by Tom Clancy
He'd taught tactics for every possible situation, or so he'd thought, and would have said as recently as twenty minutes before—but to have your only child next to you…
They're all our kids, Dom's voice told him again.
The unhurt killer had Katie Ryan by the upper arm. She was only whimpering now, exhausted from her earlier screams, almost hanging from his hand as the subject stood there to the left of the wounded one. His right hand held the AK. If he'd had a pistol, he could have held that weapon to her head, but the AK was too lengthy for that. Ever so slowly, Inspector O'Day moved his hand down, opening the zipper on his jacket.
They started talking back and forth again. The wounded one was in considerable discomfort. At first, the adrenaline rush had blocked it out, but now things were settling down somewhat, and with the release of tension also went the pain-blocking mechanism that protected the body in periods of great stress. He was saying something, but Pat couldn't tell what it was. The other one snarled a reply, gesturing to the door, speaking with passion and frustration. The scary part would come when they came to a decision. They might just shoot the kids. Those outside would probably rush the building if they heard more than a shot or two. They might be fast enough to save some of the kids, but…
He started thinking of them as Hurt and Unhurt. They were pumped up but confused, excited but undecided, wanting to live but coming to the realization that they would not…
"Hey, uh, guys," Pat said, holding his arms up and moving them to distract them from the open zipper. "Can I say something?"
"What?" Hurt demanded, as Unhurt watched.
"All these kids you have here, it's like too many to cover, right?" he asked, with an emphatic nod to get the idea across. "How about I take my little girl out and some of the others, okay? Make things easier for you, maybe?"
That generated some more jabbering. The idea actually seemed attractive to Unhurt, or so it appeared to O'Day.
"Attention, this is the Secret Service!" the voice called yet again. It sounded like Price, the FBI agent thought. Unhurt was looking toward the door, and his body language was leaning him that way, and to get there he had to pass in front of Hurt.
"Hey, come on, okay, let some of us go, will ya?" O'Day pleaded. "Maybe I can tell them to give you a car or something."
Unhurt waved his rifle in the inspector's direction. "Stand!" he commanded.
"Okay, okay, be cool, all right?" O'Day stood slowly, keeping his hands well away from his body. Would they see his holster if he turned around? The Service people had spotted it the first time he'd come in, and if he fucked this one up, then Megan… there was no turning back. There just wasn't.
"You tell them, you tell them they give us car or I kill this one and all the rest!"
"Let me take my daughter with me, okay?"
"No!" Hurt said.
Unhurt said something in his native tongue, looking down at Hurt, his weapon still pointed at the floor while Hurt's was aimed at O'Day's chest. "Hey, whatcha got to lose?"
It was almost as though Unhurt said the same thing to his wounded friend, and with that he gave Katie Ryan a yank on the arm. She cried out loudly again as he walked across the room, pushing her ahead of him, blocking Hurt's field of view as he did so. It had taken twenty minutes to achieve. Now he had one second to see if it would work.
The drill was the same for O'Day as it had been for Don' Russell. His right hand raced back, whipped inside the jacket, and pulled the pistol out, as he dropped to one knee. The moment Unhurt's body cleared the target, the Smith 1076 loosed two perfect rounds, both of the stainless-steel cases flying in the air, as Hurt became Dead. Unhurt's eyes went wide in surprise, as the children's screams erupted again.
"DROP IT, " O'Day bellowed at him.
Unhurt's first reaction was to yank again at Katie Ryan's arm, and at the same time the gun started to move up, as though it were a pistol, but the AK was far too heavy to be used that way. O'Day wanted him alive, but there wasn't the time for chances. His right index finger pushed back on the trigger, then pushed again. The body fell straight down, behind it a red shadow on the white walls of Giant Steps.
Inspector Patrick O'Day jumped across the room, kicking one, then the other rifle free of their dead owners' hands. He gave each body a careful look, and for all the years of practice and instruction he'd given and taken, it still came as a surprise that it all had worked. Only then did his heart start beating again, or so it seemed, as a vacuum filled his chest. His body slumped down for a moment. Then he tensed his muscles and knelt beside the body of Katie Ryan, SANDBOX to the Secret Service, and a thing to the people he'd just killed.
"You okay, honey?" he asked. She didn't answer. She was holding her arm and sobbing, but there was no blood on her. "Come on," he said gently, wrapping his arms around a daughter who now would forever be partly his. Next he picked up his Megan and walked to the door.
"THERE'S SHOOTING IN the building!" a voice said on the desk-mounted speaker. Ryan just froze. The rest of the people in the Sit Room cringed.
"Sounded like a pistol. Do they have pistols?" another voice asked on the same radio circuit.
"Holy shit, look there!"
"Who's that?"
"COMING OUT!" A voice called. "Coming out!"
"HOLD FIRE!" Price called over the loudspeaker. Guns didn't move away from the door, but hands relaxed a fraction.
"Jesus!" Jeffers said, standing and racing to join him in the doorway.
"Both subjects dead, Mrs. Daggett, too," O'Day said. "All clear, Norm. All clear."
"Let me—"
"No!" Katie Ryan screamed.
He had to get out of the way. Pat looked down to see the blood-soaked clothing of three agents of his rival agency. There were at least ten rounds by Don Russell's body, and an empty magazine. Beyond were four dead criminals. Two, he saw, walking to the perimeter, head shots. He stopped by his pickup. His knees were a little weak now, and he set the kids down, sitting himself on the bumper. A female agent came up. Pat took the Smith from his belt and handed it over without really looking.
"You hurt?" It was Andrea Price.
He shook his head; it took him a moment to speak again. "I might start shaking in a minute." The agent looked at his two little girls. A state trooper scooped Katie Ryan up, but Megan refused to leave his side. That was when he hugged his daughter to his chest, and the tears began for both of them.
"SANDBOX is safe!" he heard Price say. "SANDBOX is safe and unhurt!"
Price looked around. Backup Service agents hadn't arrived yet, and most of the law-enforcement personnel on the scene were troopers of the Maryland State Police in their starched khaki shirts. Ten of them formed a ring around SANDBOX, guarding her like a pride of lions.
Jeffers rejoined them. O'Day had never fully appreciated the way time changed in such moments as this. When he looked up, the children were being let out the side door. Paramedics were flooding the area, going to the children first. "Here," the black agent said, handing over a handkerchief.
"Thanks, Norm." O'Day wiped his eyes, blew his nose, and stood. "Sorry about that, guys."
"It's okay, Pat, you did—"
"Better if I'd've taken the last one alive, but couldn't… couldn't take the chance." He was able to stand now, as he held Megan by the hand. "Oh, damn," he added.
"I think we should get you out of here," Andrea observed. "We can do the interviews in a better place than this."
"Thirsty," O'Day said next. He shook his head again. "Never expected this, Andrea. Kids around. Not supposed to be this way, is it?" Why was he babbling? the inspector asked himself.
"Come on, Pat. You did just fine."
"Wait a minute." The FBI inspector rubbed his face with two large hands, took a deep breath, and looked around the crime scene. Christ, what a mess. Three dead just this side of the playground. That would be Jeffers, he thought, with his M-16. Not bad. But there was one other thing he had to do. By each of the rented cars was a body,
each a head shot. Another one, one round in the chest, and one in the head, it looked like. The fourth, he wasn't sure who'd gotten him. Probably one of the girls. Ballistics tests would determine which one, he knew. O'Day walked back toward the front door, to the body of Special Agent Donald Russell. There he turned, looking back at the parking lot. He'd seen his share of crime scenes. He knew the signs, knew how to figure things out. No warning, not a damned bit, maybe a second, no more than that, and he'd stood his ground against six armed subjects and gotten three of them. Inspector Patrick O'Day knelt beside the body. He removed the Sig pistol from Russell's hand, gave it to Price, then took the hand in his own for what seemed a long time.
"See y'around, champ," O'Day whispered, letting go after a few seconds. It was time to leave.
43 RETREAT
THE NEAREST CONVEnient place to land a Marine helicopter was the Naval Academy, and the hard part was finding available Secret Service personnel to ride with SANDBOX. Andrea Price, senior agent on the crime scene as well as Detail chief, had to stay at Giant Steps, so USSS personnel racing to Annapolis were diverted, met the state troopers at the Academy, and took custody of Katie. And so it happened that the first team of federal officers to arrive at the scene were FBI agents from the small Annapolis office, a satellite of the Baltimore Field Division. What orders they needed they took from Price, but for the moment their duties were straightforward, and quite a few more were on the way.
O'Day walked across the street to the house which had been Norm Jeffers' local command post, whose owner, a grandmother, overcame her shock to make coffee. A tape recorder was set up, and the FBI inspector ran through an uninterrupted narrative, really just a long ramble which was actually the best way to get fresh information. Later, they would walk him back through it, probing for additional facts. From where he was sitting, O'Day could see out the window. Ambulance crews were standing by to remove the bodies, but first, photographers had to record the event for posterity.
They couldn't know that Movie Star was still looking down, along with what was now a crowd of several hundred, students and teachers from the community college plus others who'd guessed the nature of the event and wanted to watch. Movie Star had already seen enough, however, and he made his way to his car, picking his way across the parking lot, and then drove north on Ritchie Highway.
"Hey, I gave him a chance. I told him to drop his weapon," O'Day said. "I yelled so loud I'm surprised you didn't hear it outside, Price. But the gun started moving, and I wasn't in a mood to take chances, you know?" His hands were steady now. The immediate shock period was over. Others would come later.
"Any idea who they were?" Price asked, after he'd gone through it the first time.
"They were talking in some language, but I don't know what one. Wasn't German or Russian—aside from that, I don't know. Foreign languages sound like foreign languages. I couldn't recognize any words or phrases. Their English was pretty good, accented, but again, not sure what the accent was. Physical appearance, Mediterranean. Maybe from the Middle East. Maybe from some other place. Absolutely ruthless. He shot Mrs. Daggett down, not a blink, no emotion—no, that's wrong. He was pissed, very pumped up. No hesitation at all. Boom, she's down. Nothing I could have done," the inspector went on. "The other one had his gun on me, and it happened so fast, I didn't really see that happening so fast."
"Pat." Andrea took his hand. "You did great."
THE HELICOPTER LANDED on the White House pad, just south of the ground-floor entrance. Again a ring of agents with weapons was in evidence, as Ryan ran to the aircraft while the rotor was still turning, and nobody tried to stop him. A Marine crewman in a green flight suit pulled the door open and stepped out, which allowed the agents on the helicopter to carry SANDBOX off and hand her off to her father.
Jack cradled her like the baby she no longer was but always would be in his mind, and walked up the slope to the house, where the rest of his family was waiting under cover. News cameras recorded the event, though no reporter got within fifty yards of POTUS. The Secret Service members of the Detail were in a mood to kill; for the first time in the memory of the White House press corps, they looked overly dangerous.
"Mommy!" Katie twisted in her father's arms, reaching for her mother, who took her away from Jack at once. Sally and Little Jack closed in on the pair, leaving their father standing alone. That didn't last for long.
"How you doing?" Arnie van Damm asked quietly.
"Better now, I guess." His face was still ashen, his body limp but still able to stand. "Do we know any more?"
"Look, first thing, how about we get all of you out of here? Up to Camp David. You can calm down there. Security is airtight. It's a good place to relax."
Ryan thought about that. The family hadn't been up there yet, and he'd only been there twice, most recently on a dreadful January day several years before. "Arnie, we don't have clothes or—"
"We can take care of that," the chief of staff assured him.
The President nodded. "Get it set up. Fast," he added. While Cathy took the kids upstairs, Jack headed back out and over to the West Wing. Two minutes later, he was back in the Situation Room. The mood was better there. The initial shock and fear were gone, replaced with a quiet determination.
"Okay," Ryan said quietly. "What do we know?"
"Is that you, Mr. President?" It was Dan Murray on the table-mounted speakerphone.
"Talk to me, Dan," SWORDSMAN commanded.
"We had a guy inside, one of mine. You know him. Pat O'Day, one of my roving inspectors. His daughter— Megan, I think—goes there, too. He got the drop on the subjects and blew 'em both away. The Secret Service people killed the rest—the total count is nine, two by Pat and the rest by Andrea's people. There are five Service agents dead, plus Mrs. Daggett. No children were wounded, thank God. Price is interviewing Pat right now. I have about ten agents on the scene to assist with the investigation, with a lot of Service people on the way there, too."
"Who runs the investigation?" POTUS asked.
"Two statutes on this one. An attack on you or any member of your family is under the purview of the Secret Service. Terrorism is our bailiwick. I'd give the Service lead on this one, and we'll provide all possible assistance," Murray promised. "No pissin' contest on this one, my word on it. I've already called Justice. Martin will assign us a senior attorney to coordinate the criminal investigation. Jack?" the FBI Director added.
"What, Dan?"
"Get your family put back together. We know how to do this. I know you're the President, but for the next day or two, just be a guy, okay?"
"Good advice, Jack," Admiral Jackson observed.
"Jeff?" Ryan said to Agent Raman. All his friends were saying the same thing. They were probably right.
"Yes, sir?"
"Let's get us the hell out of town."
"Yes, Mr. President." Raman left the room.
"Robby, how about you and Sissy fly up, too. I'll have a helo waiting for you here."
"Anything you say, pal."
"Okay, Dan," Ryan told the speakerphone. "We're going to Camp David. Keep me informed."
"Will do," the FBI Director promised.
THEY HEARD IT on the radio. Brown and Holbrook were heading north on US Route 287 to join Interstate 90-East. The cement truck drove like a pig, even with its multirange gearbox, top-heavy, slow to accelerate, and almost as slow to brake. Maybe the interstate would be better driving, they hoped. But it did have a decent radio.
"Damn," Brown said, adjusting the dial.
"Kids." Holbrook shook his head. "We have to make sure no kids are around, Ernie."
"I think we can handle that, Pete, assuming we can horse this rig all the way there." "What do you figure?" A grunt. "Five days."
DARYAEI TOOK IT well, Badrayn saw, especially with the news that all of them were dead. "Forgive me for saying so, but I did warn you that—"
"I know. I remember," Mahmoud Haji acknowledged. "The success of this mission was n
ever really necessary, so long as the security arrangements were properly looked after." With that, the cleric looked closely at his guest. "They all had false travel documents. None had a criminal file anywhere in the world, so far as I know. None had anything to connect him with your country. Had one been taken alive, there was a chance, and I warned you about that, but it appears that none were."
The Ayatollah nodded, and spoke their epitaph: "Yes, they were faithful."
Faithful to what? Badrayn asked himself. Overtly religious political leaders weren't exactly uncommon in this part of the world, but it was tiresome to hear. Now, supposedly, all nine of them were in Paradise. He wondered if Daryaei actually believed that. He probably did; he was probably so sure that he believed that he could speak with God's own voice, or at least had told himself so often that he thought he did. One could do that to himself, Ali knew, just keep repeating any idea enough, and however it had first entered one's mind—for political advantage, personal revenge, greed, any of the baser motivations—after enough repetitions it became an article of faith, as pure in purpose as the words of the Prophet himself. Daryaei was seventy-two, Badrayn reminded himself, a long life of self-denial, focused on something outside himself, continuing on a journey that had begun in his youth with shining purpose toward a holy goal. He was a long way from the beginning now, and very close to the end. Now the goal could be seen so clearly that the purpose itself could be forgotten, couldn't it? That was the trap for all such men. At least he knew better, Badrayn told himself. For him it was just business, devoid of illusions and devoid of hypocrisy.
"And the rest?" Daryaei asked, after a prayer for their souls.