by Nick Mariano
By the time the police arrived, which was only a matter of minutes, Bob and Nazari were already driving through the streets of NYC and looking for the quickest way out of the city.
Police from the two squad cars went right to the front desk and identified themselves and the clerk grabbed some keys and took them to the rooms the people had been staying in. The police knocked and when there was no answer they entered each of the four rooms and made a quick search. Enough evidence was found to confirm that this was in fact where the ISIS members had been staying. They showed the desk clerk some more photos and he picked out Bob and Nazari from the group of photos without a bit of hesitation. He also had recorded their SUV license number and the make of their vehicle and gave that to the officers. He asked when he would get the reward and the officers said they’d have someone get in touch with him. They moved to their patrol cars and quickly, radioed the vehicle ID and license number to the command center and within minutes an all points bulletin was issued throughout the NYPD. Officers were told to be on the lookout for the subject SUV and that the occupants should be considered armed and dangerous. Officers were also told to tail the vehicle but not to attempt to stop it for fear that the occupants might detonate another device within the city. The Police Commissioner and Homeland Security were immediately contacted and all concerned agreed to meet in the Commissioner’s Office in ten minutes.
Bob and Nazari wove through the NY streets. Bob knew all the short cuts from having lived there for over a year. So far their photos hadn’t appeared on TV and Bob hoped that the authorities weren’t aware that Aisha and Hassan had any accomplishes. The car sped down side streets until Bob finally saw the sign for one of the tunnels leading out of the city. They paid their toll and shot into the tunnel but not before a surveillance camera picked up the license plate number and a dispatcher radioed police cars in the area. Bob had rethought things while driving and decided to head back to their safe house by Scranton, Pennsylvania, instead of trying to get to Northern Virginia without being spotted. Once they got through the tunnel they could hit some highways before getting on secondary roads and making their way back to Pennsylvania. Bob was unaware that the feds had found the Pa. safe house after the group had departed for NYC. So far Bob didn’t detect anyone following them and he was sure that they had made the perfect get away. Bob wasn’t aware though that an unmanned drone had picked up their car just as it was exiting the tunnel.
Following the 9/11 attacks in NYC the federal government decided to institute a highly classified program to protect its cities from future attacks. A small fleet of General Atomics MQ-1 Predator unmanned aerial vehicles, drones to most people, had been purchased by the government and distributed throughout key cities in the U.S.A. The Predator carried cameras and sensors and was modified and upgraded to carry and fire two AGM-14 Hellfire missiles. The aircraft had previously been used exclusively overseas by the Air Force and CIA and was deployed in such areas of the globe as Afghanistan, Pakistan, Bosnia, Iraq, Yemen, Libya, Syria and Somalia. The Predator was able to fly up to 400 miles to a target and its cameras could zoom in and identify persons in a vehicle from over one mile up. It had been used in the U.S. primarily for intelligence and reconnaissance gathering although it was a substantial offensive weapon. The AGM-14 Hellfire missiles that it carried were 100 pound air to surface types and the drone could conduct precision strikes against most targets. The drone that now trailed Bob and Nazari was one such Predator and carried two Hellfire missiles.
The NYPD Commissioner had full authority to deploy the drone in any situations where he thought there was a high degree of danger against his city. Use of the Hellfire missile, however, was at the discretion of the President of the United States only. The Commissioner telephoned the White House on a special phone used only for national emergencies. He explained the situation to the President and requested permission to deploy the Hellfire missile if the opportunity arose. He told the President that the two occupants in the vehicle had been confirmed as two of the remaining ISIS members and although there was no evidence to support it, there was a high degree of certainty that another device containing the virus,could be in the subject’s vehicle. With the slightest bit of hesitation, the President approved use of the Hellfire missile but only if it could be used without the lose of life or property beyond the subject vehicle. The Commissioner concurred.
SA Howard and the Commissioner continued to follow the route of the vehicle and it soon became apparent that it might be headed back to the same Pennsylvania safe house that Howard and his team had found and searched just a few days before.
The vehicle continued on a course toward Pennsylvania and the safe house and Howard told the Commissioner that once it entered the property there was no possibility that any outsiders could be injured if the missile was unleashed. Howard then telephones the two agents who were surveilling the house in case anyone returned to it and told them to withdraw a mile up the road and standby. Howard and the Commissioner waited patiently as the clock continued to tick off the hours and finally at 3:00 pm, the vehicle turned off the main highway and wound its way to the safe house. When they arrived Bob waited for the two guards to open the gate remotely but when the gates didn’t open, he exited the vehicle and punched a code into the keypad next to the gate. He wondered where the two might be, however, they were probably either sleeping or fucking off and weren’t paying attention to the entrance. Bob reentered the vehicle and just as he started toward the house , the Commissioner gave the release codes to the airman flying the drone. The codes were received and accepted by the airman flying the drone that day and at first he thought this might be a test, but he finally realized it was the real thing. He steadied the flight of the drone, armed the two Hellfire missiles and just as the car pulled up in front of the house, he released the two birds. Just as Bob and Nazari were releasing their seat belts and getting ready to exit the vehicle, the two missiles impacted it and within a matter of seconds the vehicle, its two passengers and anything else in the vehicle, were incinerated in a ball of fire. It was total and absolute destruction. Bob and Nazari never knew what happened. Howard and the Commissioner turned to each other and shook hands. The chase was now over. Only Alim remained at large. It was the first time in the history of the United States that such a weapon had been deployed on American soil to foil a possible terrorist attack. Up until that day, the Predator and Hellfire had only been used overseas against terrorist targets.
A subsequent search of the Pennsylvania and NY safe houses tuned up no new evidence about the terrorists or how they had developed their weapon. Agents did, however, find two shallow graves when they checked the NY compound again. Two bodies, both with bullet holes to their heads were found buried. One person appeared to have been infected by the virus as his body displayed numerous black and blue oozing sores. The other body displayed a large bloody bite mark on the person’s forearm. The bodies were removed to Fort Detrick and authorities would later confirm that one person was Doctor Alim Maloof, who had been identified as part of the NC group, and the other person was a Robert Preston, recently discharged from the US Army’s Special Forces. Preston had developed medical problems and after being discharged from a VA Hospital became a drifter and had wandered from city to city. His connection with the ISIS members was not known and would never be established. Many assumed he was just at the wrong place at the wrong time.
A CURE IS FOUND?
Doctors and scientists at Fort Detrick and the CDC finally realized that it might be impossible to cure those who had already become infected either by inhaling the virus or after being bitten by an infected zombie. One group of scientists then decided to try to develop a vaccine to prevent people from becoming infected in the first place. Working with various vaccines that were developed during the Cold War to combat biological attacks by the Soviets, one group finally made a major breakthrough. A number of lab animals were inoculated with a vaccine labeled X554 and then exposed to the virus by using tissu
e from infected bodies. After five days the animals showed no signs of the infection and the scientists decided to rapidly move the experiment to the human stage. A volunteer came forward to act as a test subject and the vaccine was administered. The subject was then exposed to some newly infected patients for several hours and then put in isolation. After five days the subject reported no ill effects from the exposure and blood tests confirmed that the virus had not taken hold in his body. Although the scientists weren’t 100% sure that they had a totally effective vaccine, they also knew it was the only thing they had so far. An initial supply of the X554 vaccine was stored at Fort Detrick and medical teams were dispatched to outlying areas in NY where the virus had not yet spread. People were administered the vaccine and the scientists and doctors sat and waited to see if any new cases would be reported in these areas. Meanwhile a number of pharmaceutical companies were pressed into service by the federal government and started to manufacture the vaccine. Gradually all the Eastern states were brought under control and only a handful of new cases were reported. By this point in time, however, over 15,000 had been infected and 13,000 had already died. Two hundred new cases were reported and authorities moved into these areas quickly and cordoned off the towns so that the infected could be contained. The government then mandated that all persons in certain areas of the United States, where infections were previously reported, must be vaccinated. The program continued for several weeks and it appeared that things had finally slowed down and the virus had run its course.
Over the next several weeks only one case of the virus was reported on the East Coast and thankfully the virus never moved too far westward. Everyone was hopeful that they had seen the last of the virus and of zombies roaming city streets.
THREE MONTHS LATER
The second attack on Radio City Music Hall had resulted in only 2,000 of the 6,000 attendees being infected thanks to the quick thinking of a NYPD Detective who discharged the fire sprinkler system to keep the virus from rapidly spreading. Most of those infected had been sitting in one of the three mezzanine sections and almost all those sitting on the main floor and the entertainers on the stage and in the orchestra pit had escaped being infected. The fact that the authorities had segregated people by section when they arrived at the armories and stadiums where they were being held further helped to keep the rate of infection down. The vaccine that the Army’s Medical Command and CDC had developed kept new infections from starting and finally after almost three months since the initial attack at the County Fair at Whitney Point, NY, not a single incidence of the virus popping up anywhere in the United States had been reported in the last three weeks. The President held a special address to the nation and announced that the virus had finally been stopped and that the vaccine the medical authorities had developed appeared to be working and doing its job. The fact still remained that over 20,000 people in the United States had fallen victim to the deadly virus and it was one of the deadliest terrorist attacks to take place in modern times. At no other time in the history of the world had zombie like people roamed the streets of towns and cities attacking people. The attack on the World Trade Center on 9/11 had resulted in 2,996 killed, which included 19 of the hijackers, a record at that time. The President assured the nation that the government was working diligently to prevent this type of attack from ever happening again. What the President didn’t tell the nation was that the last of the terrorists had been killed on a country road in northeastern Pennsylvania by a Predator drone equipped with two Hellfire missiles. Nor did he tell the nation that these drones continued to patrol the skies of the nation ready to strike again if the situation warranted it.
Authorities had finally ascertained that the virus used by ISIS had been a super weapon developed by the Nazis during World War II and that Hitler and Himmler had personally overseen the project. Agents from the US working with German Intelligence had uncovered classified records that were still held by the German Government outlining the wartime project. Josef Mengele, the doctor in charge of Auschwitz, and a group of doctors had successfully combined the flu, plague and rabies viruses to form a super virus and had been working with Reichfuhrer Himmler to deliver the virus to the shores of the United States. Himmler had used three U-boats to deliver the virus to different locations on the East Coast. Commando teams were then bring to the virus containers ashore to German agents who were already in place. Mengele had also developed special canisters and outer containers to protect the virus, which remained in a dormant stage until it was again exposed to the atmosphere. German war records reflected that three U-boats had set sail for the United States sometime in 1943, however, all contact was lost with them before they reached their final destinations. Himmler finally assumed that the submarines had been detected by Allied forces and subsequently sunk. No word was ever heard back from the U-boats and there was never any word that the super virus had ever been released in America. Himmler assumed the project was a failure and abandoned it.
As the Allies neared Germany, Mengele and several of his colleagues fled from Auschwitz to avoid capture. Various stories of where Mengele had finally settled remained a mystery although many believed that he had made it to South America, where he assumed a different identity. The actual medical files concerning the super virus experiment were never recovered and the government believed that Mengele had either destroyed his records or taken some of the papers with him. Several references could be found in Germany’s war files about the experiment and what its final purpose was but nothing revealed how the doctor had actually engineered the deadly virus. Most historians believed that if Germany had been successful in delivering the virus to the shores of America that it could have turned the tide of the war. Germany would have gained the upper hand and the United States would have had to refocus itself on the virus spreading throughout its homeland rather than continuing its fight against Germany in Europe. Hitler may have ended up winning World War II and the world may have been a very different place.
Homeland Security and the Department of State’s Bureau of Diplomatic Security continued to screen foreign visitors to ascertain whether they had terrorist backgrounds. Both the U.S. and foreign governments would actively track potential ISIS members who traveled to Syria and Yemen for training and it would become a worldwide crime to lend any type of support to a known terrorist group. Several more ISIS fighters would be arrested and detained in the U.S. and abroad and authorities would become ever more diligent following the attacks in the US.
Authorities would finally agree that the five people identified with ISIS in the recent attacks were the only people involved and that when Bob and Nazari were killed by the Predator drone, the last of the virus canisters had also been destroyed.
EPILOGUE
In March 2015, the Wilmington Star Newspaper carried a story that researchers had found the wreck of the U-576, which had been sunk toward the end of World War II. The U-boat had sunk for some unknown reason as US Naval records failed to reflect that it had been attacked or sunk by any U.S. Naval vessels during the war. The German Government made a brief statement the following day that the U-576 had been lost during the war while on a mission along the East Coast of the US. The wreckage lay in 200 feet of water near New Bern, NC, and was considered a war grave, however, both the United States and Germany had given approval for divers to visit the site.
Gary and Reed were dive instructors from Myrtle Beach, SC, and although for years they had frequently talked about diving a U-boat site in NC , they just never got around to it. On May 2015 they finally decided to make the trip to NC to dive the newly discovered U-boat 30 miles off the NC shoreline. Both divers had recently completed their technical diving courses and so a dive of 200 feet although deep by recreational standards, was not the maximum they were capable of diving. Both had trained to depths of over 350 feet already. They got in touch with a friend who owned a dive shop in Wilmington who said he would take them out to the wreck site on one of his slow days. They would be the onl
y two divers diving the new site.
It was a beautiful NC day and the seas were like glass on the day of their trip. Water temperatures were still a bit cool but the visibility was supposed to be at least 80 feet during the day. It would be the ideal day for their visit to the U-576.
They slowly descended to the wreck site and initially the water was cold and hazy, although as they passed through the thermocline the visibility improved dramatically. At about 150 feet they could begin to make out the outline of what appeared to be a German U-boat. When they finally reached the bottom at 200 feet they could see the boat clearly and noted that it had been split in two and that wreckage was scattered across a wide area of the ocean’s bottom. They circled the wreck once or twice to get their bearings and on the last pass before their planned ascent Reed spotted what looked like a metal box several yards from the actual wreckage of the sub. A closer look at the box revealed that it was constructed of some sort of steel, that it was still intact and had heavy clamps securing the lid. A engraved Nazi SS emblem was faintly visible on its lid. The divers decided that they would retrieve the box since it could contain something of value or some items that would be historically valuable to the local museum, which had an entire wing devoted to U-boats of WWII. They attached a lift bag to the box and slowly filled the bag with air from a spare air tank. They both watched as the box began its slow ascent to the surface.