by Jim Wilson
They were not detected and entered the building and shut the door. In front of them, they could see many tractor trailers and ambulances. They could faintly hear people talking. Bill whispered to Ivan, “Follow me. I have an idea.” They headed to the back of the warehouse and, using their night vision goggles, they could see a ground-level, double garage door at the very back. Two tractor trailers were parked side by side with their hoods two feet from the door. They walked to a truck near the door and Bill pulled out his long knife. With a single lunge, he ran the blade through the side wall of the right front tire. He walked around the truck and plunged the knife into four others tires on the truck. He handed the knife to Ivan, “I need to rest, you do the next truck.” There were seventeen trucks in two rows and they took turns flattening the tires of six of them. “I’m sick of this. Let’s go hunting while it’s still dark.” The trucks took up half the floor space and were at the back west corner. They headed in the direction of the voices they had heard.
It was still pitch black, but their night vision goggles showed a different picture. They could see six men sitting on the floor in the front west corner and a few feet away, against the wall were several AK47s stacked barrel up. “Keep your UZI on them.” Bill was able to quietly walk up to a man with his back to him. He pushed the barrel of his UZI machine gun into the man’s back, “No one move! All of you are under arrest.” One of the men sitting near the wall had his riffle in his lap and fired into the darkness. Bill fired a few rounds and fell back and Ivan opened his UZI pistol on the men, but Bill had taken two hits from the powerful weapon.
Ivan knew that he still had work to do, “Bill I must keep going, but I’ll get you help soon.”
He could see well with his night vision gear and saw no one as he scanned the rest of the warehouse. He saw a solid door to the office area of the warehouse and slowly opened open it. There was no light. He was in a long room where two armed men were standing guard. Eighteen men were sitting at three tables. The guards heard the door open and turned their weapons towards Ivan, but it was still too dark for Ivan to be seen. The guards thought it was one of their own men coming from the warehouse. Ivan quickly thought. I don’t want to just kill these men. I don’t see any weapons. I’ll give them a chance, but the guards are armed. Using his M16 he fired eight rounds at the two guards.
“It’s time to give up!” The men started standing. “You can’t see us, but we have you covered.” He aimed just a little high, and fired another burst of eight rounds from his M16, replaced the clip and chambered a round. “Stay seated, raise your arms and don’t move.”
He was now guarding prisoners, as Bill lie wounded in the warehouse. He needed to alert the police, who hopefully were outside, but he had to first control the prisoners. Then, about ten feet to his left, he saw two large outside windows. He held his M16 to his right shoulder and with his left hand he pulled his UZI pistol and fired a few shots at the windows. He backed the short distance to the missing windows while holding both weapons on his prisoners. I hope that the police are out there. “If you’re out there I need you!” As he called for help, two of his prisoners near the front stood. Ivan held in the trigger of M16 for several seconds and waved the barrel from side to side. The two men each took several hits of the high velocity 223 caliber bullets. The blast also wounded and killed a few of the men sitting near the targets. Several of the prisoners were sprayed with blood and tissue, but there would be no more problem from any of them.
Policemen rushed to the broken windows with weapons drawn. “I need an ambulance, now!” A policeman first aimed his flashlight towards Ivan and then followed the barrel of the M16 to his prisoners.
“How many did you shoot?”
“Not them, my partner is wounded and is in the warehouse and he’s hurt bad.” The police radioed for ambulances and two policemen stepped through the window. One took control of the prisoners. “Follow me.” There was a little light coming through two small windows on the west wall. They arrived at Bill’s side and the policeman aimed his flashlight. Three EMTs joined them.
Bill had been hit near the top of his head and his turban was laying several feet behind him. He was also hit hard by one shot two inches above his heart. The senior EMT first tried to cut open his robe to inspect his wound with his surgical scissors, but they were useless. He then pulled a box cutter from his large red plastic case, lifted the fabric with his hand and pushed the point of the razor sharp blade into the cloth. He could not penetrate it and after several attempts, he gave up. He yelled to one of the other EMTs. ”Get me something sharper. I can’t cut this robe with box cutters.”
Ivan told him, “Its Kevlar lined.”
Against the wall near Bill were several AK47s. In front of the weapons were the bodies of the men Ivan had shot. The police, the EMTs and Ivan were concentrating on Bill, but out of the corner of his eye, Ivan saw an arm reach towards a rifle. He had replaced the clip in his M16 and Ivan lowered the barrel and emptied the entire clip into the bodies. An ambulance had arrived in front of the warehouse and a doctor and two EMTs found a way to pull Bill’s robe off.
The EMTs knew the doctor as Doctor Clara. She was young, attractive and black. This was one of her duty days, and the second year resident had gained skill in treating bullet wounds. She saw the AK47s and knew their penetrating power. “There is no exit wound. Something slowed the bullet.”
“He was wearing light Kevlar armor.”
“That means the projectile was flattened and the wound will be wider. It looks serious and I can’t let him be moved until I probe its path.” She carefully inserted a long metal wire into the opening. “It only went in seven inches and it missed his heart and lung. He’s bleeding internally and he won’t make it if I don’t go in and stop the bleeding.” She cut open his chest, spread the wound, and tied off three deep, severed blood vessels. “His skull was protected from penetration by his Kevlar turban, but the force required for the bullet to be deflected was absorbed by his brain. The bleeding’s under control for now and he’s stable enough to move to the hospital.”
At the time, the six dead bodies near her patient did not interest Doctor Clara. She would not be distracted by the dead and knew her job was to save this life. With a quick review of the scene she did wonder, who is this wounded man? She would never learn her patient’s name or that her brother was offered surrender but chose to shoot. In a few days she would be told that her brother was among the bodies, but the details would be a secret that she would never uncover. Bill had become so familiar with killing that there was no accompanying memory. For him the justifiable destruction of two attackers in a Tampa restaurant parking lot was a shadow somewhere in time. Terrell and Vernon only occupied a few minutes of his thoughts, and Doctor Clara’s brother filled none.
*****
Bill Crane was recovering in a private room at the University Hospital in Tampa. The wounds were from two close range shots from an AK47. The twenty six year shooter, Hiva Akime, was a Jihadist and a Tampa native, who was surrounded by dead relatives. His mother, grandmother, and his two uncles all had met violent deaths. He had a younger sister, Clara, whom life had given a few breaks. Their mother had been fifteen years old when she had given birth to Clara, but it had been a drug-free pregnancy. However, two weeks after Clara’s birth their mother died from an overdose. Their grandmother had been killed in a drive-by shooting so the children moved in with their forty six year old great grandmother. They called her Bella and, by any measure, she was a saint.
Hiva was a wild child and all Bella could do was feed him. Most of his time was spent on the street, but Clara chose a different path. Everyone knew that she was smart, and no matter how bad things got, Bella found a way to keep her in school. Clara had graduated three times and Bella had attended them all. Without fail her brother and uncles would always have other obligations. It seemed like Hiva was always locked up somewhere. He was in prison when Bella told him that his uncles had been killed. She did not know
the details, but an FBI agent told her that they had died attempting a carjacking. Clara said no when her great grandmother begged for money to claim the two bodies, but she did pay for Hiva’s funeral. It took her three tries to find a Christian preacher that would bury him.
Hiva had converted to Islam five months earlier and was taught how to hold his rage for jihad. Even the deaths of his uncles did not set him off. With the recommendation of the Peace Mosque, Hiva had been paroled and with that came a job and housing. The job was at Fast Grow and his housing was at the Tampa Peace Mosque. A brother at the mosque asked if he was really ready for jihad and made him an offer. Hiva’s life had been a training ground for jihad, but it took real nerve to be part of this group. The offer was, “If you want in, it takes a killing and beheading.” The brother advised him of the simplest path, “The easiest kill is a white prostitute.”
Hiva was not interested in easy, “I want to use a knife to kill a white man.”
He used to sell drugs on a dark corner near downtown Tampa, but he had no drugs, only a sharp knife. It took ten minutes for a car to stop. In it was a young well-dressed white man. Hiva ran to the driver’s window and waved a small plastic bag of crushed dried leaves at the driver and they agreed on a price of twenty dollars. He took the twenty and made the man reached out of his window for the bag. The knife was hidden in Hiva’s other hand, and it was easy for him to cut the man’s throat. He had never killed before, but he enjoyed this hunt. With the same knife, he cut off the man’s head, put it into a plastic garbage bag and returned to the mosque. When he showed it to the brother they laughed, danced and hollered for a few minutes before Hiva and the head were taken to the cleric. Hiva was the last man selected for the Tampa jihad.
When he was younger, Hiva had stolen a revolver and later sold it for $60, but he had never fired anything before joining the Peace Mosque. The mosque had a basement area set up to practice shooting. The cleric gave him a new rifle, and it was his to keep. Two of the brothers taught him how to shoot the AK47. It held a clip with thirty 7.62 mm rounds, and Hiva thought they were beautiful. He practiced as much as they would let him and he stopped counting the times he fired full clips of the long bullets at a paper target. The rifle would keep firing if you held the trigger, and he learned how to keep the barrel on target by adding just the right amount of downward force.
Joining the Peace Mosque and being part of the Tampa jihad was just like joining the Army, but there was only a little travel required. When they started filling the trucks and ambulances, Hiva lived full time in the warehouse. The cleric had given him an ambulance, and every day he would spend a few minutes sitting in it. He had pumped the nitrates and diesel fuel mixture into the bladder. It held four tons of explosives and Hiva would deliver it to a very important target. His job was to drive to the top of the Sunshine Skyway Bridge and just walk a few miles to an apartment in St Petersburg. There he would wait for the order to join his brothers for a flight to Libya, Africa.
The day of the jihad arrived and everything was working as planned. It started early with the truck going to Miami. Walter was the driver and he started the engine. Everyone was yelling, “Allah Akbar” as he left the warehouse. Hiva was one of six standing guard over the vehicles when Walter left. The rest of the brothers walked to the front office area to relax for three hours. The plan was for two trucks to go to Orlando at 8am. The rest were local and scheduled to leave at 10am. Twenty minutes after the Miami truck left, things started going wrong, starting with a power failure. It was pitch black with the lights out and all the guards sat down together and waited for power to come back. The rest of the brothers stayed in the office area because around the vehicles the smell of diesel was strong.
Hiva had heard the words before and could tell it was a white man’s voice, “Don’t move! You are under arrest.” Most of the brothers had just put their rifles against the wall, but he didn’t want to scratch his and kept it in his lap. It was his rifle and his rounds that were fired at the white man’s voice. Of all the men in the warehouse, he was the only one to actually use a weapon. He fired into the dark when he heard the man, but never knew he had hit his target. Seconds later he was shot and killed, but he had done his part. If someone had known it was Hiva that shot Bill Crane, it would be likely that his name would have been remembered, but Bill Crane’s partner killed all the witnesses. His memorial would be a cheap funeral with a Christian minister preaching everything Hiva had denounced when he joined the jihad.
*****
Dr. Clara knew that the deaths of her two uncles in a strange way made her life easier, but she could not admit that Hiva’s death made her happy. Together, the three deaths gave her family a new lease on life. Her great grandmother spent the remainder of her long life as part of a prosperous medical family. She loved Clara’s three children and helped raise them to be successful adults, marveling at how easy it was to be happy if your loved ones were married and not criminals and drug addicts. She thought that maybe she should tell her old friends how they could be happy, but they all lived in very bad neighborhoods and the idea passed.
Ivan followed her as they pushed him to the ambulance. As they were loading Bill, Ivan saw the Police Chief, “This place is full of explosives. Get your people out of here as soon as you can.”
“Yes sir. I will.”
The FBI and the ATF were soon at the Tampa warehouse. The power company replaced the green box that furnished power to the steel building. Tampa joined Atlanta, Houston, and Topeka as cities with large buildings full of dangerous explosives. In a few hours, Topeka would be the first location to reach the date and time that Bryan had set and soon the other warehouses would follow. The only person that could stop this chain was Bryan and he dead.
Professionals were trying to find a way to disarm these bombs. ATF scientists were the world’s most knowledgeable in this process. They were also very safety-conscious. Topeka was their test site and gave the order for everyone to stay well clear of all these buildings. They were trying one more experiment in Topeka. They opened a large hole in a wall of the building and attached a two thousand foot cable to an ambulance. They would pull the ambulance to the middle of a large field and use a robot to disassemble it safely.
*****
Bryan had told the Tampa warehouse staff to send off a loaded truck to Miami at 5am. Just before Bill and Ivan had reached the Tampa warehouse that truck loaded with six bladders of explosive mixture was left as instructed. It was to be followed by two trucks to Orlando at 8am, but this delivery business was closed by Bill and Ivan. The early truck was on its way and after a few turns the heavy truck reached an entry ramp for Interstate 75 and headed south. It was driven by Walter, who was a real truck driver that was experienced with Florida roads. Despite his conversion to Islam, Walter never changed his name, but his religious conviction was very strong.
As he shifted through the gears, Walter could tell that the load that he was pulling was too heavy for his engine. He was carrying twenty four tons of the explosive mixture, which was equivalent to a small atomic bomb. He needed to travel almost 300 miles to downtown Miami. The load was keeping his top speed below 50 mph and that speed on the Interstate would draw the attention of the Florida Highway Patrol. He decided to get off the Interstate and travel on back roads. He would start his trip to Miami by using Highway 41, but it had a weight station about twenty miles south of Tampa. The only route he could use to avoid the weight station required him to go through downtown Tampa. The early morning traffic was very light. He exited at the next off-ramp and headed for downtown.
*****
Bill was taken to the University Hospital. He was known by many people at the hospital, but he was not recognized. It would take his skin several more days to regain its original shade. He was still unconscious as he was rolled into the emergency chest pain center. Ivan had called the Major, who called Bill’s family. It was not long before many had joined Ivan in the waiting room. The two taxi cab drivers, the Chief
of Police from Pasco County and several other law enforcement officers were telling Sarah and his mother how wonderful a job he and Ivan had done.
An experienced surgeon, assisted by Bill’s father, explored his chest wound. The 7.62 mm bullet had pierced into his chest for seven inches. The layers of Kevlar behind the robe had shortened the path. An unobstructed AK47 bullet would have passed through him without slowing down, and if this bullet had continued its path it would have cut his spinal cord and then exited. The surgeon removed the bullet, repaired a few small vessels and assessed the remaining damage. He felt that Bill would recover nicely from the chest wound, but, because he was still unconscious, he was transferred to the emergency center for head and neck trauma. A neurosurgeon reviewed all the film and observed that Bill’s brain was slowly swelling. Bill was taken to the neurosurgery wing.
*****
In Topeka the project of removing an ambulance for inspection was underway. Seven ATF scientists were two thousand feet from the ambulance. It was being slowly pulled by a bulldozer towards the center of a large field. The date and time for this site’s detonation, programmed by Bill from the Internet, had arrived and there were no bladders to slow the process in Topeka, Kansas. Every vehicle exploded at the same time. The ATF men were about a half mile from the building and two thousand feet from the ambulance that was securely attached by a steel cable to the bulldozer. It was an ATF order that no one else could be on the farm grounds. What happened to the steel building and all the vehicles inside followed the laws of physics. Everything went from maximum order to maximum disorder. The main blast pressure wave reached the ATF men with deadly force. The ambulances and fire trucks were instantly rubble that was sent thousands of feet into the sky. The ambulance being pulled by the bulldozer flew skyward keeping the cable taunt against the bulldozer. The bulldozer was still in gear and moving forward at a slow speed when it rumbled over the bodies of several of the ATF men. Next, the rain of debris started. Large pieces of metal fell to the ground within a three-mile radius of ground zero, but small debris was also swept eastward by the wind for more than ten miles. The cable being pulled by the bulldozer floated to the ground like a fishing line without a fish and the bulldozer rolled forward until it was stopped by a large oak tree.