Lance called to Lieutenant Rolands, “Send a note to Ralph Thornton and order him to convince Martha to ask Gabriella to pick up two tickets for whatever play you think is hot on Broadway. I need them picked up only from the little kiosk in Times Square at precisely 2:00 tomorrow, the eleventh. Tell him if she doesn’t pick them up on the hour, they won’t hold them, and I will lose my special pricing. Martha or Gabriella may argue about it, but see they carry the plan through exactly as I specified.”
***
It was October eleven, and the City of New York was once again on alert for copy-cat terrorist activities that might take place on the eleventh of any month.
Most Muslims didn’t want terror attacks in their city any more than anyone else. When terrorist acts were in the planning stage, someone in the Islamic community would reason, “No, this is not what Islam is about!” Police would subsequently receive an anonymous tip. It was the one-off crazies that were difficult to spot. Lone terrorists rarely revealed their plans to anyone. They just carried them out.
Gabriella walked through Times Square to the ticket kiosk to pick up Lance’s tickets.
I don’t like doing favors for Lance, but I am grateful for an excuse to get out of the lab for a while, Gabriella thought. He could have sent one of his people, or a courier. Why me? No way to find out other than to do it and see what happens. Besides, it’s a beautiful day for a walk.
A man in a loose-fitting sweatsuit stopped on the divider island between the lanes of traffic.
“This is for you and our family, Adeeba,” he whispered under his breath.
Quadir opened his sports equipment bag and pulled out a short 9mm semiautomatic carbine rifle. Without a word, he began shooting low, but above the crowds and into the sides of buildings. Bedlam broke out. People ran stunned, screaming, or frozen in their place. Some ran into traffic in their panic and were hit by cars. Humanity was trying to get to any place other than where they were. Police radio bands, cell phone towers, and switchboards lit up like the Las Vegas Strip as everyone tried to call everyone else in the world at the same instant.
The shooter fired the rifle from left to right while looking for a clear shot at his intended target. Crowds parted. Sixty feet away stood Gabriella.
“Drop your weapon NOW,” shouted arriving police. Only two officers had a clear shot at the terrorist. They dropped to their knees to ensure any stray bullets would go over the heads of the panicked crowd. Quadir took careful aim. The officers and Quadir all squeezed their triggers at the same instant.
The two police pistol bullets struck Quadir Akram in the upper chest. Simultaneously, the rifle bullet crashed squarely into the center of Gabriella’s forehead. It deformed as it passed through the metal plate and destroyed the gel nano-machine structures in her brain as it tumbled through her head. It exited the back of her skull and deflected upward, embedding itself into a sign advertising pain relief tablets.
The terrorist sprawled motionless in the street, the crowds ran in full panic, screaming. Police and ambulance sirens blared, and Gabriella was simply no more.
Warning alarms sounded in the research lab as the computers lost contact with Gabriella. A substantial electrical spike from Gabriella recorded on the AI Concepts computers, and then nothing.
Alarms blared at the Department of Defense NYC Special Projects facility.
Every news service and social network was screaming about a shooting in Times Square and gave their estimate on the number of potential casualties, all without factual data.
Lance spoke to the Watch Commander at the DOD, NYC.
The DOD Watch Commander picked up her “hot phone” to her special teams. She barked a series of orders. “Recovery Team, link up with the Evacuation Unit 360 and secure Gabriella-1. Use your badges to cut through any jurisdictional barrier. Civilian EMTs and ambulances won’t pay much attention to anyone who looks dead for at least the next ten to fifteen minutes. Get in and get out.”
Gabriella’s tracking unit was still operational and led the DOD straight to her. They found her body sprawled over the sidewalk and into the street.
An EMT rushed to Gabriella’s still form and asked if he could help. An Evacuation Team agent flashed his badge. “She’s dead,” he lied, “please move on. We’ll take care of this one. Federal protection plan. Thanks for asking, though. Attend to the wounded.”
The EMT thanked them and moved on to a middle-aged gentleman in a business suit screaming in pain. He broke his leg when he ran into the path of an oncoming car.
The Recovery Team loaded Gabriella onto a gurney and covered her with a blanket. “What an absolutely beautiful woman she was,” one of them said with a hint of awe in his voice. “Yes indeed,” responded his partner as they looked at her still lovely form lying motionless. “It makes me wish she was real and alive.”
They lifted Gabriella into the back of the emergency vehicle. A newly-arrived news team recorded a body being placed into an ambulance. At a casual glance, the gun ports on DOD Evacuation Unit Vehicle Three were not noticeable.
The two Recovery Team officers loaded Quadir into the ambulance next to Gabriella and shut the doors. Three NYPD officers started walking towards them. The senior Evacuation Unit officer showed his DOD badge and explained, “Homeland Security instructed us to pick this terrorist up, but if you would like to do the two days of paperwork to write all of the reports, we are more than happy to let you have him.”
The NYPD officers laughed and said, “Thank you for your offer. We’re happy to give you the shooter.”
The EU officer turned to his partner. “The threat of bureaucratic paperwork can be a beautiful thing to use as a tool if you do it right.”
“It can sure simplify interactions. You can get away with almost anything if you offer to do the paperwork. Let’s roll,” his partner replied.
EU-360 threaded out of Times Square, lights flashing and siren wailing.
The wire services carried a more detailed story that night about the lone terrorist who fired into the crowd in Times Square but had been killed by two heroic police officers.
The Police Chief and Mayor held a joint interview two hours later, declaring this was the act of a lone gunman not associated with any terrorist group or organization.
Government officials condemned the action in the House and Senate and called for tighter gun control laws to prevent this problem from ever happening again. They were interested in a stand they could trumpet in their next bid for election. Half of the listeners understood their strategy and dismissed their speeches as political rhetoric. The other half cheered them on.
The body of a similar-looking Syrian refugee who died of natural causes was delivered to the morgue after they shot his body twice postmortem. Homeland Security gave a hand-picked military coroner full jurisdiction over the autopsy. His official report confirmed the corps had died from two bullet wounds to the upper torso and was the Times Square shooter. Cremation took place immediately afterward.
Lance was true to his word, as he always was. Within three weeks, Adeeba and her children found themselves in the United States. They were reunited with Quadir and resettled among the Syrian population in San Diego.
Quadir would always have a slight breathing problem because of the armor-piercing bullet which hit him in the lower right lung.
Lance knew the police would shoot Quadir, and provided him with a bulletproof vest under his clothing. An army sniper under Lance’s orders stationed himself on a rooftop overlooking the spot where Gabriella’s assassination was to take place. Lance gave the sniper explicit instructions to put Quadir down, but not kill him.
Quadir spent two weeks in a private room at the Fort Bragg military hospital. The .223 armor-piercing round left a small clean hole through his body with no mushrooming or expansion, avoiding additional tissue damage. After passing through, it buried itself into the roadway and disappeared from sight.
The tearful family received new identities and personal histories. As promised, they enjoyed extensive language and cultural training to allow them to integrate into their new culture. Quadir had a thousand questions to ask, but he would never see Lance again.
For the rest of his life, Quadir believed he had helped to strike a blow for freedom and safety in his native country of Syria. But he solemnly swore to himself under no circumstances would he ever do such a thing again.
“It’s a real shame it had to end like this,” Lance said to his Sergeant. “All she had to do was back off on those morals of hers and do her job.”
“You mean infiltrating a dummy terrorist group and sleeping with the leader to see if she could get information out of him?” Sergeant Miller asked.
“Yup, including sleeping with the enemy, namely me,” Lance said with a grin. “I said she’d be sorry. Couldn’t go back on my word, now, could I?”