Several hands went up. Riley flung the fish across the room in a wide arc. It landed in a woman’s lap.
Riley strolled toward her. His eyes took a snapshot of her name tag and appearance. African American, thirties, medium build, short hair, attractive. “Patricia Creed, NTSB Aviation Operations. You look familiar. Nice to meet you.”
“Nice to meet you. I prefer Tricia.”
“Okay, Tricia. You win the prize. What do you do?”
“I support aviation accident investigations. Mainly interviews with principals, survivors, relatives, and other witnesses. Usually face-to-face, but not always.”
Riley nodded, impressed. “What’s your vision of the next 9/11?”
“Excuse me?”
“The next large-scale terror attack on American soil.”
Creed straightened in her seat. “Well, I’m not exactly familiar with terrorism tactics. Um… what about blowing up Amtrak trains or poisoning food at McDonalds?”
“Yikes, that’s scary,” Riley said, extending his arms. “I always did like their French fries. Do you like my fish?”
“It feels like a beanbag,” Creed noted, squeezing it thoroughly before tossing it back. The audience chuckled nervously.
Riley tucked it under his arm. “Those are red beans, Tricia. One more question before we move on. Where does our freedom come from? How is it guaranteed?”
“Um… the Constitution. Speech, liberty, the pursuit of happiness. Our freedom is guaranteed by the US Constitution, specifically the first ten amend—”
“No!” Riley’s voice boomed into the microphone. The volume was so loud that several people jumped in their seats. The audience gave out a collective murmur.
“Words on a piece of paper do not guarantee a thing. Ms. Creed, you are a highly trained investigator in the field of American aviation, yet thirty seconds ago you admitted that you’re not, what was the word you used… familiar with terror tactics? The first thing you need to know is that we all need to be familiar with terror tactics. Second, paper documents, rules, regulations, and all that political correctness are totally meaningless. More important, relying on them as some kind of all-protecting shield will kill you and innocent Americans. Freedom against terrorism is guaranteed and maintained through physical force, or lost for the lack of it. A society that clings to a list of paper rights without force is doomed. Most Americans don’t have a clue about what it will take to protect our freedom.”
Riley stared at the ceiling theatrically.
“Our frontline military and law enforcement personnel are doing a great job defending us against terrorism, but they need help — your help. It’s time for homeland civilians to step up. From this day forward, I want each and every one of you to start thinking critically about your jobs, your day-to-day activities, and about every situation or human you encounter. Now, don’t do anything crazy or weird. Just give a little eyebrow raise to the potential that whoever or whatever you come across may have some type of terror linkage or relevance. Think on it briefly, file it away, and then move on with your lives. And by all means, if something doesn’t feel right or you hear a little voice, report it. The bad guys out there are getting smarter; they hate us, and they want us dead. Period. Sorry, folks, but I didn’t create this environment. That’s just the way it is. Ms. Creed, you may not believe this, but thank you. Burgers and trains are interesting ideas for terror strikes. Let me share three of mine.”
Riley made his way to the front of the room and placed Shaitan on the podium. He definitely had everyone’s attention.
“On a warm June evening, there’ll be a break-in at a fireworks factory. Small town, no alarms, no guards. The perpetrators will steal forty-eight crates of large air-bomb fireworks slated for the upcoming Fourth of July gala. The crates contain 512 cylindrical cardboard tubes, four inches in diameter. Each air bomb is slightly larger than a baseball. The tubes have no distinguishing marks, but they contain significant amounts of powdered aluminum. There’ll be a brief newspaper article, people will be pissed, and everyone will blame teenagers. Four months later, on a brisk Sunday morning in November, two jihadists will drive into an unguarded private hangar at a quiet US airport and overtake a corporate jet that’s waiting to fly three senior executives to a quarterly governance board meeting. After killing them and the pilot, they’ll load and dump 2,800 kilos of the powdered aluminum onto the cabin floor. One jihadist will strap on a high-explosive booster, a pyro detonator box, and a base canopy parachute. The other jihadist, a trained pilot, will conclude his interaction with departure control and fly that jet out.
“Once airborne, the pilot will claim some type of mechanical failure, descend to a few hundred feet, and then continue off-radar at four hundred knots. After just eight minutes of flight, the pilot will climb to seven hundred feet and then kill the engines and all electrical power. At the apex of that climb, the parachutist will be able to safely bail out. The pilot and the jet will quietly glide down and crash smack in the middle of an open-air football field. Sixty thousand NFL fans, plus millions of television viewers mesmerized by the crash, will see some unknown type of mist or dust cloud fill the stadium. And in a deadly, effective encore, that parachutist will float into that cloud, flip a switch on the box on his belt, and detonate. And that, my friends, will ignite a secondary event called a thermobaric fuel-air explosion.
“The mix of oxygen and explosive aluminum dust will create the fuel and framework for a blast hundreds of times more powerful than conventional explosions. A fuel-air bomb’s power has been compared to that of a nuclear weapon without radiation. Temperatures will reach 4,500 degrees Fahrenheit. The blast wave overpressure will be so great that eardrums will rupture and internal organs will be sucked out of people’s mouths, along with all the air in the stadium. Thousands will perish from asphyxiation. The final fatality counts will reach numbers unlike anything the United States or even the world has seen since the large-scale bombing campaigns of World War II. Victim identification alone will take weeks. The physical carnage will compare to Hiroshima. And we’re not done yet.”
Riley guzzled half a bottle of water. “What I’m about to show you is a fuse — one that will ignite the mother of all terrorist actions. More than twenty-three times deadlier than 9/11. You can count on it. My friends, this attack will be short, unimaginably brutal, highly coordinated, and most of all, purposeful. It will have extreme significance, and it will involve the smallest military invasion force in history — one hundred and forty soldiers to be exact — who in just thirty minutes will attempt to destroy the freedom of the United States of America. And they will succeed. Why? Because we’re vulnerable. And more important, because our Constitution guarantees it.”
Riley motioned to the projection screens. A list appeared.
KOMODO ONE
Disney’s Animal Kingdom — Lake Buena Vista, FL
Six Flags St. Louis — Eureka, MO
Kings Island — Mason, OH
Universal Orlando — Orlando, FL
SeaWorld — San Antonio, TX
Disney’s Hollywood Studios — Bay Lake, FL
Busch Gardens — Williamsburg, VA
Six Flags Great America — Gurnee, IL
Epcot Theme Park — Lake Buena Vista, FL
Six Flags Over Georgia — Austell, GA
Playland Amusement Park — Rye, NY
Disneyland — Anaheim, CA
Six Flags Over Texas — Arlington, TX