First Strike (28 page)

The door across the hall opened. Dewey pulled back, shielded by the wall. He saw the head of a gunman. It wasn't Garotin. His front was covered in blood. Before the door could shut, he caught a glimpse into the operating room. Beneath bright overhead lights, a headless body lay strapped to the operating room table, blood still spilling from the freshly severed neck.

He'd long ago come to terms with the concept of torture, of being mortally wounded, handicapped, even dying. But the sight of the beheaded man sent a burst of terror through Dewey in a way he'd never experienced. It was pure terror, the feeling cold and empty, with no boundaries or hope. Dewey felt uncontrollably nauseous. He fought to regain himself, but liquid shot from his mouth, over his lips, onto the wall and floor. He vomited for several seconds, trying in vain to control the heaving noises.

The door opened. It was the gunman from across the hall. The man had short-cropped black hair and glasses. At the sight of Dewey, he was momentarily taken aback.

Dewey raised the rifle just as the gunman yelled, then fired. The slug struck the terrorist in the right eye, shattering the lens of his glasses, splattering blood and brain across the wall. He crumpled to the filthy linoleum floor.

He had no choice now. He moved the fire selector to auto-hail.

Dewey opened the door and moved, rifle out in front, finger on the trigger. He glanced right, seeing nothing; then left, swinging the muzzle around and aiming. The two guards at the nurse's desk stared at him, paralyzed in disbelief, but only for a half second. The far one threw himself down, diving for cover beneath the desk. Dewey marked the one still standing and fired. Slugs burst from the carbine, slamming him back, dropping him.

Dewey walked slowly toward the desk, waiting, muzzle trained. Then he stopped and waited. After a few seconds, the other man's head appeared at the side of the desk and Dewey fired. A hail of bullets pelted the desk and ripped into the terrorist's skull before he could pull back in.

The ominous drumbeat of steel-toed boots echoed from behind Dewey as terrorists ascended the stairs at the end of the hall.

Dewey charged across the hallway into the room of the decapitated man. The room was empty except for the dead man. Dewey saw the head, lying on the floor at the end of a wet trail of blood. He fought to not throw up again.

A siren blared, screeching menacingly through the hallway.

Dewey heard shouting in Arabic followed by a short blast of automatic gunfire. He went to a corner of the room, crouched down, and got ready.

Two gunmen charged into the room. They wore black T-shirts and nylon masks that covered their faces. Each man clutched a gun; the first a pistol, the second man a submachine gun. They scanned the room and one of them spied Dewey. Dewey's eyes locked with the terrorist's, who quickly registered the muzzle of the rifle. Dewey fired. Slugs slashed into the man's neck. He dropped, screaming, as the other guard froze, aware that Dewey now held him in the killing arc.

Dewey moved quickly and stuck the muzzle of the rifle beneath the remaining gunman's chin. With his left hand, he took the pistol. He held the barrel and hammered a crushing blow into the man's temple, dropping him to the ground.

More footsteps thundered from the corridor. The high-pitched siren continued to wail.

Dewey pulled the black shirt from the unconscious gunman and pulled it over his head.

Think.

He stared down at the dead terrorist. He knew what he needed to do.

 

37

OVAL OFFICE

THE WHITE HOUSE

WASHINGTON, D.C.

Less than thirty seconds later, Terry O'Brien, the White House physician, appeared at the end of the hallway, sprinting to the Oval Office. Behind him was a swarm of people from the medical unit, along with senior White House staff.

Calibrisi's eyes shut just as the full force of the coronary hit him and sent his 230-pound frame into a horrible spasm of seizures.

O'Brien stormed into the room, dropped to the floor by Calibrisi's side, ripped off his shirt, and pressed his fingertips into his neck, searching for a pulse.

A medical assistant attached Calibrisi to a portable heart monitor as O'Brien started performing CPR.

O'Brien looked up at Dellenbaugh.

“Tell them to get the Traumahawk ready, Mr. President,” he said as he pumped his hands up and down on Calibrisi's chest in a timed rhythm. “We don't have much time.”

The Oval Office was crowded with cabinet members, various high-level Pentagon officials, and senior national security staff. An eerie silence took over the room.

After two minutes of CPR, O'Brien again searched for a carotid artery pulse in Calibrisi's neck but felt nothing. The heart monitor told him the same thing.

“
Lifepak!
” he said.

He got higher on his knees and began an urgent, faster-paced, more violent form of CPR.

A few seconds later, a nurse moved a defibrillator to Calibrisi's side. She handed O'Brien a pair of paddles, which he placed against Calibrisi's chest. He waited for the tone, indicating the charge was set, then barked, “Clear!” ensuring no one was touching Calibrisi. He pressed the handle buttons and sent a searing two hundred joules of electric current into Calibrisi's body.

His eyes shot to the monitor. It blipped, then went steady, a green line laid out across the screen. After a few seconds, the defibrillator's high-pitched tone went steady again, and O'Brien repeated the blast of electric current to Calibrisi's heart, trying in vain to bring him back to life.

After a third attempt, a small green triangle appeared on the monitor, then another, and a third, all accompanied by a soft blip; he was alive.

“Let's go,” said O'Brien.

They lifted Calibrisi onto a gurney. Someone opened the French doors. O'Brien and three others—two medical assistants and Dellenbaugh himself—sprinted as they wheeled the gurney, charging through the doors, across the Rose Garden, toward the South Lawn.

Calibrisi clung to life, his heart pumping in a weak, uneven pattern that O'Brien knew would last only a few minutes.

When they reached the South Lawn, a wall of wind hit them as they approached the bright red Sikorsky HC-60 Traumahawk
.
The chopper's rotors cut frantically through the air above their heads. They tucked the gurney into the chopper. O'Brien and one of his assistants, a physician named Lovvorn, climbed aboard. The chopper shot into the cloud-crossed Washington sky.

Lovvorn administered CPR as the chopper moved east, slashing the air as the pilots jacked the ferocious chopper to the max.

O'Brien leaned into the cockpit.

“Where to, sir?” asked the copilot, yelling above the loud engines.

“Bethesda!”

“I'll radio ahead!”

“Tell them to find Marc Gillinov!” yelled O'Brien above the noise of the chopper, referring to one of Walter Reed's heart surgeons. “Tell him we have an
advanced therapy situation!
Use those exact words!
”

 

38

NEW YORK POLICE DEPARTMENT

PUBLIC SAFETY ANSWERING CENTER

METROTECH CENTER

BROOKLYN, NEW YORK

The first call came in at 1:18
P.M.
Officer Manuela Vega of the NYPD took the call.

Vega was one of fifteen hundred emergency operators inside the sprawling Public Safety Answering Center.

“Nine-one-one, Operator Vega.”

“
Terrorists!
” shouted the caller. Vega leaned forward, hearing what sounded like gunshots in the background. The caller continued, “
They're shooting people in the streets!
”

Vega's brown eyes flashed across the six computer screens in her cubicle. Her right hand reached out, touching one of the screens where a red light was flashing. This light was the location of the caller. She touched the screen and the view zoomed in, showing where the call had originated.

“I have you at 114th and Broadway, near Columbia.”

“Yes.”

Another screen brought up a grid of local, state, and federal agencies Vega could immediately inform of the incident, again by simply touching the screen. Every New York law enforcement agency, its individual branches, along with emergency medical and fire response, were integrated into MetroTech's extremely powerful technology infrastructure, making cross-department and interagency awareness and response immediate. State and federal law enforcement was also part of the MetroTech IT matrix, including the FBI, whose counterterrorism center Vega quickly searched for, found, and prepared to inform.

Vega linked the incident to the closest NYPD precinct, the 26th, along with emergency response.

Before she sounded a broader alarm, she wanted some sort of further confirmation. She tapped a third screen, one that could focus satellite feed in real time. She linked it to the caller's location. The picture was unfocused and hazy, but with each second it sharpened.

“Has anyone been hit?”

“
Yes!
Several people. They're dead. There are bodies in the street.”

“How many gunmen?”

“Three or four, maybe more. I … I ran.”

“That's okay. That's what you should've done.”

Vega tried to get a better view from the video, but it was too unfocused.

She didn't wait any longer. She tapped several modules on the agency integration screen, sending the call to the emergency dispatch centers inside a multitude of NYPD, local, and federal entities, including NYPD Counterterrorism Bureau, NYPD Strategic Response Group, FDNY, and FBI CENTCOM.

“Should I do anything?” asked the panicked caller.

“No, you've already done something. Thank you.”

Vega hung up and immediately pressed a red button on one of three phone consoles in her cubicle.

“Gutierrez.”

“This is Operator two-two-six, Vega. I believe we have an active shooter scenario and what could be some sort of terror strike. I just uplinked it.”

“Got it. My board is flashing here. We have multiple reports. I'm going to define the protocol and elevate. Thank you, Vega.”

Suddenly, a low, emphatic emergency beacon sounded on the MetroTech intercom. This meant the active duty supervisor of the Public Safety Answering Center was establishing a protocol spelling out what all operators should advise citizens calling about what was happening at Columbia. This guidance flashed across the screens of all fifteen hundred operators.

In addition, the incident was being elevated. Jurisdiction was being officially passed up the food chain to the commissioner's office, with a cross-departmental “crisis patch” with active response guided by an intra-NYPD task force led by two departments: Emergency Services Unit and Counterterrorism.

*   *   *

Within three minutes of the first 911 call, several patrol cars from the NYPD's 26th Precinct were at the scene, along with a number of ambulances. The scene was chaotic. Working with Columbia University security, the first priority was evacuating the campus. A campuswide alarm system was activated—a piercing alarm sounded in every building, accompanied by a recording calling for all students, teachers, staff, and visitors to leave the campus immediately. Officers from the 26th quickly cordoned off the area. A security perimeter was established between Riverside Drive to the west and Morningside Drive to the east, and between 113th and 120th Streets. No vehicular traffic was allowed. Foot traffic was allowed up to the west side of Broadway and to the east side of Amsterdam Avenue for residents with proper identification. The campus itself was off-limits to everyone except law enforcement.

EMTs removed casualties from 114th Street and along the steps leading into the campus. Once police determined that the terrorists were not targeting the EMTs yet, corpses were quickly removed from the walk in front of Carman.

*   *   *

Within four minutes of the first 911 call, the commissioner of the NYPD, along with every deputy commissioner in the department, knew about the situation at Columbia.

In addition, the commanding officers of Emergency Services Unit and Counterterrorism were already together on the fourth floor of NYPD headquarters at 1 Police Plaza, in the Situation Center, a cavernous, windowless conference room that looked like Mission Control at NASA. Several dozen uniformed and plainclothes men and women populated the room, either at workstations, which filled the center of the room, or scrambling around to look at one of the fifty or so large plasma screens that lined the walls.

Henry Kaan, commanding officer of NYPD's Emergency Services Unit, stood before a conference table in the center of the room, a cup of coffee in his hand.

Across from him was Vince Blaisdell, commanding officer of the Counterterrorism Bureau.

A phone console was between them. Seated at the table were several officers, in front of them laptop computers enabling them to monitor the situation at Columbia and access various information.

“Patch him in,” said Blaisdell, nodding to one of his deputies, who hit a button on the phone.

“Henry, Vince, what's the situation?”

The speaker was Temba Maqubela, who ran the FBI's Counterterrorism Division.

“We have reports of as few as six and as many as a dozen gunmen, all Middle Eastern, taking over a dorm at Columbia. So far, there are eleven confirmed casualties outside the building. We've received a number of calls from students inside, and it sounds like many more have been shot.”

“How many people inside the building?”

“We estimate three to five hundred. We have students and we have some parents too. It's orientation day.”

“I know it's early,” said Maqubela, “but what are the options if we were to move now?”

“Option one, we enter with heavy weapons, explosives, armored vehicles, and a shit ton of SWAT via the ground floor. Option two, we drop a tight team onto the roof. Two or three choppers, a dozen men. Then we make it slightly more surgical.”