The Hammer of God

by Tom Avitabile

  In the blink of an eye, the AIM-9 Sidewindermissile traveling at three times the speed of sound locked onto the heat plume from the copter’s efforting engine. As the rocket swooped down and in, it aligned with the sun’s reflection off the tinted Plexiglas window of the top floor of Two Penn Plaza, which confused the heat seeking infrared sensor that guided the 20.8-pound HE payload to a target. The missile adjusted and crackled past the copter and slammed into the hot sun glinting off the top floor of the Manhattan skyscraper. The Sidewinder was built to essentially pop a balloon, a pressured fuselage or delicate engine on a plane already going 500 plus M.P.H. Therefore as bombs go, 21 pounds of high explosives wasn’t all that much. The building glass blew out and a small fire started. But because the building was right above Penn Station, evacuation alarms had sounded 20 minutes before, leaving no one on the top floor to be killed. Only minor cuts and scrapes befell those on the ground from the debris.

  From the ground, Bridgestone and Hiccock saw the missile veer away.

  “How much time left, Bill?”

  “Twenty seconds.”

  Bridgestone turned and saw he was standing next to a Hercules cop in full battle array to his right. In one smooth move, he elbowed the officer in the throat and grabbed his M-16 as he fell. “Bill, protect me!” was all the Army Ranger said as he released the safety and trained the assault weapon at the copter, now 100 feet above the ground.

  Bill pulled out his wallet and started waving his Homeland Security I.D. at other officers who were beginning to turn towards the “armed” man, “Hold your fire! Hold your fire! Homeland Security! This man is an agent! Hold your fire!”

  ?§?

  Number 1 laughed and cried with joy as the explosion of the building snapped his eyes opened. Allah had swatted away the missile. Now nothing could stop them. In 20 seconds the “Allah Factor” would make New York hot for nuclear detonation. The delicate equation had been unknowingly calculated at Iran’s Nuclear Research Facility under the guise of a theoretical celestial navigational problem. His joy was curtailed by the impact of bullets pummeling the cabin of the copter.

  Bridgestone ignored the screaming of “freeze” by some of the cops pointing their guns at him and stayed on target, spraying the copter’s body trying to hit the fuel tanks. Hiccock’s protesting and waving his I.D. was the only hesitation that kept the cops conflicted and Bridgestone alive.

  As Number 1 shielded his head from the bullets that perforated the skin and were ricocheting around the cabin of the copter, one of the bullets found the fuel line. The high-pressure hose burst and aerosoled Jet A fuel. A split second later, the next white-hot bullet that entered that area touched off the fumes and the rear half of the copter exploded. The explosion split the copter in two; the fiery body of the copter immediately began to counter-rotate in the opposite direction of the blades. This whirling dervish crashed on 30st Street into a 16-story building that was mostly rental space that musicians used for rehearsal. The plummeting copter had embedded itself five floors down, when the suitcase went off. Witnesses later would say that a secondary explosion shook the building and made the copter and everything else fall through six more floors. Twelve seconds later, the weight of all the debris from the top floors weakened the fifth floor, and the wreckage and the partially exploded suitcase settled in the basement.

  NEST sensors and satellite sensors immediately lit up with a radiological impulse emanating from midtown Manhattan.

  “Well?” The President asked.

  “We’re getting a plume, but that’s more consistent with a radiological device,” the Chairman reported. “I’m not getting any confirmation of detonation.”

  As soon as the copter exploded, Bridgestone dropped the weapon and put his hands on his head. Hiccock was now physically holding off cops.

  “Is Hiccock still there?” Only static filled the room. “Is Hiccock still in one piece?”

  The line cleared temporarily and the President thought he heard the human sounds of people, of Hiccock, dying. His mind raced to the thought of the two men in the street being immolated by radiation and not burning up, but burning out — outwards from within. Turning to ash as they screamed in agony. But the noise started clearing up and became easily discernable as laughter…and relief. Then a voice, Hiccock’s, broke through.

  “Sir, the bomb did not detonate; it did not fission. We’re okay. Everyone is okay! Kronos, Peter, you guys hit it right on the numbers.”

  “Natra-friggin-lutley….. “

  Bill turned to Bridgestone, “Natra-friggin-lutley, Bridge!”

  “Roger friggin’ that, Bill,” he said as he kept his hands on his head hoping the cops heard that it was over.

  “Bill, this is the President. Get out of that area. They are telling me the radiation is rising.”

  “We can help with the evac, sir.”

  “God damn it, Bill, we got people to handle that. Besides, there is something else. I’m sorry to tell you that Janice is being held hostage at a theater on 47th Street. We don’t know any details yet, but we are assuming her detail is dead. It’s a real shit-sandwich to hand to someone who just saved eight million people, but I’m sorry… truly I am, Bill… Bill?”

  The rear view mirror sheared off at 45 m.p.h. as Bridgestone squeezed the squad car between a delivery truck and the wall of an office building as the siren wailed and the lights flashed on their way up to the theater.

  “Why would they take a theater? And why now?”

  The Chechins took a theater in Moscow. They’ve got a knack for it. They must have figured it was a strong diversion… or, maybe…

  “Maybe what?”

  “Maybe they were after you. You’ve ruined a couple of their last soirees.”

  “If they touch Janice, I am going to kill them. I will fly to wherever their families are and kill every one of them!”

  “Whoa… where did that come from?”

  “Burke Avenue. You got a problem with that?”

  “No, but listen — when we get there, leave the ball-busting to me. You find and secure your wife.”

  “My mom and dad are with her.”

  “Shit. We’ll just have to get all of them out.”

  “How we going to do this?”

  “First, we’ll have to get through our own guys.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  Showtime

  The squad car careened around 47th and Fifth and into a wall of emergency vehicles.

  Bill flashed his White House I.D. and they let the car through. Then they hit the FBI ring. An agent stopped them cold at 47th and 7th.

  “Sir, you can’t go further.”

  Hiccock fumbled trying to find his FBI I.D. but gave up. “Agent I am … fuck that, who’s in charge?”

  Special Agent Burrell, sir.”

  “Get her on your radio. Tell her Quarterback is here.”

  A moment later, the agent returned. “I am to send you on up, sir.”

  “Bridge, tell him what we need.”

  Hiccock made his way to the front line established by the police across from the theater. Brooke Burrell was there and she filled him in.

  “Brooke, this is …. What’s your first name, Bridge?”

  “That’s classified, sir,”

  “No shit! Well then, Brooke this is Bridgestone. I want him to have full tactical control. He’s my man and the President’s.”

  “Full what? With all due respect, Hiccock, I’ll have a HRT team inbound in seven minutes.”

  “My wife Janice is in there. She and the others may not have that long and Bridge can do things your guys can’t.”

  “Is he Superman?”

  “No, but he holds a higher form of Presidential Immunity than I got for you. But you’ll have to forget that part. Besides, as the head of this joint operation,” Bill pulled out his F.B.I. card, “my deputy director status outranks you. And thank you for getting the info from that dirtbag.”

  “That was you? Nice!” Bridgestone tipped hi
s imaginary hat.

  “Thanks. Okay, deputy director, what’s the plan?”

  “Whatever he says it is.” Hiccock threw his thumb towards Bridgestone.

  “Subway runs under here, so I need shaped charges and access to the adjacent basement. I’ll need tac radios and weapons, stun grenades and five knives.”

  “Well, Rambo, I can do everything but the shaped charges, ‘cause they’re not here yet.”

  Bridge glanced away and saw the N.Y.F.D. Rescue One truck. An officer was unloading an acetylene tank in preparation for cutting through some metal gates.

  Bill followed his stare. “I’m on it,” Bill said, running over.

  “Captain, I need…

  “Lieutenant.”

  “Lieutenant, I need an acetylene tank. Right this second.”

  “You look familiar.”

  “The tank!”

  The lieutenant ran to the rig and pulled an extra bottle of the gas. It weighed about 40 pounds and stood about two-and-a-half feet high. When he handed the tank to Bill, he snapped his fingers.

  “I got it. You were the guy at the train station in Westchester when that building blew up… that woman under the rubble…then you got famous, all over TV and the maga…”

  “If I get out of this alive, drinks are on me and we can reminisce. Gotta go.”

  Sardi’s restaurant was famous but its basement was a mess. Bill, Bridge, and five SWAT guys put the green metal cylinder up against the wall between the restaurant and the theater. They listened, waiting for a train to pass under the building.

  As the subway rumble approached, they took cover behind the tables and rolling bars that littered the basement. Bridge shot the acetylene bottle from across the room; the bullet hit dead center and dented the metal bottle; he then drew a bead and hit it in the exact same weakened spot and it exploded at the height of the rumbling sound.

  In the theater, it was just heard as a slightly larger subway rumble, which, for the sake of the performances, the theater was built to filter out. The terrorists didn’t suspect a thing.

  The jagged hole in the wall opened to the back storage area behind the theater. There were many old props, sandbags, and lights stowed there. Bridge took the point and found the under-stage. He flipped down his night vision goggles. The trap doors and markings were all in phosphorescent paint and they glowed like neon.

  He caught sight of a figure by the stairway holding a gun. The knife flew from his right hand and landed in the throat of the man, silencing him with a muffed gurgle. Bill saw the SWAT guys look at each other. This was not their way of engaging. They would be reviewed harshly for taking the life. But there would be no review for Bridgestone. He waved on the team and started up the stairs. They led to the wings of the theater’s back stage. Bridge motioned for two of the SWAT cops to take position up on the catwalks above the stage. They silently found the ladders and scaled them in seconds. When they reached their perches, they drew a bead on the audience area and used their night vision sniper scopes to identify good guys from bad. They also radioed back to Bridge that the doors were chained and locked and that charges were wired across the span of the audience on makeshift cables attached to the balcony boxes at either side of the stage.

  Bill went up the stairs and joined Bridge. In a soft whisper, Bridge said, “Is that your wife?” He pulled his head away from the sniper scope on his rifle and allowed Bill to peer through.

  Bill’s heart actually stopped beating and ice suddenly flowed through his bloodstream. He was turned inside out by the image of the man holding a knife to Janice’s throat while another guy held a video camera up with a light shining on them. That was the good news for Bridge. That light killed the bad guys’ night vision.

  “Bill, make it for the first row then crawl up to the side where they are. I’ll drop the knife guy when you pop up, then the camera guy. You grab Janice and dive under the seats for cover.” He radioed two of the remaining SWAT guys to pick two targets each, clockwise, starting from the one at the exit door near the stage, and ordered them to go when Bill jumped up or if he was discovered. The cops up on the lighting catwalks had clear shots on the five bad guys in the back wearing the headscarves of the Caliphate.

  He assigned the last SWAT cop to cut the wire on the string of explosives dangling over the audience. He had followed the detonator wire to the house right box where the line was attached. That trooper had to scale the back stage scaffolding and use a cast entrance from the loge. A quick learner, he went against his civil police training and coldly and without provocation strangled one of the terrorists who had been assigned that hallway to guard. He then took his position in the box and investigated the wires to make sure it was a simple two-wire open circuit and no tamper proofing was in play. When he reported that it looked like a simple cut and disarm, Bridge told Bill that it was all on him.

  Bill waited until every terrorist he could see was looking the other way and then he scrambled across the lower part of the theater from the stage apron to the first row of seats. He stopped and listened to hear any sounds that would indicate if someone saw him. Over his radio, he heard Bridge.

  “Good so far. Go slowly, Bill, I got my gun on the knife guy’s temple. If he moves his hand, I pop him, so don’t rush.”

  Bill shimmied to the end of the aisle. There were at least 12 rows that got wider and wider as the theater went back so that the end of each aisle was somewhat visually covered by the one ahead of it when you looked toward the stage from the rear. At the sixth row, a figure appeared at the exit door. At first, the young Jihadi from Jordan did a double take when he saw Bill just looking up at him from the floor. He then started to raise his gun and open his mouth. But from two different directions, muzzle silenced, bullets entered his forehead and he rotated back against the closed door and slumped to a sitting position, blood gushing from the blasted open back of his head. Bill froze again to see if anyone noticed that.

  “Okay, you’re clear; keep going.”

  One of the bad guys ran up to the guy holding the knife. He had a portable TV. He started talking in Arabic. On the TV was the news of the helicopter crash and the rumor that it had a radiological device of some kind on it.

  The one with the knife then said something about Allah and started to say something else when his head exploded. His grip on Janice released. Bill shot up and ran toward her. The disconnected explosives fell harmlessly, like clothes on a broken line. A trooper started to open fire on two of the bad guys across the way. The cameraman went down next. The five at the back of the room all went down in one second. Out of nowhere, a screaming man in a headscarf came running in from the wings towards Bill and Janice. Bill fired from his rifle as he covered Janice and the guy caught two in the legs. He started to fall but kept firing as he fell. His bullets ripped into the seats around the Hiccocks as the stuffing flew. Two more hits entered the shooter’s body as he was falling and he and the gun fell silenced.

  Bridge was up and scanning now; he started yelling to the hostages, “Get down, Get down…”

  They were already scrambling, flattening themselves out and trying to hide. Then he heard a scream. He wheeled around and one of the bearded henchmen had a woman in his grasp and a.45 automatic at her temple. The jittery Middle-Eastern man started to say something in Arabic, but Bridge fired and hit the gun, which in turn smashed into the guy’s face. Immediately, blood started to come from the man’s cheek and his hostage fell to the right. Bridge then hammered the gun into his head by successive shots sparking and clanging off the side of the pistol.

  Bill grabbed Janice and got her to focus on him. “Are you all right? Did they hurt you? Are you okay, baby?” She nodded, shuddering, and then collapsed in his chest.

  A scuffle broke out among the hostages. Bridgestone ran to the commotion to see an old guy wrestling with another man. The old guy was detaining him but the younger man socked him in the jaw trying to get free.

  The older man yelled, “Shoot him. He’s got a s
witch under his coat. He’s one of them.”

  Bridge didn’t have a clear shot. The old guy was still hanging on to the younger one, grabbing his arm. But then Bridge saw the button flash from under the guy’s coat.

  “Shoot ‘em or he’ll kill us all,” the old guy yelled.

  Bridgestone crooked his gun to one side and fired back at the two struggling on the ground. From that angle, the bullet went through the old guy’s arm and into the chest of the younger one. Bridgestone knew he got him in the pump because the younger man died in an instant. His fingers never reached the plunger. The old guy grabbing at his wrist rolled out of the way in agony, a bloodstain now also blooming on his shirt by his waist.

  “Pop!” Hiccock yelled, rushing to his father’s side.

  “We got him, right?” Hank Hiccock said, grimacing through the pain.

  “Yeah, Pop. You got him. Don’t move; help will be here soon.”

  Bending down to safety the detonator, Bridgestone commented, “Your father? I shot your father?”

  “And I thought I liked you,” Bill uttered as he moved to his mother. “You okay, Mom?”

  “I’ve never been so scared in all my life.”

  He hugged her. “I am so sorry, Ma.”

  Hiccock’s mom, unscathed, kissed him on the cheek. “For what, dear? You didn’t start this.” Then she rushed over to comfort her husband. “That was a dang fool thing you pulled, Hank. All these young men here and you had to fight these punks.”