Most of the nation’s capital was busy at work again. Congress had just returned from its annual monthlong August recess, and the summer lull that hung over the city had dissipated. Alan was among the fortunate few employed citizens who were not yet locked away in an office. His schedule had allowed him to sleep in a little. On this morning, that was a very good thing; he had come home late the previous evening after going out for drinks with his Ultimate Frisbee team. He had treated himself to a breakfast outdoors on the front lawn of the house he rented with a couple of friends. To him, there was nothing better to cure a hangover than banana pancakes with chocolate sprinkles, fresh coffee and lots and lots of fresh air.
Alan worked as a copy editor for The Washington Post but viewed his employment there as temporary. He felt that his true calling was to become a published author of fiction. In fact, over the weekend Alan had finished his latest manuscript — a 300-page thriller involving a government conspiracy to conceal an alien landing in Alaska. He thought about pitching it to publishers as a Grisham-meets-Star Wars page-turner. Even Alan himself wasn't quite sure what that meant, exactly, but he thought it sounded good.
As a conspiracy-theory hobbyist, which there seemed to be more of per capita in Washington than anywhere else in the world (with the possible exception of Roswell and maybe some hippie communities on the West Coast), most of Alan’s ideas revolved around government cover-ups. His previous attempts to transfer ideas from his head to paper had not been met with enthusiasm from publishing houses. That had not deterred Alan, and he was confident his latest manuscript would make him rich and famous.
Deep in thought and caught up in his own dreams, he exited onto Washington Boulevard, which would take him by the Pentagon and Arlington Cemetery toward the Memorial Bridge. From there, he would cross from Virginia into the District of Columbia. It was his favorite part of the drive, heading across the bridge right for the Lincoln Memorial. Or, more properly put, it was his favorite part of the drive when there was no traffic. With the nine-to-five crowd already in their offices, this would likely be the case today. There were only a few cars on Washington Boulevard.
Alan, who had been speeding a little, was forced to ease off the gas when he caught up to a pair of Humvees. They were driving slowly alongside each other on the two-lane road. Though he was not in any particular hurry, Alan still honked at the military vehicles. It was not so much that he wanted to speed past them — more a sign of disdain for what the Humvees symbolized.
An avowed, avid pacifist, Alan carried his views not only on his sleeve but also on his bumper, where a sticker loudly proclaimed that he objected to using American lives, or any lives, for that matter, to procure the oil that these two behemoths, and to a lesser extent his Jetta, were using right now. “No Blood for Oil” wasn’t just a slogan for Alan, but a way of life. He was a frequent participant in rallies protesting wars, many of his government's decisions, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and various corporations. Though he worked in an industry known for its liberal bent, Alan was way left of center even among the Post's staff. His distrust of the Washington power elites was matched only by his disdain for big business.
In this case, honking was his way of saying, “Get the fuck out of Afghanistan.”
He was just about to lay on his horn again, as neither of the Humvees showed any inclination to switch lanes or speed up, when the Metrobus about 250 feet ahead of him erupted in a massive fireball.
Alan felt for a brief moment as though what he was watching was fundamentally unreal; it was like a dream; or no, it was like he was watching the latest John Woo movie. But the shock wave that shook his Jetta and the booming noise of the detonation were very real. The tremendous explosive concussion pierced his eardrums, the brightness of the inferno left Alan dizzy. He managed to slam on his brakes and just avoided sliding into the Humvees, which had stopped ahead of him with their occupants already jumping out. Alan felt the heat emanating from the blast site. An invisible force was pushing him back. There was nothing but a deep crater and a ball of fire where there had been a Metrobus just moments ago.
Pieces of debris began raining down from the sky, from a sky that had been so clear just moments before.
“Holy shit,” Alan thought. Or screamed — it was hard to tell. “Holy fucking shit.”
His hands were shaking even though they were clamped to the steering wheel. His knuckles weren’t the only thing turning white as the initial shock set in.
“Sir, are you okay?” The voice ripped him from his daze. A man in fatigues stood next to his car, a look of concern plastered across his face. As a pacifist, Alan had no idea that he was being addressed by a man whose uniform identified him as a captain of the U.S. Army. The insignia displaying the man’s rank was as foreign to him as Cantonese.
“Sir, are you injured?” the soldier asked with greater urgency, now almost leaning into the car and speaking more loudly.
“I’m okay,” Alan mumbled, thankful for the attention and suddenly more appreciative of the military. He stumbled out of his car, his vision still blurred, his ears still ringing, barely able to stand the heat blaring from where the bus had been.
Another soldier approached the Jetta and handed him some water. He pulled a candy bar from his pocket and gave it to Alan.
“The sugar will help with the shock, sir,” he said. “And you should probably move back a bit. I'll be happy to assist you if you need help.”
The other occupants of the Humvees had moved as close to the scene of the explosion as the heat allowed, likely to see if they could assist any survivors. To Alan, this seemed like a pointless endeavor. It was apparent that nobody could have survived the blast. Even after moving farther away from the site of the explosion, the heat was unbearable. Despite the fiery inferno unfolding not far from him, Alan began to feel a chill.
“Oh my God,” he muttered, when it sank in how close he had been to death. Alan turned pale and a feeling of nausea began to creep up from his stomach. His senses rapidly became overwhelmed with what had happened as his mind began computing the events of the past few seconds. He swallowed, tasting vomit.
Then Alan's gaze fell upon the remains of a human arm that had fallen to the roadway not far from his car.
He fainted.
Wednesday, 10:42 a.m. ET
It took less than eight minutes from the first “breaking news” report, which itself had come within minutes of the bombing, until half of all Americans heard something of the attack. It would have been faster had it not still been so early on the West Coast. The major networks interrupted their regular programming and the various cellphone networks were stretched to their limits by the number of calls and text messages flying across the country, all of them saying something to the effect of “Turn on the TV right now!” News websites crashed, their servers unable to keep up with the sudden demand for information.
While any plane crash, building collapse or other disaster since 2001 has been presented by broadcasters with phrases like “At this point, there is no indication that there is terrorist involvement” well until after it had become clear no foul play was involved, the explosion of the Metrobus left little doubt that it was an attack. The detonation did not appear to have left survivors, and there was now a massive crater on Washington Boulevard that simply could not have been caused by a gas tank igniting accidentally.
The scene outside the Pentagon was eerily similar to the sites of car bombings in the Middle East. The significant difference was that this attack had taken place in the United States, a few hundred feet away from the headquarters of the most powerful military in history.
Stacey Harper learned of the explosion when she, along with all of her classmates, began receiving a slew of calls, texts and e-mails from loved ones asking if they were safe.
“I think something happened at the Pentagon,” one student said, holding up his iPhone. Within a minute, he had received a fifth text from someone asking if he was all right.
Others checked their cellphones and other mobile devices and realized that they were also being asked for signs of life by people who knew they were in the vicinity of the attack.
Though classes were quickly canceled when it became clear that the first major terrorist strike on U.S. soil since 9/11 was unfolding only a couple miles from campus, Georgetown officials locked down the university. They didn't want students to leave until it was clear whether the bus explosion was part of a larger, coordinated attack. Stacey and her classmates, many of them clutched together in frightened embraces or united in prayer, huddled around television screens in classrooms and common areas. Most of the students and their professors were in shock, and all of them were on the phone to assure their families and friends that they were okay.
After more than five minutes of trying to get through to her mom, Stacey finally reached Amanda Harper, and only managed to stop her mom from crying when she assured her repeatedly that there wasn’t a scratch on her and that she would spend the night at the family’s home in Woodbridge.
A plan was devised quickly. Stacey would catch a ride home with her father, with whom Amanda Harper had already spoken briefly.
“Mom, I'm sure traffic is going to be crazy,” she said. “Dad and I will figure out the quickest way to get home, but please don't freak out if it takes us awhile or if you can't reach us.”
“Just hurry,” her mother urged.
“I love you,” she added after a moment but her daughter had already hung up.
***
The situation in Georgetown played itself out all across the nation. Classes in many high schools and universities were canceled and students assembled in gyms and cafeterias to get the latest information. Productivity in any workplace with a television set or computer screen slowed to a crawl. The attack quickly became the only topic of conversation on factory floors, in diners and barbershops. Of course, it was also the sole subject on talk radio, which for a brief while even eschewed the normal liberal-conservative battle lines. Immediately after the attack, there was no left and no right. There also was no racial divide. It didn't matter to the millionaire stock broker that the man next to him, who was also glued to the window of the electronics store in Manhattan to catch the latest news, was pushing a shopping cart bearing all his belongings. There were only Americans consoling one another — and anxiously wondering if there would be another strike.
The bombing halted many of the transit networks in the major cities. Instead of using mass transportation, people throughout the country either chose to stay home or used cars or cabs to reach their destinations. Nobody wanted to leave the vicinity of a television screen or computer.
The bomb had done more than destroy a bus full of people. It was also a blow to the American psyche. Just like the Pearl Harbor attack had shown decades earlier, and 9/11 had confirmed, the United States was not invincible. Its enemies could still reach the country's shores and kill its citizens.
Since that day in 2001, however, the U.S. had again been lulled into a false sense of security. Endless warnings that a new strike from as-Sirat was imminent or that Omar Bashir's recorded messages carried secret attack orders had all turned out to be false alarms. This slowly gave the country the belief that the combination of “taking the fight to the enemy” and the expenditure of hundreds of billions of dollars for homeland security was enough to completely protect the United States.
Many workplaces gave their employees the option of taking the day off and leaving for home to be with their families, leading to a mass exodus and traffic jams up and down the East Coast and in Chicago. In Los Angeles, many of the morning commuters already stuck on the freeways turned around to get back home when the news of the terrorist strike reached them.
Trading was suspended on Wall Street when stocks began to plummet right after the attack.
In Washington, the White House and Congress were evacuated and the president and senior lawmakers were rushed to secure locations. Lesser members of Congress hurried to their office buildings on Capitol Hill, which were otherwise sealed off. Non-essential federal government personnel were allowed to go home, but congressional and White House staff were asked to stick around. There would be a lot to do once the extent of the attack became clear. The nation needed visible leaders and an operating government in time of crisis, not news of its elected officials cowering in safety in what would appear an attempt to save their own hides first. The American leadership would not give the terrorists, whoever they might be, the satisfaction of having shut down the government.
For the first time ever, the Department of Homeland Security raised the threat level for the entire country to red. Across the Potomac at the Pentagon, the military was placed on DEFCON 3, a state of heightened readiness that had only been reached a few times in history. America was girding for war, if the need should arise.
***
Within an hour of the explosion, most of Europe also had learned that the United States was hit by the largest terrorist strike on its soil since 9/11, and the evening newscasts on the continent were scrambling to get more information. The site of the explosion was now flooded with local, state and federal law enforcement officials. Because of the proximity to the Pentagon, a group of Department of Defense forensic experts had been the first on the scene, and took command of the site, relegating most of the local officials to crowd and traffic control.
The firefighters had controlled the flames and were packing up their gear. Some EMTs lingered near the blast site, but there had been little to do for them except collect body parts. Every person on the bus was dead but, miraculously, nobody else had sustained significant harm from the attack. Alan Hausman, the closest civilian to the blast, had been treated for shock; two cyclists riding on the bike path near Arlington Cemetery had been hit by glass and received minor cuts. On the opposite lanes of Washington Boulevard, a three-car pileup followed the explosion.
In addition to scores of law enforcement personnel and first responders, crews from every major news outlet had flocked to the scene, hoping they could get there in time, before roads were closed. A swarm of photographers and cameramen accompanied them, looking for the ideal shot. The television cameras that made it to the blast area were set up near the Air Force Memorial, located on a hill just above the Pentagon. It gave the best view of the site for anchor stand-ups and was also far enough out of the way of investigators that they wouldn't be hassled by authorities.
“At this point, nobody has taken responsibility for the attack,” an NBC anchor said into the camera overlooking the scene. His tie was a little crooked, but the producers were too busy to notice.
The entire area was overcrowded with law enforcement vehicles and the news networks' large satellite broadcasting trucks. Generators and cables were everywhere, and the on-air talents and technicians had to be careful not to trip over each other.
Regrettably, for producers looking for aerial coverage, the airspace above the Pentagon was off-limits for helicopters, even though air traffic from Reagan National Airport had been stopped. It didn’t really matter, since the images displayed across the world were sufficiently dramatic to glue a global audience to its screen. The bombing had turned a perfectly beautiful day into a national nightmare.
While the news networks in this case quickly had access to images of the site of the attack, they lacked concrete information about what had happened. Nobody had claimed responsibility for the bombing yet, and investigators were still trying to put together pieces of the puzzle before going public for the first time. With little actual news to report, the networks kept showing the site of the attack and looped those images together with file footage of Metrobuses and the Pentagon. To the viewers, though, it didn’t matter that they kept seeing the same thing over and over. They were drawn to the magnitude of the event and would have to be pried away from their sets or monitors before they received some answers about the attack, namely, “Who?” “Why?” and “Will there be more?”
Anchors, who knew next to nothing about what, exactly, had happened and had no answers to such questions, were forced to work without a script, filling the time by drawing comparisons to the 9/11 attacks and to terrorist strikes elsewhere in the world. They noted the obvious — that this was the largest strike in the U.S. since then — and ventured guesses as to who was likely responsible for the carnage. The Big Four networks as well as the 24-hour news channels all rushed to pull together experts to comment on what they saw, also with no actual information and merely relying on the video that was now being transmitted throughout the world and seen by hundreds of millions.
Wednesday, 11:57 a.m. ET
The woman at the Delta counter handed back the Canadian passport Hassan al-Zaid had given her.
“Thank you, Mr. Afsani,” she said with a customary smile. “How many bags will you be checking today?”
“Just this one,” he said, forcing a smile himself. He set down a bag on the conveyor belt next to her counter.
Then Hassan al-Zaid's expression turned serious.
“I just saw the news. It's terrible what happened at the Pentagon. You think they're gonna close Dulles, or will my flight leave as scheduled?” Hassan al-Zaid asked, pocketing his forged travel documents. When he got to the airport, he had stopped at the first available television screen to make sure the explosion had gone off without a hitch. He huddled with a group of travelers who flocked around a TV monitor, standing by silently as they condemned the attack.
“I actually just checked with my supervisor,” the Delta employee replied. “It looks like National is closed but Dulles and BWI are going to stay open. Frankly, I'm a little bit surprised, but it's certainly good news for you. Looks like your flight to Nassau is only a little behind schedule.”
Hassan al-Zaid couldn’t manage to conceal a brief smile before returning to his somber look.
“Well, at least that is some good news on this awful day,” he said. “This is my first vacation in a long time. I'm flying down there for a bachelor party and all of my buddies are already in the Bahamas. I was stuck with some work in Toronto and had to take a later flight.”