Back Blast

72

Angus Lee flew the Bell 206 JetRanger news helicopter for D.C.’s Fox 5. Stafford Regional wasn’t his normal airport, but he had just flown down to Richmond for a story and was stopping off here to top off fuel before heading back to the District. There had been a mass murder this afternoon at the Ritz-Carlton Pentagon City, and his station wanted him circling the building for live shots during their full evening special report coverage of the D.C. spy murders.

He’d just finished fueling up on the helipad, and he waved Fox 5 videographer Robert Robles over from inside the hangar. Robles immediately ran over and climbed into the JetRanger, anxious to get to the skies over D.C. so he could get to work.

As the helicopter began spinning up, a black pickup truck appeared on the pad racing towards it. Robles pointed it out to Lee. “Hey, looks like you forgot to pay for your gas.”

Lee chuckled, but quickly he got the feeling something was wrong. “That’s not an airport vehicle. And he’s moving fast.”

The Fox photog knew a good shot when he saw one, so he shouldered his camera and began recording. The vehicle stopped just feet from the nose of the helicopter, and the driver’s door opened. To the astonishment of both men, a man climbed out with a pistol in his hand, pointed it at the pilot, and walked around to the right side door of the helicopter.

The gunman was head to toe in black and, at first, Robles thought the man was African American. But as the man came closer it was clear his face was covered in greasepaint.

He tapped on the Plexiglas door of the right seat.

“Get us out of here!” Robles shouted to his pilot, but Lee wasn’t going to take off with a gun to his head.

He opened the door and put his hands up. Robles did the same.

The man leaned in and spoke to Lee, because with the noise of the engine above them, Robles couldn’t hear. “Get out, go to the truck, and get the gear bag from the bed. Bring it back here.”

“What are you going to do?”

The man with the greasepaint turned to the side, used the barrel of his pistol to tap the parachute rig strapped on his back. “I just need a quick ride. Your partner there will win himself a Pulitzer for what he’s about to film.”

Lee kept his hands up, but he said, “What about me?”

“You just keep us out of restricted airspace so we don’t get shot down. That should be enough motivation for you.”

“Oh… Okay.”

Court watched the pilot move the forty-pound gear bag from the truck to the spinning helo, then Court climbed in the backseat with it. The pilot got back in and strapped himself into the right seat again.

The videographer was too scared to turn around and look at Court, but Court put on a headset and spoke to him. “Cameraman, throw your phone out the door. Pilot, you, too.” Both men did as instructed. Court read off a series of GPS coordinates to the pilot, then said, “Take me there exactly. Get us to an altitude of six thousand feet.”

Angus Lee punched the coordinates in his computer. “Yes, sir. What do I tell air traffic control?”

“Tell them you are flying to Baltimore. That will get you close enough to where we’re going. After that tell them there was a gun to your head. That will get you out of trouble.”

“I’ll do what you ask. Please don’t hold your gun to my head.”

“It’s a figure of speech, dude. Do what I say and we’ll all stay friends. Cool?”

“Yes, sir.”

The helo took off and headed north. Court had his own GPS unit on his wrist, and he used it to make sure the pilot complied with his instructions.

While they flew he also consulted a small tablet computer in his hand and looked over the schematics of the building he was about to hit, working over each detail of his operation again and again, trying to think of everything and anything that might come up.

Court’s big backpack was next to him on the bench seat, not on his back, because his parachute was using that real estate at present. The pack was bungied to Court’s waist, and it would hang from him as he parachuted down. If Court didn’t make contact with the enemy during the landing phase of his jump he would pull a knife from his chest rig and cut the pack free right before he touched down. Otherwise he would simply land with a forty-pound weight hanging between his legs, which wouldn’t be optimal, but it was nothing Court had not dealt with before, both in training and in operations.

He was well versed in dealing with Murphy’s Law.

He put the tablet computer away, then he grabbed another bag from his pack. One by one he pulled out five mobile phones and placed them on the seat next to him. Once he had them lined up, he opened the Uber car service app on each phone and fiddled with the map on each screen for a few seconds. It took longer than he would have liked, but after less than five minutes, he had accomplished what he’d set out to do.

He then opened the door of the helo and leaned out. Looking down, he realized they were flying over Huntley Meadows Park, a large forested green space that would be closed for the evening. Court took all five phones and tossed them over the side of the helo, then closed the door again.

The pilot flew to six thousand feet, checked his GPS, and told Gentry they were two minutes from the target. Court checked one more time to make sure all his kit was secure on his body.

He saw the videographer moving his camera into position. Court turned away, his back to the lens. He spoke into the mic. “No lights.”

“I understand,” said the videographer.

Court took off his headset, opened the rear door, kicked his legs out over the side, and looked out.

He saw nothing but clouds. His pounding heart skipped a beat.

From the front the pilot shouted now, “Ten seconds!”

Court checked his own GPS and confirmed this, then hefted his backpack in his lap and pushed to the edge of his seat. The cold night pressed against his face as he looked out the side of the helo.

Then, “Three, two, one. Go!”

Court went over the side, dropping his forty-pound bag from his hands as he did so. It pulled at his waist for a moment but as both he and his equipment bundle reached maximum velocity, he knew he wouldn’t think about it again.

Not until he pulled the rip cord. He did this at four thousand feet, he felt the canopy catch above him, and instantly the bag yanked hard below him. He checked his chute; it was almost impossible to see in the cloudy night above, but he saw his lines were taut and he realized he had a good, full canopy.

Checking the GPS on his wrist, he began steering to the left, then he looked down, trying to pick out the large clock tower of Alexandria Eight. It took him some time, but on his right he saw the lights of a jet on final approach to nearby Reagan National, and he used this as a reference point. His eyes tracked south from the airport, along the Potomac River, then he looked along the lights of King Street, which led from the river all the way to the massive George Washington Masonic National Memorial, the highest building in the city. From here his eyes tracked to the left, to the west, and within a few seconds he centered on Alexandria Eight.

Once he had the clock tower of the safe house in his sights, he looked at little else, because the tower was his landing zone.

He thought the darkness would improve his chances of parachuting all the way to the tower without being seen by the guard force on the property, but he had wanted to do something to improve his chances even more.

Below him on North Quaker Lane, five pairs of headlights moved slowly to the edge of the property at the front of the safe house grounds. When they rolled under the streetlight closest to the driveway, this revealed them to be five large black SUVs. They stopped one hundred feet in front of the guard shack and just sat there. They weren’t threatening anyone or anything, but they were a curious sight indeed.

The five SUVs were from Uber, and Court had ordered one to go to that location with each of his five phones. He’d texted each driver with instructions to wait at the end of the driveway. The drivers inside the vehicles didn’t know anything more than that; when they found themselves forming into a motorcade with other drivers, they likely assumed a group would be coming down the driveway from the big property any minute and piling in to go to dinner or to another location.

But Court didn’t care what the drivers were thinking. He was only concerned about what the CIA guards on the property were thinking. He knew everyone would see a motorcade of big black SUVs and immediately think “feds” or other government entity. He had planned this so that every eye on the property would look out to the cars at the end of the drive. If he had created some threatening diversion, explosions or fireworks, for example, he knew security here would order the south wing of the property locked down tight, so he kept his diversion mild. Just government-looking vehicles forming in the distance.

Court turned his attention from the five SUVs and focused again on the clock tower. The defensive plan of Alexandria Eight, Court had read in the plans sent by Hanley, had called for either one or two guards on the clock tower landing. Court was hoping for one, but when he got his NODs centered on the tower and then looked just below it at the landing, he saw three men standing there.

Shit.

He reached for the weapon on his right hip. It was a Ruger Mark 2 Amphibian, a stainless steel .22 caliber rim fire pistol with an integral suppressor.

But then he decided to change his tactics on the fly. As he descended closer to the men he took his hand off the pistol, and he let go of one of the brake handles on his parachute rig and quickly pulled his knife. At thirty feet above the landing he cut away his equipment bundle, then quickly grabbed his quick-release harness, pulling it to release the entire rigging from his back.

The backpack crashed on the landing and Court landed right behind it, hitting the surface and dropping low, just inches behind the first sentry, who swung around at the noise right behind him. Court came up under the man’s M4 rifle, ripping the weapon away with one hand and pulling against the guard’s rifle sling. This yanked the man forward, with his chin leading the way.

Court rocked the man with an uppercut palm strike to his chin.

The first guard crumpled to the ground unconscious before the other two men even knew what was going on.

Both remaining security officers spun into action now — one reached for the radio on his shoulder while his hand went down to draw his pistol, and the second brought his rifle up towards the movement less than ten feet away on the landing. Court drew his suppressed Ruger .22 and shot the first man in the forearm, knocking his support hand off the rifle and causing the weapon to drop free, where it hung by its sling.

Quickly there was a second snap of Court’s integrally suppressed pistol and a small flash of light. The radio handset in the second guard’s left hand shattered. As he drew his pistol with his right hand Court fired another round from the nearly silent pistol. The small round slammed into the barrel of the pistol in the man’s right hand, knocking it away. It bounced off into the darkness on the landing.

The officer in front reached again for his rifle hanging from his chest, but Court closed the distance, slapped the gun to the side, and pressed the long suppressor of his Amphibian into the man’s forehead. In an aggressive whisper he said, “A lot of dumb assholes have died for Denny Carmichael. That ends tonight. You don’t want to be the last one to die, do you?”

Though Court’s gun was pressed to one man’s head, his eyes were on the second man, ensuring he wouldn’t try to run for the door to the stairwell. When the man turned to do just that Court took his steel pistol and struck the right temple of the man under his control, dropping him unconscious to the ground. Then Court turned and aimed at the fleeing guard.

Court fired twice, striking the man once in each thigh. The security officer dropped flat on his face, unable to operate his wounded legs.

The dark figure who had appeared from the sky now advanced along the narrow landing, overtaking the young guard as he kept crawling for the door.

Court reached into a pouch on the wounded man’s own load bearing vest, and he retrieved two tourniquets. While the man squirmed Court applied one high to each of the two thighs, stopping the bleeding instantly, but also completely disabling the appendages, as they went numb in seconds. He spoke softly to the terrified man below him.

“I doubt I hit anything vital, so you probably don’t need the tourniquets, but I don’t know how long it’s going to take for you to wake up and call for help.”

“Wake up?”

Court smashed the Ruger pistol into the side of the man’s head, and the security officer slumped back on the landing.

Court stood, heaved his pack, and headed for the stairwell.

When he drew up his attack on Alexandria Eight, Court knew the weakest link of his entire infiltration would be the period — maybe no more than fifteen seconds — between exiting the tower stairwell and entering Denny Carmichael’s private suite. Court would have to move down a winding open staircase from the third floor to the second floor, completely exposed to everyone and anyone in the main hall of the building. For all Court knew there could be two dozen armed men standing around on the ground floor or on the second-floor landing, and they would all have a straight line of fire on him until he made it off the landing and through the entry to the hall of the south wing. And perhaps even more importantly than the fact that he’d be exposed to the guns, it would only take one person triggering a warning for the security office of the building to flip a switch, at which point the steel doors would close and the pneumatic locks would engage, sealing the south wing off from the rest of the property.

He couldn’t stay invisible and he couldn’t crawl down the stairs, because he would still be in view. No. He just had to run for it and hope no one saw him, at least until he was close enough to the hallway door to get through before it was shut and locked from the inside.

And Court had to do all this with forty pounds of gear on his back.

He moved out of the tower stairwell and onto the winding staircase around the main hall. The light was good here, which wasn’t good news for Court, but he was happy to find no CIA security officers on the stairs or on the higher floors.

He began moving down the stairs. Below him at least a half dozen armed guards stood at ground level, congregated at the main entrance to the building. They all appeared to still be looking outside at the five SUVs way down the driveway.

This ruse worked for a while, but finally Court saw one of the men turn away from the front door, idly look up, and see a man head to toe in black, his face darkened with greasepaint, and a massive black backpack on his back.

As much as he hated it, Court was impressed with the speed at which the man reacted.

“Contact!” The guard below raised his weapon, and Court picked up the pace, rushing towards the hallway doors half a floor down and twenty yards away.

With the first echoing cracks of rifle fire in the huge room, Court knew the security officer positioned behind a desk just inside the south wing would be reaching for the button that would close that part of the building off from the rest of the property. This would slam the door shut, drop steel over the windows, and lock steel doors to the attic above. Court would have zero access to Carmichael and al-Kazaz once the door — now fifteen yards away — slammed shut.

Masonry on the open stairway exploded just in front of Court but he ran into the dust and bits of debris. He didn’t bother with fighting back; even firing a couple of rounds in hopes it would force his adversaries to take cover would cost him more time than he could afford to lose.

He just kept running down the stairs, taking them three at a time. The backpack strap bit into the ragged wound on the right side of his rib cage.

All the M4s in the entryway were firing now; the noise was insane in the three-story-high room, and Court felt the jolt of a round slamming into his backpack behind him. It pushed him against the wall but his momentum kept him moving onward, and his balance was good enough to keep him from stumbling and falling down the stairs.

A light above the south wing door began flashing when Court was just ten yards away. He saw the double doors closing quickly in front of him. A squawking alarm that kept time with the flashes rang out but it was drowned out by another half dozen rounds. Court felt the overpressure and heard the zing of a bullet passing a foot from his face, but he ignored the desire to duck and instead he dove forward, arms outstretched, and he landed on his chest on the marble floor, and then tumbled right past the closing steel doors.

As soon as he was through he tucked his feet to his body and the doors slammed shut right behind him.

But his problems had just begun. There were two men at the far end of the south wing hall, one hundred feet away and looking in his direction. The security desk was just on his right by the double doors, so he rolled out of his backpack, then rushed behind the desk. Here a lone security officer drew his pistol to fire at the man in the black greasepaint but Court slid under the man’s aim and took him out at the legs.

The security officer fell on top of Court, but as he dropped down, Court fired a straight right jab up. The crack of bone on bone echoed in the hall, and the guard was unconscious before he landed face-first on the floor next to his attacker.

Court leapt to his feet, then started running to a room just off the hall. While he did this he heard shouts from the approaching security officers. Court opened fire as he ran, aiming low. One man took a pair of .22 caliber rounds in the shins, the other a single bullet through the top of his boot and into his foot.

Both men tumbled down in pain.

Court scooped his pack off the floor by a strap as he ran, then he dragged it along next to him. He made it into the room across the hall as pounding gunfire chased him, and crashed into an armed CIA security officer rushing out. Both men fell to the ground, and with the impact both men fired their weapons. The sound of Court’s .22 was drowned out by the report of the other man’s HK MP7 Personal Defense Weapon discharging a round, but both bullets struck a bookcase filled with dusty old books.

Court’s ground-fighting skills were superior to those of the other man, so he managed to get on top of him quickly, delivering a punch to the man’s jaw, and then lifting his head up and knocking it back into the hardwood floor. The security officer went limp under him.

Court dove off the man and back towards the open door behind him, slammed it shut, and then crawled to his knees and bolted it.

He stood up, then doubled over in pain, holding the right side of his rib cage as he did so. The gunshot wound bled a little, but mostly it just hurt. He fought the incredible desire to just slide back down to the floor and lie in the fetal position. Instead he used the locked door to steady himself, then he turned around slowly to survey the room behind him.

There, much to his surprise, fifteen men and women sat silently around a massive conference table. They all stared up at him, eyes wide. A blond in her thirties put her hand over her mouth. An African American male in his forties stood slowly and balled his fists, but he did not approach. Others raised their hands in surrender, and the rest did not move a muscle.

Court lifted the guard’s MP7 and trained it on the group, then he reached down into a pouch of the big pack on the floor. He dug around inside for a moment, then he pulled out a device no larger than a deck of cards. He held it up to the men and women at the table.

“Wireless detonator.” He motioned with his head to the backpack. “C4 antipersonnel charge with an anti-tamper switch and a motion detector. Enough demo to level this wing. Anybody moves, we all go on a moon shot together. Any questions?”

An attractive redhead began to cry.

Court said, “Sit tight a second, I’ll be right back.” He moved past the table and entered a narrow hallway off the conference room. He knew from the blueprints and the security plan Hanley had sent him that this hall had a narrow staircase to the attic off to the left. At the top of this was a steel-reinforced door to the attic. Beyond the staircase sat Denny’s office and private quarters.

As Court passed the stairs to the attic he raised his weapon out in front of him, and as he neared the door to Denny’s office, it opened in his direction.