Hiccock fumbled trying to find his FBI I.D. but gave up. “Agent I am … fuck that, who’s in charge?”
Special Agent Burrell, sir.”
“Get her on your radio. Tell her Quarterback is here.”
A moment later, the agent returned. “I am to send you on up, sir.”
“Bridge, tell him what we need.”
Hiccock made his way to the front line established by the police across from the theater. Brooke Burrell was there and she filled him in.
“Brooke, this is …. What’s your first name, Bridge?”
“That’s classified, sir,”
“No shit! Well then, Brooke this is Bridgestone. I want him to have full tactical control. He’s my man and the President’s.”
“Full what? With all due respect, Hiccock, I’ll have a HRT team inbound in seven minutes.”
“My wife Janice is in there. She and the others may not have that long and Bridge can do things your guys can’t.”
“Is he Superman?”
“No, but he holds a higher form of Presidential Immunity than I got for you. But you’ll have to forget that part. Besides, as the head of this joint operation,” Bill pulled out his F.B.I. card, “my deputy director status outranks you. And thank you for getting the info from that dirtbag.”
“That was you? Nice!” Bridgestone tipped his imaginary hat.
“Thanks. Okay, deputy director, what’s the plan?”
“Whatever he says it is.” Hiccock threw his thumb towards Bridgestone.
“Subway runs under here, so I need shaped charges and access to the adjacent basement. I’ll need tac radios and weapons, stun grenades and five knives.”
“Well, Rambo, I can do everything but the shaped charges, ‘cause they’re not here yet.”
Bridge glanced away and saw the N.Y.F.D. Rescue One truck. An officer was unloading an acetylene tank in preparation for cutting through some metal gates.
Bill followed his stare. “I’m on it,” Bill said, running over.
“Captain, I need…
“Lieutenant.”
“Lieutenant, I need an acetylene tank. Right this second.”
“You look familiar.”
“The tank!”
The lieutenant ran to the rig and pulled an extra bottle of the gas. It weighed about 40 pounds and stood about two-and-a-half feet high. When he handed the tank to Bill, he snapped his fingers.
“I got it. You were the guy at the train station in Westchester when that building blew up… that woman under the rubble…then you got famous, all over TV and the maga…”
“If I get out of this alive, drinks are on me and we can reminisce. Gotta go.”
Sardi’s restaurant was famous but its basement was a mess. Bill, Bridge, and five SWAT guys put the green metal cylinder up against the wall between the restaurant and the theater. They listened, waiting for a train to pass under the building.
As the subway rumble approached, they took cover behind the tables and rolling bars that littered the basement. Bridge shot the acetylene bottle from across the room; the bullet hit dead center and dented the metal bottle; he then drew a bead and hit it in the exact same weakened spot and it exploded at the height of the rumbling sound.
In the theater, it was just heard as a slightly larger subway rumble, which, for the sake of the performances, the theater was built to filter out. The terrorists didn’t suspect a thing.
The jagged hole in the wall opened to the back storage area behind the theater. There were many old props, sandbags, and lights stowed there. Bridge took the point and found the under-stage. He flipped down his night vision goggles. The trap doors and markings were all in phosphorescent paint and they glowed like neon.
He caught sight of a figure by the stairway holding a gun. The knife flew from his right hand and landed in the throat of the man, silencing him with a muffed gurgle. Bill saw the SWAT guys look at each other. This was not their way of engaging. They would be reviewed harshly for taking the life. But there would be no review for Bridgestone. He waved on the team and started up the stairs. They led to the wings of the theater’s back stage. Bridge motioned for two of the SWAT cops to take position up on the catwalks above the stage. They silently found the ladders and scaled them in seconds. When they reached their perches, they drew a bead on the audience area and used their night vision sniper scopes to identify good guys from bad. They also radioed back to Bridge that the doors were chained and locked and that charges were wired across the span of the audience on makeshift cables attached to the balcony boxes at either side of the stage.
Bill went up the stairs and joined Bridge. In a soft whisper, Bridge said, “Is that your wife?” He pulled his head away from the sniper scope on his rifle and allowed Bill to peer through.
Bill’s heart actually stopped beating and ice suddenly flowed through his bloodstream. He was turned inside out by the image of the man holding a knife to Janice’s throat while another guy held a video camera up with a light shining on them. That was the good news for Bridge. That light killed the bad guys’ night vision.
“Bill, make it for the first row then crawl up to the side where they are. I’ll drop the knife guy when you pop up, then the camera guy. You grab Janice and dive under the seats for cover.” He radioed two of the remaining SWAT guys to pick two targets each, clockwise, starting from the one at the exit door near the stage, and ordered them to go when Bill jumped up or if he was discovered. The cops up on the lighting catwalks had clear shots on the five bad guys in the back wearing the headscarves of the Caliphate.
He assigned the last SWAT cop to cut the wire on the string of explosives dangling over the audience. He had followed the detonator wire to the house right box where the line was attached. That trooper had to scale the back stage scaffolding and use a cast entrance from the loge. A quick learner, he went against his civil police training and coldly and without provocation strangled one of the terrorists who had been assigned that hallway to guard. He then took his position in the box and investigated the wires to make sure it was a simple two-wire open circuit and no tamper proofing was in play. When he reported that it looked like a simple cut and disarm, Bridge told Bill that it was all on him.
Bill waited until every terrorist he could see was looking the other way and then he scrambled across the lower part of the theater from the stage apron to the first row of seats. He stopped and listened to hear any sounds that would indicate if someone saw him. Over his radio, he heard Bridge.
“Good so far. Go slowly, Bill, I got my gun on the knife guy’s temple. If he moves his hand, I pop him, so don’t rush.”
Bill shimmied to the end of the aisle. There were at least 12 rows that got wider and wider as the theater went back so that the end of each aisle was somewhat visually covered by the one ahead of it when you looked toward the stage from the rear. At the sixth row, a figure appeared at the exit door. At first, the young Jihadi from Jordan did a double take when he saw Bill just looking up at him from the floor. He then started to raise his gun and open his mouth. But from two different directions, muzzle silenced, bullets entered his forehead and he rotated back against the closed door and slumped to a sitting position, blood gushing from the blasted open back of his head. Bill froze again to see if anyone noticed that.
“Okay, you’re clear; keep going.”
One of the bad guys ran up to the guy holding the knife. He had a portable TV. He started talking in Arabic. On the TV was the news of the helicopter crash and the rumor that it had a radiological device of some kind on it.
The one with the knife then said something about Allah and started to say something else when his head exploded. His grip on Janice released. Bill shot up and ran toward her. The disconnected explosives fell harmlessly, like clothes on a broken line. A trooper started to open fire on two of the bad guys across the way. The cameraman went down next. The five at the back of the room all went down in one second. Out of nowhere, a screaming man in a headscarf came running in from the wings towards Bill and Janice. Bill fired from his rifle as he covered Janice and the guy caught two in the legs. He started to fall but kept firing as he fell. His bullets ripped into the seats around the Hiccocks as the stuffing flew. Two more hits entered the shooter’s body as he was falling and he and the gun fell silenced.
