When The Wolves Come

And they will come ...

DISCLAIMER. Before you read further, understand this:

The story I’m about to tell is fiction. It is based on my experience, my observations, and my understanding of how terrorists think and operate — nothing more. I have no specific intelligence about any attack, location, date, or timeframe reflected in this article. What you’re about to read is a warning of what could easily happen here. It’s meant to wake people up, not panic them. No real-world tactics, techniques, or procedures are disclosed or compromised in this piece.

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Friday, December 19, 2025 – 5:00 A.M.

Reston, Virginia

The alarm buzzed at five in the morning, and Mike Rollins killed it before it finished its first full vibration.

The townhouse was still dark. The cold heavy December darkness made his bones feel older than they were. Downstairs, the Keurig hissed like it resented being awake.

Mike padded past his daughter’s room. The door was cracked, fairy lights dimmed, one socked foot dangling from the blankets. It made his chest tighten. Kids grow up too damn fast.

In the kitchen, he filled the same Navy Veteran travel mug he had used since 2017. The small television his wife Emily always left on murmured in the background as a commercial played. Reston Town Center’s ice rink lit up the screen, the giant Christmas tree gleaming beside it. Tomorrow they’d be there; his daughter had already picked out the sparkly gloves she planned to wear.

He kissed his wife Emily while she made her bagel in her nurse scrubs.

“Love you. See you tonight.”

“Love you more,” she said, tapping the counter with the knife she used to spread cream cheese on her blueberry bagel. “And do not forget your mom’s gift.”

“I won’t. I promise.”

He shrugged into his coat, stepped into the predawn cold, and backed out of the driveway. Reston was still asleep and decorated with wreaths on townhouses around his Lake Newport community. There were white Christmas lights in trees and frost painting the car roofs from the cold. He stepped on the gas and turned on a local Washington D.C. radio station that played nonstop Christmas music to get him in the mood for the commute.

Just another Friday before Christmas.

7:42 A.M. – Merrifield, Virginia

Halcyon IT Consulting

The lobby smelled like burnt K-cups and industrial cleaner.

Mike swiped his badge into the seventh-floor office suite and walked into his small office. He plopped down into the same squeaky Herman Miller chair he had “temporarily relocated” from a conference room three years earlier.

His inbox already held 58 unread emails.

Half labeled “urgent.”

None actually were.

He opened the cloud migration spreadsheet his boss wanted by noon and ignored the Slack channel melting down about an outage unrelated to his project.

A coworker leaned into the doorway of his office.

“You ready for Christmas, Rollins?”

“Almost. I need to grab a Lego set for my nephew at the mall later.”

“At Tysons? That place is a madhouse right now.”

Mike shrugged. “Heading over early. Before the real madness hits.”

He had no idea…

9:15 A.M. – Text From Emily

Do not forget your mom’s gift!!

PLEASE

Mike smiled.

On it. Promise. ❤️

A promise he would never keep.

11:50 A.M. – Break Room

He ate leftover chicken breast from a Tupperware container and scrolled the news on his phone. Politics, celebrity nonsense and violence overseas were the top stories. He didn’t click on any of them because they were too damn bleak.

Mike exhaled and shook his head.

One headline stood out—a brief report about two men connected to ISIS who had been arrested in the Midwest for plotting an attack on local schools.

“Jesus… thank God we don’t have to worry about that stuff here anymore,” he thought, swiping past it with the same detached relief most Americans feel when danger seems far away.

He scrolled more and watched a video of an Orange Tabby cat stealing a piece of pizza and laughed uncontrollably.

For two minutes, life felt easy.

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12:31 P.M. – Falls Church, Virginia

Four miles away**

The rental house near Route 29 looked like any old ranch-style home with peeling paint and sagging gutters. The kind of place people drive past without a second look. Inside, it smelled like acetone and burnt plastic and held something way more sinister.

Eight men moved around the living room without speaking.

Ahmed al-Masri, the cell leader from al-Qaeda, knelt on a flattened Amazon box and checked the suicide vest (SVEST) one last time made with triacetone triperoxide (TATP). Ten pounds of homemade explosive packed into PVC segments and wrapped in ball bearings and other metal shrapnel parts. The SVEST weighed about twenty pounds. He pressed the test button on the Nokia initiator. A red LED blinked twice and died.

Good.

Beside him, Yusuf, who was from ISIS, and had trained in the same camp in Afghanistan as the leader Ahmed. He unfolded the metal stock of his AK-47 and locked it in place with a sharp mechanical clack. He was going through his last-minute function checks of all his gear. The team was a patchwork of operatives from different terrorist organizations. By design, it would confuse the investigation later.

The rifles had come north inside a false floor SUV through a Gulf Cartel route in Laredo, TX. Classic 7.62mm Russian steel core ammo that is heavy and dirty and built to smash through bone and studs with the same indifference.

Countless spare AK magazines sat stacked like bricks on the carpet. These rifles were not for finesse. They were built to make the world scream.

Suppressors would have been convenient.

But the noise was part of the message.

The men spoke only in clipped Arabic or through the encrypted phone app Telegram. Their chat name was Wedding Guests.

The final message had arrived at 04:12 that morning from Kandahar to Ahmed. The other men weren’t privy to operational details except what Ahmed passed on to them.

The message read:

Anointed Time. Blessings of God.

Yusuf slid the AK-47s into enlarged backpacks that were purchased from Target, with the magazines out of the chamber so the rifles wouldn’t print. Each man carried 8 spare fully loaded magazines in their backpacks. The plan was to get into position at their target and immediately get the rifles out of the bag, load them quickly, then engage. They had practiced this countless times and had it down to several seconds.

The vests went on last with a couple of extra-large white Fruit of the Loom shirts over the explosives, then oversized Carhartt jackets. They looked like any other day laborers heading to a job site.

In the corner of the room sat a large black duffel bag no one had touched all morning. Ibrahim walked over and unzipped it. Seasonal attire meant for cheerful crowds lay folded inside. The colors looked muted and the fabric felt oddly worn as if it had been dragged through memories that had nothing to do with joy.

Beneath it rested the largest SVEST in the cell. It was almost twice the size and weight of the others.

Ibrahim smiled to himself and closed the bag back up. No one spoke. They all understood.

Their operational planning and surveillance had been complete for a month. Ahmed wrapped up his final preparations. He pulled the SIM from his burner phone, crushed it, wiped the device with a factory reset, then finished the job by smashing the phone to pieces with a hammer. He pocketed the tiny fragments, planning to toss them out the window as they drove through northern Virginia. This was a one way mission.

No traces.

4:19 P.M. – Falls Church

Two white vans with stolen plates backed into the driveway.

The men loaded the backpacks and gear like they were carrying wrapped gifts.

Ahmed checked his watch.

“Thirty minutes to gate.”

Ibrahim climbed into the second van with the large black duffel on his lap.

He unzipped it and drew the fabric out fully, letting it spill across his hands. He whispered something only he could hear and did not put it back. The van rolled forward toward Tysons Corner mall.

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4:52 P.M. – Tysons Corner Center

Mike merged through Beltway traffic. Brake lights pulsed like a river of red garland. He avoided Gallows Road due to a traffic accident and exited onto VA-7 and Leesburg Pike exit. He parked in the garage closest to the Barnes and Noble and zipped up his jacket.

Quick stop at Barnes and Noble for the Lego set.

Then maybe a quick stop at Starbucks on the 2nd floor for of the mall his usual, a blonde vanilla latte before he got the gift for his mom.

He never saw the two white vans slip past the same exit three minutes behind him.

Inside the mall, holiday music blasted from every speaker.

Kids yelled near Santa’s Village.

Shoppers carried mountains of bags while scrolling into their phones, blind to everything beyond their little three-foot view of the world.

And the wolves walked among them, unseen, unchallenged, and unnoticed by anyone.

5:05 P.M. – THE MOMENT THE WORLD BREAKS

Mike heard the explosion.

Then he felt it.

It came from the first floor.

From Santa’s Village.

Parents had been lining up with children.

Holiday lights glowing.

Fake snow drifting.

Phones raised for photos.

And at the center of it all, a Santa figure emerged from the crowd.

The suit was filthy and the beard crooked. People noticed something was off.

Then dismissed it.

They always did.

Santa lifted his hands slightly and yelled, “Allahu Akbar.”

Ibrahim tightened his grip on the initiator switch and detonated the SVEST.

The blast ripped through Santa’s Village with a flash so bright it erased shadows. The Christmas tree turned into shrapnel. Ornaments sliced through the air like blades. Families were thrown backward in arcs of smoke and fire. A cloud of pink mist and bone fragments violently blasted upward and out where Santa had stood.

The ball bearings and jagged metal from the bomb tore through bodies with such violent force that limbs ripped open, flesh peeled back in ribbons, and pieces of human beings were torn apart as if the blast had carved them into raw, shredded meat.

The shockwave struck the second level.

Mike grabbed the railing as air punched from his lungs.

Screams erupted instantly. Terrified, primal and raw.

Below him, people slipped on blood. A father ran with a child in his arms, her little legs limp. A teenage girl lay under a collapsed holiday display, phone still recording. Her jeans were soaked dark red and blood smeared across tile as people slipped, crawled, or were crushed under the panic. The clip would go viral before anyone knew her name.

Then the gunfire began.

Sharp.

Relentless.

Impossible to mistake.

Yusuf opened fire near the burning wreckage of Santa’s Village.

Mannequins exploded.

Glass storefronts collapsed.

People fell in broken ways that shattered the mind.

Mike leaned over the railing trying to understand the chaos below.

Before Mike even noticed, an attacker on the upper level swung his rifle toward him and fired. A round struck Mike just left off center in the chest.

He staggered back.

The Lego set dropped from his hand.

His phone slipped from his fingers.

The round clipped his aorta and blood spurted and gushed from the wound. Everything immediately blurred.

His last thought was not fear.

It was Emily’s face.

And his daughter skating under the Christmas tree in Reston tomorrow night.

He fell.

Mike Rollins died on the cold tile floor in a pool of blood of Tysons Corner Center at 5:05:27.

Chaos didn’t spread through the mall. It detonated.

The initial blast had already shredded the 1st floor by the Santa Village. Glass raining down like murderous confetti. People crawled through smoke, hands slick with blood that wasn’t theirs.

Near the Apple store, an older woman slipped on a pool of blood and tried to stand, slipping again and again while the crowd stampeded past her. Someone stepped on her hand; she didn’t even react. Shock had already claimed her.

A stroller sat overturned near the escalator.

The baby was gone, scooped up by someone or trampled or still underneath the crush of fallen bodies. No one knew.

Gunfire crackled from above, 7.62×39mm rounds tearing through kiosks, storefront glass, and advertisements featuring smiling families.

Plastic mannequins exploded into clouds of foam and limbs.

Real people broke the same way.

Yusuf walked steadily toward Santa’s Village firing in controlled bursts and was smiling the whole time.

Not spraying.

Not panicked.

Just methodical. He worked with the detached efficiency of a machine.

A mother with two children who somehow managed to survive the initial blast tried to hide behind the fake snowbank. Rounds chewed through it like it was tissue.

Another man fell near Nordstrom, clutching his throat as arterial spray misted the air. A woman screamed and slipped in it, smearing crimson across the white tile as she crawled to her death.

Above them, the giant “Believe in the Magic of Christmas” banner dangled, half torn, swinging over a scene of pure nightmare.

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THE REALITY CHECK

And here’s the part that matters: this is exactly how it could happen. This is the part no one wants to hear.

This is fiction. But it is not fantasy. I’m not writing this to scare you. I’m not telling you to hide at home or stop living your life. There are active terrorist cells inside the U.S. They are not imaginary. They are planning attacks on soft targets in this country exactly like this.

In many parts of the world these scenes are normal.

They call it a typical Tuesday. I’ve seen it with my own eyes.

Americans, buried in phones and blind to danger, have become easy targets.

Situational awareness is not paranoia. It is survival. It is the discipline of paying attention to the world instead of sleepwalking through it. It is understanding that danger does not announce itself, and violence does not wait for you to be ready. It is the difference between seeing a threat a second early and never seeing it at all. The people who call it paranoia are the same people who will freeze when the world suddenly goes dark.

If you wait until the first shot rings out to take life seriously, you are already too late.

When the wolves come, and they will come, the only thing between your family and a headline is you!

Wake up.

Look up.

Have a plan.

Be ready.

Your life and the lives of the people you love depend on it.

Stay safe and stay capable,
Ryan Geho