by Tom Clancy
The one with the photo held it up again and walked toward the kids. He pointed.
“That one.”
Strangely, it was only now, it seemed, that they saw O’Day in the room. The knee-shot one blinked his eyes and aimed the AK right at him. The inspector took his arms from around his daughter’s chest and held them up.
“Enough people been hurt, pal,” he said. It didn’t require all that much effort to make his voice shake. He’d made a mistake, too, holding his Megan that way. That fuck might shoot through her to get to me, he realized, a sudden wave of nausea rippling through his stomach at the thought. Slowly, carefully, he lifted her and moved her off his lap, and onto the floor to his left.
“No!” It was Marlene Daggett’s voice.
“Bring her to me!” the man insisted.
Do it, do it, O’Day thought. Save your resistance for when it counts. It doesn’t change anything right now. But she couldn’t hear his thoughts.
“Bring her!” the shooter repeated.
“No!”
The man shot Daggett in the chest from a range of three feet.
“WHAT WAS THAT?” Price snapped. Ambulances were coming up Ritchie Highway now, their whooping sirens different from the monotonal screams of the police cars. Down to her left, state troopers were trying to get the road clear, shunting traffic away from the area while their hands rubbed on their holsters, wishing they were there to help. Their angry gestures conveyed their mental state to the puzzled drivers.
Closer to Giant Steps, those immediately outside heard a renewed wave of screams, little kids in terror, for what reason they could only guess.
THE LEATHER JACKET rode up when you were sitting down like this. If anyone had been behind him, he’d see the holster in the small of his back, the inspector knew. He’d never seen a murder before. He’d investigated his share of them, but to see one ... a lady who worked with kids. The shock on his face was as real as any man’s, watching life vanish ... innocent life, his mind added. So he really had no choice.
When he next looked at Marlene Daggett, he wished that he might tell her that her murderers would not be leaving this building alive.
It was miraculous that none of the kids were wounded as yet. All the shooting had gone high, and he realized that had Miss Anne not knocked him down, he might be dead beside his daughter now. There were holes in the wall, and the bullets that had made them would have transited the space he’d been in a second or two before. He looked down a second, to see his hands shaking. His hands knew what they had to do. They knew their task and they didn’t understand why they weren’t doing it, why the mind which commanded them hadn’t yet given them the release. But his hands had to be patient. This was a job of the mind.
The subject lifted Katie Ryan by her arm, wrenching it, making her cry out as he twisted it. O’Day thought about his first supervisor, working that first kidnapping case, Dom DiNapoli, that big, tough guinea who’d wept bringing the child back to her family: “Never forget, they’re all our kids.”
They might just as easily have selected Megan, they were so close—and that thought did cross from mind to mind as the one with SANDBOX looked at the photo again, and over toward Pat O’Day.
“Who are you?” the voice demanded, while his partner moaned with increasing pain.
“What d’ya mean?” the inspector asked in nervous reply. Look dumb and scared.
“Whose child is that?” He pointed at Megan.
“She’s mine, okay? I don’t know who that one belongs to,” the FBI agent lied.
“She is the one we want, she is President’s child, yes?”
“How the hell should I know? My wife usually picks Megan up, not me. Do what you gotta do and get the fuck outa here, okay?”
“You inside,” a female voice boomed from outside. “This is the United States Secret Service. We want you to come out. You will not be hurt if you do. You have no place to go. Come out where we can see you, and you will not be hurt.”
“That’s good advice, man,” Pat told him. “Nobody’s gonna get out of here, you know?”
“You know who this girl is? She is daughter of your President Ryan! They will not dare shoot me!” the subject proclaimed. His English was pretty good, O’Day noted, nodding.
“What about all the other kids, man? That’s the only one you want, that’s the only other one that matters—hey, why not, you know, like, let some out, eh?”
The man was partly right. The Service guys wouldn’t shoot at one target for fear that someone else might be in here, as one surely was, his rifle leveled at Pat’s chest. And they were smart enough that they were never less than five feet apart. Shooting them would take two separate moves.
What really scared O’Day was the casual, reflexive way he’d killed Marlene Daggett. They just plain didn’t care. You couldn’t predict that sort of criminal. You could talk to them, try to calm them down, distract them, but beyond that, there was only one way to deal with them.
“We give them children, they give us car, yes?”
“Hey, that works for me, okay? I think that’s just fine. I just want to get my daughter home tonight, y’know?”
“Yes, you take good care of your little one. Sit there.”
“No problem.” He relaxed his hands, bringing them closer to his chest, right at the top of the zipper on his jacket. Undo that and the leather would hang better, concealing his gun.
“Attention,” the voice called again. “We want to talk.”
CATHY RYAN JOINED her children in the helicopter. The agents’ faces were grim enough. Sally and Jack were coming out of the initial shock and sobbing now, looking to their mother for solace as the Black Hawk leaped into the sky again, heading southwest for Washington with another in trail. The pilot, she saw, was not taking the usual route, but was instead going directly west, away from where Katie was. That was when SURGEON collapsed into the arms of her kids.
“O’DAY IS IN there,” Jeffers told her.
“You sure, Norm?”
“That’s his truck. I saw him going in right before this went down.”
“Shit,” Price swore. “That’s probably the shot we heard.”
“Yah.” Jeffers nodded grimly.
THE PRESIDENT WAS in the Situation Room, the best spot to keep track of things. Perhaps he might have been elsewhere, but he couldn’t face his office, and he wasn’t President enough to pretend that—
“Jack?” It was Robby Jackson. He came over as his President stood, but they’d been friends much longer than that, and the two shared an embrace. “Been here before, man. It worked out then, too, remember?”
“We have tag numbers off the cars in the parking lot. Three are rentals. We’re running them now,” Raman said, a phone to his ear. “Should be able to get some kind of ID.”
HOW DUMB MIGHT they be? O’Day asked himself. They’d have to be pretty fucking stupid to think they had any chance at all of getting out of here ... and if they didn’t have that hope, then they had nothing to lose ... not a damned thing ... and they didn’t seem to care about killing. It had happened before, in Israel, Pat remembered. He didn’t recall the name or the date, but a couple of terrorists had had a bunch of kids and hosed them before the commandos were able to ...
He’d taught tactics for every possible situation, or so he’d thought, and would have said as recently as twenty minutes before—but to have your only child next to you ...
They’re all our kids, Dom’s voice told him again.
The unhurt killer had Katie Ryan by the upper arm. She was only whimpering now, exhausted from her earlier screams, almost hanging from his hand as the subject stood there to the left of the wounded one. His right hand held the AK. If he’d had a pistol, he could have held that weapon to her head, but the AK was too lengthy for that. Ever so slowly, Inspector O’Day moved his hand down, opening the zipper on his jacket.
They started talking back and forth again. The wounded one was in considerable discomfort. At first
, the adrenaline rush had blocked it out, but now things were settling down somewhat, and with the release of tension also went the pain-blocking mechanism that protected the body in periods of great stress. He was saying something, but Pat couldn’t tell what it was. The other one snarled a reply, gesturing to the door, speaking with passion and frustration. The scary part would come when they came to a decision. They might just shoot the kids. Those outside would probably rush the building if they heard more than a shot or two. They might be fast enough to save some of the kids, but ...
He started thinking of them as Hurt and Unhurt. They were pumped up but confused, excited but undecided, wanting to live but coming to the realization that they would not ...
“Hey, uh, guys,” Pat said, holding his arms up and moving them to distract them from the open zipper. “Can I say something?”
“What?” Hurt demanded, as Unhurt watched.
“All these kids you have here, it’s like too many to cover, right?” he asked, with an emphatic nod to get the idea across. “How about I take my little girl out and some of the others, okay? Make things easier for you, maybe?”
That generated some more jabbering. The idea actually seemed attractive to Unhurt, or so it appeared to O’Day.
“Attention, this is the Secret Service!” the voice called yet again. It sounded like Price, the FBI agent thought. Unhurt was looking toward the door, and his body language was leaning him that way, and to get there he had to pass in front of Hurt.
“Hey, come on, okay, let some of us go, will ya?” O’Day pleaded. “Maybe I can tell them to give you a car or something.”
Unhurt waved his rifle in the inspector’s direction. “Stand!” he commanded.
“Okay, okay, be cool, all right?” O’Day stood slowly, keeping his hands well away from his body. Would they see his holster if he turned around? The Service people had spotted it the first time he’d come in, and if he fucked this one up, then Megan ... there was no turning back. There just wasn’t.
“You tell them, you tell them they give us car or I kill this one and all the rest!”
“Let me take my daughter with me, okay?”
“No!” Hurt said.
Unhurt said something in his native tongue, looking down at Hurt, his weapon still pointed at the floor while Hurt’s was aimed at O’Day’s chest.
“Hey, whatcha got to lose?”
It was almost as though Unhurt said the same thing to his wounded friend, and with that he gave Katie Ryan a yank on the arm. She cried out loudly again as he walked across the room, pushing her ahead of him, blocking Hurt’s field of view as he did so. It had taken twenty minutes to achieve. Now he had one second to see if it would work.
The drill was the same for O’Day as it had been for Don Russell. His right hand raced back, whipped inside the jacket, and pulled the pistol out, as he dropped to one knee. The moment Unhurt’s body cleared the target, the Smith 1076 loosed two perfect rounds, both of the stainless-steel cases flying in the air, as Hurt became Dead. Unhurt’s eyes went wide in surprise, as the children’s screams erupted again.
“DROP IT,” O’Day bellowed at him.
Unhurt’s first reaction was to yank again at Katie Ryan’s arm, and at the same time the gun started to move up, as though it were a pistol, but the AK was far too heavy to be used that way. O’Day wanted him alive, but there wasn’t the time for chances. His right index finger pushed back on the trigger, then pushed again. The body fell straight down, behind it a red shadow on the white walls of Giant Steps.
Inspector Patrick O’Day jumped across the room, kicking one, then the other rifle free of their dead owners’ hands. He gave each body a careful look, and for all the years of practice and instruction he’d given and taken, it still came as a surprise that it all had worked. Only then did his heart start beating again, or so it seemed, as a vacuum filled his chest. His body slumped down for a moment. Then he tensed his muscles and knelt beside the body of Katie Ryan, SANDBOX to the Secret Service, and a thing to the people he’d just killed.
“You okay, honey?” he asked. She didn’t answer. She was holding her arm and sobbing, but there was no blood on her. “Come on,” he said gently, wrapping his arms around a daughter who now would forever be partly his. Next he picked up his Megan and walked to the door.
“THERE’S SHOOTING IN the building!” a voice said on the desk-mounted speaker. Ryan just froze. The rest of the people in the Sit Room cringed.
“Sounded like a pistol. Do they have pistols?” another voice asked on the same radio circuit.
“Holy shit, look there!”
“Who’s that?”
“COMING OUT!” A voice called. “Coming out!”
“HOLD FIRE!” Price called over the loudspeaker. Guns didn’t move away from the door, but hands relaxed a fraction.
“Jesus!” Jeffers said, standing and racing to join him in the doorway.
“Both subjects dead, Mrs. Daggett, too,” O’Day said. “All clear, Norm. All clear.”
“Let me—”
“No!” Katie Ryan screamed.
He had to get out of the way. Pat looked down to see the blood-soaked clothing of three agents of his rival agency. There were at least ten rounds by Don Russell’s body, and an empty magazine. Beyond were four dead criminals. Two, he saw, walking to the perimeter, head shots. He stopped by his pickup. His knees were a little weak now, and he set the kids down, sitting himself on the bumper. A female agent came up. Pat took the Smith from his belt and handed it over without really looking.
“You hurt?” It was Andrea Price.
He shook his head; it took him a moment to speak again. “I might start shaking in a minute.” The agent looked at his two little girls. A state trooper scooped Katie Ryan up, but Megan refused to leave his side. That was when he hugged his daughter to his chest, and the tears began for both of them.
“SANDBOX is safe!” he heard Price say. “SANDBOX is safe and unhurt!”
Price looked around. Backup Service agents hadn’t arrived yet, and most of the law-enforcement personnel on the scene were troopers of the Maryland State Police in their starched khaki shirts. Ten of them formed a ring around SANDBOX, guarding her like a pride of lions.
Jeffers rejoined them. O’Day had never fully appreciated the way time changed in such moments as this. When he looked up, the children were being let out the side door. Paramedics were flooding the area, going to the children first. “Here,” the black agent said, handing over a handkerchief.
“Thanks, Norm.” O’Day wiped his eyes, blew his nose, and stood. “Sorry about that, guys.”
“It’s okay, Pat, you did—”
“Better if I’d’ve taken the last one alive, but couldn’t ... couldn’t take the chance.” He was able to stand now, as he held Megan by the hand. “Oh, damn,” he added.
“I think we should get you out of here,” Andrea observed. “We can do the interviews in a better place than this.”
“Thirsty,” O’Day said next. He shook his head again. “Never expected this, Andrea. Kids around. Not supposed to be this way, is it?” Why was he babbling? the inspector asked himself.
“Come on, Pat. You did just fine.”
“Wait a minute.” The FBI inspector rubbed his face with two large hands, took a deep breath, and looked around the crime scene. Christ, what a mess. Three dead just this side of the playground. That would be Jeffers, he thought, with his M-16. Not bad. But there was one other thing he had to do. By each of the rented cars was a body, each a head shot. Another one, one round in the chest, and one in the head, it looked like. The fourth, he wasn’t sure who’d gotten him. Probably one of the girls. Ballistics tests would determine which one, he knew. O’Day walked back toward the front door, to the body of Special Agent Donald Russell. There he turned, looking back at the parking lot. He’d seen his share of crime scenes. He knew the signs, knew how to figure things out. No warning, not a damned bit, maybe a second, no more than that, and he’d stood his groun
d against six armed subjects and gotten three of them. Inspector Patrick O’Day knelt beside the body. He removed the Sig pistol from Russell’s hand, gave it to Price, then took the hand in his own for what seemed a long time.
“See y’around, champ,” O’Day whispered, letting go after a few seconds. It was time to leave.
43
RETREAT
THE NEAREST CONVENIENT place to land a Marine helicopter was the Naval Academy, and the hard part was finding available Secret Service personnel to ride with SANDBOX. Andrea Price, senior agent on the crime scene as well as Detail chief, had to stay at Giant Steps, so USSS personnel racing to Annapolis were diverted, met the state troopers at the Academy, and took custody of Katie. And so it happened that the first team of federal officers to arrive at the scene were FBI agents from the small Annapolis office, a satellite of the Baltimore Field Division. What orders they needed they took from Price, but for the moment their duties were straightforward, and quite a few more were on the way.
O’Day walked across the street to the house which had been Norm Jeffers’ local command post, whose owner, a grandmother, overcame her shock to make coffee. A tape recorder was set up, and the FBI inspector ran through an uninterrupted narrative, really just a long ramble which was actually the best way to get fresh information. Later, they would walk him back through it, probing for additional facts. From where he was sitting, O’Day could see out the window. Ambulance crews were standing by to remove the bodies, but first, photographers had to record the event for posterity.
They couldn’t know that Movie Star was still looking down, along with what was now a crowd of several hundred, students and teachers from the community college plus others who’d guessed the nature of the event and wanted to watch. Movie Star had already seen enough, however, and he made his way to his car, picking his way across the parking lot, and then drove north on Ritchie Highway.