Rafael tilted his head back to look between the lines of waiting trucks. Javier was in the lane on the far end of the facility. Although the border checkpoint was relatively level, it was somewhat higher at that far end.
Javier was driving a regular tractor trailer, but hidden inside his ordinary-looking trailer he carried a two-thousand-gallon steel tank filled with gasoline. The trailer had hatches below valves on the tank. Once he received word from Rafael, Javier hit a switch that dropped the three hatches in the floor of the truck. When those hatches sprang open, they automatically opened the gravity valves on the tank above. Gasoline poured out of three wide-opened valves and began spreading across the pavement as it ran downhill under all the waiting trucks.
Border-patrol agents smelled the gasoline and began coming out of their booths to look for the source.
Rafael picked up the phone with Esteban’s name. He could see Esteban out of his truck, standing near the rear of his trailer. Many of the other drivers had emerged from their trucks as well, because of the apparent failure of the electricity and computers, so none of the security officers thought anything of Esteban being out of his truck.
At least half a dozen officers finally converged on the truck spewing gasoline. At first, they ran around the truck, looking for the source of all the gasoline. When they saw the open gravity feed valves, they drew guns and pointed them up at Javier in the cab of his truck.
Rafael pressed send for the message to Esteban. GO WITH GOD.
Esteban, only two lanes over from Rafael’s truck, had been waiting for the order. He glanced briefly at the message for confirmation, then deliberately dropped the phone in the river of gasoline. He put a foot up on the rear crash bar that kept cars from submarining under the back end of the truck in the event of an accident, and hoisted himself up. He quickly pulled open the latch and then lifted the roll-up door. Lining the sides of the trailer’s interior were over a hundred cages. Esteban pulled the handle on a steel cable that sequentially unlatched all those doors.
The doors of the cages had springs, so once the latches were released they sprang open, one after another. Over a hundred dogs, most pit bulls, bolted from their cages and spilled out of the back end of the truck. All the dogs had been bred and raised in Mexico to be vicious. They had all been trained for one thing: to attack anyone in a border agent or highway patrol officer uniform. They had been trained to ignore gunfire and loud explosions.
All the dogs were also wearing bomb vests packed with high explosives, ball bearings, screws, and nails.
Some of the dogs began fighting each other, but most single-mindedly charged toward border agents and highway patrol officers. The dogs storming around all the standing trucks at the border checkpoint created confusion and disarray. Tactics used in the training of border agents and police for gaining control of a situation suddenly became worthless. While prepared for an assault by men, they were not prepared for an attack by dozens of vicious dogs.
Some of the dogs raced in and latched on to a leg with their powerful jaws. The dogs would never release the leg they had in their jaws, so the men now had a heavy dog anchoring them. Men drew guns and shot the dogs clamped on their leg, but the damage had already been done.
Other dogs clamped on to arms held up defensively. Once they had that arm in their teeth, they shook it for all they were worth. The stocky dogs had powerful neck muscles, and when they shook their prey it tore muscle from bone. Other dogs, running at full speed, leaped up at the men, knocking the wind from them as they knocked them down. Once they had their prey on the ground they went for the throat or face. There was no effective way to physically fight them off. Only guns could stop them.
One dog leaped onto and grabbed a female officer by her breast. As she toppled back with the dog on top of her she drew her gun and shot it, only to have another dog race in and clamp her face in his powerful jaws. When he shook her head, it tore neck muscles and ripped flesh from her face.
People everywhere, both agents and truck drivers who had gotten out of their trucks, screamed in terror or pain. Some of the drivers who had been waiting at booths saw the erupting chaos, put their trucks in gear, and took off to escape before they were caught up in the attack. Men in other trucks leaped out and ran, leaving their trucks blocking the lane between booths.
While some dogs attacked the same man, most of the angry animals raced throughout the facility, looking for people in uniforms to attack. They spread out as they ran, going after any uniformed officer they saw.
It only took seconds for guns to be drawn. Officers everywhere began shooting at the dogs. A few took down a dog, but many shots missed the racing animals as they zigzagged through all the trucks and people. The shooting diverted their attention from the true danger.
As officers tried to shoot the dogs, the timers on the vests the dogs were wearing ran out and the bombs exploded. Everywhere throughout the entire facility the dogs’ bomb vests started going off. It didn’t matter if a dog had been shot dead. The vests had already been armed, and they exploded by their internal timer, sending shrapnel streaking out in every direction.
People close enough but not directly taken down by the explosion were shredded by the ball bearings and nails. People farther away were hit with shrapnel and went down. Others were wounded but still able to run. They did their best to stop the bleeding of injuries as they ran. Many ran directly into another explosion, where they were blown limb from limb.
While some detonators went off almost immediately after the attack started and created mass confusion, others had delays of anywhere from ten to sixty seconds, adding to the confusion. As bombs were going off, the dogs left alive continued their attack, until their bomb vests in turn exploded. Those explosions spread the pandemonium and death out to those who had not been in the original danger zone.
Several of the officers around Javier’s truck turned to shoot at the dogs that raced in toward them. Others held their weapons pointed up at Javier, since he was the driver of the truck dumping thousands of gallons of gasoline all over the ground. They yelled at him to get out of the truck or they would shoot.
Javier was holding a dead man’s switch.
Rafael knew that Javier yelled “Allahu Akbar” back at them. They grasped the meaning and immediately began retreating even as they opened fire.
A few seconds later Javier’s truck exploded with a ground-shaking thud.
The men in close, climbing up to open the driver’s door to the truck, were vaporized when the massive bomb in the sleeper compartment of his truck cab detonated. The huge explosion sent debris flying in every direction. The expanding shock wave from the explosion knocked people from their feet. It rocked all the trucks trapped at the checkpoint. Rafael’s truck rocked in turn as the blast wave raced past.
The catwalk above the booths came apart and parts of it blew high into the air. Half of the booths and personnel in them were blown to pieces, adding to the flaming debris flying through the air. The big axle and tandem wheels off a truck sailed out over the row of booths and into California.
A massive ball of red flame laced with orange and yellow tendrils expanded from the initial explosion. Rafael squinted at the bright blast. Fire boiled over the surrounding trucks. Black smoke swelled up into the air.
Almost simultaneously the gasoline vapor from all the fuel that had poured out across the area caught fire with a chest-pounding thump, igniting the gasoline that had poured across the ground.