The Turkey Plot - Chapter 2

Tuesday, November 4, 2008

“Inshallah, we shall meet our contact by nightfall,” said the leader of the group, known only as Ali the Egyptian.  They had crossed from Mexico into Arizona west of Nogales the night before and were going across some rather cold, windy desert mountains to a safe house off a remote highway.  The plan was set and the four of them knew where they were going. They also had in their possession the Sword of Allah.  Only Ali the Egyptian knew what it was, but they knew that their reward would come very soon in the next life.

The team had been brought into the United States by a coyote connected with the MS-13 gangs prominent from Central America to the US border states. Much of their weapons smuggling logistics had been accomplished by or (with sensitive cargo) coordinated with this gang. Naturally MS-13 had reaped financial reward, but understood the limits of the relationship. They understood that they would be given no advance information on any operations and that they could be exposed to danger inherent with this line of business, but were paid a premium and accepted this tradeoff.   Javier Cocias had dealt with Hezbollah before, but not with Ali the Egyptian or any of his team.  He had no idea what this team was transporting.  He had met them two days before, set them up with wardrobe and ensured that they shaved to help the team “look” Mexican.  None of them spoke Spanish but Yusef, a Dutch Muslim of Moroccan heritage from the Netherlands, spoke flawless English. Yusef translated all of Javier’s instructions into Arabic for the team.  Ali spoke perfect English, but feigned ignorance because he did not want to debase himself to interact with this disgusting kuffer (unbeliever).  The other two team members were fairly quiet, spoke very basic English, and were clearly subordinate in this group.  Javier did not learn anyone’s identity, but the two quiet ones were Mochtar Hasan of Tyre, Lebanon and Mohammad al Jaduri of Tripoli, Lebanon. Loyal, dedicated, and violent, they had been chosen because there was no concern that they would falter and it was believed that their looks would not arouse suspicion.

Ironically, Ali the Egyptian had never been to Egypt.  His father, who was Egyptian, was a long time Hezbollah operative and was not welcome in Egypt.  Specifically, he had played a central role in Hezbollah’s greatest operation outside the Middle East – the Buenos Aires Jewish Community Center bombing in 1994.  At that time, he was Director of Overseas Operations in London.  He died of a heart attack four months after the operation and most believed Mossad had a hand inducing that heart attack.  His London born-and-raised son was ambitious and unwaveringly loyal to the mission that his father gave his life to.  His greatest honor would be to die for the same goals.  Ali was considered ideal to lead this operation. 

“Interesting that you’re crossing over right as America elects a new president,” interjected Javier after about two hours of silence.  “Don’t you want to find out who wins?”  The United States was electing a new President on this day.  One had promised to “take the fight to the terrorists” while the other favored “talking with those who disagree with us”. 

“No matter who wins, America is still a den of filthy unbelievers who stand against God,” replied Yusef. 

Clearly, Javier was also an unbeliever who realized that the conversation would not get any better.  Silence ensued for the next few hours until they came over a ridge and spotted the grey trailer at the end of a gravel road.   Javier turned back to the south and Mochtar gave a questioning look to Ali the Egyptian as if to say “why are we letting him go?”  However, Ali knew that Javier’s disappearance would ring alarm bells around MS-13, always sensitive to clients killing their employees. Given how riddled with informants MS-13 was, this might raise alarm at the FBI , CIA, or DEA.  No need for that drama and they would not be in the safe house long enough for it to make a difference. 

True to form, within 10 minutes of arriving at the safe house, the four of them were in an old Chevy Cavalier heading north to Phoenix.  They would spend the next three weeks at a nondescript Super 8 motel in Goodyear, a nondescript Phoenix suburb. 

Monday, November 24, 2008

After their time in Phoenix, it was about time to move to the staging areas.   

The three weeks were spent in seclusion – no phone calls, no e-mail, no reconnecting with family, no unnecessary interaction with the locals, nothing.   Ali the Egyptian knew the plan and made sure his three charges did as well.  Really, it was quite simple.  All three could figure out how to carry out their plot within five minutes.  They also discussed how to steal cars, but all were competent mechanically so there was not much to discuss there either.   At the safe house, they had picked up Illinois drivers licenses – the thinking was that anyone who actually checked the ID would be less likely to notice an irregularity in an out-of-state license.  They simply spent the three weeks together, prayed, and focused on the task at hand. The last things they did on Monday were expose themselves to the Sword of Allah and film a video on a handheld camcorder.

The Sword of Allah was smallpox, bought from North Korea.  It was carried to the United States and kept in a Phoenix in grouping of vials transported in an innocuous looking carrying case that resembled a laptop bag.  The fluid remained stable and viable as long as the temperatures did not reach extremes, which they had not.  Even crossing the Mexican / Arizonan desert, the vials had been taped to Ali the Egyptian’s chest.  Needless to say, pink test tube vials would not do well at airport security, so on Monday the fluid was moved to several 3oz bottles that looked like hand santizers.  Each one would have a full plastic bag to take to the airport tomorrow.

Tuesday, November 25, 2008

Yusef told the motel owner, “Phil” Singh, that they were leaving to go camping over the holiday weekend.  The weather around Phoenix was mild at this point, so it sounded reasonable.  “Phil” was born in India but emigrated with his family as a teenager. He had been a car salesman, but took over the family business three years ago when his parents died in a car accident. He went by Phil because his name “Ramani” was so badly mispronounced and made fun of in Middle School that he took the name Phil.  The nickname stuck.  His family was Hindu and had emigrated in 1984 because of the violence directed at his family by the Muslim majority in their native Kashmir.  He had always had a little extra wariness towards Muslim people based on that experience, but he had tried to keep it in perspective.  “These people are not those people”, he would often say to himself.  Phil thought they did not really look like the outdoorsy types.  For that matter they looked Middle Eastern even though the name on the registry was Mariel Sanchez (a.k.a. Yusef).  It was none of his business and after all they were paid through the following Monday.  Yusef asked one last thing.  They planned to return Sunday night, but if they were not back by Monday morning, Yusef asked that Phil call his cousin Rick and give him a package sitting out in the room. Rick would come and pick it up and the call was local.  Phil said that would not be a problem.  Yusef reasoned that “openness” about their plans to “go camping” would arouse less suspicion than the disappearance of four Middle Eastern looking- and sounding- guys (with Latino names), with the hope that the manager would simply discover and alert authorities to a camcorder.  None were aware of the details of the suicide bombing or stadium campaigns, but Ali the Egyptian knew theirs was part of a coordinated attack.  Without knowing of the parallel attack plan, Yusef’s logic persuaded Ali the Egyptian of the rightness of this course.

Phil did not notice that the four of them walked out of the motel with light backpacks – far too light for camping – but it would not have mattered as Phil was determined not to be suspicious of the first Middle Eastern appearing guests he had seen in many months.  They walked a couple blocks and took a bus to Sky Harbor Airport in Phoenix. 

All four were going to start their Wednesdays in different cities in the Eastern Time zone. They started in the East and flew west because it provided more time to get to more places.  The other benefit of flying on Tuesday was that they had the chance to get the plan going early. Wednesday was the day to accomplish their goals – as it was the busiest travel day of the year – but those flying Tuesday would be given their chance to spread Allah’s Justice around the house of the Great Satan. 

First, they had to get past security…  “If the Great Satan is as soft as his airport security, America will be part of the Dar al Islam (the House of Islam) within five years, Inshallah,” Mochtar thought to himself as the four went their separate ways. 

Yusef booked all the tickets online. The only rule was that all four had to change planes at a major hub and have no less than a two-hour layover.  He also booked all flights as round trips just to avoid tripping any flags.  Ironically, it appeared that there was no coordination between airlines, so one could book a person on four trips the same day without tripping a flag.

Ali the Egyptian (“Miguel Andalusia” – a surname he requested) would fly American Airlines via Dallas to Charlotte.  Mochtar (“Chuey Portillo”) would fly Northwest Airlines via Minneapolis to Boston.  Mohammad (“Sergio Fernandez”) took United via Chicago to Detroit. Yusef (Mariel Sanchez) booked himself on Delta via Atlanta to Newark.  They were all booked to stay at airport motels and arrive at their respective airports by 4am.  The earliest flights out of most airports were at 6am, so the security lines would open at 4am.  

The plan was quite simple: fly from airport to airport.  Touch every surface possible and continue to “clean” their hands with the solution of smallpox throughout the day.  Moving walkways, sinks, faucets, water fountains, the hands of security and gate personnel, seats, kids’ play areas, door handles – every surface in the terminal and on the plane was a good surface. Tuesday flights were just a bonus.  The operatives were instructed to pour warm water into the empty containers, as they would be diluted but retain some effective nonetheless.  Lastly, the operatives themselves would be contagious but only appear to have a little winter cold by Wednesday. 

Dan Miley was flying with his wife and three kids on Tuesday afternoon from Minneapolis to Boston.  Sitting in the gate area, was a man who made him uncomfortable.  A Middle Eastern man with a stern appearance, he just gave him the creeps.  Dan did not want to be an Islamophobe but the man just gave off a distant stare and was rubbing the armrests on his chair in the strangest way. Just then, Dan’s son Max directed his toy car towards the man and it rolled right up to his foot.  Max trundled over to get the car. Just then, the stern man picked up the car that had hit his foot, handed it to Max with a big smile and sent him off with a friendly pat on the back of his neck.  Dan was ashamed for having been suspicious of this man.  The was probably just in his own zone after a long day of travel, but he was nicer to Max than Dan had been when Max crashed his little car into his foot.  “People are people for crying out loud,” Dan lectured himself silently.  Just then Northwest called their row, so he gathered up the kids and boarded the flight along with the smiling stern man.

Wednesday, November 26

The entire day went off without a hitch for all four. There was no drama.  There were no near misses.   Almost every major airport in America was given the rub down by four "Typhoid Marys" with intent – several of them twice.  Not since a sailor stepped off a boat in Italy with the Black Death nearly seven centuries ago would such horror be unleashed on a continent.

Ali the Egyptian flew from Charlotte to Philadelphia on US Airways, then via Chicago to Memphis on United, then via Houston to Los Angeles on Continental. He then boarded a red eye from Los Angeles to Atlanta on Delta. Yusef’s itinterary took him from Newark to Philadelphia on US Airways, then on via Cincinnati to Seattle on Delta.  He concluded his day by flying Alaska Airlines to Oakland and continuing down to San Diego on Southwest. Mochtar flew Delta from Boston via Atlanta to Orlando.  He then took Southwest stopping in Nashville and San Antonio en route to Las Vegas.  Lastly, Mohammad flew American from Detroit via Chicago to Milwaukee.  He then flew United via Denver to Honolulu.  He then boarded a red eye on Hawaiian Airlines to Los Angeles.  In two days, the four of them were able to work their magic 33 times in airports nationwide.  The overnight airports got it twice. They shared recirculated air with innocents above America.  Their paths crossed with countless families flying to countless destinations bringing the silent killer with them. 

Thursday, November 27

The last step was what to do upon landing.  They wanted to eliminate the paper trail to prevent others from possibly backtracking their plan in time to quarantine those exposed. Thus, each operative had four steps to close out the mission.   

1)   Evidence: Throw out all the spent mini-bottles in the airport.  The janitorial staffs will pick up the trash bags and discard the evidence rather quickly.  Boarding passes are to be discarded as each flight is completed.

2)   Identification: Discard and ideally destroy.  Ali the Egyptian instructed them to incinerate their IDs upon leaving the airport. Yusef thought that was a little showy and decided to bend and discard his drivers license in a can of soda (along with a napkin to keep it from rattling) on the final flight. 

3)   Steal a car: leave the airport and find a car that is not in a secure location. All four finished in airports surrounded by businesses, homes, and plenty of cars besides airport parking.

4)   Crash the car: when a stolen car driven by a thief with no ID is involved in a high speed head-on collision, the autopsy does not closely examine the body for signs of advancing stages of smallpox. Even if they do notice it, they cannot trace it back to the flights.

Saturday, November 29

Mike Jorgensen loved working at the largest hospital in Des Moines.  He loved the work, he loved where he and his wife were living, and he loved helping people.  Mike had grown up about 50 miles west of Sioux Falls, South Dakota in a two horse town.  Des Moines was such a nice city – big, but not too big in his eyes.  Mike was working at the ER on Saturday morning when a family visiting from Dallas came in.  A mother came in with two kids – seven and ten - it looked like chicken pox.  Mike diagnosed it as chicken pox, although the symptoms were a little unusual.  Mike took that to be a variant or a combination chicken pox/ flu.  Then the mother said, ”that’s odd.  I thought you could only get chicken pox once.”

“Excuse me?” replied Mike.

“Well, Joey and Sarah both had chicken pox about two years ago.”

Concern shot across Mike’s face. It was not shingles.  Yesterday’s attacks had everyone on edge.  While he did not want to jump to a conclusion, he knew he had to contact the CDC.   He told her to wait a moment and called the CDC hotline for physicians.

He was quickly forwarded to Director of the Center.  “You’re in Des Moines?”

“Yes, why?” asked Mike.  He did not want to hear why, because he was correctly afraid the answer would chill him.  

“Jesus. You’re the sixth person to call in this morning.  The first five were in the Northeast but you’re in the middle of the f&%#ing country.  Is the patient from Des Moines?” 

“Dallas.”

The silence hung until the director ultimately walked him through the quarantine procedures. He also clarified that he could not share the other cases.  He must explain to the family that they need to hold them some testing, but it could take a while.   In the meantime, they must be kept in a separate – along with him.

When Mike re-emerged to speak with the young mother and her kids after 15 minutes, he looked as if he had seen a ghost.   The family was smiling and joking as he opened the door, but they sensed immediately that this was not just a chicken pox relapse.

The Turkey Plot - Chapter 1

Friday, November 28, 2008

Black Friday.  The day when retailers go into the black.  The day when everything goes on sale and people start Christmas shopping in earnest.

The excitement was electric outside Nordstroms on Friday morning.  Mercifully, they had moved their grand opening back to 9am.  Stores had been opening earlier and earlier with specials, but besides getting publicity 5am openings were really just a pain for all involved – shoppers, salespeople, everyone.  Nordstroms got out in front advertising a month beforehand that they would have amazing prices on jewelry, accessories, clothes, and so forth – and that you did not need to get up four hours before sunrise to experience it.  To top it off, the first 1000 who entered the store would receive a $100 discount certificate on purchases of $250 or more.  It had been a slow sales year and Nordstroms was going big with their sale offer.  There must have been at least 1000 -1500 people ready to rush the doors on this side of the store (and there was another entrance as well), but Nordstroms had done everything to make it a carnival atmosphere. People passed through the crowd giving out free cups of Nordstroms Café coffee. 

Lisa Morgan was so excited she couldn’t stand it.  A middle school junior from Medford, she and her parents were staying with her aunt, uncle, and cousin in Tigard.  Together with her mom and aunt, here they were having the shopping trip she had been thinking about nonstop for the six weeks since her mother told her they would be going up to Portland for Thanksgiving.  One of the unique things about coming to the city from Medford is seeing weird people – from people with avant garde fashion sense to the homeless, Portland always had a variety of strange looking people.  She felt self-conscious for thinking of them as “weird”, but it always grabbed her attention. One man caught her eye this morning.  One, he was a man and about 90% of this crowd was not.  Two, he had on a very heavy winter coat but it was about 50 degrees out. “He must be burning up”, she said to her mother.  What was odd was that the coat had squares apparently filled with down, but the down was balled up in each square as if it was wet.  It was also a massive jacket – much too big for the man. It was not clear if he was obese, the jacket was oversized, or both.  She was staring – she realized it and stopped staring.  “So do we each get to spend $250?” she asked.  “My answer has not changed, honey, but we’ll get a few things,” her mom replied with the smile of a parent who wants to make “no” sound pleasant, or at least better than she had the previous afternoon.  “No prob, mom.  Just checking.”  “For a teenager, Lisa is about as good a daughter as you can hope for,” her mother thought to herself. It was 8:55 and Lisa could not wait to rush the doors.  She was about to burst with anticipation.  Just then, someone did burst.

Lisa was thrown into the back of the person in front of her and felt her aunt thrown onto her. Dazed and baffled, she felt a sharp pain in her shoulder and her neck was wet with the blood of a ruptured ear drum – not necessarily her own ear drum.  Smoke was all around them and she just reached for her mother.  Her mother hugged her tightly.  Then she heard the glass come down on them.  Nordstroms is a low, freestanding building in downtown Portland surrounded by towers of glass and steel.  Suddenly, it was raining glass from across the street – some pieces were heavy rain drop sized, but mostly they were jagged plates that were anywhere from a couple inches to a couple feet long.  They were floating to the ground, somersaulting and swinging side to side.  One of them sliced her right forearm pretty badly, but with her aunt on top of her and her mother hugging her, she was only exposed to the glass in a few places.  The sights and sounds were both muted and confused.  She heard screaming all around, but not from her aunt.  When the glass rain stopped, she turned around and realized why.  In shock, she turned for comfort to her mother, but one of those glass shards had gone straight through her mother’s neck.  Her mother had terror in her eyes and gave a final anguished look as she expired at her daughter’s side.  Wriggling out from under her aunt, Lisa realized her mother had rolled over to cover her after the impact.  Lisa was apoplectic.  She looked up and the massive throng was now covered in half a foot of glass.  The scene was horror beyond description – screaming, crying, but mostly bloody or motionless bodies.  The bomber had stood at the base of the building across the street.  By being away from the center of the crowd, the nails blew out further and the impact shattered more glass.  The pain in her shoulder was nail directly from the bomber.  Her scalp was also grazed by a screw, but she felt no pain as the scene around her rendered her numb. 

This horror was repeated around the nation – at the same time: noon in the East and 9am on the West Coast.   The details were different in every city, but the story was the same – a suicide bomber taking innocent life in a public setting: Hartford, Buffalo, New York City, Philadelphia, Williamsburg, Rock Hill, Houston, Tulsa, Phoenix, Las Vegas, San Diego, Orange County, and of course Portland.  Nobody was safe and there was next to no commonality to the attacks: large cities, small towns, four attacks in the Southwest but none in the Midwest, an upscale shopping mall in Philadelphia, a WalMart  in Tulsa, a Starbucks in Phoenix, a McDonalds in San Diego. Piecing things together in the days afterwards, it appeared that the targets of these attacks were not always designed to inflict maximum casualties. 

While the Nordstroms was the deadliest, the first one on national news was the taxicab in Times Square.  Nobody even knows if the cab had a passenger.  Apparently the trunk and back seats of the cab were completely packed with a fertilizer bomb not entirely unlike the one used in Oklahoma City back in 1995.  As the cab drove past the Virgin Records store on the east side of Times Square, the cab detonated.  While it tore the façade off the building and leveled the Broadway Show tickets booth, the explosion “only” killed 58.  Given the number of people in Times Square at the time and the energy released by the explosion, this was considered no less than a miracle.  Over 250 were injured, but many of them would have died had the cab been packed with metal projectiles that every other suicide bomb was.  The images of a leveled Times Square were immediately iconic both for those who mourned the dead and those who cheered the destruction.  In all, there were 13 suicide bombers who killed 751 innocents – nearly half of them in Portland. 

As a suicide bomber detonated in the checkout aisle at a Harris Teeter grocery store in Rock Hill, South Carolina, something far worse was about to unfold 26 miles to the north.  Many of college football’s best rivalry games take place on the Saturdays before and after Thanksgiving. Recognizing that football fans have the day off and still want their football on Friday, several of the lesser matchups moved their games up to Friday with the promise of national coverage on the ESPN network of channel.  At noon Eastern, ESPN2 featured the East Carolina – NC State game live from Charlotte’s.  Drawing from their strong local alumni bases and thanks to NC State’s unexpectedly strong season, the game in Bank of America Stadium – the home of the NFL’s Carolina Panthers – was a near sellout.  No less than 55,000 fans were in the stadium and maybe another 10,000 were loitering outside – tailgating, throwing a football around, and finishing their brats or chili before going into the stadium. With kickoff in about 10 minutes, most were inside the gate when it started.  A minivan packed with fire accelerators drove into the mass of spectators going into the South gate and blew up. The explosion rattled the stadium, but the fire – the people on fire – started the stampede into the stadium.  Two gunmen emerged from a van parked near the gate to spray the crowd with automatic rifle fire – the effect was to kill a quite a few people, but the larger effect was to force a rush into the stadium as people were trampled under foot.  The third and fourth team members emerged from another van to fire Rocket Propelled Grenades (RPGs) into the gate areas, again forcing people into the stadium and killing or wounding those in the back of the stampede.   A fifth and a sixth killer emerged from a third van with a mortar.  It began lobbing mortars into the stadium, exploding in the air.  The automatic rifle fire was redirected from the gate to the parking lot to secure the perimeter around the team of six.  This was repeated in the East Gate and the North Gate – forcing those in the gate areas deeper into the stadium while killing some of those in the lot.  Three teams of seven (counting the suicide van drivers) had killed hundreds while trapping a panicked stadium of about 60,000.  They were then firing at will, raining shrapnel on the survivors.  Prepared with enough mortars to fire continuously for an hour, the only question was when they would be stopped.  

The North Gate attack group almost immediately encountered some small arms fire from a nearby apartment building.  This new apartment building had just opened in September – upscale flats built downtown and ideal for the urban single lifestyle.  The building complex was nearly empty today as the primarily 20-something residents had mostly gone elsewhere over the long weekend or were out doing something by noon.  But Jacob Hamilton was home.  Jacob had just left the Army and was three months into his new job in corporate finance.  He was taking advantage of the long weekend to get ahead at work.  Just yesterday, he had driven to his parents’ place in Asheville for Thanksgiving and picked up his deer hunting rifle while he was there.  Back in his own new home, he was making headway on a project when all hell broke loose out his window.  He heard the first explosion and knew immediately what was going on. Although he had a clear line of sight to the group, he was not an elite rifleman by army standards and he was 500m away.  Nonetheless, within 30 seconds, he had downed two of the North Gate team members and forced the other four to take cover thanks to the fortuitous retrieval of his deer rifle.  They continued to fire mortars at infrequent intervals, but the assault rifle fire and RPG fire were stopped for the moment.  Through the scope, Jacob could not see the other team members but he kept the harassment fire coming in and watched for movement.   About 7 minutes later, he downed a third team member.  At the very least, he kept their lethal effectiveness down from the start.

The same could not be said of the other two groups, whose continuous fire on the crowds took a horrible toll.  All three gates were bloody messes of bodies – hundreds of innocents strewn all over the place, dismembered, more blood than anyone could imagine.  Fortunately, the fans who made it from their seats into the concourse were relatively safe. In the highlight of the day from the perspective of stopping the killing, Charlotte’s SWAT team was on the scene within ten minutes.  Countless lives were saved as the three assault teams were quickly taken out. Nonetheless, 1468 people died and nearly 10,000 were injured.  When the shooting stopped, many fans just stood in a daze, wandering around waiting to find out what to do.  Others – half expecting the shooting to reignite - could not get out of the lot fast enough.  Although fans were routed away from the three gates of concentrated carnage, there was more than enough to horrify them inside the stadium and most had to walk near the gates to get back to their cars.

Charlotte’s carnage paled next to that of New Brunswick, New Jersey.  The ESPN noon game featured Rutgers and Connecticut.  The stadium was smaller, but several factors contributed to making this attack by far the more lethal of the two.  Several people were getting phone calls saying "Can you believe what's going on?" or "get away from that crowd" or text messages like "go 2 a TV"... but then the explosions started.  Much like in Charlotte, the intent was to block a couple exits with incendiary bombs, increasing the panic and keeping the crowd herded into a tighter kill zone, but events exceeded the goals of the planners.  At one gate near the endzone, the fire caught and began sweeping into the stadium.  At another gate, the explosion damaged a pillar, causing a partial collapse several minutes later.  The panic that ensued killed an untold number of spectators.  The number is untold because the collapse victims, fire victims, and stampede victims were difficult to separate. This forced people towards the open end of the stadium, which is where the RPG and mortar fire was concentrated.   There were no reinforcements and there was no escape for the crowd, the cavalry did not come for over half an hour due to jurisdictional confusion and an initial focus of resources in the region on responding to the Times Square suicide bomber.  There were four teams of attackers instead of the three in Charlotte, so more firepower was put on fewer people for a longer amount of time and every exit was blocked.  When the assault teams ran out of rpgs and mortars – nearly 20 minutes into the killing, they simply walked into the stadium unopposed.  Armed with AK-74 assault weapons, they shot everyone they saw and did not run out of ammunition.  They walked into bathrooms packed with fans running for cover and threw grenades in the air, then walked through shooting those who survived.  On several occasions, they chose to behead victims who appeared to be alive.  When the police and SWAT teams did come, they took up positions at a distance outside the stadium and only slowly entered the stadium despite the sounds of explosions and gunfire ringing out all over the stadium. 36,383 fans walked into Rutgers Stadium, but only 8,636 survived. Most of those were in the press boxes & suites or survivors of the collapsed side of stadium who retained the ability to walk and escaped before fire swept across their section.   It was death on a level America had not seen since the Civil War.

Sunday, November 30, 2008

Before the worst came, there was one more violent attack to shatter the nerves of a horrified nation almost two days after the initial attack.  On Sunday at 4:46am in St. Louis, the residents of the Meadow Terrance Apartments woke to a deafening explosion that shook their building. Meadow Terrace is a lower middle income apartment block with 40 units and 133 residents about 9 miles north of downtown St Louis’ iconic arch in a fairly middle class area.  In the parking garage beneath the building, a pipe bomb planted next to a pillar was remotely detonated with enough force to wake slumbering neighbors 1 mile away.  The initial blast killed nobody, but the structure of the building immediately became unstable.  The unit directly above the blast was vacant, as the residents were visiting relatives in Chicago, but their living room was demolished and fell into where the garage had been. With the sounds of creaking and cracking, every resident in the building ran to get out before the building started to come down.  Additionally, several neighbors had flashlights and ran out to the building to see if they could help.  No need.  Within 10 minutes, everyone was out front, at which time the police and ambulance arrived on the scene.  It looked like everyone in this bleary eyed suburb had dodged a bullet when police lieutenant Darryl Williams noticed a red light blinking inside the nearly opaque tinted windows of an early 90’s model Mazda with aftermarket ground effects and a spoiler.  He began to yell for everyone to get away from the building, but it was too late.   In an explosion many times as powerful as the first, the car bomb sent out a shock wave peppered with ball bearings. The assembled group of people between the car and the apartment building – 108 residents , 7 police/ambulance personnel, and 15 neighbors – did not have a chance.  Many were standing within 10 yards of the car.  The explosion shattered windows three blocks away.  The projectiles critically injured a man looking out his window almost 100 yards away - a ball bearing severed his jugular artery.  In all 72 people were killed and another 82 injured by the second bomb, but any lingering hope that after Friday’s devastating attack would give the people of America another long pause like the one after 9/11 was shattered.

Incredibly, the worst was yet to come and it could no longer be stopped.