Harris was off. More police cruisers arrived. Harris found a wounded cop on the ground. His torso was ripped open. Harris knew enough to know he was in bad shape so he took off his belt and wrapped it around the bloody uniform. Then he looked up and waved at the helicopter overhead.
.G.
Tom saw one of the men on the ground waving him down and pointing to the downed officer. “Control, I am being waved down by a man, probably an FBI agent. I think I know what he is asking . . . I am going to train the camera on us as I land. I’ll continue from my cell phone.” Tom landed the copter, dialed the station, and popped in his earbuds. “Do you read me, Control? Good. I am leaving the chopper.”
.G.
“He’s not going to make it . . . Can you get him to a hospital right away?” Harris said, pointing down at the injured man.
Tom looked down; there was so much blood. His first instinct was to decline, saying he was press and his job was to cover the story . . . but Tom had been a medevac pilot in the Iraq War. Only one ambulance had gotten to the area. The street outside, and for as far as he could see, was jammed with arriving and abandoned police vehicles. The ambulance was blocked from leaving. He looked down at this fallen public servant who got up every day and tried to help people, who now lay dying . . . The old call to duty kicked in. “Control, I am going to medevac this officer to the nearest hospital. Hackensack University Medical Center is thirty seconds away and has a heliport. Please alert them on Med Emergency Frequency one. I am two minutes out. I’ll try to keep reporting but I am going to be a bit busy for a few minutes.”
.G.
Harris helped him carry the man towards the copter. Two of his fellow officers quickly joined them. “We’ll take him.” They gingerly loaded him into the seat of the news helicopter. One of the EMTs from the only ambulance jumped into the bird with his bag and applyed a gauze patch and rolled up the officer’s sleeve to administer a shot. The helicopter was up and away in thirty seconds, heading towards the medical center’s landing pad on the edge of the airport.
Harris went back to Andrea as she was waving off the other arriving EMTs. “Go help them. I can wait.” Harris grabbed a medical bag from the back of an ambulance and helped her out of the cabin and onto the tarmac. “The good news is I seen this done a dozen times . . .”
Through deep breaths, Andrea asked, “What’s the . . . the bad news?”
“I’ve never done this before . . .” he said as he found the scissors and cut away her pants around her upper thigh. He took some iodine solution and swabbed the wound. She recoiled at the sting. “Sorry.”
“S’okay . . . thank you for doing this.”
Harris looked up at her and smiled. “No problem . . . At least you won’t think I’m a complete asshole.”
Chapter 41
The Evil Portfolio
“Kitman’s dead,” Bridge said as he came into Brooke’s office grabbing the remote and turning on channel two.
“What? What happened?
“He decided to meet his maker rather than surrender. And he tried to take George and Harris and a few local cops with him.” He turned towards the TV.
“. . . boro airport. Our own NewsChopper 880 was on the scene. We’ve edited out some of the more disturbing footage but police are now calling the gun battle that broke out at this normally quiet airport that serves the wealthy and business communities ‘as fierce as they come’ in the words of one police spokesman who wished to remain anonymous. In an unusual turn of events, our own reporter, Tom Colletti, went into action and airlifted a critically wounded Moonachie township police officer to a nearby hospital. He is in stable condition but his prognosis is guarded. We’ll have that report a little later in the program. Now we are going live to our street team at Teterboro where they’ve got the latest . . .”
Bridge muted the TV.
“How are George and Harris?”
“Fine. The FBI pilot took a round in her leg, but she’ll be okay.”
“She? Andrea?”
“I don’t know her name.”
“What’s your gut telling you, Bridge?”
“Well, they found an AK-47 in the trunk, which had a small armory in it. The wooden stock had notches in it. I’ve seen that before. The mujahedeen sometimes would notch their guns for every one hundred Russian invaders they killed. One of the two dead guys was probably one. And I could kick myself, Brooke.”
“Why, what did you do?”
“It’s what I didn’t do. He was flaunting it in all our faces, in the world’s face. I never connected that the word ‘kitman’ is synonymous with ‘taqiyya.’”
“Holy shit!” Brooke blurted out, snapping her fingers. “‘War is deceit.’ It’s part of the Hadith.”
“Exactly. Taqiyya, or the pass you get from God to lie to infidels.”
“It was that obvious and we all missed it.”
“Yeah, makes you feel pretty dumb doesn’t it. He was telling us all along that he was lying to us about his true intentions and true beliefs. What balls. So for that reason, my money’s on Kitman being the bankroll if not the brains behind the attack, or he would have just surrendered instead of pulling the pin on the Paradise Express.”
“How bad?”
“We lost five cops; four more in the hospital; five with your wounded pilot friend.”
“Dear God, we’ve got to stop these men. We can’t keep losing good people.”
“Brooke, in war, you lose people.”
“War?”
“ISIS has declared war on us. We better gear up or we’ll have a hell of a time catching up.”
“Okay, what’s in your playbook?”
“Squeeze the contacts the FBI and local authorities have in the suspect communities; come down hard, trace all leads of stolen weapons, police and military equipment, or missing ambulances, fire trucks; they’ll use whatever they can to cover their movements until they strike. We now have this much confirmed. We are no longer in lone-wolf territory. Flash-to-bang is now zero. We are up against an organized attack.”
“Do you agree with the brain boys, that their play is imminent?”
“Yes, and I think Kitman trying to get out of the country is an indicator. Speaking of the brainiacs, have they got any financial forensics yet that can give us a lead?”
.G.
Wallace Beesly, Kronos, and Remo were finishing their report to Brooke.
“So you all agree that there were large put and call orders in place awaiting triggers?”
“And it was all pre-distributed. If Kitman died, it was still all safe and secured,” Wallace said.
Peter added, “Had we not pierced the Kevlar wall, those transactions would have netted trillions after an attack,” Peter said.
“You kind of buried the lead there again, Pete. You broke through the wall? Good work, guys.”
“Yeah, so at least they won’t be able to party for the next one hundred years on the trillions they was gonna make,” Kronos said.
“Okay, I want specifics. Maybe finding out where they held positions will tell us what their plan is.”
“Disaster supply replenishment is one group, or at least the best name we came up with for some of the industries that are awaiting the trigger,” Remo said.
“What are those?” Bridge asked.
“Everything from medical supplies, stretchers, hospital beds, linens, ambulance services, building materials, cleanup services, rehabilitation, coffins, crematoriums, and cemeteries.”
“The smart thing about this strategy is that it comes in waves. The windfall isn’t right after the attack, but days, even months after, when the supply has to be restocked; that’s when holding the kinds of positions Kitman intended would turn into platinum. No one would even notice.”
“Okay, that’s one group. What’s another?”
“Heavy construction, but with an edge towards municipal works,” Remo said.
“How so?” Brooke said, sitting down.
“Looking into the kinds of suppliers and contracting and engineering firms, this all points to public works projects.”
“Highways?” Bridge said.
“Possibly, but the trajectory of all the companies on this list points to things like water, sewage, drainage. Big concrete cast pipes, sewer vaults and the like.”
“Next?” Brooke said.
“Electrical resupply, the big players: GE, Allison Charmers, copper wire and transmission line manufacturers, transformer companies; all the power grid construction companies outside of government authorities.”
“I think I know where this is going but I don’t want to believe I’m right. What’s your consensus, guys?”
“Brooke, these guys were planning to cash in, not so much on the attack but on the aftermath, and from the scope of what he was setting up, the attack was going to be one mother of an event. Something that would devastate infrastructure for years to come,” Kronos said, amazingly without any colorful lingo.
“Bridge, what kind of attack could create that sort of wholesale damage to a city?”
“We can rule out nuclear.”
“Why?”
“Because none of these things, these rebuilding projects, could be done for decades after a radiological device was detonated over a wide area.”
“Plus, I didn’t find any industries usually tied to Rad suits or potassium iodide, which would be needed by the freight train full, every day,” Kronos said.
“Okay, here’s what we’ll do: In a half hour I’ll have the FBI, NYPD, and every head of every city authority and their security people, and hell, even the Boy Scouts if I need them, in the big conference room. We don’t let them out until you guys have three attack scenarios of something this large and this devastating. Then we take those and put our additional resources there and hope we are right. If not, we’ll still have the current level of elevated protection in place. God willing, that will be enough.”
A quiet fell on the room. Nobody spoke. All eyes were on Brooke. Her eyes darted then stopped; she tapped her pencil on the pad. Her head moved from side to side as she weighed two opposing thoughts, then she spoke. “Okay, big question. Bridge and I are pretty sure Kitman is the top of the pyramid here. He’s probably ex-mujahedeen, if there is such a thing. The attack would be the victory. Why the aftermath cashing in on something materialistic?”
George had entered the room with Harris during the interlude. George jumped in, “Iranian Sataad.”
“George, Harris! Glad you’re okay. Right after this I want you both to fill me in. What about the Sataad?”
“It’s clear to me now. Kitman was a true believer, probably a deep mole,” George said.
“He came back from Afghanistan a different guy, literally!” Beesly said.
“He was ISIS’s guy on Wall Street. Maybe even before we knew there was an ISIS. He was propped up with oil money from certain sympathetic parties around the world. With a bankroll like that, he couldn’t miss becoming one the wizards of the street. It was just a matter of time,” George said.
“With the trillion in windfall from the attack, ISIS could fund the caliphate for the next one hundred years. Regain control of all of Europe and Northern Africa, then set their sights on the Great Satan in the year twenty one hundred,” Remo said.
“Kitman’s dead. And thanks to you guys, the long and shorting is neutralized. Now, do we have anything on timing of the attack?” Brooke asked as she scribbled a note on the pad in front of her.
“Wallace has the best-probable window,” Remo said, giving him the floor.
“Again, based on what I believe the triggers to be against optimum time to snatch the market away from imitators and profit seekers who will descend once there is an event, I’d say . . . now. They are going to strike now!”
Chapter 42
Ratcheting Up
Dequa sat in stunned silence as the news that Kitman had been killed sank in. Before him on the TV was the constant replaying of the gunfight filmed from the air above. To him, it was as if God himself shot the video. He hesitated. His thoughts became knotted. Was this a sign to abort, or a divine inspiration to proceed. Kitman was strategically crucial but not a tactical element in the plan; he had done his part by funding and protecting the means of arming, training, and support. However, Dequa regarded the brilliant mujahedeen warrior, who’d so skillfully infiltrated the capitalists of the West and become a trusted insider of those infidel dogs, as his leader in more ways than financial.
Dequa now regretted having once raised doubts as to Kitman’s willingness to give it all up for the great struggle. He chided himself for ever doubting this man, Kitman or El-had Berani as he knew him, who’d taken on the Russians and the early American invaders so brilliantly and had been so tactically astute as to make them curse the day they’d set foot on Afghan soil. As the TV told of his rise on Wall Street and his many associations with captains of industry and politicians, Dequa realized how great this man’s deception had been. So skillful was his ability to fool the West that he, Dequa himself, had been taken in and believed that Berani had turned infidel. Dequa vowed that if he lived through this day, he would atone for this blasphemy of such a true hero and devout man. Then Dequa prayed.
.G.
Brooke was in the conference room with the heads of all New York City’s major infrastructure agencies. An assistant popped her head in and quietly walked over to Brooke. She bent down and whispered, “White House on line two, Director.”
“Thank you,” she said quietly, then addressed the room. “Gentlemen, ladies, if you’ll excuse me for a second, something needs my attention. Mr. Bridgestone, would you come with me. This concerns your plan.”
Brooke shut the door of her office and hit the speakerphone. “Burrell-Morton here.”
“Hold for POTUS.”
Bridge reflexively stood taller.
“Brooke?”
“Mr. President, thank you for getting back to me so quickly.”
“Your Archangel RDF plan is approved. I’ve instructed the Pentagon, the National Guard and the governors of New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut to comply with your proposal and it is now an official war plan of the United States of America.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“Brooke, you’re under a lot of stress there. Is there anything I can do from my end to assist?”
“Sir, that was the big one, and your personally smoothing over any intramural squabbles makes it all an easier road.”
“It ruffled a lot of feathers from the Central Command, the joint chiefs, and right up to my own steaming mad Sec Def, but in my executive order, I specifically note that anyone not adhering to your orders will answer directly to me, whether they’re a general, private, or county commissioner.”
“That should certainly do the trick, sir.”
“Almost as big a stink was made over your Internet part of the plan, Suppressor. White House council is still going at it with the FCC and two congressional oversight committees, but I wrote a finding that should ultimately quash any injunctions.”
“We need to blind the millions of eyes who will tell the bad guys what we are up to, sir.”
“Brooke, do you still think this could be as bad as your report indicated?”
“Sir, I got the best minds here, and any way they slice it, the enemy is planning something of titanic proportions and, it seems, with a plan that can reach out for one hundred years.”
“Good God . . .” There was silence.
“But, Mr. President, my guys have cracked their most secure lists. We now know where the money was going to go to fund the caliphate. Kitman died believing it was set in stone and nothing could stop it. He didn’t count on Kronos, Wall
ace Beesly, and Peter Remo, sir. They are, right this minute, sending those targets to the CIA. Sir, it’s like a contact list, a who’s who of every terror group and their supporting allies all over the world. We are going to be able to put a giant dent in the balance sheets of ISIS, Al-Qaeda, and every other enemy of the free world.”
“That’s amazing, Brooke. Well done. Please let your team know that they have done this country, its people, and much of the population on earth a great service and I am personally indebted to them.”
“Thank you, sir, I know that will mean a lot to them.”
“Nothing more left to do than to wish you good luck, Brooke. I’ll be praying for you and your team.”
“Thank you, sir . . . Oh, sir?”
“Yes, Brooke?”
“Sergeant Major Richard Bridgestone drafted the proposal you approved, sir. So I am very confident in its ability to interdict or eliminate the threat.”
Bridge silently waved her off. He didn’t like being credited.
“Is he there now?” the president asked over the secure circuit.
Bridge gave her a “See! Now look what you did!” gesture then relented. “Yes, sir. I’m here.”
“Time we had a beer, son. I still owe you for saving New York City a while back among a few other things.”
“You owe me nothing, sir. It’s my duty. But I will take you up on the beer.”
“Good, looking forward to it. Brooke, Sergeant Major, be careful. Keep me apprised of events. God speed.”
The line clicked. Brooke looked at Bridge as a smile appeared on her face. She stood up and held up her hand. Bridge slapped hers as she said, “Yes. We are approved. Get out there and make your prep. You are running the show, Bridge.”
“This is all going to kill my undercover profile, you know.”
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