NOVEMBER 13, 2015
SAINT-DENIS, FRANCE
9:16 P.M.
The daughter of the famous journalist Geraldo Rivera is in danger.
But she does not know it. Simone Rivera, a twenty-one-year-old Northwestern University exchange student, is spending a semester studying in France. On this Friday night, she is attending a soccer game at the Stade de France—the French national stadium. Simone sits with her roommate and two other friends. The international match between France and Germany is a popular place to be on this chilly autumn evening, and the eighty-thousand-seat stadium is sold out. France wears blue, and Germany white. Even French president François Hollande is in attendance.
Simone Rivera is just days away from finishing her final academic project and flying home for Thanksgiving when the first explosion startles the stadium. The blast occurs outside, along the Avenue Jules Rimet. It is nineteen minutes and thirty-six seconds into the game. The blast is loud enough to be heard over the noise of the crowd. Thinking the explosion is perhaps part of a midgame fireworks display, the audience cheers for a moment and then resumes watching the contest.
Yet Simone feels uneasy.
Paris is very aware of terrorism. The city is still grieving over the brutal murders of twelve employees of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo. The terrorist perpetrators were a group known as al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, led by ruthless Yemeni terrorist Qasim al-Rimi. That happened ten months ago. A citywide terror alert followed the mass slaying, and soldiers were deployed throughout the area, which is home to 2.1 million people. Shortly after the Charlie Hebdo murders, in a related attack, terrorists took nineteen Jewish hostages at a kosher supermarket in Paris, killing four. As in the Hebdo situation, the perpetrators were shot dead by police. Later, a massive rally was held in the Place de la République, where Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo condemned the murderers. Fifty-four Muslims who publicly supported the terror attacks were arrested as “apologists.”
Simone Rivera follows French news fervently. She knows the people of Paris and Muslim fanatics are at odds. Nearly one million Islamists around the world marched in support of those who killed the Charlie Hebdo employees. And militant groups such as al-Qaeda, Boko Haram, and the Taliban all praised the dead terrorists who committed the murders. In fact, more than three quarters of Muslim students in the volatile Seine-Saint-Denis district have voiced allegiance to the killers. “I’ll drop you with a Kalashnikov, mate,” one student informs a teacher trying to enforce a moment of silence, referencing the AK-47 assault rifle used most often by jihadists.*
The terror threat in France is ongoing. Three months ago, French authorities intercepted a thirty-year-old suspect en route to Syria, who told them that attacks on French concert venues were in the planning stages. And just yesterday, Iraqi security forces informed the US-led coalition fighting ISIS in Syria and Iraq that suicide bombers would soon strike a target in the West, location unknown. But, obviously, nonspecific information could not be acted upon.
Back inside the stadium, the first explosion mystified the crowd, but the game continues.
Then, ten minutes later, a second blast rocks the night. This time, the fans know something is wrong. Many panic and begin running for the exits.
Unbeknownst to the crowd, a full-blown terror attack is underway. A terrorist, using the alias of twenty-five-year-old Ahmad al-Mohammad, tries to gain entry to the stadium, hoping to slaughter hundreds. But a security guard at Gate D notices the cumbersome vest under his jacket. The Syrian terrorist flees, unable to complete his mission. Seconds later, he explodes the vest, killing himself and an innocent pedestrian outside the stadium.
Another explosion comes when Bilal Hadfi, twenty, blows himself up near Gate H. It will later be confirmed that Hadfi, a Belgian, fought with ISIS in Syria.
Over the stadium loudspeakers, spectators are told to stay calm. Incredibly, the soccer match continues on—the thinking being it is better to keep fans and players inside the stadium than have them run outside into danger. Quickly, Paris police cordon off the area. Then, at 9:53, comes a third explosion, more distant this time. It will later be surmised that a third terror bomber, recognizing that the stadium was now alerted, wandered off in search of a new target. Thus, an explosion takes place inside a McDonald’s restaurant on the Rue de la Cokerie, four hundred meters away from the Stade de France. The bomber, a twenty-year-old Frenchman, succeeds in killing only himself.
Simone Rivera realizes that terror now reigns over Paris. “At halftime, we went to get food,” she will remember. “They wouldn’t let anyone leave the stadium at that point and they weren’t telling us anything and they just had a bunch of ambulances and people in uniform starting to look very nervous.”
The tension escalates as the game ends. Fans attempting to leave the stadium come face-to-face with armed police officers. Every exit is barricaded.
“No one was telling us what to do,” Simone will later recount. “We were all freaking out and then there was one point where we started to break away and then there’s this swarm of people running at us and we just all start running in this direction, not knowing where to go and then all the police officers were there with their guns ready.”
Simone and her fellow New Yorkers, none of whom speak French, follow instructions to remain in the stadium. Like many fans, they flood onto the field rather than go back to their seats.
Back in New York, Geraldo Rivera hears the news and immediately calls his daughter. But Simone’s phone is out of battery. She does not pick up. That night, while reporting on Fox News, Geraldo gets emotional. Holding up a photo of Simone, he tells the audience of her plight. “It’s my gorgeous daughter,” he says. “She just turned twenty-one years old. She’s a straight-A student. She’s a wonderful person and a very gentle soul.”
Uncertain of his daughter’s fate, the veteran journalist then goes off the air and books the next flight to Paris.
The night of terror is not yet over.
In fact, it is just beginning.
Even as Simone Rivera and other fans remain trapped for their own safety in the stadium, three terrorists drive through Paris in a small black Spanish sedan. They are armed with Kalashnikov assault rifles. Their targets are the city’s soft underbelly: bars, cafés, and restaurants—the sorts of places where people gather in large groups. The assassins focus on the 10th and 11th arrondissements, close to the heart of Paris.
Five minutes after the first stadium explosion, at 9:25 p.m., the three killers get out of the car and spray bullets into restaurants at the intersection of Rue Alibert and Rue Bichat. Fifteen people immediately die. Mission accomplished, the terrorists calmly get back into their car and drive to another target. The locations have been preselected—the killers have planned their violence.
It is just a short ride to the next site.
Seven minutes later, at 9:32, five victims are shot outside La Casa Nostra pizza restaurant, and the café Bonne Bière on Rue de la Fontaine. The assassins then hear the sirens of approaching Paris police as they depart for their final destination.
At 9:36, twenty-one more innocent people are shot dead at the La Belle Équipe restaurant. Their mass murder finished, the assassins drive off. The next morning, the car will be found abandoned three miles away in the suburb of Montreuil, still loaded with three assault rifles, five full magazines, and eleven empty magazines. All told, the terrorists fired 330 bullets and murdered thirty-nine people.
But the death does not stop.
In another part of Paris, a terrorist dressed in a hooded sweatshirt sits in a café near the Place de la Bastille. The man is a decoy. His name is Ibrahim Abdeslam, and it was he who rented the black sedan for his terror compatriots. His mother will later talk of the great stress Abdeslam endures in his life. But tonight, his job is to divert police away from the three armed murderers roving the city. Looking at his watch, he knows that his comrades are now most likely trying to escape. Ibrahim Abdeslam stands and screams inside the café. He then explodes his suicide vest, dying instantly. Several patrons and a waitress are badly injured.
Meanwhile, the fleeing terrorist shooters disappear into the night. But five days later, acting on a tip, French police and military units surround an apartment building in the Saint-Denis section of Paris. The stand-off lasts for hours as a pitched battle between the terror suspects and police ensues. Local residents are evacuated amid heavy gunfire. More than five thousand rounds are fired by French authorities during the four-hour siege. When it’s all over, three terror suspects are dead, among them Abdelhamid Abaaoud, the mastermind behind the terror plot. The lone police fatality is Diesel, a seven-year-old Belgian Malinois assault dog who was just months away from retirement.*
Still, the violence continues on this Friday night, November 13. Another group of terrorist attackers wait inside a rented black Volkswagen Polo outside the Bataclan theater, on the east side of Paris. Three men, all wearing suicide vests and carrying Serbian-made Zastava M70 AKM assault rifles, are ready to kill. Each terrorist is a French citizen. At 9:42 p.m., one of the terrorists sends a simple text: “We’re starting.”
His phone will later be found to contain a complete map of the Bataclan’s interior.
What follows is the most horrific of the night’s seven terror attacks. As the hard rock band Eagles of Death Metal launches into their song “Kiss the Devil,” the three murderers exit the car and spray the crowd gathered on the sidewalk in front of the 1,500-seat venue. The next to die are patrons standing at the bar in the back of the theater. Methodically, the terrorists proceed into the concert hall, shouting “Allahu Akbar”—“God is great.” They have practiced this moment and move through the room with military efficiency, making sure to aim for the head and thorax of the concertgoers. One terrorist immediately hastens to block the emergency exit. Any patron seeking to escape through this door will be shot dead.
Hearing gunfire, the band immediately races off the stage and out the back door. The standing-room-only crowd is slaughtered, mowed down as panic fills the hall. The shooters are precise, with one continuing to fire while another reloads; in this way, the killing goes on without pause. Bodies fall from the balcony and lie in heaps on the floor. After a time, some in the crowd take refuge in whatever hiding place they can find. The killers then walk through the stacks of fallen bodies and shoot dead anyone who moans or otherwise appears alive. Ninety concertgoers die. Police reports will also speak of women being molested and bodies being ritually dismembered. The victims are international, hailing from America, Spain, Mexico, Portugal, Britain, Chile, and Belgium, along with France.
After the massacre, one terrorist kills himself by detonating his suicide vest on the stage. The two others remain on the floor, unharmed.
An hour goes by before police enter the building. The surviving terrorists take hostages, but the police sweep in shortly after midnight and rescue all of the captives alive. One terrorist explodes his vest during the gun battle, while the other is shot dead by gendarmes. Police dogs then sniff through the corpses, searching for another possible suicide vest.
All told, 130 people are killed across Paris on this night. President Hollande, who escaped from the soccer stadium at halftime, immediately declares a state of emergency—the first in France since World War II. The country’s borders are closed. The search for the terrorist killers intensifies.
“We will lead the fight and we will be ruthless,” Hollande will state as ISIS takes credit for the attacks.*
“France is at war.”
Two days later, one dozen French fighter jets launch air strikes on ISIS targets in Raqqa, Syria. The French have long been a partner in the US-led coalition against ISIS but chose not to actively engage the enemy until the Paris attacks. An ISIS command center, recruitment building, ammunition dump, and training camp are bombarded. In all, thirty bombs are dropped.
Every ISIS target is destroyed.
As word spreads about the attacks, hotels, restaurants, and even Paris’s underground Métro stations are locked down. Simone Rivera walks the streets with her friends, crying but in control of herself. People are on edge, not knowing if there will be another attack. Many are too frightened to even take a taxi. When Simone and her friends attempt to rent a hotel room, still unsure if more terrorists are on the loose and not wanting to walk across town to their apartments, they are denied.
However, Simone’s roommate has now managed to call her mother, who then relays news of their safety to Simone’s father. A longtime acquaintance of Rivera’s who lives in Paris promises to find the girls and shelter them. After two tense hours, the friend finally catches up to Simone and her friends.
Charles de Gaulle Airport is almost empty as Geraldo Rivera arrives in the morning. The terrorists considered the international facility as a potential target. Soldiers, carrying their automatic weapons at port arms, scrutinize any potential threat. France is experiencing an incredible trauma from the horrific realization that more than a hundred innocent men and women are now dead.
Geraldo and his daughter reestablish cell phone contact and quickly rendezvous.
“Do you want to come home, sweetheart?” he asks Simone.
Fox News cameras record the moment.
“I want to come home.”
But as the world now knows, many others will never come home.