Operation Red Dragon and the Unthinkable

The Day that Changed the Nation

Captain Omar Hammadi and his crew of eight had volunteered for this suicide mission…. they would deliver the first of two of Allah’s Swords against the Americans. They were originally going to target Houston and the oil refining centers; then their orders were changed by the Caliph himself. He told the men that he had had a vision, and that their new target would be Manhattan and New York Harbor.

As someone who had served in the Iranian Navy for years, Captain Hammadi was pleased with the change in orders due to the greater tactical advantage of the new target. However, he did have concerns about the increased risk in potentially being detected before they reached their final position. He didn’t want anything to stop him from fulfilling his legacy of destroying the infidels. The 50 kiloton nuclear warhead they were carrying below the deck of their ship could be set to detonate by timer or by manual control; Captain Hammadi had one of his engineers wire the trigger device directly to the bridge so that he could personally be the one that unleashed Allah’s Sword on the unrighteous Americans.

As they joined the queue of freighters waiting to enter the Hudson River, the crew played along with the Harbor Master’s rules, waiting their turn to be inspected before they could proceed. After nearly three days of waiting, they had finally received notification for their ship to move into the next inspection queue. The Coast Guard announced, “Come to a complete stop, and wait to be contacted for your inspection.”

Captain Hammadi started to feel nervous. The freighter was so close to their intended target; they were less than 6 miles away, yet it felt like a million miles away. Hammadi had been assured that the device was heavily shielded and should not set off any radiological detectors or other devices. It was also buried under several tons of coffee beans, to ensure it would not be detected by a boarding party. Despite these assurances, Hammadi’s heart was still racing. He was concerned they would be discovered before they were able to get close enough to their intended target. If they had to detonate the warhead in their current position, they would still cause catastrophic damage, but it was nothing in comparison to what would happen if they managed to reach their goal. The maximum potential carnage would be reached if they could position their ship near the I-75 Bridge that connected lower Manhattan and Jersey City.

As the minutes turned into hours, they waited for the Coast Guard to board their ship. Hammadi’s palpitations became one step shy of a full blown panic attack; his palms were sweaty, his breathing became labored, and his thoughts were steadily racing. Time continued dragging along at a snail’s pace while his internal urgency kept increasing. He finally decided that the boat was close enough that if he creeped into the harbor and then gunned it, he could get to his intended target before anyone could do anything to stop them. The Captain informed the crew of his decision, and they all conducted one last prayer before getting the ship and the device ready to go.

Their plan appeared to be working. They had not been hailed by the harbor master or the Coast Guard yet, and they had just made it under the I-278 bridge. It was at this moment they received a hail from the Coast Guard, “Stop your ship and prepare to be boarded!”

The Captain and his men quickly spotted the small cutter heading their way, but they did not appear to have any heavy weapons on them other than a 20mm cannon and a couple of .50 cals. This was more than enough firepower to disable their ship, but not if Hammadi acted quickly.

“Full speed ahead!” Captain Hammadi ordered. He prayed he would be able to get close enough before the Coast Guard ship decided to engage them or could disable their vessel.

Suddenly, an urgent voice filled the bridge, “Zulu Warrior, Zulu Warrior, this is Lieutenant Willis of the US Coast Guard. Stop your ship and prepare to be inspected! Acknowledge.”

The ship was nearly to full speed, and they had just passed the Statue of Liberty on their left and Battery Park on their right. The radio came to life again, “Zulu Warrior, Zulu Warrior, stop your ship and prepare to be boarded. If you do not comply, we will fire and disable your vessel. Acknowledge!”

Hammadi continued to ignore their desperate pleas for him to recognize their warnings. He could see the Coast Guard ship repositioning themselves so they could have a better angle to shoot, angling their propulsion and engine room to the rear. At that moment, the I-75 bridge moved into sight. Captain Hammadi grasped the detonator in his right hand, and as he depressed the button, he let out one last, “Allahu Akbar.”

Jeremiah Nolen was a rising star at JP Morgan. He had made it to the “big leagues” as a trader, and over the past two years had built his book of business to over $192.3 Million dollars. With his new promotion from Senior Advisor to Vice President, he felt that he had finally arrived: bigger commissions, company stock options, and a bigger piece of the action. He was handling the higher net worth clients now. He had made his clients a lot of money by buying railroad stocks, which had gone through the roof with the increased demand the war was placing on the manufacturing sector. He had also made several smart investments with a couple of companies that provided very specific component parts to the new Pershing tanks and the Razorback helicopters, the two most in-demand items of the War.

As Jeremiah looked out the window of his corner office, he reveled in the fact that he had finally moved out of cubicle land. Suddenly, the late afternoon became incredibly bright. Something powerful reflected off the building windows across from his office, forcing him to bring his hands up to his eyes to protect them as he turned his head. His metal and plastic chair quickly fell apart, dropping him to the floor. He looked down at his hands to see his skin liquefy and melt right before him, right before his body drifted into unconsciousness. The super heat generated from the nuclear device caused the structure of the building to liquefy; the structure imploded on itself and then dispersed into a million pieces of flying debris as the shockwave of the blast slammed into the expanding inferno. Jeremiah’s hopes and dreams vanished into an untraceable film of radioactive dust.

Lisa Thomas was shopping at the neighborhood Whole Foods grocery store with her two-year-old daughter, waiting in the checkout lane. Like all rambunctious two year olds, her daughter was trying to pull at the candy and gum to add other items into the cart as her mother was placing them on the belt for the checkout lady. As Lisa reached down to pick up something that her daughter had dropped off of the floor, there suddenly appeared a bright flash near the entrance to the store. Thinking it must have been lightning for a brief moment, she placed the dropped item back where it belonged. Seconds later, the entire front wall of the store shattered, sending thousands of shards of glass flying into the store. Then the structure of the store imploded, and everyone at the cashier stations were thrown like rag dolls against the aisles from the several hundred mile per hour winds. Lisa was swiftly impaled on part of the structure of the building; the last thought she had before everything went black was of her daughter.

About four miles away from the blast site, Claudia Alvaros was finishing her shift as a nurse in the oncology ward of New York Presbyterian Hospital in Queens. She walked to her favorite diner, ready to eat some “breakfast for dinner” and unwind with a Sukoku puzzle before heading home to her cats. Claudia knew a thing or two about the direct effects of cancer; five years ago she had lost her daughter, Diana, to an aggressive brain tumor. The pain of the grief had been too much for her and her husband to bear, and the couple had separated. Unwilling to allow this loss to create bitterness in her life, Claudia had instead used it to fuel her change of direction in her nursing career. Before her daughter’s illness, Claudia had been a school nurse, enjoying a more relaxed schedule and weekends off. After Diana’s death, Claudia did whatever she needed to do in order to transition to the oncology ward; she had to pay her dues at the night shift on the Medical-Surgical wing, but she had finally made it. Now she spent every day helping families like hers to make it through a traumatic experience.

Every day was so rewarding, and also so painful. She couldn’t help but see her daughter in the face of every patient that she worked with. However, every time a family member hugged her and said, “Thank you,” with that deep gratitude that came from having someone compassionate walk alongside them in their tragedy, Claudia found the strength to keep on going. This was one of those days. As her omelet arrived, Claudia bowed her head and gave thanks to God for helping her to be a light to the patients she worked with.

With her eyes still shut, she was aware that there was a bright flash of some kind. As she opened her eyes, she looked out the window and saw several people behaving very strangely, almost drunk. They were holding their heads or eyes and stumbling. A loud sound, almost like rolling thunder, filled the room. Before she could process this odd behavior or the strange noise, several cars crashed into each other. She leapt up from her table to go see if anyone was hurt. As she ran outside, she suddenly saw the mushroom cloud in the distance, and understood immediately what was going to happen to her and the people around her. While she did not know everything about how atomic bombs and nuclear fallout worked, she did know a thing or two about radiation… and she was pretty sure she received a fatal dose.

In that moment, she made the decision to simply help as many people as she could on her way out. She assessed the wounds of the car accident victims; one man’s air bag had not activated and he had a horrible gash on his forehead. Head wounds are notorious for bleeding heavily. She grabbed the guy’s scarf and quickly applied pressure to stop the bleeding. No need to worry about blood borne pathogen exposure today; she would be dead before it could possibly matter.

She talked to pedestrians nearby, calmly saying, “I’m a nurse. I can help.”

Claudia enlisted the help of several passersby to assist her in bringing the injured back to the hospital. The process was slow, as they kept stopping to help those who were most in need. One of the men who was with her was in his upper 60s, old enough to remember the 9/11 attacks. He was calm and helpful, but he seemed very far away; the memories were clearly affecting him, but he was also determined to help his fellow New Yorkers.

When they finally arrived, the ER was already crowded with people, some had injuries from falling debris, several had been in motor vehicle accidents, and a few poor souls were already demonstrating signs and symptoms of radiation poisoning. They were vomiting intractably, disoriented and somewhat delusional; one woman reached up and touched her head, and a handful of hair fell out.

Given the situation, “business as normal” was cancelled at the hospital. All non-life saving activities were cancelled. Surgeons that were scheduled for tonsillectomies were suddenly treating open fractures. Patients that were stable were enlisted to help. There wasn’t anyone who was concerned about possible lawsuits or malpractice; it didn’t matter who was licensed to do what, everyone just pitched in and did whatever they were physically able to do to help one another.

Claudia hadn’t started to have the nausea and vomiting yet; she calculated out in her head that she could potentially live a week or more, given the length of time it was taking for symptoms of radiation sickness to appear. She shrugged off her tiredness, and selflessly began working to triage and to provide comfort wherever she could.

As the 50 kiloton nuclear explosion began to expand into lower Manhattan and Jersey City, it rapidly began to gain in speed, with temperatures quickly rising to 20 million degrees Fahrenheit. Everything within a 2.5 kilometer radius — sky scrapers, buildings, trees, cars, people, everything — was completely vaporized. In an instant, nearly one million people were killed. Four million more received fatal doses of radiation, suffering with agonizing third and fourth degree burns. As the several hundred mile an hour winds swept through the city and surrounding suburbs, it blew out windows, pushed cars into each other and threw tens of thousands of citizens on the streets of New York to the ground and into buildings like ragdolls. The impact bent dozens of sky scrapers in the neighboring boroughs beyond their tolerance levels, causing dozens of them to rip right off of the lower part of the structure and fall into neighboring buildings and then crashing to the streets below.

The initial blast wave dissipated, but the eerie silence that followed was not to last long. There was an immediate reversal as oxygen was sucked back into the blast cloud, and the surrounding firestorms began. The blaze from the blast created thousands of secondary explosions; a multitude of taxis, delivery trucks, and other vehicles (that moments before had been traveling the bustling streets of New York), began to burst into flames. Gas and water mains started to explode, further adding to the chaos and destruction. In minutes, most of Brooklyn, Jersey City and all of Manhattan became a massive cauldron of flames and death. People were being asphyxiated from the lack of oxygen as it was sucked into the firestorm… it continued to grow and consume everything in its path.

Battery Park, Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty were obliterated in the blast, destroying one of the most recognizable symbols of America. As the remnants of Lady Liberty fell into New York Harbor as unrecognizable hunks of melted copper, any restraint President Stein may have felt in his response was destroyed as well. More Americans had died in this single act of aggression than at any other time in American history. The Islamic Republic was showing no restraint in their war against Israel and the US, so it was not just time for the muzzle to come off of the American military, but the leash as well.