Give Us This Day

by Tom Avitabile

“Look at the bright side; you can finally have a library card under your real name.”

  Bridge gave her a quizzical look and bolted out of her office.

  She opened Bridge’s briefing book for Archangel and smiled. There she saw her code word for this op was, “Stiletto.”

  .G.

  Attack imminent

  Paul had assembled the North and South teams at an abandoned warehouse in nearby New Jersey that was their staging area. The overall general depression of this part of town almost ensured that no one, except for the occasional vagrant or drug dealer, would even notice any activity in the old Eastern Mills textile factory. The dilapidated building had once been the lifeblood of the “Embroidery Capital of the World,” as the locals had boasted fifty years earlier.

  While Dequa was up in an office preparing to come down and address the “troops,” Paul walked the line of twenty-four men and inspected their weapons, making sure they each knew their place in the two pre-attack scenarios that he had drawn up to buy the ten minutes of precious time that it would take to execute the main attack. After he finished addressing the men, Dequa would lead them in their final prayers, because even though Paul had planned and readied many means of escape for them, and especially himself, he knew, and he believed they knew, that none of them would likely live longer than ten minutes after the attack started. As for his own survival, he would use his “strategic command post” away from the battles to ensure his unmolested escape to his South Sea safe house.

  Dequa emerged from the office and climbed up the rickety staircase overlooking the floor of men, weapons, and vehicles. He stood for a moment on the second landing. Emotions overwhelmed him. He raised his hands. Before he knew it he was speaking.

  “We have been blessed that the power of change, for the next thousand years, has been placed in our hands. Today we will begin the end of the great struggle. You will all have a place in paradise as heroes, martyrs, and the great liberators of a religion and people too long oppressed. You will become the champions of countless generations that have been left to die in poverty and ruin. Today you will strike a blow against the greatest of Satan’s disciples. In one hundred, two hundred . . . a thousand years, the events we are about to embark on today will be taught to every new generation. For them the world will be at peace. There will be no war, no poverty, no famine. The one true religion, and our faith in the supreme entity, will guide all men of faith to prosperity, goodness, and fruitful lives in service to Allah and our fellow man. Whoever among us that shall perish today, will live forever in the glory of Allah. We will now pray for our victory in his name.”

  All the men in the room, including Paul, acceded.

  .G.

  All told, Archangel was the most ambitious and complex domestic mobilization since the Civil War. The three large assembly areas called for in Bridge’s plan had been filling up all day, pursuant to the president’s orders. The largest base, designated RDF 1, on the green grass of Liberty State Park right outside Jersey City, New Jersey, had a closed-circuit TV camera system that connected it to the two other Rapid Deployment Forces bases: RDF 2 in the Great Lawn in Central Park, and RDF 3 located in the large parking lot at CitiField in Queens.

  Nine hours to the minute after the word went out from the Pentagon, each Archangel Forward Operating Base, or FOB, had its compliment of Apache AH64, OH58D and AH-1 Super Cobra attack helicopters, refueled and at the ready. In all, six platoons of Marines, Special Forces, and SEALS were amassed and ready to go. Added in the mix were ever-increasing amounts of specialized weapons and tactics men, including members of the Army EOD bomb disposal units, Navy Dive Teams and NBC specialists who could neutralize or at least contain any nuclear, biological, or chemical threat.

  There were twenty light-utility UH72 Lakota helicopters assigned to the National Medical System for fast battle medevac service.

  From the three RDF FOBs, any point in the metropolitan area was two minutes flight time, at balls to the wall. The choppers wouldn’t even have to land; the Rangers and other A-team troops could rappel from hovering copters in seconds.

  NEADS was up and they had two E8-JSTARS, tactical command post airplanes in the air over New York as command control and communications relays to the troops on the ground. But also to support the North East Air Defenses System and their two F-22 Raptors, which were circling the sky above Manhattan in case all this was just a ploy or diversion and ISIS’s ultimate plan was a redo of 9/11.

  .G.

  Three hours before, in a joint press conference, the governors of New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut, along with the chairman of the joint chiefs and the heads of Homeland Security, FBI, Port Authority Police, and NYPD announced a “Readiness Emergency Test.” It was introduced as an unprecedented coordination between federal, state, and local authorities. They alerted the public of this snap drill designed to test the viability of pre-positioned resources in the extremely unlikely event of a natural or manmade catastrophe.

  At every point, the leaders stressed in calm, clear voices, that this was not in response to any specific threat but done out of an abundance of caution in light of recent events like Hurricane Sandy and the now-public aborted Fifth Avenue truck bomb.

  The governors and their staff also asked that the press “please refrain from reporting on any specifics of deployment, equipment, or even location of these ‘practice’ areas to maintain the operational integrity and the safety of our men and women who are drilling to protect all of us.” In return, the press was promised unprecedented embedded access to the next drill and hourly reports from the governors’ podium on the progress of these drills.

  It was messy, what with the onslaught of questions, but essentially the cover story held and a voluntary virtual news blackout of sorts was initiated. That bought the RDF forces at least eight hours of relative mobility without any news cameras revealing their methods, tactics, or location to the enemy.

  .G.

  In rapidly erected DRASH tents, part of the expeditionary logistics packages located at the three bases, all the members of the RDFs were assembled. In Queens and Central Park, they gathered in front of large-screen TV monitors.

  Bridge spoke live from the Liberty State Park location. “Today, you are part of the largest Rapid Deployment Force ever assembled in this nation’s history. You all come from different branches of the military and government agencies. Separately, you have all trained for this; today we combine all that we have learned, all that we have trained for, and all that we have accomplished into one critical mission in which failure is not an option. I am here to announce, as many of you have suspected, that this is no drill. Repeat: this is no drill. An organized group or groups, which we believe to be ISIS-based, are planning a devastating attack on this city. Intelligence indicates the attackers are planning for death tolls in the hundreds of thousands to millions. At this time, we don’t know the means of the attack or their intended targets for that matter. That’s why we have received the Prepare To Deploy Order from the commander in chief. From this point forward, we are at Red Con One.”

  The men reacted and murmured because up till this point they hoped it really was a drill. But a PTDO and “Ready Condition One” were no bullshit; it meant full engagement was imminent.

  Bridge paused and let his announcement sink in for a moment. “At any second, including this one, the alarm may sound and you will be our nation’s first and probably only line of defense. I know I don’t have to remind you that you’ll be going in weapons hot, but we are still on American soil. I want accuracy, clean kill shots, no spray-and-pray and no rock-and-roll. We are all professionals and I know each and every one of us will follow the rules of engagement, acting as our training dictates and our sacred oath to this country demands.

  “The people of this city, the people of America, and our commander in chief are counting on us not to fail, not to waver . . . to terminate with extreme
prejudice anyone who is intending harm to our fellow Americans and our way of life. The political leadership has paved the way for us to operate within our borders. May you all be safe, may you all be accurate in your shooting, and may you all save us from the terror about to be unleashed. Now, I’d like to ask the Navy chaplain to lead us in prayer.”

  Bridge looked to his right, then his left, and caught a glimpse of the man approaching the podium. Bridge was slightly taken aback. He stepped up to the man of God. He wore the insignia of a chaplain and captain’s bars but the man was an Imam. Bridge asked, “Are you up for this, Chaplain?”

  “Of course, Sergeant Major. I got this . . .”

  Bridge saluted him.

  “Oh, and Sergeant Major . . .”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “God bless you and your mission.”

  “And God bless you, Chaplain.”

  There was a slight stirring among the troops as the Imam took the stage. But not a single disrespectful word was uttered. The room quickly quieted down.

  “In the chaplain’s service, we come from all denominations, and we are instructed in the tenets and traditions of over seventeen world religions. Our job is to help our warrior men and women connect to their God, spirituality, or whatever they hold dear within their personal belief system. Our motto back at the home office is the old saw: ‘There are no atheists in foxholes.’”

  The soldiers laughed.

  “Today you may be called upon to go into battle. May God protect you and keep you safe. May your actions be guided by him to be just and righteous and may you be judged not harshly in the afterlife for the act of taking of any life you may be forced to commit as you faithfully execute your sworn duties, before God, to protect this nation and the people we all so dearly love. And by that I mean all the people—of all races, of all creeds, and of all places in society—for we are all God’s children, even the atheists . . . And you are now his instrument for protecting his greatest gift to all of them, that of their own lives.”

  The man of God then clasped his hands together, looked up for a moment, then right, left, and finally into the camera at the other troops who were watching in the two remote base camps. “In a minute, I will ask you all to pray according to the traditions of your chosen religion or for those of you not of faith, to just quietly reflect. But first I need to acknowledge the obvious: As you can see, I am an Imam by religious standards, but as you can also see I am a captain. The bars represent the commission by the President of the United States as an officer and gentlemen of the armed forces. The chaplain insignia designates me the Priest, Rabbi, Reverend, Minister, Imam, Llama, and all-around utility infielder for the many denominations that serve this great nation. Those who you may do battle against today have a distorted view of God’s way. They bend and twist the meaning and spirit of a great religion to meet their own political and militaristic ends. Millions of Muslims around the world are disgusted with these acts that have no place in the world today, but these godless individuals, they are using horrific exaggerations to create force multipliers and bring on confrontation. No matter what the enemy does today, their first act of aggression was against the Quran, a book and a way of life that I love and believe in. As I look out at all of you, Christians, Jews, Baptists, Episcopalians, Muslims, Buddhists, and those in the back and the other camps that I can’t see, I will pray to Allah for your success in eradicating this blasphemy of Islam. Amen and Ameen. Now please take a moment to pray as you desire or silently reflect . . .”

  To his surprise, Bridge was emotionally moved by the words of the Imam. His eyes were actually misting up. Although he had seen and known acts of courage, including those he himself had been credited with, he now saw it in a whole new light, a holy light. Softly, under his breath, he uttered, “Bless you, Imam.”

  Chapter 43

  Locked and Loaded

  The rusting garage door of the old abandoned textile factory in Jersey City opened and a stream of vehicles rolled out. A large red Con Edison gas truck was followed by two large black tour busses, each towing a five-by-eight-foot trailer painted a matching black behind them. Then a yellow Yeshiva school bus, loaded with what at first looked like bearded seminary students. Last were two ordinary sedans; Paul was driving one and Dequa was in the passenger seat of the other.

  .G.

  Bridge had taken off in the command copter and the pilot was doing a racetrack pattern across the city. The thought being that if anything popped, being airborne would give him that many more seconds of edge. Of course, if something happened at the other end of the pattern they were orbiting, then the edge would be nullified.

  .G.

  In more than a few newsrooms across the city, emails claiming to have attached photos and videos from citizens who had taken candid images of troops on the highways and the streets were pouring in. Supposedly these shots were from rooftops showing concentrations of soldiers and equipment in Central Park. But for some reason, the downloads of these items was excruciatingly slow. Amazingly, the deal struck with the media held. The editors and reporters respected the “quarantine” for the time being. But competitive pressures were building. And the various news outlets monitored each other to see who would bust the dam first so that they could all flood the airways, reporting on this with abandon.

  .G.

  When Archangel was approved, along with it was Kronos’s crazy idea to plant a virus on the World Wide Web. He called it Suppressor and had written it up in a matter of hours. Suppressor effectively scrubbed metadata from every image file posted on the Internet. If the GPS coordinates in the data file of a photo were within a three-mile radius of one the RDF staging areas, then the file was rerouted to a buffer that would eventually deliver that file in two days’ time. This throttling was totally legal, since the speed of delivery was not guaranteed by the Constitution, and was especially open to manipulation under a liberal interpretation of the Net Neutrality protocols which, as an unintended consequence, actually opened the door for bandwidth manipulation either way. The techno-sapien genius was confident that a digital veil of secrecy was in place around Archangel’s Forward Operating Bases.

  .G.

  At headquarters, Brooke and her brainy guys were still trying to crack the nut of where the attack or attacks would come from. So far the emergency drill cover story was holding . . . but reporters were starting to get curious and were getting closer to the RDF bases.

  She had Remo, Kronos, and Wallace broken into three teams with various agency personnel. In big generic terms, they were Water, Power, Subway. Individual targets like bridges, tunnels, and airports wouldn’t have the impact that could trigger the kinds of windfalls that Wallace claimed could make up Kitman’s post-catastrophe payday. No localized attack could generate the kind of rebuilding, and thus the profits, the terrorists were expecting.

  Wallace’s own group, Subways, had developed only one specific threat. The system was too spread out and the kind of devastation that could be induced didn’t seem to meet the level of the put and calls. There was one chilling thought: tunnel breach. Although the large flood doors that Remo had spoken of had been un-welded after 9/11, they were again welded back into the safe, open position after New York had experienced a tremor of the Pennsylvania earthquake in 2012. The rumbles had renewed the fears of them slamming down and cutting a train full of commuters in half. Out of their group came warnings to the Coast Guard and NYPD harbor unit to be on the lookout for explosive charges placed on the seawall near the old World Trade Center “bath tub.” The path trains ran on the other side of that wall. And although they were a smaller transit system in the city’s web of underground tunnels, a breach in that wall would flood every underground subway system in Manhattan, Brooklyn, the Bronx, and Queens, which were all connected. A civil engineer stated that such a rush of sea water into the system could weaken the foundations of nearby buildings and super-compressed air tra
pped below the street by onrushing waters could cause explosive ruptures of water, gas, and electric lines. That made it a major event worthy of the profile they were looking for.

  Kronos’s group, Power, had a few nasty things to look into but all of them concerned points in the grid, like substations and power plants. But the electrical grid was loaded with redundancies and trip breakers designed to isolate any sudden change in the load or generating capacity. Again, with these safeguards in place, nothing could be amassed to create a catastrophe the likes of which would create the need for the materials and services the bad guys hoped to profit from.

  Peter Remo’s working group, Water, was also a little bogged down by the imagined enormity of the terrorists’ goals. Number one was a biological or chemical additive to the reservoirs, but this would be a short-lived, defensible attack. The entire water system had thousands of monitors and incredibly sensitive ways to detect foreign substances. Even too much bird droppings in the water system rang bells. Therefore, any biological or chemical additive would set off alarms from every precinct up and down the water supply system. Plus there were many reservoirs, so that even if they managed to deposit the hundreds of tons of any substance that it would take to raise the particulate of the city’s tap water even one percent, it would still take a day or two for the water to reach New Yorkers. Even longer for those in buildings with water tanks, which was every building over five stories in Manhattan alone. That would yield plenty of time to take corrective measures and alert the public and isolate the contaminated reservoir. Although minor riots and civil unrest might occur if water was rationed, that still didn’t rise to the level of casualties in the five or six figure range.

  Brooke called in the three men to confer about where their groups were at, as time was ticking away.

  “Okay, the two biggest threats so far seem to be contamination of the water supply and flooding of the subways?”

  “Seems so,” Remo said, looking to the others for concurrence.