Shaw got out of Enderby’s car, opened the trunk and took out one of the C-4 charges. Taking a long, casual look around the parking lot, he began walking toward the front doors of the commissary. The chaos had only increased, with flashers, sirens, MPs, people lying on the sidewalk and being attended to by medics or other civilians, and people running in and out of the doors in a panic, all of which made his job incredibly easy.
The general’s sedan was parked at the side of the long aisle. Shaw still had his Beretta in his outside jacket pocket and his Ka-Bar knife in his inside pocket, but the driver did not look like he posed much of a threat. Shaw approached the sedan from the rear and saw that the fellow was alone. He wore dress greens, like the general and the sergeant, but with only two stripes on his sleeve, and a flat dress hat with a plain black band and no gold braid. He sat leaning against his door, his attention focused on the swirl of activity to his front as Shaw approached the car from the driver’s side rear. The driver’s window was open, and Shaw could see the young man’s eyes in the side mirror. Finally, Shaw leaned over and asked, “Wow, what a mess, eh?” That startled the driver, who sat up and turned his head as Shaw slipped his hand inside his jacket. “What general are you driving for?”
“Oh, uh, General Stansky, Deputy Commander of JSOC.”
“That’s what I thought,” Shaw said as he reached through the open window and drew the sharp Ka-Bar knife across the side of the driver’s neck, cutting deep and slicing through his jugular vein. The driver’s eyes went wide and Shaw stepped back to avoid the initial spray of blood. The driver raised his hands to his throat, but that was too little too late. His eyes soon glazed over, and as he began to slump forward, Shaw reached inside and caught him. He straightened him back up and wedged him between the car door and the seat back. Finally, he pressed the driver’s hat down on his head and left him sitting there, as if he had fallen asleep. With that task completed, Shaw stopped and looked around. Nothing had changed. No one had seen or heard anything, so he walked around to the passenger side of the car, knelt, and placed his baseball-size C-4 explosive charge under the rear passenger side of the car.
Easy peasey, he thought as he slowly walked back to his Peugeot. Looking around, he decided this parking space might be a tad too close to the forthcoming action, so he got back in the Pontiac, drove to the rear of the lot near the exit and parked in a space where he had a clear view of the sedan and the front of the commissary; then, he waited.
In the meat department, Sharmayne Phillips would never admit it, but she looked down at the unconscious attacker lying on the floor and was impressed. “I suppose you bagged this one too?” she asked Bob. “One hell of a body count you’ve got going tonight, Major.”
“Nope, I had already exceeded ‘the day’s catch.’ The ladies bagged and tagged this one, I just came back to check. As I understand, it was a combination of a Nolan Ryan frozen filet mignon to the honker, thrown by my wife, followed by a big-boy T-bone to the side of his head, compliments of the Air Force over there.”
Sharmayne bent down and handcuffed the unconscious attacker to the heavy leg of the butcher block, and then looked up at Linda. “Ladies, you both have my compliments… and Mrs. Burke, my profound sympathies.”
“You aren’t the first,” Linda replied as she dropped the frozen filet on the table.
Sharmayne then turned back to Bob. “Are you trying to tell me you had nothing to do with the ones upfront by the counters?”
“Oh, no, that’s a different matter altogether. Master Sergeant Harold Randall, a fellow innocent bystander like myself — that’s his wife Dorothy with the T-Bone — were shopping back here for some steaks, when we heard the shooting up by the front entrance. M-4 carbines, by the sound of it.”
“You could tell what kind of weapon it was from way back here?” she questioned.
“The sound of an M4?” he asked her with a surprised expression. “You’re kidding, right? Anyway, we had a sharp exchange with the men responsible, and Master Sergeant Randall and I managed to subdue them; unfortunately, not quickly enough to prevent a number of very serious casualties.”
All she could do was to stare at him for a moment, unable to speak. “I’ve heard about your ‘sharp exchanges,’ but give me a break! You’re telling me the two of you, unarmed, managed to take down eight heavily armed men with automatic rifles…”
“He does things like that,” Linda told her, almost embarrassed.
“I think there were nine, but Ace would know,” Bob shrugged. “He’s better at numbers than I am.”
“Did you two leave any of them alive this time?” Linda asked.
“This one, and I guess one more up front,” Phillips answered.
“That is surprising,” Linda said matter-of-factly, until she saw the expression on the CID Special Agent’s face. “Hey, what can I say?”
Sharmayne turned and stared at Bob. “I heard a lot of stories about you from various people over the past day or two, but I threw 90% of it out, figuring it was just more Delta Superman crap. I never…”
Bob gave her a self-deprecating shrug. “We do what we gotta do.”
She shook her head, reached inside the unconscious man’s hip pocket, and pulled out his wallet. Inside were two ID cards: an Illinois driver’s license and a green, laminated military ID card. “Johnson, Ahmed, Spec Four. Jesus Christ! This guy’s Army, our Army.”
“He’s like the others. No insignias, rank, unit patches, or name on the uniform; but from the well-worn boots and the way they handled their rifles, I think you’ll find most of them are,” Bob replied. “Assuming the uniforms and IDs prove real, we just got hit by our own people.”
“Let’s get back up front,” she answered, and then turned to Linda and Dorothy. “Ladies, if you will stay here and watch this one, I’ll send a couple of MPs back here to relieve you ASAP.”
“And can you get them a ride home to Sherwood Forest?” Bob asked. “I think we’ll be here for a while. You can always get a statement from them later.”
Sharmayne looked at him and then nodded. “Sure,” she smiled. “I can do that.”
By the time they reached the front of the store, the medics were well into their triage and had already cleared most of the serious cases to the hospital. Sharmayne stopped an MP Sergeant First Class, and asked him, “Tony, what’s the count? How many dead and wounded?”
“Five dead, ma’am, not counting the gunmen, which is surprising, given the number of rounds fired, and sixteen wounded. Most of those are serious, and those have been transported to Womack.”
“Good. Send three of our men back to the meat department. They’ll find two ladies in there. I want one of your guys to drive them home. They will also find one of the terrorists handcuffed to a big butcher table. Take that moron into custody and bring him up front with the others.”
Sharmayne’s CID techs had already swung into action and were photographing the scene, picking up weapons and spent brass, and taking statements. The bodies of the other six attackers lying in the produce department had been laid out in a side aisle where their faces were photographed and fingerprints taken. Two CID agents had taken the lone survivor whom Bob and Ace disarmed, sat him in a different side aisle, and were questioning him. That was when Ace Randall walked up, and Bob introduced him to Sharmayne.
Ace was built like an NFL tight end and looked as rugged as a WW II airborne recruiting poster. “Glad you didn’t get arrested out there,” Bob told him.
Sharmayne gave Ace a long look and said, “Sheesh, you look like a younger version of that wily old bastard O’Connor. He isn’t your father, is he?”
“Not that my mother ever told me, ma’am,” Ace quickly answered. Sharmayne extended her hand to him, but Ace held back, showing her the blood on his hands and clothes. “I appreciate the gesture, but I really need to clean up. We had some difficult triage out there before the medics arrived. It was touch and go,” he said as he stepped over to one of the other produce tables, pi
cked up a white grocer’s apron off a stack of tomatoes and began wiping the blood off his hands.
That was when one of Sharmayne’s crime scene techs stepped over and handed her a deck of Polaroid photos. He motioned her aside for a moment and whispered, “Special Agent Phillips, I don’t know if you know what happened out here,” he pointed at Ace with a wide-eyed expression of awe. “That man took charge and organized a half-dozen stunned civilians to render some serious first aid to all these wounded. If it wasn’t for him, we would have had three or four more dead. You can ask the medics, if you don’t believe me.”
“Was your sidekick a medic or something?” Sharmayne asked.
“No more than the rest of us,” he answered. “It goes with the job.”
She stared at him for a moment. “Okay, don’t say it; you ‘do what you gotta do,’ don’t you?” Finally, she looked back at the photos and said, “Anyway, I’m not sure these are going to get us very far without fingerprints. Your head shots make IDs a tad harder.”
“They seemed like a good idea at the time,” Ace said as he rejoined the group.
“You sound just like him,” she said as she cocked her head toward Bob.
“A prodigious compliment, ma’am” Ace answered her, “but the Major is actually a much better shot than I am.”
“Zowie, I never thought I’d hear you admit that,” Bob laughed.
“Got to give the Ghost his due,” Ace shrugged.
Sharmayne began flipping through the photographs, looking at each one closely before she handed it to Bob. “Okay, I can guess who Ace’s hero is. Who’s yours?” she asked.
“Me?” Bob frowned as he thought about it for a moment, and then said, “Oh, I guess I have three. First is Pete Dawkins, West Point class of ’58, Cadet First Captain, as I was, plus president of his class, captain of the football team, Heisman Trophy winner and Rhodes scholar, Ranger and member of the 82nd Airborne right here at Fort Bragg. He was the finest man the Military Academy produced since Robert E Lee. He should have been Chief of Staff of the Army, but retired as a brigadier general because he wasn’t a politician.”
“Gee, I don’t see any similarity there at all, do I?” Sharmayne laughed.
“Second, is Bill Carpenter, Dawkins’ classmate and the All-American West Point ‘lonesome end,’ as he was called, who famously called in napalm on his own position in Vietnam, when they were being overrun by a Regiment of NVA.”
“Because you ‘do what you gotta do,’ right?”
“Exactly,” Bob agreed. “It was a gutsy call, but he saved his unit.”
“And it got him the Distinguished Service Cross, the same one you have, didn’t it?” Sharmayne asked. “But as I recall, Carpenter stayed on and retired with three stars, and you got out as a major.”
“Maybe after all that napalm, he could take the smell of BS better than I could.”
She laughed. “Okay, I’ll give you that one. But who’s the third?”
“None other than Major General Arnold Stansky, right here at Fort Bragg. He’s the straightest shooter I’ve ever met in the Army.”
“Another DSC, and the worst politician I’ve ever met in the Army, which makes him a perfect match for you.”
“Probably, but you need to get to know him.”
“Funny, though, everybody knows what Carpenter and Stansky did, but I tried to look up the citation on yours, and it’s all redacted. More ‘Ghost’ stuff?”
“Yeah, I’m pretty good at disappearing,” he answered as he looked at the photos.
“So are your records… See any faces you recognize?” she asked.
“The two who are still walking, and maybe two of the KIA, from my visit to the Muslim Student Center. Do you have these photos digitized?” he asked the tech.
“Of course, in high-res,” he said, sounding miffed. “We just use these Polaroids for a quick-and-dirty field check. Why?”
“You took their fingerprints. Those are digitized, too?”
“I just sent them off to Quantico. They said we’ll have something by midmorning.”
Bob gave Sharmayne a look. “Tell you what,” Bob said as he pulled out his cell phone and brought up a listing in his Speed Dial. “Text the digital photos and the fingerprints to this number. I’ll have my people look at them.”
“Wait a minute,” the Tech bristled. “Nobody’s better than Quantico.”
“Humor me,” Bob answered with a pleasant smile as he pointed to the phone number.
“Go ahead,” Sharmayne nodded to the Tech. “Is that ‘the Geeks’ I heard about?”
After her Tech texted them out and handed Bob his phone back, Bob pressed the number. “Jimmy, there’s some photos and fingerprints headed your way. Run them against the other data and photos and call me back ASAP with any matches.”
Sharmayne frowned. “Burke, what the hell do you have that I don’t?”
“Well, for starters, I don’t give a damn about search warrants, lawyers, grand juries, or budgets. But off the record?” he asked. When she nodded okay, he continued, “We’ve pulled the college admissions records, all of Shaw’s rosters here and at the college, membership records from the mosque, passports, the photos I took of his minions in the Muslim Student Center, and about anything else we could think of… but I didn’t tell you that. If we add in your photos and fingerprints, we should be able to tie a bow around it and bust Shaw’s cell wide open… and it won’t take my guys until midmorning.”
She stared at him, wide-eyed. “I hope you’re right, just don’t screw this thing up.”
Bob smiled and was about to reply when a large African American man in civilian clothes burst into their small group in Produce. He was being pursued by two large MPs, whom he shoved aside as they tried to stop him. Sweating and face flushed, he pointed at Bob and screamed, “I want that man arrested!” as the MPs tried to restrain him.
Sharmayne turned and looked at him. “And you are?” she asked calmly, obviously irritated by the rude interruption.
“Adkins, Colonel Jefferson Adkins,” he blustered. He was twice her size and made a point of bending down and reading her name tag. “I’m a senior member of the JSOC staff and I want him arrested, now, Mz… Phillips!” he said as he fumbled in his hip pocket and finally pulled out his wallet so he could flash his Army ID card in her face.
Sharmayne put her hands on her hips and looked up at him. “Colonel, this is an official crime scene, and I am the OIC here. With all due respect, Sir, I work for the Provost Marshal. Not only are you not in my chain of command, but you are interfering with a CID investigation. If you do not back away, right now, and go on about your business, I will have you arrested and charged with obstruction. Is that perfectly clear?”
His eyes narrowed as he rose to his full height, towered over her, and poked her in the chest with his finger. “I gave you a direct order, Warrant Officer Phillips, and I expect it to be obeyed!”
With her eyes locked on his, she reached up, grabbed the finger and twisted. He screamed as she quickly brought him to his knees, where she could look down at him. She then turned to the two MPs and said. “Escort this individual out the front door. If he resists, take him into custody for assaulting an officer and obstruction, and transport him to the stockade. The PM can deal with him in the morning.”
“I’ll have your badge, Phillips,” Adkins growled at her as the MPs pulled him away.
“You won’t have anyone’s badge, Colonel,” they heard a familiar gruff voice behind them say. Bob turned his head and found Major General Arnold Stansky coming straight at them like a heat-seeking missile. Stansky was about Burke’s size, but when he was wearing his dress greens, as he was tonight, with that chest full of ribbons and gold braid, it was as impressive as a US flag with all its pennants on the Fourth of July. “Colonel Adkins! Her name is Special Agent Sharmayne Phillips, Special Agent, or Ma’am to you, not Warrant Officer, or Mz, or any other goddamned thing. As she said, she is in charge here, and you will comply with he
r orders. Is that clear?”
Adkins was one of those bullies who didn’t know when to leave well enough alone. “You can’t protect your boy this time,” he continued. “Burke shot this place up tonight, and people are dead as a result. That’s a capital offense, and I want him charged!”
“The only people Major Burke shot up were six terrorists who were trying to take over the commissary, Colonel,” Sharmayne corrected him. “We have five civilians dead and sixteen wounded, and the body count would be much worse if he and Master Sergeant Randall had not intervened.”
“It was his fault. He was reckless and out of control,” Adkins insisted. “He always is.”
“We have statements from a dozen witnesses,” the MP Sergeant First Class said. “None of them agree with that assessment.”
“Exactly what did you see, Colonel?” Stansky stepped closer, hands on hips, and stared into Adkins’ eyes as he sniffed his breath. “Where exactly were you when this went down? I don’t see any blood on your uniform, as there is on Ace Randall’s or Major Burke’s.”
Burke's Revenge: Bob Burke Suspense Thriller #3 (Bob Burke Action Adventure Novels) Page 35