It's a sunny afternoon in San Francisco, perhaps tomorrow. The tourist season is at its peak with people from all over the world coming to visit the city famous for its hills, cable cars, Dungeness crab, and LGBT acceptance. The SF Giants are playing at AT&T Park and the evening rush hour is beginning, residents and commuters leaving by their masses to head home for the night or to catch the ball game. It's a day like any other...

And yet a day like no other...

Unbeknownst to the unsuspecting populace, San Francisco is about to become the next victim of a calculated terrorist attack as a small group of men in several vans and minivans, blending in with the everyday traffic, head down I-80 and US-101 towards San Francisco as an even larger group in various innocuous-looking boats and vessels on the San Francisco Bay also armed with an arsenal of weapons and artillery, stealthily leave various marinas in the East Bay and North Bay and converge on the city from all directions.

As the gunmen on the road cross the upper deck of the Bay Bridge towards Yerba Buena Island and the ones in Marin County heading towards the Golden Gate Bridge approach the Waldo Tunnel, a few of the boats head south towards SFO in San Mateo County. The rest of the gunmen swiftly dock at several of the more than 100 piers throughout the city. As the vans enter the Waldo Tunnel and the Yerba Buena Island tunnel, the men inside suddenly veer their vans into the traffic alongside them inside the tunnels causing multiple accidents to block the lanes. They then jump out and begin firing AK-47 rifles and machine pistols at the traffic still approaching them causing multiple more accidents inside the tunnels which block all lanes of traffic and brings the ingress of cars into the city from the north to a grinding halt. Almost at the same time, the men on the boats walk out onto the piers armed with their own weaponry assortment such as AK-47's, Uzi submachine guns, and RPG's. And in a scene reminiscent of Mumbai 2008, they begin attacking the populace; firing AK-47s at rush hour traffic on city streets and highways, and at tourists at Fisherman's Wharf and Union Square; launching RPG attacks at spectators in AT&T Park and on commuters at Muni, BART, Caltrain, and ACE Train stations; and some carjack people on the streets and drive into to the downtown and tourist areas such as Chinatown, North Beach, and Union Square and begin attacking people in office buildings, malls, and hotels; shooting bystanders and taking hostages.

The various law enforcement agencies in San Francisco; including the SFPD, San Francisco Sheriff's Department, CHP, Bay Area Rapid Transit Police, University of California Police, California State University Police, California Fish and Game Wardens, California State Park Rangers, California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation Peace Officers, and California Department Of Justice Special Agents; are all dispatched to respond to the attacks. The numerous federal agencies with offices in the City including the FBI, DEA, ATF, US Secret Service, US Marshals, Customs and Border Protection, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Diplomatic Security Service, US Mint Police, US Park Police, and Federal Reserve Police also send special agents and officers to assist. Mutual aid calls for help go out to other Bay Area police departments with officers from the nearby neighboring cities of Daly City, Brisbane, Broadmoor, and Colma entering San Francisco using the back roads. But with both the Bay Bridge and the Golden Gate Bridge under attack and traffic on the freeways into and out of the city snarled from gridlock, additional reinforcements can't respond quickly. First responders; armed only with handguns, shotguns, and a few semi-automatic rifles; quickly find themselves outgunned by the well-equipped terrorists armed with fully automatic rifles and submachine guns, rocket launchers, RPGs and IEDs.

The Governor mobilizes the Army and Air National Guard and the California State Guard. But by now the huge swarming numbers of attackers have barricaded themselves inside buildings throughout the city and are holed up in the 49-square-mile city with over 800,000 residents and thousands of tourists creating hundreds of buildings to search. More attackers have also landed at the San Francisco International Airport a few miles to the south and have begun attacking the terminals with automatic fire and the grounded planes with IEDs, even firing RPGs at incoming planes and police and news helicopters. And as CHP and SFPD officers along with Coast Guardsmen from the USCG Sector San Francisco base shoot it out with the terrorists blocking the Bay Bridge and Golden Gate Bridge, in the downtown district the situation is spinning even more rapidly out of control as the terrorists begin setting fires and explosives off inside the various downtown skyscrapers threatening to bring them down.

The Governor and California Attorney General urge the President to invoke the Insurrection Act and deploy active duty federal troops to assist with the crisis. Less than an hour later, the President approves the deployment of the Armed Forces.

Travis AFB in nearby Fairfield, CA is among the first of the nearby installations to receive presidential orders to deploy service personnel. Several teams of Security Forces are airlifted to San Francisco to back up first responders until reinforcements from Delta Force and SEAL Team 6 can arrive to help. As the Coast Guard and the SFPD Marine Unit deal with the boats still in the bay attacking the bridges; the USAF Security Forces from Travis, along with several other Security Forces and Military Police units; land at SFO and the decommissioned military installation at the Presidio, Treasure Island, the USCG station on Yerba Buena Island, and Alcatraz Island. After being briefed of the situation by SFPD, DHS and DOD personnel, they quickly gear up and are rushed into service to help local and state law enforcement search for and stop the terrorists.

Here Officer Alastair of the SFPD and Airman 1st Class Keith Redfield of the 60th Security Forces Squadron prepare to enter the Transamerica Pyramid to join numerous other first responders inside looking for the terrorists.

Characters ©  Redfield007 and myself.

Artwork done by the very talented  Chibi-Marrow

Thanks Keith for this wonderful gift art of our characters! It really helps to lift my spirits as I hope it does yours and every other police officer and service member who sees it.

Let us never forget Freedom is Never Free.