The 9/11 Machine

by Greg Enslen

  Ellis was helpless, powerless. He had done nothing.

  No, that wasn’t true. Somehow, he’d made things worse.

  “I didn’t fix anything,” he said quietly, but the others didn’t hear. They were too busy staring at the horror across the East River.

  2.25

  Texas

  Elementary School

  President Bush was sitting in front of a group of small children in an elementary school in Houston—the teacher was reading a story to them, and he was listening and nodding along. He’d canceled on these students once before; the first visit had been scheduled to take place on 9/11, but the secret service and his staff had rescheduled it for security reasons—and out of an sense of superstition. They hadn’t wanted to tempt fate by holding any events that day.

  He’d rescheduled, and the elementary school had graciously accommodated his always-shifting schedule, bringing these students in for a special half-day—normally they would not be in school on the day after Thanksgiving.

  President Bush was listening to the story, something about a whale, when the classroom door opened and Andrew Card, his chief of staff, came into the room.

  Bush could tell from the look on Card’s face that something had happened.

  President Bush put his head down, hoping against hope that it wasn’t an attack. Bush had seen the video from the other timeline, the one where his doppelganger was sitting in front of a group of similar children in a similar classroom when he’s informed about the first events on 9/11. After watching the classroom video over and over, the president now felt a dreadful moment of déjà vu—this was a different school, with a different class, but the end result might be the same.

  “Mr. President,” Card said into his ear. “We’re under attack.”

  Bush tried to not make that face that he’d seen in the photos, the one with his face all screwed up like he was eating a lemon.

  But he couldn’t help cursing.

  “Son of a bitch.” he said quietly. “What is happening?”

  The teacher stopped reading, and she and the students looked up at him and Card.

  President Bush stood, aware of the criticism he’d received in the other timeline for remaining in the classroom with the children for seven minutes before getting up and leaving. He could see the troubled looks on the kids’ faces, but he needed to get out of here and go to work. At least this time, people wouldn’t criticize him for just sitting there looking like an idiot.

  Of course, this time they would probably criticize him for scaring a room full of kids.

  He had an idea. “Mrs. Stevens, students, I apologize. I’ve just been informed that there is a critical shortage of ice cream and other treats in your cafeteria. Is this correct?” Bush asked.

  The kids nodded, and the teacher smiled for a second.

  “Well,” Bush said, standing. “Maybe it’s because none of the other students are here today, but I need to look into this immediately. You kids have a good day, and listen to Mrs. Stevens—she knows what she’s talking about.”

  He nodded to the teacher, and then he and Card made their way out of the room. In the hallway, a contingent of Secret Service agents hurried him away. They passed a school administrator on the way out, and Bush thanked him for bringing the students in for a half-day. Outside, President Bush and the others climbed into a waiting car.

  “What’s happening?” The president shouted. “Did they attack?”

  Andrew Card nodded, opening a report. “Six planes this time instead of four. The Capitol, the Pentagon, both buildings of the World Trade Center, Fort Knox, and the Mall of America.”

  “Holy shit.”

  Card nodded.

  “We don’t have any idea on the casualty estimates, but the emergency orders you set in place are working. We’re headed to Air Force One now and we’ll be in the air soon.”

  “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” President Bush said, looking at the reports in front of him. “What about Laura?” he asked, his voice straying higher.

  “She’s fine,” Card nodded. “She’s in lockdown with Cheney right now, under the White House.”

  Bush visibly relaxed and began reading through the preliminary reports Card had handed him in the car. When they arrived and boarded Air Force One, which was already fueled and prepared to leave, the plane began taxiing. They were airborne before he was even to the briefing room. A wing of fighter jets escorted the plane, along with several other support aircraft. The plane banked and turned north, heading for an undisclosed location.

  Minutes later, after they went through the initial reports, Bush and the others watched the news reports come in on the large TV in the conference room. The TV news was always going to be a little ahead of the vetted news that the president received through official channels.

  The TV showed the Capitol on fire, smoke and fire billowing from the front of the building. What looked like the remains of a 747 covered the western steps of the Capitol, and large holes in the façade of the building indicated that portions of the plane had penetrated the building. The Capitol dome seemed undamaged. Fire trucks screamed through the streets as emergency vehicles congregated on the scene. Across the river, a column of smoke rose from the damaged Pentagon.

  “I can’t believe this is happening,” the president said, looking at the table. Several members of his cabinet and staff were at the table, and large screens lined the walls. Other cabinet members attended the meeting via remote video link.

  The president spoke. “This attack on our country must be halted.”

  The Director of the Department of Transportation spoke up from one of the screens. “We’ve already grounded all flights in U.S. airspace and are diverting all incoming international flights to airports in Canada. All flights are now on the ground or accounted for.”

  “Are there any missing flights or other potential hijacked planes?” Andrew Card asked.

  “No,” the FAA director said. “All planes in U.S. airspace are accounted for. The six planes that were hijacked were lost early on in the process, and visual or verbal contact has been made and verified with all other planes still aloft.”

  “They’re continuing on to their destinations?” Ari Fleischer asked.

  “Yes,” the FAA director said. “I thought it would be best to not disrupt them—”

  “Get all of those goddamned planes down now,” the president ordered. “We have no idea if there are more. I don’t care about inconvenience,” he said sharply.

  The president turned to one screen, which showed Don Rumsfeld, the Secretary of Defense.

  “We have detected no other threats in the area or on any of our borders,” Rumsfeld answered. “This appears to be a coordinated terrorist attack, not the work of a foreign government or power.”

  Bush sighed, looking around at everyone in attendance, then stood.

  “OK, here goes. The information I am about to give you is going to sound hard to believe, but it comes from a very reliable source. The attacks today are the work of al Qaeda on orders from the terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden. The lead hijacker, Mohammed Atta, flew the first plane into the North Tower of the World Trade Center.”

  There was silence around the table and on the video links.

  “We have been working to prevent this attack for almost six months,” the president continued. “We had some prior intel of the terrorists and where they might strike, but in trying to thwart those attacks, we appear to have given them more time to gather forces and carry off an even larger attack.”

  “This planned attack was to occur on September 11, 2001. We learned of this impending attack and did what we could to prevent it. One result of the original attack that I found particularly troubling was the essential crippling of the U.S. Congress, due to the serious loss of life in the Capitol. I, therefore, signed into law two months ago a provision that required all congressional members to designate or arrange for a list of three representative replacements who would be able to step in
to the congressperson’s role until such time as a special election could be held to fill the post through the voting process.”

  The others looked at Bush and nodded.

  “Because we had most Congress members designate an emergency backup appointee, the transfer of power has already started. They are to convene at Constitution Hall in Philadelphia this evening. Most of the backups and designees are on their way now or will attend the opening session via video link.”

  He waited for a few moments, and then continued, explaining exactly how they would proceed.

  2.26

  Aftermath

  Laura Bush was fine. If there was anything President Bush had learned from the other timeline, it was that he needed to stay in control and not allow Cheney to push him out of office. He’d asked Laura to limit her number of visits to the Capitol building, just in case something happened.

  Stationing surface-to-air missile batteries on the Capitol building had seemed like a crazy idea at the time—now, he looked prescient. The surface-to-air missiles had fired on the incoming jetliner, striking it midair. The plane had still crashed, but had been downed in front of the building, sliding into the western-facing steps and the front of the Capitol building. The plane had not crashed directly into the dome, which did not fall, so the damage to the building and the loss of life had been greatly reduced.

  But fires and debris still killed many, including thirty-seven senators and representatives. Because of the backup plan put into place by Bush, their alternates had already been designated and got to work immediately, averting the constitutional crisis from the other timeline.

  Things were worse in New York and at the Pentagon—the casualty numbers were roughly the same as in the original timeline. And the bottom line was that they had still been attacked, and by foreign terrorists. He was reading through a version of tonight’s speech, working through the details, and wondered which direction to move in first. He knew the perpetrators, the exact location of their training camps, and all about their Taliban supporters. Thanks to the future intelligence, he even knew which future military operations he ordered would be the most successful. But things were different enough here, with the two-month delay, to warrant caution.

  The Mall of America and Fort Knox—he hadn’t anticipated additional attack locations. He hadn’t counted on a backup set of targets, or additional teams of al Qaeda operatives in the country, or the additional eight weeks of planning time that he’d given them.

  Now, he had to decide what to do.

  Afghanistan—that was obvious. Bomb the camps, take out the Taliban, release all the information they had on al Qaeda.

  Bush had already worked it out with the Joint Chiefs—forces were in movement within 48 hours of the attacks on 11/24, moving into theater and preparing for combat operations.

  Tonight, they would begin bombing Afghanistan. It was the evening of December 7, 2001, and his speech tonight would open with a discussion of the sixtieth anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor. His speechwriter had conjured up a moving tribute to those soldiers and airmen who had died decades ago in the surprise attack. Bush would then announce the beginning of major combat operations. That was the military’s signal to begin bombing runs from the ships already stationed off the coast of Afghanistan.

  Ground troops would follow three days later, if all went according to plan. Bush had a line in tonight’s speech about the Taliban giving up power and turning in their al Qaeda compatriots, but he didn’t think it was likely to happen. In the other timeline, it had taken the nuclear annihilation of one of Afghanistan’s major cities to break the will of the Taliban. In this version of history, Bush hoped to do it the old-fashioned way. He didn’t relish the idea of a massive expanse of irradiated desert being named after him.

  No, this time it would be bombs, ground troops, and a ruthless embargo of all ships into and out of Afghan ports. The Taliban would be pushed from power and the vacuum filled with an interim government, one more aligned with U.S. foreign policy.

  But if he had to, he would back the Taliban and al Qaeda into the mountains and tunnels between Afghanistan and Pakistan. And if that happened, and there was a stalemate, then he might think about the nuclear option.

  But the war in Iraq to follow—that concerned him. President Cheney, in the first timeline, had moved too quickly, moved to quash Hussein before doing his due diligence and without taking the proper time to prepare and build up sufficient forces. When the weapons of mass destruction had been unleashed on the invasion forces, the ground war had come to a halt.

  Bush didn’t want to repeat that.

  2.27

  An Older Twin

  “What else do you have?” Foreman asked her over the phone.

  Cassie shook her head. “Massive power usage, lots of equipment going in, and nothing coming out. If they were producing something, they’re not sending it anywhere.” She was exhausted from weeks of living on takeout food and staking out the warehouse and Ellis’ home in Jericho around the clock. The floor of her rented apartment was covered with yellow notepads along with Thai takeout bags and dry cleaner bags.

  “And with that level of power consumption,” Cassie said, “they could be running an automobile factory inside.”

  “You can’t get any closer?”

  “No,” Cassie answered. “He’s got internal and external security. Plus, it looks like he’s got the local Padrino and his crew on the payroll as well. I can drive by a few times a day, but between the barbed wire, security guards, and blacked-out windows, I’m getting nothing.”

  She heard Foreman grunt. “What about the guy’s house?”

  “In Jericho? Nothing there, either. Cute family.”

  “OK. And what about the older brother?”

  Again, she shook her head. “Nope, he doesn’t have an older brother. Or older cousins that would fit the description. Plus, the guy looked like a twin, an older twin.”

  “You can’t have an ‘older twin.’” Foreman said. “It’s against the rules, in case you didn’t know.”

  She smiled. “Yeah. I don’t know any other way to explain the guy.”

  2.28

  Livermore

  Dr. Ellis and Marburger were waiting at the conference room table in Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories (LLNL) on the day before Christmas, 2001, when the doors opened and President Bush entered, followed by Andrew Card, Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld, and at least a dozen Secret Service agents. The president sat, waving the security agents out.

  “Gentlemen, thanks for coming,” Card began, passing out a stack of paperwork.

  “Look,” President Bush said, “we’re here to talk about what happened and what we can do about it. Dr. Ellis, what happened?”

  Ellis swallowed and began speaking slowly.

  “Obviously, our actions affected the timeline. In the original event, four planes were hijacked instead of six. The Fort Knox and Mall of America incidents didn’t happen. Our actions in trying to prevent the attacks from happening in the first place only delayed them.”

  “That much is obvious,” Rumsfeld said dryly.

  “If we had not changed the timeline,” Ellis continued, “things would have progressed exactly as they did originally. Four planes, four teams of hijackers.”

  Bush nodded. “But the extra security, and the FBI rummaging around, knocking over everything—”

  Card shook his head. “This isn’t about your suggestion. There was no way we were going to let the U.S. military run that investigation. You can’t have the military on U.S. soil trying to find terrorists.”

  “At least we could’ve kept it quiet,” Rumsfeld answered. “At least we know how to follow orders.”

  Card shook his head. It was an argument they had had many times before.

  Bush looked at them both. “It doesn’t matter now, anyway. The delay gave them enough time to work on their plan, expand it. And now things are worse and impossible to predict.”

  Ellis disag
reed. “Prediction is what we do—we had all the information we needed to accurately predict the outcome of this. It should never have happened—”

  “OK, this is what we’re going to do,” the president said curtly, ending the conversation. “We’re going to send ourselves a warning—”

  Ellis shook his head. “It won’t work.”

  “Why not?”

  “Well, for one, the machine isn’t working correctly yet,” Marburger said. “It’s not operational.”

  Bush nodded. “We know that. But when it is—”

  “It still won’t work,” Ellis said.

  Rumsfeld leaned forward. “Cut the crap and speak your mind, Ellis.”

  “Because we won’t believe the message when we receive it in the past,” Ellis said. He stood and began to pace the room. “We hardly believed it this time and that was with reams of evidence. Why would we believe it next time?”

  Bush was confused. “What?”

  “What’s changed that would make us believe another message from the future and take it seriously this time? I already gave you a message from the future, and we still allowed the attacks to happen.”

  “That wasn’t really what happened,” Andrew Card began, but Ellis cut him off.

  “The president said that we should ‘send a warning’ back to ourselves. Based on our track record, I don’t think it would work, even if the machine were operational.”

  The room grew quiet as Ellis walked back to his chair and sat down. It was a pointless discussion, as far as he was concerned.

  2.29

  Invasion Plans

  President Bush’s war on Afghanistan was much more successful than President Cheney’s had been in the original timeline. Ground forces, augmented by artillery bombardment from naval destroyers off the Afghan coast, quickly pushed the Taliban south, out of power and into hiding.