Galveston, TX
Before you embark on a journey of revenge, dig two graves.
Confucius
Amir sat quietly in the back of the rented van as it slowly turned the corner. Earlier that day, a large piece of plywood had been inserted between the front seats and the cargo space, blocking off any outside view. The interior walls had been lined with bundles of newspapers, insulating the occupants form any incoming gunfire. With its windows closed, the odors of sweat and gun oil hung heavily in the stale air and the men in the back of the van were feeling it, including Amir. Rivulets of sweat dripped from their foreheads while the rest of their bodies glistened from a sticky perspiration that saturated their shirts. This slick sheen made grasping their assault rifles difficult.
The “load and go” rental vehicle had been obtained from a national hardware box store. It had been leased for just under twenty dollars an hour. That had been earlier that morning, and the cost of the vehicle was quickly mounting. Not that it mattered. There were no plans to return it.
On the front of the van, metal struts had been bolted into place. Then, one-inch-steel, oil-drilling pipes were cut and welded to the van’s frame. The final result reminded Amir of an old train and its cow catcher. Amir smiled. There would have been a hefty penalty levied by the hardware store for the modifications, but there wasn’t going to be much left if all went according to plan.
Amir looked at his companions, a ragtag group of believers that were on a mission to strike back at the Great Satan. He knew most of them by sight and none by name. A necessary precaution so that if one of them was captured, there was a layer of protection for the others. Even their mission had been kept secret until they’d all gathered earlier that day. That was when the true nature of their task had been laid out, its glorious details explained. Afterwards, all of them had been kept together in one place to prevent anyone from knowingly or inadvertently leaking their plans to the Americans.
Amir was still in shock at the contents of the wooden crate that sat in the middle of the cargo area. It was secured to the floor of the van with multiple nylon straps that kept it from sliding around on the vehicle’s metal floor. They had all been assured that the crate’s contents would not be inadvertently activated by the jolts and bumps of the road.
Amir mentally reviewed his instructions. The cleric who’d opened his eyes to the evils of America had given him the ultimate responsibility for the group’s mission. His only duty was to flip a toggle switch. Hardly a complicated undertaking, but that simple action would be remembered forever.
The van slowed to a crawl, then quietly came to rest. Three loud slaps on the plywood barrier between the driver and the cargo area confirmed that they were at their first stop. The men all clutched their weapons, a collection of AK-47s and older Russian assault rifles.
“We are here. Remember your responsibilities.” The group’s leader commanded. He pointed to couple of young men, probably in their 20’s. “Team one, take your assigned positions and follow the van through the gate. Go now!”
The two nodded and the rear doors were flung open. They quickly disappeared into the black, cool Texas night. The doors were closed, followed by a silent few moments before the vehicle accelerated once again.
The van had disgorged the pair around the corner from their objective, a large government facility in the downtown section of the Texas city of Galveston. The target was a laboratory nestled within a barbed wire topped, eight-foot high, chain-linked fence. Internet mapping software had provided them with a good layout of the facility, and with some speed of action and Allah’s blessings, they would soon be at their final destination.
Amir clutched the assault rifle to his chest as the stress began to squeeze the breath from his lungs. He had to tell himself to relax but found that quietly reciting the Quran helped him the most. His anxiety began to drain as he recited chapter 22, and the promise of paradise.
“Those who leave their homes in the cause of Allah and are then slain or die. On them will Allah bestow verily a goodly provision: Truly Allah is He Who bestows the best provision.”
Ever since his spiritual awakening at the Dallas Center for Islamic Studies, Amir had prayed for the chance to avenge his Muslim brothers that were being slaughtered by the American military. The clerics had explained, in no uncertain words, the genocide and Islamophobia were embodied by the United States. They use their drones to kill the innocent. Their military shoots missiles from a mile in the air, obliterating men, women, and children while they push their Satanic morals onto his fellow Muslim people. The wise men of the mosque showed him the words of the Prophet himself, extolling his followers to kill the infidels that were polluting their holy lands. Finally, the clerics explained the wonders of the afterlife, and what awaited him when he completed his sacred mission.
Amir looked up when, as planned, he felt the van slowly decelerate at the facility’s front entrance. He glanced at one of his fellow jihadists and received a warm smile in reply.
“Allahu Akbar.” The man whispered. “We have made it. Truly, Allah is great.”
“Allahu Akbar!” Amir replied, his fears now gone.
Amir could hear the driver and his passenger seat companion speaking to the gate’s guard. Both were dressed as delivery men.
An explosion of gunfire erupted, as the jihadist in the front of the van sprayed automatic fire out the driver’s side window. The eruption of bullets was deafening, even with the half-inch plywood barrier. After the gunshots stopped, their vehicle shot forward as the driver slammed the accelerator pedal to the van’s floor. If the satellite map was accurate, they had about seventy-five meters to gain speed before they would try to blast through an electronically locked chain-link gate. This was the only unknown. The van should be able to crash through the gate, which was why the one-inch steel pipes had been soldered onto the grill. It was still a questionable tactic, but it was determined to be their best chance to complete the mission. After that barrier was breached, they would quickly be at their final destination.
The men in the back of the van hung their heads and grabbed the nylon straps that were secured with floor-mounted cargo anchors. They waited for the collision, that many feared, would end their glorious mission.
The small jolt they felt as the van blew through the gate was almost imperceptible. The only thing that confirmed that they’d made it past the locked barrier was the cheers from their two companions in the front seat.
They had made it! Amir thought. The bio-lab was within their grasp. Amir said a prayer of thanks to Allah. The laboratory they were now heading toward should have been secured to a much higher degree, but America had far too many soft targets to properly reinforce. This lack of security was one of the reasons the Galveston location had been selected.
Amir and the other jihadists smiled at each other. The hurdles put up by the infidels were falling before them. Now, they sat silently as the van’s driver took them to their final destination.
They took two turns before coming to a quick stop. Again, three slaps on the plywood had the remaining men spill out of the back door. Amir was the last one off. As he landed on the asphalt, two of his fellow jihadists pushed him aside and quickly unstrapped their cargo. They pulled it out of the back and set the wooden crate down on the paved parking lot.
Amir felt something brush by his ear. The blast of compressed air and a high pitched “zing” let him know that a bullet nearly blew his head off.
“ALLAHU AKBAR!” Several of the jihadists screamed, as they fired their weapons up the road. The muzzle flash of incoming gunfire could be seen about fifty meters back. Someone was shooting at them from the rear wall of a building. With all of the jihadi rifles returning fire, the battle quickly ended as the lone gunman was either shot or retreated in the face of overwhelming odds.
Someone shouted and pointed at one of their companions who was laying on the ground. He was an older man that Amir recognized from several of their training sessions. He was face up on the road, a small hole punctured in his forehead. His brain was dead, but his body hadn’t gotten that message as his arms and neck spasmed in a final gesture of life. His eyes stared skyward; bone fragments and brain tissue sat in a red puddle that was pooling in a perfect circle around his head as his heart continued to pump blood.
“Leave him.” Their leader commanded. “He’s with Allah now.”
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Four of the men gathered the wood crate and carried it to a large, steel door. The building was marked with multiple biohazard-warning signs, confirming that they had found their target. After verifying that the door was locked, two of them brought their AK rifles up and sprayed the area around the handle. Each emptied their 30-round magazine into the metal, punching a large hole through the door.
One of them kicked the double paneled entrance open.
“Let’s go!”
Amir followed the men into the room, a gathering area with a reception desk and government issued metal waiting room chairs. The next door was locked as well but gave way to another magazine dump.
The crate was manhandled into the hallway beyond. At first, Amir was startled at their rough handling of the device. But when he thought about it, they had arrived at their destination. If it was accidentally activated, so be it. It wasn’t the ideal location to detonate the bomb, but the effects would still be devastating.
They came to a third locked door, one that was far sturdier and more reinforced that the prior two. After emptying three magazines into the door, then one more into the wall to see if they could make a hole there, the group’s leader rotated their lone RPG from off his shoulder. The weapon looked like an old Mercury rocket sitting atop of a long, metal tube.
“Everyone, back up and take cover.” He commanded. All of them moved to the back of the long corridor and hid in several of the side connected rooms.
Their leader carried the rocket propelled grenade into a doorway about halfway down the hall. Leaning out, he pointed the weapon at the end of the corridor and activated it.
“ALLAHU AKBAR!” He yelled and pulled the trigger.
The explosion threw debris back down the hall, filling the space with white powdery dust while spewing fragments of concrete and reinforced metal everywhere. As the cloud settled, Amir could see that the door had been blown back, leaving a gaping hole. The hallway looked like someone had fired the world’s biggest shotgun. Fragments from the blast had peppered every square foot of the corridor with deadly shrapnel.
Outside, the crack of bullets echoed back from the reception area. Team One had followed them through the open gate and set up a rear guard at the building’s entrance. The staccato of gunfire was rapidly accelerating, from a few single shots to a never-ending cacophony of automatic fire. The higher pitched sounds of the American battle rifles could be heard along with the lower explosions of the heavier AK-47 rounds. Team One was under attack. The Americans were finally mounting a defense.
“Keep moving.” The leader growled. “We have to go further.”
The crate was hauled through the opening and into the next hallway.
Amir followed and found himself in a large locker room. Another secured door blocked them; a biometric pad was attached to the wall on the door frame’s left side. Another magazine dump onto the lock had them past that barrier and into a tile lined room beyond. Shower heads protruded from the walls, and placards warned the occupants of the dangers that awaited them further into the facility.
“Team 2. Go back into the last room and hold your position. Kill any of the kafir that dares to interfere with Allah’s will.” The man barked.
Four more jihadists went back to the locker room and Amir could hear the noise as they began to overturn furniture and any lockers that weren’t bolted to the wall. The leader, a tall and confident man, pointed at Amir and the other two jihadists.
“Follow me. We need to go further.” He commanded. Amir and the others obeyed, helping him pull the heavy cart into the next room.
As they moved deeper into the facility, Amir was pleasantly surprised at the ease of penetrating the biohazard lab. Then he realized that Allah would pave the way for their holy jihad. This was a sacred mission, and they were very close to its completion.
They moved through another hallway and past an airtight door. The space they entered was a narrow room with spacesuits hanging on the wall. Yellow umbilical cord-like tubes were hanging from the ceiling, awaiting a scientist or researcher to don the protective body armor and hook themselves up to the building’s air and power supply.
The leader stopped at the far end of the room and stared through a round, glass window. Looking like a submarine door, the heavy metal barrier was impressive in both its size and presence. There was no lock or handle evident to open the imposing entrance.
“It must be remotely activated.” The man mumbled as he swung his rifle off his shoulder.
He emptied his magazine into the door and its clear window but was disappointed at the lack of results. He took the butt of his rifle and began to smash at the door’s window, which had withstood the heavy AK rounds. Those bullets had left nothing other than nicks on the metal and star-like cracks on the reinforced glass. He quickly realized that it was futile. He looked one more time into the next room and sighed.
“I believe we are as far as we can go.” He said. “It should be enough.”
Amir looked through the cracked, but still effective glass window and saw a bank of cages lining the wall, each holding various test animal. They were near to their goal, and if the cleric was correct, they were close enough for Allah to exact his revenge.
With more gunfire drawing closer, the leader barked.
“You two, put the crate over here and go to the door. You will protect our young friend.”
After depositing the wooden box, the two men moved to the room’s entrance and pointed their rifles back down the hallway.
Using the butt of his rifle, the leader smashed the crate open, exposing an explosive device. It was a surprisingly small metal tube, perhaps only a meter in length. The weapon looked oddly cold. Its surface a dull, brushed grey. The leader flipped a lever on its control panel, and several flashing lights began to blink. The cleric then reminded Amir about which switches were to be triggered.
“Allah be with you, young one. I will see you in paradise.”
With that, the leader sprinted out of the room to confront the American assault.
Amir stood over the device, studying its elegant design and marveling at the power that Allah had granted him.
The sound of gunfire was rapidly drawing near. Amir looked back at his two remaining companions who were guarding the open doorway of the biohazard room they were in. Both men stood facing out, their AK-style rifles pointing down the hallway. Further away, the rest of his group was making their final stand.
One of the guards at the door, a boy he had just met the previous night, turned towards him, and smiled. He looked like Amir’s younger brother. His sibling had been thirteen years old when he had been killed by a missile launched from an American drone. It was his brother’s death and the slaughter of his friends and countrymen that led to this final, glorious moment.
Amir looked at the weapon’s control panel and flipped one of the switches, turning a red warning light green. The bomb was now armed. All Amir had to do now was toggle the next lever to the right. That would send an electric current into the device, creating the massive explosion.
Their bomb was a nuclear missile triggering device. It was a small fission device, similar to the bomb first dropped by the Americans on the Japanese back in World War II. This triggering device had been designed to initiate the detonation of a hydrogen bomb’s larger fusion explosion, The compact, but powerful device was a marvel of technology and innovation. It weighed less than ten percent of the nuclear device dropped on Japan in World War II but had the power of two Hiroshima bombs.
Amir sat quietly on the facility’s tile floor. One of just a few level-4 laboratories in the continental United States. It held about every known deadly virus and bacteria known to man. The bomb he was about to detonate would send the research facility’s lethal contents into the air, adding to the radioactive destruction he was about to unleash.
An explosion from down the hall silenced the building. Amir knew from the lack of gunfire, that the rest of his team had been eliminated. The remaining two jihadists that stood at the room’s door brought their rifles up and aimed down their barrels into the next space, each determined to take as many of the infidels down with them as they could. They would buy as much time for Amir as possible, allowing him to complete the team’s sacred mission.
The two jihadists suddenly began firing out of the laboratory’s door. Amir knew that his time to die had come. He put his finger on the toggle and closed his eyes, giving thanks to Allah for the chance to become a martyr. He thought of the blessings he would soon be receiving and then, in his mind’s eye, he saw his dead brother’s face smiling down on him.
Both his companions cried out in pain and flopped back into the room, but Amir never opened his eyes to see what had happened. He knew they were already dead and that they would be expecting his arrival in the afterlife. He hoped they would be standing next to his younger brother, all enjoying their final reward.
A clink sounded from the polished tile as a canister grenade settled next to him on the lab’s hard floor. But it was too late. Amir flipped the switch on the small, but powerful weapon.
The surge of electricity detonated conventional explosive plates that surrounded a ball of enriched uranium. The plates directed their energy into the mass of reactive material, compressing the ball so that the Uranium was rapidly condensed. A nearly two-kiloton explosion resulted, emitting energy and radiation at a terrifying rate.
The fireball roared outwards, instantly killing everyone within a four-block radius. The next fifteen blocks were ignited by the bomb’s intense heat while creating an expanding radioactive mushroom cloud. Thousands died instantly as commercial buildings and homes were leveled or incinerated.
Just a few dozen meters away and one floor below the detonation, a soup of viruses and bacteria survived the initial detonation. Several milliseconds later, the overpressure from the explosion cracked the Level-4 container, breaking its six-inch titanium walls and shattering the glass vials within. Marburg, rabies, pneumonic plague, smallpox, and any number of naturally occurring and man-made viruses puddled together; all were saturated with ionizing radiation. For many, their DNA simply disintegrated into a soup of nucleic acids and denatured proteins.
But some of the viral material survived. They blended together with unimaginable results. The unholy combinations of virulent RNA and DNA blew out of the crater and spread.
One building away, in the basement of the Forever-Youth Life Extension laboratory, two vats of the newly created biologic medium were shattered, and their contents dispersed with the explosion.
The infective cocktail was drawn up the shaft of the expanding mushroom cloud, where high winds carried the irradiated, infective dust eastward. The fallout blanketed America’s Southeastern coast and beyond, rising into the upper atmosphere where it rode the high-altitude winds.
As for the two scientists working nearby, they never did find out what all the fireworks were for.