by Thomas Waite
He gripped her arm and led her toward the parking structure on Massachusetts Avenue. Sirens screamed. The roads were chockablock with cars. To avoid the gridlock, ambulances and other emergency vehicles were rolling down sidewalks and across the Capitol’s wide expanses of neatly manicured grass. The cacophony was ear-splitting. The whole time Agent Pence kept them walking at a furious pace.
She wondered how the bomb- and rifle-toting terrorists had forged their way so close to the nation’s seat of power. Then again, several years earlier an unauthorized man had made it into the living quarters of the White House, and another guy landed a gyrocopter on the West Lawn of the Capitol.
“Can you tell me about the gunfire?”
The way Pence was looking around, with his handgun by his side, he appeared to be ready for more of it. “No, there’s an embargo on all info.”
“Can you tell me where?”
He shook his head. “Here we go.”
The garage was half a block away. Amid all the turmoil, Lana hadn’t noticed their progress.
Still holding her arm, Pence led her into the parking structure. “Now you take the lead,” he said.
He still held his semi-automatic close to his hip.
Lana pointed their way to her Prius. Pence took the passenger seat, his handgun in plain sight now.
She reached past him and grabbed her Sig Sauer from the glove box. The agent nodded in approval, but cautioned her to follow his commands on any action. “Don’t start shooting until I do.”
Presuming you’re still alive, she thought reflexively.
She tried to text Emma from her car.
“Service is spotty,” Penn said, shaking his head.
The agent gave her step-by-step directions, and in minutes they were speeding down the Washington Mall.
They passed hundreds of people. Most looked scared. Many were running. She hadn’t seen this much panic since the grid went down. Not even the nuclear bombing of Antarctica had produced so much transparent fear. But that explosion had taken place at a great distance, and the seas had risen over weeks. They were still rising, but even flooding of coastal communities lacked the immediate drama of suicide bombers and armed skirmishes in the District of Columbia.
They made it to Bethesda in good time, given the challenges. Lana had taken mental notes of the byways she hadn’t been aware of in the past. Don’s truck was gone.
Jojo greeted her at the door. He looked right past her to Agent Pence.
“He’s okay,” she said to Jojo.
The Malinois might not have agreed: he followed Pence into every room on the ground floor and then up the stairs to the second level.
“Your dog never let me out of his sight, but kept his distance,” Pence reported when he came back down to the living room, where Lana had just checked her phone and seen there was still no service. “He’s a good dog.”
She nodded. “I think so, too. I really like him.”
“Nobody’s gotten into your home. I’ve contacted Bethesda PD. They’re dispatching an officer in a marked car to sit in your driveway. Meantime, keep your weapon on hand at all times. I wish we could spare you one of our agents but we’re in crisis mode at the Capitol.”
Lana nodded.
“Are you okay?” Pence asked with finality.
“I’m fine. Thank you. How are you getting back?”
He pointed outside, where a full-size gray sedan waited on the street. Right then the Bethesda cruiser pulled up.
Before Pence was out the door, Lana checked her phone again. Nothing.
Minutes later, though, her phone beeped. She had service. “R u ok?” she texted Emma at once.
“Yes @ Suf. U?”
“Fine @ home”
“Thank Allah”
That gave Lana pause. “Do u want 2 stay with him?”
“Yes”
As if I had to ask. “ok”
She called Jeff Jensen, who answered on the first ring.
“Where are you?” she asked.
“Here at CF.”
“I thought everyone was ordered out.”
“I pulled rank. I don’t have to tell you that we’ve got intelligence stored here that no FBI agents are cleared to see.”
“Are they there?”
“Yeah, they’ve secured the perimeter.”
“I’ll be right down.”
“I think that’s smart.”
Lana stopped to draw a glass of tap water, downing it in gulps. Then she texted Don, unsurprised that he was parked near Sufyan’s house. She knew the jury was still out for him regarding Tahir. Lana told Don she was heading to CyberFortress, and that Em had just said she’d be staying put.
When Lana headed for the garage, she was shocked to see it wasn’t even noon yet. So much had happened.
Jojo tailed her. She looked at him. “Ready to work? Let’s go.”
She led him to her car. The Malinois jumped onto the passenger seat, looking exceptionally alert.
Lana was backing out of her driveway thirty seconds later. She told the officer in the cruiser she was leaving. When he objected, she flashed her federal government ID and said she wouldn’t return for at least an hour. She expected the drive to CyberFortress to take no more than fifteen minutes, even in the worst of traffic.
But more than cars and trucks were on the road.
STEEL FIST EXPECTED COLONEL Williams and his cadre of killers to go after Lana Elkins with “extreme prejudice,” but he’d never anticipated this: live video of their murderous operation that Vinko could stream on his website for the voyeuristic pleasure of his most volatile subscribers.
He’d met the colonel in person more than a year ago when Vinko had attended a large gathering of neo-Nazis and right-wing militia members down in Boise. He’d never let on that he was Steel Fist, enjoying the fly-on-the-wall experience of hearing people speak glowingly about the mystery man behind his website. The only comment he’d made about his alter ego was to speculate aloud about whether Steel Fist was in attendance.
He’d been inspired enough by Colonel Williams’s call-to-arms, issued behind the conference’s closed doors, that he’d made a point of shaking his hand and finding ways to praise the ex-Army officer on the Steel Fist website without implicating the man in committing or abetting any crimes.
So when Vinko received the electronic code for the locator on Lana Elkins’s Prius from the same anonymous “guardian angel” who’d proved so helpful in the recent past, he sent it along to Colonel Williams, warning that the window of opportunity would be brief. He’d closed with “Good luck!”
“Don’t need luck,” Williams fired back at once. “Just tell me it’s good intel.”
“Good intel,” Vinko confirmed, hoping like hell that was true, because you didn’t get a second chance with men like the colonel.
All the telling clues that could identify Williams’s men on-camera were hidden. The three beefy bruisers wore urban camouflage clothes—dark green, gray, and dark blue. Their full face masks bore the same dull colors. Even Vinko, a fan of the conventions of terror, thought the colonel’s heavily armed crew looked daunting.
He watched them inspect their weapons, hearing the encouraging slide of steel on the semi-automatic pistols getting readied for business, and the shush-shush of camo pants legs brushing against each other. When Vinko still hadn’t spotted the tall, lean colonel he realized the officer must have been the one with the camera mounted on his head.
The men’s diligence reminded Vinko of how impending violence can bring out a studied sullenness in men. Yet the four also moved with such purpose that he would have known they were ex-military even if the colonel hadn’t assured him that his crew had seen plenty of combat.
Years ago, the colonel had been cashiered out of the 75th Ranger Regiment after a night raid in Ramadi, Iraq. Not dishonorably. Quietly. When the Army has a colonel who leaves behind seven dead noncombatants, and a severely wounded four-month-old baby girl whose leg had been severed b
y bullets fired by the officer’s own M17—her hearing lost to a percussion grenade—you don’t advertise your failures by making any of that public. For the colonel, speaking behind closed doors in Boise about what had happened on that night raid was a point of honor. Unfortunately for him, though, the entire incident had been captured by the unit’s cameraman and made available to his superiors, who did not agree with his self-serving assessment. But Vinko admired the colonel’s steadfast refusal to apologize. “They were there. They were in the way. They made the mistake. Not me or my men.”
The one-legged baby without eardrums was now a deaf seven-year-old who shared a bed with three other girls in a Baghdad orphanage. Something the official newspaper of sharia law—The New York Times—would not let its liberal readers forget. More aid and comfort for the enemy. One of these days they were all going to learn their lesson.
Vinko was content to watch the men moving about on screen. He didn’t plan to go live online until the last possible moment. The colonel had noted unnecessarily that the propaganda value of the video would fail dismally if he and his cadre were caught, so there would be no signposts viewed along the way, no advance notice of the target, and no identifiable locations until they closed in for the killing of Lana Elkins and whoever else might be in her car. Vinko hoped Emma, most of all, would be in that Prius.
Already the colonel’s camera was focused tightly on the blinking light of the locator on a tablet screen. His voice was electronically disguised, making him sound echoey, froggy, and plenty scary.
“The target is in motion. Operation Intercept American Evil is underway.”
The ambient sounds of footfalls accompanied them to an enclosed parking area with whitewashed walls. Could have been anywhere. Could have been the moon. The killing crew approached a pair of dual sport motorcycles and a gray Hummer H3 parked in the lot. As soon as two of the men gunned the motorcycle engines, Vinko felt his pulse quicken. He double-checked his website, making sure it was ready to receive the video. He’d been sending out a cryptic message all morning to his subscribers: “Countdown to Killing.” That was all. Not who, where, or when. His subscribers didn’t need to know. They trusted him. Just like the colonel. They knew Steel Fist didn’t bluff.
The colonel and his men were only minutes away from the blinking locator. They’d had all night to move into position, since Vinko had passed along the guardian angel’s electronic code for the device. Whoever the guardian angel was, he’d proved himself a useful son-of-a-bitch. Clever, too, even if he’d outsourced the placement of the locator on Elkins’s tin-can car, which was Vinko’s suspicion.
If he regretted anything about the need to move on Lana so quickly, it was that she’d never get to hear those two words from Emma: “I’m pregnant.” Vinko couldn’t remember ever wanting anyone pregnant as much as he wanted that seventeen-year-old bitch to be knocked up by that Muslim.
Vinko caught a quick reflection of the colonel’s mask-covered face on the passenger-door window. Yep, there was the camera, strapped to the top of his head.
Otherwise, Williams kept the lens focused on the locator. But Vinko figured they were getting very close, confirmed within moments when the colonel pointed his eyes—and that lens—at the Prius driving down a tree-lined suburban street.
Where’s her protection? Vinko wondered. The guardian angel had warned him that Elkins would probably have an FBI escort, which Vinko had told Williams.
Vinko smiled. This is going to be a turkey shoot.
“Go!” the colonel commanded over a radio in his froggy voice.
Vinko sat forward, feeding the video for the first time onto his website.
The bikers were getting down to business, racing past the Hummer. They came up alongside Elkins’s car, shooting out her front tires. But they didn’t shoot her.
Intriguing. The colonel must have a flair for drama.
Vinko wondered what he had in mind.
But his cadre would have to move very fast now. Anyone familiar with these streets could be watching, and in a town that was home to many government employees, including intelligence and military officers, there might be a few who would be on their computers and outraged by this attack.
Gunshots flared on screen.
Elkins had just fired a shot out her driver’s-door window, hitting the biker on her left, who was spilling off his dual sport on the fly. But she was slowing down, running on her front rims.
She angled sharply right and shot at the biker on her passenger side. She missed him with car and bullets as he veered off, speeding up over the curb. He chewed half a donut into the lush front lawn before braking, no longer an easy target.
Vinko smiled. Elkins didn’t appear to know the real threat was racing up behind her.
• • •
Lana had fired four times, leaving six rounds in the magazine. She had another one loaded and waiting in the glove box.
Silencing Jojo with a command, she then yelled “Down.” The Malinois dropped to the floor in front of the passenger seat as his master pulled behind a Chevy van and in front of a large Buick, grabbing the scant protection available to her crippled car. A large chestnut tree towered over the spot she’d claimed, trunk thick as a whisky barrel.
Lana opened the electronic locks and looked left before moving to exit right. She glimpsed the biker she’d shot, bleeding from his neck on the street. His arm rose feebly, drawing her attention to a large SUV turning to a stop about fifty feet away, effectively blocking the street on that end.
The biker on the lawn shot out her rear window. She pushed past Jojo, then opened the door, determined to grab the protection of the tree. The Prius now felt like a goldfish bowl. She doubted it could stop a .22. She’d bought it before chaos had come to America. Time to trade it in for a vehicle more up to the grim challenges gripping the country.
She signaled Jojo to heel as she scrambled behind the tree, wishing like hell her one-time lover, Agent Maray, hadn’t been shanghaied by the crisis at the Capitol.
Two men were throwing open the front doors of the Hummer. She couldn’t tell if there were more in the back, certain only that at least three were still alive.
The biker on the lawn fired two more times at her, having claimed cover behind a Toyota RAV4. His second shot shaved bark off the chestnut tree inches from her head.
In the corner of her eye she saw someone snatch a toddler from the wide front window of the house fronting the shootout. A drape fell back, closing off any view of the interior.
Through the RAV4’s side windows, she saw the biker’s shoulders move, guessing he was reloading. She made a split-second decision: “Jojo, attack!”
The exceedingly fleet Malinois, moving at twice the speed of the fastest human, cleared forty feet of lawn, wheeled around the RAV4, and launched sixty pounds of rippling muscle at the masked man as he raised his weapon.
The shooter was too slow.
Thank God.
Jojo’s powerful jaws locked onto the man’s gun hand, driving him backward into a garage door. Lana could see them clearly now. It looked like the tenacious warrior was crushing bone and metal and would never let go.
The biker beat Jojo’s head with his fist—to no avail.
Rip him to pieces, Lana thought.
But she couldn’t help Jojo; she would risk shooting him by mistake at this distance, and the men from the Hummer had taken cover behind the Buick less than thirty feet away.
• • •
Vinko was so excited. I did this. He felt like a commanding officer who’d deployed his men on a vital mission. And millions would see this video. He imagined thousands already messaging friends and alerting online groups, even as he stared lovingly at his screen. But he’d also make sure no interested party would ever miss seeing the action by streaming the video over and over for years. A battle to remember, with the colonel and his closest cohorts in a position now to terminate Elkins.
What did Vinko care about the biker who was shot in the neck
and now bleeding to death on the street? It was good bang-bang, as the news crews always called the battles in a war zone. And make no mistake about it, Bethesda was now a war zone. He was just as glad to see the dog hanging off the other biker’s arm because the man still had his wits about him and was unsheathing a knife.
Yes, stab the beast.
The biker was—over and over.
But not for long. The big dog fell away and the man bolted right back to the protection of the RAV4 in the driveway, switching his gun to his left hand. The right didn’t look so good anymore.
The dog—what a pathetic animal—tried to crawl after him, leaving a blood smear a foot wide behind. Vinko saw the dog’s shoulder bone glinting in the sunlight. He reached down and patted Biko. “Don’t you worry. I would never let that happen to you.”
But Biko’s eyes opened wide a beat later when the Malinois howled in pain.
• • •
Lana’s first impulse was to retreat. Where? Then she saw one of the men from the Hummer lob an object toward her.
She had time only to swear at the grenade and tuck herself tightly behind the tree before the explosive ripped apart the Prius. The blast sent plastic and metal fragments into the tree trunk with such force that the stately old chestnut shuddered and the big window where the toddler had stood shattered. Tiny bits of flaming Prius also tore into Lana’s calf. The pain was searing.
She heard footfalls and spotted one of the men from the Hummer ducking and running around the far side of the Buick. She aimed low, guessing he was in body armor, reasoning that if he’d come bearing grenades, he’d be equipped in every possible manner. As soon as he moved out from behind the roof, she fired three times, nailing both of his upper legs. The bullets sprawled him onto the pavement.
That son-of-a-bitch. The man was wearing a head-mounted camera. She aimed to kill but heard two men advancing on the lawn side of the tree.