The Third Terrorist

by Jayna Davis Narrated by Jerry Sciarrio

Overview

Within hours of the bombing of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City on April 19, 1995, the FBI had evidence pointing to Iraqi and Islamic extremists. But incredibly, federal authorities quickly squelched all investigations implicating Middle Eastern suspects. In this electrifying new book, award-winning investigative reporter, Jayna Davis, shares a gripping and intensely personal account of her arrival on the scene thirteen minutes after the blast, the worldwide search for suspects, and the abrupt and unexplained abandonment of the manhunt for John Doe #2. Did he even exist? Eyewitnesses assured Davis that he did identifying him down to the distinctive tattoo on his arm, and his Middle Eastern connections led directly to Saddam Hussein's elite fighting forces, the Republic Guard. Stonewalled by officials, Davis followed her own leads into an activated terrorist cell on U.S. soil, high-level intelligence sources, and classified government leaks. What she uncovered rivals the plot of any spy novel, and is the shocking truth every American has the right to know.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940171712426
Publisher:	Books in Motion
Publication date:	09/15/2008
Edition description:	Unabridged

Read an Excerpt

THE THIRD TERRORIST

The Middle East Connection to the Oklahoma City Bombing

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By Jayna Davis

NELSON CURRENT

Copyright © 2007 Jayna Davis
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-7852-6103-2

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Chapter One

A VIEW OF HELL

April 18, 1995

"Mama, I want to come home," the trembling twenty-year-old softly spoke into the telephone.

A tender answer reached her ears, "Okay. You're ready to come back. Your sister and I miss you."

Daina Bradley had not spoken to her mother in a year. Her life had changed dramatically in just twelve short months. As a teenage runaway sleeping on the streets, she had confronted the danger and vulnerability of living on her own. She resolved to emerge from the sinkhole of self-destruction and voluntarily commit herself to a drug rehab program to overcome an addiction to methamphetamines.

Now the teen mother wrestled with the responsibility of being the sole provider for her three-month-old son. The emotional and financial burden of parenthood threatened to destroy Daina's devotion to the child's father, her first love and high school sweetheart. Living together outside the bonds of marriage and the insecurity that represented was more than she could endure.

"Gabreon, we're going to live with my family," Daina whispered to the slumbering baby as she climbed into her mother's car.

Cheryl Hammons reached over and embraced her daughter, "No matter what has happened between us, I'm here for you. I love you. Nothing will ever change that."

Tears and regrets stained the past. Cheryl was a dedicated mother who raised two girls while juggling around-the-clock jobs as a licensed nurse and housekeeper. But the burgeoning pressure of single parenthood became overwhelming. Alcohol and romantic relationships substituted as a distraction to ease her anxieties. Daina never doubted her mother's love, but she deeply resented the physical abuse she suffered at the hand of Cheryl's live-in boyfriends. She complained, but her mother refused to believe her stories.

At the tender age of eight, Daina began to lash out. She became physically aggressive toward classmates, then turned her rage inward, attempting suicide. Mother and daughter reached an impasse. The state interceded. Daina was institutionalized until her sixteenth birthday. Upon returning back home, the troubled teen returned to a life of revelry-imbibing alcohol to anesthetize suppressed hurts. Resentment and a sense of abandonment had obliterated her hope for the future.

Searching for love and security, she soon found herself pregnant, unwed, and emotionally incapable of caring for her infant daughter, Peachlyn. She buried her fears in pills. What began as momentary escapism quickly turned destructive. She had a drug habit which enflamed a rebellion within. Her mother and older sister, Falesha, raised her child while she grappled with premature adulthood.

"I've made a lot of mistakes, Mama," Daina said with a tear-streaked face that conveyed a daughter's profound regret. "I put you through a lot. I see now how rebellious and disobedient I was. I'm sorry. But I made sure I never got in trouble with the law. You raised me right. I guess I'm trying to say thanks for disciplining me."

"You know I let the state care for you all these years because I was trying to protect you. It tore me apart to be separated from my baby girl. But you were more than I could handle at the time," Cheryl confessed. "I know that you also had a tremendous burden dealing with my drinking. I hope you can forgive me."

The family reunion of April 18 seemed dreamlike. An inner peace and contentment replaced what was once a perceptibly tense environment where tempers were quick to flare. For the first time in years, Daina was together with her mother, sister, her daughter Peachlyn, and her newborn baby Gabreon.

Daina smiled with quiet reassurance. "Living with my family is going to work out this time," she thought.

April 19, 1995, 6:45 a.m.

Clark Peterson stirred from sleep. For some unexplained reason, a palpable uneasiness invaded his morning prayers. Something was amiss, foreboding. His thoughts quickly became preoccupied with the hectic workload awaiting him at the U.S. Army recruiting office. Clark had planned to take vacation time on April 19, but he confronted too many pressing deadlines. He glanced at the clock and grimaced. He was behind schedule. The brisk one block walk from his apartment complex to the Murrah Building landed him in his fourth floor office at the stroke of 7:30 A.M.

7:00 a.m.

"You're happy and you shine," Cheryl Hammons hummed with a lightheartedness that was reminiscent of school mornings when she would rustle Daina from bed singing a familiar tune.

"You sleepy heads need to get up and get going," she repeated as she opened the blinds. "We have to be there by 9:00 A.M. to beat the crowd."

Daina slipped back under the covers. She and her mother had stayed up late playing video games and catching up on the events of the past year. The family planned to visit the federal building in downtown Oklahoma City to obtain a Social Security card for Daina's son, Gabreon. But as the daylight began to bathe the windows and bedroom, Daina felt an inexplicable reticence to initiate the day's plans.

Her sister Falesha voiced a similar discomfort moments later, "Mama, I don't feel right. I want to stay home."

"I need you to go so you can help watch the children, or I can just leave you here to baby-sit Gabreon," Cheryl instructed.

Falesha relented. "I'll go."

7:36 a.m.

"I'm exhausted. I'm going to turn off the phones and crash for a few hours," Steve Bowers told his wife Teresa. He hung up the phone, flipped off the ringer, and melted under the bed covers. He had just returned from the graveyard shift at the Bethany Fire Department, running breathlessly from one ambulance call to the next throughout the pre-dawn hours. For the past two years, Steve had been juggling college and full-time duty as a firefighter and emergency medical technician. His energetic passion for his profession normally enabled him to endure the sleepless nights. But today was one of those rare occasions when his body craved rest. Within seconds, he slipped into deep slumber.

9:00 a.m.

"The girls are elated about starting college next semester," said Dorothy Hill, a forty-three-year-old purchasing agent for the General Services Administration. "Dot," as she was affectionately known by family and friends, enjoyed bantering about her daughter's career ambitions with coworker Steven Curry. The two shared a common bond. Both their daughters were high school seniors who aspired to attend the same state college to earn a degree in physical therapy.

As the work colleagues stood chatting at the office copier, Dot glanced at the clock. It was 9:00 A.M.-time for her morning break. She crossed the room to her desk, which stood flush against the wall of plate glass that framed the front plaza of the Murrah Building. A large Ryder truck, parked just fifty feet away, eclipsed the rays of light that streamed through the window where Dot stood. Oblivious to the bustle of rush hour traffic just outside her office, Dot headed toward the back entrance, crossed the hall, and entered the company break room. After turning on the television, she sat down to savor a moment of escapism in her harried work week.

9:02:13 a.m., Zero Hour

Daina turned from the line of waiting patrons on the ground floor of the Social Security Administration office and headed back to the chairs where her children quietly waited. Seconds later, a brilliant white light blinded her. A thunderous concussion thrust her downward. Unconsciousness seized Daina as her world faded to black.

A Ryder moving van parked twelve feet from where Daina and her family stood exploded, instantly transforming the nine-story structure into a smoldering cauldron of flames and acrid smoke. The terrorist bomb unleashed a searing shock wave that shredded concrete, cable, steel, and glass at the blinding rate of seven thousand feet per second, more than two times the muzzle velocity of an M-16 assault rifle. A crushing force field indiscriminately sought its victims with an immeasurable fury-lacerating human flesh, shattering bones, dismembering limbs, and compressing internal organs. The cold hand of death clutched many without delay. For others, the end was less merciful, suspended in mind-boggling horror, as they felt their bodies free-falling after the floor beneath their feet instantly vaporized.

The propulsion of the bomb simulated a giant dagger plunging into the belly of the building, severing it in two. The majority of federal workers located in the northern sector died as one floor after another collapsed, sending countless employees plummeting into the debris pit at ground zero. The monstrous, explosive pressure wrenched the cement-encased edifice from its foundation, peeled back the roof like cardboard, and hurled office workers out of windows. Several victims landed in the thirty foot wide crater the truck bomb had carved out of the earth below. Inside the Federal Employees Credit Union, director Florence Rogers was instructing a group of six female employees who were sitting just a few feet away when suddenly, the women vanished. The bomb's fatal course viciously devoured the floor of Rogers's office, stopping three inches shy of her desk.

A spark of electricity surged through Clark Peterson's computer as an impenetrable darkness flooded the room. The agonizing sound of moaning metal screeched inside Clark's ears. Glowing objects, illuminated by intense white heat, flew past at incalculable speeds. Fractions of seconds moved in slow motion as Clark's eyes recorded the last breath of a female coworker standing just ten feet away. The woman screamed into the black abyss as the stranglehold of gravity violently pushed her arms heavenward. In that harrowing moment, both she and Clark spiraled downward into death's dungeon.

The scorching fireball that erupted from the enclosed cargo hold of the moving van incinerated the daycare center located on the second floor. Several toddlers were burned beyond recognition. One child was decapitated. Fifteen youngsters and three workers perished. The glass façade that lined the north side of the federal building disintegrated into a shower of razor-sharp rain. Cement slabs were minced into white powder that coated bleeding corpses with a ghostly white pallor.

The fractured carcass, which housed federal agencies, spewed columns of rapidly rising smoke as wounded survivors staggered from the choking black mist. Many were partially clad, stripped down to their underwear, seemingly unaware of streaming blood that saturated their torn clothing. They scampered barefooted across a blanket of shimmering slivers of glass before collapsing on sidewalks. A trembling woman quietly awaited medical treatment as she bled profusely-her trachea and jugular vein slashed. A female coworker clutched the victim's hand, unconcerned that she too had been gravely wounded. Shock obviously had masked the excruciating pain.

On the north side of the building, gas tanks and tires of parked cars ignited and exploded. Blistering heat from rows of burning vehicles crackled in the chilly morning air. The tremendous vacuum at the core of the explosion caused surrounding buildings to shudder and buckle, violently shattering windows and tossing people about like rag dolls. At the nearby YMCA, the vibration from the detonation lifted a two-hundred and forty pound man from his bed, thrusting him through a window like a battering ram. Before Trent Smith could comprehend what was happening, he was dangling halfway out of a gaping hole encased by jagged glass, thankful his sizeable frame prevented him from being completely expelled from the building.

9:02:19 a.m.

For several interminable seconds, time remained suspended. Falling ceiling tiles pelted Dot as opaque darkness coated the break room where she was trapped. Thankfully, an adjacent elevator shaft had served as a firewall, insulating her from the deluge of bone-crushing debris. Yet no one was shielded from the torrential current that surged from the bowels of the terrorists' lethal instrument. The noxious airflow consumed Dot's body and instantly siphoned the life's breath from her lungs. A paralyzing fear of suffocation accompanied the peculiar sensation.

"What is happening?" she thought. "The TV blew up. The air conditioner on the second floor must have fallen. Surely we haven't been bombed?" Dot winced in pain as she opened her eyes to seek out an escape route. Abrasive dust scratched her corneas with knifelike jabs. "I can't see. I can't breathe. Am I going to die?"

"Help me, help me!" a frightened survivor cried out, shaking loose the anxiety that had seized Dot.

"Hold on, I'm coming," she answered. Navigating by hand, Dot felt her way through the black hole of destruction. Seconds later, she clutched the trembling hand of a young female janitor pinned in the debris outside the break room doorway.

"Follow me, I'll get you out of here," Dot promised. The two women began edging their way along the granite walls that lined the hallway when they met Dot's boss, Don Rogers. A stream of faint light guided them to an exit on the west end of the building.

9:03 a.m.

Dazed and traumatized children from the nearby YMCA daycare center wandered into the chaos searching for their parents. Within seconds, passing strangers embraced the trembling youngsters who had just been brutally slashed by shards of glass that had been converted into flying shrapnel. Frantic mothers and fathers darted through the pandemonium, hysterically crying out their children's names, but few reunions would take place. In desperation, one woman repeatedly begged passersby, "Have you seen my daughter?" No one answered.

9:05 a.m.

Daina lay entombed in a cement coffin. Her body immobilized. Her ears deafened by the haunting wails of her mother, "No, No, No," Cheryl cried.

"Mama, Mama, where are you?" she screamed. Suddenly, she heard the faint whimpers of her children, Gabreon and Peachlyn, who had been seated just inches from her when the bomb detonated. But now their tiny bodies were unreachable. Suffocating black smoke stung Daina's lungs with every labored gasp for air. As she lay buried in a shroud of petrifying darkness, Daina's only comfort was her loved ones' tortured voices. Though agonizing to hear, at least her family had survived.

Seconds later, a dangling section of the building collapsed, muffling the cries of her mother and children. The only sound Daina could distinguish now was the distant moaning of her sister Falesha. The omnipresence of death enveloped her as she drifted back into unconsciousness.

9:06 a.m.

"What the hell happened here?" Dot shrieked.

"I don't know," coworker Don Rogers answered in amazement.

"It looks like the war zone in Bosnia!" Dot exclaimed. Immediately, she was reminded of the daycare center on the second floor. She was grateful that her eighteen-month-old grandson had stopped attending the facility six months ago, but Dot continued to visit several youngsters at the daycare to whom she had grown emotionally attached. She ached at the thought of their cruel fate.

"My God, Don, the babies," Dot sobbed.

"They're gone," Don replied in grief-stricken resignation.

"No ... No, that can't be."

At that moment, Dot spotted an Oklahoma City policeman racing toward the gaping hole where her office once stood. "Officer, there are children in that daycare," she shouted.

"What daycare?" Officer Terrance Yeakey apprehensively inquired.

"On that second floor, there's a daycare center."

"How many kids?"

"Not more than twenty-five," she answered as pressing heaviness clawed at her heart. The officer grabbed his dispatch radio, reported the position of the daycare center, then disappeared into the crumbled remains of the General Services Administration office, which had shouldered the brunt of the blast. Dot followed him in.

9:08 a.m.

Two policemen, who were among the first to arrive at the scene, ventured into the bowels of the smoldering structure. Their flashlights illuminated the massive destruction inside the Social Security office. Wading through rising water from burst pipes, the officers navigated through a minefield of live electrical wires. A short time later, they emerged from the suffocating darkness and dust, carrying an unconscious woman by the upper torso and legs. As Officer Keith Simonds's eyes adjusted to the bright morning sun, he immediately noticed he had been holding an exposed bone of the victim's upper arm. He feared her wounds might be mortal. Days later, Simonds and his partner, Sergeant Richard Williams, learned the Jane Doe who they extricated from the rubble had survived. Her name was Falesha Bradley.

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from THE THIRD TERRORIST by Jayna Davis Copyright © 2007 by Jayna Davis. Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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