by Gordon Ryan
“Thanks, Jack,” Dan laughed.
“Think nothin’ of it, son. Glad to help. Oh, and Dan, one more thing.”
“Yeah?”
“Watch yourself. Don’t underestimate those fanatics in the Shasta Brigade. They won’t look kindly upon those who get in their way.”
“Believe me, I know it. And the sheriff’s telling me the same thing. On his advice, I’ve started carrying a pistol in my vehicle. You’ve carried one as long as I can remember.”
Jack nodded. “He’s probably right. Now, c’mon back to the house and let’s rustle up some dinner.”
* * *
Just after 10 p.m., Dan drove past the rural area adjacent to Yolo County Airport on his way home after leaving Jack’s house. When he saw a van stopped crosswise in the center passing lane of the highway, blocking passageway in both directions, Dan slowed his Blazer. The van’s flasher lights were activated, and it looked like a minor accident had occurred.
Approaching carefully, he stopped about ten yards short of the vehicle, just off the southern end of the single airport runway. About fifty yards away, just inside the fence line, a small Cessna was on the edge of the main runway, with two men silhouetted in the cockpit, the engine idling. He couldn’t see the driver or passengers from the van, but the vehicle lights were still on, and he could see slight exhaust fumes from the tailpipe, as if the vehicle engine was also running. Dan’s instincts went on full alert, and he reached into the glove box to retrieve his Beretta and an extra clip. The intuitive response action saved his life.
Two men came out of the ditch to the far side of the van, each wielding pistols and approaching Dan’s car from both angles. Each man wore a balaclava that covered his face. Instinctively, Dan floored his Blazer, ramming the back of the van, pushing it toward the edge of the road, but still not leaving enough room for Dan to drive around it without dropping into the three-foot-deep ditches.
Several shots rang out, and the rear window of Dan’s Blazer collapsed in a shower of glass shards. Dan slid across to the passenger seat, exiting his vehicle and taking cover beside the right front fender between the Blazer and the van. The two attackers closed to the back of Dan’s car, one of them shouting a warning.
“Come out with your hands high, and we won’t shoot. We don’t want to hurt you.”
Dan remained silent.
One of the men crept around the front end of Dan’s car, exposing his upper body and pointing his weapon at Dan. “I said stand up and put your hands on your head.”
From a kneeling position behind his vehicle, Dan fired one round, which struck the man in the center of his chest. He dropped his weapon, remained upright for several seconds, and then fell to the pavement. The second man fired several shots, which struck the Blazer, and then he jumped over the ditch, running toward the airport runway, firing back toward Dan as he ran.
Dan stood behind his vehicle and took aim, but decided to hold fire as the man ran away. Suddenly, the door on the Cessna opened up, and an automatic weapon appeared, a volley of shots striking the Blazer and the van. Dan ducked down again behind his vehicle. The shots ceased, and Dan carefully looked over the hood of the car. The fleeing man had climbed the fence and nearly reached the airplane when a quick burst from the automatic weapon dropped him instantly. He fell on the pavement, close to the end of the main runway.
Dan remained behind his car as the Cessna revved up its engine, quickly pulled onto the runway, and began the takeoff run, lifting into the air and banking west into the darkened sky. It had been too dark to observe the tail number of the aircraft, but within seconds everything was quiet. Dan checked the pulse of the man he had shot and took a quick look inside the van. The driver was dead, and the van was empty. It appeared that only the two men, plus those in the aircraft, had been present. He stepped back toward the driver’s side of his car and retrieved his cell phone, dialed 911, and reported the shooting, calling for an ambulance.
In less than fifteen minutes, Sheriff Tony Sanchez arrived, followed by three of his deputies, and the Fire Department ambulance that had already arrived on the scene. Just over an hour later, Special Agents Samuels and Bentley arrived at the Yolo County Sheriff’s office to join in the questioning. The man who attacked Dan was dead, the other critically wounded. Absent the balaclava, the wounded attacker, who had been shot by his own people, was immediately identified as Kenny Bailey, Dan’s brother-in-law. He had been transported to Woodland Memorial, but was in critical condition and unable to speak.
At the end of three days in a coma, Kenny Bailey died in the hospital. Investigators determined that both the van and the aircraft had been stolen. The Cessna was located at a small, rural airport near Santa Rosa, cleaned of all fingerprints and identifying evidence. In a subsequent interview with both the FBI and Sheriff Sanchez, Dan was advised that the attack gave all the appearances of an attempted kidnapping, as the van contained a body bag and a vial of anesthesia, plus a syringe. Agent Albert Samuels told Dan he’d had a lucky escape, while Sheriff Sanchez told him that he had done well, that his quick reaction had clearly saved his life.
All Dan knew for certain was that he had shot and killed a man, that his brother-in-law was involved in the attack, and that he, too, was now dead.
Chapter 9
CIA Headquarters
Langley, Virginia
Nearly three thousand miles east, Marine Corps Colonel Pug Connor picked up his notepad and headed down the hall toward an impromptu staff briefing called by the director of Central Intelligence.
Five years earlier, U.S. President William Eastman had appointed a former federal judge, Clarence Wentworth, as director of Central Intelligence, known internally as the DCI. The current rumor in the agency was that with his health failing, the judge had finally decided to hang it up. The office pool favored an outside appointee, but most of the old-time management level staff favored Wentworth’s DDO, Grant Sully, to replace the director. Organizationally, the CIA had a director, a deputy director of intelligence (DDI), a position held by retired Air Force Lieutenant General William Austin, and deputy director of operations (DDO), the post held by Sully, a career CIA employee. Sully’s impressive field record, commencing immediately after his hire in the late seventies, included service in the East German and Russian Cold War campaigns, where he had been trained by the old-boy network of former OSS agents, some of whom had been Jedburghs through the close of WWII. Stories abounded regarding Sully’s early “wet work” operations, but only a few operatives from those ruthless hit teams remained to confirm the stories. In light of current political expediencies, those who could confirm preferred to keep their prior involvement quiet.
Colonel Connor’s immediate boss was Bill Austin, the deputy director of intelligence. Austin’s staff was large and mostly located within the complex in Langley. There, they analyzed information gathered from all sectors of the world, providing “best-guess” scenarios for any given international situation. Austin often equated his work to that of the world’s economists, who rarely agreed on monetary policy and who, in retrospect, were generally way off-base.
Sully and Austin, although nearly the same age, had distinctly different management styles. About two-thirds of the headquarters staff seemed to prefer Austin. But many still admired Sully, who commanded a great deal of respect, especially among the old time CIA managers, as someone who had gone from a slick-haired Yale preppie to DDO in an impressive, action-packed thirty-two years.
As director of strategic analysis, reporting directly to Austin, Pug Connor usually attended staff meetings, and along with several other department heads had been specifically invited to attend this impromptu briefing. Connor had recently returned from Europe, where he had spent most of his time in Ireland. The IRA, despite the peaceful accords that had been in place for several years, continued to play a low-key role behind the scenes.
General Austin met Pug in the hall en route to the conference room.
“Welcome home, Pug. Is Ire
land still green?”
Pug smiled at his boss. “The parts I visited certainly are,” he replied.
Connor had worked with William Austin for over ten years, first coming to the National Security Agency as a young major when Austin had been NSA’s director of intelligence. Austin had seen Pug through an emotionally devastating divorce and assumed a father-like role in the process.
Pug Connor had married late, following his time at college, a two-year LDS mission to Ireland, then return to and graduation from the United States Naval Academy where he was commissioned as a Marine Corps officer. He was thirty by the time he married, and was immediately deployed to a Marine expeditionary unit at sea, absent for nearly a year. Several years of similar assignments had taken their toll on his marriage, and finally his wife had divorced him, fortunately before children entered the picture. At forty-two, divorced for nearly four years, his life had taken on a sameness of routine, the job consuming all his time and attention.
When Austin retired from the Air Force and President Eastman appointed him to the CIA, Austin had invited Connor, a newly promoted lieutenant colonel, to join him. Trained as a Marine combat officer, Pug Connor had been involved in several covert field actions during his military career, serving as company commander in a seaborne marine expeditionary unit, then, following completion of his master’s degree in international economics, spending most of his time in military intelligence.
His participation in one “we-were-never-there” action in Iraq, prior to the second Gulf War, had earned him a Silver Star and the respect of the New Zealand Special Air Service task force he had commanded. Finding out that Pug had family ties in New Zealand, the Kiwi SAS regiment had awarded Pug an honorary beret, which he displayed proudly on the bookcase in his office.
Upon joining the CIA, the retired general had made a telling request.
“Colonel Connor,” Austin had said, “General Austin is no more. He’s retired. I hope you can find it in yourself to address me as Bill. After ten years together, I’ve earned that.”
This had surprised Pug, as he had always used formal military address for the general, but this loosening of protocol pleased him nonetheless. Since that time, except in meetings, Pug dealt with his boss on a first-name basis. They had grown close, both professionally and personally.
As they entered the conference room and took their seats at one end of the table, Austin leaned toward Pug.
“Meet the right people in Dublin?” he queried.
“I’ve been meeting with Donahue and his crowd for over five years, and no real answers have appeared. But I know one thing for certain: the Provos still suffer from internal dissent, and not everyone is onboard with the diplomatic posture currently in vogue. They’re still angry over British support of Australia’s republican movement, and now they’re angry that California’s trying the same thing and seeming to get away with it. My contacts in the IRA told me that if America can’t support their war for independence as well, then maybe the United States isn’t such a valuable ally. I’ll put my findings in a report.”
“Good, but don’t copy Sully until I’ve had a chance to read the draft,” Austin warned. “He’s still looking for reasons to tag the Provo leadership. It doesn’t matter to him if they’ve disavowed terrorist actions or not—he just needs more ammunition to discredit them. Will you have time to complete the report before you leave for New Zealand?”
Pug nodded. “I don’t leave until next Monday. I’m going out for a crash refresher course in sailing on George Granata’s new yacht this Saturday, in the hope of not looking like a total fool in the water in front of my Kiwi relatives.”
“Think the Kiwis will take the America’s Cup back from the San Francisco Yacht Club?” Austin grinned.
“They’ve got about as much chance of that as Sully inviting me to a backyard barbecue.” Pug laughed softly. “Besides, New Zealand already owns the Cup. It’s just housed in San Francisco. All the American sailors are Kiwis. But in truth, New Zealand probably hasn’t got the money to mount a credible campaign. It’s all about dollars now. National pride takes a back seat.”
Even though Al Qaeda was the ‘terrorist de jour,’ Pug knew that the DDO and several of the operations staff were still focused on monitoring the old-line, long-recognized terrorist organizations, even though it appeared more and more that recent attacks were the work of splinter groups. The pattern had long been recognized by intelligence agencies: Unable to go to war against stronger powers, smaller nations had resorted to supporting state-sponsored terrorism using surrogate armies. Everyone accepted that.
But Grant Sully’s theory, not unacceptable by any means, was that once the historical terrorist organizations such as the IRA and the PLO had achieved a certain level of recognition and a quasi-political status, they were rendered less able to perpetrate the heinous acts they had traditionally used to achieve their ends. And so the notorious organizations had begun sponsoring splinter groups from within their own ranks, disavowing any responsibility for their actions, but in fact, fully supporting them under the table.
Connor had to admit it made sense. Only time or a major intelligence breakthrough would tell. Al Qaeda’s individual cells worldwide made such disavowal even easier. In the meantime, he would heed Austin’s warning and go easy with any information that might give Sully and his allies more ammunition.
Once everyone was present, Judge Wentworth entered the conference room from the side door in his office and commenced the meeting.
“Thank you all for coming. I’ve asked you here to participate in a briefing by a representative of the FBI and the Army CID. A domestic briefing.” He smiled.
“They’re gonna let us in on family secrets?” Grant Sully said, eliciting a ripple of laughter around the room.
“Maybe so, Grant,” the judge smiled. “But while we’re waiting …” He looked at Pug. “Colonel Connor, give us a quick update on your trip to Ireland.”
Pug glanced at General Austin, then responded to Wentworth.
“Director, the word is that a major split has occurred in the IRA as a result of the British and American support of the growing Australian republican movement and the hands-off attitude regarding California’s burgeoning secessionist movement. One group, those in Kevin Donahue’s camp, disavow any responsibility for the recent violence, and the other group, claiming to represent the IRA, have assumed responsibility, vowing further action if Northern Ireland is not afforded the same rights as Australia. Not surprisingly, each group is calling itself the true IRA.”
“Garbage,” Sully snorted. “They’re one group with one purpose, and they’re covering it up. It’s the ‘good guy, bad guy’ stuff. One group can do whatever it wants, while the other remains in a position to talk. I don’t buy it—not for one minute. And if you can’t see it, you’re in way over your head, Connor. I’ve told you before—stay out of my ballpark.”
The director interjected. “Let’s not get into that again, Grant. Pug, please continue. What are the British doing about it?”
“Sir, the government is still reeling over the change in leadership. Prime Minister Thornton has tried to hold down the scuffle, at least until they consolidate their position regarding the Commonwealth and the Queen’s legal position, vis-à-vis Australia. It’s the old story, sir. If they give in now, it will appear that pressure worked, and they will be expected to cave in every time a dissident group pushes hard enough.”
Sully growled. “I’ve been hearing that same crap since I scraped horseshit off my musket. There will always be pressure, either politically or by violent action. That’s what I meant, Director, when I said Connor doesn’t know what he’s doing. And he’s gonna foul this up, sending this Provo splinter group the wrong message.”
Director Wentworth frowned again and gave Sully another stare.
Sully paused a moment and then, in a softer voice, continued. “The decision should be reached based on its results and benefits, not on the latest bombing inciden
t. We still need to address the issue based on our national objectives, and the British need to take a much larger view. The whole political alliance thing has changed over the past fifteen years. Holding on to a piece of land that doesn’t want to align itself is senseless. With former alliances breaking up all over the world, countries like Puerto Rico want to align with a larger power, and others just want out of their existing ties. In Ireland’s case, they’ve been trying for several centuries. It’s crazy to force them to stay.”
“Grant, before our guests arrive, tell us—would that analysis apply to the current furor in California?” the director asked, changing directions and spurring interest around the table as all waited for Sully’s answer.
Startled by the comparison, Sully nevertheless maintained his composure. “California’s just political hyperbole, Director. Senator Turner had a stiff test against a younger and better-financed opponent, and he found a horse to ride back into the Senate—maybe even into Eastman’s job in a couple of years, if he can milk it that long.”
“From what I hear, the matter’s going to the California Supreme Court, and the militia units are having a field day. Have we got a handle on what’s happening, or not?” the director pressed.
“It’s nothing more than political posturing.”
“So you’re telling us that in spite of overwhelming voter approval, a United States senator’s support, and growing militia unrest, you see no substance behind this secession mania? Why, then, is he forcing it to the Supreme Court?” Wentworth continued.