Into the Night (65 page)
How many times had she come out of work to find that her trunk had popped open? At least twice. She'd thought it was funny that it had done that all by itself, thought maybe it was the heat of the day that had made the metal expand or contract or whatever metal did when it got too hot.
She looked at her watch. Lord Jesus, the President was due to come to the base any second—if he hadn't already arrived.
"I have to make a phone call," Mary Lou told Aaron. She didn't wait for him to give her permission, she just pushed her way out of the kitchen into the little hall by the bathrooms.
Someone was using the pay phone there, so she went outside to the phone in the parking lot.
Boy, it sure must've put a crimp in someone's plans when she'd gotten her trunk lid replaced with a lock that worked. They couldn't use her as a mule anymore—not without a...
Key.
Ihbraham had made a copy of the new key for her. In fact, he'd been willing—even eager—to do it.
Dear Lord.
She could see him in her mind's eye, arguing with his brothers. All those Arabic faces and voices, dark with anger.
He'd said his brothers had wanted him to join them. He'd said he'd promised them... something.
Dear, dear Lord.
Was it possible... ?
Her hand shaking, Mary Lou picked up the receiver and dialed 911.
Muldoon scanned the crowd, looking for the man Jenk had spotted from the helicopter.
"I've got him." Duke Jefferson—the sniper in Sam Starrett's helo—sounded calm and almost detached. "Ready on your command, sir."
"Steady, Duke," Paoletti said. "We're just watching him here. Just an insurance policy. Sam, I want to know if he so much as moves an inch."
"Aye, sir. He's watching the dais, looking over toward Bryant, like he's waiting for the show to start."
There were a lot of men wearing white T-shirts today, and from Muldoon's viewpoint—because of the denseness of the crowd—he couldn't see who had a stroller and who didn't.
If this were an attack by a suicide bomber, chances were the man was acting alone.
But after 9/11, the entire world had learned to expect the unexpected.
"Okay," Sam said. "He's putting on a hat. Baseball cap— white—backward. Jesus, is that some kind of signal?"
And there he was.
Muldoon saw him. White cap on backward.
But there was someone else right down in front, over closer to the President, who was also just putting on a white baseball cap, backward.
"Our head scratcher is almost on top of our guy," Jenk reported from the helo. "And I see about four other suits closing in from all directions—and he does, too!"
"Gun!" Sam shouted.
"Duke, fire!" Paoletti shouted.
"Gun!" Muldoon echoed in unison with Jazz Jacquette, and chaos erupted.
Joan's first thought was Where?
"Get down!" someone was shouting. It was Muldoon, and he was shouting at her, a look of disbelief on his face that she should be over there, so close to where the President was being hustled away by the Secret Service.
What had he thought? That she would just ditch her grandparents when he'd told her that there might be trouble?
"Come on," she shouted to both Vince and Charlie, pulling them toward the stairs, following the President. This was just a false alarm—it had to be a false alarm. That really wasn't a gun that had been spotted—how could anyone get a gun in here?
But then shots exploded, a ragged burst of—God!— machine-gun fire.
Where was it coming from?
"Gun!" Sam shouted, and time clicked into slow motion. Through the binoculars, he could see their man pull a room broom—a 9mm submachine gun—from the baby stroller. He came up firing even as Tom Paoletti shouted, "Duke, fire!"
Duke Jefferson squeezed the trigger before the K of his name was out of Paoletti's mouth.
"Shooter down," he announced in his sniper's calm, and time clicked back to regular fast speed. It was over.
"Agent down!" Sam shouted.
But, Jesus, there were more shots being fired, the ripping sound audible even over the throb of the helos. Someone else down there was still shooting—and shooting into this crowd.
"Second shooter in the stands!" Cosmo shouted from Sea-hawk Two. "He's firing at us!"
And that would be one fucking disaster, if these fuckers brought one of these Seahawks down into this crowd.
"Take 'em out!" Paoletti's voice crackled over the radio.
"Third shooter out in front! White hat!" That was Muldoon’s voice. Jesus, he was unarmed. Sam scrambled to see him.
"Second shooter down," Cosmo announced.
"Duke!" Sam shouted. "Do you see Muldoon's guy?"
* * *
The chaos was incredible. From where he was, Husaam could barely see Ihbraham. But he caught a flash of blue as his three biker friends brought him down to the ground. And then, as the crowd scattered, he could see one of them—the larger one—kick Ihbraham savagely in the head, hard enough to break his skull.
Husaam headed with the crush toward the gate.
Mary Lou heard the first of the gunshots as the emergency operator finally came on the line.
"Coronado security. This call is being recorded. What is the nature of your emergency?"
"They're trying to kill the President!"
"May I have your name and location, ma'am?"
"Terrorists are trying to kill the President over on the parade grounds!" she sobbed. There was more shooting, a tearing sound that echoed, contrasting hideously with the peaceful tranquility of this beautiful sunny day. Oh, Ihbraham, how could you have done this? "There are four of them. I think there are four of them—brothers—and their name is Rahman."
"What is your name, ma'am?"
"Who the hell cares what my name is! You need to send help! Now!"
Mary Lou hung up the phone and ran toward the parade grounds, praying that she was wrong.
Vince saw the gun.
It was a handgun, not one of those submachine guns he'd heard firing just seconds ago.
Still, a gun was a gun whether it fired dozens of rounds per second or only a few. It could still kill you and the people you loved just as dead.
The son of a bitch had it out and was pointing it where the President was being hustled off the stage and down the stairs. Where Joanie was trying to pull him and Charlie.
Vince did the only thing he could do. He tackled them both, pulling them down to the metal floor of the stage.
But before he got them down, he heard shots, felt one slap the back of his leg.
"Crawl!" he shouted to Joan, praying he was the only one who was hit. "Grab Gramma's arm and elbow crawl!"
Muldoon saw the shooter open fire, saw Vince get hit protecting Charlie and Joan.
The crowd was scattering in a panic, making it close to impossible for any of the Secret Service agents to reach the third man. And the shooter was running, moving with the crowd, trying to get even closer to the dais.
"I still don't see him," Jenk, the team's sharpest pair of eyes, reported from the helo overhead. If the man had stood still, they'd have no problem picking him out.
Muldoon was going to have to do the only thing he could do given these circumstances.
He was going to have to take this motherfucker out with his bare hands.
Joan saw Mike running, but unlike everyone who was sane, he was running toward the man with the gun.
He ran toward the edge of the stage, and when he got there he jumped and dove—kind of like Superman taking to the skies. Only Mike didn't go up, he went across and down.
The gunman turned and saw him and swung his gun around to fire.
Another shot rang out just as Mike hit him.
And Joan knew. If Mike Muldoon died here today, he'd die a hero.
And her life would never again be as bright, as sunny, as funny and wonderful as it had been these past few days.
If he lived, she was going to do it. She was going to marry the man. Life was too short to fool around. And if he died, she was going to rip the heart out of the bastard who killed him with her bare hands.
Muldoon connected hard with the last terrorist.
"Duke!" Sam ordered, and the sniper got ready in case the unthinkable happened and Muldoon got taken out before taking out the shooter.
Shit, there was blood on Mike's uniform, garishly red against the bright white.
But the kid was still kicking.
He had the shooter in a body lock and twisted hard. Sam could almost hear the crack from all the way up here.
"Shooter three down," Muldoon said, as he scrambled to claim the man's gun.
Chapter 27
"Man down," Tom Paoletti said over the radio, and it wasn't until Muldoon stood up and saw the blood that he realized the man his CO was talking about was him. "Lopez, get your ass down here."
The bastard had shot him in the arm.
But that was the least of his worries.
"I'm okay," he said, looking around for Joan. The entire side of the dais where she'd been standing was empty. There was no one there at all. "It's just a scratch."
All of the SEALs in the helos were coming down the ropes—which was quite a show from this perspective—and they quickly secured the area.
As the Seahawks moved off, Muldoon could hear more ambulances approaching, people crying, the continuous chatter from the radio over his headset, and some kind of electronic ringing—
His cell phone.
He dug it out of his pocket and flipped it open.
"Joan?"
"Michael, are you all right? I saw you jump on that man with the gun and—"
"I'm fine," he said. Shit, she'd seen that. She probably watched him break the bastard's neck, too. Way to convince the woman to marry him. "Are you okay? When I saw you over by the President—
"I'm fine."
"Really? You're not wounded at all? Not even a little?"
"Oh, God," she said, smart enough to figure out that his concern came from his telling her that he was fine, when in fact he wasn't. "He shot you, didn't he? How bad is it?"
"It's just a scratch."
"What is it with stupidass macho he-men?" she ranted. "Gramps got shot in the leg, and he says he's fine, it's just a scratch. Let me give you a tip, okay, tough guy? When a bullet hits you—even if it just grazes you—it is not a scratch''
"Where are you?" Muldoon asked. He saw Tom's uncle with his arms around Meg Nilsson, helping shield her baby's eyes from the sight of the dead terrorists, who still lay where they'd fallen.
He caught sight of Kelly, too, hard at work over in a makeshift triage area that Lopez was helping her set up.
Tom Paoletti saw Kelly as well, and Muldoon could see some of the tension in the man's shoulders ease as he headed toward her.
There were far fewer casualties than Muldoon would have thought after hearing that first rip of machine-gun fire. Most of the wounded were able to walk.
"We're under the stage," Joan told him. "Gramma and I got everyone down here while you were doing your superhero imitation. Gramps isn't the only one wounded. There are two other men with scratches''
"Do you need help, coming out?" he asked. He saw John Nilsson catch up with Meg, and with a nod from Tom Paoletti, Nils quickly led his wife and baby out of the area.
As Muldoon watched, Tom gave his elderly uncle a quick hug.
"No, we can do it," Joan said. "Gramps insists he can walk. I just wanted to make sure it was safe before we came out. Really, I wanted to make sure you were safe. That was, um, pretty goddamn scary, Mike. And you do this for a living, huh?"
"It's not usually like this," he told her. "This was what we call a goatfuck, if you'll excuse the expression. However, it could have been a lot worse. You can thank Commander Paoletti for the fact that the casualty count is so low. Two men with machine guns, a third with a handgun. It's a miracle we're not bringing in body bags by the dozens."
"God," she said. "What a thought."
He could see her now, leading a ramshackle band of VIPs and dignitaries out from behind the dais.
She faltered only slightly when she saw the blood on his jacket, hanging up her phone and pocketing it—as if she didn't trust herself to speak to him right at that moment. But by the time she reached him, she'd managed to smile.
"I think you need to go where we're going," she said. Her eyes were suspiciously bright. "To the hospital. I think your scratch needs stitches, babe."
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