Give Us This Day

by Tom Avitabile

  .G.

  Brooke was in a helicopter that had landed atop the FBI building and scooted her off for the three-minute flight to the eastern shore of the East River. As they approached, she saw the gun battle and the burning bus in front of the building. She was listening to the Tac 1 channels and catching bits and pieces of the battle in one ear and a link to the conference room in the other. In the chopper, she slid on her Kevlar vest and put on a helmet. She strapped on the webbing that held twenty magazines for her MP5. She checked her sidearm and looked forward, waiting for the door to open as the FBI chopper slowed for a touchdown.

  She hit the street out in front of the facility and took cover behind a car parked at the curb. She chanced a look above the fender and saw some troops engaged in firefights with unseen men in well-guarded positions in the various recesses and windows of the building. She raised her weapon and took aim at one window where every few seconds a figure would appear and let go a short burst then roll back behind the wall. She switched the selector switch on her automatic weapon to the three-burst position, and when he appeared again, she pulled the trigger three times with a slight sweeping motion. She thought she saw him go down. She watched with her sights trained on the window for at least ten seconds but he never showed again. She panned her gun looking for the next target when Bridge came up behind her.

  “What the hell are you doing here? If you get clipped who’s going to run this outfit?”

  “George’s got it. Besides . . .” She paused and pulled off another three-round burst, looked, but knew she’d missed her target. “He’s due for a promotion. What’s the situation here?”

  “At least ten shooters well positioned and well armed with heavy squad weapons. We lost twelve or fourteen, I think. I’m still holding RDF 1 in case there’s another prong attacking another power station. Do you have any idea what they’re doing here?”

  “They are trying to slow down the generator and start a million fires across the entire city.”

  “Later, you’ll explain how that works, but for now, I am going to order in the Cobras and take that building down brick by brick.”

  “Approved. But have them hit the fuel tanks first. That will kill the generator. As I understand it, if it stops so does their plan.”

  Bridge gave orders to the gunships. In twenty seconds, ten rockets hit the front of the building in close, thunderous grouping. The façade started to crumble. When the smoke cleared, much of the opposing fire went silent. Bridge signaled for the second platoon to approach.

  The second platoon got halfway to the building when the back doors of the red Con Ed truck swung open and a .50 caliber machine gun opened up on the unit. Two troopers went down immediately as the rest scrambled for cover.

  “Cobras, red truck, hit it.”

  From two different directions, two missiles hit the truck at almost the same instant. The fireball emerged from the truck for a split second then the whole truck exploded.

  “Medics!” Bridge yelled as he ran forward. He skidded to a stop when a grenade bounced off the concrete just past him. He dove down and hugged the ground. The blast went off and he felt the searing sting of fragments in his thigh and calf. He winced and looked at his leg. There was some blood, but the frags must have ricocheted off the ground first so they weren’t deep. He heard a machine gun burst behind him and then someone landed next to him.

  “You hit?” Brooke said.

  “Not too bad. I’m good. What part of ‘you shouldn’t be here’ isn’t getting into your head?”

  “Don’t be a chauvinist, Bridge.”

  “That’s not . . .” He was cut short by a line of bullets that crashed into the ground right before them.

  “Son of a bitch,” Brooke said as she pulled on her eyelid trying to loosen some concrete bits that had bounced up into her eye.

  “How much time do we have?” Bridge spit out some gravel.

  “My brain trust says they can do what they’re here to do in five minutes or less.”

  “We got to move. We got to get in there and stop ’em.”

  There was a huge flash and then a large explosion rocked the ground; they both covered their heads. After a few seconds they looked up and saw the Cobras had hit the three fuel tanks outside the building as Bridge had ordered, in an attempt to cut off the fuel to the generator. The heat was intense and caused them to move. They ran to the front door and spread out to each side.

  Bridge pulled a grenade from his webbing, pulled the pin, and rocked his arm back to toss it into the lobby. Suddenly, a man appeared in the doorway. He was unarmed. He was walking in shock. He had two bullet wounds, one in each of his shoulders.

  Bridge quickly pitched the grenade over to the exploded Con Ed truck then pulled the man down and shielded him from the blast. Brooke took cover on the other side of the door.

  .G.

  “I’ve switched to the emergency fuel reserve. It’s inside the building and should be good for twenty minutes. We are at fifty-six cycles. At this rate we will only need three more minutes,” Dequa’s engineer said.

  The grenade that Bridge aborted blew up outside, causing Dequa to say, “The Americans are getting close.”

  .G.

  In Sunnyside Queens, Martha Klein was walking her dog, Chili, who liked to christen the wooden pole that was there to hold up power lines, although most New Yorker’s wrongly referred to it as a telephone pole. As Chili lifted his leg, Martha’s attention was drawn to a buzzing sound coming from over her head. She looked up and saw nothing but the garbage-can-sized thing atop the pole. It was just like the ones on a few of the other poles on the block. The sound got louder, but still she saw nothing that could be buzzing that loudly.

  .G.

  In a gas station on Eleventh Avenue in Manhattan, owner Julio Ramirez was wondering if his tanks were low, because his pumps started slowing down the flow of gas. He also smelled something like fried grease pinching at his nostrils.

  .G.

  At an older Park Avenue skyscraper, all the elevators slowed down. The building superintendent tried to restart the system’s motor-generator in the elevator room, but it started smoking.

  .G.

  Many TV and radio stations around the city, those with the older-style wall clocks, started running over the hourly network newscasts as they were telling the time to the split second from clocks that were running three seconds slower, for the first time ever.

  .G.

  Dequa looked at his watch. The synchronous meter on the control panel was now reading minus fifteen percent, or nine cycles less than the sixty-cycle norm. The process was slowing now because the generator was still attached to the city’s local grid due to the shunt. As a result, the conflicting current it was receiving at sixty cycles from the local grid eroded the rate that the giant armature was slowing. For its part, the armature was having an identity crisis of sorts. It was starting to act like a motor being turned by electricity from outside—from the local grid—rather than acting like a device being turned to make electricity. His engineer was busily turning dials in an effort to overcome the electromotive effect.

  Dequa was suddenly aware that the gunfire had lessened. He called over his radio. “Paul, Paul, what is the situation? Have they breached?”

  “The first line has been broken. I can see the Americans have breached the main door. The secondary teams will be engaging.”

  .G.

  Brooke spun around as she held the radio that she had taken off of one of the dead terrorists to her ear. “Paul!” she said out loud and immediately looked for an observer’s position from where he would be directing the battle. Suddenly, the attack was secondary to her. Even amid the gunfire and carnage all around her and with the adrenaline coursing through her veins, her anger rose.

  .G.

  “Activate the ADS,” Dequa said into the radio and grabbed his gun
as he turned to the engineer. “I must go. Do not leave this panel, no matter what.”

  .G.

  “Bridge,” Brooke called out to him as he was taking cover twenty feet into the building ahead of her, “what is an ADS?”

  Bridge was temporarily stumped and shrugged his shoulders.

  “They are about to use something called an ADS. Be careful! I’ve got something to do.” She scurried off in the direction of the street. There were fifty cop cars and more arriving every second, along with ambulances and fire trucks. The MPs were supposed to hold a perimeter, but something must have gotten fouled up. She found the Queens Borough Commander. She had not put her ID around her neck and had a bit of a time wrangling it out of her back pocket with the body armor and webbing she was wearing. “Commander, I’m the agent in charge. Damn, here it is.” She held up her ID.

  “I know you. You used to be FBI New York. I have ESU thirty seconds out.”

  “Good, we need the firepower. But right now, I need you to lock down every street, every building that has a direct line of sight to this plant. They’ve got an observer somewhere out here who is tipping them off to our every move. I also have reason to believe he is a mass murderer and extremely dangerous. Tell your men to approach with caution.”

  “With all this lead flying, I won’t have to tell them to be cautious.”

  Brooke never heard what he said as she was off running towards the first place she would have picked to command the battle from.

  .G.

  Bridge had twenty troopers in position in the main lobby of the giant facility. A Con Ed man arrived wearing borrowed body armor too big and bulky for his slight frame with a helmet that he kept having to balance on his head. He had the layout to the building. “There is a huge movable wall here for turbine replacements and the like but it is welded shut and only used for major repairs. The only way into the main control room from inside is through this corridor.”

  Bridge spoke to the men. “That’s the way in. We go in pairs, cover to cover. You two, you’ve got our six. You and you, keep back and watch the upper floors.” He waved his arm and the first pair advanced ten feet and took cover behind a guard’s desk.

  The advance went well and soon the doorway was clear. Fifteen troops hustled through when suddenly they all started screaming in agony. Bridge felt a sensation of heat and recoiled to the side. Most of the men scrambled sideways; two went down screaming. Bridge could see their faces were burnt and blistered. He screamed, “Microwaves! Everyone take cover.” Then he ran outside the building.

  Out in the equipment yard he found what he remembered seeing on the way in. He marshaled some ESU cops. “ Guy’s, each of you grab a sheet of this corrugated metal and follow me. Keep it in front of you, like a shield, at all times. We got an Active Denial System in there and it’s stopping us.”

  “What’s that?” a heavily geared-up cop asked.

  “A microwave beam weapon that cooks you alive.”

  .G.

  Originally designed as a crowd control device, Dequa’s engineering “students” had copied the American design but increased the frequency and power so instead of sending heat a fraction of an inch under the skin, which made any human flee the beam, the beam went right through as it would through roast beef in a microwave oven. Dequa was applying bursts to the device and the Americans were retreating. Because they knew the power in the building would also be affected by the frequency slowing, just like the rest of New York City, they ran the ADS off a portable generator; its exhaust was starting to make Dequa choke in the confined space at the end of the long hallway. He saw a soldier at the end appear and he hit the button. The man immediately recoiled and threw something in his hand. A few seconds later, the grenade went off with a concussive thud. Then two soldiers appeared simultaneously and tried again, tossing two more. The beam rendered them unable to get out of the way and Dequa could hear one scream as the grenades went off halfway between he and them.

  The fluorescent lights at the facility flashed erratically, a sign that the power frequency had dropped below twenty percent. Soon fluorescent lights would have their ballasts, the coils that energized the gas in their tubes, ignite from the tremendously inefficient off-frequency power and every office building, factory, and neon sign on Broadway would burn. He was deciding on whether to just leave the ADS on and let it burn out in sixty to ninety seconds of continuous use while he’d try to escape, when something down the hall caught his eye. Five men were approaching, carrying sheets of corrugated metal. He hit the switch and immediately the sparks flew from the makeshift shields like aluminum foil in a microwave.

  Bridge had the men tie rope around the shields so that they held them up from behind without exposing their fingers at the edges. Some of the shields were slipping as the metal bent and folded so they had to stop to keep re-hitching them, holding them tighter.

  Dequa saw the men approaching and left the machine running and swung around his machine gun and opened fire. Bullets pinged off the metal. One soldier went down as a bullet hit the flat hollow between the waves of the shaped metal. He started burning and writhing on the floor. Another soldier got in front of him with his shield blocking the ray, but that was two men out of action. Bullets were bouncing off Bridge’s metal, but it was working. They were approaching the satellite dish-looking element of the ADS. Because it was a wide beam, but still a beam, as he neared, Bridge veered right of the ray and the sparking stopped. He dropped his shield and fired. The man at the device got off a burst as he was hit. One bullet hit the wall right by Bridge’s face and concrete chewed into his cheek. But the guy was down. Bridge then rocked a full magazine into the dish and guts of the machine and it went dead. He dabbed at his face with his glove as he neared the downed man and kicked away his weapon.

  .G.

  Dequa looked up, the gaping wounds in his chest making a sucking sound as his lungs tried to capture air. The overhead lights blinked off; he looked up at Bridge and smiled at the sure sign that soon the lower power frequency would ignite the ballasts coils in every fluorescent light fixture in the city into an incendiary bomblet. Then he said something in Arabic as his life slipped away.

  .G.

  Bridge ran into the main room. Bullets immediately crashed all around him. He took cover behind a desk. More soldiers were coming in. There were at least five men firing down on him and his men. At the far end of the large room, a man stood at a console. Two men at his side were firing back at the invaders.

  The marines, SEALS, and other special ops guys who’d been thrown together on this impromptu mission went to work and did what they do best. In fifteen seconds, all the threats were neutralized. Bridge ran to the control panel. He pulled the body of the engineer, who’d been feverishly working the controls until a bullet entered his skull, off the large control panel. The dials and gauges were dancing and he didn’t have a clue what was going on. “Kronos, Pete! I am here at the controls. What do I do?”

  .G.

  “You’re on. Don’t fuck up!” Kronos said to the Con Ed chief engineer in the conference room.

  “Look to your right as you stand at the console. On the flat panel just above the controls there is a clear plastic box . . .”

  A claxon horn was heard over the speaker in the control room.

  “Oh, you found it.”

  .G.

  Bridge pulled his hand away from the big red button that was marked EMERGENCY FUEL CUT OFF SWITCH. “Yeah. Anything else?”

  .G.

  “No, that should do it.” There was a collective cheer that went up in the conference room. Kronos slapped the chief engineer on the back. “Way to go, man!”

  Over the cheers no one heard Bridge say, “Oh shit!” over the radio link.

  .G.

  Bridge stood still as the room vibrated and the giant Allison-Chalmers generator picked up speed. “Hey, I thought I killed
this thing. Come on, somebody, what’s going on here? This thing isn’t dead, yet.” He turned and yelled, “Get me some explosives on the double!”

  Kronos came over the radio. “Yo, hold your horses there, Bridge. Hey, hey, Con Ed guy, tell him what’s going on.”

  The voice of the engineer came back on. “My friend, without its fuel supply turning the rotator, and since it’s still hooked up to the smaller local New York City grid, which it was overpowering before you cut the fuel, the generator is reversing into a motor. It’s actually speeding up back to its natural resonant frequency. There is no need for concern. It will happen till we break the shunt they put across the master disconnect relay.”

  For the first time today, Bridge let out a sigh, and dropped his shoulders. He hit his Tac radio mic. “Brooke, it’s Bridge. It’s over! Facility secure, threat neutralized.” Then he turned to help the wounded.

  .G.

  “Thank God, Bridge. Have George alert the president.”

  “Where are you?” Bridge asked.

  “I’m after the son of a bitch who killed Nigel and half my team and nearly you and me.”

  “Good hunting. Say hello for me.”

  “Will do . . . Oh, by the way, well done, Bridge.”

  “It was a team effort—your team, Brooke.”

  “Duly noted.” She clipped the mic back on her vest and turned the corner. There, in a Ford sedan, was a man using binoculars. There were two other men in the car with him. She quickly hid behind the edge of the building, but it was too late; they’d seen her. She heard the doors close and saw the car pull away. She darted back behind a parked car and hit her radio. “Bridge, get your choppers to follow a black Ford Taurus that’s going south on Vernon Boulevard. Our guy’s in it. Also send backup to the corner of Forty-First and Vernon.” As she finished, the car she was behind shook as a fusillade of bullets slammed into the rear corner panel. Brooke squatted down and swept her MP5 under the car while holding the trigger, the tires exploded as the spray of bullets fanned out wide. They caught the two men attacking her in their lower legs and feet and they went down. She then rolled to the side of the car and scurried across the street, putting more distance between her and the men who, although down, could still shoot if they could control their pain. Shots rang out and she heard yelling; she looked over the edge of the Caddy she was using as cover and saw four Hercules Unit cops kicking away the guns from the two guys they’d made dead on the ground. Brooke got up and waved to one of them and ran off to get to a car. She found a detective’s car running with its dash light going.