9:09 A.M.
UNITED NATIONS SECRETARIAT BUILDING
FIRST AVENUE AND FORTY-SECOND STREET
NEW YORK CITY
The perimeter of the UN was highly secure and most of it was inaccessible—high-voltage electronic iron fence stretched around the seventeen-acre complex. The front of the facility faced First Avenue, and this was the only way in quickly. But it was heavily guarded with UN Security forces and, on this day, U.S. Secret Service, FBI, and NYPD.
These gunmen were firing back at Mansour and his soldiers, but with six vans and two buses filled with trained Hezbollah soldiers, the attackers were gaining ground. First Avenue near the UN looked and sounded like a combat zone. Hezbollah was encroaching with each passing minute. The external layer of UN Security had either retreated back toward the tower or had been shot in cold blood.
Still, as Mansour tucked against a sedan on First Avenue, he looked south and saw six or seven dead Iranians.
It would be over soon. The whole thing would be over soon.
He heard sirens—more NYPD was coming.
Mansour ignored the carnage and broken glass and moved toward the UN. He cut across First Avenue, clutching an AR-15 and gunning toward any movement he saw from the Americans.
Within the piece of land, the footprint of the UN building occupied less than an acre.
Mansour knew that his men needed to get to the tower and control access. That meant controlling the lobby. It was operating leverage; a confined space that, if secured, enabled its possessor to control the tower. Control the lobby and roof, that was what they had to do. It was his soldiers’ job to take hold of the lobby. To control the roof, that was why he bought missiles and had men stationed to use them as needed.
Mansour was pinned down behind an SUV on First Avenue, struggling to get closer. He watched, in the distance across the courtyard, as uniformed UN Security, NYPD, and FBI SWAT were pushed backward across the large, open concrete area outside the tower; ineluctably backward, ducking and afraid, spraying bullets at the Iranians, trying to protect themselves in a last-ditch effort.
He saw one of his soldiers breach the outer ring of the courtyard. Several Hezbollah gunmen moved in, but in moments two of them were shot dead, dropped to the hard ground. But the wave of Iranians was winning out and the Americans were dropping quickly. Hezbollah moved in closer. He glanced right. Windows on vehicles were shattered, and there were hundreds of bullet holes in cars. There were dead civilians along the sidewalk on First Avenue. Several of Mansour’s men were down, dead, killed—but the UN cordon had been broken.
Now Mansour skulked from behind the SUV. Suddenly, slugs rained down from the UN building. He was at least a thousand feet away, yet the bullets had come close. He tucked back against the SUV just as several bullets ricocheted inches from him.
Mansour had been marked. A sniper inside the UN building had him locked. He wasn’t about to let go.
Mansour paused a few moments, on his heels, crouched back against the vehicle.
On the other side of the SUV was a sidewalk, and then a three-foot-high line of pine shrubs, then an iron fence, and beyond was the courtyard in front of the tower he needed to get to.
Mansour stuck his hand out ever so slightly in front of the back bumper. He held it for a few moments, then instinctively yanked it back just as a dull boom echoed from the tower and a slug slammed into the bumper where his hand had just been.
He saw red and blue lights north of him, up First Avenue.
A Hezbollah soldier was positioned in that direction. The gunman started hammering bullets at the oncoming NYPD cruiser. The cruiser abruptly swerved and smashed into a parked, or abandoned, car. Mansour lurched through the break in the vehicles and sprinted across the sidewalk, leaping at the fence, hitting the shrubs with his feet and scaling the fence as bullets flew just behind him. Bullets pulsed the concrete just behind him.
A guard booth was on the other side of the fence. It would provide shelter from the sniper. As he got over the fence, he heard another boom in the same instant his knee erupted in blood and pain. He was hit—but he continued moving even as white-hot pain burned through his kneecap.
“Fuck,” he muttered as he moved to the small guardhouse, out of the sniper’s aim.
He looked down. His right knee was a mess. Blood was all over the place; a patch of his pants was torn. He ripped material aside, exposing the wound. The bullet had only grazed him. He could still function as long as he stemmed the blood and could deal with the pain.
He glanced around the guard station. He gazed across the concrete courtyard before the entrance to the tower, as his gunmen created a shock wave of cover around the outer edges of the facility, where law enforcement was trying to fight them off, pumping slugs back at them, but there were too many Hezbollah.
Mansour’s team was hatcheting through whatever security existed at the UN—even though dozens of his most loyal and talented men lay dead on the ground.
He felt cold wetness at his ankle. He’d already processed the pain and was moving it to a box inside his mind, as he’d been taught. But he needed to deal with the blood that was trickling, like a faucet that hadn’t been turned fully off, from his knee.