First Strike (37 page)

“And if they don't?”

Dewey stared at Dellenbaugh with a cold, blank expression. He said nothing. Then he walked down the empty corridor, away from the crowd of nurses and doctors and medical staff, away from Polk, away from Vivian. He found the stairs, climbing at a fast run to the roof. On the helipad were two choppers, including the CIA Traumahawk. He opened the cabin door and climbed in.

“Get this thing in the air,” said Dewey.

Both pilots looked back as Dewey took a seat.

“This is an assigned—”

“I don't care what it is,” said Dewey. “Get it in the air now. Head for New York City.”

Dewey pulled out his cell and hit Speed Dial. He heard the low, groaning rumble of the chopper engine beginning to move the rotors.

A familiar voice came on the line.

“Hey,” said Rob Tacoma.

“Are you in the United States?”

“Yeah.”

“New York City?”

“Maybe.”

“What does ‘maybe' mean?”

“It means,” said Tacoma, whispering, “that I'm at the Four Seasons with Ilian Gateeva. She's in the bathtub.”

“Who?”

“She's a
Sports Illustrated
model.”

“Congratulations. I'll call someone who hasn't turned into a douche bag.”

“Fuck you. What do you need?”

“I need a place to land a helicopter and I need you to meet me there.”

“West Thirtieth Street has a heliport.”

“Better get Katie. Tell Igor while you're at it.”

“What are we doing, if you don't mind my asking?”

“I need your help with something.”

“‘Something'?”

“Remember the bomb in the harbor?”

“Yeah, sort of.”

“That kind of something.”

“Oh. Why didn't you say that in the first place?”

 

49

CARMAN HALL

COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY

Sullivan heard a noise coming from one of the stairwells. He walked slowly to the door, his rifle extended, finger on the trigger. At the end of the hallway he leaned carefully out and looked up. What he saw made him gasp. The stairs were covered in a latticework of wire. Near the center, a large object with a flashing red light was perched.

Sullivan quietly inched over to the stairs. A thin gap along the banister allowed him to see up and down. His heart racing fast, he leaned into the opening and looked up. The floor above appeared normal, but two floors up, wire was wrapped around the banister, the same way as on the stairs directly in front of him. He looked down. Though it was dark, he could make out more wires two floors below.

“Oh, my God,” he whispered as he tiptoed back to the door.

He took his cell phone from his pocket and dialed 911.

“Nine-one-one,” came a female voice. “What is the emergency?”

“My name is Jack Sullivan. I'm inside the dormitory at Columbia.”

There was a brief pause, which Sullivan guessed was disbelief.

“We're aware of the situation. Are you all right?”

“Yes, but I need to speak to someone who is managing things,” said Sullivan.

“Mr. Sullivan—”

“Please listen to me. I'm not a student. I'm a parent. I killed one of the terrorists. I need to speak to someone. There's a bomb. The building is wired.”

“Hold on, sir.”

As Sullivan waited, he ran to the stairs on the other side of the building. He saw the identical wire lattice and bomb. The floors two up and two down were also wired to blow.

He let out a deep breath, trying to calm down.

“This is Andrew Ronik with the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Who am I speaking with, please?”

The voice on his cell phone awakened Sullivan from his shock.

“
Hello?
”

“The … the building is wired,” whispered Sullivan.

“When you say wired—”

“There are bombs on the stairs. I counted six. There could be more. They're balanced on some sort of wire netting above the stairs.”

“Let's take a step back,” said Ronik. “Who is this?”

“My name is Sullivan. Jack Sullivan.”

“Who are you?”

“A parent. My daughter is a freshman. I was dropping her off. I'm inside the dorm. I hid. I killed one of their men.”

“Where are you, Mr. Sullivan?”

“On the third floor.”

“Are you alone?”

“Yes. Well, actually, no. There's an elderly woman. She was too old to jump. She's hiding.”

“I'm going to ask you to hold for a sec.”

“Okay.”

More than a minute passed, then someone else came on the line.

“This is Dave McNaughton with the FBI. Mr. Sullivan?”

“Yes. Jack Sullivan.”

“Okay, Jack. I need you to do something for me.”

“What?”

“Can you take some photos of one of the bombs? Try to get a close-up. There will be an area with a bunch of wires, maybe a light. I'm especially interested in that. Also, you told Agent Ronik it's on wires?”

“Yes.”

“Please try to get a close-up.”

“What should I do with them?”

“Text them to me. I'll give you my cell.”

*   *   *

As Sirhan started for the stairs, he heard suppressed gunfire.

Fahd.

He ran into a room facing the campus. This time, he was careless, sprinting to the window and looking out. It appeared empty. Green lawn spread in neat rectangles between large, majestic buildings and sidewalks punctuated by statues. He saw a cluster of SWAT-clad law enforcement officers at the top of wide granite stairs in the center of campus, way in the distance. Looking left, in front of a building on the other side of campus, he saw a similar cluster of men in tactical gear.

He heard another suppressed gunshot. It seemed to be coming from directly below him.

He leaned closer to the window, trying to get a better view down the side of the building.

He saw movement below. He pressed his face against the glass.

“Oh, my God,” he said aloud.

Someone was crawling along the side of the building on the sidewalk, dragging a leg. Then he eyed several others, moving away, a few crawling, some walking, all clinging to the brick façade of the dormitory.

He pressed his face tight to the glass. Then he saw it: third floor. Students were jumping from the window.

Fahd,
you stupid idiot!

Sirhan sprinted down the hallway and up the stairs. When he reached the tenth floor, he motioned for Tariq. Another round of gunshots echoed. They scrambled down the stairs toward the sound.

*   *   *

Sullivan went back to the stairs. He listened for several minutes, making sure no one was on the stairs. He stepped to the area below the bottom stair, a few inches from the beginning of the wires. He took several photos. Back in the third-floor hallway, he texted them to McNaughton.

Sullivan heard gunfire coming from above. Then he heard screaming from the bedroom where the students were jumping.

He ran down the hall and charged into the room. A male student was standing on the ledge.

“Back inside!” Sullivan screamed.

It was too late.

The slug hit the boy's shoulder. Blood splattered down his front and across the window as the boy screamed.

Sullivan lurched for him, but he fell just as Sullivan reached him. He watched, helplessly, as the boy tumbled out, somersaulting to the ground, landing on his head.

*   *   *

The sniper, Kulka, was on his stomach on the roof of the School of Journalism, several hundred feet away. His rifle was an FN SPR A3G, the standard-issue sniper rifle of the FBI, manufactured by a Belgian company, and deadly accurate.

The rifle was on a ceramic bipod. He stared through a Millet Designated Marksman Scope, searching for the gunman he knew was somewhere hiding behind one of the hundreds of windows.

For the past minute and a half, Kulka had listened as the gunman fired suppressed shots at the ground below, trying to hit the students. But the angle was too tight. The gunman couldn't get the correct downward angle unless he leaned the entire weapon out the window. Thus far, he'd remained just inside.

Or had he? The sun splashing off the glass was wreaking havoc on his ability to see.

The spotters were equally perplexed.

“Are you sure there's someone shooting?”

“Yes,” said Kulka.

“Why hasn't he hit anything?”

“He doesn't have the angle. Now stop fucking talking.”

Thud thud
.

There it was again. Desperately, he scanned the building. For some reason, his eyes shot to the seventh floor. Nothing. Was it the eighth?

Then he saw the boy step to the windowsill on three—and above it, on six, the black appurtenance.

Thud thud.

He listened to the scream without looking, knowing that the student had been hit. Kulka remained focused, tilting the rifle ever so slightly. He acquired the outline of the gunman just as the suppressor was pulled back in, disappearing.

Kulka pulled the trigger and fired.

A loud, dull boom exploded across the cavern between the two buildings, combining with the sound of shattering glass as the slug obliterated the window and, behind it, the gunman.

Kulka fired another slug into the room, in case someone else was there, then another.

“Man down,” he said into his commo. “I got that little motherfucker.”

*   *   *

As Sirhan reached the sixth floor, he heard the boom of the gunshot he knew had come from a sniper rifle, then the shattering glass and a pained grunt he knew was Fahd.

He got to the hallway outside the room, kneeling. When Tariq caught up, he held up his hand, making him wait. Several more gunshots echoed from the distant sniper. Glass shattered, and the wall above Fahd was gutted with big holes.

Sirhan looked at Fahd. The bullet had hit him squarely in the chest. Blood flooded down onto the floor of the bedroom. Fahd's eyes were open, staring up at the ceiling, but life was gone.

“You stupid son of a bitch,” Sirhan said.

He looked at Tariq, Fahd's older brother.

“I'm sorry.”

Tariq was quiet. He stared at his brother for several seconds, then looked at Sirhan.

“We are all going to die today,” said Tariq.

“Yes,” said Sirhan, his eyes glued to Fahd's destroyed chest. “Now it's their turn.”

 

50

CARMAN HALL

COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY

Daisy sat upright, against the wall. Andy and Charlotte both had their heads on her lap.

The room was packed with people. There were many students who were alone. There were also family members. For a long time, Daisy stared at a man who wore a light blue baseball cap with the Columbia logo on it, his arms around his son, who sat in front of him, leaning against him, as if he was just a child. For some reason, the image gave her strength.

It also distracted her, and she needed that.

As horrible as her own predicament was, thinking about it was preferable to thinking about her father. Every time her mind flashed to the phone call—and then Josh Brubaker's words—she felt as if the ground might open up and swallow her. It was a feeling of helplessness and futility. How could she be with someone one day and then have it all disappear the next?

Please, God, please protect him.

A smile creased her lips. For whatever reason, she pictured her father from some Christmas morning, so many years ago, and a Barbie dollhouse. It was all she wanted. She and he had spent the day carefully putting it together. Three floors, purple and pink, with a miniature hair dryer that sounded like a hair dryer and, if you pressed the doorbell, the most annoying but, at age eight, wonderful song ever.

Andy suddenly looked up.

“Are you okay?” she asked.

“Yeah, I am,” said Daisy. “I have a good feeling about this.”

 

51

JOHN JAY HALL

COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY

Damon Smith, the FBI's in-theater commander, stood inside a large room on the first floor of John Jay, another Columbia dormitory on 114th Street, with Butler Library, Columbia's main library, in between it and Carman. The room Smith had commandeered was the dormitory's common room on the ground floor. It now served as crisis command center.

Tables in the room were occupied by young FBI and NYPD analysts with laptop computers, tied into Homeland Security's mainframe. The walls were lit up by high-definition plasma screens. There were eleven in all, displaying a variety of real-time activity in and around Carman Hall. Every side of the building was displayed by cameras that had been put in place since the hostages were taken. The roof was shown from a chopper overhead. Cameras also displayed the entrances to the dormitory, now mostly empty and quiet. Other screens displayed coverage of the scene as it happened on the various local, national, and international news channels.

The room was crowded with law enforcement: FBI agents, Homeland officers, and NYPD's antiterrorism group were everywhere. So too were high-level staffers from the Pentagon and White House. The governor of New York and the mayor of New York City, as well as several members of their staffs, were also present.

Smith stood at a table on the far side of the room, near an unused fireplace, behind a set of glass French doors. Four other agents were with him: Moore, Calder, Francisco, and McNaughton. Each had a specific category of responsibility. Each had a wireless headset on, with live connection to a CENCOM operator, whose job it was to make calls, receive calls, and patch the men into real-time commo from on-the-ground operators.

Moore was in charge of perimeter security, including the management of all street-level access points and security teams, along with the establishment and, if necessary, amendment of rules of engagement. He was also in charge of air rights—making sure non-law-enforcement helicopters didn't get too close.