Enemies Foreign And Domestic

by Matthew Bracken

  Wally Malvone, the boss!

  Malvone was being snatched; Bullard grasped this essential fact in an instant. This explained why he hadn’t heard the front driveway gate open—the attackers had come from the water!

  It all became clear: Hammet had been snatched, and then killed. Perhaps he didn’t die Monday night, right after he was taken from the landing field in Chesapeake. What had Hammet told his abductors before he died? Obviously, he had told them when and where to find Wally Malvone. All of the puzzle pieces fell into place in just a few seconds, while looking out through the steps into the blackness.

  Malvone would also talk. He loved himself too much; he was too prideful to remain silent. And, among other things, Wally Malvone would undoubtedly mention who had placed the bomb under Mark Denton’s Jeep in Virginia Beach.

  That simply couldn’t be allowed to happen. Bullard eased the barrel of his M-4 out between the steps. A bright red pinpoint hovered inside the sight’s tube. He put the red dot on the white shirt, and flipped the selector switch straight up to “semi” to take aimed shots. This version of the M-4 was also able to fire in three round bursts, but Bullard was a professional, and he knew better than to waste his single magazine of thirty shots spraying them around the yard. Before he could fire, Malvone’s white shirt and the other moving shadows temporarily passed out of his vision behind some small trees.

  ****

  Ranya was standing on the rusty pipe which ran along the eroded bank a yard above the beach, watching the backyard for the approach of her team. The long fat suppressor of her MAC-10 lay over the crest of the berm; its wire stock was fully extended against her shoulder. The boxy gun was cocked and ready to fire, if needed. She heard “Spooky” tell “Night Watchman” that they were coming out. Without a doubt Tony was going to need substantial help to get down the bank without further damaging his leg, or loosening the vital tourniquet. She was only a few yards from the park bench where Tony had shot the sentry, but there was no sign of his body.

  She heard them before she saw them, and then she saw Malvone’s white shirt coming first, at the head of their line. When they were about forty feet away, she said, “Right here, by the bench,” into her radio.

  When they were closer, she could see them clearly, silhouetted above her against the stars. Brad was walking heavily, leaning over with Tony on his back, straining to keep his balance. The former Marine had to be in excruciating pain from the leg wound, but he didn’t make a sound.

  Malvone said, “Take it easy, here. Don’t strangle me going over the edge.” Ranya could see the thin line of white cord around his neck, leading to Carson’s left hand.

  Carson replied, “Chill out, Wally. Brad, sit Tony down on the bench for now. Then, we'll do a two-man side-carry and get him to the edge, and then you hop down and get him from the bottom. All right?”

  Brad teetered backwards to the bench and began to squat down, when a red light flashed past them with a snap. Another red light followed, and another, some passing them and skipping off the water, some stopping short. Malvone staggered and toppled, and fell over the side of the bank. Carson couldn’t get the parachute cord’s loop off of his wrist in time and was jerked over with him; Ranya glanced over for a moment as the two went tumbling past her down to the rocky beach.

  She heard Tony grunt aloud and Brad shouted something. When she looked back they were both lying in a heap on the ground in front of the bench, just a few yards from her. Red tracers continued to crack past and smack into the dirt all around them.

  She emptied her magazine at the source of the red tracers, high on the left side of the house. She switched to the fresh mag taped along the first, and emptied it as well in a ripping three-second thirty-shot burst, holding it down with the long suppressor, the gun already hot in her hands. Then she climbed back up onto the lawn. Brad and Tony were both down on the ground; she heard Brad groaning. She grabbed his collar with both hands and began dragging him toward safety as the red tracers continued to fly at them, often ricocheting and spinning off at crazy angles.

  ****

  Barney Wheeler was moving through the inside of the woods, back to the creek, after giving Carson and the others a short head start. He was holding his rifle shouldered, using its sight as a night vision monocular to see the way ahead of him.

  He left too soon! When he heard the bullets cracking past, and saw the red tracers in his peripheral vision, he couldn’t immediately see their origin. First, he had to move back to the edge of the trees. Once there, he could see the source of the firing, from the top of the stairs on the side of the house. In another second he was returning fire. In the fuzzy glow of his night sight, the tracer bullets looked like green shooting stars flying away from the steps.

  If he’d been doing his job, he would have seen the shooter getting into position, and he would have killed him before he was able to fire his first shot.

  There was no time for self-recriminations, only for returning fire and stopping the sniper from firing. He put his glowing crosshairs on the top step and began to rapid-fire single shots. Still more tracers flew away from the sniper, cracking across the backyard.

  ****

  Phil Carson landed on top of Malvone on the rocky beach, and he knew instinctively that his prisoner was already dead. His goggles had come off during the plunge. He cut himself loose from the tether which joined them, and swung Hammet’s old 10mm MP-5 off his back. It was no time for the pip-squeak 9mm MP-5SD. He scrambled up onto the pipe; Ranya was already over the top, trying to drag Brad to safety.

  The weapon had a glowing front sight. He put it on the source of the red tracers, flipped the selector, and began sending back three shot bursts. The red tracers ended abruptly, and Carson switched to the fresh magazine which was snapped on parallel to the first. Then, he climbed back up onto the grass and helped Ranya to pull Tony and Brad back to the edge. Once down on the beach and under the protection of the bank, they would be out of further danger from the house.

  “How’s it going, Tony?” asked Carson, crouching over him and turning him onto his back. Tony didn’t answer; his head merely flopped to the side. Carson felt for a pulse on his neck to confirm what he already knew. “Brad, what happened? Did Tony get hit?”

  “Yeah, I think so. I think I got hit, too. My side really burns.”

  Ranya was beside him then, holding his face. “You’re okay, the boat’s right here; we’re getting in the boat now. Let’s go, we’ve got to get down now. Help us Brad, sit up if you can, sit up,” she pleaded, trying to pull him up.

  Carson helped her to lift him to a sitting position. “I can make it, I think,” he said. He turned onto his side to crawl, made it to the edge and collapsed onto his stomach. Carson went over the bank, found the pipe with his feet and grabbed Brad’s legs to guide him down. Ranya slid down on his other side. They both supported him and walked him the few steps through the water to the boat, and lowered him onto his back on its plywood deck.

  Then, Wheeler was there, pulling Tony’s legs over the edge of the bank. Carson helped him to pull Tony’s limp body down, and they laid him beside Brad in the bottom of the boat. Ranya was sitting next to Brad, holding his face and comforting him. Carson collected the submachine guns, night goggles and loose gear from the rocky beach and dropped them into the boat.

  Wheeler said, “Help me with Malvone.”

  “We don’t need him anymore—he’s dead,” Carson replied.

  “Let’s take him anyway. I’ve got an idea.” They dumped Malvone’s corpse across the bow, his arms and legs dangling in the water. The two old veterans then pushed and pulled the Zodiac out into thigh-deep water and climbed aboard, sitting on the tubes back by the transom, panting deeply from the exertion. Wheeler had the engine down and running in seconds, and then they were roaring across the still water on a fast plane, leaving Tanaccaway Creek in their wake.

  By then, Carson had completely forgotten his devil’s brew, which was rapidly coming to a boil in the mi
crowave. They were around the point and heading south along the Maryland shore of the Potomac when the coffee pot exploded, sending burning cushions and napalm-like flaming jelly globs across the basement of Malvone’s house.

  ****

  Anna Hobart had turned off her reading light and set her book on the bedside table. Bevan was snoring lightly on the other side of the bed. She yawned, and squirmed into a comfortable position, fluffing and rearranging her pillow and the comforter.

  That’s when she heard the firecrackers, or something like firecrackers, coming from Walter Malvone’s place. Well, my God! That was just about enough! Firecrackers, like loutish schoolboys, and at this hour! Simply because they were high-and-mighty federal agents, they thought they had the right to run roughshod over the lives of mere lesser mortals. Well, we shall see about that!

  Anna picked up the telephone from her nightstand, and scrolled through the memory for the police non-emergency number, but then she reconsidered. A report of firecrackers wasn’t going to get their attention. And how did she know they were only firecrackers anyway? They could be gunshots, for all she knew, from some kind of secret agent machine gun.

  She jabbed 911, and waited until the operator answered. “I’d like to report gunshots, lots of them! It sounds like a war! No, that’s my own address. It’s across the street, at 48 King George Lane.” Bevan continued snoring, oblivious, while she remained on “hold.”

  Anna Hobart was standing by her window while she waited for the operator, looking in the direction of Malvone’s place. Of course, from upstairs, all she could see was the blackness of the tall fir trees along his side of the road, lit by the single street light almost around the curve.

  That’s when she noticed the orange glow.

  “Operator…”

  ****

  They tied the Zodiac alongside the Molly M for the transfers; concealing it on the landward side of her white hull. Carson climbed over to the cockpit first; Captain Sam already had the diesel engine running. He leaned back over the gunnel into the inflatable to help, pulling Brad and saying, “Come on, you can do it; you’re going to be okay.”

  With Ranya’s assistance, Brad struggled to sit up again, and they helped him to crawl up onto the Molly’s gunnel, resting for a moment lying along its length. Ranya climbed over him onto the Molly, and they both helped him onto the top of the engine cover, where he was placed gently on his back. Carson reached back over into the Zodiac and, working with Wheeler, they dragged and pushed Tony’s body over the gunnel. Carson left him lying on his back in the narrow deck space between the engine box and the side of the Molly.

  Wheeler remained in the inflatable and dropped most of the weapons and loose gear over onto the Molly, leaving only Hammet’s 10mm MP-5, the larger full-stock weapon Tony had been carrying tonight, the weapon Hammet had used to kill Joe Bardiwell.

  “Come on Barney,” said Carson, “Let’s go! Tie it off on the stern cleat—we’ve got to get out of here!” They were going to tow the Zodiac out of the area now because of their rush. They only had to switch the bow line to the back of the Molly for towing instead of removing the engine and bringing the Zodiac aboard the Molly, which was the original plan.

  Wheeler scrambled forward and pulled Malvone’s body down from across the inflatable’s front tube into the center of the boat, then he untied the bow line from the Molly’s amidships cleat. Carson reached to take the line from him, but Wheeler pulled it back, freeing the rubber boat from the larger vessel.

  “What are you doing?” asked Carson, puzzled, leaning out over the gunnel with his arm outstretched.

  “I’m going to buy you some time,” Wheeler called back. Twisting the throttle, he maxxed the engine RPMs. With only his weight and that of Malvone’s body on board, the rubber boat leaped up onto plane. It disappeared up the Potomac at almost thirty miles an hour, leaving only its white V-shaped wake faintly visible in the starlight.

  Carson climbed around the pilothouse onto the slanting forward deck, pulled out his sheath knife and slashed through the Molly M’s thick nylon anchor line. Far to the north, he saw a helicopter coming down the Potomac, flying low, its spotlight sweeping the river ahead of it.

  ****

  Barney Wheeler kept the throttle twisted wide open, and the greatly lightened Zodiac screamed straight up the river, pushed by the 35-horsepower Evinrude. He passed the mouth of Tanaccaway Creek and saw the fire. Malvone’s house was burning; he saw the orange flames leaping skyward above the trees. So, Carson had decided to burn the place…that was one of their contingency plans. Fingerprints, fibers and DNA left behind in the house wouldn’t matter now but, on the other hand, any evidence tying Malvone to the stadium was also going up in flame and ash.

  He saw the searchlight of the helicopter probing ahead, coming down the river very low, maybe a mile away, and closing on him rapidly. He knew that his boat’s gleaming wake would point directly to the Zodiac like a giant white arrowhead on the water. With his left hand, he reached forward and grabbed the MP-5, and laid it across his knees. He ran his hand over its contours while he watched the helicopter approach; he found the selector switch above the trigger and turned it to fire full-auto bursts. Even though Tony had been assigned to carry Hammet’s 10mm MP-5 back at the halfway house, Carson had insisted that they each gain familiarity with all of their different weapons, “just in case.”

  Carson had been a diligent and thorough teacher, given his pupils and the short amount of time that he had to work with them. But Wheeler knew that in return, he had utterly failed him and the rest of the team. If he had only done his job, and kept the house under observation until the team was safely down on the beach, he would have seen the sniper before he opened fire. But he left his post too soon! Now, Tony was dead, Brad was shot, and their prisoner, Wally Malvone, would never talk. Why did they have to pay for his mistake? All of that death and misery was on his head. Every single tracer bullet fired at his friends was completely his fault, because he had left his assigned post too soon. It was his fault!

  He estimated the chopper was less than a thousand feet up. It was probably flying down the river responding to 911 calls of shots fired, and now a house on fire at the same address. Even with suppressors, the supersonic bullets from most of their weapons were almost as loud as .22’s, loud enough to wake up neighbors, loud enough to rate an immediate response from ABLE, air-borne law enforcement.

  The helicopter seemed to move faster and grow in size rapidly as it neared him until it was suddenly hovering almost directly overhead, and he was trapped in its brilliant night-sun beam. Before the pilot and observer could react to what they were seeing below them, Wheeler let go of the throttle and the boat dropped down from its planing speed. He immediately shouldered the MP-5 and aimed it straight up at the blinding light, and fired off the entire magazine in three shot full-auto bursts as fast as he could pull the trigger. One lucky shot found the bulls-eye and the night-sun exploded and went dark. The pilot had made a terrible error in approaching him so closely. With only eight-hundred feet of altitude separating them, Wheeler couldn’t miss the bulk of the helicopter. As rounds smacked through its fuselage, the pilot broke away, dropping his nose and veering off to the left to make an emergency landing.

  This was more than enough of a chance for Barney Wheeler. He knew other police helicopters and Coast Guard vessels would be closing in rapidly. Still partially blinded by the searchlight, he held his own small flashlight in his mouth, and used his folding knife to cut the flex-cuffs and parachute cord off of Malvone’s body. Then, he dragged the corpse up onto the side tube, looped the MP-5’s sling over his head and around his torso, and dumped it into the river. In seconds, Wally Malvone plunged through the black water beyond the reach of his light’s beam.

  Wheeler switched off his flashlight. The surface of the river again became invisible to him, a void. The Zodiac might as well have been floating through the blackness of outer space. He pushed the tiller away and turned the rubber boat i
n a slow circle, blinking and rubbing his eyes, until he could once again see the lights of the Virginia shore only a quarter mile away. He was still wearing his black daypack with his evasion kit and clothes inside, and he felt a new glimmer of hope: there was even yet a slim chance of getting away.

  ****

  Brad was lying on his back; Ranya was kneeling by the port side of the engine box holding him, her wet face pressed to his. Carson had stripped off Brad’s packs and pushed up his black warm-up jacket, working by flashlight to find his wound. There was only a trickle of blood, but his abdomen was swollen hard and tight. He found no wound on his chest or stomach. They turned him gently onto his side and saw the entry; it looked like he had been stabbed in the lower back with a broken pencil. Ranya sobbed at the sight and buried her face against him.

  The puncture wound was just below his ribs, halfway between his spine and his side. They had no way of knowing that the bullet had first passed through Tony’s body on its way into Brad’s, or that it had severed a sub-branch of his superior mesenteric artery, one of the network of vessels which supplied his small intestine with oxygenated blood.

  The wound was hardly bleeding…on the outside.

  Captain Sam was steering the Molly southwest down the Potomac at fifteen knots. She could do almost twenty wide open, but that would be too obvious. Dead-rise workboats didn’t push that hard on the Chesapeake.

  ****