The Running Mate (A Jack Houston St. Clair Thriller)

by Andrew Delaplaine

  Shahzad and his men moved away from the seawall and between two large estates. Two dogs barked, but they were not close.

  All these soldiers (mixed with agents) patrolling the seawalls would come flooding toward the southwest corner of the island the minute they heard the RPGs go off, exploding the Secret Service houses. Shahzad’s men would be ready to shoot them down as they approached Flagler Hall.

  They crossed over St. Clair Drive, the only road on the island, and moved onto the expansive golf course, heading toward the center of the island. Here they were out in the open, but there were no lights, nothing to give them away.

  All the security was directed outward, so within the island there was nothing to hinder their progress. It was a matter of only five minutes for them to cross the open fairways, sticking as close as they could to whatever trees they passed, before they entered the cluster of trees across the 16th Hole from the front doors to Flagler Hall.

  Here, they paused to collect themselves, let their adrenalin settle down (if that was possible, thought Shahzad), and observe what lay in store for them.

  Using their binoculars and night-vision goggles, they could see four agents milling around outside on the gravel driveway in front of Flagler Hall. Two of the agents carried Heckler & Koch MPs, high-powered submachine guns, one held a MAC-11 type machine pistol, and the fourth a FN P90 submachine gun.

  Shahzad wasn’t concerned with these guys. He knew his people would be able to take them out right away. His focus was directed to the rooftop. During the day, he’d observed as many as four and as few as two sharpshooters on the roof. Now, he could see the silhouettes of two. Whether there were two on this side of the house and two on the water side, he could not be sure.

  He toyed with the idea of using his two best snipers to take them out before they launched the general assault. If he could eliminate the threat from the roof before they even got started, their task would be easier. The commandos firing the RPGs into the two Secret Service houses a few yards from the main house would not need additional covering fire if the rooftop shooters were removed.

  And with the silencers, no one would hear his snipers’ gunshots.

  There was a bench on the far side of the 16th Hole green that provided a little cover. Shahzad decided to give his snipers a try. He quietly explained his plan. The snipers would “low-crawl” on their bellies over to the bench. Each would try to take out one of the sharpshooters on the roof at the same time. The whole team would low crawl behind them. The instant the snipers succeeded, or failed and drew fire, the moment the whole team would rise up behind them and launch the general assault.

  Everybody had his orders. All was in readiness.

  The two snipers crawled out across the No. 16 green with the whole team following them. They drew no attention from the agents in front of the house or from the roof.

  The two snipers carefully rested their weapons on the bench for stability and got their sites properly set. Shahzad was right behind them on his stomach, and he could hear the senior sniper communicate with his comrade. On his signal, they both fired at once. Shahzad barely heard two dull thuds come from the M24 sniper rifles.

  Instinctively, Shahzad’s eyes rose to the roof.

  He saw the sharpshooter on the left side of the house crumple, silently. No activity from the agents on the gravel driveway below. His eyes jumped to the right side just in time to catch the other sharpshooter fall.

  Shahzad breathed in a thankful sigh of relief and he closed his eyes momentarily. When he opened them and looked up, he saw the second sharpshooter’s body roll off the roof and drop with a loud thump on the gravel driveway right beside two Secret Service agents, who immediately ran over to his aid, thinking perhaps he had fallen.

  “Now!” Shahzad cried in a hoarse whisper, and his men jumped to their feet and dashed—with no screaming, no yells, not a single word—across the green toward the four agents. Three were bent over the fallen sharpshooter and one stood up and looked directly toward the onrushing commandos.

  Just as the fourth agent raised his Heckler & Koch MP5 to fire, he was cut down by a withering fusillade directed at him by Shahzad’s team. All four of the agents were killed before they could fire a single shot in response; more important, none of them had a chance to use their Motorola radios to alert the communications center or agents inside the house.

  And Shahzad was only thirty feet from the front doors to Flagler Hall.

  He heard explosions as his men fired the RPG-7s into the Secret Service houses over to the right, followed quickly by harrowing screams coming from within. So much for the Secret Service communications hub.

  But Shahzad’s job was in front of him, not over there.

  He knew the agents inside the house would have had no warning, so when his people broke through the doors, they caught the five agents sitting at a desk in the ground level enclosed courtyard totally unprepared. They were gunned down in seconds, the thud-thud-thud sound of the muffled weapons barely making a sound.

  A piece of cake, thought Shahzad.

  Shahzad and his team swept up the grand marble staircase and took out a Secret Service agent standing guard in front of the President’s suite. Far down the balcony was another agent standing in front of the Florida Suite where Shahzad expected to find Dumaine. Since the long open balcony overlooked the courtyard below, both these agents saw what happened just below them, and both had already pulled out their SIG Sauer P229 handguns and begun firing. But the HK MP5s Shahzad’s people carried effectively shut them down in a matter of seconds. Miraculously, no one on Shahzad’s team was even wounded.

  Shahzad took one unit down the long wide balcony toward the Dumaine suite while a second unit broke through the doors into the President’s suite.

  One of Shahzad’s commandos put his shoulder to Dumaine’s door and they all burst into the room, weapons at the ready.

  They drew up and paused.

  The lights were on. The bed was pulled back, a chocolate on the pillow.

  The room was empty.

  Shahzad took a deep breath.

  It’s never a piece of cake.

  “Shit!” he said, running out of the room back into the hall.

  Looking over the marble railing into the courtyard below, he saw the area secured by his people. He looked down the balcony running the length of the house toward the President’s suite where his No. 2, Gilani, came back onto the gallery, caught sight of Shahzad and shook his head:

  No.

  Dumaine wasn't in his room—and neither was the President—and it was 4:10 A.M.

  “Where the fuck are they?” Shahzad screamed.

  While Shahzad and Gilani had hit the two most important targets, other units had broken in the doors of all the guestrooms between the two on the corners and killed all the people inside, their screams and moans filling the air before being finished off by shots to the head.

  Shahzad ran down to Gilani.

  “Check all these rooms; make sure they aren’t in one of them. Maybe he’s with his two girls.”

  But Shahzad knew Dumaine wouldn’t be with his two girls at 4 A.M.

  Shahzad looked over the main room below. His men looked up at him, awaiting orders. The place was secure—for the moment. But it wouldn’t be for long. Flagler Hall was a huge house, with 55 rooms. The last thing he wanted to do was comb the house looking for Dumaine.

  And then Shahzad remembered seeing lights shining in Jack Houston St. Clair’s house as they made the wide turn out to avoid observation by the anchored patrol boat.

  Would it be possible Dumaine was socializing with the President’s son? At this late hour?

  His helicopters for the getaway would be landing within five to ten minutes.

  He had to act—now!

  * * *

  CHAPTER 96

  Agent Rodriguez was out on the deck with another agent, Billy, overlooking Jack’s docks where his three boats were moored. They were admiring his boats and talking abou
t the weather, looking at the whitecaps and feeling sorry for the poor souls in the Zodiac CB-OTH patrol boat anchored directly offshore from Jack’s docks, bobbing up and down on the water like a drunken cork.

  It wasn’t Rodriguez’s crack training as a Secret Service agent that alerted him to the fact there was something seriously wrong over at Flagler Hall.

  He and Billy turned like anybody else would have when the RPG explosions obliterating the Secret Service support bungalows made them look through the trees in time to catch the fireball rising from the houses.

  “Fuck!”

  Rodriguez absorbed the urgency and danger of the situation immediately, if for no other reason that he knew those buildings were the nerve center of the Secret Service presence on St. Clair Island, and instinctively, he knew in his now churning gut that this was not some kind of gas leak. And that there would be no Secret Service agents coming to back them up.

  He didn’t know why it was or what it was. He didn’t really care. He just knew it was BIG. He didn’t have any explanation, just the hard fact of the explosions themselves.

  To Billy:

  “Get them in the back of the house. Kill every light in the place, then come back.” Normally, he’d have assigned Billy to remain with the President and Dumaine, but he was shorthanded and might need Billy any moment.

  The agent disappeared inside, but not before Jack came running out.

  “Carlos, what the fuck?”

  “I don’t know. Something serious. The Secret Service houses just exploded. You gotta get back inside.”

  “How many people you got?” Jack asked as he watched through the trees as the fire consumed the Secret Service bungalows.

  “Four, including me.”

  “Five, including me. Six with Gargrave. And my Dad’s not a bad shot. That’s seven.”

  The two agents guarding the other side of the house came running around to Rodriguez for orders.

  “Jack, I can’t—”

  “Listen, Carlos, something’s terribly wrong over there. You hear any shots?”

  “No.”

  “Right,” said Jack, looking over his shoulder into his Game Room where he’d been playing poker with Dumaine, Harcourt and his dad. The lights went out just as he caught the glazed expressions of horror on all their faces. Gargrave stood behind them—he was just placing a silver tray with drinks on the bar. An alarmed frown darkened his brow. Then all went black.

  “That means we do have an accident of some kind, or someone’s using sound suppressors on their weapons.”

  Jack reached for a small flashlight he kept out on the deck, a Surefire E2D LED Defender type that threw off a brilliant, blinding light, but with a small, focused radius.

  Billy came back.

  “The President said he wants to see Jack.”

  “Okay. Billy,” Rodriguez said, “move up to that tree line and let me know what you see. John, you stay here with me.”

  “What’s your weaponry?” Jack demanded.

  “Just our handguns and John’s got an HK-MP5.”

  Jack didn’t like that—three handguns and one machine pistol.

  “Leave John out here. Come with me to my Gun Room and we’ll get some firepower, yeah?”

  Rodriguez nodded in the dark.

  “For sure—you got everything back there.”

  They came into the Game Room and Jack turned on his E2D, careful to point its intense beam to the ceiling to give out some ambient light.

  “Dad, it’s something serious. The Secret Service houses just blew up.”

  “It’s not an accident, Mr. President,” said Rodriguez.

  “Let’s get some weapons, Jack,” said the President. “Come with us, Bill. You ever use a weapon?”

  Dumaine just shook his head, horrified by everything he was hearing.

  “No, but Tim has.”

  Gargrave had already preceded them, leading the way with an identical E2D flashlight. They raced down a long corridor past two of the bedrooms, including Jack’s room to which Francesca had retired hours earlier, right after the President had kicked ass with a straight flush, pushing the game further into the wee hours than she was willing to follow it. Now, as they came running back, she rushed out into the hallway in a thin white cotton nightgown.

  “Jack, what’s—?”

  “I’ll be right back. We’ve got trouble outside. I’ll explain. Stay here till we get back.”

  Jack knew Francesca could handle a gun, an expertise learned from many hours in the hunting fields in the forests around her father’s villa outside Florence.

  Following his dad, Dumaine, Harcourt and Gargrave, Jack went into the Gun Room where Gargrave was already unloading some heavy-duty weaponry.

  “Gargrave, I think the P90s are what we need here,” said Jack.

  “Yes, sir. I agree. They’re small and we have several of them.”

  Gargrave passed out half a dozen FN P90s, very small but highly effective personal defense weapons made by FN Herstal in Belgium. It had a top-mounted magazine. People who weren’t used to such weapons would find it easier to use when they had to insert a replacement clip.

  “How could they get close enough to bomb those houses, Agent Rodriguez?” asked Dumaine.

  Gargrave actually laughed.

  “That was an RPG, sir,” said Agent Rodriguez.

  “A what?”

  “Rocket propelled grenade. RPGs, no question.”

  “We’ve got one of those, Mr. St. Clair,” said Gargrave. “It’s the RPG-7D3.”

  “That’s right,” said Jack. He turned to Dumaine. “It’s used by the Russians. We’ve been practicing with it out in the ’Glades. Better haul it out, Gargrave. If they used it against the Secret Service, they’ll use it against us if they find us here, blow this place up.”

  “And you just painted the Bahama shutters,” said his dad with a gallows humor.

  “Here, Dad,” said Jack, forgetting the “Mr. President” he always deferred to when he was in company. Now was not the time. “Take this.”

  He handed the President an FN P90.

  “Give me three more of the P90s, Gargrave,” said Rodriguez.

  “I’ll bring out replacement clips in a minute,” said Gargrave.

  “What can you handle, Bill?” asked the President.

  Dumaine just shook his head.

  “Uh, nothing. I never shot a gun in my life.”

  “Tim?”

  “I’ve shot a Mac-10, just at a practice range for fun, so I can handle the recoil okay.”

  Jack handed him a P90.

  “All right, let’s arm the others,” Jack ordered, and they all moved out, hauling weapons with them, Rodriguez leading the way. Gargrave remained behind in the Gun Room emptying drawers of clips they’d need to reload.

  As they passed Jack’s bedroom, Francesca peered out, having changed into a pair of jeans and a black T-shirt.

  “What is it, Jack?”

  “Not sure yet. Something over at the Hall. They blew up the Secret Service houses. Come out to Game Room. We’re going to need everybody.” He thrust a Remington 870 into her hands. “Gargrave will bring up more ammo.”

  “Okay, Jack.”

  Before he could dash away to follow the others, she gave him a quick kiss on the lips.

  “I love you,” he said.

  “Take care, Jack. I love you, too.”

  She smiled that sexy smile of hers, and then he was gone.

  By the time Jack got out to the Game Room, Rodriguez had beefed up the arms of his three-man unit with the P90s. Rodriguez then joined Billy at the tree line about 30 feet from Jack’s house. From here they could see out to the wide open green that stood between them and Flagler Hall. Any force coming their way would have to cross this open area.

  The other two agents, John and George, he deployed on the east side of the house.

  In all the confusion in the Gun Room, Rodriguez’s earpiece had fallen out. He put it back in.

  Check
ing in, he could hear all three of his men on his Motorola radio. Then he tried to check in with anybody over at Flagler Hall.

  “Bumblebee Two, Bumblebee Two. Eagle One, come in.”

  He was surprised when he got a response.

  “This is Pigeon Three, on the roof!”

  Jack leaned in to Rodriguez.

  “Sharpshooter on the roof is coming in. What the fuck happened, Pigeon Three?”

  “Enemy commando attack. They’re in the house. Sound suppressors. You won’t hear ’em when they come.”

  “How many of you on the roof?”

  “They got two, I’m the last one. I’ll get as many as I can when they come out of the house. They don’t know I’m here.”

  “Night-vision?”

  “Yeah, I’m equipped.”

  “Okay.”

  Gargrave came up behind them quietly.

  “Sir,” he said. “Speaking of night-vision, I thought we might make good use of these.”

  “How many you got?”

  “Only five pairs, sir.”