The left doors opened up with holes as bullets tore through toward the back of the Jeep.
He raised up and shot once toward the left front. That was answered by a hail of bullets tearing through both sides of the Jeep.
“I’m hit,” he called out. “I’m coming out.”
Both hands appeared in the left side window space. He tossed the gun. Then put both palms out.
“Come out.”
“Which side?”
“Doesn’t matter. You choose.”
He sat up, holding his left triceps, blood seeping through the hand.
He reached down with his weakened left hand, opened the Jeep door, and stepped out. Leaning with his back against the Jeep.
He looked toward the hut and saw his two dead comrades lying in the dirt.
He saw a young woman with an Uzi walking toward him.
“Who are you?”
“Martha Washington.”
“Not your name. Who are you people? What do you want?”
“It doesn’t matter to you anymore.”
And she shot him in the chest. Walked over and put a bullet in his head.
Then she and Samms shot each of the already dead militiamen in the head, walked over to the door of the Quonset hut, put their infrared goggles on over their masks, and knocked loudly.
“Cheese, Tom,” Samms yelled into the door. “You done? Do you need us? Can we come in?”
“Yes,” Tom said. “Come in.”
As they entered, they saw Cheese and Tom holding their Uzis on a terrified militiaman.
Under their direction, he was walking away from the computer room.
“Anybody else?” Samms asked.
“No,” Cheese said. “This is the last one. He just surrendered.”
“Do we need anything from him?”
“No. I was just about to finish the job, but you interrupted.”
“Let’s get out of here.”
Cheese gunned the last militiaman down without another word.
Tom put kill shots into twelve of the heads on the ground. Cheese the other three.
They had spent a total of four long minutes in the hut.
Samms tossed three of her cards into the smoke.
Cheese grabbed a book off of the table to the left of the door, jerked it free of its chain.
“That’s it,” Cheese said. “Let’s go.”
They ran out the door, jogged up the hill, and jumped into the car, leaving the Uzis and extra ammunition behind.
Samms careened over the back roads south and east to I-25, KD Lang’s “Hallelujah” blaring through the speakers.
“Can you turn that thing off, or at least down?” May said, knowing the answer was no.
“Isn’t that Jeff Buckley’s song?” Cheese asked.
“Seriously,” Samms said. “You don’t know who wrote this song?”
“Leonard Cohen,” Tom said to Cheese.
“No way. It was Jeff Buckley.”
Samms looked at him in disgust in the rearview window, stuffing two of the pieces of chocolate she had left in the cup holder into her mouth.
“Best drop it, Cheese,” Tom said. “Such ignorance could get you left on the side of the road.”
Cheese opened his mouth. Then closed it. “Can you kick this thing any faster than eighty?” he asked instead.
“You’re welcome to drive,” she replied. “But getting pulled over by a trooper today could turn this into a lifetime trip for each of us. Don’t try to cover up your ignorance with excessive bravado.”
Before Cheese could think of anything to say to that, she stopped the car long enough, five seconds, to let Tom get out wordlessly at the entrance to the freeway.
He jumped into his waiting car and headed north.
Samms then drove the three of them south for thirty-five minutes to the jet sitting in the private airport in Pueblo where she had left it, the soundtrack to the movie “Drive” now drowning out all road noise with no criticism from her two colleagues.
“Five minutes early,” May said. “Impressive.”
Cheese flew them to Los Alamos, switched planes, and Samms flew them to Albuquerque, where she and Cheese had commercial reservations to separate destinations.
They would each be attending scheduled meetings less than seven hours after the attack.
May stayed behind to clean up.
Over the next several weeks, investigators would search vainly for a Samuel Twain and an Alicia Clemens, the two pilots identified in the flight plans and the leasing agreements.
Chapter 9
“What have we got?” Colonel Edwards asked Moose as the Rogues Task Force settled in for an emergency meeting the morning after the attack in Colorado Springs.
“Publically?” Moose asked. “What we have is twenty-two dead militiamen in a Quonset hut, registered to something called the Friends of Freedom, outside of Colorado Springs. Actually, seven were killed outside the hut, leaving law enforcement with the mystery of why the others sat meekly waiting to be killed inside the hut.
“The local and state police are calling it a terrorist attack by a rival militia group. But no group has taken public credit for the assassinations. Roughly two hours after the murders, the cops, along with the New Mexico and Kansas police, sealed off all roads for a hundred fifty miles surrounding the area. They have turned the matter over to the FBI, NSA, and DHS who, as you each certainly know, have had no comment. CNN and Fox are going crazy for details.”
“Airports?” Colonel Edwards asked.
“Homeland Security is looking into that. There are more than ten that could have been used in the relevant time period.”
“Ironically, I was in Colorado Springs yesterday morning.”
“We know that, Tom. Wondered about it. Let’s get to that interesting coincidence later, okay?”
“Sure.”
“And privately?” Linda asked. “What do we know that the public doesn’t?”
“This is the ultimate shit-kicker hitting the fan. It’s definitely our Rogues…”
“That’s what we’re officially calling them now?” Tom asked.
“Internally anyway. It’s definitely our vigilantes. Samms left three cards. All with the name Bobbi Samms on the front, and she wrote VCOAG in all caps on the back.”
Rogues, Samms said to herself. I guess they could be calling us worse. We may have to work on that.
“We have any idea what VCOAG means?” Nancy asked.
“No. Any of you?”
“Do we even know what ‘Samms’ means?” Tom asked. “It’s not a real name. What does it stand for? Is she trying to tell us something?”
“Why assume Samms is a woman?” Linda asked.
“None of us think a man would choose a woman’s spelling of ‘Bobbi’,” Moose said.
“Maybe,” Nancy said.
All three shook their heads. Frowning in thought.
“The now-dead militiamen were the militia soldiers that the various intelligence agencies had been watching for months. The ones planning the cyber terrorism attacks to shut down the urban power grids.”
“Wait,” Nancy said. “Could VC stand for ‘Vigilance Committee’? I think a lot of American vigilantes back in the nineteenth century used to call themselves Vigilance Committees.”
“What would ‘OAG’ be then?” Tom asked.
“Office of Adjutant General?” Linda said. “Maybe Samms is signaling us that they’re U.S. Army. That they’re working under cover of the Adjutant General?”
“I’d certainly know,” Tom said. “If the U.S. Army is operating a covert anti-terrorist group in the domestic United States, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and my boss, the JSOC Commander, would certainly know. Domestic counter-terrorism is my responsibility. It would be preposterous for it to be housed in the Adjutant General’s area. Preposterous. And even so, I would know.”
“And,” Linda said, “you, of course would tell us everything you knew.”
&nb
sp; He nodded. “Almost everything, Linda.”
“Before we leave this not uninteresting topic,” she said, “that brings up why your title is ‘head of the JSOC Operational Studies Group’. We know your responsibilities are analogous to ours,” she gestured toward Nancy. ”Why aren’t you in charge of ‘JSOTF, U.S. Domestic’ or ‘North America’? Just like all your counterpart colleagues are in charge of ‘JSOTF, Philippines’ or ‘Iraq’ or ‘Spain’? Their titles tell us who they are.”
“That’s pretty boring, Linda. We have time for this, Moose?” Got a nod to continue. “My title is partly historic. As I’m sure you all know, the 1878 Posse Comitates made it illegal for the military to work with U.S. local law enforcement. President Clinton corrected this oversight in nineteen ninety-four with his directive. PDD twenty-five, I think. Since then, as domestic terrorism has increased, JSOC has nudged itself more and more into working with the entire domestic counter-terrorism effort,” his turn to gesture to Nancy. “Nobody has seen fit since ninety-four to rub anybody’s nose in it, so all domestic SOCOM activities were folded into my predecessors’ responsibilities. Now mine. With respect to the title, unlike all CIA and FBI job titles, some of ours aren’t fully transparent or descriptive.”
“Okay, Linda?” Moose asked.
“Sure. Interesting, though.”
“Tell you what,” Tom said. “I’ll raise this VCOAG thing up to my Commander and the Chairman and get back to you immediately if the Adjutant General or any of his supply people are Samms. You’ll be the second group to know of my resignation.”
“Can we get back to the dead militiamen in Colorado Springs planning to shut the United States down under all our watches?” Moose said.
“How could this have been so badly missed by all the agencies?” Linda asked. “We’ve known since way back in two thousand fourteen that hackers have been targeting the electric grids. The head of NSA told the House Intelligence Committee about it back then.”
“Those were the Chinese and the Russians,” Moose said. “Everybody felt they’d buttoned that up. These guys are domestic.”
“And so they slip through because they program in English?” Nancy asked.
Moose ignored her. “The four Uzis used in the murders and the leftover ammunition were left on the floor. All the militias’ computers were left on their desks still turned on. We’re investigating the contents. We had some of the passwords. So now we know they were targeting eleven U.S. cities, starting tomorrow.”
“Eleven?” Linda asked. “I thought you all had them at seven with no known start date and no real risk.”
“We were apparently misinformed.”
“But not the Rogues,” Tom said.
“No, not the Rogues. They were ahead of us. We don’t know that all eleven of the grid targeters are among the twenty-two dead yet, and we have no idea why the rest of them were killed.”
“Does it look like the Rogues’ first mistake? Collateral damage?”
“No. At first blush, it looks like all twenty-two are militia. We’re still checking through materials that we have on the group, but so far there appear to be thirty-one calling themselves members. The nine members who weren’t there survived, and are being questioned today. We’ll see what, if anything, they have to add.”
“And the Uzis, Nancy?” Linda asked.
“Preliminarily, three of them were purchased by three of the now-dead militia members we had been monitoring under some of their aliases,” she replied.
“So the Rogues killed them with their own weapons?”
“So it would seem,” Nancy said. “Apparently our Rogues are good. Perhaps we should look for a new name for them.”
“Were we about to arrest any of their targets, Moose?” Linda asked.
“Nancy?”
“No. We had no idea this was imminent.”
“So, without the Rogues,” Tom said, “several major cities would be shut down starting tomorrow?”
“Apparently. That was already pointed out unflatteringly to us by the President during our briefing last night.”
“Then…” Nancy started but didn’t finish.
“Then, what?” Moose said. “Then ‘good for them’? No matter what our personal thoughts on these matters, it’s not yet a capital crime in this country to be thinking about a cyber-attack.”
“We can debate whether or not it should be,” Tom said.
“The Fourth Amendment is a bit of a hindrance here, Colonel.”
“I know the law, Moose. Also the Fourteenth. Still, there’s no question that it’s our job to be enough on top of all this to be able to arrest them before the fact. We’re living in a world where your Justice Department may have to find ways to make reasonable searches and seizures. There is no escaping the fact that this was a massive intelligence failure.”
“So,” Linda said, “notwithstanding the subtleties of Constitutional Law, does anybody have any idea how the Rogues have superior Intel to every single intelligence agency in this government? How they do it? What they have that none of you, none of us, have?”
“The President said he and the DNI have discussed how to approach that question.”
“Without bringing in the NCSC?”
“Yes, for now,” Moose said. “There’s also no escaping the fact that, if the vigilantes are an inside job, the traitor or traitors are withholding evidence from the other agencies. Whichever one, or ones, of you knew this was coming and kept the information from being disseminated to the other agencies is a traitor.”
And there it was. Straight from the White House.
Silence hung over the room like a shroud.
“That brings us to the hard part,” Moose said. “Nancy, where were you yesterday morning? Linda, you? All three of you were away from the office yesterday morning and afternoon.”
Silence.
“Tom, we know you were in Colorado Springs at a meeting with the Northern Command. Linda and Nancy, we checked, and the timing made it also possible for each of you to be in Colorado Springs at the time of the attack, and be back here this morning.”
*
“And what did they each say?” the President asked Moose later that morning.
“They each had legitimate alibis. Nancy had a meeting the night before at Quantico. Spent the night there, checked out of her quarters in the morning, and stopped on the way to FBI headquarters to meet with several investigators. Linda was on a flight from Berlin. Colonel Edwards was actually in Colorado Springs. At a Northern Command meeting.”
“All verified by FBI surveillance?”
“Yes, sir. They all check out.”
“Any chance they could have slipped our surveillance?”
“Sure. It’s possible. Nancy would certainly be able to. And, in fact, there was no certain identification of Linda’s arrival at Dulles. She says she avoided Customs with a confirmed CIA escort. More importantly, Tom was out of the Northern Command conference room for half of the morning meeting. Three hours.”
“Where does he say he was?” the President asked.
“In his room.”
“Confirmed by FBI?”
“They said they never saw him leave or come back to his room in those three hours.”
“And, of course, the Rogues could have pulled off this operation even if their leader or one of their leaders wasn’t present.”
“Right.”
“Anything from them on what the hell VCOAG could mean?”
“Not really. Maybe something, though. Nancy pointed out the presence of Vigilance Committees in the U.S. two hundred years ago. Tom was pretty hot when they wondered if Samms was a covert arm of the Office of the Adjutant General.”
“Seems like a long shot.”
“Certainly. But Tom said he’d check with the JSOC Commander.”
“Hard to believe that the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff would allow such a thing without my knowledge.”
“Tom took it personally, too, sir.”
&
nbsp; The President laughed. “Run it along with other tracers. Let’s see what we find. Maybe Samms is just suggesting an alternative name for her than ‘Rogue’.”
“Will do. Are you and the Directors comfortable with the current level of surveillance?”
“For now. We see no reason to tighten it down. I think the Task Force will button this down fast enough without going to greater lengths. They’re each on notice.”
“Okay. One other thing. All three are pretty hot that whoever the inside person is didn’t alert either the FBI or local police or NSA or somebody on what they knew. You and I know that Samms did try to reach out to us, but none of them do. None of them have any sympathy for the dead militiamen, but they each are now angry at whoever is irresponsibly holding out on the security agencies.”
“Well, all but the insider, anyway. He or she is only pretending to be angry.”
“Or insiders.”
*
“Afternoon gentlemen.”
“Afternoon, Mr. President,” both the Directors of the FBI and NSA said.
“What do you two make of this Colorado Springs fiasco?”
“The FBI is there in force, sir.”
“What is there still to learn?”
“It’s clear there were four shooters. They left their Uzis on the floor for us to find. We don’t expect the rifles will lead us anywhere. Nancy is saying that the rifles were stolen from the victims and will just lead us back in a circle.”
“Probably why they left them.”
“No doubt. We don’t yet know much else, I’m afraid. The surviving militia members we’ve questioned are clueless as to the killers’ identities. No surprise to us.”
“And at NSA?”
“The computers are a treasure trove of how to cyber-attack various locations. The Rogues were very far ahead of us on this. Ahead of the Israelis, too I think. It’s amazing, frankly. They identify the eleven targets and dates. L.A., Houston, and Miami would have been first, then Philly.”
“And we had no inkling?”
“We,” he nodded to his counterpart, “and the FBI had eight of them under surveillance. We had detained six of them. But we thought there was nothing actionable for an arrest as of yet. We thought, wrongly as it turns out, that it was still in the theory rather than the operational stage.”
The Point Of A Gun: Thriller Page 5