First Strike

by Ben Coes

  “I’ll get you clearance.”

  “Where’s Hector? Was the information actionable?”

  “Very,” said Polk. “But we have a situation.”

  “I heard. Where in New York? What happened?”

  “At Columbia. A dormitory was taken over. It’s a hostage situation. But that’s not what I’m talking about. Dewey, Hector is at GW Hospital. He had a massive heart attack.”

  Dewey was silent.

  “They…” Polk started, then paused. Dewey could hear him trying to control his emotions. “They don’t know if he’s going to make it.”

  Dewey shut his eyes. He reached out and put his hand against the seat back, steadying himself.

  “I’m here right now,” said Polk. “They put him into a coma. Even if he does make it, they’re not sure how long he went without oxygen.”

  Dewey cleared his throat. “Has someone told Vivian?”

  “Yes. She’s on her way.”

  “Bill, can you make sure there’s a chopper waiting for me at Andrews?”

  “Yes, of course. By the way, how are you doing?”

  “Fine. See you in a few.”

  46

  CARMAN HALL

  COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY

  By the time Mohammed stepped onto the eleventh floor, gunfire and screams had repeated themselves so many times the students and parents were terrified into silent acquiescence. Mohammed cleared the floor without incident, just a few gunshots into the ceiling to get people to hurry up.

  The problem was, the stairs were overcrowded as everyone moved ineluctably to the tenth floor. The doorway itself was a logjam. The floor was getting filled to capacity.

  Many of the hostages had watched in horror as the helicopter was shot down. Everyone heard it. If any resistance had existed, the sight and sound of the chopper being blown up in midair shut up even the boldest of the crowd.

  Meuse was responsible for the twelfth floor. He stepped inside, but before he even raised his gun, a young woman in a hijab stepped from the hushed crowd and held up a hand, then spoke to him in Arabic.

  “You don’t need to shoot,” she said. “We’ll do what you say.”

  “Go to the tenth floor,” he said. “Praise Allah.”

  At Meuse’s words, the girl’s face grew angry, but she held her tongue. She turned.

  “Tenth floor, everyone,” she said.

  * * *

  Sullivan was crouching on one knee, pivoting almost constantly between the ends of the third-floor hallway, moving the gun back and forth. He could feel his heart racing.

  Had someone told him that morning that he would kill someone—by snapping his neck—as dozens of people looked on, including his daughter, Sullivan would’ve spat out his coffee. The most violent thing he’d ever done to another living creature was during a fistfight in college, when he’d been reluctantly dragged into a barroom brawl in Brunswick, Maine. Sullivan had beaten the crap out of two locals after they picked a fight with him and his roommate. Sullivan’s roommate had gotten knocked out with a beer bottle. Even then, he’d tried to avoid the fight, pleading with the two drunk bikers to let him walk away and take his unconscious roommate to the hospital. But they were having none of it. Sullivan had broken one of the thug’s arms and the other man’s nose on the way to beating them both senseless. To this day, he didn’t know where it had come from.

  His mind flashed to that memory and a slight grin came over his face. He was still batting a thousand.

  As for handling a firearm, he was completely inexperienced. He clutched the terrorist’s assault rifle and tried to familiarize himself with it, though other than the trigger he wasn’t quite sure what most of the various switches, latches, and knobs were for.

  He glanced behind him. The dorm room was half-empty as students and parents did what he’d asked them to do, and what his daughter showed them was possible—leaping two floors to the hard ground below.

  They’re going too slow, he thought.

  His mind raced with worry. The terrorists were obviously distracted as they tried to secure the building. The minute one of them saw someone jump, all hell would break loose. They’d know something was wrong—that their man was dead—and they would come looking.

  He noticed an older woman, someone’s grandmother, sitting in the corner of the room. She looked terrified.

  Sullivan stood, cased both ends of the hallway, and went to her, training the rifle at the floor.

  “What’s your name?” he asked.

  The woman stared at him.

  “All right, why don’t I start,” he said. “I’m Jack Sullivan.”

  He put his hand out to shake the woman’s hand, but she didn’t move. Rather than pull it back, he placed it on her shoulder.

  “Where you from?” he asked.

  “Toronto.”

  Sullivan nodded.

  “I’m from Philadelphia,” he said.

  “My name is Ruth.”

  “Are you here dropping off a grandchild?”

  “Yes, my grandson.”

  Sullivan nodded toward the window.

  “You’re scared, aren’t you?”

  “I have two artificial hips. I have a mechanical valve in my heart. My body will break into a hundred pieces if I jump.”

  “Ruth, these men aren’t here to make friends. They’re going to kill everyone. They’re terrorists. If they find you, they’ll kill you.”

  “I know.”

  Sullivan led her to the window, moving in between people preparing to jump. A male student leapt, fell quickly, and landed on his legs, a muffled scream echoing up as he struck concrete.

  Ruth moved her hand to her mouth. She let out a low yelp.

  “I can’t,” she pleaded, looking at Sullivan.

  He was silent for a few seconds.

  “I need to go back to the hall,” he said. “If you stay, I want you to hide. Get under a bed somewhere. If you have a cell phone, turn off the ringer.”

  * * *

  After wiring the first-, third-, and fifth-floor stairs with IEDs, Omar joined the rest of the cell upstairs.

  Fahd, as instructed, had taken up position on the sixth floor, above the highest of the wired stairwells. As he descended the stairs, he removed a suppressor from his coat pocket. It was an FA556, black, four inches long. He attached it to the muzzle of the rifle. When he walked onto the sixth floor, he fired off a round, testing it. A low, metallic thwack echoed quietly in the air as the round struck a distant wall.

  He knew the snipers would be positioning themselves soon, if they hadn’t already. He needed to be careful. Fahd knew he was going to die, but he couldn’t die yet. None of them could. The size of the cell was a function of mathematical necessity based on the operation. Each one of them had a job to do. Right now, his was to kill anyone who tried to come inside the building through the main entrance.

  He found a bedroom halfway down the hall. Fahd crawled along the floor of the room, pressing himself against the wall.

  When he reached the waist-high windowsill, he got to his knees. Very slowly, he raised his head and looked out.

  The sidewalk in front of the dorm was empty. The campus looked abandoned. Blood stained the tan-colored surface where people had been gunned down. He tried to see the front of the building, but it was difficult. He would have to lean out the window if he wanted to see the area immediately in front of the entrance.

  He took a monocular from his vest and studied the rooftops, looking for movement. There: straight ahead he marked two men in tactical gear. They were crouching on the roof of a brick building nearby. One of the men had binoculars and was scanning the dorm. The other was speaking on a cell phone. They were visible from their shoulders up, partially blocked by decorative iron.

  Fahd studied the six-story building, looking into each window for signs of law enforcement. He went floor by floor. On the third floor, he noticed an open window and, behind it, movement. The room’s lights were off. Though he couldn’t see in
, he assumed they were establishing a sniper nest inside.

  Fahd lowered the blinds and adjusted them so they were cracked just a bit, enough to see through. Enough to fit the muzzle of his gun. He pushed a bed against the wall, near the window. The bed was the height of the sill and would allow him to sit and keep watch for what he knew would be long hours of waiting. He repeated the setup in a room across the hall.

  Fahd had one huge advantage over the snipers. How would they be able to tell if he was a sniper or a student? Even if he was spotted, would they shoot and risk killing an innocent student?

  Fahd returned to the bedroom above the entrance. With the monocular, he looked through a seam in the blinds at the men on the roof. They were both looking up into the sky above the dorm. Fahd craned his neck, trying to see, but couldn’t. Then he heard helicopters.

  Carrying his AR-15, Fahd moved again to the other side of the building, searching until he found the two black objects whistling across the sky. He watched as the helicopters moved closer and started to descend toward the roof. Suddenly, gunfire erupted from the front helicopter, a furious spray of bullets shot from the machine gun mounted to the copter’s underbelly.

  Was Sirhan still on the roof? What if they hadn’t wired the roof yet and the FBI attacked and killed him?

  Stop thinking so much.

  But he couldn’t. The sound was loud and unrelenting.

  Then his ears picked up the telltale hiss of a the missile. A moment later, he saw it screech across the sky and hit the chopper. His heart jumped as the fiery debris dropped from the sky.

  A moment later, he heard a scream. It was somehow different from the others.

  He ran back to the other side of the building and looked out. The scream had come from this side, but he saw nothing. He climbed onto the bed, then the sill, wedging his body against the window frame, though still behind the blinds. He knew they would be distracted right now. He pulled the slats apart and looked down. This was where the scream had come from—and there it was. A woman was lying on the ground next to the side of the building. She was crawling. Then another individual appeared in the window above her. He was standing on the windowsill. He jumped.

  Fahd felt the anger rising inside him. They were escaping! Whose floor was it?

  He now counted four people, all crawling along the very edge of the building to safety.

  He swept the muzzle of the AR-15 to the open window, then aimed it down along the brick face of the building. With the monocular, he looked quickly through the slats, first at the roof of the neighboring building, then the third-floor window. The men on the rooftop were gone. In the window, he didn’t see any signs of activity.

  They’re distracted.

  Fahd convinced himself that the explosion of the helicopter had caused them to leave. He moved the silenced rifle to the open window, preparing to fire.

  * * *

  Sirhan stepped onto the tenth floor. It was packed. Students and parents filled the hallway and dorm rooms. He strolled casually down the length of the hall, his rifle out in front of him, brushing the muzzle just inches from people’s heads.

  Sirhan was a short man—five foot five—though he projected a sense of strength that made those around him not think about his height. His head was large. He was bald, with an overgrown mustache and beard, olive skin, and a sharp, long nose. His eyes were calm, confident, and he rarely looked people in the eye. This aloofness gave him a measure of strength. Sirhan had spent much of his youth lifting free weights at the gym inside the Cairo juvenile hall he’d been sent to at age ten. His arms were defined, the biceps rippled, even grotesque and out of proportion. He wore a tight black T-shirt that showed off his thick chest muscles. He was bowlegged and walked with a limp due to a broken leg that didn’t heal properly after jumping from a window during one of his many escape attempts from the youth prison.

  At age twenty-three, Sirhan was the youngest man in the cell. Yet Nazir had put him in charge. Several members of the group had initially been angry, but they all came to understand the wisdom of Nazir’s selection. Sirhan was a masterful operator—highly organized, disciplined, open to opposing thoughts and new ideas. He was intensely loyal. He gave each man a sense of belonging and mission. At the same time, he made each one of them feel that he cared about him. Because he did. Of course, he also had a ruthless side bordering on evil. Sirhan had single-handedly figured out how to get each man into the United States. He’d created cover stories. He’d kept them together, patiently planning for this day. Some believed that being a terrorist was about the ultimate moment of violence, the planes flying into the Twin Towers, suicide vests being detonated. But it was the quiet times, the waiting, the planning, the kindnesses given to those whom you would see dead—these were the parts of terrorism that were far more difficult. Sirhan had understood that and had somehow succeeded in building as close to a family as most of the eight jihadists would ever know.

  Many were crouched on the floor in mute horror. He walked the length of the hall in silence. If a space was too tightly packed with people, he waited for someone to move. He wasn’t vicious about it. He got to the end of the hallway. Mohammed and Omar stood in front of the door, rifles out, aimed at the floor. Sirhan made eye contact with both men, turned, and walked back to Tariq, Ali, Meuse.

  Fahd, he knew, was on the sixth floor. Jabir was in the lobby.

  “Where is Ramzee?” he asked Ali in Arabic.

  Ali looked at Sirhan with a concerned look, a hint of guilt on his face.

  “I don’t know, Sirhan.”

  “Something happened,” he said. “Did any of you see him?”

  “I did,” said Ali. “I cleared the fourth floor. He was in front of me, on three.”

  “Did anyone see him after that?”

  They all shook their heads.

  “One of you has to go down there,” said Sirhan.

  “The stairs are wired, Sirhan,” said Omar. “Between five and six and between three and four. It’s not possible to access them any longer.”

  “What about climbing on top of the banister?”

  “No,” said Omar. “It would take a high-wire artist, and even then, the banisters are wired. Even a slight touch to the wire could break it. And if you slipped, it would be all over.”

  “What do you think happened?” asked Tariq.

  “He’s dead. He must be. Perhaps one of the students knows self-defense or had a weapon.”

  “Or a parent,” said Ali.

  Sirhan nodded, deep in thought.

  “If we can’t get down, whoever is there can’t get up,” said Tariq. “They’re trapped too.”

  “With Ramzee’s gun,” whispered Sirhan, an agitated look on his face.

  If there was somebody down there, they were trapped, thought Sirhan. Still, the possibility that Ramzee was dead, and that the killer might still be out there, worried him.

  Sirhan walked to the gathered students and parents. He stopped in the center of the hallway.

  “Welcome to Columbia,” he said in English with a harsh Middle Eastern accent. “We wanted to begin the school year with some festivities.”

  There was silence. Then a girl yelled, “What the fuck is wrong with you?”

  The girl stepped forward. “What have we done to deserve this?”

  She was young, plain-looking, and had short brown hair.

  “What did those people in the helicopter do?”

  “What is wrong with me?” asked Sirhan, grinning.

  He fired. The bullet hit the girl in the chest. She fell to the floor as people around her screamed.

  “In case any of you don’t get it,” he said, looking around savagely, “we’re not fucking around.”

  He paused, continuing to make eye contact.

  “If you want to live, do exactly as I say. Rule number one: keep your mouth shut unless I tell you to talk. Rule number two: we’re not afraid to kill you. Bullets hurt, and we have a lot of them.”

  Sirhan glanced
at Tariq, who was standing guard near the end of the hallway. Tariq nodded at him. Sirhan walked to the end of the hall and took him aside.

  “You’re sure there’s no one on the top two floors?” he asked in Arabic.

  “Yes, I’m sure.”

  “Go to the sixth floor with Fahd. Keep watch, especially the hallway. If someone killed Ramzee, he has Ramzee’s weapon. We have to be careful.”

  Sirhan pushed past him and took the stairs to the eleventh floor. The hall was eerily quiet. He walked with his assault rifle in his right hand, finger on the trigger, trained in front of him, sweeping it methodically back and forth between rooms.

  A few doors down, he stepped into a dorm room. It had a pair of desks, bunk beds, a pile of boxes. He slunk slowly along the wall. It was early in the assault, but if the Americans—the university, the FBI, the police—were prepared, they would already have snipers in place. He inched delicately along the wall until he was a few feet from the window, and looked down on 114th Street and, in the distance, Broadway. Other than cars, 114th Street was empty. Broadway too was abandoned, except for a line of armored vehicles at the corner of 114th.

  He looked up. He counted three helicopters, hovering in the sky. But they were far away. The missile strike had done its trick.

  Sirhan moved back to the hallway. He pulled out his cell phone and hit Speed Dial. The phone rang a few times, then Nazir picked up.

  “Sirhan?” asked Nazir. “Is everything okay?”

  “Yes, Tristan. We’re inside. We’ve sealed off the building and established strategic advantage.”

  “Very good. It’s all over the news. You shot down a helicopter.”

  “Yes. They were coming in close, perhaps to try and take the roof. It’s wired now.”

  “Are there any reporters there yet?”

  “I don’t know. The area is cordoned off. They have a perimeter. I saw armored vehicles. It’s hard to see beyond the other buildings.”

  “Don’t use your cell phone unless it’s an emergency,” said Nazir. “They’ll be picking up the signals soon, if they haven’t already. I’m surprised they haven’t jammed everything yet. Then again, maybe I’m not surprised. The Americans are slow. Remember what to do if you lose cell coverage.”