Strike Force Charlie (29 page)

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Authors: Mack Maloney

BOOK: Strike Force Charlie
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Dave Hunn was a lucky man.
Not many people could take a bullet practically point-blank to the chest and survive, but Hunn did. Three factors helped him. Factor one: the D.C. policeman had shot him with a small .22-caliber revolver. Essentially a popgun, it was probably the cop's backup weapon, though why he was using it they would never know. Factor two: Hunn was wearing a Kevlar double-weave bulletproof vest given to him when the escapees first landed at Cape Lonely. Thank you, Master Chief Finch. Factor three: Ozzi had somehow stopped the bleeding from Hunn's wound—more of a vicious bloody bruise than a perforation—during his backstreet odyssey of carrying Hunn up to Li's house after the shooting.
Hunn was swathed in bandages now, lying atop the mattress that once made up the huge bed inside Li's master bedroom. His chest was black-and-blue from his collarbone to his navel. He looked like he'd stopped a cannonball and not just a 22. And this was his second wound in the last six months; he'd been shot in almost the same place the day of the Hormuz attack. But he was alive, and at the moment that's all that counted.
“Are sure you'll be OK?” Li was asking him now. “You shouldn't really move around that much.”
“I'll be fine,” Hunn breathed to her. He really felt that way, though he had no choice, because actually going to a doctor was out of the question. But both Ozzi and Li had received medical training as part of their runup for the DSA, and Hunn knew a little about patching wounds, too. This one would require bed rest and little activity at least for the next couple days.
Trouble was, they didn't have the luxury of 48 hours to just sit around and do nothing. Everything that was in force the night before, when he and Ozzi went looking to pop Rushton, was still in play today. If anything, the situation had grown worse. Rushton's security people had to know by now that someone was authentically out to get the general, to ice him just as Palm Tree had been iced. If anything, this would double the general's security detachment when he was out and about. And if the Rushton kids thought their days of shuttling around with their famous father had come to an end, they had another thing coming.
What's worse, everything the east side ghosts were trying to prevent or solve was still up in the air. An early news bulletin that morning told about a Greyhound bus being shot up on a Texas highway. It was a scant report, but it led them to believe it might have been the west side crew finally nailing the first bus. How they did it the east side had no idea. But this did nothing to solve the bigger mysteries here: What was up with the second bus? Where was it? What were the people onboard planning? What about this theory of Li's, bolstered by Nash's visit, that Rushton not only knew what the second bus was up to but thought the ghosts knew, too?
The walls of the master bedroom were plastered with printout images of the mysterious napkin in all phases of polarities, negatives, false colors, different sizes, and so on. It was such a silly-looking thing, but it was hard to stop thinking about it. Again, if it was inside Palm Tree's PDA, it must have meant something. But they found the more they dwelled on it, the deeper the puzzle became. It was always on their minds, but that didn't make any of it any clearer.
So, if the first bus was indeed destroyed, then the second
bus was now their number-one priority—that and still trying to put a tap shot into Rushton. And that's what Ozzi and Li were out to do tonight. That's why they were contemplating leaving Hunn alone.
“We have no idea when we'll be back, if ever,” Ozzi was saying to him now. “And if we don't come back, at some point you'll have to make it out of here on your own.”
As he was telling him this, Ozzi gave Hunn one of the clean cell phones he'd stolen from the DSG store in East Newark, this just before Hunn had beaten the owner within an inch of his life.
Hunn took the cell and said, “Don't worry; if it comes to that, I know who to call.” Then he winked enigmatically and added, “In fact, I might just call him anyway … .”
 
It was a little before 9:00 P.M. when Ozzi and Li climbed into her “new” Toyota and started down the reservoir road.
They'd left Hunn with little more than the rest of the doughnuts and the TV remote. “Be careful out there,” he said as they were leaving. “The mosquitoes are vicious.”
Ozzi drove; Li was in charge of their weaponry. It consisted of their remaining M16 clone with about hundred rounds left of ammunition. They had no telescopic sight, no long-range capability, nothing in the way of night vision. They had no edge at all in any attempt they might make on Rushton. But they still had to go out and try, mostly because they didn't know what else to do.
They drove down through the suburban Virginia streets, quickly moving away from the dreariness of the reservoir road. The streets were not as populated as one might have expected on a pleasant summer evening. No doubt the entire D.C. area was still on edge, with so many rumors floating around about massive weapons due to go off, invisible terrorists everywhere, strange doings out west. Ozzi couldn't blame them for wanting to stay inside.
They got on the Parkway, heading into D.C. itself. The traffic was very sparse. In fact, for the last mile before their exit Li's Toyota was just about the only car on the road.
“This is weird,” Li said as Ozzi steered onto M street—it, too, was nearly empty of cars. Ozzi and Hunn had told her about the traffic jams that had plagued the district for the last week. But now it seemed as if just the opposite was true.
“This is more of what it was like when all this first started,” she went on. “When was it? Last week? Or a year ago? Or ten?”
If possible, the traffic became even sparser the closer they got to the center of D.C., down near the Capitol and the White House. They were heading for the EOB, as it was the likeliest place they thought they would find Rushton. But all they saw now was taxis and panel trucks.
They turned onto Pennsylvania Avenue and started heading inward. At one intersection that came up to a construction detour, Ozzi commented that the public works people had seemed particularly busy digging up the streets of D.C. this summer. Always very bad, it was at least three times the usual volume these days, strange for a place that normally had very little money to spend on itself.
The detour forced them to turn onto Olsen Avenue. All the streetlights were out here; in fact, for the next three blocks it was dark except for the ambient light coming from the few businesses that were still open this time of night. Ozzi knew his way around D.C. Taking a small side street two blocks down would get them back onto Pennsylvania, where they wanted to be.
This particular side street was an anomaly in D.C., as it went on unbroken for three blocks, very rare in a city that was laid out mostly like a wheel with a lot of spokes. Still in the middle of the streetlight blackout, he wheeled onto this odd stretch of road—and immediately hit the brakes. This alley was usually full of nothing but Dumpsters. But something was drastically different here now.
The alley was filled with military vehicles. Not just Humvees and troop trucks, of which there were many, but huge A1 Abrams tanks, too. And Bradley Fighting Vehicles, and LAVs and Stryker APCs.
“What the f—” Ozzi cried.
Li was just as stunned. “What is going on here?” she asked.
Again her thoughts went back to that night when she'd left the parking garage in tears, when she seemed to be the only one on the roads, except that column of Humvees and trucks that had rushed by her. Since then, from what she'd heard from Ozzi, the D.C. streets had been crowded with Humvees and trucks.
But this?
This was different.
Ozzi had pulled about fifteen feet into the alley before hitting the brakes. Now he shifted and started moving forward again.
They passed six massive A1 tanks, their crews lazing at the turrets or sitting on the snouts. With studied indifference the soldiers watched the Toyota go by. Many were smoking. Some were sleeping. One solider flicked his expended cigarette at the Toyota. Whatever the hell was going on here, it didn't seem too disciplined.
They passed more Humvees, more troop trucks, then more tanks. At the end of the three blocks, they saw the most unusual piece of equipment of all in this unusual stationary parade. It was a C2V, a tracked vehicle about two-thirds the size of an Abrams tank that was used for one thing only: battle management, especially coordinating ground forces with air assets. Unarmed but stuffed with all kinds of communications equipment, the C2V was usually found about a mile behind the front lines, coordinating the battle ahead. What was it doing here, with all this armor and personnel, killing time in the shadows?
Ozzi finally steered the Toyota out of the alley and back onto Pennsylvania. At that moment, two F-15s went overhead. The jets were more prevalent in the skies of D.C. lately than pigeons. But suddenly their appearance took on a more ominous meaning. Before, Li and Ozzi and anyone else who bothered to notice had just assumed the overflights were a reaction to the terrorist rumor scare, on duty as part of the heightened terror alert. But what if they were up there
for a different reason? The sighting of the C2V command vehicle made both Li and Ozzi think the same thing.
“Could someone inside that thing be talking to those guys up there?” Li wondered out loud.
“But what for?” Ozzi replied.
There was no good answer for that. They continued along in silence.
 
The streets remained empty all the way to the area surrounding the EOB. Ozzi and Li did spot several Humvees parked in the shadows near some key intersections on the way, only deepening their growing concern that something very strange was happening here. It really didn't make sense. If the troops were in the streets in case of a pending terrorist attack, why were they staying in the dark, so out of sight? Why weren't they blocking or guarding the bridges? Or surrounding the key buildings and facilities? A1 Qaeda didn't hit hard targets; they spent much of their time looking for soft, unprotected, unsuspecting targets, leaving the well-guarded stuff alone. So again, why was the Army staying hidden? Why not be visible, be high-profile, and act as a deterrent?
And those jets? What were they going to do if they weren't shooting down hijacked aircraft, an unlikely possibility these days? Were they going to shoot at the terrorists on the ground? One barrage from an F-15 could take out a city block in tightly packed D.C. There had to be a simpler, more efficient way to take out a few mooks should they suddenly be found on the streets of the capital.
And if the rumors of the terrorists exploding a dirty bomb right in the middle of the capital
were
true, again, why were all these troops sticking to the shadows? This wasn't a case of wanting to catch the perpetrators in the act. They had to be caught beforehand, or disaster would result.
None of it made any sense.
 
They reached the EOB, and by luck Rushton's unmistakable limo was there. Big, long, and black, with several young kids
spotted playing on the sidewalk nearby? How could they miss it?
But immediately they both saw the security that had been put in place around the general and groaned. There were plainclothes Secret Service agents lined up in front of the entryway of the building; this Ozzi and Li saw as they drove by as casually as possible. They tried to take in everything they could, because they knew with no other vehicles on the streets except the taxis and delivery vans, all these people watching the EOB would immediately notice the Toyota if they began driving back and forth.
Standing behind this small army of Secret Service agents were at least a couple dozen uniformed White House guards, technically Secret Service as well. Every window on the front side of the building had an armed man in it. Every building on the block had snipers on the roof. Floating above it all were two unmarked Blackhawk helicopters, their huge bulbous noses identifying them as carrying high-tech infrared detection and perhaps eavesdropping equipment onboard.
Ozzi just shook his head. “The President himself doesn't get this much security.”
 
As they didn't want to drive by the EOB again, Ozzi doubled back, returned to the Parkway, and headed for Bethesda. Again the roads were virtually empty nearly the entire way.
“This was the way my father said it was back in 1962, during the Cuban Missile Crisis,” he told Li. “Everyone hunkered down in their homes, waiting to get nuked.”
They got off at the first Bethesda exit and were soon cruising in front of Rushton's palatial home. But it was more of the same here. Secret Service agents everywhere—surely a violation of the Treasury Department Security Act—plus a battalion of Global Security bodyguards, including two small MH-500 helicopters hovering above the place.
But there was no military in sight. This further convinced Ozzi and Li that the troops in the streets back in D.C.
were there for a different purpose than just protecting Rushton's fat ass.

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