The 9/11 Machine Read online

  Soon, Bush had trapped the entire Afghan branch of al Qaeda in a series of tunnels along the Pakistani border. Then he deployed the final weapon in his arsenal. The battlefield nuke destroyed what the CIA had pinpointed as a massive series of tunnels and hiding places, plugging them up forever and killing anyone in the caves inside under thousands of tons of rock. The mountain passes and rough crags were irradiated, so even if anyone did somehow escape the blast that occurred, they would never escape the radiation.

  Bush didn’t go to the U.N. for permission to attack Iraq—it hadn’t worked for Cheney—but he did stretch out the timeline. Over the next twelve months, Bush worked to build an international coalition of forces, motivated by Hussein’s historical possession of weapons of mass destruction, to join the United States–led coalition. Bush also moved more forces into theatre before the official invasion of Iraq, which took place on 11/24/02, the one-year anniversary of the attacks. Bush waited until major combat operations were over in Afghanistan and every single soldier had returned before he invaded Iraq, not wanting to get caught up in two simultaneous wars.

  As 2003 began, the war progressed quickly. Because of the aggressive aerial bombing from local bases and other locations a half a world away, Bush’s invasion force avoided the challenge of Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction. Bombing also wiped out most of the stores and production facilities in the first hours of the war, and U.S. and coalition forces moved quickly across the desert. They faced and defeated organized resistance from the Republican Guard, leaving Iraqi tanks littering the desert.

  Retreating forces set fire to hundreds of oil wells, darkening the sky to impede invading troops, but Bush had anticipated that. In the earlier timeline, President Cheney had taken two full weeks to deploy the special firefighting and explosives battalions required to put out the smoky fires. This time, those special units had been staged in Kuwait and followed the invasion forces across the border, ready to quench the fires. In the first timeline, those fires had delayed Cheney’s forces and allowed the Republican Guard to fall back into Baghdad, strengthening their defenses around the city.

  This time, that didn’t happen. Within weeks of the invasion, U.S. and coalition forces were in Baghdad. Worldwide, people watched on TV as Iraqi citizens, assisted by eager U.S. and coalition forces, began pulling down the massive statues of Saddam Hussein that littered the capital city. It was the Iraqis’ “Berlin Wall” moment, and Bush was smart enough to not interrupt it with a useless speech.

  And the Iraqi leader disappeared. Bush didn’t know where to look for him, as Hussein had never been caught in Cheney’s timeline, so he just instructed U.S. forces to search high and low for him. Until the dictator was caught and tried in Iraq by a court of his peers, the war in Iraq would never truly be over.

  2.30

  Al-Hazed Airport

  Sunlight glimmered off the large airplanes gathered around the state-of-the-art Jeddah International Airport. It was the morning of February 10, 2003, and the relentless heat of the desert made the tarmac of the airport appear to shimmer. It was a new airport, located just east of the sprawling city of Jeddah in western Saudi Arabia.

  One of the large airplanes, a Boeing 747 decorated with a United Airlines logo, sat at a loading gate, glimmering with sunlight that bounced off the glass and stainless steel. Passengers were beginning to enter the plane through a glass boarding tunnel. On the tarmac below, the desert sun fell harshly as sand whipped across the concrete. Several men, dressed in traditional Arabian garb, worked beneath the plane, fueling it.

  Other planes were unloading pilgrims from all over the world, arriving at the airport before beginning their ten-mile trek to Mecca, Islam’s most revered site. Followers of the Koran were instructed to make the pilgrimage to Mecca at least once in their lives, but many millions of Muslims returned yearly for their opportunity to be closer to God, to commune with him on that most holy of holy sites, the Ka’aba.

  At the airport coffee shop, Wade Tulinger sat quietly in a booth, his rolling luggage bag at his feet like a loyal dog. His pilot’s cap sat on the table, next to the latte he’d been nursing for over a half hour. Wade desperately wanted a gin and tonic, but Saudi Arabia was a dry country. Alcohol, bars, nightclubs—all were illegal here. The pilot wondered what it would be like to live in a country where you couldn’t even sit down with your friends and enjoy a nice cold beer.

  Cindy always enjoyed a drink. She liked the fancy, girly ones. Lately, she’d been into Martinis, trying out different kinds whenever they went out for dinner. His flight schedule had made it difficult to get a weekend night out for them, and finding sitters for the kids had always been a problem.

  He didn’t have any of those problems any more. He missed those problems.

  Wade pulled his wallet out and removed a small photo.

  Behind him at the coffee bar, the barista called over to the pilot, but he was lost in thought, looking at the photo.

  After a minute, he walked over and touched the pilot on the shoulder, making him jump.

  “Sir?” the Middle Eastern man asked.

  The pilot looked up from his coffee.

  “Yes?”

  The barista pointed at the loading area, where a United stewardess was waving at him, trying to get Wade’s attention.

  “You’ll miss your flight,” the barista said politely, smiling and pointing.

  Wade looked at the stewardess and the passengers, lining up to board the plane. He tapped the hat on the table next to him.

  “They’re not going anywhere without me.”

  The pilot looked down and, for an awkward moment, the barista wasn’t sure what else to say. After a moment, he turned away, shrugging at the United stewardess.

  Wade finished his drink and looked at the picture resting on the table in front of him. It showed him with a smiling, happy woman and two laughing children. They appeared to be at a festival or fair—one of the kids was eating cotton candy.

  After a long moment, the pilot picked up the photo and kissed it. He stood, grabbed the handle of his luggage bag, and headed for the gate and the nervous stewardess.

  2.31

  Air Space

  Aboard the 747, passengers and crew alike settled in for the two-hour flight to Cairo. Many of the passengers on the jet were traveling on to Europe after having enjoyed short vacations along the Red Sea—Jeddah was Saudi Arabia’s largest port on the Red Sea and the second largest city in Saudi Arabia after the capital, Riyadh—and most visitors came for the beaches and the cosmopolitan environment. Jeddah was also the gateway city for most visiting pilgrims making their way to nearby Mecca.

  In the cockpit, Wade Tulinger slowly banked the massive plane to the east, sunlight glinting off the water to the west. He was quickly working his way through the checklist of switches and buttons to flip after takeoff. Keeping a massive 747 in the air was a complex operation.

  Next to him, the copilot was of little help—he had a large knife sticking out of his chest. His eyes were blank, and blood was still pooling in his lap.

  Wade reached into his pocket and took out the photo of his family and leaned forward, tucking into the instrument panel.

  “I’m sorry, Cindy,” he said to the picture. “But I can’t get over it.”

  He turned, looking out the window at the desert.

  “6,242 people died,” he continued, talking to no one. “And the people who did it… it’s their religion. It’s so primitive. They’re jealous of us, of our technology, of the way we live. No beer, in a whole country? Women forced to cover themselves from head to toe. And all these pilgrims, come to kiss a rock. A magical rock from space.”

  The pilot flipped more switches as the plane slowly turned.

  “I couldn’t help,” the pilot said. “You, and the kids, and all those other people, just going about their day. It’s not fair—”

  Wade broke down, sobbing.

  And the plane, fully loaded with fuel and passengers, continued to bank s
lowly to the east.

  2.32

  The Ka’aba

  From far above, the Temple of the Ka’aba was a stunning religious site, even when the Hajj wasn’t underway. The rest of the year, the Ka’aba was the holy site in Mecca where each Muslim turned to pray five times a day. Muslims showed their obeisance with their prayers, but it was also how they showed their love and respect for Mohammed and for their Islamic traditions. As they unrolled their prayer mats, wherever they were, and prayed, they were reminded of their unity, of a shared experience that brought them all together, no matter where they were in the world. Or off of the world, as had begun recently—Muslim astronauts still followed the procedure and, unrolling ornate prayer mats, pointed their bodies to Mecca.

  During the annual Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca, known as the Hajj, tens of thousands of pilgrims crowded into the site every day—over the course of two weeks, nearly two million devout Muslims would find their way to the site.

  Authorities stood by to manage the massive crowds, ensuring safe passage for pilgrims to and from the holy site. Even with security precautions and other methods in place, the Hajj had seen many stampedes of pilgrims and a few deaths. It was a challenge for the Saudi Arabian government to manage so many pilgrims over the two-week period.

  To the outsider, the Temple of the Ka’aba might seem a strange place to worship—a sea of Muslim pilgrims, each dressed in a simple white shift, surrounded a sixty-by-sixty foot cube-shaped temple.

  A massive black stone was embedded in the southeastern corner of the cube and surrounded by a large silver ring. The origin of the stone was a mystery, but there was no doubt that it was at least 4,000 years old and, according to the Koran, the prophet Mohammed had visited the Temple and kissed it. And in the intervening years, millions of pilgrims had jostled for a chance to touch or kiss the large black stone—the surface of the stone had been rubbed smooth by the touch of millions of worshipers. As part of the ritual, each person was to make seven revolutions, or circumlocutions, around the sacred stone.

  On this day at the Temple of the Ka’aba, the peak day for the Hajj, seventy-four thousand Muslims were in attendance.

  In the sky above, a 747, the tail of the plane emblazoned with the white and blue markings of United Airlines, banked suddenly and turned, screaming down out of the sky.

  Ten thousand heads, bowed in prayer, turned upwards. Another ten thousand souls saw a massive airliner drop precipitously from the blue desert sky.

  2.33

  White House

  Situation Room

  The doors opened and an aide rushed in, speaking quietly to Rumsfeld and handing him a sheet of paper. President Bush and Andrew Card watched as the Secretary of Defense grimaced before waving the aide away.

  “Well, things just got worse,” Rumsfeld said.

  “Worse?” Card asked.

  They had been sitting in the conference room, going over the Iraq war and the military’s efforts to find Saddam Hussein. In the original timeline, he had never been found, so they would get no help from that direction. It was up to Rumsfeld and his troops to kick down every door in Iraq to find the ousted leader before he could foment a rebellion. The war was essentially over, but Bush had wanted to make sure everything about their planned troop drawdown was planned, down to the tiniest level of detail.

  “Yes,” Rumsfeld said quietly. “It appears that someone decided to retaliate. An ex–Air Force pilot, a civilian working for United Airlines, just crashed his plane into the Hajj.”

  “No,” Card, sitting next to them, stood, his eyes wide. The president simply shook his head.

  Rumsfeld nodded, his eyes scanning the document.

  “The 747 had been fully loaded with fuel. They were flying out of Saudi Arabia when the pilot barricaded himself in the cockpit and changed course. He hit the site dead on.”

  “This will unleash a religious war,” the president said.

  Andrew Card sat back in his chair. “My God.”

  Rumsfeld read on. “It appears that the plane came in vertically at maximum speed right into the crowd of pilgrims. Everything within three hundred feet of the impact zone was vaporized, including the temple and the Black Stone of the Ka’aba, Islam’s most sacred relic.”

  He paused, looking at Bush and Card. Everyone knew what he was thinking. This would trigger a whole new level of worldwide conflict.

  “Initial casualty estimates are somewhere between 30,000 and 40,000 worshippers,” Rumsfeld continued. “Today was the peak day from pilgrimage.”

  “My God,” Card said.

  “Why would someone do that—” Bush began to ask.

  “The Mall of America attack—” Rumsfeld interrupted. “The pilot lost his wife and kids.”

  “Damn it,” Bush said, standing and planting both palms on the table in front of him. “This has to stop. We need to be ready. This changes everything. Now, no one will sit idly by and wait for orders from the Middle East—retaliation will come from all over the world. Donald, put all of our forces on high alert. I’ll get started on a speech—I need to get in front of the American people. I need a speech on tolerance and religious freedom right now.”

  Bush turned to Andrew Card.

  “And call Marburger and Ellis, and get that goddamned machine working. We need it now, more than ever.”

  2.34

  Jihad

  Around the world, Muslim communities reeled.

  Rocked by the loss of their most sacred and holy site, the calls began almost immediately for a religious Jihad, or holy war. And a worldwide collection of militant imams and clerics and Muslim leaders answered.

  There were calls from within the Muslim community for peace, for restraint, but those calls fell on deaf ears.

  And so the bombing began.

  Although the number of Muslims in the States was small, the militants among them had been agitated in a way that could not be predicted. And others from around the world made their way to the shores of the United States, seeking revenge.

  Suicide bombers began striking in public buildings, destroying churches and synagogues across the country. The attacks were random, and terrifying. Cathedrals were bombed, sometimes by suicide bombers and, in other cases, by devices that had been hidden inside the buildings and remotely detonated, often during mass. Boston’s catholic community was particularly hard hit, with twelve catholic masses targeted with suicide bombers.

  More disturbing than those attacks were the fires set at religious child care centers and schools. Dozens around the country were targeted. In Dayton, a catholic school and day care facility was bombed, and the attackers had gone the extra step of chaining all of the doors closed, trapping hundreds inside the burning structure.

  It was a religious war, and not confined to the United States. Iran struck Israel, joined by a handful of other Muslim countries, in an attempt to take back the Holy Land and restore Muslim control over the remaining shrines mentioned in the Koran. Some commentators felt that, with the destruction of the Ka’aba, Islam needed a new holy site.

  The Vatican was attacked by jacketed suicide bombers—if the Ka’aba fell, so should the Pope and the Vatican and Vatican City.

  On February 15th, during Sunday mass at New York City’s famous St. Bart’s Cathedral, two suicide bombers, who had entered with the rest of the congregation, detonated nail- and C4-filled bombs inside. Almost three hundred people died in a matter of moments, shocking the city. On the same morning, two more suicide bombers struck the Crystal Cathedral in Los Angeles. The attacks had been coordinated.

  A day later, during a live report from the local NBC affiliate, Muslims and anti-Muslims clashed, fighting in the streets as police tried to separate them. Moments later, shots rang out as some sprayed the street with gunfire, sending everyone, including the reporter and cameraman, scrambling for cover. One police official called the scene “chaotic,” while the reporter, once she was back on the air, compared it to madness.

  The following week, Pre
sident Bush was to speak at a ceremony calling for peace at the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C. Security was at an all-time high—live reports showed the congregation filing through the metal detectors. The building was searched multiple times—the Secret Service and D.C. police forces were sweeping for devices and doing background checks on every person in attendance, including the senior religious leaders who would be holding the service.

  To lighten the nation’s somber mood, Bush himself even stepped through the metal detectors and made a face when they went off.

  After words from two clergymen, Bush nodded and somberly stepped up to the podium. Just as his speech began, three hidden incendiary devices detonated inside the church.

  One hundred and six people died, a low number considering the enclosed location and the number of devices that had been used. The injured numbered in the hundreds, including President Bush, who had dropped behind the podium and been protected from the nearest blast. His left hand and arm were broken—it remained in a cast and sling for months—and his right hand was severely burned.

  Later, investigations showed that the bombs had been placed inside the heavy wooden pews. The sealed pews had been built to look exactly like the pews inside the cathedral and were switched out sometime, at least two weeks before the service, right under the noses of the D.C. Police.

  2.35

  A New Skyline

  The new version of the New York skyline stood behind the warehouse.

  Dust rose from the pit at Ground Zero—even after a year, they were still carting away pieces of broken steel. The dust and ash thrown up by the construction workers blanketed lower Manhattan. Trucks piled high with broken steel beams and burned bricks streamed away from the hole in the ground and made their way to Staten Island and the waste repository, where scientists and investigators poured over each piece, looking for clues as to what happened.