A single gunshot shattered his train of thought, and he leapt up from his chair, drew his service weapon, and rushed to the door. He had a clear line of sight to Mendoza and observed him locked into a firing stance with both hands on his gun. Stewart was on her knees past Mendoza, with her hands clasped tightly around something he couldn't quite see. As he neared the door, he saw an arm extended downward from her grip. Mendoza and Stewart yelled at each other, and he immediately understood what had happened.
His moment of clarity was interrupted by three rapid gunshots that hit Stewart. He reached the doorway, only to be blown back into his office by an incredible force that shattered the entire office. If he had been sitting at his desk, he would have been shredded by the floor-to-ceiling glass that was blown inward by the initial shockwave. Instead, he was thrown onto his back, next to his desk, hit by four ceramic ball bearings; none of which severed an artery or punctured a critical organ. Mendoza had been standing directly between Sharpe and the suicide vest, absorbing most of the fragments headed in his direction. He stared upward at the ceiling, unable to hear a sound or utter a word. A few seconds passed before he tried to raise himself onto one elbow. The pain in his shoulder was unbearable, and he collapsed back to the glass-covered floor. He felt the entire office shake beneath him and wondered if the building was about to collapse.
Major Hillary Carson witnessed the bizarre events unfold on the Operation Center's watch floor before she was tossed like a rag doll into the concrete wall behind her. She had just stepped onto the raised catwalk from the spiral staircase embedded within the wall and leaned over the railing to look down at her workstation. She worked with the deputy assistant secretary of defense's liaison group, spending most of her time on the floor, wishing they had something valuable to contribute to the investigation. She quickly realized why the deputy assistant secretary of defense for Homeland Defense and America's Security Affairs was never present in the Operations Center. Their group served no functional role on the task force, other than to allow someone somewhere to check off the box requiring her office to be included in any task force investigating an active threat to homeland security.
She had been headed to their small office on the second level with the intention of lying down on the couch for a few hours. She'd send whomever she found in the office to the watch floor. She was the senior-ranking member of their contingency when the deputy assistant secretary's own assistant wasn't present. He'd left around 7:00 PM, presumably to have dinner, and she didn't expect to see him for a few hours.
When she leaned against the railing and surveyed the watch floor, she immediately noticed the creepy-looking guy in the NCTC windbreaker. She'd been assigned to NCTC for nine months and had never seen one of these jackets, not that it was truly unusual or out of place. Every agency in D.C. seemed to have an exclusive line of dark blue, yellow-stenciled outerwear. From her bird's-eye view, she could see that three people had taken an active interest in the same guy. Karen Wilhelm and Special Agent Mendoza started to converge on his location, along with Callie Stewart, the sharply dressed woman that everyone seemed to despise.
Stewart's arrival at the Operations Center had sparked a flurry of whispers and controversy among the FBI agents. She quickly came to understand why they were so uncomfortable with her presence. Stewart worked for the formerly disgraced General Terrence Sanderson, and everyone in D.C. knew that story. Stewart's presence was an enigma to everyone but Special Agents Sharpe and Mendoza, who looked like they had been forced to swallow some bitter medicine when she arrived. As soon as Carson learned of Stewart's affiliation with Sanderson, she checked the FBI's wanted lists. Sanderson had disappeared from both the Top Ten and Most Wanted Terrorists lists, along with his associates, Daniel Petrovich and Jeffrey Munoz. Formerly disgraced was the operative term.
Callie Stewart broke into a sprint when Agent Mendoza drew his pistol and fired. The man in the windbreaker dropped to the deck just as Stewart dove at him. She grabbed the man's hand, and a quick argument ensued with Mendoza. She couldn't hear what they were yelling, but Mendoza turned the gun on Stewart. Before he could fire his weapon, one of the agents seated at a workstation directly behind her fired three quick shots that killed her instantly. Carson heard one of the bullets strike the glass to her left, distracting her for a moment. She never saw the explosion that destroyed the Operations Center and slammed her against the wall next to the stairwell opening. If the blast had flung her two feet to the left, she might have been tossed down the metal staircase.
Dazed by the blast, she crawled over to the edge of the catwalk, unable to stand, and stared at the destruction. A few of the hanging pendant lights still functioned, swaying back and forth and competing with the inadequate emergency lighting to create dancing shadows among the smoldering wreckage. The FBI's side of the watch floor had been leveled, leaving toppled desks and a tangle of chairs. She couldn't make out too many details through the smoke and paper debris raining down, but she could see that the blast had cleared everything within a twenty-foot radius of the suicide vest and ignited small fires nearby.
She saw bodies slumped over desks in contorted positions or lying twisted on the floor. A few of them still moved. Sparks showered down onto the carnage from the damaged video displays lining the floor, mounted to the bottom of the catwalk. A lone workstation caught her eye on the other side of the Operations Center, where the damage had not been as severe. A man appeared to remain upright in his chair, as if nothing had happened. There was no way for Carson to know that the NCTC analyst had been instantly killed by a ball bearing that had punctured his skull.
Security personnel started to pour into the center a few seconds later. She could see that they were paralyzed by the utter devastation that lay before them. They paused upon entry, clearly debating where to start. One of the men motioned the sign of the cross and dropped to one knee. Just as his knee touched the floor, the Operations Center rumbled, and the catwalk lurched two feet downward. Carson clung to the railing until it stabilized, quickly deciding that she had to get out of here.
She crawled into the stairwell just as the catwalk dropped a few more feet and broke free from the bolts that kept it fastened to the wall. The metal supports directly underneath that section of the catwalk had been critically weakened by the blast, putting incredible downward strain on the bolts. When one bolt failed, the rest followed, snapping that corner of the catwalk free from the wall. Instead of dropping directly onto the floor below, it careened outward into the middle of the Operations Center, tearing one section after the other free from the wall, as it swung toward the security guards and finally slammed into the office next to the security doors.
The stairwell felt stable for now, so she decided to stay in place and wait for emergency responders. She remained conscious the entire time, listening to the groans and wails of survivors. In her mind, she kept replaying what she had seen before the explosion. Mendoza had almost stopped Stewart from detonating the bomb.
Reggie Taylor nearly released his bladder when the frosted glass doors leading into the Operations Center vestibule exploded, showering the security checkpoint with glass fragments. The inner vestibule door had resisted the initial blast of the shockwave, absorbing a significant portion of its energy, which saved their lives. The glass left most of them with multiple lacerations, but lacked the speed necessary to deeply penetrate their bodies. He froze at his station, unwilling to process what had just happened. As most of his colleagues raced toward the source of the explosion, Taylor couldn't move.