by Gavin Reese
Fuck…yes…
After cautiously inspecting each connection along his path, Duke assured himself he had everything in place, and he would soon set into motion the unstoppable sequence of events to reform America into the nation it once was, the Anglo-Saxon Empire she had always intended to be. He briefly stood and admired the monster of his own creation. He had done this; not single-handedly, he had to admit, even to himself. But he had designed, orchestrated, and puppet-mastered each necessary cog in the proverbial machine to reach this point. An intense arrogance and self-righteous sense of accomplishment overcame him, and his gaze moved from the beautifully crude devices to the world outside the glass walls that surrounded him. Duke confidently strode back to the north end of the 23rd Floor along Van Buren Street, looked down at the densely packed pedestrians maneuvering on the sidewalks along Central Avenue and Van Buren Street north and east of the Tower, and disdainfully glared at the anonymous crowds and dense, streaming traffic below.
Although he commanded a nearly unobstructed, 360-degree view of downtown Phoenix, Duke knew the tinted glass kept anyone inside the neighboring skyscrapers from peering in to witness his handiwork. They have no idea what’s about to happen. They’re so self-absorbed in their tablets and smart phones, not a shred of concern for the others around them. Most of them are responsible, in some way, for the wretched state of American affairs, he determined. Some of them will be injured today, many of them killed, but they all have it coming.
Only two final things left to do now…
Seventy-Eight
Lobby Security Desk, American Bank Tower. Phoenix, Arizona.
“God-fucking-dammit!” Detective Alex Landon swore out loud, drawing nervous glares from several American Bank employees gathered in the lobby, who’d already been made anxious by his tactical POLICE vest and rifle. He saw Jonathan McDougal didn’t budge at the outburst, and realized he alone had heard the increasingly bad news about Reggie Page being a false identity. Almost immediately thereafter, the fire alarm klaxon commenced an intermittent wail and the activated overhead sprinklers quickly drenched everyone in its dirty, soured initial output that had likely been retained in the pressurized lines for years. “Evacuate, now!! Get out and go NORTH!” Alex shouted at the employees assembled nearby, all of whom had already started toward the exits. This anonymous motherfucker is gonna get away! He turned to McDougal, and shouted only loud enough for him to hear. “Reggie Page doesn’t exist, whoever that guy is, he used a fake identity to get the job here!”
Alex keyed his mic again. “David-33, radio, American Bank Tower evac is finally started!” He yelled to be heard over the klaxon, aware its tone and volume impeded his radio transmission.
“David-33, copy,” the dispatcher responded, “we’ll notify Phoenix Fire for them to stage.” Alex had no idea where fire personnel could safely stage in the area, or how far away they were. Guns might be ineffective in a bomb fight, but fire hoses faired far worse.
“SIR!!” Alex heard McNealy’s voice to his left, and looked to see he stood only a few feet away, holding his arms and hand up as though in apology. Despite having been activated for only a few seconds, the overhead sprinklers had already soaked McNeeley’s uniform. “Don’t go anywhere yet, I just got the bottom ten floors activated, and it’ll take me a bit longer to get the rest of the building’s sprinklers and fire alarms turned on.”
“Get it done, Tom, we’re gonna run outta time much faster now that the evacuation’s started!” Alex considered whether to tell dispatch about the delayed evacuation of the upper floors as he watched McNeely hustle back to the Security Office. He glanced around and saw another dozen or so American Bank employees and visitors scurry from the main lobby and its adjacent bank branch toward the exits, several of them trying in vain to protect themselves from the downpour. Several slipped and fell on the slick marble floor, but they remained ambulatory and continued self-evacuating. As the volume of outbound evacuees from the first ten floors increased around him and McDougal, Alex strode across water-covered marble to the security desk where Rocky had remained.
“Is he still on 23?!” Alex yelled so Rocky could hear him over the klaxon.
“Uh, yeah, yessir, I think. I never saw him leave on any of the stairwell cameras, and there’s been no freight elevator activation from that floor.” Rocky, also drenched, appeared to grow increasingly uncomfortable about remaining in the building.
“He may know the gig is up if he can hear those klaxons, Rocky! Can you keep an eye on the cameras for another few minutes until McNeely gets everything set off?! I mean, you’re not gonna get any wetter!”
“Yeah, sure, yessir, I can do that, but only for another couple!” The rotund guard stood and pushed the chair back away from the desk, in obvious preparation for his own escape.
McDougal yelled to cut into Alex’s conversation. “We going up to get him, or are you walking away and starting over, and praying for a lucky break somewhere in this clusterfuck?!”
Alex saw McNeely hustle back from the Security Office with a tan bag slung across his chest and left shoulder. “Sir! I got the problem fixed, but the sprinklers and fire alarms on the floors above ten are not popping simultaneously. I don’t think the sprinkler system on the upper floors was pressurized like it’s supposed to be! It’s taking about ten seconds for each floor to pop in sequence, like the system’s gotta pressurize and load first!”
“So, where was it at when you left the office?!” Alex leaned in close to McNeely to avoid having to yell so loudly.
“Fourteen had just started, so fifteen and sixteen should be going now!”
“You think we got about a minute then, before the system sets off everything on 23?”
“Yessir, seems about right!” McNeely paused, stepped back from Alex for a moment, and then leaned back in close as though to ensure Alex heard him. “Sir, I’m along for the ride, especially if you’re headed up! I served five years in Marine Corp infantry fighting these kinds of dickbags overseas! I’m as combat ready now as I was then, and I just got a conditional job offer from the US Marshals! Plus,” McNealy took a breath from yelling, “I thought something like this might happen someday, so I always carry my AR10 pistol with me!” McNealy patted the now-soaked slingpack.
“So, whaddyasay, Detective,” McDougal said as he stepped in closer to Alex and McNeely, “you wanna Cowboy Up or fall back and let him run?! He’s put in too much effort trying to blame other people for this, he doesn’t intend to die here today. He’s coming out, so we can either get another ten guys here to cover all the exits or we hafta go get him!” McDougal paused, as though in hopes he hadn’t overstepped his bounds. “You know ten guys you can call right now to stand post outside?!”
It seemed to Alex that McDougal didn’t intend to leave empty-handed, regardless of what he did. When he thought they had identified the suspect, Alex knew heading upstairs to be a poor choice in light of their ability to apprehend him later. Now that they had no name, no real identity, and the guy had a demonstrated propensity for anonymity, he felt truly tempted and torn. There’s really no intel to identify other targets, so I can’t say running on the sidewalk outside is really any safer than being in here.
“All due respect, Detective, I’m with Jarhead here!” McDougal continued yelling as Alex mulled over his choices. “I didn’t fight and bleed in the fuckin’ sandbox, and send some of my men home in flag-draped coffins just so I could come home and turn tail as soon as a bad man shows up here! I trained and swore an oath to run toward the gunfire and chaos, and that’s not changing today! My oath didn’t expire with my commission! I’m going up, where’re you going?!” Alex found McDougal’s face and demeanor surprisingly calm, and, somewhat inspiring. He knew the best decision would probably still be to walk away and track the suspect down another day. But how do I look myself in the mirror if this guy gets away and kills a buncha people in the process? We may not be able to stop what’s happening here today, Alex tho
ught, and we might die trying, but we can certainly try to stop this from ever happening again.
“You have a weapon on you, Captain?!”
“Yeah, but I thought you might get nervous about that before we had this talk!”
“Good! I’m headed up the same stairs Reggie took! We got no communications, so I’m gonna run the stairs up to twenty-three, see if I can clear anything there, and come back down. Where do you want to set a rendezvous?!”
“Actually, Detective, he’s going to be coming down faster than we’re going up, so there’s no need to go above, say, ten. If you get to the tenth floor, and you don’t see him, turn around, and get the fuck out!”
Alex immediately agreed with McDougal’s assessment, and turned to address McNeely. “Thanks for your help, Tom, but the best place to be is outside, running north!” Alex saw that Rocky immediately took that as solid advice and moved toward the closest exit as fast as his Velcro walking shoes could propel him. Alex felt grateful Rocky had stayed to help with the cameras, and that he had tapped out so quickly when the task at hand defied his skillset.
“The best place to meet is gonna be the parking garage east of 1st Street,” McNeely offered, apparently having ignored Alex’s suggestion to leave. “When you come back down stairs, get back to this desk, and then head northeast down that hall!” McNealy pointed with his left hand while his right opened the slingpack to reveal his AR10 pistol, a .308-caliber handgun, essentially an eight-inch rifle. “Keep going through the underground tunnel and you come out in the parking garage basement!”
“Leave your keys on the security desk, Tom, so Bomb Squad and Fire have them when they make entry later!” Alex hated that he sounded so morbid.
“Good call!” McNealy removed a large key ring from his pants pocket and dropped it on the counter.
“Be safe, boys! See you in a few minutes!” Alex saw the volume of soaked employees vacating the stairwells had substantially increased, the momentum of which he now needed to move against.
As the three men each moved toward different stairwells, Alex turned off his police radio and cell phone, and made his way through the fleeing masses toward his fate.
Seventy-Nine
23rd Floor, American Bank Tower. Phoenix, Arizona.
15:00
14:59
14:58
Duke stood over the backup timer and briefly watched its countdown, satisfied it seemed to function properly. Now dressed in his final disguise, Duke wore an American Bank-maroon dress shirt, maroon-and-khaki Argyle clip-on tie, khaki slacks, Buddy Holly hipster glasses with clear lenses, and a maroon fedora. Just another aging bank employee trying to fit in with his young coworkers. He opened the messenger bag slung across his right shoulder, retrieved his burner phone, clipped its plastic holster to his belt at his right hip, and calmly strode toward the stairwell opposite that which he’d previously ascended. Dropping the bag at the doorway, Duke picked up the electric drill and purposefully removed the long screws he’d placed into the doorframe to prevent unwelcome guests from interrupting his work. After the fourth screw fell free onto the floor at his feet, he carelessly tossed the drill aside, retrieved and shouldered his bag, and disengaged the deadbolt.
Duke pushed the door closed and entered the stairwell, but didn’t bother securing the door behind him. Having abandoned his security key ring among the construction equipment placed against the exterior glass wall, he couldn’t have locked the deadbolt anyway. As he hurriedly descended the stairs, he curiously noticed an audible din coming up from the floors far below him, but saw no one else around. Just after he reached the landing between 23 and 22, the fire alarm’s klaxon sounded for two long, incredulous seconds before the pressurized overhead sprinkler system began spraying down on him.
“Goddammit!!” Duke instantly feared his op might be blown. I can’t unfuck this bitch! He hadn’t planned for the bomb’s electronic components to be water resistant, and now had no opportunity to make them so. Fear of failure and capture immediately consumed him, and he sprinted down the stairs as fast as he believed the wet concrete would allow. Focus, he thought, the fuckin’ UN still might only get to run my country for another fourteen minutes.
With nothing more to do than attempt to escape with his freedom and hope for success, Duke’s pace devolved into a fearful, cowardly sprint toward the ground floor exit. As he stepped below the 21st floor, several soaked American Bank employees entered the stairwell and fearfully fell in behind him. He rounded the next landing and saw more employees fleeing into the stairwell from 20. His anxiety grew with the realization that the growing mass of water-logged employees would both slow his escape from the cops and threatened to prevent him from safely exiting the building before 23 detonated. Sonuvuhbitch, he realized, these fucks’ll trample me to death if we’re still in here when that blows! As though he’d created a self-fulfilling prophecy, he saw that each exit he passed had become a thick stream of water-logged people; he saw fear and uncertainty gripped them all, and he understood he had to consider taking more drastic measures to ensure his own survival.
Now below the 18th Floor, Duke had just turned down from the landing when a woman lost her footing on the wet concrete and fell immediately in front of him. The now-dense throng of terrified humanity parted only enough to bypass the woman as they each sought to save themselves from the unknown source of the building-wide fire alarm. Unable to move around her and unwilling to delay his own salvation, Duke pushed the woman back down to the stairs as she attempted to stand up and flee. He tried to leap over her, but stepped on one of her hands and almost fell himself. The woman immediately screamed and called out after him, but Duke didn’t even bother to look back. He didn’t care about her, or about how the nearby crowd had reacted. Nothing mattered now but his own escape. Duke pushed several employees aside to attempt to accelerate his flight despite the verbal objections and obscenities from those around him, but that soon became impossible.
The crowded stairs approached capacity as more employees fled the hypothetical flames they likely feared had engulfed unknown portions of their densely populated tower. As the horde’s descent slowed well below a tolerable pace, Duke could almost smell the growing terror so prolifically strewn among them. The palpable trepidation and subsequent pleas for deliverance only increased as the multitude further slowed to a dense, anxiety-filled crawl. They more frequently tripped over one another and lost their footing, although the very density that inhibited their collective descent now functioned to keep most of them upright.
Duke realized he had lost track of his downward flight and the anxiety around him began consuming his consciousness. What floor am I on?! Am I below the initial blast radius?! What if I got stuck here, would I survive the blast to be arrested? The crowd’s noise, a din of shouts, fearful pleas, and sobbing, began inducing panic, both in Duke and among itself. Duke pointlessly clutched and clawed at those in front of him, trying in vain to violently cast them aside to make room for himself in their place. His frantic actions spread to those around him, who either duplicated them or futilely tried to stop him from assaulting those below him. More around him lost their balance, more were pushed, shoved, and assaulted, more began falling underfoot, and several brought others down onto the stairs with them. The unstoppable force of the masses above prevented any among them from stopping to help as colleagues fell, many of whom were trampled and left to fend for themselves. Pandemonium spread like wildfire through a dry grass field; Duke began to believe he wouldn’t emerge from the stairwell alive. As he clawed his way below the 14th floor, the possibility of being trampled by his victims replaced his fears of concussive death and arrest.
Turning the corner at the midfloor landing, he immediately recognized the man forcing his way up the stairs toward him as an adversary. He wasn’t a cop, wasn’t wearing a uniform, didn’t have a ballistic vest, Duke thought to himself and tried to make sense of what he saw. The fit, unknown man used the stairwell’s interior me
tal handrail to pull himself farther upward, somehow yelling over the din to make room for his ascent. There’s no other reason for him to defy the fire alarms and sprinklers, Duke concluded, this man is here to stop me.
As the man climbed closer, Duke saw righteous, indignant rage and steeled determination on his face. He immediately knew he had to avoid the man at all cost, having neither time or benefit to fighting him here among the crushing humanity and dwindling overhead timer. Duke had to get away, had to escape, had to survive. I can’t die here, in vain and for nothing. America depends on me! He couldn’t take his eyes from the approaching rival and watched the man systematically searching the faces of those descending toward him. He continued to climb and looked nearly out of breath.
Duke tried to slow and move to his right to get away from their near-collision course, but the downward mob thrust him uncontrollably forward and almost directly into the man’s upward path. Don’t look at me, don’t look at me! Duke tried to will the man to focus his gaze on those around him, but to no avail. As the enraged stranger met his gaze, Duke saw his reaction and immediately understood their eye contact had betrayed him. He watched the man’s rage immediately intensify and focus solely on him while he felt his own body display fear and apprehension. This can’t be true, they can’t have identified me, they’re supposed to search for the patsies!! Understanding he had to kill this man, this would-be hero, Duke knew he could not otherwise avoid capture, and fought to focus his actions. He can’t stop the bombing, I won’t let him kill my new America. This man will die, right here on this landing, and I will live to continue the fight!!
