by Reed Hill
*****
In the instant he felt the rifle’s stout recoil on his shoulder and heard the muted pop of the 270 grain bullet leaving the barrel, Haslett was astonished to see the black woman’s head almost disappear from her shoulders spraying the hulking nearby bodyguard with crimson like those hit with exploding watermelon in the front row of a Gallagher show. Holy shit.
He didn’t stop to admire the chaos on the tarmac. Haslett got to his knees and began the take the scope off the weapon with the quick-release extended knobs. That’s pretty damn weird. There should have been a longer delay between trigger action and results at target he thought. As he took a knee and carefully ejected the spent case and picked it off the ground, he was puzzled at how soon his bullet had reached the target. That 270 grain low-drag bullet would make the 1,220 yard shot in just over one and half seconds of flight time. The impact had been nearly instant upon his trigger-pull. How in hell could my bullet get there that damn fast?
He gathered the photo and pre-paid wireless and put them in the small backpack and set it aside, carefully placing the rifle into its camouflage nylon case. He zipped the rifle case shut, threw the backpack over his shoulder and low crept to the back edge of outcropping lightly pushing through the brush. This was the most dangerous element to the mission – getting through the hundred yards of mostly open scrub to the tree line where his truck was at. The sun was low in the southeast almost in line with the direction where discerning eyes could find him. It was still a significant risk.
He scanned eastward to his left, and tracked his gaze all across the perimeter of the area to the south and then to the west, letting his eyes move from closer to further away as he looked. This scouting method he did instinctively as he crouched in the brush and low branches, preparing to make the hastened move across the open field. Just as he began to step from his hidden position he saw the slight hint of movement in the rising sun off to the east, and he froze in place. About two or three hundred yards almost due east, he saw man in woodland camouflage jacket, tan work pants, olive baseball cap, and dark wraparound sunglasses, hunkered low looking around. The man then moved rapidly to the southeast and away from Danny’s position. Dammit – bastard saw me for sure.
Danny cursed quietly. He knew that if he could see the other guy, the other guy could see him and he didn’t have the time to wait for him to clear. Doing his best to contain the rush of the adrenaline dump hitting his bloodstream, Danny took a deep drink of air and did his best crouched sprint across the field. Heart racing, lungs pushing and pulling the dry Texas air, he scanned his perimeter as he moved low and briskly across the field. Looking back west he could not see the other man and cussed again under his breath. Thirty seconds post-shot – I gotta be at the trees by now.
It took him a while to clear the second half of the field, and he prayed to God that the morning sun was covering his six from any prying eyes as he hit the tree line. One minute – get to the truck. He ducked under branches and around old stumps and fallen logs, only stumbling once because of the over-sized boots in the hundred yards to his truck by the narrow gravel road.
At the pickup, he dropped the rifle case into the back along with the backpack and unzipped the top taking out the wireless and sticking it in his back pocket. He stripped the gray long-sleeved t-shirt and stuffed it in the pack along with the size twelve boots. He peeled off the rubber gloves with a snap and tossed them in. He removed the rifle from its case forcing it into the garbage bag of chipped rock he had left there. He grabbed the rifle case, moved to the cab of the truck and threw on the regular steel-toed boots he had sitting on the floorboard. Felt good to have his size nines on. He didn’t move like a drunkard. He shoved the nylon rifle case with the scope inside it behind the seat and started up the truck. Two minutes down – need to be getting the hell outta here.
He flipped down the visor and put on the multi-color mirrored hunting sunglasses that fell to his lap, heading slowly down the gravel road. He pulled around the looping drive and stopped by the row of dump trucks and cement haulers that sat alongside the main office. Leaving the truck running, he pulled to a halt by the end truck, where Ricky stood dumping its slag cement into a pile at the southwest edge of the quarry, just as he said he would. When the workers returned from a job, it was common for the trucks to dump their leftover concrete so they could clean their vehicles. These slag piles of worthless cement could easily be pushed into the gravel pit bed for disposal in the scrap area of the quarry. A few feet away was the burn barrel which Ricky had built to a nice blaze, for the junk and scrap wood. Three minutes gone – get on the road, dumbass.
Danny waved hello to Ricky as he grabbed the backpack from the truck bed and dropped it into the burn barrel and then took the garbage bag and let it fall into the slag pile as Ricky kept dumping old concrete on top of it – it disappeared into the slag heap as the chunky concrete dropped on top of it. Danny slapped Ricky on the shoulder and thumbed toward his truck, “I’m gonna go ahead and deliver this rock to where you said you needed it yesterday.”
“No problem. You got the address?” Ricky smiled. The faint sound of a siren reached the site. “If anyone asks, I’ll tell them that order has been taken care of,” Ricky said without looking up from his work.
“Yep. Thanks for opening early so I can load it,” Haslett said climbing into his truck. “Helluva lot easier to get your hard work done before it gets so damn hot.” He pulled around and out of the gate with a wave to Ricky, who whistled as he dumped more slag concrete from the truck. Danny could hear more sirens off in the distance as he headed down Burleson and exited onto Highway 45 south. He smiled as he thought about the old long-beard who had spoken at the barbeque – he hoped that this would make the old bastard proud.
Four minutes.
*****
Governor’s Residence
Austin, Texas - July 5th, 2017 – 7:45 a.m.
Doyle strode over and stood before Governor Chase, “We’ve contacted the U.S. Attorney General’s office and informed them of our scheduled speech and our desire to meet afterward.”
Chase didn’t look up from the jumble of papers that lay before him and he switched his gaze to the tablet he worked with his left hand. “Any response?”
“None yet, sir,” Doyle said.
“Keep me posted.”
Lopez joined the conversation abruptly and Chase looked up at him with a furrowed brow, “Staff has something. Not sure what.”
Doyle trailed Lopez into the war room as a page flipped on the television. The page’s hand quivered a bit as he retracted it, “The kitchen staff had the TV on and I saw this – thought I should tell someone.” As he was speaking, a number of wireless phones in the room buzzed within a few seconds of each other. There were a volley of gasps and muttered curses within moments as the morning show anchors appeared to be referencing written pages, getting a lot of commentary in their ear pieces.
That’s strange. They’re off script. They should be cutting to the recipe of the day or the ‘pet of the week’ that needs a home. Doyle edged closer to the TV, “We need volume.”
A page scrambled to find the remote and cranked up the sound from the little green meter that appeared at the bottom of the screen. The anchors cut to a live shot where a disheveled looking young reporter quickly leveled his demeanor, looking directly into the camera, “—the shooting, just moments ago, Stu, we were waiting behind the doors of the terminal behind me – it’s the south terminal here at Bergstrom Airport – typically used by VIPs and government officials. We were on the runway side”
Everyone in the room knew the low terminal building in the background, as they had used it many times in the past. The reporter was standing in front of the low building, and behind him were two fire rescue ambulances and several black sedans parked awkwardly, and dozens of police officers were milling about, marching in and out of the building.
The Asian female anchor cut in, “Greg, what can you tell about the scene there? What
was it like inside the terminal?”
“Shooting? What shooting?” Lopez said.
“Come on you stupid news drones, give us the headline,” Doyle said.
The on-scene reporter continued, “It was pandemonium, Janet. One moment we were readying our cameras just inside the building, getting footage of the U.S. Attorney General as she walked the short distance from her jet toward the terminal. We had been hoping to get a quick quote from her as she made her way to her car service. She paused momentarily just a few feet from the door, and appeared to be waiting for security to get the door for her. As the Attorney General was about to enter the building, she just slumped to the ground suddenly. Her security team sprang into action and were attending to her when her assistant just fell to the ground screaming. It was just a tragic scene, Janet.”
“Greg,” the black male anchor voiced in, “what happened to her? Did she have a stroke or heart attack? What do you mean she slumped over?”
“We’re working on…cleaning up…the footage…and making it appropriate for…the public…most audiences, rather.” He struggled to find the right words, “What I can tell you is that the scene can only be described as gruesome, Stu.” He gathered himself and said firmly, “We didn’t hear anything since we were still inside the building, but it definitely appeared to be some kind of gunshot to the head or neck. In fact, we…had to...adjust our camera angle somewhat…because our view was…obscured… by the stains on the terminal glass windows.”
No one on camera spoke for several seconds. At last, the field reporter came back in, “The U.S. Attorney General’s body hit the tarmac and from our angle – before the security detail appeared over her with their side arms drawn – she appeared to be losing blood at a very rapid pace, Stu and Janet.”
Janet cut back in, “Did an ambulance arrive quickly, Greg? What chance is there that paramedics could help Attorney General Ross-Brown?”
The field reporter shook his head into the camera, “No chance. No one could have survived what we saw, Janet.”
The war room went silent.
*****
Texas State Guard – Domestic Operations - Command, Intelligence and Control Center
Austin, Texas - July 5th, 2017 – 7:56 a.m.
The desk phone buzzed and General Dinger grabbed up the hand set, “Dinger here.” He had been expecting the call from General Stein, and said, “General, we’ve had developments along the border between El Paso and McAllen.”
“Okay, let’s get into that in a moment,” Stein said, “I have Phil Pritchard with me on the line from NSEP down at Tyndall, and he’s had some conversations in the past hour that you should know about.”
“Morning, Hum,” Pritchard had a non-descript Midwestern tone, “as Bill said, I’m the Director of the Northern National Security Emergency Preparedness Directorate. Bill and I go way back, and I thought I would bring you into the loop with some developments.”
“Sounds good, Phil. Honestly, it seems like I’ve been getting the run around from DHS, because I can’t get anyone with authority on the phone.”
“Well, speaking strictly off the record, I got off a conference call with the FBI’s Strategic Information and Operations Center about fifteen minutes ago, and it’s clear that the folks with their hands on the controls over there aren’t used to doing anything other than navel-gazing and memo-writing when it comes to emergency response management.”
“Seriously…” Dinger said.
“Oh yeah, we had a dozen mid-level people on the line for an FBI Critical Incident Response task force, and all we did was problem-definition and scope of the scenario for 45 minutes. Based on the call, I thought I should touch base with you and let you know a bit of how the game is going from inside the lines, so I called Bill.”
“I had prepared an emergency action report up the chain and hand–delivered it to General Burkett at 1st Air Force as of 0630 and pulled in some information that came from INSCOM in regarding ‘rioting in south Texas’. This information had come to light about the same time as we experienced some anomalies in our normal interactions with JTF North out of Ft. Bliss on some ordinary DEA mission status reports.”
“What sort of anomalies?” Stein asked, “This is news to me as well.”
“Yes, well JTF and we at NSEP try to stay in contact regarding drug interdiction missions monitoring interagency strike teams. If we have an op going in south Florida, the Caribbean or Central America, we would act as the primary intelligence hub and they would be the support group for additional operational resources of whatever nature. They would basically be our back-up should something go haywire and we need extra manpower or hardware, or what have you.”
“Got it,” said Dinger. “And when you came knocking on JTF, no one was home.”
“Exactly. There is a DEA op that is supposed to be deploying in about twenty-four hours along the central border zone of Texas. We needed to be doing back-up preparations to support that and no one at JTF was available. So, I tried to get a hold of a few people at Ft. Bliss and it was the same story,” Pritchard said. “No answer.”
“Yep,” Dinger said. “All of El Paso is pretty well fucked.”
“That’s what Bill said when I finally got a hold of him.”
Stein jumped in, “And you reviewed some footage during the FBI call?”
“Yeah, it was the same info I had come across – in much redacted form – showing about five or six minutes of IR imagery, reported to be drone surveillance of McAllen, Texas from the 470th recon group out of Ft. Sam Houston. I won’t go into details because who knows what will end up being classified or not, but the footage showed planning, organization and serious firepower. We had two solid action report summaries on those missions from a Major Theroux.”
“Yes, that came from our Intel Center here at Mabry – Theroux is with my group,” Dinger said.
“Well, excellent work,” Pritchard said. “We also looked at some other border crossings in the interior of the perimeter, more central, that I would characterize as coordinated and supportive of the major assault in the west at El Paso and the south at McAllen. Apparently, there have been major attacks at the Nogales station in Arizona and at Yuma. There is a lot of movement in California as well, but the Navy Intelligence is all over that, I’m told.”
“Holy Christ, this thing is national…” Dinger mumbled. “Well that jives with the developments on the central border, between El Paso and McAllen.”
“Oh?” Stein said. “Go on.”
“Insurgents seem to have consolidated forces in those areas, at Del Rio and Laredo,” Dinger said. “We now have at least four separate engagement areas. We’re not sure of the forces in the outlying areas.”
“Well, thanks for the handshake here, Phil. I really appreciate it,” General Stein said.
“Happy to help,” Pritchard said. “I figured you fellas may need someone to throw you a bone. Oh, and one more thing – CIA was on the FBI call at the beginning but dropped off abruptly just as we were doing intros and the transcription started.”
“Odd,” said General Stein.
“Yeah, I don’t know what it means, but it certainly smelled funny. Well, best of luck with all this. Karma, I suppose.”
“How do you mean?” Dinger said.
“Well, the state of Texas has kind thrown the U.S. government into a shit storm and now we’ve got this going on. And….um…wait a minute.” Pritchard could be heard talking to someone on his end, but it was muffled. “If you thought it was a shit storm before, well I guess you could say, when it rains it pours. And it looks like it’s raining crap all over you over there.”
“What do you mean?” Dinger said.
“I need to go. I may not be able to call again, Bill,” Pritchard said.
“Phil, what are you talking about?” General Stein asked.
“Just turn on CNN.”
*****
Governor’s Residence
Austin, Texas - July 5th, 2017 – 8:05 a.m.
“The story’s gone national,” Doyle called from the war room. A gaggle of staff gathered around the TV again as Doyle turned up the volume. “Fox Cannon has the story on CNN.”
The white-bearded commentator stood beside a graphic of a spinning globe that ceased its revolution and focused on the U.S. zooming down all the way to a red-highlighted state of Texas, with a black star where Austin was. “Tragedy in Austin, this morning as CNN has learned that the Attorney General of the United States, Rosa Ross-Brown has been shot.” A flattering head and shoulders shot of Ross-Brown dissolved in as state of Texas minimized to the bottom of the screen. “Observers on the scene indicate that Ross-Brown was hit by gunfire as she walked the short distance from the Department of Defense jet to the private south terminal of Bergstrom Airport in Austin. She was immediately attended to by members of her security detail who, we’re told, were able to begin CPR until airport emergency medical professionals arrived on scene.”
“So she made it?” Chief of Staff Lopez said.
Fox Cannon walked to a different set location with a map of Austin, with a highlighted street route, “Sources at the scene tell us that the Attorney General was rushed to University Hospital at shortly after seven-forty-five a.m. central time, where medical professionals began assessing the state of her injuries. We now go to Anna Perez, who is on the scene at University Hospital. Anna, what can you tell us?”
“This is odd. The local telecast made it sound pretty definitive that she had not made it,” Doyle insisted with narrowing eyes.
A young raven-haired woman appeared on screen with the Emergency Room entrance of a large hospital in the background, “Well, Fox, we’re told that the Attorney General was brought here to University Hospital at a little after eight o’clock local time, and that she was taken directly into the Emergency department for assessment. While no official word was been given at this time, a witness in the admitting area of the department described the scene as grim and very serious, Fox,” the face of Anna Perez was solemn. “While we have no indication from staff that the hospital will make any statements about the Attorney General’s condition, our hopes and thoughts go out to the Brown family, as this has to be a very difficult time.” The young reporter shifted her stance and flashed a winning smile, “This is Anna Perez, outside of University Hospital in Austin, Texas.”