Day of Wrath (18 page)

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Over the next hour, the four other schools under siege were freed of their nightmares, if freedom could ever really be achieved after what so many young hearts and souls had witnessed and endured. A nation had seen, on their wide flat-screen TVs and on their hand-held phones, images of the carnage.

Every school in America was in terrified shutdown. The nearly 98,000 public schools in America, along with tens of thousands of private and parochial schools, tens of thousands of day care centers, thousands of universities, colleges, and community colleges, all were in lockdown. The universal sound of that day would be the wailing of sirens. Every local police officer, whether on duty or off, had raced to the schools in their town. For almost all, there was a school with their own children or those of friends and neighbors. County sheriffs raced to protect schools as well, until called to go to nearby interstates where an even greater mass murder was unfolding.
 

State police raced to the interstates. Their years of looking for drunk drivers, or, in quiet moments, pulling over those going eleven miles over the speed limit, or their being first on the scene of a deadly crash, none of that had prepared them for chasing gunmen armed with AK-47s, joyful in their killing and with no intent of being taken alive.

Across the nation every National Guard unit had been called to mobilize by the second hour, but it would take hours more before the first vehicle rolled out, the first aircraft took to the air. Though some of the first black hawks, armed with 20mm and air-to-ground weaponry, were lifting off.

As for the Air Force units within the continental United States: the half dozen jets that were actually armed and up on routine patrols or practice drills had, when the extent of the attack was realized, been vectored to respond as if it were another 9/11. They closed in on New York, Washington, and other major cities, circled and remained ready to engage.

As on 9/11, an hour and a half into the attack, the FAA informed all air traffic controllers to order every plane in America to land, warning that any that deviated from a flight controller's orders would be shot down without warning. At this time of day, upwards of three thousand commercial aircraft and thousands of general aviation planes were in the air over the United States. It would take time to jockey each plane into position, to redirect planes bound for O’Hare and order them to LaGuardia, to order any aircraft approach from the Atlantic, the Pacific or the Gulf of Mexico that if it had sufficient fuel, to return back to its place of origin or seek emergency landings in Heathrow, Seoul, and Tokyo.

The ripple effects of fewer than one hundred and fifty jihadists were now echoing around the world, as promised by ISIS and their caliph months earlier. As with so many previous threats by other terrorists, this threat had been received with just a ripple of notice.

Unlike 9/11, this time, aircraft were indeed shot down. A commercial flight, a “puddle jumper,” missed its approach to Austin, and a new copilot, still in training, when requested by ground control to switch its transponder code and to swing out southwest of the city until things were sorted out, punched in the wrong code. He entered the 7700 number, indicating that they were no longer in control of the plane, that a terrorist had seized it.
 

A Texas National Guard A-10 warthog was tracked to the plane with the hapless copilot, his error compounded when the plane appeared to be circling toward the middle school that was still under siege. The pilot of the warthog was ordered to release his weapons and to drop the plane, no matter its location. He did as ordered. Twenty-seven innocent people on the plane and eight unlucky people on the ground died.
 

Thousands of small general aviation planes were up and about on that autumn afternoon; in the northeast it was exceptional flying weather after more than a week of autumn rains and winds. Though it would seem hard to believe for some, more than a few of these pilots were not yet aware the nation was under attack, flying in airspace where radios were not mandated. Three were shot down by civilians on the ground, who assumed they had to be terrorists if they were still up.
 

All of this chaos was applauded and greeted with joyful laughter in Raqqa, one of the planners crying out that his prediction was right, that the cowardly infidels would now turn about as rabid dogs, and begin to slaughter each other in their fear and insanity.
 

The shutdown of the American airspace, within minutes, resulted in the announcement of the closings of British, Dutch and German airports to all international flights going to or coming from the United States. The same occurred along the Pacific rim. In another half hour, the ripple effect was indeed global, nearly every nation announcing that all but internal domestic flights were to land at the nearest airport and hold. News sources around the world were reporting their own woes as tens of millions of nonbelievers lamented how their lives had now become inconvenienced, vacations ruined, business meetings delayed, funerals missed, and family reunions cancelled.
 

The effect even spread to that new hub of world travel, the wealthy sheikdom of Dubai, which would one day very soon acknowledge the caliphate. This global cascade of events was even better than they had hoped for and revealed yet again the weakness and cowardice of their enemies.

CHAPTER TWELVE

The attacks along the interstates had hit their climax and the end game was on, the personal end game which every holy jihadist on this mission knew would be the final result. All knew that they would not outlive this day. But oh, how they were praised by their clerics (who were staying safely at home even as they extolled others who died) to the rewards that awaited them in paradise. All that had been denied to them on earth was now moments away in the gardens of paradise. In the brief interludes of killing, they braced each other’s courage by boasting to each other of all that would be given to them: the praise they would receive, the slender boys with angelic faces who would serve them and the virginal pure women who would await them. Not like the sluts of America with which more than a few jihadists had entertained themselves for a meager price in the days before this holy day of martyrdom. More than one began to chant sura 52, speaking of promises of dark-eyed virgins, of wine and young boys, laughing with joy even as they died. Everything denied on earth would be theirs for eternity in just a few more minutes.
 

In the car racing along Interstate 76 northeast of Denver, one jihadist considered the banal and earthly concerns and stupidity of the Nazi SS. Kill enough Jews and you got a trifling medal and promotion to some unpronounceable rank. But in his reality, if you kill enough infidels, if you are a believer in the prophet, you gained the most beautiful virgins of paradise. There was even a laughing argument among the three in the car, one of them dying of wounds, as to whose virgins would be the most beautiful and willing to submit and not cry with pain to their lusts. They spotted a somewhat slow Volkswagen van of the 1960s, occupied by an elderly couple traveling across country who were recreating the honeymoon travels of their 50th wedding anniversary and slaughtered them both while trading accounts of whose virgins would be the most beautiful and willing to accept their desires, no matter what was demanded of them.

It was finally an F-18 out of the Air Force Academy that had been stalking the murderers for over ten minutes, desperately waiting for an open space where no other cars would be hit, until finally under direct orders to shoot regardless of further damage, that placed a round into the black sedan, vaporizing the three within and ending their musings about beautiful virgins and young boys. The shot tragically killed half a dozen innocent people in nearby vehicles as well. After he landed, the base doctor and commanding officer reassured the pilot that if he had not fired, far more would have died. He would never fly combat aircraft again, diagnosed with severe trauma.

The team sweeping Interstate 96 between Grand Rapids and Lansing, Michigan, had enjoyed similar success, slaughtering several hundred until all rifle ammunition was depleted. With the final loads for their 9mm semi autos, they had driven up an exit ramp on the outskirts of Grand Rapids, killed two police officers and seized their patrol car. Their pad map showed a Catholic school only half a dozen blocks away, a target that would be an exceptional finish to it all. With siren wailing, they managed to dodge the confusion of hundreds of parents who had blocked the approaches to the school. Leaping out of the patrol car, they attempted to storm the building. Though they killed several dozen, armed parents and police held the entrance to the school.
 

The report of this attempt on a school, delivered from a police car, created yet more panic. The murderers on the interstate highways, as a final gasp of hate, were now attempting to reach schools close to interstates, especially Catholic schools, disguised as police, and kill all within. Parents, in a renewed frenzy of fear, moved cars to block all approaches to any school while police begged them to keep some lanes open for emergency traffic with several officers shot by panic stricken civilians.

Reports swept the news outlets of lone gunmen being spotted who were waiting to carjack vehicles and set up a hostage situation. Half a dozen people died and several score were wounded that afternoon, as drivers shot at each other, believing the other was “one of them.”
 

And in more than one city throughout the Middle East the reactions were setting in. Many were silent, many sickened, but more than a few joyful as the “Great Satan,” was humbled by ISIS.
 

Raqqa, Syria

Though he had never said so to any of the jihadists before they had left for America, the caliph hoped that several, perhaps even half a dozen, of his warriors would be captured. They would have made such excellent pawns in the months ahead.

He himself had been a prisoner for four years in Iraq. But he had never feared for a moment. It was four years of training, an opportunity every day to observe the enemy. Most of the military police assigned to his prison camp had come out of an American National Guard unit from the New York City area. Many were actually survivors of the World Trade Center as firemen, policemen and medics. Every last one had lost comrades on that day.

So perverted in their thinking, these Americans. He knew that most hated him, and yet even then, many had tried to reach out to speak to him when they discovered he could speak their language. To ask him why? Some had even attempted to convert him and he had played along to learn of their weaknesses.
 

So he knew their vulnerabilities better than they themselves did.
 

So far only one of his warriors had been captured, somewhat honorably unconscious. He was taken during the storming of the fourth school. There had been a wonderful display of the West's evil racism to show to the world when, as the unconscious man was carried out and put into an ambulance, a crowd gathered and spat on him, demanding that he be lynched in front of the school where over two hundred children had died at his hands. The same police officers who had stormed the school were now having to defend the captive. He would be a useful pawn in the months to come for they would put him on trial, which could take a year or more. Demands would be made for his release and there would be some who would actually argue for his release and thus further divide the infidels against each other.
 

All around him laughed as they watched a shouting match on an American network between two members of Congress. Their cherished building was in total lockdown, surrounded by hundreds of security with aircraft overhead. The one politician was demanding immediate vengeance, the other shouting back that now was not the time to overreact.
 

A noted “spokesman” for whatever cause he could barge his way into, was interviewed on a street corner in New York, and shouted that hundreds of innocent ethnic Americans were now being targeted by angry mobs, in a wave of racial hatred not seen since the days of lynchings in the South.
 

All of this was amusing but there was still one more result that he knew would soon unfold. He had predicted it to his inner circle of followers. It was what their president would do. Announcements were going up that within the hour, their leader would speak.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

New York City

“It is now approximately three and a half hours since the first report that America is again under attack. An attack far more broad-reaching than 9/11 because it strikes at our very heart as a nation and as parents.”

The anchor for the network looked haggard, exhausted. Though used to being on camera for hours at a time, his voice was raspy. And it was evident as well that he was having increasing difficulty with emotional control.
 

The network’s afternoon anchor, his stunned reaction while watching the monitor that had been switched off to the rest of the world, was now a moment etched into the nation's memory. The horror of it all did not need to be seen. His reaction, his features, the way his body recoiled from the horror and his cry for vengeance, was shocking to the generations raised since the 1960s who believed that vengeance could never be an act of justice.

There was a time, little more than a generation ago, when the flow of images was controlled by studio executives, producers, political and even sponsor pressures. If the average citizen had filmed something using a hand-held film camera, be it horror or triumph, unless cleared by “wiser heads,” the image was never seen. It was years before the impact of a bullet striking a president down was actually seen as film and not just a few still images.