by Nick Mariano
Later that afternoon the four ISIS members met back at the hotel and after some preliminary discussion the sites quickly narrowed down to either Macy’s or Radio City. It was finally decided that Radio City would be chosen as they already knew it was a sold out performance the next night and that meant at least 6,000 people possibly getting infected. Once they departed the theater they would spread the virus throughout all of NYC. Casualties would be enormous. Hassan had already built the timer/firing device and they were ready to go the following day. Aisha would carry the device and place it and Hassan would accompany her to the theater and wait for her outside. This attack would far surpass Whitney Point.
Meanwhile, Howard and the Police Commissioner met again to discuss any developments regarding the five ISIS members. Police teams were still on Bob’s NY home and at Alim’s home and Mount Sinai, however, no one had appeared at any of the locations. Photos had been distributed to all law enforcement personnel, however, not to the local press. They feared that the terrorists might run if they knew the authorities thought they were in NYC. Security was increased at the subways and all major sporting events. It was just a matter of wait and see.
The day of the attack finally arrived and Aisha and Hassan went over some last minute details. Hassan and Aisha would travel by taxi to the theater as Bob had said there was added security at all the subway stations. Aisha already had her ticket and she would enter the theater approximately ten minutes before the show started and make her way to her seat in the second mezzanine . The device will already be set and she would place it under the seat in front of her and leave when the timer had five minutes remaining. This would give her ample time to exit Radio City and meet up with Hassan for their trip back to the hotel.
Richard DeAngelo, Tony Cesario, Johnny DeSanto and Sammy LaSante, were all detectives assigned to protect the Police Commissioner of NY and all worked doing VIP protection during their off duty hours. That night they would be going to Radio City Music Hall to do security for the two key performers, Tony Bennett and Lady Gaga. It was easy duty, good money and they got to see a lot of entertainers up close and personal. They were all from one of New York’s Italian neighborhoods, had gone through school together, the police academy together and finally ended up being NYPD Detectives. They were now on temporary duty providing protection to the Police Commissioner, who was a high profile individual in the city.
During tonight’s performance Richie and Tony would cover the front entrance to Radio City in case something happened inside, Johnny would sit in the Radio City Control Room where he could monitor the entire theater via CCTVs located throughout. Sammy would stay backstage and be there in case they had to quickly move the performers from the building. There had been a number of bomb threats throughout the years at Radio City but nothing really serious. Now, however, the entire city was on alert for the possibility of a biological attack like what had taken place at Whitney Point just the week before. Everyone was on high alert throughout the city and Sammy thought to himself that Radio City would be an ideal location for an attack like ISIS did at the County Fair.
The show started at 8:00 pm sharp and Aisha and Hassan arrived at the theater around 7:40. The device was already armed and was set to disperse its deadly contents in approximately 35 minutes, 8:15 pm. Aisha would enter Radio City at about 7:55 and make her way to her seat. After the lights went down she would slip her backpack under the seat in front of her and leave the theater. Her seat was on the end of the row in the second mezzanine and she only had to get by two persons before she reached the aisle. It would then take her about three minutes to reach the front entrance and meet up with Hassan. Just after they were on their way the device should activate and the deadly virus would spread throughout the mezzanine areas and hopefully to the main floor below.
By 8:00 pm Aisha was in her seat and the lights slowly lowered as Tony Bennett and Lady Gaga came on stage to a round of applause and started their first duet. Aisha checked her watch and just after the first song ended she stood and excused herself as she exited the row. The two people on the end of the row looked at her with a strange look as they couldn’t figure out why someone would be leaving just as the show got started. Aisha was walking up the aisle when one of the persons from her row yelled that she had left her backpack. She speeded up her pace and didn’t look back. He yelled again and Aisha took off at a slight jog. The man looked back at the backpack and either he or someone close by suddenly yelled “Bomb!” Aisha flew by an attendant who immediately took to his radio and informed security that they may have a problem. All the NYPD detectives working the theater suddenly sprang into action. Sammy ran onto the stage and grabbed Tony Bennett and Lady Gaga and yelled that they should come with him immediately. The three ran to the rear exit and left the building. Johnny scanned the CCTV monitors and spotted a woman running. Thinking back to the photos of the ISIS terrorists that had been distributed, he was 95% sure this was the woman in one photo. He radioed Richie and Tony at the front door that she was headed their way and told them his suspicion. Richie radioed back to him and told him to mag lock all the doors immediately. An attendant had just reported a mist like substance being discharged from where the suspect was seated. It had to be another virus attack and if 6,000 people suddenly got exposed and raced from the theater the results would be disastrous. He also told Johnny to trip the sprinkler system in hopes that the falling water might keep the mist from fully rising and spreading throughout the theater. A second before the doors locked down a woman came running through the exit next to Tony. Tony drew his 9 mm and as he yelled for the woman to stop, she slid her hand inside her coat and Tony had reason to believe she was going for a weapon. He fired two shots dead on, hitting the woman once in the chest and once in the head. A gun dropped from her coat to the sidewalk as she fell. As this was happening Richie saw a man who had been standing on the sidewalk outside the theater for the past 15 minutes begin to bring out a gun, pointing it at Tony. Richie drew his gun and fired three shots just as the man fired one shot at Tony. The man dropped to the sidewalk with three chest shots in a two-inch circle. Tony was also hit but only in the shoulder.
As soon as the sprinklers went off in the theater there was mass panic. Several people had heard the word “bomb” yelled, many saw a strange mist rising in the mezzanine and almost everyone knew what had happened at Whitney Point the week before. People stampeded toward the exits only to find them completely locked down. Several people were trampled to death and cries of help could be heard outside the doors where Tony and Richie stood. The NYPD bomb squad and chem/bio team had already been notified and the Commissioner and SA Howard were already enroute. Tony and Richie were in a dilemma. If they kept the doors closed and locked, several people could be killed or injured by the panicked crowd. If they were wrong and this wasn’t a biological attack they would surely be fired from the NYPD and perhaps even serve jail time. If, on the other hand, it was a biological attack, they had to contain these people, otherwise the entire city could be infected. It was the old adage, dammed if you do and dammed if you don’t.
By the time the Commissioner and Homeland Security arrived, Johnny had played back the video from the second mezzanine and confirmed that something had been discharged by the seat vacated by the woman Tony had killed. The Task Force decided that everyone in the theater had to be decontaminated and relocated for observation. Additional Biological teams arrived and portable decontamination stations were set up. The patrons in the theater were informed of the situation and everyone was asked for their cooperation. Anyone who got out of hand would be arrested. Once they went through a field decontamination, they would be dressed in hospital clothes and given a mask to cover the mouth and nose. They would board city buses and be relocated to an armory on the other side of NYC. They would remain there until they were cleared to leave by medical personnel.
The process took several hours. Chemical/biological teams finally confirmed that a second device, similar to what was used in
the Whitney Point attack, had been deployed at Radio City. Medical doctors were hopeful that the quick thinking of the NYPD Detectives might have reduced the spread of the virus when they activated the fire sprinklers.
Once people reached the armory they were separated according to where they were sitting at Radio City. People on the main floor were keep in one area and each of the three mezzanines in other areas. The second mezzanine, where the device was activated, would likely have the most exposed people and then the other two mezzanines. Spread of the virus to the lower main floor and stage area would hopefully be minimal. It would be a matter of 5-7 days before doctors could fully determine the degree of infection from the attack.
News of the Radio City Music Hall attack quickly spread through all the news channels on TV and within thirty minutes all the world had heard of the attack. People in NYC further panicked and many refused to leave their homes until they were assured that the authorities had caught the terrorists. New Yorkers were told to stay off the main roads of the city so that emergency vehicles could enter and exit the city quickly.
Bob and Nazari also were watching TV and saw that the attack had taken place as planned, however, the news stations were also reporting that a gun fight had ensued outside the theater and two people, a man and a woman, had been believed killed by NYPD Detectives. Bob and Nazari wondered if the two people were Aisha and Hassan.
MEANWHILE ELSEWHERE
Work continued at the CDC and US Army Medical Command at Fort Detrick on finding a cure for the deadly virus. The number of infected has risen to over 6,000 with 4,000 now dead. The infection has spread to two additional states, Pennsylvania and Connecticut. The rate of infection had begun to wind down, however, all it took were another dozen or so people to spread the disease to more states and the rate would start to increase again. The occurrence of zombies and flesh eaters had also increased and now some of the infected managed to live longer than the projected 5-6 days when the virus first got started. It appeared that the virus may had mutated and people were living almost two weeks before they finally died. Hospitals were overrun with patients and doctors really had nothing to help the infected except to try to keep them comfortable until they eventually died. The infected were placed in a number of large stadiums and Army personnel guarded the facilities so that none of the infected could escape. There were incidents of the infected trying to overrun the guards and in a number of instances the guards finally had to resort to shooting many of the infected who had progressed to the zombie stage. In one case an entire stadium population had to be exterminated using poison gas when it appeared the infected would breach the entrances and escape into the nearby towns and wooded areas.
So far the virus had been confined to the East Coast, however, a few isolated cases further west had been reported in Illinois and Nebraska. Obviously some of the infected had managed to leave NY State before the quarantine. New York and the surrounding boroughs still had not reported any cases. Later in the day following the reported attack on Radio City Music Hall, the news reported that no persons had managed to escape from the theater after the virus had been released. Over 200 people had initially been killed in the stampede to exit the theater, however, the doors had all been remotely locked and no one had exited. The entire theater population had later gone through a decontamination process run by the NY authorities and the US Army and persons were then relocated to military armories and stadium facilities for further evaluation. It was estimated that authorities would not have exact numbers concerning how many people had actually been infected after the device discharged the virus for at least another 1-2 weeks. Until that time no persons would be allowed to return home. Although the attack was considered a major terrorist attack, authorities said that fatalities would have been much more extensive if persons had managed to leave the theater and move to other parts of the city. The number of potentially infected persons at Radio City numbered close to 6,000, a capacity crowd for the concert that night, however, with the population of NYC numbering over 8.4 million, the number of infected could have risen into the millions if the virus had been allowed to get past the doors of Radio City. The authorities again stressed that the virus was airborne like the regular flu and that the best prevention against it was for people to remain at home until authorities were certain the virus had been contained. News stations continued to show the scene at Whitney Point, NY and a phone video taken by a passersby at Radio City showed the gunfight between two NYPD Detectives and the suspected terrorists. Authorities had stated that they had yet to confirm the identity of the two persons killed. (This was in fact not true, however, as NYPD had a firm identification. The two killed were Aisha Samaha and Hassan Boulos, the same ISIS members initially identified by State Department agents in Wilmington, NC. Three other ISIS members were still at large) The police authorities still wanted the remaining terrorists to believe that the identities were unknown so as not to spook the remainder of the group. Howard and the Commissioner hoped that either Bob or Alim would eventually return to his house and be picked up by their surveillance. Up until now the authorities had no clue where the ISIS members were hiding. NYPD planned to release photos shortly to the news channels of Aisha and Hassan in hopes that someone had seen them and could help authorities locate the remaining members.
The very next day all the major news channels carried photos of a young man and women who had now been identified as the persons responsible for the Radio City Music Hall attack. Homeland Security said that both had ties to ISIS and that this had been a terrorist attack. Authorities asked all New Yorkers to immediately call the NYPD Hot Line if they had any information about these two individuals. A $50,000 Reward was offered by Homeland Security for any information on the couple or any individuals they may have been traveling with.
Bob sat watching the TV in his hotel room along with Nazari and they both agreed it was time to leave NYC.
GOODBYE NYC
Bob and Nazari had just finished watching the morning news coverage concerning the attack on Radio City Music Hall the night before. Authorities had reported that a device, similar to what was used at Whitney Point, had been detonated on mezzanine number two, and had dispersed what was believed to be the same virus as that used at the County Fair. The Tony Bennett/Lady Gaga Concert had been sold out and so the audience numbered somewhere near 6,000 persons. Police had managed to get both Bennett and Lady Gaga out of the theater before the device had detonated. NYPD Detectives at the theater on the night of the attack had mag locked all the entrances and activated the fire sprinkler system as soon as they detected something was wrong and that an attack could be occurring. Several people had been killed while trying to escape the theater. Somewhere along the way the word “Bomb” had been shouted and this was the start of mass panic in the theater. Authorities believe that the water from the sprinkler had cut down on the amount of virus that may have reached people in other sections of the theater. Police and military authorities had quickly arrived at the scene and taken command of the situation. All theater patrons were cleaned at outside decontamination stations and made to board on site buses, which transported them to holding areas on the outskirts of NYC. Area stadiums and armories were being used to secure these people until it could be confirmed whether or not they had been infected. Army EOD experts had confirmed that a biological attack had taken place. The Police Commissioner, Mayor and Homeland Security were evaluating the situation and the Mayor was scheduled to make a public statement later in the day. The White House and President were also monitoring the incident and the President was scheduled to meet with his Security Council later that day. All steps were being taken to prevent further attacks. It was believed that ISIS had been behind both attacks. The two people killed outside Radio City last night were now confirmed to have been trained by ISIS in Syria. Police were searching for additional ISIS members in the city. A $50,000 reward had been offered for information on the two ISIS members killed or any persons that may have associated with
them.
Bob told Nazari to get all his things together and meet him at the SUV in the garage. One device was left and they planned to leave NYC as quickly as possible and head to a safe house in Northern Virginia to plan their next and final attack. Ten minutes later they had left the hotel but not before an alert desk clerk had seen on TV the photos of the two ISIS members that had been killed. He immediately knew that they had been staying at the hotel and that there were two other men who had checked in with them. He called the telephone number on the television screen and said he was calling about the reward and knew where the individuals had been staying and that there were two other people with them. The NYPD command center had received hundreds of calls already, however, the dispatcher thought there might actually be something to this one. He knew the hotel involved and thought to himself that it was a perfect place if you wanted to hide out. He thanked the desk clerk and said they would look into it and that the clerk shouldn’t do anything to alert the two remaining occupants. Two radio cars were immediately dispatched.