Tom Avitabile - The Hammer of God

Bill immediately stood as the President left the parade in the hall, and shut the door.

Oh Boy here it comes, Bill thought, stiffening as if a 300-pound defensive lineman had locked onto him in the pocket. “Of course, Sir.”

“During the campaign, my wife was quoted as having said she wasn’t fond of pennies; they cluttered up her purse so she always said ‘keep the change’ or she put them in the little ‘take a penny, give a penny’ thing….”

Bill listened as intently as he could. The moment hung. The president just looked off four years in the past. Bill finally figured he was finished and started to say, “Sounds innocuous enough a statement…”

“We were campaigning in Illinois, Bill!”

Okay this is a pop quiz, Bill thought, Illinois…pennies…. Got it! “Oooo, not such a kiss to the land of Lincoln was it?”

“Exactly, Bill. So don’t let this thing with Janice rattle you too much. Remember, the words of the divorced poet: ‘For better or worse is a blessing and a curse.’ You may not quote me.”

“What happens in my office, stays…”

The president interrupted. “What’s this?”

For the second time today the blood rushed from Bill’s face. There, in the President’s hand, was Joey’s stupid counterfeit seal of the QuOG. Trying to read the expression of the man who stood down the Russians in the geopolitical poker bluff of all time over the sovereignty of the Georgian State was futile. The only sound Bill heard was the sound of the blood rushing through his ears.

“You know…I like it!” the President said as he put it back down on the desk. The he turned and snorted, “Football,” and walked out of Bill’s office, leaving the door open.

The giant sigh of relief that escaped from Bill’s lungs had a quick, sharp stop as he realized that Joey would never let him live this down.

It was a field day for the press. An Al Qaeda operative was caught in Karachi, Pakistan with, of all things, a New York subway map in his possession. Immediately, the NYPD and other agencies went into prevent-defense. “Random Bag Searches” became the phrase du jour as subway stops became checkpoints. What followed was the expected torrent of outcries from every religious, racial, and civil liberties group. Instant polarization occurred between the conservative, if-you-have-nothing-to-hide-then-you-have-nothing-to-fear crowd and the liberal, how-am-I-going-to-smoke-some-weed-at-work-now group.

It all went away after a news cycle…until Thursday. That was when Ali Rashid, a.k.a. Rodney Albert, having not read the papers, tried to take the number 1 train from 50th Street to 34th Street/ Penn Station to take New Jersey Transit back to the Store and Lock. His senses tingled as he saw the two officers going through the bags of a blonde woman right ahead of the turnstile. It momentarily froze him. A New York City subway station has a constant wave of people coming and going. Therefore, someone stopped in his tracks creates eddies as scores of people start swirling around that person like water around a rock in a stream. The effect created a highlighted human circle around Rodney. Officer Levant Harris took immediate notice. His eyes met Rodney’s for the briefest of seconds then Rodney averted, turned, and climbed back up the stairs onto 7th Avenue.

“I’ll be right back, Phil,” Levant said to his partner as his hand rested on his standard issue Glock 9mm, steadying it in its holster as he took the stairs two at a time against the flow of entering commuters. On the street, he saw Rodney walking fast downtown. He weaved his way through the throngs of lunchtime workers, visitors, and street vendors. At 48th Street, for the first time, Rodney hazarded a look behind him. Levant startled him by being right there.

“Sir, would you step over to your right.”

“Why? Why you bother me? I not doing nothing.”

Note to anyone visiting New York during a heightened terror alert: do not, repeat, do not under any circumstances disobey a direct order from a member of law enforcement. This especially includes any lip…especially lip in broken Arabic-English. Just ask Rodney.

Before he knew what hit him, Rodney’s face was up against the brick wall of an office building, his arm twisted behind his back, his legs kicked apart, and his wrist smarting from the cuffs that crashed down on them. He was hearing but not understanding what the policeman was saying to him. “…silent, you have the right to an attorney…”

Midtown South was the cop house for that part of Manhattan. David Ginsberg, a proud member of the ACLU, was always poking around there looking for his “issue,” a tort or malfeasance of the law that would catapult him to the stratosphere of the great civil libertarians, the best known of which he shared a name with, if unfortunately not the blood. He felt as though he’d hit the lotto when Levant manhandled Rodney up to the sergeant’s desk for booking.

Within two hours, David had a court order releasing Rodney from a sympathetic judge, who just happened to once be his law professor at Columbia. One Police Plaza had made a political decision not to fight the judge’s order. The commissioner, the Mayor, the New York Visitors Bureau didn’t want to have a major brouhaha over the new subway searches unless this guy Rodney was caught with a weapon, a bomb, or Bin Laden’s baby picture in his wallet.

Levant punched his locker so hard he dented it when he heard the news that his bosses let his collar go. “They want us out there to find the bad guys. These creeps don’t wear it on their sleeve. It’s in the eyes, man, and I am telling you this guy was bad.” He told his sergeant, who then reminded Levant that he was a good cop with 27 years in, and that going up against the bosses was a surefire way to patrol Far Rockaway on foot in the winter.

The various papers and news outlets ate lunch and dinner on the story. Rodney had been referred to as an “immigrant” in the stories, which used as their angles that this was a case of racial and religious profiling. The far-left crowd started making allusions to Hitler’s storm troopers, Pol Pot’s ethnic cleansing, and the lynching parties in the south.

Finally, not being able to take it anymore, the commissioner went on one of the Sunday morning shows and made only two points. One was that the NYPD never released the ethnicity or religious affiliation of the alleged immigrant. That could only have come from the lawyer or the press. The second was that the arresting officer was black. He then gave a look that might have confused the rest of the country but every New Yorker knew meant so shove your racial profiling charge up your ass.

This sideshow aside, the big story nobody got was that the only concrete lead, the only tangible connection to the biggest assault and mass murder ever to be planned against any country, was allowed to walk out of police custody. It was a great feather in the cap of David Ginsberg.

?§?

Bill entered the Situation Room. Only Reynolds was there.

“What’s up, Ray?”

“NSA intercepted encoded traffic from a suspected terrorist cell node. They have not been able to decode the entire message, but two words are setting off alarms and I wanted you to know.”

“Thank you.”

“Roosevelt and Maghra.”

“Isn’t Maghra the name of the oil refinery where we found the nukes?” Ray was starting to catch on.

“Exactly.”

“Holy shit.”

“Double-xactly.”

“What’s the brain trust think?”

“Well, there’s a Roosevelt Island in New York City.”

“Sure. I got a buddy who lives on it, along with a lot of U.N. personnel.”