Tier One Wild (44 page)

The effort of all this left him exhausted, so he made his way back to his mattress and then gingerly lowered himself down to it by using the chair.

“I need a fucking bed,” he said to the dark and empty room.

Just as he relaxed back on the mattress his mobile phone rang. He found it lying on the floor and he looked at the readout on the screen:
TJ
.

Raynor almost didn’t answer it. He would do anything in the world for his best friend, but he figured TJ was just down in the dumps about David Doyle, and since Kolt felt every bit as depressed about letting Doyle slip away in Mexico as Timble had about missing his semi-opportunity in Pakistan, Kolt figured he would be the last person TJ needed to help buoy his spirits tonight.

But on the fourth ring Raynor reluctantly answered the phone.

“Hey, bro,” Kolt said wearily.

“Turn on the TV!” TJ said, and Kolt quickly reached for the remote.

“What channel?”

“
Any
fucking channel.”

Kolt flipped it on, and even before the old big screen came to life, he knew. There was no doubt in his mind that somewhere in the United States an aircraft had been shot down.

“Where?” he asked softly while he waited for the picture.

“L.A.,” came the reply.

Now the screen showed a black landscape of hills with a grass fire raging in the center of them. Fire trucks raced up a street and the crawl under the video feed said a United Airlines flight to Taipei had crashed on takeoff at 10:05 p.m.

Kolt looked at his watch and saw this was only a half hour ago.

As he continued to watch the chaotic scene, he spoke into his phone. “How many dead?”

Timble was obviously watching the news as well. “CNN says two hundred eighty-six, plus God knows how many on the ground.”

Raynor thought about the number of casualties, and then he thought about the number of missiles left in play. He said, “CIA estimated they took fifty SAMs from Libya. He launched one in central Mexico against the Navy helo, one at the National Guard helo, and one tonight. We found forty-six at the scene. One more plane is coming down unless the cops stop them.”

TJ responded bitterly, “You don’t know that. Fifty SAMs was just a CIA guess based on the size of the container that left Benghazi. Could have been fifty-one, fifty-five, or even sixty-five. Be careful with your assumptions.”

Kolt knew his friend was right. This could be just the beginning.

Timble and Raynor sat quietly in their own homes and watched the televised success of their enemy into the morning hours, like two beaten men.

THIRTY-EIGHT

In the early afternoon of the next day, Miguel, Tim, and Jerry watched aircraft take off from San Francisco International Airport’s two Runway 28s—28L and 28R. The planes flew north, rising over the city, before departing their runway heading and banking to the east toward Oakland or to the west, which took them out over the Pacific Ocean.

The three terrorists had positioned themselves on the northern side of Golden Gate Park. They’d parked their Explorer alongside North Lake, and they had taken an Igla launcher, wrapped in a large blanket, into the trees at a secluded section of the park near Chain of Lakes Drive, where foot traffic was light this hot afternoon.

At 1:40 p.m. Miguel decided the time was right. He would take the next wide-body jet that flew overhead. He sent Jerry back to the Explorer to wait behind the wheel, while he and Tim readied the weapon to fire.

A steady procession of smaller aircraft took off, frustrating both Tim and Miguel. Finally, just before two p.m., an American Airlines Boeing 777 wide-body aircraft rose skyward over the southern half of San Francisco. “Inshallah, we will kill three hundred more infidels,” Miguel said with a determined smile.

Miguel shouldered the missile launcher while still deep in the trees, and he put his hand on the grip to hold it steady. He knew he’d have to step out into the open to launch, but he wanted to wait until the last possible moment.

Tim stood at his side; his Kalashnikov rifle had been hidden in a garbage bag, but he brought it out and to his shoulder.

As the 777 passed overhead, Miguel waited a few seconds more, and then stepped out into the bike path rimming North Lake. All his senses were focused on the aiming reticule of his iron sights as he centered them on the jet above.

The aircraft was still too close for Miguel to fire; he’d need to wait a few more seconds to be certain his missile would have time to acquire its target’s heat register after launch.

“Hurry,” said Tim next to him.

“One moment. Yes. Now is good,” Miguel said confidently.

Just then, from behind, Miguel heard shouting.

“Hey! Hey!”

Miguel took his eye out of the sights for an instant, just as Tim spun around, raising his rifle toward the shouting. There on the bike path, not fifty feet away, two San Francisco Police Department bike patrol officers leapt off their still-moving bicycles and began drawing their sidearms. They shouted in English as they drew their guns.

“Drop the fucking weapon!”

Tim fired his AK, missing with his first two rounds, but his second burst hit the nearest bike cop in the thigh and spun him to the ground.

The second officer got his gun out of its belt holster and he raised it to fire. A long spray from Tim’s rifle cut him down, but not before he’d squeezed off two rounds from his .40-caliber Smith & Wesson service pistol.

Shouts and screams came from the road to their left and from across the tiny lake. More police on bicycles hurried around the path to come to the aid of their friends. Miguel looked up again at the aircraft, but he knew he would have to start the targeting sequence over, and he did not want to wait around for the ten seconds or so necessary to accomplish this.

The white Explorer screeched to a stop on Chain of Lakes Drive, just twenty feet from the two men. Miguel shoved the forty-pound launch system off his shoulder and let it fall to the bike path, and he and Tim ran for the safety of the vehicle.

Jerry pushed the barrel of the AK out of the driver’s window of the SUV and fired a burst at a group of people running toward the wounded policemen, killing a young woman, and Tim spun around to spray the remainder of his magazine indiscriminately across the lake at the traffic on John F. Kennedy Drive.

Both men were back in the Explorer in seconds, and the big vehicle spun out of the park, turning right on Fulton Street, heading across the city for the Bay Bridge.

“Dammit!” Miguel screamed, furious for failing to knock down the jet, but even more angry with himself for leaving the Igla behind. He pounded on the dashboard with his fist.

Jerry shouted back at him, “Calm down and help me navigate!”

“Keep going east! East to the bridge!”

Behind them, in the back of the SUV, Tim shouted, “Police! Following us!”

Miguel looked back over his shoulder and saw several patrol cars, their lights flashing, racing through the afternoon traffic on Fulton in hot pursuit of the Explorer.

“Dammit!” Miguel said again. He handed his rifle back to Tim, who wasted no time in opening fire out the back windshield, firing past the four crates of missiles stacked next to him.

*   *   *

Twice the three men in the Explorer managed to lose the police in traffic, but soon a California Highway Patrol helicopter appeared overhead and began overtly tracking them as they made their way east across the city toward the Bay Bridge.

The three men had not anticipated the amount of traffic they encountered getting across San Francisco in midafternoon. Multiple times Jerry was forced onto the median in order to keep moving, and twice he had to stop completely before bumping other vehicles to encourage them to get out of the way.

All the while Tim bounced around in the back of the vehicle, desperately trying to unpack and assemble another SAM. The CHP chopper flew directly behind them, and Miguel ordered Tim to shoot the cursed thing down, hoping it would keep other eyes in the sky off their tail.

They made a series of turns, desperate to avoid traffic as well as dodge police coming at them from the other direction, and this turned them to the north and then back again to the west.

Miguel realized where they were from the quickly moving GPS device he kept attached to the windshield. He also realized the folly of trying to make it back around to the Bay Bridge. He’d studied the street map of San Francisco to some degree in Yemen, but they were already traveling in an area he had not studied, as his plan had been to head to Oakland.

But the GPS showed him another escape route out of the city. The Golden Gate Bridge was just to the north, so he ordered Jerry to take the next right. The Pakistani driver swerved across two lanes of traffic to do so, causing a multicar collision on Geary Boulevard and a near-miss with a gas truck on Park Presidio.

Within a minute they had made their way into the MacArthur Tunnel, over a dozen police lights flashing in the traffic behind them. They shot out the other side of the tunnel onto Doyle Drive, and passed the Presidio on their left at speeds approaching eighty miles an hour, the helicopter and the police cars still tracking their every move.

Tim had been beaten and battered by Jerry’s evasive driving, and he still had not managed to assemble the Igla-S launcher. Miguel looked back and saw the futility of his efforts, so instead he said, “Pick up the rifles and fire at everything behind us. Make them back off!”

In seconds Tim had opened fire on civilians and police alike. As they raced up Doyle Drive, the vehicles around them skidded left and right to avoid the flying lead.

A minute later they shot through the FasTrak lane onto the Golden Gate Bridge. Tim reloaded and dumped another magazine into the traffic.

They made it a fourth of the way across the bridge before Jerry screamed, “Roadblock on the bridge!”

Miguel looked ahead and saw a line of SFPD squad cars, CHP cars, and even an armored vehicle, along with dozens of armed police, completely blocking traffic in both directions.

He knew there was no way they could escape. “This is the end, my brothers. Prepare yourselves for martyrdom.” His voice was solemn. He lifted the Beretta pistol from the center console of the SUV and he slid it into his jeans.

Jerry hit the brakes and turned the wheel, and the Ford Explorer swung violently to the left. As it came to a stop, Miguel opened the passenger-side door, away from the roadblock ahead, and he rolled into the street. Behind him, both Tim and Jerry elected to remain in the SUV. He heard the booming fire of their rifles chattering in unison, as together they raked the police cars ahead of them.

The cops must have known that behind the terrorists’ vehicle were dozens of civilian cars, and they would all be in the line of fire. As the two al Qaeda operatives dumped 7.62 rounds into the police cars fifty yards ahead on the bridge, the return fire was hesitant. But when the first cop fell, dropping his pistol and falling dead on his back, his brothers- and sisters-in-arms poured more and more fire into the SUV ahead of them.

Miguel crawled away from the SUV, keeping himself shielded behind the vehicle and his body low to the ground to avoid the bullets whizzing overhead. He was heading for a bright red four-door full of college-aged adults who were huddled down in their seats and screaming in terror.

Behind him he heard the Kalashnikovs of his fellow jihadists fall silent. He did not know if the men were just pausing to reload or if Tim and Jerry were dead.

It did not matter, he told himself, as the fear of his impending death tightened the muscles in his back and squeezed his heart nearly shut. Tim and Jerry had fought bravely in Yemen and Mexico and now here in the United States. They were lions, and they would be rewarded in paradise.

Just then the Explorer’s tires squealed. Miguel looked back as he ran away, and he saw the big truck fire across the bridge, slam into the pedestrian rail, and smash through. The truck hit the side of the bridge itself at speed, and the force of the impact sent the Explorer headlong over the side. The truck tumbled from view, leaving smoke and dust and metal and glass behind as it fell hundreds of feet down into San Francisco Bay.

Miguel turned away and kept running.

Though the thirty-four-year-old Kuwaiti was fleeing, he had no illusions about surviving this. Along with the roadblock that stopped him, the police who had chased him here were still on the bridge as well. He was surrounded and there was no way he could commandeer one of these vehicles and punch it through the traffic jam between here and freedom.

No, the al Qaeda operative was running from the roadblock, toward the red car, because he wanted to pull out his pistol and shoot the infidels there. One last act of defiance against the Great Satan just as he was cut down.

The shooting behind him slowed as he arrived at the college students covering their heads with their hands inside their car. Miguel pulled the 9mm pistol from his jeans and lifted it toward the windshield, and he rose with it, standing erect as he slipped his finger on the trigger and shouted, “
Allahu Akhbar!
”

He fired twice, the gun cracked and jolted, and his bullets pocked the windshield and struck the driver in the chest. He started to pull the trigger a third time, but instead he felt himself spinning, out of control, the gun toppling out of his grasp, and he saw the asphalt roadway rushing to meet him.

He’d been shot in the stomach, he felt the burn there, and somehow he knew it was a fatal wound.

He fell to his side, reached out frantically for his gun, and found it with his fingertips. He brought it back into his grip and sat up quickly, keeping the weapon on the ground in his hand. As Miguel looked around, he found himself surrounded by too many policemen to count. They had closed to within ten meters, holding their guns on him and screaming bloody murder in all directions.

Waleed Nayef, aka Miguel, looked at the policemen for a brief moment. Then he lifted the Beretta off the roadway and every man and woman in sight with a gun and a badge shot him dead.