train cars in one large gulp.
The nuclear plant sustained only minor damage to non-critical components as the tail end of the train tore a section of roof off. Duty officers in the control room immediately scrammed the reactor, effectively putting the nuclear core into cold shutdown. Environmental lobbyists would hold this event in their front pockets for years to come, pulling it out when the time was right.
Four hundred and fifty-six human souls riding in twelve train cars, swallowed whole. Most were people on their way to work, trying to scratch out a living. But some were simply going to see the big fun buildings, run around Central Park throwing a Frisbee, and ride on what Mommy and Daddy called a double-decker bus.
8:43 a.m. Eight—forty—three.