Under Seige
Stephen Coonts
TO MY PARENTS,
GILBERT AND VIOLET COONTS
Government is not eloquence. It is not reason. It is a force. Like fire, a dangerous servant and a fearful master.
—GEORGE WASHINGTON
Of all the tasks of government, the most basic is to protect its citizens from violence.
—JOHN FOSTER DULLES
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two
Chapter Twenty-three
Chapter Twenty-four
Chapter Twenty-five
Chapter Twenty-six
Chapter Twenty-seven
Chapter Twenty-eight
Chapter Twenty-nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-one
Chapter Thirty-two
A Biography of Stephen Coonts
CHAPTER ONE
WALTER P. Harrington was eastbound on the inner loop of the beltway around Washington, D.C., this December evening, in the leftmost lane. He kept the speedometer needle rock-steady at fifty-five miles per hour. Traffic swirled past him on his right.
Harrington ignored the glares and occasional honks and upthrust fingers from drivers darting into the middle lanes to get around and kept his eyes firmly on the road ahead, though he did occasionally glance at the speedometer to ensure the needle was on the double nickel. It usually was. Maintaining exactly fifty-five was a point of pride with him. He often thought that if the speedometer ever broke he could nail fifty-five anyway. He had had plenty of practice.
He also ignored the car that hung three feet behind his rear bumper flashing its lights repeatedly from low to high beam and back again. His rearview mirror had been carefully adjusted to make such shenanigans futile.
Walter P. Harrington had absolutely no intention of moving into the middle or right-hand lane. He always drove in the left-hand lane. Walter P. Harrington was obeying the law. They weren’t.
The car behind him darted past him on the right, the driver shaking a fist out his window. Harrington didn’t even glance at him. Nor did he pay any attention to the next car that eased up behind him, a white four-door Chevrolet Caprice.
In the Chevy were two men wearing surgical gloves. The driver, Vincent Pioche, muttered to his passenger, “It’s him, all right. That’s his car. A maroon Chrysler. License number’s right and everything.”
The passenger, Tony Anselmo, swiveled his head carefully, scanning the traffic. “No cops in sight.”
“What’cha think?”
“Well, we could just pass him and be waiting for him when he gets home.”
“Neighbors, kids,” Vinnie Pioche said disgustedly.
Both men sat silently staring at the back of Walter P. Harrington’s balding head. “Little jerk driving fifty-five in the left lane,” Tony said.
“Yeah, he’s an asshole, all right. The problem is, he may swerve right and nail us before we can get by.”
“He won’t,” Tony Anselmo said thoughtfully. “He’ll go out like a light. Won’t even twitch.”
“In his neighborhood, there may be a cop two blocks away and we won’t know. Or some broad looking out the window ready to call nine-one-one. A kid screwing his girl under a tree. I hate the fucking suburbs.”
They followed Walter P. Harrington for a mile, weighing the risks.
“I dunno, Vinnie.”
“In a right-hand curve, with him turning right, when he goes out the car will tend to straighten and go into the concrete median. I’ll floor this heap and we’ll be by before he smacks it and rebounds.”
“If he comes right he’ll clip us,” Tony objected.
“Not if you do it right. Stick it in his ear.” When Tony didn’t move, Vinnie glanced at him. That moved him.
Tony Anselmo crawled across the passenger seat back and flopped onto the rear seat. He paused to catch his breath. He was getting too old for this shit and he knew it.
Under a blanket on the floor were two weapons, a twelve-gauge sawed-off pump shotgun and a Remington Model Four Auto Rifle in .30-06 caliber. Both weapons were loaded. After he rolled down the left rear window, Tony Anselmo picked up the rifle and cradled it in his arms. He flicked the crossbolt safety off. The shotgun would be easier, but the buckshot pellets might be deflected by the window glass. It would take two or three shots to be sure, and they didn’t have that kind of time.
“Okay,” he told Vinnie. “Get in the next lane, pull up beside his rear bumper, and sit there until you see a right curve coming. Try to let some space open up in front of you.”
“Got it.” Vinnie used his blinker to ease into a space in the traffic on his right. That stream was flowing along at sixty-five to seventy miles per hour but he was still doing fifty-five, so a space quickly opened as the car in front pulled away.
Tony scanned the traffic for police cars. He saw none, nor did he see any cars that might be unmarked cruisers. Harrington was plainly visible, his head about twenty to twenty-five feet away, his hands in the ten-and-two position on his steering wheel. He was concentrating on the road ahead, looking neither left nor right.
“Looks good. Any time.”
“Curve coming up. Fifteen seconds. Get ready.”
Anselmo scooted to the right side of the car, then leaned left, resting the barrel of the rifle on the ledge of the open window. “I’m ready.”
“Five seconds.”
Anselmo concentrated on the open sights of the rifle. This was going to be a shot at a bouncing, moving target smaller than a basketball at a range of about a dozen feet, from a bouncing, moving platform. Not a difficult shot, but tricky. An easy shot to miss and wonder why.
“Here we go.” Anselmo felt the engine rev. Out of the corner of his eye he saw they were gaining on Harrington’s Chrysler.
Then they were there, right alongside, passing with a three or four mile per hour edge, Harrington’s head plainly visible. Tony could feel the centrifugal force pushing him toward Harrington’s car, feel the Chevy heel slightly.
Tony swung the rifle gently, adjusting for the jolts of the car. His finger tightened on the trigger.
Harrington’s head exploded as the rifle bellowed.
Vinnie floored the accelerator and the Chevy began to pull away. As expected, with a dead hand at the wheel, Harrington’s car eased left, toward the concrete median barricade.
“Get by, get by,” Tony shouted.
In the car immediately behind Pioche, the horrified passenger screamed at her horrified husband behind the wheel. He swerved right as far as he could and still stay in his lane. It wasn’t enough. The rear end of Harrington’s decelerating Chrysler swung ponderously into the traffic lane as the front ground spectacularly on the concrete barrier. The left rear fender of the maroon Chrysler kissed the left front corner of the swerving vehicle, a gentle impact that merely helped the Chrysler complete its 180-degree spin.
The wife screamed and the husband fought the wheel as their car swept past the Chrysler, which, with its entire right side in contact with the barrier, rapidly ground to a smoking halt as pieces of metal showered the interst
ate.
In the backseat the two teenagers cursed and looked back at the receding Chrysler. The wife’s screams died to sobs. “Did you see that man shooting, Jerry? Jerry? My God!”
Behind the wheel of his car Jerry McManus of Owosso, Michigan, strove manfully to keep the vehicle going down the highway in a straight line as he began to feel the full effects of a massive adrenal shock. In front of him the white sedan that contained the gunman accelerated and pulled away. A moment later another vehicle, a van, swung left into the widening gap and McManus lost sight of the gunman.
Jerry McManus had just been driving down the road on the way back to the motel, comfortably following these two cars at fifty-five miles per hour while all the locals played NASCAR in the right lanes and the kids in the backseat hassled each other and his wife gabbled on about her rich great-aunt who lived in Arlington or someplace.
Owosso, Michigan, didn’t have any freeways, and even if it had McManus wouldn’t have driven them, living as he did immediately behind the gas station that he owned. But now, on the big annual vacation, the pilgrimage to the tourist traps of Washington, D.C., that his wife had insisted upon—“it will broaden the children, make them understand what America’s all about, make them appreciate their heritage”—out here on these goddamn racing strips they call beltways, these maniacs are murdering each other with guns. Why in hell can’t they do it downtown, around those marble monuments to dead politicians? And to think we took the kids out of school for two weeks for this!
“We’re going home,” Jerry McManus told his wife grimly.
She looked at him. He had his jaw set.
Behind them the teenagers resumed their interrupted argument. The youngsters had been bickering at each other for the entire week. When in Washington …
“We’re going home,” Jerry said again. “Today.”
“Okay,” Tony Anselmo said as he rolled up the rear window to staunch the flow of fifty-degree air into the vehicle. “Nobody’s following us.” He turned his attention to the rifle. “Let’s get off at the next exit.”
He flipped the box magazine from the weapon and jacked the bolt to clear it. Then he broke it into two pieces and placed it in a shopping bag that also lay on the floor. The magazine, the loose cartridge, and the spent brass all went into the bag.
Vinnie steered the Chevy down the off-ramp and turned right, toward the District. After two blocks he turned into a narrow side street and pulled to the curb in the middle of the block. No vehicles followed.
Tony got out of the car carrying the shopping bag and went around to the trunk. In fifteen seconds he had the license plate slid from its holder and another in place. The original plate, stolen, went into the shopping bag. From the trunk Tony took two cartons of eggs wrapped in plastic. After taking the plastic off, he dumped the eggs into the shopping bag, then threw the plastic wrap on top. Holding the bag shut, he broke the eggs. These were old, old eggs that had never been refrigerated. They would make the bag and its contents stink to high heaven.
Holding the bag firmly shut, he climbed back into the passenger seat, beside the driver.
A half mile from the beltway they saw the tops of a large apartment complex. Vinnie Pioche steered slowly through the parking lot. The dumpster was in back. No pedestrians were about.
Tony Anselmo hopped out, tossed the shopping bag into the dumpster, then got nimbly back into the car. The vehicle was stopped for only fourteen seconds.
Out on the beltway traffic had ground to a halt. A Maryland state trooper arrived within three minutes and blocked the eastbound fast lane with his cruiser. After a quick glance into the remains of the maroon Chrysler, he used his radio to call for an ambulance and the crime lab wagon. Soon another trooper stopped his car behind the first one and began directing traffic.
A curiosity slowdown developed in the westbound lanes, but traffic was still getting through until a third cruiser with lights flashing parked immediately beside the concrete barrier westbound. Traffic on the beltway around the northern edge of Washington, D.C., stopped dead.
Pioche and Anselmo took the Baltimore Parkway into the heart of Washington and found a spot in a parking garage. They had dinner at a small Italian restaurant where they were known. The headwaiter insisted they try a fine red wine from northern Italy, compliments of the house. After the uncorking ceremony, they sipped the cool, robust liquid and languidly studied the menu. They had plenty of time.
Outside on the streets the evening dusk became full darkness and the temperature began to drop. It would get down into the thirties tonight.
The reporter and photographer for The Washington Post entered the beltway jam-up from the east, westbound. The police scanner had warned them. After thirty minutes of stop-and-go creeping, the reporter, who was driving, eased the car to a stop in front of the police cruiser halted against the median barrier. The two men exited through the driver’s door and stood for a moment staring at the wreckage of the maroon Chrysler on the other side of the barrier. A television chopper was hovering overhead, just high enough so that its downwash created a gentle breeze and cut the fumes from the idling vehicles creeping by.
The reporter approached the plainclothes detective who was in charge, Detective Eddie Milk, who was standing to one side watching. Milk had a meaty face, a tired face, noted the reporter, who wasn’t feeling so chipper himself after a long day.
“Hi, Eddie. Some fucking mess, eh?”
Even though Milk knew and tolerated reporters like this young one from the Post, he had other things to do at the moment. Milk concentrated his attention on the ambulance attendants, who were placing the remains of Walter P. Harrington on a stretcher. They were in no hurry.
The reporter got a good look. The head was gone from the torso: all that remained was a bloody fragment of tissue on top of the neck. There was no face at all. The photographer had his equipment out and began snapping pictures. He even got a close-up of the corpse, though he knew the editors would never use it.
Milk finally opened up. “At least one shot, maybe more, from the right side of the vehicle. One of them hit the driver smack in the right side of the head. Killed instantly. Can’t give you his ID yet. Get it downtown.”
“Any witnesses?”
“You kidding?”
“Dope or guns in the car?”
“Not so far.”
Jack Yocke, the reporter, was twenty-eight years old, two inches over six feet tall, and he still had a flat stomach. He silently watched the ambulance crew carry the corpse to their ambulance, then pile in and roar away with lights and sirens going.
The Post photographer, a dark man clad in jeans and tee-shirt and wearing a ponytail, stood atop the median barrier and aimed his camera down into the front seat of the Chrysler. From where Yocke stood he could see that the left side of the vehicle’s interior was covered with blood and tissue. Sights like this used to repulse him, but not now. He thought of them as surefire front-page play in an era when those boring policy stories out of State and the White House and overseas usually had top priority on “the Front.”
In the cars creeping past, faces stared blankly at the smashed car, the police, the photographer. Slowly but perceptibly, the speed of the passing vehicles began to increase. The body was gone.
Yocke looked around carefully, at the traffic, at the huge noise fences on the edge of the right of way, and at the tops of the trees beyond. To the west he could just see the spire of the Mormon cathedral.
“An assassination?”
“How would I know?” the cop grunted.
“Rifle or pistol?”
“Rifle. You saw what’s left of the driver’s head.”
“Color of the car that impacted the victim’s car?”
“You know I can’t tell you that. Check downtown.”
“What do we know about the victim?”
“He’s dead.”
“Gimme a break, Eddie. It’s all got to come out anyway and I’m close to a deadline.”
The cop regarded Yocke sourly. “All right,” he grunted. “Victim’s driver’s license says he was a male Caucasian, fifty-nine years old, Maryland resident.”
“How about his name and address, for Christ’s sake! I won’t print it until you guys release it. I won’t bother the family.”
“Don’t know you.” That was true.
And Yocke didn’t know the cop, but the reporter had seen him twice and learned his name and had made the effort to associate the name and face.
“Jack Yocke.” He stuck out his hand to shake, but the cop ignored it and curled a lip.
“You kids are ignorant liars. You’d screw me in less than a heartbeat. No.”
Jack Yocke shrugged and walked past Harrington’s car, looking around the technicians into the bloody interior. The photographer had finished shooting pictures and radioed in to the Post’s photo desk. Now he was standing beside the Post’s car.
Yocke walked eastward, back along the way the victim had come. He could see where the car had impacted the concrete barrier, scarring it and leaving streaks of paint and chrome. Fragments of headlight and the colored glass of blinkers lay on the pavement amid the dirt and gravel and occasional squashed pop can. He kept his head down and his eyes moving.
He walked on up the road another hundred yards, still looking, past the cars and trucks, breathing the fumes.
The motorists regarded him curiously. Several of them surreptitiously eased their door locks down. One guy in the cab of a truck wanted to question him but he moved on without speaking.
Facing eastward, Yocke could just see the crash site. He looked to the right, the south. Nothing was visible but treetops. Where was the rifleman when he pulled the trigger? He walked back toward the curve, carefully inspecting the naked, gray upthrust branches of the trees.
05.Under Siege v5 Page 1