“You mean you want her released?”
“No.” Liarakos spoke forcefully. “I want to see her first. Then, maybe, but …” His voice trailed off.
Jake turned to the captain and said, “Bring those men to my office. And take this gentleman back to visit his wife.” He asked the women to accompany him.
Back in his office with everyone seated, he sent Toad for coffee. Jack Yocke sat silently at the other desk.
The younger woman began to sob. Her name was Fulbright. “I know it’s not your fault,” she said, “but it’s more than a body can stand, what with the drugs and the unemployment and the schools that don’t teach them nothing. How can they grow up to be men living in this? I ask you.”
“I don’t know.”
The silence grew uncomfortable as Mrs. Fulbright sobbed. Jake could think of nothing to say, and once he shot a glance at Yocke, hoping he would help. The reporter returned his look impassively and said nothing.
Toad brought the coffee just seconds before two soldiers escorted the men into the room in handcuffs. Men? They were just boys.
“You kids are leaving,” Jake said, “because these women cared enough about you to risk their lives walking over here. You may not have much money, but you got something a lot of folks will never have—people that love you.”
Both the youngsters looked uncomfortable, embarrassed. Ah, what’s the use? Jake wondered. But maybe, just maybe … “Toad, when these ladies finish their coffee, drive these people home.”
“My God, Thanos, why did you come?”
“I—”
She held up a hand so he couldn’t see her face. He pulled her hand away. She was crying.
“You shouldn’t have come,” she whispered. “Oh, my God, Thanos, look what I’ve done to myself.”
The room they had her in held five other women. It stank of vomit and urine. A half dozen bare mattresses lay scattered on the floor, but there was no other furniture. Elizabeth sat huddled on a mattress. Her clothes were filthy.
“I’m sorry, Thanos. I’m sorry.”
“That’s the first step on the road back, Elizabeth.”
“I feel so dirty. So degraded! And I’ve crawled into this sewer all by myself. How can you even look at—”
“You want to go home? Without the dope?”
“I don’t know if I can! But why would you—don’t you know what I’ve done? Don’t you know why I’m here?”
“I know.”
She tore her hand from his grasp and held it in front of her face. “Please leave, for the love of—”
Liarakos rose and pounded on the door.
“Sir, I’d like to take my wife home.”
Liarakos stood in front of Grafton’s desk. Jake Grafton forced himself to look up into the man’s face. “Fine,” he said. “Where do you live?”
“Edgemoor.”
“Isn’t that over on the other side of Rock Creek Park?”
“Yes.”
“Jack, go catch Toad. Tell him he’ll have two more passengers. Go with him, Mr. Liarakos.”
Liarakos turned to go, then looked back. “Thanks, I—”
Jake waved him out.
In ten minutes Yocke was back. “They all left with Toad,” he said and sat down in the chair in front of Jake’s desk. “Do you know who that man was?”
“Lee-something. I’ve forgotten.”
“Thanos Liarakos. He’s the lawyer representing Chano Aldana.”
“Everybody has their troubles,” Jake Grafton said, his eyes back on his report. The skin on his face was taut across the bones. His eyes looked like they were recessed even deeper into their sockets.
“You knew that when you first saw him, didn’t you?”
“You’re worse than Tarkington. Go find something to do someplace else, will you?”
Yocke rose uncertainly. He wandered aimlessly for several seconds, went out the door and down the hall, then out to the desk in the bay where the soldiers were checking in the prisoners. He waited until the sergeant finished logging in two more surly prisoners, then asked, “Mrs. Liarakos. Who was the man arrested with her?”
“Ah, I’ve got it here.” The sergeant flipped through his book, a green, hardbound logbook. He found the entry. “Guy who refused to give his name. Stuff in his wallet says he is one T. Jefferson Brody, a lawyer if you can believe that. Three hours ago. He’s in bay four if you want to talk to him.” The sergeant gestured vaguely to his left.
Some of the prisoners were still drunk and belligerent. They shouted and raved obscenities. The smell of urine and body odor made the air heavy and lifeless. Yocke tried to breathe shallowly.
He looked into bay four, a waist-high enclosure with a stained concrete floor normally used for the repair of vehicles. The bay now held several dozen men who were shackled in place. Immediately across the corridor was another bay which contained women. The women sat with their backs to the men.
Yocke didn’t recognize Brody. Dressed in a filthy blue suit, the lawyer was standing and straining against the chain around his wrist, screaming at the top of his lungs at the women’s area. “You fucking cunt! I’ll rip your fucking liver out with my bare hands. We won’t be in here forever, you fucking bitch. Then you wait! I’ll get you if it’s the last thing I ever do!”
One of the soldiers walked over with a look of disgust on his face. “Hey you! Big mouth! I’m telling you for the very last time. Shut up!”
“That fucking cunt robbed me,” Brody howled. “I’ll—”
“Shut up, butt-face, or we’ll gag you. You hear me!”
Brody fell silent. He stared fixedly across at the women’s holding area. After a moment he sat down, but his gaze never wavered.
Jack Yocke turned away, slightly nauseated. Hell couldn’t be any worse than this, he told himself, and shivered.
The first bomb exploded at six-thirty p.m. A truck packed with five tons of dynamite was driven through the fence at a huge electrical transmission substation on Greenleaf Point, near the mouth of the Anacostia River. The driver ran back through the hole in the wire as two soldiers chased him and fired their rifles. The driver disappeared into the low-income housing projects nearby. The soldiers were going back through the fence to examine the truck when its cargo detonated in a stupendous blast that was felt and heard for miles. The electrical substation was instantly obliterated. The lights went out in downtown and southeast Washington.
In the next fifteen minutes three more substations were attacked, effectively depriving the entire city of electricity.
“At least the damned TV stations are off the air,” Toad Tarkington told Rita Moravia, who had just arrived at the armory on the back of an army truck.
While General Greer was responding to these attacks, a major natural-gas pumping station in Arlington was bombed. The explosion resembled a small nuclear blast. Then the place caught fire. In the darkness that fell on the city when the lights went out the glare of the raging inferno could be seen from rooftops all over the city.
At the same time the explosions were racking the city, an army platoon was ambushed and wiped out on the Capital Beltway by twenty men carrying automatic weapons. Three men in uniform waved the truck to a halt, then shot the driver and sergeant as they emerged from the cab. Some of the men were machine-gunned as they exited the back of the truck. A dozen survivors, trapped in the truck bed and unable to see out, threw out their weapons and surrendered. They were led down into the drainage ditch beside the freeway and shot. The weapons, ammunition, and radios were collected and loaded into the truck.
The attackers climbed into the back of the vehicle under the canvas covering and took their seats. In the cab two men examined the controls of the truck, which was still idling, managed to get the transmission into gear, and drove away.
The truck left the beltway at Kenilworth Avenue and proceeded south toward the city at about twenty-five miles per hour. Anticipating the enthusiasm of teenage soldiers, the Army had long ago installed a go
vernor to prevent the engine from overrevving, yet the inexperienced driver couldn’t get the transmission into a higher gear.
The two headlights behind metal grilles put out little light, but it was enough. The huge tires rolled easily over the potholes and broken pavement that commuters had accepted as their lot for years.
On the front of the truck was a huge steel horizontal beam, painted olive-drab like the rest of the vehicle. This beam was intended by the Army to enable the truck to push other, disabled, military vehicles.
At the Kenilworth—New York Avenue interchange a half dozen National Guardsmen were manning a roadblock. The driver of the hijacked truck didn’t even slow down. The steel beam on the front delivered a glancing blow to the bus parked crossways in the road, shoving it aside as the truck careened on with the engine roaring. The men in back opened up with automatic weapons at the soldiers in the road as the truck swept past.
A third of a mile later the truck thundered by the sign that marked the boundary of the District of Columbia. It was a large white sign with blue letters artfully arranged above and below the logo of the Capitol dome. The sign read: WELCOME TO WASHINGTON, A CAPITAL CITY, MARION C. BARRY, MAYOR.
Henry Charon soaked the old bandage with water from the jug, then slowly unwrapped it from around his waist. It hurt too much for him to twist around to try to see the wound, so he didn’t bother. He merely wrapped strips of the stolen sheet around his middle and tied them in neat knots.
Then he put on a flannel shirt and over that a sweatshirt.
The coat he had appropriated last night from the college boy was fashionable but certainly not utilitarian enough for Charon’s taste. He hung it on a nail and donned a spare water-resistant parka. His well-worn leather hunting boots went on his feet over two pairs of wool socks.
He threaded a scabbard for a hunting knife onto his belt and positioned it so it hung into his rear hip pocket. When the belt was fastened and adjusted just so below the makeshift bandage about his middle, he inserted the thin-bladed razor-sharp skinning knife he favored into the scabbard and snapped the restraining strap around the handle.
Lastly he put on his cap, a wool-lined billed affair with ear flaps folded around the sides, just in case. The cap was a dark brown and bore the dirt and stains of many winters.
The silencer attached smoothly, effortlessly to the 9-mm pistol. He checked to ensure the magazine was loaded and pulled back the slide until he saw the gleam from a round in the chamber. Flicking the safety on, he slipped the weapon behind his belt in the small of his back. The grenades and two loaded magazines for the pistol went into the pockets of the parka.
He opened the duffle bag and checked the Model 70 Winchester. Still secure, properly padded, with a box of .30-06 ammo wrapped in bubble wrap. He zipped the bag closed and slung it on his shoulder.
What else? Oh yeah, the pencil flash. He tried it, then turned it off and stowed it in one of the pockets of the parka.
Not the radio. It would be nice but was too bulky. Food, water? A handful of jerky and a plastic baby bottle full of water—that would have to do. And the street map.
Anything else?
Gloves. He pulled them on slowly, good pigskin gloves that fit perfectly.
True, this would not be a stalk of Rocky Mountain Bighorn above timberline in subzero cold and blowing snow. Yet the quarry would be the wariest, most difficult game of all—man. Henry Charon grinned in delicious anticipation and turned off the battery-powered lantern.
The hijacked truck drove slowly through the gate into the armory parking lot and came to a stop beside three other trucks. The driver turned off the lights, killed the engine, and climbed down. On the other side the sergeant walked back and watched his men disembark from the bed.
The men didn’t line up in formation. They immediately wandered away in twos and threes.
The parking lot was lit by emergency lights mounted on poles and powered by portable generators, which were noisy. The light was adequate, but barely.
The sergeant and a half dozen men walked toward the open door of the armory and passed inside. Two of the men halted inside the huge open bay and stared a moment at the prisoners shackled to the south wall. In the dim glare of the emergency lights that had automatically illuminated when the electricity failed the bay was quite a sight. Over two hundred sobbing, cursing, crying men and women were chained there. The noise was like something from a nightmare about an insane asylum.
After several seconds of silent observation, the intruders turned their attention to the soldiers guarding them, the men coming and going, the ladder that led up to a catwalk and more offices.
Another two of the men walked the length of the bay to the door on the other end while the sergeant and his remaining companions left the bay and walked into the hallway. Although the sergeant knew no English and couldn’t read the posted signs, he immediately headed for the large double door standing open at the end of the hall that seemed to have a large number of people coming and going. He passed several Americans on the way, but they didn’t give him a glance. With his dark, Latin complexion he fit right into this multiracial army.
The fake sergeant, with his two companions immediately behind him, paused in the large open doorway. Maps covered every wall and radios and telephones stood on the desks. In the center of the room behind a large desk sat a stocky man with two silver stars on each collar.
With a nod to his companions, the sergeant unobtrusively removed a grenade from the webbing across his chest and pulled the pin while the two men beside him did likewise. The three of them each tossed the grenades underhanded toward the center of the room and dove behind nearby desks for cover.
“Grenades!”
The shout galvanized the soldiers. Men were leaping and running and diving when the little hand bombs exploded. The shrapnel destroyed the emergency lighting.
The darkness and silence that followed the explosions was broken only by the high-pitched scream of some poor soul in mortal agony. Then the three intruders opened fire with their rifles.
Out in the squad bay the explosions were muffled but plainly audible. As the soldiers reacted the two terrorists near each door began, in a very businesslike fashion, shooting uniformed men as fast as they could aim and pull the trigger.
But there were too many soldiers. In less than twenty seconds the four intruders were dead.
In the parking lot the gunfire and staccato blasts of grenades continued unabated. One of the men from the hijacked truck reached an M-60 machine gun mounted on a swivel on the back of a jeep and began spraying the soldiers indiscriminately. He was soon shot, but another man took his place. Over eighty soldiers went down in the first thirty seconds of the firefight.
Inside the command post, most of the soldiers had been unarmed. Not that it mattered. The only light was the strobing muzzle blasts. Those soldiers who survived the grenades lay huddled on the floor as the bullets lashed and tore through the furniture and radios. By some miracle, all three of the terrorists fired their weapons aimed too high.
One officer had a pistol. When the automatic bursts stopped—he thought the intruders had expended all the shells in their magazines and were changing them—he opened fire with the pistol at the spots in the darkness where the muzzle blasts seemed to have been coming from. He hit two of the gunmen, but the third one successfully reloaded and killed him with a burst of six slugs.
This man emptied his rifle and reached for another grenade. Just as he got the pin out, a private ran up to the door behind him and gave him a point-blank burst from his M-16. The grenade fell, unseen by the private, who was killed in the explosion that followed a few seconds later. From the first grenade blast to the last, thirty seconds had passed.
Outside in the parking lot the battle lasted longer. Between the machine gun and bursts from M-16s on full automatic, the number of men who were down was staggering.
Still the soldiers who were unwounded or not wounded too severely fought back. In the conf
usion some of the Americans shot each other.
The shooting was still going on a minute later when someone began roaring, “Cease fire, cease fire.” Then it stopped.
The sergeants were turning the bodies of the terrorists over and searching their pockets by the time that Jake Grafton got outside with his rifle. He had been in the head.
“They all look Latin, sir,” someone said to Jake.
“Here’s one still alive.” The man the soldier was referring to was babbling in Spanish. He had a hole in the center of his stomach that was pumping blood. He was staring at the wound and repeating the rosary in Spanish.
“Colombia, sí?”
The wounded man continued his prayer. The soldier grabbed his shirt, half lifted him, and shook him violently. “Colombia, sí?”
“Sí, sí, sí…”
“I hope you die slow, motherfuck!” The soldier dropped the man to the pavement.
“How many did we lose?” Jake asked the major beside him as he stared about at the carnage.
“We’re counting. Sweet Jesus, I think a lot of our guys shot each other. Everybody was shooting at everybody.” The major’s face wore an indescribable look of sadness. “God have mercy.”
Jake Grafton felt a terrible lethargy. He wanted to just turn off his brain.
“General Greer’s dead, sir.”
Jake nodded slowly. Somehow he wasn’t surprised. Toad, Rita, where were they?
He found them inside administering first aid to wounded men. Rita was working on a man with a sucking chest wound and Toad was trying to get the bleeding stopped on a man with a bullet through the thigh.
Jake left them and went to find a radio that still worked.
The radio was in the command post, its metal cover scarred by shrapnel. All over the room the medics and volunteers worked feverishly in the light of battery-powered lanterns and flashlights to save the living. The dead lay unattended in their own blood and gore. Jake Grafton fought the vomit back and held the flashlight as the technician tuned the radio to the proper frequency and made the call.
Minutes passed. The saliva in Jake’s mouth kept flowing and he kept swallowing. His eyes remained firmly on the radio.
05.Under Siege v5 Page 52