“Call the cops?” the Sergeant Major asked.
“What for?” Cummings asked reasonably. “He ain’t even spit far as I can tell. ”
“Okay, I’ll walk on up.” Breckenridge stood. He was bored anyway. The Sergeant Major donned his cap and walked out of the building, heading north across the campus. It took five minutes, during which he saluted six officers and greeted a larger number of mids. He didn’t like the cold. It had never been like this during his childhood on a Mississippi dirt farm. But spring was coming. He was careful not to look too obviously out of the gate as he crossed the street.
He found Cummings in the guardhouse, standing inside the door. A good young sergeant, Cummings was. He had the new look of the Corps. Breckenridge was built along the classic John Wayne lines, with broad shoulders and imposing bulk. Cummings was a black kid, a runner who had the frame of a Frank Shorter. The boy could run all day, something that the Gunny had never been able to do. But more than all of that, Cummings was a lifer. He understood what the Marine Corps was all about. Breckenridge had taken the young man under his wing, imparting a few important lessons along the way. The Sergeant Major knew that he would soon be part of the Corps’ past. Cummings was its future, and he told himself that the future looked pretty good.
“Hey, Gunny,” the Sergeant greeted him.
“The guy in the doorway?”
“He’s been there since a little after four. He don’t live here.” Cummings paused for a moment. He was, after all, only a “buck” sergeant with no rockers under his stripes, talking to a man whom generals addressed with respect. “It just feels funny.”
“Well, let’s give him a few minutes,” Breckenridge thought aloud.
“God, I hate grading quizzes.”
“So go easy on the boys and girls,” Robby chuckled.
“Like you do?” Ryan asked.
“I teach a difficult, technical subject. I have to give quizzes.”
“Engineers! Shame you can’t read and write as well as you multiply. ”
“You must have taken a tough-pill this afternoon, Jack.”
“Yeah, well—” The phone rang. Jack picked it up. “Doctor Ryan. Yes—who?” His face changed, his voice became guarded.
“Yes, that’s right.” Robby saw his friend go stiff in the chair. “Are you sure? Where are they now? Okay—ah, okay, thank you ... I, uh, thank you.” Jack stared at the phone for a second or two before hanging it up.
“What’s the matter, Jack?” Robby asked.
It took him a moment to answer. “That was the police. There’s been an accident.”
“Where are they?” Robby said immediately.
“They flew them—they flew them to Baltimore.” Jack stood shakily. “I have to get there.” He looked down at his friend. “God, Robby...”
Jackson was on his feet in an instant. “Come on, I’ll take you up there.”
“No, I’ll—”
“Stuff it, Jack. I’m driving.” Robby got his coat and tossed Jack’s over the desk. “Move it, boy!”
“They took them by helicopter ...”
“Where? Where to, Jack?”
“University,” he said.
“Get it together, Jack.” Robby grabbed his arm. “Settle down some.” The flyer led his friend down the stairs and out of the building. His red Corvette was parked a hundred yards away.
“Still there,” the civilian guard reported when he came back in.
“Okay.” Breckenridge said, standing. He looked at the pistol holster hanging in the comer, but decided against that. “This is what we’re going to do.”
Ned Clark hadn’t liked the mission from the first moment. Sean was too eager on this one. But he hadn’t said so. Sean had master-minded the prison break that had made him a free man. If nothing else, Ned Clark was loyal to the Cause. He was exposed here and didn’t like that either. His briefing had told him that the guards at the Academy gate were lax, and he could see that they were unarmed. They had no authority at all off the grounds of the school.
But it was taking too long. His target was thirty minutes late. He didn’t smoke, didn’t do anything to make himself conspicuous, and he knew that he’d be hard to spot. The doorway of the tired old apartment building had no light—one of Alex’s people had taken care of that with a pellet gun the previous night.
Ought to call this one off, Clark told himself. But he didn’t want to do that. He didn’t want to fail Sean. He saw a pair of men leave the Academy. Bootnecks, bloody Marines in their Sunday clothes. They looked so pretty without their guns, so vulnerable.
“So the Captain, he says,” the big one was saying loudly, “get that goddamned gook off my chopper!” And the other one started laughing.
“I love it!”
“How about a couple of beers?” the big one said next. They crossed the street, heading his way.
“Okay by me, Gunny. You buyin’?”
“My turn, isn’t it? I have to get some money first.” The big one reached in his pocket for some keys and turned toward Clark. “Excuse me, sir, can I help you?” His hand came out of his pocket without any keys.
Clark reacted quickly, but not quickly enough. The right hand inside his overcoat started moving up, but Breckenridge’s own right grabbed it like a vise.
“I asked if I could help you, sir,” the Sergeant Major said pleasantly. “What do you have in that hand?” Clark tried to move, but the big man pushed him against the brick wall.
“Careful, Tom,” Breckenridge warned.
Cummings’ hand searched downward and found the metallic shape of a pistol. “Gun,” he said sharply.
“It better not go off,” the Gunny announced, his left arm across Clark’s throat. “Let the man have it, sonny, real careful, like.”
Clark was amazed at his stupidity, letting them get so close to him. His head tried to turn to look up the street, but the man waiting for him in the car was around the corner. Before he could think of anything to do, the black man had disarmed him and was searching his pockets. Cummings removed the knife next.
“Talk to me,” Breckenridge said. Clark didn’t say anything, and the forearm slid roughly across his throat. “Please talk to me, sir. ”
“Get your bloody hands off of me! Who do you think you are?”
“Where you from, boy?” Breckenridge didn’t need an answer to that one. The Sergeant wrenched Clark’s arm out of the pocket and twisted it behind his back. “Okay, sonny, we’re going to walk through that gate over yonder, and you’re gonna sit down and be a good boy while we call the police. If you make any trouble, I’m going to tear this arm off and shove it right up your ass. Let’s go, boy.”
The driver who’d been waiting for Clark was standing at the far comer. He took one look at what had happened and walked to his car. Two minutes later he was blocks away.
Cummings handcuffed the man to a chair while Breckenridge established that he carried no identification—aside from an automatic pistol, which was ID enough. First he called his captain, then the Annapolis City police. It started there, but, though the Gunny didn’t know, it wouldn’t stop there.
15
Shock and Trauma
If Jack had ever doubted that Robby Jackson really was a fighter pilot, this would have cured him. Jackson’s personal toy was a two-year-old Chevrolet Corvette, painted candy-apple red, and he drove it with a sense of personal invincibility. The flyer raced out the Academy’s west gate, turned left, and found his way to Rowe Boulevard. The traffic problems on Route 50 west were immediately apparent, and he changed lanes to head east. In a minute he was streaking across the Severn River bridge. Jack was too engrossed in his thoughts to see much of anything, but Robby saw what looked like the remains of a Porsche on the other side of the roadway. Jackson’s blood went cold as he turned away. He cast the thoughts aside and concentrated on his driving, pushing the Corvette past eighty. There were too many cops on the other side of the road for him to worry about a ticket. He took the Ritc
hie Highway exit a minute later and curved around north toward Baltimore. Rush-hour traffic was heavy, though most of it was heading in the other direction. This gave him gaps to exploit, and the pilot used every one. He worked up and down through the gears, rarely touching the brakes.
To his right, Jack simply stared straight ahead, not seeing much of anything. He managed to wince when Robby paused behind two tractor-trailers running side by side—then shot up right between them with scant inches of clearance on either side. The outraged screams of the two diesel horns faded irrelevantly behind the racing ’Vette, and Jack returned to the emptiness of his thoughts.
Breckenridge allowed his captain, Mike Peters, to handle the situation. He was a pretty good officer, the Sergeant Major thought, who had the common sense to let his NCOs run things. He’d managed to get to the guard shack about two minutes ahead of the Annapolis City police, long enough for Breckenridge and Cummings to fill him in.
“So what gives, gentlemen?” the responding officer asked. Captain Peters nodded for Breckenridge to speak.
“Sir, Sergeant Cummings here observed this individual to be standing over at the comer across the street. He did not look like a local resident, so we kept an eye on him. Finally Cummings and I walked over and asked if we might be of assistance to him. He tried to pull this on us”—the Gunny lifted the pistol carefully, so as not to disturb the fingerprints—“and he had this knife in his pocket. Carrying a concealed weapon is a violation of local law, so Cummings and I made a citizen’s arrest and called you. This character does not have any identification on him, and he declined to speak with us.”
“What kind of gun is that?” the cop asked.
“It’s an FN nine-millimeter,” Breckenridge answered. “It’s the same as the Browning Hi-Power, but a different trademark, with a thirteen-round magazine. The weapon was loaded, with a live round in the chamber. The hammer was down. The knife is a cheap piece of shit. Punk knife.”
The cop had to smile. He knew Breckenridge from the department firearms training unit.
“Can I have your name, please,” the cop said to Eamon Clark. The “suspect” just stared at him. “Sir, you have a number of constitutional rights which I am about to read to you, but the law does not allow you to withhold your identity. You have to tell me your name.”
The cop stared at Clark for another minute. At last he shrugged and pulled a card from his clipboard. “Sir, you have the right to remain silent....” He read the litany off the card. “Do you understand these rights?”
Still Clark didn’t say anything. The police officer was getting irritated. He looked at the other three men in the room. “Gentlemen, will you testify that I read this individual his rights?”
“Yes, sir, we certainly will,” Captain Peters said.
“If I may make a suggestion, officer,” Breckenridge said. “You might want to check this boy out with the FBI.”
“How come?”
“He talks funny,” the Sergeant Major explained. “He don’t come from here.”
“Great—two crazy ones in one day.”
“What do ya mean?” Breckenridge asked.
“Little while ago a car got machine-gunned on 50, sounds like some kind of drug hit. A trooper got killed by the same bunch a few minutes later. The bad guys got away. ” The cop leaned down to look Clark in the face. “You better start talkin’, sir. The cops in this town are in a mean mood tonight. What I’m tellin’ you, man, is that we don’t want to put up with some unnecessary shit. You understand me?”
Clark didn’t understand. In Ireland carrying a concealed weapon was a serious crime. In America it was rather less so since so many citizens owned guns. Had he said he was waiting for someone and carried a gun because he was afraid of street criminals, he might have gotten out on the street before identification procedures were complete. Instead, his intransigence was only making the policeman angry and ensuring that the identification procedures would be carried out in full before he was arraigned.
Captain Peters and Sergeant Major Breckenridge exchanged a meaningful look.
“Officer,” the Captain said, “I would most strongly recommend that you check this character’s ID with the FBI. We’ve, uh, we had a sort of an informal warning about terrorist activity a few weeks back. This is still your jurisdiction since he was arrested in the city, but...”
“I hear you, Cap’n,” the cop said. He thought for a few seconds and concluded that there was something more here than met the eye. “If you gentlemen will come to the station with me, we’ll find out who Mr. Doe here really is.”
Ryan charged through the entrance of the Shock-Trauma Center and identified himself to the reception desk, whose occupant directed him to a waiting room where, she said firmly, he would be notified as soon as there was anything to report. The sudden change from action to inaction disoriented Jack enormously. He stood at the entrance to the waiting room for some minutes, his mind a total blank as it struggled with the situation. By the time Robby arrived from parking his car, he found his friend sitting on the cracked vinyl of an old sofa, mindlessly reading through a brochure whose stiff paper had become as soft as chamois from the numberless hands of parents, wives, husbands, and friends of the patients who had passed through this building.
The brochure explained in bureaucratic prose how the Maryland Institute for Emergency Medical Services was the first and best organization of its kind, devoted exclusively to the most sophisticated emergency care for trauma victims. Ryan knew all this. Johns Hopkins managed the more recent pediatric unit and provided many of the staff surgeons for eye injuries. Cathy had spent some time doing that during her residency, an intense two months that she’d been happy to leave behind. Jack wondered if she were now being treated by a former colleague. Would he recognize her? Would it matter?
The Shock-Trauma Center—so known to everyone but the billing department—had begun as the dream of a brilliant, aggressive, and supremely arrogant heart surgeon who had bludgeoned his way through a labyrinth of bureaucratic empires to build this 21st-century emergency room.
It had blossomed into a dazzling, legendary success. Shock-Trauma was the leading edge of emergency medical technology. It had already pioneered many techniques for critical care, and in doing so had overthrown many historical precepts of conventional medicine—which had not endeared its founder to his medical brethren. That would have been true in any field, and Shock-Trauma’s founder had not helped the process with his brutally outspoken opinions. His greatest—but unacknowledged—crime, of course, was being right in nearly all details. And while this prophet was without honor in the mainstream of his profession, its younger members were easier to convert. Shock-Trauma attracted the best young surgical talent in the world, and only the finest of them were chosen.
But will they be good enough? Ryan asked himself.
He lost all track of time, waiting, afraid to look at his watch, afraid to speculate on the significance of time’s flight. Alone, completely alone in his circumscribed world, he reflected that God had given him a wife he loved and a child he treasured more than his own life; that his first duty as husband and father was to protect them from an often hostile world; that he had failed; that, because of this, their lives were now in strangers’ hands. All his knowledge, all his skills were useless now. It was worse than impotence, and some evil agency in his mind kept repeating over and over the thoughts that made him cringe as he retreated further and further into catatonic numbness. For hours he stared at the floor, then the wall, unable even to pray as his mind sought the solace of emptiness.
Jackson sat beside his friend, silent, in his own private world. A naval aviator, he had seen close friends vanish from a trivial mistake or a mechanical glitch—or seemingly nothing at all. He’d felt death’s cold hand brush his own shoulder less than a year before. But this wasn’t a danger to a mature man who had freely chosen a dangerous profession. This was a young wife and an innocent child whose lives were at risk. He couldn’t j
oke about how “old Dutch” would luck this one out. He knew nothing at all he could say, no encouragement he could offer other than just sitting there, and though he gave no sign of it, Robby was sure that Jack knew his friend was close at hand.
After two hours Jackson quietly left the waiting room to call his wife and check discreetly at the desk. The receptionist fumbled for the names, then identified them as: a Female, Blond, Age Thirty or so, Head; and a Female, Blond, Age Four or so, Flailed Chest. The pilot was tempted to throttle the receptionist for her coldness, but his discipline was sufficient to allow him to turn away without a word. Jackson rejoined Ryan a moment later, and together they stared at the wall through the passage of time. It started to rain outside, a cold rain that perfectly matched what they both felt.
Special Agent Shaw was walking through the door of his Chevy Chase home when the phone rang. His teen-age daughter answered it and just held it out to him. This sort of thing was not the least unusual.
“Shaw here.”
“Mr. Shaw, this is Nick Capitano from the Annapolis office. The city police here have in custody a man with a pistol, a knife, but no ID. He refuses to talk at all, but earlier he did speak to a couple of Marines, and he had an accent.”
“That’s nice, he has an accent. What kind?” Shaw asked testily.
“Maybe Irish,” Capitano replied. “He was apprehended just outside Gate Three of the U.S. Naval Academy. There’s a Marine here who says that some teacher named Ryan works there, and he got some sort of warning from the Anti-Terrorism Office.”
What the hell. “Have you ID’d the suspect yet?”
“No, sir. The local police just fingerprinted him, and they faxed a copy of the prints and photo to the Bureau. The suspect refuses to say anything. He just isn’t talking at all, sir.”
“Okay,” Shaw thought for a moment. So much for dinner. “I’ll be back in my office in thirty minutes. Have them send a copy of the mug shot and the prints there. You stay put, and have somebody find Doctor Ryan and stay with him.”
Patriot Games (1987) Page 35