6th Horseman, Extremist Edge Series: Part 1

by Anderson Atlas

  Still laying in bed, I look at the phone. My ringtone used to make me smile. Now I just want to throw it out the window. I instantly think of three charges: littering, pedestrian endangerment, and destruction of private property.

  Damn this Zilla. I am, in fact, prepared for this call. There’s a game being played and Zilla wants me to throw a wrench into the whole operation. I didn’t sleep well and my neck is tense. I clench my teeth. There are times in my life when I feel so confused I shut down. I can’t tell what’s right or what’s wrong. I hear two opinions on either side of the political table and they both make sense. They both say they’re right, but they’re both diametrically opposed to each other. One has to be wrong, doesn’t it? What do you do when you can’t do anything, when you feel hopeless and lost and are on the verge of tears? You answer your phone.

  “Hana here,” I answer, trying to sound professional, but inevitably sounding like a twelve-year-old girl talking to a boy for the first time.

  “We have some serious problems. We need you to get to the station as fast as you can. I’m calling you cause I can’t get a hold of anyone else. Five guys already called in sick. The shit is hitting the fan and I’ve got no officers! Precinct 28 is a ghost town! Dispatch is flooded.”

  I hop out of bed, pull my underwear out of my butt and sprint to the bathroom. I thought it would be Zilla. Luckily, I know not to use the tap water. I flip on the light. I look like shit. Age seems to have beaten up my skin over night. I stretch my skin tight at the edges of my eyes, temporarily smoothing my crow’s feet. When did these wrinkles get so deep? I grab a bottle of water intentionally left by the sink and wash my face. I slip out of my nightshirt and into a sports bra and some comfortable panties. I pull on an undershirt, then my vest, and finally my police uniform. I take my weapon out of my safe, cock it, and then slide it into my holster with the safety on. I grab my necklace off the bathroom counter, secure it around my neck, and slide it under my vest. Then I take a moment to cover up the bags under my eyes with powder, add mascara, and then wrap my hair into a bun. I cinch the bun tighter until I feel the pull on my scalp. The bit of pain distracts me for just a moment.

  I’m out the door in ten minutes. I slam my door as hard as I can. I can’t help it. Anger whips away the anxiety like an ejected shell casing. Today might be the worst day of my life. People are running down the street. The radio is lit up with chatter. I flip on my lights and push through the crowd. Some people are yelling at me. Others are holding rags over their mouths. Something slams into my car. A civilian is screaming at me. I’m ordered to disregard. FM and AM radios are down as well as cell towers, but I’ve got a ham radio. It was issued by Homeland Security and set to the Emergency Broadcast Channel. A looped recording is all I hear. I turn up the radio, trying to catch some details before I get to the station.

  Around one o’clock that morning people had started flooding the hospitals, sick as dogs. Thousands of people had been debilitated. The hospitals were overwhelmed in a matter of minutes, and the sick had just kept coming. On top of that, a computer virus had corrupted twenty-six satellites and some cell networks in a matter of minutes, which brought military and civilian communications to a halt. Our station’s computers were down. We were blind. Our response time blew up in our faces.

  Now, we’ve got officers getting sick and not responding. I’m not sick, but even if I were, I’d go in. It’s my duty, above all else, to help save lives. Sick people and sick computers a coincidence? No.

  This guy named Zilla contacted me last night. He claimed he was a whistle blower embedded in the CIA. He said the CIA, Feds, and Homeland Security were playing games with people’s lives. He said that what was coming would be the ultimate war game, unlike any other they had played before.

  “If you think we would have gotten into the Vietnam War without the Gulf of Tonkin incident, then you need to revisit some history books. The CIA faked an aggressive act by the North Vietnamese to get the public angry. And they did it on 9/11 too. The ‘powers that be’ knew about the attack, but looked the other way, allowing it to succeed, effectively getting the public in the mood for the Iraq invasion.”

  Zilla also told me that Homeland Security is trying to justify an attack on the newly discovered oil reserve in the mountains of Sudan. It is the largest, deepest oil reserve ever found on the planet. Some say it was formed three billion years ago and could keep the U.S. flush with oil for the next two hundred years.

  We can’t let the manipulation happen again, Zilla said. He’d confided in me because of my involvement in the Richardson case last year. Richardson was the Deputy Chief of the New York PD and as dirty as they get. He had six subordinates, including two Lieutenants and one detective, that all took bribes from Russian Gangsters who smuggled pharmaceutical meds from Canada. I was the lucky responder to a deal gone bloody, but one dealer wasn’t quite dead. He spilled it all to me in his dying breath. So I set up a sting and took all the crooked cops to jail. When the panic settles down I’ll help Zilla do the same.

  A car careens off the road and smashes into the lobby of a high rise. A fireball erupts from the car throwing a woman into the road. I swerve around her. It takes every ounce of self-control not to stop and help her. I flip channels on my Ham radio and find a dispatch signal. They redirect me to the entrance of the Queensboro Bridge. A mandatory government quarantine is in effect. The bridges are being closed so no one can escape the island. There are lots of cars heading in the same direction as me and it’s the middle of the night. They’re trying to evacuate and I can’t blame them.

  Someone jumps in front of my car. I slam on my brakes. Now I’m surrounded by people, angry people. They’re banging on my windows. When the man in front of me refuses to move I push forward slowly.

  “Go home! Martial law is in effect.” My voice is projected by speakers under the hood.

  As I turn onto 59th Street heading to the onramp of Queensboro Bridge, a group of Humvees and two Bradley fighting vehicles force me off the road and pass. They are ramming other cars and anyone that doesn’t move. I wonder if this is some dream, but it isn’t. I think of my family. I’m glad they don’t live in the city. I think of my best friend, Mira. I try calling her, but the cell towers are down.

  I drive on the shoulder to the onramp and push my cruiser passed lined up cars, blaring my horn raucously. I arrive at the barricade and pull in tight against the other two patrol vehicles. I leave my lights on, but switch off my sirens. I pop my trunk and arm myself with my M-4. I walk the short walk to the barricades. I glance over the edge of the road. There are a mass of cars clustered at the lower entrance. A crowd of people have gotten out of their cars and are trying to cross the bridge on foot. I nod to Officer Denton, who opens the barricade to let me through. Two other officers arrive on foot. They couldn’t get their cruisers on the onramp.

  A man in a black jumper with a do-rag on his head approaches us. “What the hell is going on?” He yells. More people were joining him. “You gotsta get out of my way, Po Po!”

  “Go home!” I reply.

  “Come on! I gotta get to my baby! She’s just over there in Woodside! You can’t keep us here, yo!”

  “Yeah!” echoes another man in the crowd.

  “If I was you, I’d be at home taping my windows up with plastic and hovering over the TV, watching the emergency broadcast system.” Denton yelled then coughed.

  “I live in Brooklyn, foo! You won’ let me go home!” The man in the do-rag yells.

  I look at Denton. He’s flushed and sweating heavily. He coughs again.

  “You okay?” I yell.

  He’s tall, really bald, and tough. “I’m fine. Get your head in the game.”

  The man in the do-rag continues yelling, but I have to tune him out. More and more people are massing. We’re going to need more troops on the bridge soon or they’ll overrun us. I listen to the radio chatter from my earpiece, which I linked to the ham radio. Crowds are growing. Fires have been started. Car ac
cidents are everywhere. Lethal force is ordered. The marinas are being attacked! Boats are overloaded with people and some are speeding across the Hudson River trying to get to New Jersey. One yacht doesn’t turn back and it is shot up and sunk by an Apache Helicopter.

  Five o’clock comes fast. More and more people pack the Queensboro Bridge onramp. They are mad as hell and are starting to cohesively get pushier. This is expected. They’re pushing up to the razor-sharp barbed wire.

  The crowd facing me surges forward. People yell and cry out as they move the wire and the posts. Some are cut. There are cries for help and then I see blood. I flip the safety off my M-4.

  #

  I think about what Zilla said last night. I passed by a market and got some food. As I was leaving I was stopped by a woman. She was nicely dressed but had a scar down her cheek. She gave me a cell phone. She said someone wanted to talk with me. I took the phone and she walked off.

  “Hello?” I answered.

  “Hana Scottfield?”

  “Yes?”

  “I have some information about a terrorist attack that will happen tomorrow,” the voice said.

  “Who is this?”

  “My name is Zilla. And I’ve left a package for you at your building. It has evidence of a plot by Homeland Security to attack New York. This is real. Tomorrow, the U.S. government will try to lock the city down in the most comprehensive quarantine in history. The panic will result in thousands of deaths. They are trying to start another war.”

  “Talk to the President,” I said and almost hung up.

  “He is aware of this plot.”

  “Then what the hell can I do?”

  “Break the quarantine.”

  “What makes you think I’ll believe you?”

  “You know how to take down the powerful. You can do what’s right. You know how corrupt men can get. Break the quarantine tomorrow and by next week we’ll have the President behind bars.”

  “Good bye,” I snapped and hung up the phone. I slipped the phone into my pocket, planning to file a report and offer the phone up as evidence.

  When I got home my superintendent handed me the package from Zilla. I took it upstairs and set it on the counter. I took a beer from the refrigerator and popped the top. I didn’t even drink it. I stood at my counter, staring at the package. Is this for real? I had some enemies in high places already. This could be a bomb. Retribution had been promised by Richardson. I pulled a knife from a drawer and carefully cut the tape. I flipped open the cardboard flaps while carefully inspecting it for wires. I half expected something to jump out at me.

  Under some packing beans was a disk and a stack of documents labeled classified. I looked through them all. Just a bunch of official documents with black marks over names and other classified filing numbers and names. I inserted the disk into my DVD player. It was a surveillance tape of the Secretary of Defense talking with the President at the Pentagon. The film was grainy and the camera angle was from a high point, possibly the vent. The two men were discussing an attack that was supposed to happen tomorrow.

  The Secretary of Defense was sitting on a plush couch somewhere in a large windowless office. Photos of important people hung on the wall, and there was an ornate desk in a corner backed by a huge wall of books and binders. The Secretary said plainly, “The watershed that feeds New York will be contaminated next week. We’ve uncovered a terrorist cell looking to make a lot of people sick. So far as we can tell, it’s non-lethal, but still dangerous. If we can sell it to the public as a foreign terrorist attack, we can set ourselves up to go into Sudan.”

  The President paced back and forth. “You know what you’re asking me to do?”

  “Yes,” said the Secretary. “But, like any covert action, the end justifies the means. We will be able to test quarantine efforts in case of a lethal biological attack as well as set up the Sudanese government as the guilty party. We know the Sudanese are planning to attack Ethiopia, and they regularly kill innocent people. They’re extremely oppressive and corrupt. This will, in effect, save millions of lives in the long run, and the public will support you. Since the oil pockets were discovered, the Sudanese have more money flowing into their system than Saudi Arabia. In ten years we’ll have a monster on our hands.”

  The President nodded. “Then do what you need. I will deny this entire conversation,” he replied. The video ended.

  My blood began to boil. I grabbed some of the documents and read through them. One was a release of duty for five cops and two security guards, which would leave the water contamination and surrounding neighborhoods completely void of police authority. Another was an equipment purchase order for the NYPD. Indeed, last year, all patrols, including myself, had been issued barbed barricades, M-4 assault rifles, ham radios, and biological attack training. Since 9/11 our forces were increasingly getting set up with more crowd control tools. I sat at the edge of my couch feeling a sinking sensation pull me down into the abyss of cyclical thought, confusion, and despair.

  I flipped through more paperwork. Some were attack plans on the Sudanese government—the details of a premeditated war. Others were transcripts of the communication between the terrorists and their leaders. It would seem that the real culprits were domestic environmentalists. The last document I saw was an organized global alliance, grouped into three sides: allies, enemies, and neutral. I gasped at the neutral list and how it included France, Britain, and Italy! Our government was planning on going to war without our European allies. This was madness.

  I was sold.

  Panic gripped my chest. I finally drank my beer, but that didn’t help my anxiety. I stood on my bed, unscrewed the ventilation faceplate, and hid the documents inside the duct. My mind raced as I got back in bed. I mulled over my options all night, until I got that three o’clock call. By that time, I’d come to the conclusion that if the CDC confirmed the bug wouldn’t kill anyone then I would break the quarantine and do everything I could to stop these lies before the real damage was done.

  #

  The sun peeks over the tall buildings. By now there are so many people crowding the onramp to the Queensboro Bridge that I feel the time is at hand. Everything has happened exactly as Zilla had predicted. The reports even say the attackers are possibly Sudanese terrorists. I look at Officer Getty. He looks sick. All my guys are getting sick, but not me.

  Then I finally get the confirmation I’m looking for. The radio announces that the Center for Disease Control has just issued a report. There’s a simple bacteria group in the city’s water supply. No one is going to die from it. It’s making people ill, but it is non-lethal.

  Officer Denton shrugs and yells. “What the hell are we doing if the thing isn’t deadly? This is fucked!”

  “Pull the plug!” I yell back. No one hears me. My voice is weak. I repeat loud enough to squelch my tears. “Open the gates!”

  “What?” Denton shrieks. “We’re ordered to keep this locked up!”

  “I take full responsibility here. Open the bridge. Let everyone that can get out, get out!” I lower my weapon. The other officers follow my lead. I’m their senior and have never led them astray. Denton pulls the barbed wire away and the crowd spills past us like an overflowing river after a heavy rain.

  I push my way back to my cruiser to see if I can get it off the road. The crowd continues flooding the bridge, thousands of very scared people, none having heard that the bug is harmless.

  I fire up the engine and pull off the road to let traffic through. People start driving across the bridge recklessly. After a few hectic minutes, the crowd finally thins. I relax. That’s when I see it.

  Thick white smoke arcs into the sky. It must have been a rocket fired from a rooftop nearby. I watch it burn deeper and deeper into the atmosphere and disappear. A cold sensation erupts up my spine. This is about to get worse.

  Suddenly, my cruiser goes dead. It just shuts off. I try the ignition, nothing. The remaining cars around me stop. The traffic lights blink out as w
ell. I pull out my cell phone, dead. The rocket must have been an EMP attack. All electronics within a certain radius are fried or useless. I try my radio. It too is dead. Shit, Zilla never said anything about an EMP. Why would the government do that? Another thing to blame on Sudanese rebels?

  Movement to my right catches my attention. An old Chevy truck is unaffected by the death of the electronics and is heading right for me! It hits the onramp going over forty miles an hour. The old truck is aiming for the gap between my cruiser and a red Honda. I grab by seatbelt and clip it just as the truck slams into my passenger side. It’s just the right force to knock me off the onramp and tip me over the rail. I hit hard, nose first. The front of the cruiser crumples. My airbag fails to deploy but my seat belt cinches tight. My car continues to topple over on its roof. When I hit, windows shatter and the roof caves in. I cover my face and wait for the cruiser to stop moving.

  I’m hurt, but not too badly. I unclip my seatbelt and fall onto the ceiling of the cruiser. I’ve landed on two other vehicles that had been stopped before entering the lower level of the bridge. Both sides of my cruiser are smashed in and the doors won’t budge. I can’t squeeze out the front windshield, and the steel cage prevents me from crawling out the back. I’m trapped.

  I feel a surge of anxiety so I scream. It makes my head feel dizzy. I get so dizzy that I start gasping for breath. I’m gonna die. I’m gonna die just like my mother.