by Ben Coes
One of the men in back opened the rear door. Two gunmen leapt out. Men and women in surrounding vehicles screamed, ducking or leaping from cars, trying to get away. But the gunmen positioned without firing, taking up position at each corner of the back of the van, covering the area. Mansour climbed out of the back, moved around the corner of the van, and knelt behind a gunman on the driver’s side, then locked in the optic. He trained the MANPAD on the UN, counting out floors until he came to eighteen.
He waited, even as bullets ricocheted and clanked against the van.
There were more screams, then sirens.
Mansour looked at his watch, then put his eye to the optic. Then he fired the MANPAD.
The Strela made a loud boom and then it hissed and screeched as it soared toward the UN, trailing smoke, drowning out all other noise.
The missile screeched above the live weapon fire around the UN, tearing up at the tower as people screamed. The missile punctured the building approximately halfway up, shattering a large hole in the glass. A half second later, the explosion blew out a large wall of the windows on that floor, as well as the floors above and below. A cascade of glass dropped through the sky in front of the building, shattering in sheets and shards on the plaza directly beneath.
45
9:04 A.M.
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY
116TH STREET AND BROADWAY
NEW YORK CITY
Professor Aaron Singerman, age forty-nine, stood in front of a massive chalkboard that spanned the front of the lecture hall. In front of him was a theater filled with students from the university, but not just undergraduates. There were students studying for MBAs, doctoral students at the School for International Affairs, from the law school, and even a few students from Columbia’s School of Journalism.
It was a hard class to gain entry to. There were 102 students in the class, but more than 800 had applied for admittance.
Singerman was tall and thin, and his dirty blond hair was a tad messed up, behind a cowlick at the front of his head and a handsome face. He was a legend at Columbia. Theoretically, Singerman’s seminar was about the history of numbers from the first recorded use of a number to demarcate value up to the present. Singerman taught his students that numbers were, in their own way, a form of artificial intelligence in and of themselves, and that the world was run by individuals who were able to manipulate and control numbers.
Singerman’s lecture hall was on the top floor of the School of International Affairs, the eighth floor, and behind the students spread a wall of glass that showed the Columbia campus and beyond, to the Hudson River and New Jersey.
On the chalkboard, Singerman wrote down six numbers.
000000
“Tell me why these numbers are significant,” said Singerman to the class. “Six zeros.”
He looked out at the class. No one said a thing.
“Want a hint?” said Singerman.
Several people laughed and a bunch yelled out, “Yes.”
“Those six digits, in that order and number, are the most important six digits that have ever existed, and they are critical to human life.”
A black-haired female student raised her hand.
“It’s ‘Crystal Code,’” the student said.
Another student piped in.
“It has to do with the correlations between language and time,” said the student.
Singerman kept a blank look on his face.
“It’s a DNA sequence.”
“Everyone knows, it was the first line typed by Gates when he wrote DOS.”
There were several more guesses, each of which caused little to no reaction from Singerman.
The guesses at some point stopped coming and there was a palpable silence in the amphitheater.
Singerman went to the chalkboard. He started a line and drew one large zero around the line of zeros. With every sixth of the circle, he erased one of the zeros from the line. When he was done, he had a complete circle and no zeros leftover.
“Six zeros is the minimum mechanism for the control of metadata, that is, electronic signals,” said Singerman. “It is the basis for anything nonorganic in our world today, from blockchain to spaceships, bitcoin, cars, weapons systems, whatever, and to control it is to have the ability to build or destroy. Do you understand?”
“But why?” said a student.
“How, Professor Singerman?”
Suddenly, someone at the back of the class screamed.
In the distance, at the lower part of Manhattan, billowing smoke and fire was taking over the sky.
Singerman suddenly heard a high-pitched beep in his ear. He pressed his earbud as he listened to the questions.
“Go,” he whispered.
A digitized female voice spoke:
“You’re active under NO/SEC forty-four. Identify NOC.”
“NOC 3390 AB2,” he said under his breath.
Singerman raised a hand to his class, trying to calm them down as others yelled, although he was now active and nothing else mattered.
He heard another beep, then a voice.
“Aaron, it’s Bill,” came the voice of Bill Polk, the head of the National Clandestine Service. “We have an attack about to take place on Manhattan by Hezbollah. I know you’re teaching a class so just listen.”
“It just happened,” Singerman whispered.
He looked at the class. Students were moving to the back of the lecture hall, looking out the window. A sense of fear and pandemonium had taken over.
“Hold on,” said Singerman, tapping his ear.
He looked at the classroom.
“Everyone, back in your seats,” he said.
Singerman waited, and soon the students were back in their chairs.
He stepped out in front of the long lecture dais. Singerman crossed his arms and looked out at his students, many of whom were still preoccupied by the smoke in the sky, and others by texts they were receiving.
All Singerman cared about was getting out of there. “You guys need to stay here. Do not go outside for any reason. Text or call your friends and family in the city, and tell them to stay inside.”
He looked around the classroom, which was quiet. Singerman lifted his briefcase and was soon outside the lecture hall and jogging toward the elevator, then the building’s exit. Soon, he was cutting in front of Low Library and across the Columbia campus.
Another ear tap.
“Clear,” said Singerman.
“The president is at the UN,” said Polk. “We’re extracting him now.”
“So what do you want from me, Bill? I’m a financial asset,” said Singerman, jogging down the steps in front of Low Library, moving across campus toward his town house on Riverside Drive.
“Get your equipment,” said Polk. “Emphasis ammo. You still remember how to fire a gun, don’t you?”
46
9:04 A.M.
FLOOR 18
UNITED NATIONS SECRETARIAT BUILDING
FIRST AVENUE AND FORTY-SECOND STREET
NEW YORK CITY
Dellenbaugh stood at the outer wall of the tower. Several large sections of glass had completely shattered. He stared out at a sky spanned in sharp clouds of smoke and fire, as if volcanoes had erupted.
Alarms wailed from inside the tower—and from outside the building. There was a constant rat-a-tat-tat of automatic gunfire from the streets below.
Dellenbaugh’s eyes made first contact with Callanan, the lead Secret Service agent. Callanan was on his chest, on the floor, trying to stand up and move to Dellenbaugh, but his ears and nose were oozing blood.
There were loud groans coming from all over the floor.
But then one noise arose above all the other din. Dellenbaugh heard the explosive shriek as his eyes found Callanan. The shrill of a missile. From outside the building—and growing louder. The eerie, screaming whistle of the incoming missile was followed immediately by a deafening blast as an object came flying into the building, into the floor it
self, and everything disappeared in a maelstrom of noise, heat, and destruction.
Dellenbaugh dived down just as the Strela ripped horizontally through the glass wall that had not already shattered from the concussion from the explosions. A sharp, powerful heat-filled outer stroke of steel, fire, and air came flying through the U.S. Mission on floor eighteen.
Dellenbaugh hit the ground just before a steel desk tore above his head, as if swept up in a tornado. He watched as a wall of crumbling glass slammed into Callanan’s head, pulverizing him. Dellenbaugh grabbed a section of wall and tucked his head down, trying to avoid the overwhelming wave of projectiles caused by the missile that had just struck the building.
Dellenbaugh watched as people he knew, staff members, Ambassador Wasik, all of them, were suddenly eviscerated in an awkward, horrible sequence, too ugly, too many moments of death, to fathom and he shut his eyes. Then, even as he tucked low, trying to survive, Dellenbaugh felt a sudden, hard object stab into his torso. He lost his grip and tumbled until the wave of energy from the explosion dissipated. He looked down and saw a piece of thick glass embedded in his stomach.
“Jesus,” he moaned as he clutched reflexively at his abdomen, unable to catch his breath. Then he coughed out a mouthful of blood.
Dellenbaugh tried to breathe but the wind was knocked out of him, and every breath was clotted with blood. He looked down and saw a foot-long section of window in the shape of a triangle jutting out from his stomach.
“Oh, fuck,” he whispered aloud, to himself. He looked around, from the floor, bleeding badly. He couldn’t see any signs of life.
He spat blood.
“If you’re alive, say something,” he said as loud as he could, wheezing, coughing blood.
The pain was just starting. It was intense and he fought to remain lucid.
He called out again.
“Say something!” he shouted.
But there were no responses.
Both of Dellenbaugh’s hands went to the shard of glass. It was thick, and he studied where it entered him next to his navel. Blood chugged from the seams, in spurts, and ebbs, and yet as he held it he couldn’t do anything, as if all of his strength was gone. He started to try to slip it out, but it was stuck hard. But he knew he needed to stop the bleeding.
He saw smoke out through the broken glass window, a distant part of Manhattan, and felt helpless and desperate.
Dellenbaugh was on his back. Slowly, and in a considerable amount of pain, he worked his way out of his blazer and removed his tie. His shirt was ripped across the torso by the shard of glass. His hands were coated in blood. He tried to dial, but then dropped the phone as he felt his head drop to the floor.
He felt pain and watched as fog seemed to clog his eyes, and he felt tired. As hard as he fought, he couldn’t escape the feeling of total fatigue. It was in every inch, every molecule, of his body. Dellenbaugh shut his eyes as blood pooled beneath him. He slipped into unconsciousness.
47
9:04 A.M.
LOBBY
UNITED NATIONS SECRETARIAT BUILDING
FIRST AVENUE AND FORTY-SECOND STREET
NEW YORK CITY
Glass poured down from above following the missile strike. Bullets slammed into the windows in the lobby, shattering them.
The security design for that day was complicated and somewhat political. Five security groups had worked to reconcile and negotiate various rights and rules regarding how the president’s visit to the UN was to be handled. It was UN Security, Secret Service, NYPD, FBI, and DSS. Each had men at the UN. There had been twice-daily meetings for a week leading up to Dellenbaugh’s visit. It was the first time, however, that anything had disrupted what had been a cool but smooth interagency security protocol. Now that chaos had ensued, whatever existed before went out the window, especially in the lobby, where each agency had multiple gunmen.
It was UN Security who were supposed to take the lead in a hostile situation. But the head of UN Security was on the eighteenth floor, with the president and the secretary general.
It soon became about survival, and not who was in charge.
Steve Koch—a senior-level Secret Service agent—was dressed in a navy suit. He stepped behind a steel beam as he watched chaos descending. It may not have been protocol, but Koch decided to start giving orders.
“We need to hold the perimeter of the UN complex,” barked Koch. “Moriarty,” he said to the deputy director of UN Security, “tell your men to hold the line! Jack,” he pointed at one of the NYPD officers, “get men over here attacking the outer wall of gunmen from behind. Watch your field of fire.”
Meanwhile, bullets continued to shatter glass. Several men were caught in the fusillade. Koch removed his .45 and turned from behind the steel stanchion. He pumped bullets through the broken glass at gunmen attacking and now in the courtyard, like wolves.
Koch looked at a man holding a rifle. He was black, and wore a sharp-looking uniform. He was one of the NYPD officers detailed to the president’s trip. He clutched a rifle.
“Ricky, right?” said Koch.
“Yes.”
“Get up to the third floor,” said Koch. “Get a strategic advantage point. Shoot as many of them as you can. We’re buying time here. They’re trying to kill the president.” Koch pointed to a dead security man. “Grab his mags. We need to hold them off. Kill as many of these motherfuckers as you can. Got it?”
“Yeah.”
“Go.”
48
9:05 A.M.
MANDARIN ORIENTAL HOTEL
COLUMBUS CIRCLE
NEW YORK CITY
Rob Tacoma stood naked in a large, marble-tiled shower, in one of several bathrooms in the penthouse condominium. The warm water was perfect.
Tacoma had spent $40 million and bought into the Mandarin at the development stage. Today, the condo was worth at least one hundred million dollars. But Tacoma didn’t think about that, and he didn’t care. It was simply where he stayed when he was in New York. The penthouse suite of rooms was dimly lit, with interior walls of wood and exterior walls of glass in every direction. The most amazing view was, without question, the front: a sheer wall of glass that looked out on Central Park and the crowded streets below, and people; distant, though, like objects seen from an eagle’s aerie on a high mountain.
Then, he felt it. It was a sharp quiver to the very foundation of the building.
The massive apartment took up half the penthouse floor of the Mandarin Hotel. It also had come with a stunning, large, rectangular terrace that faced Central Park. The views were astounding. The most cutting-edge engineering firms had been hired. Glass was everywhere, clad upon a steel chassis as laid out by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill.
Yet, whatever had just exploded outside made the Mandarin tremor and bend.
Suddenly, he heard the sound of breaking glass.
Tacoma lurched for the shower door and sprinted naked into the living room, running to the windows that looked out at the city. He was soaking wet and tracked water even as he charged to the window and looked out as a pair of mushroom clouds filled with smoke and fire ballooned over the skyline. Then a third vibration shivered through the skyscraper and—a second later—two more explosions echoed from somewhere to the south, and then the telltale mushroom clouds of orange fire spiraled into the sky from there too.
Alarms inside the Mandarin began wailing from the hallways—and emergency government sirens on buildings all over the city started a frenetic medley of rising high-pitched chaotic distress signals.
The air was soon covered in a layer of haze as smoke was blown from each of the tunnels across the darkening sky.
Tacoma stood on the terrace. His eyes were drawn to the streets below, Central Park South, Columbus Circle, and he saw dozens of people running in every direction as guns were fired. He searched and then registered two, then three, then three more gunmen. They were different from the others, the pedestrians just fleeing. Each man was armed with an automati
c rifle. Another low boom from one of the rifles went off, and he saw the flash. He tracked the sound, then saw a woman falling to the ground, shot in the head at close range.
Tacoma watched calmly as three gunmen moved randomly, looking for prey, pumping slugs. They shot anyone they could find, gunning people down in cold blood on the streets, people in cars, even gunning up at buildings, trying to sow terror and chaos.
Clouds of smoke clotted the air even as the gunmen moved, indiscriminately killing people.
Tacoma stood, staring out at the growing carnage. He plotted the explosions against a map in his head. He quickly realized the four tunnels into Manhattan had been bombed. He went back inside his condo. He picked up the house phone.
“Yes, Mr. Tacoma?”
“I need a suite in the hotel immediately. The most luxurious you have.”
“I understand, of course, Mr. Tacoma.”
“I also need you to send someone up. There’s a woman who will be staying there and I’d appreciate it if you brought her there. Also, you need to tell your manager, initiate any emergency security protocols you have, immediately. Lock down the hotel.”
“Yes, sir.”
Tacoma put the phone down and went back to the bathroom and nodded at the woman.
“I apologize, but you need to leave,” said Tacoma. “It has nothing to do with you.”
“What happened?” She stood, naked, under the massive showerhead. “This is too wonderful,” she said. “Come back under the water.”
Tacoma reached in and turned off the water. He looked at her.
“I’m sorry, but you need to leave,” said Tacoma gently, taking her by the wrist and pulling her from the shower. “The city is under attack. You’re being taken to a suite in the hotel.” He pointed at the window. “I don’t want you to leave the building. The streets are very dangerous.”
“Why can’t I stay here?” she said.
“You just can’t, that’s all.”
“We finish the shower when this all dies down?” she said in a soft Danish accent.
