The Tin Man

by Dale Brown

  “A private hospital on Coronado,” Patrick responded, “near San Diego…”

  “I know where the hell Coronado is,” Chandler snapped. “Explain why.”

  “I already did,” Patrick said. “My company is going to do reconstructive surgery on Paul’s left shoulder…”

  “You mean he’s going to get an artificial arm, a prosthesis?”

  “Yes.”

  “Now explain why that can’t be done in Sacramento, where he stays under protective custody.”

  “Because our medical facility is standing by ready for Paul,” Patrick said. “It would take too long, be too expensive, and not help Paul one bit for us to move our surgical staff and facilities up here.”

  “You realize the danger you’re placing your brother in, don’t you?” Chandler asked. “He’s under twenty-four-hour guard here.”

  “He’ll be under careful guard down there too,” Patrick said. “I’ll see to that personally.”

  “The city won’t pay for this surgery. Paul has to accept all the risks involved-and that means he’s in danger of losing his survivor’s benefits and medical retirement if something goes wrong.”

  “I know that, Captain,” Paul said.

  “The city has made Paul, me, and almost every employee of my company sign affidavits agreeing to all that,” Patrick said. “My company is accepting all the responsibility.” He paused, looking carefully at Chandler, then asked, “What’s the real reason you’re bringing all this up again, Captain? You getting a little pressure from the chief?”

  Chandler scowled again at Patrick. This was certainly not the same whining Milquetoast that had come into his office a blubbering wreck back after the shooting. Maybe the shooting shook this guy up, made him get off the sauce and take some responsibility for his family. But it was also possible he hadn’t changed, and that he was giving Paul some bad advice by taking him out of Sacramento. Chandler took a deep breath in resignation and said, “It would look real bad if Paul was hurt…”

  “Look bad for the city and the chief, you mean.”

  “It would look like we weren’t there to protect him,” Chandler said. “The chief is already under pressure for what these gangs have been doing in Sacramento. If we leave Paul’s safety in the hands of a private, non-law-enforcement company and they get to Paul, everybody loses.”

  “The chief gets embarrassed, the city looks bad-but Paul gets dead,” Patrick said. “Don’t expect me to feel sorry for you.”

  “I could get a judge to order Paul to stay in protective custody,” Chandler said angrily. “It would be for his own safety. If there was an arrest and a trial, Paul would be a key witness, and it would be up to the city to protect him so he could testify. We can compel Paul to stay…”

  “We’re going to fit Paul for an artificial limb-you think a judge is going to deny that, especially if you haven’t made an arrest yet?” Patrick asked. “Exactly how long would you and the chief and the city plan on denying my brother a new left arm?”

  “Give me a break, Mr McLanahan!”

  “Shut up, both of you!” Paul shouted, his electronically synthesized voice raised for the first time. “Captain, I’ll return to Sacramento any time it’s necessary to do a lineup or testify in court. I trust my brother and his company to keep me safe until I return.”

  “Well, I don’t,” Chandler said. “Paul, what do you know about this Sky Masters, Inc.? We did a check on them. Their corporate headquarters are in a little Podunk town in Arkansas. We can’t get any financial records off the computers. We can’t verify any income, get tax returns, or even positively verify that the company is a real business entity. We get no responses on our inquiries from the FBI, the Commerce, Treasury, Labor, or Defense departments…”

  “Captain Chandler, the decision’s been made,” Patrick said resolutely. “If the city is going to try to force Paul to stay, go ahead-we’ll see you in front of any judge in the state. Otherwise, we have an ambulance waiting downstairs. What’s it going to be?”

  Chandler had no option. McLanahan was right: Chandler’s office had already talked to a judge about compelling Paul to stay, and had been denied. “Then your decoy ambulance and the car that will carry Paul will have motorcycle escorts to block off the intersections. You can’t say no to that.”

  “Not the car,” Patrick insisted. “The Suburban is armored, and we’ll have armed security officers inside.”

  “Those robbers had anti-tank weapons,” Chandler pointed out. “Even an armored car won’t have a chance.”

  “This one will,” Patrick said.

  “You’re making a big mistake.” Chandler jabbed a finger at Patrick. “You’re endangering yourself and Paul needlessly.” No response. He was still shaking his head as he departed with the computer sketch artist.

  Soon afterward, under police guard, a heavily disguised man in a wheelchair-with a bulletproof vest under his hospital gown-was brought down a service elevator to the underground parking facility and quickly transferred to a waiting Suburban utility vehicle. It looked ordinary, but it was armored with Kevlar, the windows were bulletproof Lexan, and it rode on run-flat reinforced tires. A private ambulance was parked directly in front of the Suburban. Its lights flashing, with two California Highway Patrol motorcycle officers escorting it front and rear, the ambulance sped out of the parking garage and onto Stockton Boulevard. The Suburban followed a moment later, a Sacramento Police Department motorcycle officer behind it.

  Just as the Suburban pulled onto Stockton Boulevard, shots rang out and tires exploded on both vehicles. The ambulance screeched to a stop on shredded tires. The Suburban’s driver gunned his engine to escape, but a large blue Step Van delivery truck pulled out of a side street right in front of it, blocking its path. Before the Suburban could pull into reverse, four armed men, each wearing body armor, helmets, and black combat outfits, raced out of the Step Van. The motorcycle officers laid down their bikes and dived for cover as the assailants opened fire on the two vehicles. The ambulance driver and his assistant leaped out the passenger-side door away from the gunfire and ran for their lives.

  One of the terrorists lifted a short rocket launcher to his shoulder, shouted, “Die, McLanahan!” and fired an anti-tank rocket into the ambulance, which exploded in a ball of fire. Then all four assailants ran to inspect the Suburban. They found a driver, unconscious but alive, in the front seat-and a headless mannequin, dressed in a hospital gown, in the backseat. The vehicle had taken a point-blank hit from an anti-tank rocket yet was undamaged. Swearing hotly in German, all four ran off to waiting escape vehicles nearby and disappeared.

  The wheelchair was just reaching the private helicopter waiting on the roof of the Wells Fargo Building, several blocks west of the UC-Davis Medical Center, when the first reports of the attack came in. “Holy shit!” Hal Briggs shouted. “Both the decoy ambulance and the decoy car were ambushed!” With his.45-caliber Colt automatic in his hands, he checked in with his security team on the rooftop and stationed around the building, and received an all clear. “The ambulance drivers made it out okay; the Suburban driver is hurt but he’ll be okay,” Briggs said to Patrick McLanahan as he received more updates. “That BERP stuff you put on the Suburban saved his life.”

  While Paul and the other security men were being loaded aboard, Patrick turned to Briggs and shouted over the roar of the idling helicopter, “What about the security units at the apartment? Have they checked in?” Members of Hal Briggs’s ISA action team were stationed at Paul McLanahan’s apartment in Old Sacramento, where Patrick, Wendy, and their baby had been staying. Hal keyed his microphone, ordering all his security units to check in.

  All the teams checked in except one.

  Hal Briggs and two of his Madcap Magician commandos, both of them experienced US Marine Corps Special Operations Capable soldiers, moved as one through the stairwell and hallways of the third floor of the Harman Building in Old Sacramento, above the Shamrock Pub. Patrick followed, carrying a SIG Sau
er P226 9-millimeter handgun, which looked like a popgun compared to the commandos’ Uzis and MP-5 submachine guns.

  There was no sign of the commandos assigned to guard the third floor and the apartment itself. They reached the front door and Briggs tried it silently. It was unlocked. Patrick had briefed the team on the layout, so they were all familiar with the traps inside the apartment: lots of big closets and cabinets, lots of windows on the river side, a large porch on the west side, thin walls, multiple doors to many of the rooms.

  Briggs slid a flat fiber-optic camera beneath the door and activated the TV monitor. He gave hand signals to his commandos of what could be seen within: two hostages, one target visible, straight ahead in the living room. Nothing else visible. Open doorways all along the hallway on both sides-an almost impossible gauntlet. Bad guys could pop out of half a dozen doorways the minute they entered.

  Briggs’s mind was racing, trying to formulate a plan, when the front door swung open. Guns snapped up to the ready, safeties flicked off…

  “Only McLanahan may enter,” the astonished commandos heard, in a British-accented voice. “If anyone else tries to enter, Mrs McLanahan and the child die.”

  “Shit,” Briggs whispered. He looked around the entryway as if expecting to spot the wireless TV camera or microphone the intruders used to see them coming. He adjusted his earset commlink and…

  “Don’t,” Patrick McLanahan whispered, touching Hal’s shoulder. “I’ll go in. Alone.”

  “It’s suicide, Patrick.”

  “If he wanted to kill us, I think we’d already be dead by now,” Patrick said. He stood, the P226 in his right hand. He raised it, imitated Hal Briggs’s Weaver pistol grip as best he could, and entered. The sight before him made his blood turn cold. Wendy was seated on a dining room chair, holding the baby, duct-taped in place with more duct tape over her eyes and mouth-both of them covered in blood. Blood was everywhere-down the hallway, splattered across the walls, all over the floor. “Jesus, Hal,” he whispered over his earset commlink. “Wendy, Bradley… my God, I think they’re already dead.”

  “Oh Christ!” Briggs cursed. “God, no…”

  Patrick continued forward, past the hall closet-empty-past the open door to the first bedroom on the left-empty-and then to the kitchen on the right. There he saw the two Madcap Magician commandos, their throats slit, staring lifelessly into space. The floor was slippery with their blood. On the left the guest bathroom was empty, as was the…

  “Please put the gun down, General McLanahan,” the British voice said.

  Patrick spun toward the dining room to the right-empty. But as he turned, he felt the barrel of a gun on the back of his head. The guy was behind him, dammit!-I’m dead!…

  “Please don’t do anything rash, General, or more will be hurt needlessly. Decock your weapon, and keep your hands extended.” Patrick thumbed the decock lever on the SIG Sauer P226, which dropped the hammer without firing the weapon. “Very good. Now hold still or you will die.” A gloved left hand reached out and, as the muzzle of the gun continued to press into his head, closed over Patrick’s SIG and plucked it from his hands. “Thank you. Fine weapon. Step forward, hands behind your neck… stop right there.”

  Patrick was facing the dining room, but out of the corner of his eye he could see his wife and baby. The hatred and anger bubbled up from his chest and came out in a low growl. “You bastard!” he said. “First a cop-killer, then a baby-killer. You had better kill me now, because if you don’t, I’ll dedicate the rest of my life to hunting you down and killing you.”

  “Give me a bit more credit than that, General McLanahan,” the voice answered. “I would never purposely kill non-combatants, especially women and babies. Your wife and beautiful child are alive and sleeping-sedated. I set up this little display for you in case I was not here to greet you upon your return. But I promise I will kill you without hesitation if those men in the hallway try to enter the apartment. I would hate to have noncombatants hurt in a gunfight.” Patrick closed his eyes and said a silent prayer.

  “Let me go and check my wife and child.”

  “All in good time, General,” the terrorist said. “I have a proposition for you first.”

  “Who are you?”

  “My name is not important, although I have a feeling you or your associates in the hallway will soon match a name with the voice. You seem to be a very resourceful man.”

  “What in hell do you want?” Patrick barked. “You already killed my brother…”

  “Nice try, General. I wish that were true,” the terrorist said, “but my men report that we missed. Two decoy vehicles-very clever, very effective. I believed you would not use more than one. And the actual escape was not from the hospital heliport, which we had covered as well. This company you work for, this Sky Masters, Incorporated, appears to be serving you well.

  “But the men you had stationed here to guard your family were obviously professional soldiers, highly trained and well-equipped, although young and inexperienced,” the voice went on. “So you appear to still have some connection to the military. Curiouser and curiouser, as they say.”

  “Why don’t you just leave us alone?”

  “I would be most happy to leave you and your beautiful family alone and conduct my business,” said the Brit, “but you apparently chose to personally involve yourself in my business when you showed up at the Bobby John Club, asking questions about the Sacramento Live! incident.

  “We could have passed that little episode off as the deranged, futile efforts of a vengeful sibling, and left it at that. But once we found out who you were, we performed with our usual due diligence and began to discover some very unusual and interesting facts about you-or, to be precise, even more interesting was what we did not find out about you. Such fascinating tidbits of information, like the colorful pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. One source claims you are an ex-military man working for a military contractor, but other sources say you are an Air Force one-star general. But what one-star general does not have a command of his own? You apparently do not, at least not one that my sources can identify. But here we find these obviously military or ex-military men, guarding your family-and more soldiers outside ready to burst in. Very curious.”

  “What do you want?”

  “A simple request, General McLanahan: We form a partnership. You obviously have special military contacts, far more extensive and secretive than I could ascertain in a short period of time. All you need to do is sell some weapons or information to me. I guarantee to make it worth a great deal to you.”

  “What in hell makes you think I have access to anything of value to you?”

  “An educated assumption on my part,” said the voice. “But I have learned that general officers typically have access to things that sometimes even they are not aware of. My network is vast and growing quickly, and your access combined with others all over the world may prove very valuable. I would be willing to share the profits of our association with you, a fifty-fifty split, if you agree to join me. I can guarantee that you will make hundreds of thousands of dollars a month-in fact, I am so sure of it that I am prepared to advance that amount to you. I can offer you safe havens anywhere in the world, a new identity, a place of safety for your family and your brother.”

  “You can take your offers and shove them up your ass.”

  “I expected you to say no less, General-few men of worth decide right away to turn against their country and their uniform,” the terrorist said. “As a professional courtesy, one military man to another, I will give you three days to think about my offer. Take your brother, your wife, and your son, go to your company’s headquarters in San Diego or wherever your secret command is located, and consider my offer. Formulate any questions you wish and ask me when I contact you again.

  “But if you refuse, you and I are at war, and I will hunt you and everyone in your family down and slaughter them. This is your one and only warning. If you go to the authorities, I will assume that y
ou have chosen to do battle with me, and then you and yours will all be considered combatants and will be executed. That includes your mother in Arizona, your sister in Texas, and your other sister in New York. Do you understand, General?”

  “Yes.”

  “Very good. Now, General, down on your face, hands behind your neck.”

  Patrick reluctantly did as he was told, realizing now that he should have risked shooting the bastard when he had the chance. The earset was plucked out of his ear, and he felt an object being set on his back. “Attention in the hallway,” the terrorist said into the earset. “I will betaking my leave now. I suggest you hold your position and do not interfere. I have left an explosive device with the general. It is battery-powered and can be set off either by remote control, if the general moves, or if the device’s sensor detects anyone approaching it. It will certainly kill everyone in this room, including the general and his lovely family. If it is not disturbed, it will deactivate itself in about thirty minutes. I think you know what to do. Good day.”

  It was a huge relief for Patrick to realize that the man had departed. His greatest fear now was that Wendy or the baby might wake up and set off the explosive. It seemed like only minutes later that he felt a touch on his side, then a crawling sensation up his right thigh. Christ, a rat or a cat or something, he thought in panic. An animal could probably set off the explosive! He fought hard to control his breathing and muscle tremors. The… the thing, or whatever it was, had moved right up onto his back-oh shit, he realized, it was actually sniffing around the object sitting on his back…

  “Go! Go!” came a shout seconds later. But before he could even move, Hal Briggs was pulling Patrick to his feet.

  “Jesus!” Patrick shouted. “Hal, what are you doing?”

  “It’s clear, Patrick, it’s clear,” Hal Briggs said. One commando was checking the rest of the apartment, while the other was checking out the window and covering the front, trying to determine the terrorist’s escape route. “There’s no bomb in here.”