by Jon Land
“Which makes this an awfully sophisticated piece of work if you’re thinking hostile action from a source other than Red Dog’s crew.”
“That’s why I called you.” Belgrade’s expression became utterly flat and rigid. “We can’t let this stuff fall into the wrong hands, MacNuts. If Devil’s Brew works even half as good as the preliminary testing indicated, there won’t be a person in this country who’ll be safe. And it’ll be my goddamn fault, even though I took every conceivable precaution. It was a textbook operation.”
“Sometimes things happen you haven’t got a chapter ready for.”
Before Belgrade could respond, Blaine saw police cars tear onto the Mall and converge on the Washington Monument. In the distance, beyond the Reflecting Pool, tour patrons were scattering in all directions. Blaine stiffened, the hairs of his beard seeming to stand on end. From the foot of the Memorial, Johnny Wareagle turned and looked up at him.
“Like I was saying,” Blaine said.
“All right,” Sam Kirkland, the FBI’s assistant director in charge of counterterrorism informed McCracken thirty minutes after terrorists had seized the Washington Monument. “This is what we know.” Kirkland’s expression was somewhere between a scowl and a sneer, and he didn’t bother to disguise the reluctance in his voice. “For starters,” he continued inside the FBI’s makeshift command post, where equipment was still being dragged in, “we’ve got five perps armed with automatic weapons holding thirty-seven hostages on the observation deck. Our thermal scan was positive for explosives, most likely C-4, enough to blow the tip of the monument into orbit. The leader says he’ll detonate in just under three hours if he doesn’t receive twenty million dollars.”
“Any ID on the leader?”
“His voiceprint’s not in our files.”
“What about photo reconnaissance?”
“He hasn’t given us a clear look. He’s bald, that’s all I can tell you so far.”
“Not very much.”
“The money’s twenty minutes away,” Kirkland said, “if it comes to that.”
“What about Hostage and Rescue?”
“Ten minutes away, with a response plan drawn up no more than one hour after that,” Kirkland said, trying to sound confident.
“Then they’d better draw up new specs for the Monument while they’re at it, Mr. Assistant Director. The observation deck windows are too thick to shoot or crash through, and my guess is the elevator has been disabled. Think your men can cover ninety flights of stairs and still take these bastards by surprise?”
Kirkland met McCracken’s eyes for the first time, liquidy spheres that looked like miniature black holes. “You got a better idea?”
Blaine focused his gaze on the tip of the Monument. “Just one.”
TWO
“This the FBI I know we’re talking about?” Buck asked disbelievingly, still treading water. “I can’t see these keep-it-in-the-house sons of bitches opening up their doors to an outsider.”
“Hank let a few people know I was on the scene; they took care of the rest.”
“Too bad.”
“Wrong place at the wrong time.”
“Then or now?”
“Why don’t you tell me?”
Buck finally pulled himself onto the dock and sat on its edge next to McCracken. His huge forearms pulsed slightly with exertion and his black t-shirt clung to his barrel chest like a glove. Blaine couldn’t say Torrey was still muscular; he was just big—everywhere. His face was block square, his jawline so angular that it lent his expression a perpetual menacing glint. His jet-black hair showed some streaks of gray now and it was longer than Blaine had ever seen it. His face, though pitted and pockmarked, was strangely gentle, that of a man who could hug a person as easily as break him in half.
Buck Torrey’s career had been that of a textbook hero until the relatively recent past. As sergeant major of the elite troop Blaine had been selected for in the early seventies, Torrey had designed the program that separated the good from the great among Special Forces personnel. This and subsequent work led to a steady rise for him through the Special Forces as it eventually became umbrellaed under the Special Operations Command based in Florida. Torrey, it was said, was being groomed to take over the post of Command Sergeant Major upon the retirement of the legendary Hank Luthie.
Everything changed on a single ragged morning in Somalia, when an army Ranger detachment was dispatched to “acquire” a Somali warlord. The operation went off without a hitch; the detachment was pulling out when one of its choppers was hit by an RPG. The chopper went down and the result was a pitched battle that rivaled any on record for ferocity and violence, ending with Ranger troops fighting with bayonets or hand-to-hand through an impossibly long night. The Rangers took three dozen casualties. The Somalis took over a thousand.
For Buck Torrey that was small consolation. He had written a half-dozen memos on the need of armored support for his men dispatched to that godforsaken country. Because they had gone unheeded, on-site Special Operations Command was helpless to mount a rescue or send in proper reinforcements. Torrey’s men—and he saw them all as his men—had handled their end of things brilliantly, only to be fucked by an establishment that was balancing image and dollars instead of protecting lives. Torrey wrote one final memo, walked into the SOC commander’s office, and broke his jaw with a single punch.
He accepted his discharge, took his pension, and dropped off the face of the earth, so far as most were concerned. But he couldn’t escape the Special Forces network, which had a way of keeping track of its own, and that’s how Blaine had tracked him down.
“I got to warn you that if you come down here looking for a place, there ain’t no vacancies,” Buck Torrey said, in a drawl that mixed both sides of the Mason-Dixon line.
“I came to see you.”
“I talked with your doctors, son.”
“You …” Blaine was unable to hide his surprise.
“They told me they put you back together.”
“That’s because I can walk without falling and shave without cutting myself. After that, things get tough.”
“Not much of a life, walking and shaving.”
“No.”
Buck Torrey dangled his legs over the dock’s side and shook some of the water from his clothes. “Now, you add fishing, son, and you got yourself something.”
“I want you to train me again, Buck.”
“Sure. Fly or cast, take your pick.”
“I’m not talking about fishing.”
Torrey looked at McCracken’s DS ring, compared it to his own. “Looks nice on you.”
“Thanks.”
“When was the last time you had it on?”
“I don’t remember.”
“That would explain its mint condition.” Torrey looked at Blaine closely. “You wear it today for me?”
“I hoped it would take me back.”
“You can’t go back, son. Forward’s the one direction in a man’s gearbox.” Buck’s eyes settled on Blaine’s ring. “And everything you need to start shifting again is right there in those two letters.”
“Dead Simple.”
“Just words. You gotta look beyond them being our motto ’cause of how good we were at killing. Lots of boys can be good at killing. But to live to be old dogs like us, you got to be good at plenty more than that.”
“Like you, maybe.”
“I don’t know. You’re alive, ain’t ya?”
“Not by much.”
“It’s a yes-or-no question, son.”
“Yes.”
“Then tell me the rest of the story.”
The A-1000 Thunderhawk helicopter cruised through the sky in stealth mode, silent and invisible in the night. Blaine crouched in the doorway of its cramped rear bay, as the Washington Monument drew closer beneath him. When the tip was directly below, the Thunderhawk slowed to a hover and he eased out gracefully into the night sky, holding fast to the black line rigged to his har
ness. Camouflaged in black as well, Blaine knew he was invisible to even the trained eye.
All the equipment he had required had accompanied the FBI’s elite Hostage and Rescue Team to the staging site set atop a baseball field in West Potomac Park. He left it to Kirkland to explain his role in the operation to the commandos, listening to the briefing as he buckled himself tightly into a climbing vest and carefully checked his supply of pitons and carabiners for wear and spring. Satisfied, he clipped or pocketed them in place and then went to work coiling the climbing rope so it would drape comfortably from his shoulder. Pulling the rope over him to get accustomed to its feel and weight, Blaine carefully eased the rest of what he needed into a pack, leaving inspection of the piton gun Kirkland had managed to obtain for him for last.
Now, twenty minutes later, three hours after the Monument had been seized, Blaine dropped his feet and angled his toes straight for the tip. The wind pushed him slightly, and he learned fast how to compensate by twirling his lower legs to keep the tip of the Monument directly beneath him.
Touching down was a bit more jarring than he had expected. But Blaine slid slightly down the precipice and leaned his torso against the base, legs straddling it. His angle of descent had placed him down on the southern side of the tip, since reconnaissance indicated that the hostages were concentrated along the other three walls. Several might be injured by the explosives he had come up here to set. Since all were seated away from the area where the blast’s effects would be centered, their chances of survival were considerably better than if left to the whims of the terrorists.
Ready to go to work, Blaine pulled the piton gun from his vest and inserted a piton eye first into the barrel. Once fired, the sharp edge of the piton would be driven deep into the marble face six feet below the Monument’s tip. His biggest problem when he drew back to aim the piton gun was the wind, because it forced the chopper to bob slightly in the air, drawing him upward and keeping him from being able to steady the piton gun long enough to shoot it.
Blaine shifted slightly to better his position. He got the piton gun level and aimed, ready to fire it, when the chopper jerked him upward again.
Frustrated, Blaine settled back down against the smooth marble and unclasped the support line from his harness. He waved the Thunderhawk away as the line dangled free, leaving him clinging to the Monument’s south side with nothing to catch him if he fell.
His left arm wrapped tightly around the tip above him, Blaine fired the piton into the Monument face even with his chest. After making sure it was secure, he jammed the piton gun into his harness and flipped the start of his climbing rope down from his shoulder. Taking it in his now free hand, he threaded the line into the piton’s exposed eye and then carefully ran it through a trio of carabiners on his harness. He held the line tight, testing it, and pushed off with his heels.
Two more rappels left him a few yards above the top of the observation deck’s windows. Blaine shifted his backpack around to the front and then raised his legs as he lowered his head. Suspended upside down now, gazing down the long white band of the Monument to the dark abyss of the ground, he could feel the blood rushing to his head.
Awkwardly, he put some more slack in the line, lowering himself until he could easily reach the top of the observation deck’s twin windows. Next Blaine pulled a rectangular mound of plastic explosives from inside his pack and wedged it in place over the left side of the first window. Then he shimmied sideways and repeated the same process on the right, wedging a second remote-controlled detonator into the mound. The charges had been packed to ensure that not only the windows but also enough of the marble over them would blow to create an accessible route in for the commandos.
By the time McCracken reached the second window, his movements had turned graceful, confidence coming from practice. The third and fourth explosive mounds took to the marble as if slots had been tailored for them. Blaine jammed the final detonator in place and gave it a hard twist to the right.
He regripped his line to ready his ascent back to the tip, flipping his feet and head again first. He felt better instantly, just dangled there while he waited for his blood to resettle.
“Mission accomplished, Kirkland,” Blaine said into his headset. “Send your team in.”
Less than two minutes later, after he had climbed to a safe distance above the charges, Blaine looked up at the sky and saw the Blackhawk soaring through the night, dead on line with the Monument. According to plan, he would hold here while the commandos finished the job, then join them in the observation deck.
“Eighteen, seventeen, sixteen …”
Kirkland’s thirty-second countdown filled Blaine’s ears until the approaching Blackhawk’s rotor wash stole it. The downwind pressure made the line threaded precariously through the piton vibrate madly. It felt to Blaine like the vibrations made by a dentist’s drill, the entire surface of the Monument seeming to tremble.
He could see the six Hostage and Rescue Team commandos leaning back-first out of the Blackhawk’s bay now, heels touching only air as they held fast to the black cords fastening them to the chopper’s tie-lines. They had angled themselves to swoop downward as soon as the charges detonated, creating their passage in.
Then the Blackhawk seemed to buckle in the air. It turned violently to the left, the Hostage and Rescue Team members left to cling to their tie-lines for dear life as the chopper began spinning.
The gear spur, Blaine realized.
He had seen it happen before, but never with the timing so bad. The gear spur controlled the spin of the tail rotor, and when it seized, the tail rotor sputtered and stalled. As he watched, the Blackhawk continued to spin wildly before flitting out of control, the pilot struggling with the throttle and control arm to gain it back. For now the chopper was lost in the night, soaring away, the attack aborted.
But the charges were still going to blow, leaving the rest of the operation in his and Johnny Wareagle’s hands. Blaine took his SIG-Sauer nine-millimeter pistol in hand and readied his push off the marble face in the last moments before the windows erupted in a burst of smoke and flame.
The blast temporarily deafened McCracken but didn’t stop him from swooping down toward the center of the chasm that had been blown in the Monument’s observation deck. He came up a bit long and slammed into the blackened marble just beneath the jagged opening. Grabbing hold of the smoking, charred ledge, he hoisted himself upward, SIG-Sauer aimed through as soon as he cleared it.
The smoke and stubborn flames stole his vision and stung his eyes. There were shapes clustered about, most at least stirring, others crawling desperately away. More, undoubtedly, were blocked from his view by the elevator shaft, ten feet away in the center of the deck. He distinguished hostages rushing past it, some holding fast to the wounded or terrified, bravely trying to guide them toward the lone staircase on the north side, as a fire alarm wailed incessantly.
A pair of bleeding figures clinging to the wall for support raised submachine guns their way, fingers about to press tight to triggers, when Blaine poured the SIG’s bullets at them. The multiple hits spun the gunmen around before dropping them, errant fire sent spraying in all directions.
McCracken started to hoist himself inside, when a burst of automatic fire greeted him. His bulletproof vest took most of the impact, but a few of the rounds sneaked beneath it and Blaine felt a series of hot jabbing stabs to his abdomen reaching toward his hip. His whole right side went numb, and he collapsed downward. A chunk of jagged marble sliced through his shoulder in a burst of fiery pain like none he had ever felt before. He screamed and lost his grasp on the SIG, watching it drop to the floor. He started to sink, and more hot agony drove through his shoulder, the sinewy flesh and muscle around it shredded and pouring blood.
A dark figure was angling for another shot, when the barricaded exit door on the deck’s north side blew inward a breath ahead of Johnny Wareagle’s charge through it. He held Heckler & Koch submachine guns in either hand, pummeling
the figure with one even as he was turning the second on a fourth terrorist, who lurched behind the elevator shaft for cover. Wareagle darted to the left, blocked from Blaine’s view by the elevator shaft, as he positioned himself between the terrorist and the sole exit door hostages continued desperately trying to reach.
Blaine felt himself slumping, holding on to the ledge for dear life, the pain numbing him toward unconsciousness, when he saw something shiny and metallic lying on the floor fifteen feet from him. A man had just crawled past the elevator shaft across the observation deck’s rubble-strewn floor, heading toward the object, which had a red light flashing like a beacon in the night.
The detonator!
The realization shook Blaine alert an instant before he saw that the crawling figure was bald, the only thing Kirkland had been able to identify about the leader. Blaine heaved himself back over the edge of the chasm, feeling about his vest again as if his SIG-Sauer might have miraculously reappeared.
His hand brushed past the piton gun instead.
The bald man was almost to the detonator, starting to stretch a trembling hand determinedly outward.
Blaine yanked the piton gun free and loaded it.
The bald man raised a trembling hand over the button, even with the flashing red light on the detonator.
Blaine aimed the piton gun for the man’s head, willed his hand steady.
The bald man’s finger started down, as Blaine curled his inward. The piton shot out behind the familiar poof! But it wasn’t made to fire at this distance, and Blaine sensed it veering from his intended target of the bald man’s skull at the last.
He was already reaching for another when the piton pierced the back of the man’s hand, plunging all the way through the palm. He screamed, and the reflexive jerk that followed sent the detonator sliding across the floor.
The bald man struggled to his feet and started to go after it, but a fresh swarm of hostages fleeing for the exit enveloped him. By the time he extricated himself, Blaine had the piton gun steadied on him yet again. There was a brief instant when they locked eyes, the bald man’s as crazed and hateful as any Blaine had ever seen, before he fired. But the piton lodged in the elevator shaft eight feet away when the bald man ducked. He reversed his field and steered away from the lost detonator, bloody hand pressed limply against his side as he joined another surge of bodies groping for the stairwell.