Jack Ryan 9 - Executive Orders (104 page)

She didn't have a husband. She didn't have kids, probably never would. Andrea Price wasn't one of those who sought to escape her womanhood in pursuit of a career. She wanted it all, but she hadn't quite managed that. Her career was important—she could think of nothing more vital to her country than what she did—and the good news was that it was so all-encompassing that she rarely had the time to dwell on what was missing . . . a good man to share her bed, and a small voice to call her Mommy. But on drives alone, she did think about it, like now, heading up New York Avenue.

“Not all that liberated at all, are we?” she asked the windshield. But the Service didn't pay her to be liberated. It paid her to look after the First Family. Her personal life was supposed to run on her personal time, though the Service didn't issue her any of that, either.

I
NSPECTOR
O'D
AY WAS
already on Route 50. Friday was best of all. He'd done his duty for the week. His tie and suit jacket were on the seat next to him, and he was back in his leather bomber jacket and his lucky John Deere ballcap, without which he'd never consider playing golf or going out to hunt. This weekend he had a ton of things to do around the house. Megan would help with many of them. Somehow she knew. Pat didn't fully understand it. Maybe it was instinct. Maybe she just responded to her father's devotion. However it came about, the two were inseparable. At home, she left his side only to sleep, and only then after a major hug and kiss, her little arms tight around his neck. O'Day chuckled to himself.

“Tough guy.”

R
USSELL SUPPOSED IT
was the grandfather in him. All these little munchkins. They were playing outside now, every one in his or her parka, about half with the hoods up, because little kids liked that for some reason. Serious playtime here. S
ANDBOX
was in the sandbox, along with the O'Day kid who so closely resembled her, and a little boy—the Walker kid, the rather nice young son of that pain in the ass with the Volvo wagon. Agent Hilton was out, too, supervising. Strangely, they could relax more out here. The playground was on the north side of the Giant Steps building, under the direct view of the support team just across the street. The third member of the team was inside on the phone. She ordinarily worked the back room, where the TV monitors were. The kids knew her as Miss Anne.

Too thin
, Russell told himself, even as he watched the toddlers having the purest sort of fun. In the extreme case, somebody could drive by on Ritchie Highway and hose the place. Trying to talk the Ryans out of sending Katie here was a wasted effort, and, sure, they wanted their youngest to be a normal kid. But. . .

But it was all insane, wasn't it? Russell's entire professional life had revolved around the knowledge that there were people who hated the President and everyone around him. Some were truly crazy. Some were something else. He'd studied the psychology of it. He had to, since learning about them helped to predict what to look for, but that wasn't the same as understanding it. These were kids. Even the fucking Mafia, he knew, didn't mess with children. He sometimes envied the FBI for its statutory authority to track down kidnappers. To rescue a child and apprehend the criminal in that sort of case must be a sweet moment indeed, though part of him wondered how hard it was to bring in alive that kind of subject instead of just sending him off to have his Miranda rights read to him by God Himself. That random thought evoked a smile. Or maybe what really happened was better yet. Kidnappers had a very bad time in prison. Even hardened robbers couldn't stomach the abusers of children, and so that variety of hood learned a whole new form of recreation in the federal corrections system: survival.

“Russell, Command Post,” his earpiece said.

“Russell.”

“Price is heading out here like you requested,” Special Agent Norm Jeffers said from the house across the street. “Forty minutes, she says.”

“Right. Thanks.”

“I see the Walker lad is continuing his engineering studies,” the voice continued.

“Yeah, maybe he'll do bridges next,” Don agreed. The youngster had the second level building on his sand castle, to the rapt admiration of Katie Ryan and Megan O'Day.

“M
R.
P
RESIDENT,
”
THE
team captain said, “I hope you'll like this.”

Ryan had a good laugh and donned the team jersey for the cameras. The team bunched around him for the shot.

“My CIA Director is a big hockey fan,” Jack said.

“Really?” Bob Albertsen asked. He was a very physical defenseman, the terror of his conference for his board checking, but as docile as a kitten in this setting.

“Yeah, he has a kid who's pretty good, played in the kids' leagues in Russia.”

“Then maybe he learned something. Where's he go to school?”

“I'm not sure what colleges they're thinking about. I think they said Eddie wants to study engineering.” It was so damned pleasant, Jack thought, to talk about normal things like a normal person to other normal people once in a while.

“Tell them to send the kid to Rensselaer. It's a good tech school up by Albany.”

“Why there?”

“Those damned nerds win the college championship every other year. I went to Minnesota, and they cleaned our clock twice in a row. Send me his name and I'll see he gets some stuff. His dad, too, if that's okay, Mr. President.”

“I'll do that,” the President promised. Six feet away, Agent Raman heard the exchange and nodded.

O'D
AY ARRIVED JUST
as the kids were trooping back in the side door for bathroom call. This, he knew, was a major undertaking. He pulled his diesel pickup in just after four. He watched the Secret Service agents switch positions. Russell appeared at the front door, his regular post for when the children were inside.

“We got us a match for tomorrow?”

Russell shook his head. “Too quick. Two weeks from tomorrow, two in the afternoon. It'll give you a chance to practice.”

“And you won't?” O'Day asked, passing inside. He watched Megan enter the girls' bathroom without seeing her daddy in the room. Well, then. He squatted down outside the door to surprise her when she came out.

M
OVIE
S
TAR, TOO
, was at his surveillance position in the school parking lot to the northeast. The trees were starting to fill in, lie realized. He could see, but his view was somewhat obstructed. Things appeared normal even so, and from this point on, it was in Allah's hands, he told himself, surprised that he used the term for a decidedly ungodly act. As he watched, Car 1 turned right just north of the day-care center. It would proceed down the street, reverse directions, and head back.

Car 2 was a white Lincoln Town Car, the twin of one belonging to a family with a child here. That family comprised two physicians, though none of the terrorists knew that. Immediately behind it was a red Chrysler whose twin belonged to the again-pregnant wife of an accountant. As Movie Star watched, both pulled into parking spaces opposite each other, as close to the highway as the parking lot allowed.

P
RICE WOULD BE
here soon. Russell took note of the cars' arrival, thinking over his arguments for the Detail chief. The afternoon sun reflected off the windshields, preventing him from seeing anything more inside than the outline of the drivers. Both cars were early, but it was a Friday . . .

. . . the tag numbers . .. ?

. . . his eyes narrowed slightly as he shook his head, asking himself why he hadn't—

S
OMEONE ELSE HAD
. Jeffers lifted his binoculars, scanning the arriving cars as part of his surveillance duties. He didn't even know he had a photographic memory. Remembering things was as natural to him as breathing. He thought everyone could do it.

“Wait, wait, something's wrong here. They're not—” He lifted the radio mike. “Russell, those are not our cars!” It was almost in time.

I
N ONE SMOOTH
motion, two drivers opened their car doors and swung their legs out, lifting their weapons off the front seats as they did so. In the back of both cars, two pairs of men came up, also armed.

R
USSELL
'
S RIGHT HAND
moved back and down, reaching for his automatic while his left lifted the collar-mounted radio microphone: “Gun!”

Inside the building, Inspector O'Day heard something but wasn't sure what, and he was facing the wrong way to see how Agent Marcella Hilton turned away from a child who was asking her a question and shoved her hand into her gun purse.

It was the simplest of code words. An instant later, he heard the same word repeated over his earpiece as Norm Jeffers shouted it from the command post. The black agent's hand pushed another button, activating a radio link to Washington. “S
ANDSTORM
S
ANDSTORM
S
ANDSTORM
!
”

L
IKE MOST CAREER
cops, Special Agent Don Russell had never fired his side arm in anger, but years of training made his every action as automatic as gravity. The first thing he'd seen was the elevated front sight of an AK-47-class automatic rifle. With that, as though a switch had been thrown, he changed from a watchful cop into a guidance system for a firearm. His SigSauer was out now. His left hand was racing to meet his right on the grip of the weapon, as the rest of his body dropped to one knee to lower his profile and give him better control. The man with the rifle would get the first shot off, but it would miss high, Russell's mind reported. Three such rounds did, passing over his head into the door frame as the area exploded with staccato noise. While that was happening, his tritium-coated front sight matched up with the face behind the weapon. Russell depressed the trigger, and from fifteen yards, he fired a round straight into the shooter's left eye.

I
NSIDE
, O'D
AY
'
S OWN
instincts were just lighting off when Megan emerged from the bathroom, struggling with the suspender clips on her Oshkosh coveralls. Just then, the agent the kids knew as Miss Anne bolted out of the back room, her pistol in both hands and pointed up.

“Jesus,” the FBI inspector had time to say, when Miss Anne bounded right through him like an NFL fullback, knocking him down at his daughter's feet and banging his head against the wall in the process.

A
CROSS THE STREET
, two agents ran out the front door of the residence, both holding Uzi submachine guns while Jeffers worked the communications inside. He'd already gotten the emergency code word to headquarters. Next he activated the direct drop lines to Barracks J of the Maryland State Police on Rowe Boulevard in Annapolis. There was noise and confusion, but the agents were expertly drilled. Jeffers's function was to make sure that the word got out, then to back up the other two members of his team, already crossing the lawn of the house—

—they never had a chance. From fifty yards away, the shooters from Car 1 dropped both of them with aimed fire. Jeffers watched them go down while he got the word to the state police. He didn't have time for shock. As soon as his information was acknowledged, he lifted his M-16 rifle, flipped off the safety, and moved for the door.

R
USSELL SHIFTED FIRE
. Another shooter made the mistake of standing to get a better shot. He never made it. Two quick rounds exploded his head like a melon, saw the agent, who was not thinking, not feeling, not doing anything but servicing targets as quickly as he could identify them. The enemy rounds were still going over his head. Then he heard a scream. His mind reported that it was Marcella Hilton, and he felt something heavy fall on his back and knock him to the ground. Dear God, it had to be Marcella. Her body—something—was on his legs, and as he rolled to get clear of the obstruction, four men came into view, advancing toward him, now with a clear line of sight to where he was. He fired one round that scored, drilling one of them right through the heart. The man's eyes went wide with the shock of the impact, until a second round took him in the face. It was like he'd always dreamed it would be. The gun was doing all the work. His peripheral vision showed movement to his left—the support group—but no, it was a car, driving across the playground right at them—not the Suburban, something else. He scarcely could tell as his pistol centered on another shooter, but that man went down, shot three times by Anne Pemberton in the doorway behind him. The remaining two—only two, he had a chance—then Annie got one in the chest, then fell forward, and Russell knew he was alone, all alone now, only him between S
ANDBOX
and these motherfuckers.

Don Russell rolled to his right to avoid fire on the ground to his left, shooting as his body turned, getting off two rounds that went wild. Then his Sig locked open on an empty magazine. He had another ready, and instantly he ejected the empty and slapped in a full one, but that took time and he felt a round enter his lower back, the impact like a kick that shook his body, as his right thumb dropped the slide lever and another bullet struck him in the left shoulder, ripping all the way down his torso to exit out his right leg. One more round, but he couldn't get the gun high enough, something wasn't working right, and he hit somebody straight through the kneecap an instant before a series of shots lowered his face to the ground.

O'D
AY WAS JUST
trying to get up when two men came through the door, both armed with AKs. He looked around the room, now full of stunned, silent kids. The silence seemed to hang for a long moment, then turn to the shrill screams of toddlers. One of the men had blood all over his leg, and was gritting his teeth in pain and rage.

O
UTSIDE, THE THREE
men from Car 1 surveyed the carnage. Four men were dead, they saw, as they jumped out of the car, but they'd done for the covering group and—

—the first one out the right-rear door fell facedown. The other two turned around to see a black man in a white shirt with a gray rifle.