by Tom Clancy
An AK firing a full-auto burst.
The door in front of him splintered right in front of his knees, and he felt a blow to his right hip that staggered him but did not knock him down. He wore a .45-caliber semiautomatic pistol at the four-o’clock position under his T-shirt, but now he was only thinking about cover.
He dropped the bag of fast food and his drink, got the door open, fell inside, and crawled forward on his elbows.
He knew he’d taken a round right in the hip joint, he was bleeding like hell, and he could not stand up. With a blood-covered right hand he pulled his .45, rolled onto his back, and aimed at the closed door.
And with a blood-covered left hand he pulled his mobile phone out of the pocket of his jeans and called 911.
And then he looked at the floor around him. Wayne was a medic in Delta Force, and he knew what all this blood meant. There was four times the amount of blood he’d expected to see from a GSW to the hip. He felt sure the AK round had slammed into his hip and either tumbled around inside him or broken into pieces. His femoral artery had been clipped and ruptured, and from the location of the hole Wayne knew it was too high on his body to tourniquet.
Too much blood lost too fast.
An ambulance could roll up his driveway right now with a team of vascular surgeons in the back, and he would probably still bleed out before they could save him.
Mike Wayne realized he was a dead man.
After a few seconds to come to terms with his fate, he looked back down the sights of his pistol, and he willed his door to open. More than anything in the world he wanted to shoot the guy who’d just killed him.
Just then, his phone was answered, “Nine-one-one, do you need police, fire, or ambulance?”
Mike kept his voice strong. “Gray GMC Terrain. Two occupants.”
“I’m sorry?”
The phone dropped from Mike’s hand. The pistol stayed up for a few seconds more, but his hand would lower and then come to rest at his side in a pool of blood before he was able to get one last target in his sights.
—
In the training at the Language School in El Salvador, the cell members had practiced firing their weapons while seated inside cars. The cars they used had been old junkers lying around the property, and none of them had had any window glass. Karim had misjudged the recoil of his Kalashnikov, because he’d propped it on the glass of the partially opened window to shoot, but as soon as he opened fire, the glass shattered, and the rifle dropped off target. He’d seen the last few rounds hit the street just twenty feet in front of him.
But by the time he lifted the rifle back up to his shoulder and pointed toward the carport door across the street, he just saw the boots of his target as he crawled through the door.
Karim shouted from the passenger seat. “Damn it! He got away!”
Namir said, “Get out and finish him! He is wounded!”
Karim did not move. “You do it!”
Musa al-Matari’s voice came over the speakerphone now. “Karim! Brother! You are a brave lion! I saw you shoot him! He’s in there bleeding to death. Go! Finish it. But hurry! And take the phone, so everyone in the caliphate can see your bravery.”
Karim took the phone from Namir, opened the car door, stepped out onto Lemont Drive, then raced up the driveway. As he ran he held the weapon at his hip and began sweeping it left and right, ready to engage anyone else out here who might have a weapon.
As he passed the F-150 on his left he saw a huge splatter of blood on the carport and a shining smear on the broken glass of the outer door. He swiveled around in front of the door, brought the rifle to his shoulder, and opened the outer door. He got ready to open the wooden door, but an idea occurred to him. He took two steps back and opened fire, emptying his entire magazine.
This done, he stepped to the side of the door, reloaded, then entered the small house.
The bearded man lay on the floor, ten feet from the door. A pool of blood around him. Bullet holes in his T-shirt. He was clearly dead. A pistol lay inches from his right hand. A cell phone lay next to his left hand.
Karim realized the man had been waiting for him to come through the door so he could shoot him.
He held up the phone’s camera on the scene while he muttered “Allahu Akbar” a half-dozen times.
Then he spun out of the doorway and sprinted back to the SUV.
Namir met him in the driveway, and Karim climbed back inside. With screeching tires the SUV sped down Lemont Drive, right past a seventy-five-year-old man wearing a U.S. Army Special Forces baseball cap on his head. He’d come outside once he’d heard what sounded to him like an AK-47 firing what had to have been two fifteen-round bursts, a sound he hadn’t heard in person since the jungles of Vietnam.
He walked down his driveway just as a vehicle sped in his direction. He didn’t recognize the SUV, so he noted the make and model, as had the victim, Mike Wayne. But the old Green Beret standing in his driveway also noticed that the GMC had Maryland tags.
He turned around to head back inside for his phone.
—
Namir and Karim were miles from the scene within minutes of the shooting. They headed north on I-95, still careful to stay within the posted speed limits, both men fighting the amped-up effects of the adrenaline in their bodies.
They felt euphoric about their operation, and even more so because Mohammed had watched it all live. He’d signed off so they could concentrate on their escape, but he’d praised the men over and over for their great success.
As they drove north they talked about returning to the safe house and telling David Hembrick about their killing of the infidel, and self-consciously they discussed how the video would look when the Islamic State PR people put it to music and effects and broadcast it out all over social media.
They thought they were home free, because other than the old man they’d passed near the shooting, they’d seen no one who could have possibly known what they had done, and they doubted he’d even noticed at all.
—
But they made it only as far as exit 61, which is to say, they didn’t make it far at all.
Four North Carolina State Highway Patrol troopers had been parked in two vehicles at the Lucky Seven Truck Stop when a call came out saying a gray GMC Terrain had been involved in a shooting on Lemont Drive. One of the witnesses reported that the vehicle had Maryland plates, and that gave local law enforcement a hint that the perpetrators might show up somewhere northbound out of the city.
And I-95 was local law enforcement’s immediate choice, as it served as the spine that went up and down the eastern seaboard.
The troopers raced their two Dodge Chargers out of the truck stop, down the on-ramp, and then they took up positions in the median facing northbound.
Four minutes and twenty seconds later a gray GMC Terrain drove by with two men inside.
The Dodge Chargers were V8s and they probably would have had no problem catching up to the 185-horsepower, four-cylinder rental SUV while in reverse, but they stayed back for a moment. Only when the troopers in the lead vehicle saw that the car they were tailing did, indeed, have Maryland plates did they turn on their lights and sirens.
The Terrain did not stop, which was just fine with the North Carolina State Highway Patrol troopers. By now dispatch had said there was a soldier from Fort Bragg dead in his own home back on Lemont Drive. These troopers had no problems at all with this felony stop turning a little rough.
Ten minutes later they had a helicopter overhead, six more vehicles in pursuit, and a roadblock across I-95.
The GMC saw the roadblock, slowed quickly, and turned to shoot off into the grassy median to try its luck going back southbound, but a cluster of silver-and-black highway patrol vehicles instantly and professionally boxed it in.
The GMC stopped horizontal to the highway, troopers poured out of thei
r cars and SUVs, and shotguns, AR-15s, and pistols were pointed at the vehicle’s two occupants from multiple directions.
—
Inside the Terrain, Namir used his shaking hands to initiate a Silent Phone call with their handler. When he answered, Namir screamed into the phone. “We are surrounded by police. By God’s will, we killed the infidel, but there are many armed men around us now. What do we do?”
The man they knew as Mohammed had Namir pan the phone around in various directions, confirming they were, in fact, completely surrounded by law enforcement.
Over the phone’s speaker the two young men heard Mohammed’s calm voice. “You have done well, my brothers. Now you must surrender without incident. Don’t worry. I will dispatch forces to liberate you. I’ll send a team down today.”
“Yes, Commander Mohammed. Thank you, sir.”
“But leave your phone on, and place it on the dashboard so I can film your arrest.”
—
A minute later the AK and the Uzi came flying out the side windows of the GMC Terrain, then Karim raised his hands out of the passenger side, and Namir did the same out of the driver’s side. By now there were twenty-two State Highway Patrol vehicles on the scene, and the helicopter continued circling overhead. More than forty men and women kept weapons trained on the two suspects.
Following the orders of law enforcement as broadcast through the PA of one of the trooper’s vehicles, Namir opened his car door slowly, reached out with his hands in the sky, and walked backward to a point in the middle of the highway. There he was told to lower to his knees and lie facedown, with his ankles crossed and arms away from his body.
With Karim still reaching out the window with his empty hands, two officers moved forward to cuff Namir in the street. They knelt down, one put a knee in his back—
And then the entire scene erupted in a flash of light.
The two North Carolina State Highway Patrol troopers flew through the air in the explosion.
In the GMC Terrain, Karim crouched down behind the dash, first thinking someone had opened fire. But as debris rained down on his car and smashed his windshield, he looked out over the dash and through the spiderwebbed glass. Namir had been blown to bits, along with the two troopers. More members of law enforcement lay on the ground, clearly injured.
Karim’s ears rang; Namir had not activated his suicide vest, so Karim had no idea what had happened.
And he never would.
His own suicide vest detonated ten seconds after Namir’s, and the Terrain exploded in a ball of fire, firing projectiles out in all directions and injuring more of the troopers all around.
Above the highway, the helicopter had to bank to avoid the plume of smoke and debris that shot straight into the sky.
30
Jack Ryan, Jr., had worked till midnight analyzing the private-actor angle of the U.S. intelligence data breach, but he forced himself to roll out of bed the next morning at five, slip on his summer running gear, and stagger down his condo stairs in the Oronoco Waterfront Residences.
It was less than a five-minute jog to the Hendley Associates building, but Jack walked it, using the ten minutes to wake up a little, to allow some heat to build in his muscles, and to give him time to win the little mental fight he was having with himself. Most of him wanted to go back to bed for a couple more hours, but enough of him wanted to get some PT in this morning, knowing that it would make his brain work better during the day, that he kept putting one leg in front of the other until the next thing he knew, he was in the parking garage under his office giving tired but uplifting fist bumps to his cousin and Domingo Chavez.
A minute later Midas and Adara stepped out of the stairwell; from the sweat on their clothing it was clear Clark had already been working the two new recruits out in the gym there in the building. This made Jack smile; he knew Clark would be tough on the two newcomers to the operational team, but he also knew the two newcomers would have no problems making it.
There was a brief delay as Clark stopped to take an early-morning phone call. Jack listened at first to see if it was related to the intelligence compromise, but apparently he was talking to an old friend to help with a role-playing exercise for the two new trainees. He tuned out of Clark’s call, and while everyone was standing around the lighted parking garage stretching for this morning’s run, Jack walked over to Midas, who was a few feet away from the others.
“Hey, man, how’s the training going?”
Midas seemed surprised to be spoken to by Jack, which made Jack feel like shit. He’d been in a bad mood all week, and he’d been so damn focused on this intelligence leak that he’d been distant to pretty much everyone in the building except for Gavin.
Midas said, “I’ve learned one thing so far.”
“Yeah? What’s that?”
“I want to be Mr. C. when I grow up. That guy is a machine. My old man’s heart blew up at fifty-five while he was watching a game show. Mr. C. looks like he’s got another sixty years in him.”
Jack smiled. “Sorry about your dad, but I bet he wasn’t in Delta.”
“Sold carpet during the day and drank cheap scotch all night. He was surprisingly good at doing both.”
Jack glanced to Clark. “Yeah, Clark keeps us younger guys on our toes, for sure.” Now he turned back to Midas. “Look. I’m not usually such an asshole. It’s been a really hard week, and—”
Midas reached out and slapped Jack on the arm. A show of kindness that nevertheless unsteadied him. “No worries. I heard about what happened. Well . . . in a general sense, anyway.”
“Really?”
“I heard you and your mates did your jobs and did them well, but still something bad happened.”
Jack said, “Something bad happened. I don’t know that I did my job well.”
Midas said, “There’s an old saying you’d hear around Delta. All skill is in vain when an angel pisses in the flintlock of your musket.”
Jack cracked a smile at this. “Yeah . . . I guess that’s true.”
“I personally know some great dudes spending eternity napping just up the road at Arlington Cemetery. They didn’t do a damn thing wrong other than pick a profession that kills the exceptional just the same as it kills the unexceptional. Whatever happened, you did your best on the day, and you survived, which means someday you’ll be around to have the opportunity to do even better. I hope you can shake it off.” Midas did a neck roll, then spoke with nonchalance. “Because you’re right, you’ve been acting like a little bit of a tight-ass.”
It was a weird pep talk, Jack acknowledged, but it was exactly what he needed to hear. He laughed and the two men shook hands, and seconds later Clark sent everyone on a four-mile run.
—
As Jack Junior ran in the predawn along the Potomac River, his father was getting dressed just a couple miles to the north in the White House. Jack Senior had been woken an hour before usual this morning to take a call from Dan Murray. After their quick conversation, the President asked for his senior national security staff to be contacted and summoned for a seven a.m. meeting in the Situation Room.
The President arrived in the underground conference room at exactly seven to find everyone else already seated. Though they stood at his appearance, he immediately motioned for them to sit back down, and he turned the floor over to Dan.
The attorney general stood and walked to the end of the conference table, where a large screen on the wall displayed the presidential seal. He said, “It appears Islamic State operatives have been conducting attacks in America for thirty-six hours.”
There was a murmur of confusion at the table, although many of those seated, the President included, knew about some of the incidents already. Murray clicked a button on a remote control and the DIA departmental headshot of Barbara Pineda appeared on one of the screens. “As I’m sure you all know, a young woman was
murdered with a bomb the night before last in Falls Church. She was, in fact, an analyst for the DIA, working against Islamic State as an area officer.”
Everyone knew about the incident, but the fact the police had not immediately identified her as the actual target of the bomb had slowed down associating her with her work against ISIS.
Murray clicked the button again. The picture of Barbara Pineda was replaced by the image of U.S. Navy SEAL Todd Braxton wearing his khaki and black service dress uniform and his black garrison cap. Everyone in the room knew Braxton instantly. There wasn’t a bigger American celebrity to come out of the military in a decade. He made the rounds on the news as a talking head, and on adventure reality shows, and his book had been at the top of the bestseller lists. There were gasps of surprise around the table, because no one had heard anything about his death. “Some of you might be aware that yesterday morning in Los Angeles, the television actor Danny Phillips was shot dead along with his bodyguard. What has not been widely reported is that Phillips was with former Naval Special Warfare Chief Petty Officer Todd Braxton at the time of the assault. The two were making a film version of Braxton’s book. Even though Braxton was uninjured in the attack, we are confident he was, in fact, the intended victim. We think the assailants mistook Phillips for Braxton, which would have been easy to do because Phillips was playing Braxton, and Braxton himself had adopted a different appearance to play in the same film.”
The secretary of homeland security said, “How do we know that—”
Dan Murray held a polite hand up. “Andy, just a second and I’ll answer that.”
Now Murray clicked his remote again, and a Department of the Army image of a clean-shaven man in his twenties appeared. “Last night, in Fayetteville, North Carolina, U.S. Army Sergeant First Class Michael Robert Wayne was shot dead at the front door to his private residence.”
Some in the room had been up late and seen news of the shooting and police chase on CNN, although neither the victim nor the perpetrators had been identified.