The House of War: Book One Of : THE OMEGA CRUSADE (15 page)

“… We repeat: An assassination attempt has been made on President O’Neill’s life just moments ago, here at Andrews Air Force Base. It is not known whether the President has been hit or not. The Secret Service responded immediately…”

22:12:35

Box Car, the armored Presidential limousine is racing down Suitland Parkway. The President isn’t hit and that is one less thing for Morton Gallagher to worry about. O’Neill is winded from being roughhoused back into the limo, but otherwise he is doing fine. Morton is linked via the CarComm to his man on the ground at Andrews, Victor Phillips. The image of his fellow agent’s dark, round head stares at him from within the smoked glass partition behind the limo’s driver.

“Talk to me, Vic. What have you got?”

“It was Quinn, sir.”

“What?”

“It was Carlton Quinn,” Victor Phillips repeats. “The shooter was Quinn. We have him in custody.”

Gallagher doesn’t know what to think. It doesn’t seem possible that the Carlton Quinn he knows would take a shot at the President. Quinn is one of them. Morton has had dinner with his family a half dozen times. He has
been drinking with the man a score of times in the five years that they worked together. It makes no sense. Across from him, agent Beam fingers the hole Quinn’s round made through the suitcase she carries. And that makes even less sense to Morton.

Quinn missed?

Gallagher can’t begin to fathom how he could’ve missed. Carlton is a first class sniper who perfected his lethal skill through three tours in Afghanistan. He is one of the best, one of the sharpest shots Gallagher knows. Something isn’t right. Quinn never misses. No, thinks Morton, something just isn’t right. If Carlton had wanted the President dead, O’Neill’s brains would be on the tarmac right now. The shot was fired to keep the Commander in Chief from boarding Air Force One.

But why, Morton wonders?

“The air raid horns are blowing, chief,” Victor Phillips says suddenly. “We’ve got incoming.”

Gallagher doesn’t have time to ask Phillips what he means.

“We’ve got company, boss,” the driver announces. “At six and twelve o’clock.”

Morton looks out the rear window. Two Eighteen wheelers are bearing down on them. Out the front window another two are slowing down.

“Hang on boys and girls,” the driver says. “I’m going to earn me my Christmas bonus.”

The driver gives the wheel a sharp turn. In the back of the limo, bodies are hurled violently to the right, to the left and then to the right again. They are then pushed back as the limo accelerates quickly. The driver laughs out loud.

“Eat my dust,” he yells out triumphantly.

22:10:41

Major Kettering would normally have waited a little longer before ordering jets scrambled to intercept the bogeys making their way along the Potomac. Given the assassination attempt, he had the F-22 Raptors fired up immediately even if the pack of Cessnas were well outside the No Fly Zone. The small planes had taken off from different fields in the south and come together in a tight phalanx over Fredericksburg. That was highly suspicious. Following the river towards the capital is ominous and alarming. The Major’s control tower at Andrews is abuzz with incoming intelligence from all over the map. Seated
before him is the controller tracking the cluster of inbound planes and the F-22’s closing in to intercept. The lines are open and the controller is trying to communicate with the Cessna pilots.

“Oh-oh.”

It is Levine, the controller tracking commercial traffic.

“What is it, Levine?”

“Major, flight one-one-niner inbound from Barcelona to Newark has just altered its heading. It’s also dropping altitude, sir.”

“Where is it, Mr. Levine?”

“It’s nine hundred thirty-eight clicks northeast of Milford at thirty-three thousand feet and dropping.”

“And what’s the heading?”

“DC, Major.”

“Reynolds!”

“Yes sir?”

“Scramble jets to intercept immediately.”

“Aye, sir.”

This is not good, Kettering thinks, and it’s not getting better any time soon.

“Sanchez, patch me through to Forrester at Homeland Security.”

“Right away, sir.”

22:08:13

Congressman Lamar Reed cuts across three lanes of traffic to make the connection to highway 50. Tires screech and horns blare angrily all around him. None of it registers. He is clocking 90 mph in his race back to NSA headquarters. His left hand is on the wheel and his right hand wrapped firmly around the clutch. The ghostly image of Earl Forrester is centered on the lower half of the windshield. The Chief of Homeland Security is updating him. The good news is that the President isn’t hurt. The shot missed and the sniper was apprehended.

“We caught a break there,” Forrester says.

“So it would seem,” Reed responds.

“Unfortunately neither the jet nor the Cessnas are responding to the Raptors we sent up to greet them.”

“That’s not good.”

“No,” Forrester continues. He pauses momentarily to consider something off screen. “Listen, Lamar. I’ve got Kettering from Andrews back on the line. I got to go.”

“Keep me posted,” Lamar says.

Earl nods one time before his image flickers and disappears off the windshield.

“At least the President isn’t hit,” Annie says, letting out a sigh of relief.

“Thank God,” Joe says from the back of the car.

A hundred yards or so ahead of them a swath of road is suddenly illuminated by the lights of a low flying helicopter. There is no mistaking just what chopper it is. Even as it streaks across the sky ahead of them, its’ silhouette is unmistakable. It is Marine One, the Presidential Chopper. Lamar glances at his mirrors, and seeing the road clear behind him, cuts across four lanes to get to the shoulder. He hits the brakes and brings his Mercedes to a screeching stop.

“What’s wrong?” Annie asks.

Lamar Reed doesn’t know how to respond. He doesn’t have the words for it. Something is bothering him about the timing of the attack on the President. And then there are the planes. It didn’t make much sense to attack the capital when most of its politicians were spread across the country with their families. It made little sense if it was an attack of Islamic terrorism. And the attempt on the President’s life happened at Andrews, at one of the most secure bases in the country, if not the world. It couldn’t be jihadists. No, he thought. It could, however, be the military cabal they have been investigating the last six months. Yes, it could be them.

It had to be them!

Lamar takes the wheel back in his hands. He backs the car, turning the wheel until the Mercedes is pointing perpendicular to the road. At the first break in the traffic’s flow, he speeds across the road and onto the median. He then turns east after Marine One and floors the pedal.

22:07:23

“Repeat. You are entering the No Fly Zone! You are ordered to change course immediately!”

Major Kettering and his crew listen to the fighter pilot’s voice over the speakers. He has been trying to establish communication with the cluster of
planes for five minutes. They are not responding. More disturbingly, the pilot reported that their windows were blackened. They have been unable to establish visual contact. Could they be flying remotely, Kettering wonders? It has been done before, during the Border War. An assassin for the drug cartels flew a C-4 loaded, radio controlled, toy plane into an Arizona’s sheriff ’s office. The poor man’s drone killed the sheriff and two of his deputies. Was the stunt being improved upon by the use of real planes? The Major feared so.

“Fire a warning at them,” Kettering orders.

His command is relayed to the pilots.

“Copy that.” The pilot’s response crackles through the speaker.

Lt. James ‘Big Mac’ McDonald pulls his F-22 Raptor above and behind the phalanx of Cessnas. Carlos ‘Da Rodster’ Rodriguez maneuvers his F-22 above and ahead of the small planes. Da Rodster scans the terrain before and beneath them. There is nothing in their way and no traffic on the Potomac.

He radios his partner. “Big Mac, you’re all clear. All clear, Big Mac.”

“Copy that, Rodster.”

McDonald thumbs the safety off his 50 caliber guns. He lets loose a burst of gunfire. The spray of bullets flashes across the front of the small planes. The Cessnas break formation and start weaving and bobbing in the air.

“Bogeys are taking evasive maneuvers,” McDonald relays to his superiors at Andrews. “They are still inbound for DC. Repeat. Bogeys still inbound.”

On the ground Major Kettering has no options left. The Cessnas will enter the No Fly Zone in another minute and a half. Further north he has another pair of Raptors flanking a 757 jet that seems to be setting itself up for a kamikaze plunge into the capital. It is not responding either. Homeland Security has given him the green light to shoot them all down. The Major will wait until the jet is over the Chesapeake before he deals with it. The Cessnas, on the other hand, will have to be handled immediately.

“Something happening here, sir,” Levine blurts out behind him.

Kettering turns and notices that the radarscopes and computer screens are all blinking on and off. Within seconds they all go black.

“We’re blind, sir.”

“Do we still have audio?”

“Yes sir!”

“Then advise the Raptors to take out the Cessnas.”

His controller echoes the command to the jets.

“Copy that, Eagle Nest,” McDonald replies. And then, after a few moments, “Fox one. Fox one away! Fox two. Fox two away!”

22:05:44

Earl Forrester considers himself a practical man. He accepts the world at face value. It baffles him to no end when others can’t or won’t do the same. And nothing turns his befuddlement into gnawing frustration and pure indigestion like a Presidential Cabinet Meeting. The one he attended earlier in the afternoon was no exception. Invariably at these meetings, matters of national security were trumped by considerations of opinion polls. The nation’s course was charted by equal parts of what was thought to be good for her image and what might be good for the people; two aims which were, in Forrester’s estimation, most often inimical to each other. The ‘next election’ was an ever present consideration in every issue and crisis giving the good of the nation a permanent back seat to the good of the political party in power. Earl can’t say that it is new to him. He is sixty-nine years old now and has witnessed administration after administration paralyzed by this madness. He can’t say that he has gotten used to it either. The government frustrates Forrester now as much as it did when he was a teenage recruit wading through Vietnamese jungles. It didn’t matter what party was in power. Earl had taken to calling them republicrats and demopublicans. A pox on both their houses, he thinks.

They had their chance.

It now up to us, Earl tells himself. The pieces are in place and the wheels are in motion. The operation is a go!

Forrester connects his CarComm to the Presidential limousine with a push of a button on the back seat’s armrest. He is patched through to Box Car almost immediately. It is a voice only transmission.

“Mr. President, our satellites have been blinded. All visual transmissions have ceased.”

“Who blinded us?” the President asks. “How?”

“We’re working on that,” the Chief of Homeland Security responds. “It appears the cyber-attack is native, uploaded from Washington. We should be able to pinpoint the source of origin in a few minutes. In the meantime we’re
scrambling jets and AWACs to patch together a birds-eye view of the homeland.”

“And where are the planes?”

“The Cessnas have been shot down.”

“What’s the damage?” O’Neill asks.

“None sir,” Earl replies. “They were shot down over the river.”

“That’s good to hear.”

“Yes sir,” Forrester continues. “Unfortunately we still have that inbound 757. I’ve ordered Major Kettering at Andrews to evacuate Marine One. It’s en route to you as we speak. We will extract you at the Suitland-Pennsylvania Avenue connection and get you out of DC immediately.”

“Got it,” the President says. “Let me know what happens over the bay.”

“I will, sir.”

“And get your own ass out of Dodge, Earl,” O’Neill adds. “There is no telling what is on that plane.”

“Don’t worry about me, sir,” Forrester says. “I should be safe where I am. You just make sure you get on that chopper.”

“I’ll be there.”

“Godspeed, Mr. President,” Earl says and signs off.

The Chief of Homeland Security relaxes into the plush leather of his armored car’s back seat and exhales. It is over now. His career with the United States government is finished. Earl closes his eyes and lets his mind drift back to its beginning.

It was 1969 when Earl signed up to fight in Vietnam. After basic, Forrester applied and qualified for Special Operations training. Six months later he donned his Green Beret and boarded a plane with dozens of others for the Vietnamese peninsula. Through two tours, he worked his way up the ranks. Earl and his Green Berets fought their war with little consideration for the lines on a map. They sought out their enemies wherever they hid. Laos, Cambodia and even into mainland China, they pursued, hunted down and killed the Viet Cong. They had even less consideration for the political hand wringing back home. They carried no tags and often operated without official sanction, answering only to the conditions on the ground. It was bloody work that took the lives of many of their comrades. Yet regardless of the privations and casualties they suffered, they remained of a single mind. There were no draftees
among them. Every man was a volunteer intent on doing his part to stem the spread of Communism across the world. Earl believed, as they all did, that defeating the Viet Cong would go a long way to reversing the tide of totalitarianism sweeping westward since the end of the second World War. Forrester’s father lost his life holding the line in Korea. Earl was more than willing to lay his down in Vietnam.

The CIA recruited Forrester after the war and for the next thirty years he worked with the Agency’s Black Ops teams that took the fight to America’s more rabid enemies. He was responsible for the deaths of scores of men, many at his own hands. Earl never relished the killings but neither did he regret them. The enemies he took out were all butchers themselves. They had no cause to complain of their treatment at his hands.