Under Siege (48 page)

So Freeman Mcationally had decided to permanently settle Willie Teal’s hash. Another little lesson for those who thought they could cross Freeman Mcationally and get away with it.

M-79 grenade launchers, 40-mm grenades through the window. Like this window. He pulled back the edge of the venetian blind an inch or so and peeked out at the parking lot and the grass beyond.

do you do when a grenade comes through the into your bedroom at night? Do you huddle under blanket? Pick it up and toss it back?

Hell no! You die, man! Bloody and perforated from hundreds of shards of steel, you die. Just like Willie Teal.

He was breathing hard. His heart was pounding and he was breathing too fast.

He turned off the light. In the darkness he got dressed, layering on sweaters and sweatshirts.

In the bathroom he tried to vomit and couldn’t. His stomach felt like he had swallowed a stone. He closed the door, stuffed a towel under it so light wouldn’t leak, and turned on the light.

The .45 automatic was loaded and had a round in the chamber. The hammer was back and the thumb safety on. Cocked and locked, the DI had called this condition, way back when.

He put the muzzle in his mouth and tasted it.

Go ahead. Save Freeman the trouble. You know that he didn’t decide to annihilate Willie Teal and not lift a finger to solve his biggest problem-you. He saw himself in the mirror. So pathetic.

He put the gun in his waistband and sat on the commode and sobbed.

About two in the morning Harrison Ronald heard the fire door on the first floor of the stairwell being opened. h made a metallic noise that was clearly audible here on the third-story landing of the Quantico FBI dorm, where he sat in the darkness with the slab-sided Colt in his hand. Nobody had ever oiled the push-bars on the heavy doors, thank the Lord.

Harrison Ronald eased his head between the rails and stared downward into the darkness, trying to see. There was nothing. Not a glimmer of light. There should have been light, of course, but Harrison Ronald had unscrewed all the bulbs over two hours ago.

Somebody was down there.

He closed his eyes and concentrated on what he could hear. He even held his breath. Yes, a scraping sound. A shoe sole on the nonskid of the concrete steps.

Harrison Ronald pulled his head back and sat absolutely still, the automatic held firmly in both hands.

This is really it, he told himself. Anybody with a legit reason to use this stairwell would not try to be quiet.

This is really it!

He sat frozen. Any movement he made the other man was bound to hear. His feet were out of position and his butt was cold, ice-cold, on the hard concrete step. He sat listening, breathing shallowly.

A light! The man below was using a small pencil flash, looking things over. Now it was gone.

Somewhere outside a car horn honked. It sounded far, far away.

The man was at the second-floor fire door. The intruder would have to push down the thumb latch on top of the grip, then pull the door open. The thumb latch would require some serious pressure since it mechanically moved the push-bar on the other side.

The latch clicked and the sound echoed in the stairwell. The man below stood for the longest time, also listening. Harrison Ronald didn’t even breathe.

Then the door opened and the intruder went through. He let the door swing shut but stopped it before the latch clicked.

Was that right? That’s what it sounded like to Harrison Ronald. He eased himself upright, massaged his cold, stiff bottom, and still trying to make no noise, crept across the landing and down the stair to the second-floor door.

felt the steel door, slid his fingers across to the jam.

it was ajar.

eased his eye to the window in the door and looked down the hallway. The man was outside his door. A thick figure, medium height, carrying a long weapon.

Harrison Ronald moved away from the window and stood in the darkness, trying to think.

The man might not come back this way although he had left the door ajar. Even if be did, he might be expecting Ford to be waiting here. If the man goes into the room, Ford asked himself, should I go down the hallway toward the room? Back up to the third-floor landing? Or down to the first floor? He took another look. The man was bent over, working on the lock. What if there is more than one man?

That thought froze Harrison Ronald. No, not a sound here in the stairwell. Maybe another man coming from the lobby, using the elevator or the stairway beside it. If so, where was he?

He took another peek through the window. The stout man was going through the door. No one else in the hall. The man would come out of there in seconds. What to do?

Amazingly enough, the simple expedient of avoiding the man never occurred to Harrison Ronald Ford. He had lived with fear too long. He sought now to surprise his enemy, confront him in a way that maximized the slim advantage that surprise bestowed on the aggressor. For Harrison Ronald intended to be the aggressor. Growing up black in the blullar neighborhoods of Evansville and as a young rifleman in the Marine Corps, he had learned the lesson well: attack-fiercely, ruthlessly, with iron-willed determination-always attack.

The door to Ford’s room opened silently. A head peeped out and surveyed the dimly lit hallway. Now the stout figure emerged, moving lightly for a man so large, and came along the corridor toward the fire door standing ajar. He opened the fire door and slipped through.

Crouching on the second step, Ford swung the edge-of his hand with all his strength at the man’s legs. The man pitched forward headlong. He made a sickening splat on the landing.

Ford was on him in seconds. His hands around the prone figure’s throat, squeezing with all his strength. After a few seconds he stopped.

The man under him was absolutely limp. Sitting on his back, Harrison Ronald felt the carotid artery. Nothing.

He rolled the body over and felt gently in the darkness. The forehead was smashed in, pulpy. No blood, or at least no slick, smooth wet slimy substance.

Still breathing hard, still pumped with adrenaline, Ford grasped the dead man’s arms and pulled the corpse up the steps. The weapon clattered away.

The body was heavy, at least two hundred pounds. Ford heaved and tugged with all his strength. He paused twice, but with one last mighty heave he managed to get the corpse to the second-floor landing. He checked the hallway through the window in the door. Empty.

Wedging the door open, he tugged the body through and pulled it down the hallway, which, mercifully, was polished linoleum. He opened the door to his room and dragged the body inside, then raced back for the weapon on the stairs.

In his room, with the faint light from the parking lot coming through the window, he examined the man carefully. Even with his forehead smashed in, he was recognizable. Fat Tony Anselmo. There was a weapon in his coat pocket, a 9-mm automatic with a silencer as big as a sausage. The long weapon was a shotgun, a Remington pump with the barrel amputated just in front of the forearm. It was loaded.

Ford laid the shotgun on the bed and went through the man’s pockets. A wallet containing cash, nocredit cards. A lot of cash, mainly twenties. Ford put the wallet back in Anselmo’s pocket. He quickly went through the other pockets. Cigarettes, lighter, a motel room key, some change, a small pocket knife, two wadded-up handkerchiefs. No car keys. How had Anselmo gotten here?

was outside waiting.

checked the 9 mm. Loaded, with the safety on.

long had selmo been in here? Five minutes? Four?

He stuffed the automatic in his belt. He was already wearing a jacket over a sweatshirt and sweater. The stairwell was unheated.

He opened the door slowly, checked the hallway, then slipped out. He headed for the stairs that led down to the lobby.

There was a man at the lobby desk, seated on a stool with his head down. Harrison Ford waited behind the fire door, watching him through the small window. The man was reading something on the desk in front of him. He turned a page. A newspaper. A minute passed. Then another.

The desk man picked up his coffee cup and put it to his lips. He frowned, looked into the cup. He rose from his stool and walked to his sight, Ford’s left.

The pot was in that little office across the hall. Quickly now!

Ford eased open the door, checked that the desk man was not in sight, then popped through and pushed the door shut behind him. He strode across the carpeted lobby and went through the outside door, closing it behind him.

He dropped behind the first bush he came to and looked around. Beyond this little driveway was the parking lot with the mercury-vapor lights shining down upon it.

Using the trees and shrubs for cover, he circled it as fast as he could trot, pausing and crouching several times behind large bushes for a careful scan. He reached the vantage point he wanted, with all the cars between him and the entrance to the stairwell that Tony Anselmo had used. Crouching, staying low, he moved carefully parallel to the last row of cars with the 9-mm automatic in his hand. Up there, on the second row. Wasn’t that ahead in that dark green car? Hard to tell. Perhaps a seat-back headrest.

He moved slowly alongside a car, keeping it between him and the green sedan.

It took fifteen seconds to get to a place where he could look again.

Yes. A man.

He moved slowly now, going behind a line of cars, working closer. He also checked the other cars. There might be someone else out here.

The door to the green sedan opened. Ford realized it when the interior courtesy light came on.

Then it went off. The man was standing beside the car. On his hands and knees, Ford crept across the back of the last car in this row, the third one, and looked forward. The green sedan was in the second row, and the man was way

VLU’NTILUG ide 1-ne ‘d comfive’f”…s’door”, “i“‘bleduwtarocrgtcy nree equals t from where Ford was hunkered. He was doing something. A weapon. He was stuffing shells into a shotgun.

Ford heard the distinctive metallic snick as the man worked the action, chambering a round. He turned his back to FD-RD and started toward the stairwell door.

Harrison Ronald Ford rose into a crouch, braced his hand against the side of the car, and steadied the automatic. The damn thing had no sights.

He quickly aligned the silencer and squeezed off a round.

The man staggered, tried to turn. Ford squeezed again. Another pop. And another.

The man went down. The shotgun clattered as he hit the asphalt.

Ford ran to his right, all hunched over, down about five cars, then charged across the driving lane into the second row. Alongside a car he threw himself on his face and looked under the parked vehicles. He could see a dark shape on the asphalt, obviously not a tire.

Harrison Ronald Ford leveled the automatic with both hands, trying in the gloom to sight Along the rounded top of the silencer.

Shit! This is crazy! He could not see well enough to really aim, even if. he had had sights.

He lay there breathing rapidly, staring across the top of weapon at the dark shape five cars over. The seconds by. He was going to have to do something.

If he went back to the spot that he had fired from, the man would have a clean shot between the cars at him. If he went along the first row, the same thing would eventually occur. If the guy were still alive and conscious, that is.

Harrison Ronald wiped the sweat from his face with a sleeve. Fuck! He was sure as hell going to have to do something.

He got to his feet and rounded the front of the car he had been lying beside. The green sedan was plainly visible. Moving carefully, silently-he was wearing rubber-soled running shoes-he went toward it with the pistol grasped tightly with both hands, the safety off.

Kneeling on the asphalt, Ford tried again to see the fallen man between the tires. He saw a piece of him the second time, apparently still in the same place and position.

He rounded the front of the green car with the pistol ready and fired the instant it covered the man sprawled there on his side beside the front tire.

He needn’t have bothered. Vinnie Pioche was already dead.

When Jake Grafton left the Pentagon, Callie was waiting out front in the car. The buses and subways didn’t run at these hours of the night. Jake climbed in and sighed. “I called home. Amy said you were here. How long have you been waiting?”

“TW-O hours.” .6 I’m sorry.”

“Oh, Jake,” Callie said as they hugged each other. “I was so worried about you today. Amy called me at school. She was distraught, almost hysterical. They’ve run film clips on TV, over and over, all evening. The attorney general getting Shot, the Secret Service agents ready to blast the first person who twitched, and you’re standing up and looking around like a damned fool.”

“Story of my life,” he muttered.

“Hug me again, Jacob Lee.”

“With pleasure,” he said and gave her another squeeze and a kiss. She drew away finally and looked at him with her arms around his neck. “Your mother called.”

He nodded. There was nothing to say.

Finally she released him and put the car in motion.

The radio was on. Something about a huge fire in northeast Washington.

“What’s that all about?” he asked.

“Haven’t you heard? Somebody attacked a row house. Set half the block on fire.”

“When?”

“About ten tonight. Have you been working on this National Guard thing all evening”…‘9 Jake nodded and turned up the radio volume.

“What’s happening, Jake”…“Assassinations, battles … it9’s almost like a war.”

“It is a war.“‘9 After listening a minute, he snapped the radio off. 4’This is just the first battle. The have-nots versus the haves.” .”…Have you eaten?”

“No, but I’m going to drop you at the apartment building. I need the car for a while. There’s somebody I need to go see. 99

“Oh, Jake! Not tonight! You need some sleep. Why, the sun will be up in a few hours.” Jake Grafton grunted and sat watching the empty streets. “Let me come with you.”