First Strike (26 page)

Daisy's thoughts were interrupted. She saw something. Ahead, parked across the street, was a van. A dark-skinned man was in the driver's seat, spray painting the inside of the windshield. A sense of dread came over her. Charlotte's loud laughter interrupted it. Daisy smiled and turned to Charlotte. Her mind dismissed what she'd seen. It was college, after all. Some sort of fraternity prank.

They traipsed in through the Columbia gate on 114th Street and walked to the dormitory entrance, saying hello to the uniformed security guard for the umpteenth time that morning. On the elevator, her mind flashed to the van. When the elevator stopped at the eighth floor, she felt her pocket for her cell phone, but it wasn't there.

They walked down the hallway, past students and parents unpacking their belongings. People were chatting in the hall and having a good time. Daisy walked ahead of Andy and Charlotte, arriving at the room before them, dropping the duffel on the ground. She saw her cell on the windowsill.

She started to dial her mother to tell her she would be leaving soon. As she dialed, she looked out the window, down to 114th Street. Her eyes caught the van. For several moments, she stared. Then an involuntary cry came from her mouth. She tried to speak, but her throat was choked with fear and emotion. The phone dropped to the floor before she could finish dialing.

She tried to say something, but no sound came out. She could only point as, eight floors down, five men—dark-skinned, Middle Eastern—charged from the back of the van, each man clutching an assault rifle.

The gunman at the front of the pack leveled the rifle and pointed it down the street. Her eyes followed the path of the gun. Several students were walking to Broadway, their backs turned.

“
No!
” said Daisy.

Gunfire cracked the air and echoed. The students were struck by the bullets. They tumbled awkwardly to the ground, contorted on the sidewalk, blood covering their backs, splattering the sidewalk, and quickly pooling.

Daisy's eyes shot right. Near the gate. Another gunman started firing.

Soon, gunfire was everywhere.

*   *   *

Each gunman wore a trench coat—navy or khaki or green so as to not stand out more than necessary—buttoned at the neck, arms empty so that the men's arms were beneath the coat, on the inside, where submachine guns and carbines were concealed, Uzis in front, in hand, carbines tethered across each man's back. Every firearm was loaded with ammunition, mags filled with Kevlar-tipped cartridges. The trench coats were packed with extra mags.

Tariq climbed slowly from the driver's door as, at the same time, Sirhan got out the passenger's side and Jabir climbed out the back of the van. Someone handed the long steel case to Tariq. He carried it with his left hand as he held an Uzi against his leg, finger on the trigger, hidden by his coat. They walked calmly toward the nearest gate into campus.

Sirhan walked in front. He stepped through the gate just as a man and a woman came in the opposite direction, followed by a small group of students. Sirhan passed them and went up a set of stairs. He glanced behind him, eyeing Tariq and Jabir, making sure the group of passersby hadn't somehow gotten suspicious.

Turning back around, Sirhan eyed the dorm entrance, now just several yards away. It was just like in the photos on the Columbia University Web site; one story tall, double doors of glass, slightly opaque, covered in stickers, placards, taped-on flyers announcing this and that.

There were people on the path to the entrance. He quickly counted twelve people in four tiny clusters. He passed the first two groups, which were made up of students, talking among themselves. The third group was a father and mother and their child, who was hugging his mother, saying goodbye.

He moved past them all, drawing no attention. Near the door, a tall man stood with his son, a student, Sirhan guessed. They were waiting for someone. The boy was looking past Sirhan at the group of girls who were chatting. But the father stared at Sirhan. He was white, bald, and wore a short-sleeve plaid button-down. Sirhan kept walking, pretending not to notice the man. The man was staring at him with a strange look on his face. His eyes seemed to be glued to the raincoat.

The entrance was now just a few feet away. As Sirhan came in front of them, the man held up his hand.

“Excuse me,” he said.

“What?”

“Are you a student?”

Sirhan looked at him, attempting a smile.

“Yes.” Sirhan pointed to the building. “I live in Carman.”

“Dad,” the boy said to his father. “There are lots of Middle Eastern—”

But the man ignored his son. He stepped forward to block Sirhan, reaching for Sirhan's raincoat.

Sirhan jagged left and raised the Uzi. The man lurched toward him, both arms out, but it was too late. Sirhan fired. Unmuted automatic weapon fire punctured the calm. Bullets ripped through the man's chest. The son turned, screaming, trying to get away. Sirhan triggered the gun again and sent another burst into the boy's head, killing him instantly.

Screams came from behind Sirhan, but he didn't turn. Instead, he ripped the coat from his neck and ran toward the entrance to the dorm. He saw movement through the glass and heard yelling and another pocket of screams.

Tariq, a few feet behind, pulled out his Uzi and started gunning down the fleeing people. He was joined by Jabir, who lifted an AR-15 and fired.

Tariq sprayed bullets at the small wave of panicked people, pumping a fusillade of bullets in a line, cutting most of them down. A girl near the back was hit in the arm but still managed to leap over a hedge and run toward the center of campus. Jabir charged to the hedge, leveled the gun, targeted the fleeing student, and fired. The first few slugs missed her, but he hit the back of her legs and she dropped, screaming. He finished her with a slug into her head.

Sirhan entered the dormitory with the muzzle out and his finger on the trigger. By the time his foot crossed the doorsill, the security guard was standing and pulling his gun from the holster. Sirhan sprayed him with a short burst of slugs, which struck his chest, washing the wall with blood and kicking the guard back and down behind the security desk.

Sirhan's eyes swept the room. There, to the left. Students. Five in all. Sirhan pointed the Uzi at them.

“Stand up,” he said. “Now.”

“Fuck you, Osama,” said a male student, seated in the middle.

Sirhan moved the fire selector on the Uzi to manual, then triggered the submachine gun. A single round exploded out. The slug struck the boy in the forehead, blowing out the back of his skull. One of the girls screamed.

The four remaining students climbed to their feet, arms up, cowering in fear.

Sirhan glanced to the entrance. He studied the sidewalk outside.

“Stand at the entrance,” he told the four students. “If you attempt to run, the next thing you'll feel is a bullet in your back. Do you understand?”

Sirhan positioned the students in a line across the entrance, a shield in case someone in law enforcement arrived sooner than he expected and tried to shoot.

Sirhan studied the entrance for several seconds, noticing the steel security grate recessed along the ceiling.

Tariq came running into the lobby, followed by Jabir.

“Cover the entrance, Jabir, quickly,” said Sirhan.

Tariq put the steel case on the ground and dropped his backpack. He removed a coil of chain and pulled out a handful of flex-cuffs. He noticed one of the students, a female with blond hair, turn her head. He leaned forward to see what she was looking at. At the corner of the building, a security guard was crouching and attempting to skirt along the building. Tariq dropped the flex-cuffs and lifted his carbine. He put the muzzle between the heads of the girl and another student, aimed, then yanked the trigger, sending a hurl of slugs into the man.

Sirhan moved behind the security desk, which was covered in papers and empty coffee cups. Two small black-and-white screens showed live footage of the front entrance, taken by a stationary camera outside the building. The other screen showed Carman's basement-level entrance.

Gunfire erupted from outside the building, at first a single weapon, then multiple weapons.

“
Where are they?
” Sirhan barked. “We don't have much time!”

A moment later, he saw Meuse round the corner, charging for the door, hurdling the corpses that littered the blood-drenched path in front. The rest of Sirhan's cell ran to the entrance behind Meuse, pushing past the students standing like targets.

Sirhan swept his free arm across the desk, shoving aside the papers and cups, searching. In a drawer he found a set of keys, which he pocketed. Along the underside of the desk he found a button. He pressed it and a steel gate rumbled down from the ceiling, blocking off access, sealing Carman Hall behind a wall of corrugated steel.

Sirhan moved around the security desk and found Tariq's backpack. He removed an industrial padlock and went to the entrance. He pushed aside a brass plate on the floor. Beneath it was a recessed area where a thick hook protruded, designed to attach to a similarly thick hook on the bottom of the steel security door. He padlocked the door to the hook.

Meanwhile, Tariq flex-cuffed the students' hands behind their backs. He wrapped flex-cuffs around their necks as well, then fastened each cuff to one of two chains, which he held across the back of their necks. He yanked each cuff tight, so that each student was now chained by the neck. If either end of the chain was pulled, it would tighten around their necks and choke them. He tested the chain, yanking hard, watching as the students, who were already hysterical with fear, struggled to breathe.

Tariq removed a black handheld device from the backpack. It looked like a controller to a video game. It was a cell phone detector, called a Wolfhound. He flipped the switch. A screen lit up and Tariq aimed it at the four students, waving it across each individual. When the Wolfhound made high-pitched beeping noises, Tariq reached out and removed the cell phones from their pockets, sticking the four phones in his backpack.

The other terrorists stood with rifles out, awaiting Sirhan's command.

He nodded at Tariq. “You know what to do,” he said in Arabic. “Position the students in the basement. Wire the door. Then meet me on the roof with the explosives.”

“Yes, Sirhan.”

Sirhan looked at the others.

“It's thirteen floors, two sets of stairs,” said Sirhan. “Jabir, you guard the lobby. Make sure no one comes in, and no one comes down from the stairs. The rest of you, start with the second floor, clear it out. One man per floor. Get everyone as quickly as possible up to the tenth floor. We want to be high enough so they won't jump, and we want a buffer if they approach from the roof. Move floor by floor. Use the east stairs.” Sirhan pointed. “No students on the west stairs. Get everyone to the tenth floor as soon as possible. If someone argues, kill them.”

The men grunted assents or nodded.

“Fahd, Omar, start wiring the stairs with explosives immediately,” said Sirhan. “The first level you can do right away. We wire the stairs between one and two, three and four, five and six. Understood? Then meet us upstairs.”

“Yes,” said Fahd. Omar nodded his head, adjusting the large duffel he had slung over his shoulder.

“Fahd, after you finish wiring the stairs, remain on the sixth floor and cover the entrance.
Be careful.
Any minute they'll have snipers. If you stick your head up, it will get blown off.”

*   *   *

Gripping the chain, Tariq went down the corridor past the elevators, pulling the four cuffed students along. He opened the door to a stairwell and descended.

Other than a lone hall light, the basement was dark. He tugged the students to the end of the dimly lit corridor, stopping at a green steel door. He examined it briefly, trying the doorknob, but it was bolted shut. A narrow glass window ran vertically down the side of the door. Behind the glass was an empty hallway.

Tariq locked one end of the chain to the door handle. He looked around the ceiling and walls for something to attach the other end of the chain to. A steel beam ran from floor to ceiling, built into the concrete. Tariq trained the rifle on the concrete and blew several slugs into it, creating a rapidly increasing crater until it recessed behind the beam. He repeated it on the opposite side of the beam until there was a channel through the concrete. He retrieved the end of the chain, tucked it through the hole and around the beam, pulling it tight, so that the chain was a taut line between the door handle and the beam. If someone tried to open the door, the students would die. The small window was a bonus. Before someone tried to enter through the door, he or she would see the students and know that entering would kill them by tightening the chain like a noose around their necks.

He removed a padlock from his backpack and locked the chain around the beam.

One of the students, a Korean girl, looked hatefully at him.

“If we sit down,” she said, “we'll strangle to death.”

Tariq nodded. “Yes, that's right.”

After the students were tied up, Tariq removed a beat-up shoe box from his bag.

“What is that?” asked another student, fear in her voice.

“Shut the fuck up,” Tariq snapped.

It was, in fact, an improvised explosive device, or IED, the creation of which Sirhan was an expert. The box contained a trigger, a fuse, a battery, and, most important, a large hunk of explosive material, in this case, Semtex. All of it was assembled inside the box. With duct tape, Tariq taped the box over the crack in the door, above the handle.

The IED would prevent the FBI from entering Carman from the building next door through the basement. If someone from the FBI opened the door, the IED would drop, the trigger would be struck, and the bomb would go off. Not only would the students die, but the basement would collapse beneath rubble.