Wandering carefree through the streets, which yesterday had caused him to feel lonely and oppressed, he smiled at everything he saw. Turning into the street under guidance from the map on his phone, he saw military personnel patrolling in pairs, heavy barriers erected to prevent cars from entering the street, and no less than six officers of the NYPD visible in the iconic uniform which was such an everyday sight for native New Yorkers, but a tourist attraction in itself for Cal.
Craning his head back a little, he paused amidst the rushing crowds to take a picture of the Stock Exchange.
Friday 12:25 p.m. – Free America Movement Headquarters
“Butler,” he said into the phone after the room had been cleared of all personnel. “Yes, confirm we are good to go,” he said, hanging up the phone and calling his staff back inside where they had all congregated to watch the news screens.
On the other end of the satellite call, the voice signing off from Butler put down their equivalent device and picked up the landline on the desk. Speaking rapidly in English but using a complex series of words, which made no sense to anyone overhearing the one-sided conversation, he replaced the handset and leaned back in satisfaction.
Saturday 12:25 a.m. Local Time, Beijing
Sixty-six hundred miles away, another man had received a phone call. After listening intently to the information, he replaced the handset and leaned back to look up into the expectant faces of a half-dozen uniformed officers and one mysterious woman in a dark suit. The intelligence services wore no rank or insignia, and offered no names—only their department. That opened any door, and removed all but the most secure of resistance to their questions.
Speaking rapidly but strongly in Mandarin, he gave a short speech and issued orders.
“The operation is about to proceed as planned,” he said, feeling the nervous tension in the room. “To your duties,” he ordered, and the office emptied leaving only a black-suited woman. She approached the man at the desk, intimidating him with her sheer presence.
“You are sure of this?” she asked, the threat of failure evident in her tone.
“Yes,” he replied, meeting her gaze as though he truly believed his answer. “By tomorrow we will have crippled them and their eyes will be facing elsewhere,” he said, showing her a clenched fist to emphasize his point.
Friday 12:28 p.m. – Washington, D.C.
“Atteeeeen-HUH,” called the master sergeant. Major Taylor walked into the hangar-sized building flanked by his junior officers to the sound of his brigade stamping their boots.
“At ease,” he called out, removing his cap and surveying the front rank of his troops decked out in full battle gear.
“You know what we are doing here will be called treason by some,” he said, as though everyone present didn’t realize the danger of the mission. “Anyone wishing to stand down has my permission to do so now. You will not be punished, but you will be confined to barracks under guard until the mission is complete.” He let that hang, watching his assembled force for any sign of hesitation.
Every man and woman, every soldier under his command, stared resolutely forward. He took that as a sign that nobody had second thoughts.
“Okay then. Team one is under the command of Captain Anderson, the rest are with me as QRF. Let’s move out!”
Taylor replaced his cap and turned to the passenger side of the command Humvee. His battle helmet was on the seat and he switched the cap for the ballistic protection. Dressed similarly to his troops, including the M4 propped against the seat, his decision to lead the quick reaction force gave him an element of removal from the mission which gave him better oversight. He trusted Anderson to do his duty, and the hand-picked members of team one had his total faith. The big engine gunned and rolled out, followed by the second Humvee and the three troop carriers behind.
Rodriguez halted his truck just inside the entrance to the Holland tunnel and hit the four-way flashers. He checked his watch, closed the door of the cab and walked away. A dozen other small trucks were doing the same all over the city, and each stranded vehicle, one by one, caught fire from the incendiary device buried in the load of waste PVC plastic. Within minutes, almost every major route in and out of the city was a panicked mess of boiling black smoke and toxic fumes.
Leland checked his watch and held his breath as the seconds ticked down. His watch was analogue, a relic he had to wind up daily, but it kept good time and wouldn’t be affected by what was about to happen. Glancing up at the skyline of Wall Street, he muttered a single word to himself.
“Go.”
ORDO AB CHAO
Friday 12:30 p.m. – New York Stock Exchange
At the precise moment it was supposed to, the timer attached to the suitcase-sized EMP buried deep in the bowels of the exchange ticked to zero, and a loud click echoed amongst the whirring banks of flashing lights. A strange hum reverberated through the air, almost imperceptibly, and the banks of computers went dark all at once.
Upstairs on the trading floor, where sweat-covered men and women shouted to one another with phones pressed to their ears, the lights went out. The computers stopped working and blinked into oblivion, and the noise first rose in intensity to a deafening crescendo, then fell to a grumbling as they all waited for the backup power to come online and reboot the world market.
Seconds ticked by and nothing happened. Voices began to rise to demand the power come back on, as though rude indignation and the feeling that time was money could will it to happen. Still nothing happened.
The collective intelligence of everyone on the floor failed to grasp that their machines were not going to come back to life, and they milled about in confusion like chickens in a coop waiting to be fed.
A muted crack and an answering rumble penetrated the sounds inside the building, causing a moment of silence before shouted questions began to pierce the grumbling.
Outside, just as Cal was trying to get the right angle for his selfie, the screen of his phone unexpectedly went black. Frowning, he tried to turn it back on without success. He cursed the phone, the manufacturers, and everything else as he had just seen the battery indicator showing 88 percent before it died. Reverting to the most British of approaches when dealing with faulty technology, he tried to hit it twice and turn it on again without success.
Just as he was coming to terms that he was now in the dark ages and cut off from the world he accessed through the phone, he glanced around to see almost everyone else doing the same.
Hang on, he thought, that can’t be right.
Just as the realization hit home that something had affected the entire area and not singled him out to ruin his day, a loud crack rang out from a nearby street.
He couldn’t have known, but a trash can had exploded on the street, killing six pedestrians outright and blowing out the plate glass windows of all the nearby stores in great shards. Smoke rose from the explosion and caused instant panic.
Cal had ducked instinctively at the sudden noise, not having heard anything similar for many years but never forgetting the sound. As vivid as his distant memory was when it came to explosions and war, the city of New York had a far more intense collective memory when it came to terror attacks.