WAKING THE MAJORITY (Anonymous Justice Book 4)

by Boyd Craven Jr

  Angry shouts came from the Muslim side, “Leave this place!” and “Freedom of religion!” while the opposite side shouted, “Leave them alone!” and “Freedom of religion!”

  The marching loop in the road stopped, as some of the BLM members became frightened when they realized the position they were in and began inching their way towards Walmart. Others became angry and began getting in the faces of those they perceived as weak links.

  “Don’t you know what these mufuckers plan to do to us?” one woman shouted in the face of a MoveOver.org member. “Don’t be takin’ sides against your own people, now.”

  “They are our people!” came her reply. “The President just named you Black Lives Matter folks a domestic terrorist group on TV yesterday.”

  That seemed to stun the BLM people within hearing range.

  “We ain’t the terrorists, dummy! The fuckin’ Muslims are!” a BLM man in the road yelled at him.

  “Leave them alone!” and “They have freedom of religion too!” came back to him.

  Similar exchanges were made back and forth, up and down the line. Tempers flared, and soon the pushing and shoving began. On the Islamic side, a heavy white BLM guy in his middle thirties stepped from the road onto the sidewalk and punched the smallest Muslim in front of him in the jaw. The teen dropped like a sack of rocks to the cement.

  As soon as everyone on the sidewalks realized that BLM had committed the first act of violence, their signs were torn off their handles, which made them resemble and function just about like a baseball bat. The heavy white guy was the first on the receiving end.

  As he shouted, “You’re next asshole!” to the next Muslim man on his right, bats swung at him immediately.

  “This is your punishment for putting your hands on a follower of Allah!” the teen sneered, as several boys from the Islamic Center rained heavy blows on his face and head until he lay bleeding and unconscious on the road.

  Another man from the road caught the arm of one of the boys swinging and began manhandling his bat away from him. Before he succeeded, the end of another boy’s bat caught him just under the ribcage, taking all of the air, and all of the fight, right out of him. Without a word, the same boys turned on him and, in a matter of seconds; he looked worse than the first guy.

  The element of surprise had worked well for the Muslim boys. Lots of BLM members, men and women alike, found themselves down on the pavement and a bloody mess before they knew what was happening. Their organized chants were quickly replaced with war cries and screams of pain as fists and bats began flying furiously. Shots rang out from several places within the BLM crowd. Hands holding pistols were smashed beyond use by multiple bats, and the person attached to them received more than their share of extra attention.

  On the MoveOver.org sidewalk, the wielders of the bats were a little more hesitant to bust heads right away, especially the younger girls. They got their bats taken away from them, and got some broken arms, and broken ribs as a result. As they went to the ground crying out with pain and surprise, they got trampled by others engaged in heavy fighting. They had been talked into this fight by those leading their cause but had had little to no training. The only thing that saved them from a much worse fate was the fact that most Judeo/Christian men had it ingrained in them to protect women rather than hurt them.

  On the road in front of the other sidewalk, however, there were more women on the ground with busted heads than men. The Muslim boys had no such silly ideas in their heads. They had been taught since birth that women were less important than men, and beating them with sticks was something most of them had seen or taken part in within their own families.

  That made the MoveOver.org sidewalk the weaker of the two, and it was soon overrun by those from the street. The Muslims stayed on their sidewalk, so a gap quickly developed between them and the BLM crowd.

  “Back to the parking lot, and let’s get the hell outta here!” shouted one of their leaders.

  Those standing raced to assist their fallen before they got beat to death. Probably a third of the BLM numbers were down, and the remaining two-thirds were mostly assisting them towards the now abandoned far sidewalk, and heading slowly towards Walmart.

  The officers in their cars had long ago called for backup and advised them to come in through Walmart via the back streets. They were ordered not to get out of their cars until backup arrived. Dispatch had told them that they were rolling everyone and everything available that way. Some squad cars were beginning to arrive at that moment. They began parking their cars in a formation that they had been previously trained for.

  Several hundred feet above, a news helicopter hovered patiently. The pilot knew to maintain a certain altitude and relative position to the sun, in order to not create a shadow.

  “This resembles more of a street rumble you’d expect to see from inner-city gangs than from a teen church group and some college kids countering a Black Lives Matter protest!” the reporter/cameraman Steve Dexter exclaimed. “They’ve caught the BLM crowd unaware and unprepared for the beating they’re getting. Every sign handle was really a weapon in disguise, every bit as dangerous as a baseball bat! This is premeditated assault and/or murder if any of these people die. At the very least, conspiracy to do great bodily harm!”

  Four Muslim figures from the Target end of the battle drew Kel-Tec PMR-30 pistols, stepped onto the road, and began shooting the retreating BLM members in the back with slow semi-automatic fire. Nearly every shot claimed a victim.

  The helicopter showed the approaching law enforcement. SWAT teams, armored vehicles, police cars, and EMT rigs approached Walmart and Target from the back roads. More police made their way on foot from the back of the traffic jams on either side of the Islamic Center to expedite getting civilian cars away from the scene and clearing the road.

  Panic had taken over by this time in the BLM crowd, who were dropping like flies. They began running down the road to Walmart as fast as they could, where they came face to face with two lines of riot police, who herded them together in a corral of police cars. SWAT took down the shooters, who never tried to get away. They’d just kept shooting until they died, killing hundreds of protestors while they could.

  The news helicopter showed the Muslims going back to and entering the Islamic center quickly, but in an orderly manner. It then showed the MoveOver.org crowd moving quickly towards Target, where they too were corralled by police and ordered to sit down. The process of arresting this many people would take some time.

  Under police protection, first responders began assessing and prioritizing casualties by the severity of their wounds. It was mass chaos, and there weren’t enough bodies on the law enforcement side to make any sense of the action. It was turning into a road full of triage in the process. The shooters had been dealt with, but still, they kept a wary eye on the Islamic Center, knowing they would have to go in and arrest those who’d used bats.

  In the confusion of the crowd of BLM members sitting on the pavement, four black latecomers stood up as one, shouting, “Allahu Akbar,” and detonated the explosive vests they wore beneath their ‘western clothing’, designed to camouflage their true intentions. They had known to stay on the far end of the crowd, away from the danger from their shooters. They had known to spread out among the corralled crowd before they were made to sit down. The large amounts of C4 their vests carried killed or knocked down everyone in the corral, including the police who stood surrounding it. At the Target parking lot, and on the road in between, everyone standing had hit the ground, being beyond surprised.

  The electric QuadCopter that had been flying overhead during the entire confrontation now flew directly to the far side of the Islamic Center and landed. The Muslims had been flying it to record the incident, to make propaganda clips.

  Chapter 14

  Clay & Miller

  Bloomington, MN

  Tuesday, March 8th, 2016

  At the same time, two young Canadian women, on a three-day shopping an
d indoor entertainment holiday at the Mall of America, arrived at the Minneapolis - St. Paul Airport on a commercial flight, along with a full plane load of others. They’d done this before, so they knew to take the light rail service directly from the airport to their hotel to check into their room and freshen up, before taking it again directly to the mall for a bit of light shopping in some of the five hundred plus stores. Later, it would be people watching to rest up a bit before having dinner in one of the fifty plus restaurants there.

  ***

  In his seat on the jet, Miller’s phone vibrated on his belt. It was a text message from AJ.

  AJ- Islamic State taking credit for the massacre at Islamic Center. They claim that this is just the beginning. The ‘prize’ is yet to come. Focus on locations where large groups of people would gather.

  “Clay! Look!” he said, showing the screen to his partner.

  “Seatbelts on, gentlemen,” the pilot announced. “We’re making our descent to Minneapolis - St. Paul now. Look, something’s going on out the starboard windows.”

  “What is that?” Clay asked, hoping the pilot could hear him. It looks like every emergency vehicle in the world is over there.

  “I have no idea.”

  “Where would the most densely populated place be here, this time of day?”

  “At any time, on any day here, that would be the Mall of America,” came the reply.

  Clay and Miller looked at each other. Clay grabbed his phone and dialed 911. He just got a fast-busy signal. Over and over he tried it, to no avail. He called his office and filled them in on everything he knew to this point. He informed them that he and Detective Miller would take a taxi to the mall, which they could now see. Everything appeared calm over there, thankfully.

  ***

  “Now Caitlin, you hold Grandma’s hand so you don’t get lost in all these people.”

  “Go ahead, Mom, they’re waving us across,” Catherine, Caitlin’s mom, said. They stayed tightly together crossing the walkway from the parking lot to the east entrance. “Thank you,” she mouthed to the older couple in the car, pushing the stroller ahead of her.

  “Look!” Caitlin pointed. Catherine followed the direction of her daughter’s finger up to the huge white star, surrounded by red and blue streamers, just above the huge white letters that spelled Mall of America, just above the entrance. “America!”

  Catherine had purposely not told her almost six-year-old daughter much detail of what she was about to experience, on her very first trip to this feast for the senses. She wanted to watch her expressions and capture as many of them as she could for her video blog, Moms of Nebraska. They were here in Minnesota visiting Grandma and Grandpa, who insisted on buying their granddaughter Caitlin her first American Girl doll at the official store here.

  As they entered the doors, Caitlin froze in her tracks, amazed by the sheer size of the tiled floor that seemed to go on forever. Above it were brightly colored neon signs of every shape and color. As they made their way past the entrance foyer and entered the main shopping floor, she stopped again. The noise of the place was totally unexpected. Just the casual conversations of the many thousands of people here, echoing about the tile, glass, and polished marble storefronts, sounded almost like a train in the distance to her. Her eyes followed the long, shiny metal escalators that crisscrossed their way up two floors higher, and then across the open space of the rotunda, to the ceiling way above. She looked up to her grandma for reassurance, and when Grandma smiled, Caitlin smiled too. Catherine couldn’t help but let loose the tiniest of giggles, as she videoed her daughter’s first glance at the largest shopping mall in America.

  “Can we ride that, Grandma?” she asked, pulling her hand towards the escalator.

  “Yes, dear. Of course, we can, but Mamma will have to take the elevator with the stroller. See? They have a sign that says, No Strollers or Wheelchairs.’ Meet you at the top, Catherine. Okay?”

  “Sure Mom!”

  ***

  AJ, digitally disguised, made a voice call to Miller. “Detective Miller, I have learned that ‘the prize’ as they called it, is the Mall of America! I’m quite sure that an act of terror is going to happen there, very soon.”

  “We’re already here, just outside. A taxi dropped us at the main entrance,” Miller told AJ. “That was the fastest way we could get here. All law enforcement seem to be on the other side of Hwy-77 in a big jam as we landed.”

  “Oh crap! Look at this,” Clay called to him.

  “Ugh AJ? There’s a big QuadCopter drone rising into the air here! We’re going inside fast. I’ll leave this connection going. Record what you can!” Miller told her, as he clipped his phone in its belt holster while running towards the doors.

  ***

  At the same time that Miller and Clay were running, a group message was delivered to eighteen pre-paid cell phones. Each was held by the young, sweaty hand of a radicalized Salafi Islamic jihadist, spread evenly throughout the second and third floors of the mall.

  The time is now! Go forth, and strike terror into the hearts of the non-believers. Deliver to them the message of the Islamic State! Allahu Akbar!

  ***

  Slowing to a walk, so as not to create a panic, Clay and Miller entered the main doors and walked quickly through the entrance foyer. Following people’s eyes and pointing fingers upward, they saw another QuadCopter flying up near the ceiling in the open court area. Before either had time to say a thing, from speakers on the drone came a message, loud enough for all to hear it over the soft background music playing and the general buzz of crowd noise.

  ‘Attention! Attention! This is decreed by the Islamic State; because of your attacks on Muslims around the world, and on our mosques in this country, you will no longer enjoy safety anywhere in this land. For Mohammad, peace be upon him, has said; whoever shall resist the advancement of Islam shall know only fear and death. On this day, your punishment begins! Allahu Akbar!’

  ***

  Caitlin and Grandma were almost to the top of the escalator as the message was broadcast. Fear gripped the old woman’s heart: there was nowhere to hide. People began screaming and running chaotically ten feet above them at the top. “Look Grandma! There it is!” Caitlin squealed with excitement, pointing at the drone high above. Unconsciously, Grandma’s eyes followed the child’s finger upward, thus sparing herself seeing the young woman at the top of the escalator with the black pistol put a .22 bullet into her granddaughter’s throat, from five feet away. It was the first shot fired that day, with many, many more to follow. The next one hit Grandma in the forehead as her eyes came down from the ceiling to see what the noise was. Caitlin’s tiny crumpled body was shoved forward off the moving metal stairs, with her still holding her little throat and trying to scream. Grandma fell over backward, tumbling down the escalator stairs, taking those behind her down with her. Moving ever upwards, the stairs brought the tangled bloody pile of people upwards, to face the flames leaping from the end of the black pistol.

  “What are you doing?” screamed an older teenaged boy, running at the shooter, to tackle her. Two quick rounds from the black pistol ended his run. The two high school girls with him froze, screaming, hands in front of their mouths. One round for each of them from the black pistol silenced them.

  The female shooter, having counted 27 rounds fired, each having struck flesh, ejected the 30 round clip from the pistol. She snatched another that was velcroed to the outside of the tactical vest she wore beneath her jacket. Inside, front and back were heavy body armor plates. Calmly, she thumbed out the last three rounds from the clip, dropped it, and shoved them in her vest pocket, just in case. She had five more clips on that side, six more on her other side, and 12 on her back. 750 hollow point rounds were what she started with. She was instructed to use only one round per person unless they were a threat to stopping her. She was not to surrender. She was here to martyr herself, after first sending as many of these unbelievers to hell as she could.

 
She pressed the garage door opener in her vest pocket, and 18 McDonald bags that had been stuffed into 18 different trash cans as the shooters had entered the various entrances, each containing a small pipe bomb inside of a large drink container, a canister of smoke, and a canister of tear gas, exploded simultaneously.

  Masses of terrified shoppers who had been running for the exits felt the bite of shrapnel. The lucky ones were already out the doors. The unlucky ones were a bloody mess on the floor. Everyone behind those turned and ran away from the blast, the tear gas and carnage, back to the center of the building.

  The two young Canadian women found themselves in the middle of a group of perhaps a hundred people running back in from an exit foyer. As they ran, a large rock, or so they thought, bounced off the floor. Someone had dropped a military grade hand grenade from above. They didn’t even know what hit them. That scene was repeated 17 more times.

  ***

  Only by luck, had Miller and Clay been just barely around a corner from an explosion near them. They both reacted by hitting the floor and rolling into the doorway of the nearest store.

  “Shots fired, shots fired, shots fired,” Clay shouted into his radio. “Class One terror attack at Mall of America!”

  “Stay together, or split apart?” Miller asked.

  “Stay together. Cover each other. Where the hell are they?”

  “I saw one at the top of the escalator there,” he pointed, “and another down to the left on the third floor.”

  “I hear a lot more than two weapons being fired,” Clay said. “MANY active shooters, repeat, MANY active shooters at Mall of America,” he put through his radio again. “Explosives involved. Explosives involved.”

  “Who are you reporting to on that?” Miller asked.

  “Local law enforcement channel. I’m not getting any response, though.”

  “How are you set for ammo?” Miller asked him.