Ranya was sitting on a flattened cardboard box, her arms wrapped around her knees for warmth. Even wearing several layers of clothing which were topped by a gray track suit, she was chilled through and sometimes shivering after sitting nearly motionless for over three hours. She was stiff and sore, peering through the vertical gap where she had pulled out a wooden slat in the trash can enclosure that concealed her. Since three AM the six-foot square cypress-wood box had been her hunting blind, open to the stars above on the unseasonably cold night. There had been no moon at all, and no wind. After occasionally nodding off, she was watching the first hints of dawn seeping through the black forest wall across the lake, until branch by branch the individual trees emerged from the gloom into a new day.
Ranya had picked the back of this two-story brick home on the street lined with luxury sedans and SUVs after seeing two newspapers lying by the front door, and no lights on inside, during her scouting trip Friday night. She strolled up and rang the doorbell several times, noticing at the same time a half dozen pizza delivery and carpet service fliers jammed inside the screen door. After hearing the loud doorbell chime inside the house she walked quickly away to observe from a distance: there was no reaction within and she was certain the house was unoccupied.
When she returned at three in the morning, dressed and equipped for her mission, she settled into the trash bin storage area on the back side of the house. It was an ideal hiding place, with an unobstructed view across the lake. The upscale red brick home she had selected was directly across a finger lake from the fifth hole of the Greenspring Country Club, in the southwestern corner of the county-sized and mostly rural city of Virginia Beach. The water hazard ran north to south for hundreds of yards in each direction from her position, forming the western border of the golf course’s front nine.
At 6:20 an early morning jogger ran down the cinder golf cart path near the water’s edge, and Ranya could hear his footsteps crunching across the still water from two-hundred yards away. Mallards paddled by in a line, moving to their morning feeding grounds, leaving a series of V-shaped wakes. Ugly Moscovy ducks with their deformed-looking red bills wandered on the grassy lawn near the water’s edge, unaware of Ranya’s presence only twenty yards away. A little breeze from the north riffled the treetops and set tiny wavelets into motion down the lake, causing the mallards to change their course in formation.
At 6:35, the first golf cart of the day drove down the path. The cart’s passenger was holding a cell phone or a walkie-talkie, and had a pair of binoculars hanging on a strap around his neck. The two men in the cart were wearing dark suit jackets and ties, not golfing attire. The golf cart stopped in the open near the fourth hole’s putting green, and the passenger stepped out and scanned through 360 degrees with his binos, then he climbed back in and they drove further down the cinder path and repeated the process in the middle of the fifth hole.
They had to be Sanderson’s advance team making a security sweep. This was a very positive sign to Ranya, strong evidence that her information had been correct, and the Virginia Attorney General was indeed on his way. She had been hopeful that Sanderson and his powerful friends would use their VIP clout to move their party into the first tee time, and this security check was the first evidence that her assumption was correct.
She took up her final shooting position, sitting with her back against the wooden boards across from her vertical firing slit, and pulled her shooting platform into position in front of her. This was a small two foot high black rubber garbage bin, turned upside down to make a steady shooting table to rest her Tennyson Champion across. She placed an old telephone book from the blue recycling bin in the middle of her ‘table’ to support the barrel and sound suppressor of her scoped target pistol. Her Champion was already loaded with its single .223 caliber hollow-point cartridge.
Ranya placed the insides of her feet against the upside-down black plastic bin, with her knees bent sharply upwards. Her elbows rested on the tops of her knees, both of her gloved hands were wrapped around the carved wooden pistol grip. The bottoms of her fists rested on the curved edge of the trash bin, with the weight of the Champion on the old telephone book.
With her face a foot behind the pistol, she scanned across the lake through the scope. Even in the early light the vivid emerald-hued clarity of the short-cropped turf around the fifth tee leaped out through the ocular lens. At 7X magnification, looking across the trash enclosure through the slot where she had pulled out the board, Ranya only had a narrow sliver of a view of the country club, just covering all of the area around the fifth tee. A golf cart zipped quickly past her field of view from left to right, just a blur. Perhaps more security, or country club course wardens.
Another cart rolled into her sight and stopped, she was looking over the scope now, watching with both of her eyes. Two men climbed out, and then one more cart parked partly behind the first. There were four middle-aged white men, old frat brothers perhaps, or former law partners, or possibly campaign contributing corporate lobbyists. To Ranya it didn’t matter which: it only mattered that Eric Sanderson was one of them.
Ranya lowered her head to scan through the scope again, checking faces, and there he was! Sanderson appeared to be standing only a hundred feet away when she peered through her seven power scope. He looked the same as he did on television, with his youthful black hair trimmed with distinguished gray at the temples. Today he was wearing tacky lime-colored pants and a yellow V-neck sweater. Ranya never could understand men and their bizarre tastes in golfing outfits, but she quickly banished her extraneous thoughts.
The decision had already been made; the time for doubt and emotion was in the past, now was the time for only a stable body position, proper breathing technique, and precise trigger control. She squirmed her bottom into a better place further back, the small of her back against the rough cypress boards. Then she welded her elbows into her knees, stretched out her fingers and remade her grip. Finally she thumbed the sharply-checkered hammer all the way back, and both felt and heard its metallic treble-click as it locked to the rear.
An overweight gray-haired man in a pale-blue sweater went first, facing her shooting blind 220 yards across the finger lake. Magnified, he appeared to look directly at Ranya from only a hundred feet away for long seconds, sending a chill through her. Then he bent over and planted the ball on its tee in one smooth motion. He stretched and twisted his torso with his arms straight up, his driver held between both hands, and then he slowly and with exaggerated flourishes assumed the position over the tee and took a practice swing. Finally he settled his twitching club head down near the teed-up ball, and as he bent over Ranya laid the thin black crosshairs on the top of his head. It’s not your day you fat jerk, it’s not your day, she thought. But you’ll never forget this day for as long as you live, I guarantee it.
The chubby older man swung, the ball was smacked beyond her view. The foursome all stared after it, their clubs resting lightly over their shoulders, loose and relaxed. Their unintelligible words and laughter floated across the still water as murmurs. The first to tee-off had sliced his ball into the lake, judging by their amused reactions.
Then Eric Sanderson stepped up and planted his own ball on its tee. Ranya sucked in a deep breath and watched him through the scope as he stepped back and took a practice swing. Next he dug his spikes in, shifting his weight around, his lime-green legs shoulder width apart, his arms in a rigid “V,” his face down with the top of his head pointing directly at her.
Ranya slowly exhaled while putting light pressure on the Champion’s trigger with the pad on the end of her right index finger. The thin black crosshairs danced ever so slightly in rhythm with her pulse as they quartered the top of Sanderson’s head, while he stared straight down at his waiting golf ball. Sanderson was as motionless as a marble statue at the moment that the Tennyson Champion spat out its muffled shot.
The fifty grain lead and copper projectile was the weight of a dime, and the size and shape of the first half-inch of a ball point pen. It left the barrel and the suppressor at almost 3,000 feet-per-second and covered the distance to Sanderson in one-fifth of a second, hitting him very near the center of the crown of his head while he was bent over. The high velocity hollow-point slug pierced his skull, mushroomed open and shredded into pieces, releasing as much energy as a .45 caliber fired point blank, literally exploding his head as his cranial vault failed to contain the overpressure from the supersonic shockwaves.
The slight sound of the suppressed muzzle blast arrived a half second after Sanderson’s head exploded. His three golf partners and the security detail never heard it; their minds were overloaded with the sudden sound and images of flying blood, brain, flesh, hair and bone. The snap of the supersonic bullet passing over the lake was as loud as a bullwhip’s crack and it startled the mallards into sudden flight, but neither this sound nor the flight of the ducks was noticed by the other men, as they just stared, slack jawed, at what had been the Attorney General’s head.
The fat golfer’s heart went into instant tachycardia as they watched Sanderson’s body, headless above the exposed jawbone and fountaining blood, crumple forward and bounce once off of the smoothly manicured turf. One of the other men golfing that day, who had served in combat in Vietnam, hit the ground only a second later, his old survival reactions coming to the fore after lying dormant during three decades of peace.
The other two men stood frozen in their places, their eyes wide and their mouths agape, their clothes splattered with blood and tissue. One of them had a dark stain spreading down the front of his khaki trousers. After more long seconds of shock the Attorney General’s two-man bodyguard team jumped from their own cart and pulled the two golfers who were still standing transfixed down to the ground between their golf carts, like cowboys seeking the protection of circled wagons during an Indian attack. Only then did they begin babbling semi-coherently into their cell phones and walkie-talkies, staying well hidden to avoid the next bullet from the unseen sniper.
****
After Ranya’s utterly quiet three-hour wait in her sniper’s lair, the echoing sonic crack of her shot seemed certain to wake up any neighbors who were sleeping in on the weekend morning, and sure to attract the attention of those already up for the day. But she could not pause to worry about that, and immediately went into the escape plan she had thought out and mentally run through over and over while waiting for daybreak and Sanderson’s arrival.
Still sitting, she broke her Tennyson Champion into its three components: the suppressor, the barrel with its mounted scope, and the grip and trigger assembly. She withdrew the empty brass shell case and dropped it into the unzipped black fanny pack lying on the cement next to her. The suppressor and grip went into the fanny pack next. The fourteen inch barrel she slid up under her t-shirt and layers of clothing and beneath her sports bra, where its smooth blued-steel came to rest snuggly between her breasts. The chamber end of the barrel and the scope she pushed down inside her track pants and the blue jeans she was wearing underneath. She then snapped on the fanny pack and pulled it around in front of her, where it would cover the lumpy bulge under her layers of clothing.
Ranya wore a cheap blond wig under a pink and gray knitted wool Icelandic cap, pulled down so that six inches of golden hair fell on her shoulders. The track suit, knit cap, wig and fanny pack had cost her less than ten dollars at the Salvation Army thrift store in Norfolk.
She turned the small trash can she had used for a shooter’s bench back upright, and as she pushed the missing cypress wood slat back into its place she heard a police car’s siren across the lake. She took one more look around the trash can enclosure for any items left behind, saw none, took a deep breath, stood and reached over the boards to unlatch the gate and she stepped out.
Just under one minute had passed since her muffled shot, enough time, she hoped, for anyone already up at this hour to look out a kitchen window, and then return to their newspaper or television. Her goal was to be clear of the neighborhood in less than two minutes. Her fear was a police cruiser that might already be in place, blocking the way out to Greenspring Avenue. Her .45 pistol was locked under the seat of her motorcycle where she had left it. She had not declared war on society at large and would not shoot a local cop like Jasper Mosby in order to escape.
Ranya didn’t hesitate. She strode purposefully back up the path beside the brick home, her face turned away from the neighbor’s house a hundred feet away across a dividing hedge. While she walked her thin beige driving gloves went into her fanny pack, and she brought out and slipped on the large pair of orange-tinted glasses she had worn in the library, back when she had begun her search for Eric Sanderson. When she reached the street she turned right on the sidewalk and began “power walking,” her arms pumping, just another slightly overweight young suburban housewife burning up the calories while the children were still asleep. A block further on she passed an elderly man across the street, but he was intent on his cocker spaniel’s bowels and didn’t even look at her.
Ranya turned left at the stop sign, and then walked two more blocks out of the tree-lined subdivision and crossed the four-lane avenue at the traffic light. She continued past the Quick N’ Go convenience store, and ducked into the strip shopping center’s 24-hour laundromat and went straight through the rows of washing machines to the narrow corridor in back.
In the bathroom of the laundromat, with the door bolted shut behind her, Ranya unzipped her fanny pack and dug out of it a blue baseball cap and a carefully folded department store shopping bag. She pulled off her itchy synthetic blond wig and stretch cap and dropped them into the bag, along with her orange glasses and the fanny pack. She unzipped and removed her gray warm-up jacket, then slid out the barrel and scope from against her body, wrapped it in the jacket, and placed it in the bag. Her gray warm-up pants had zippers at their ankles so that she could pull them off over her running shoes standing up.
With the gray suit peeled away Ranya was dressed in blue jeans and a red long-sleeve sweat shirt. Her brown hair was already in a pony tail, she twisted it and piled it on top and pulled the blue ball cap down over it. After a quick look in the mirror she picked up her shopping bag, stepped out of the bathroom, and left the laundromat through the glass rear exit door to the alley which ran behind the row of shops.
Police sirens were screaming down Greenspring Avenue from both directions, just on the other side of the shopping center, while she walked down the alley with her heart pounding furiously. Two blocks down the alley and partly around the corner her faithful red white and blue Yamaha FZR was waiting for her. It was half-concealed by a green dumpster alongside a cinder block wall, outside the back entrance of a closed tavern. As she strapped down her shopping bag under the black bungee net on the back of the bike she could hear more than one helicopter. She didn’t look up until she had removed the cable locking her black helmet to the bike’s frame, and pulled it down over her head.
She kept to her planned route, using only secondary streets through suburban neighborhoods, until she was clear of the immediate area. She heard many more police sirens. Less than seven minutes after the fatal shot, she was on I-64 heading west at sixty miles per hour in the slow lane. She desperately wanted to twist the throttle wide open and eat up the asphalt pavement in front of her, but she forced herself to remain as inconspicuous as a twenty-one year old female assassin on a motorcycle could be. She felt certain that her guilt was flashing like a beacon, that her disassembled sniper pistol was glowing within the bag behind her, that her obvious guilt would immediately be noticed by any passing policeman on the highway or up in a helicopter.
As she covered the miles with no destination, she saw Eric Sanderson on the 5th tee of the Greenspring Country Club again, his club across his shoulder, smiling and relaxed, laughing with old friends, enjoying his perfect life which was one continuous ascending arc of personal success and political victory. He had not minded if his latest political victory was gained over her father’s charred body. In fact he had publicly, gratefully welcomed her father’s death. Joe Bardiwell’s dead body was just a convenient stepping stone placed before him to advance his career, a minor help in establishing his national reputation.
Whether Sanderson had personally sent the killers to the gun stores and to her house or not, he had certainly been using the murders to advance his political fortunes, which in Ranya’s mind made him a legitimate target. Someone had to pay for her father’s murder, and Sanderson was a good place to start, at least until she could find George, and hopefully learn from him who was actually giving the orders. Anyway, Ranya knew that whoever was actually behind the Stadium Massacre and the arson murders and all the rest of it was now clearly on notice. In a country where the people are armed, politicians who employ or benefit from government killer squads, well they too can be killed.
Eric Sanderson was not going to run for higher office on the ever-popular Constitution-shredding platform. He was not going to dance on top of her father’s grave.
****
All the way down I-95 and I-64 to their new base of operations, the STU Team members in the 36-vehicle convoy were tuned to National Public Radio’s “Weekend Edition,” and later to AM talk radio, listening as each new detail about the Virginia Attorney General’s assassination was reported. All of them, the operators and tech support guys in their mix of government and private vehicles skipped from station to station, relaying the latest news to each other on their VHF tactical radio net.
Listening in on Virginia State Police frequencies they learned that Virginia Beach police were searching for a white male, approximately forty-five years old, who had been seen in the area fishing. It was believed that he may have carried a rifle to a black pickup truck concealed in a long white tube and escaped from the area. Police were stopping and searching all white men in black pickup trucks moving in southeastern Virginia, unceremoniously pulling their drivers out and to the ground at gunpoint.
Attorney General Sanderson had been nailed by a sniper while golfing, teeing off on a private Virginia Beach country club. The golfers among the STU Team couldn’t help thinking ‘what a way to go.’ There you are, concentrating on one of your favorite activities in the world, and in the next second your head is melon salad and you’re talking to Saint Peter…or Lucifer…or to nobody at all. Not a bad way to go, even if it’s messy for the cleanup crew. Messy but painless.
The sniper had not been captured or for that matter even seen or heard, so he was a pro. He’d known where Sanderson would be, and was waiting for him. Unlike Senator Randolph, Sanderson had not been sniped at home, but on the move, at a private and unannounced event, so the shooter obviously had a good source of inside intel. This was a strong indication that the sniper was part of a well-coordinated team, which lined up perfectly with what they had already been briefed about.
Inside and unspoken, all of the STU Team members, alone in each vehicle, felt a great deal of respect for the assassin. Obviously, he was a kindred spirit on some level, even if he shot for the other team. “One shot, one kill,” and a clean getaway: you had to admire that…strictly on a professional basis. Probably ex-military, or ex-SWAT, or both. The bad guys obviously had some pretty decent shooters, who would demand their utmost attention and respect.
Sanderson had foolishly taken a high profile on guns recently, hoping to gain publicity for his run for Governor. Just yesterday he was all over television promoting his “FIST” checkpoint teams. Well, obviously, someone had not liked the idea of submitting to random highway firearms searches, and had taken him out…
The killing brought a new sense of urgency to their mission in Tidewater, energizing the STU Team as they rolled down the highway in their anonymous mixed convoy. They drove black Chevy Suburbans, “Bell South” and “Virginia Power” vans, motor homes, utility trucks, a small fuel truck loaded with aviation gas, some of their own private vehicles, and actual rental trucks hired to haul their lockers and crates and boxes of bulky equipment.
They knew that hard-core domestic terrorists were loose in Tidewater Virginia, spreading fear and death and havoc. But unknown to these domestic terrorists, a new kind of ass-kicking undercover sheriff was coming to town. The covert operators of the secret STU Team were on their way, and the evildoers were about to find out that their only easy days were yesterday.
All of them to a man could not believe their good fortune, that they were members of the STU Team on that crisp clear Saturday morning. They’d trained and planned and sweat and bled for years, mostly beginning way back in the military, and now the battle had finally come to American soil. On that day not one of them would have accepted a transfer to the FBI’s Hostage Rescue Team, or even to the almighty Secret Service. For once the Fibbies of the Joint Domestic Terrorism Task Force would be playing the supporting role while the deviously named Special Training Unit would do the shooting and killing.
And they all knew exactly who to thank for their great good fortune on that blue-sky Saturday as they rolled south to Tidewater: none other than that genius and visionary, Wally Malvone. Only Malvone had the insight, only he had foreseen the coming need for the Special Training Unit. He had pushed for the creation of the STU Team, just in time for them to go into action when they were needed the most.
****
The President’s Homeland Security Team met in the White House Situation Room at ten o’clock, and the mood was beyond grim. As usual, President Gilmore sat in his swiveling black leather recliner by the center of the conference table, and used the remote control to switch the sound among the bank of big screen television screens.
The eight FBI SWAT agents slain in the Reston Virginia ambush were being memorialized at Arlington National Cemetery with full military honors, a first for federal law enforcement agents killed in the line of duty. Seven of the eight had prior military service, so it was not much of a stretch when they were brought to the cemetery on flag-draped caissons. There were bagpipes playing Amazing Grace, and a bugle playing Taps, and weeping children and stoic wives veiled in black, being handed American flags folded into tight triangles.
“Damn… I should be there,” said the President bitterly. He hated the idea of missing the solemn and dignified national television exposure which attending and speaking at such an important ceremony would have brought him.
No one corrected him. They all knew that the Director of the Secret Service had admitted that they could not absolutely ensure his safety during outdoor appearances for the time being, while new procedures were put into effect. The completely expendable Vice-President had gone in his place. The Reston ambush had been the worst single day’s disaster to ever befall the FBI, even worse than 9-11.
“Wayne,” he said to his FBI Director Wayne Sheridan, “what do we know about Sanderson’s assassination?”
“We’re on it, Mr. President. He was killed by a single small-caliber high-velocity rifle bullet which struck him in the head. The assassin has thus far eluded detection, but local police have some solid leads. They’re looking for a thin white man with a goatee-style beard, who was seen carrying a long white tube back to a black pickup truck. They believe the sniper was posing as a fisherman, waiting at the end of the lake where Attorney General Sanderson was shot. We have an eyewitness working with FBI sketch artists, and we think we may be able to use hypnosis to recover the license number of the getaway truck. We’ll nail this guy. We’re hot on his trail.”
“How far away did the sniper shoot from this time? Did he use another antique ‘trash rifle’?”
“We’re searching the area where the fisherman was seen; it’s 500 yards away at the north end of the lake. It'll be a while before we can tell what kind of rifle he used; apparently they’ve only recovered a few tiny fragments of the bullet so far. They can’t even tell exactly what caliber it was yet.”
“Did anybody hear where the shot came from?”
“Well, sir, the initial reports from his security detail, they’re inconclusive. They’re still in shock, Sanderson’s head… Well, it happened right in front of them, and they’re pretty shook up. They might have just missed the sound, or the sniper could have used a sound suppressor.”
“A what? You mean a silencer?”
“He may have. Used a silencer I mean.”
“But they’re illegal, aren’t they?”
Wayne Sheridan looked over at David Boxell, the Director of the BATFE. ATF’s profile had risen considerably in the federal hierarchy since the Stadium Massacre, and he had been asked to attend the HST emergency meetings. Boxell was a rather slight man wearing horn-rimmed glasses. Sometimes his subordinates called him Barney Fife, after the timid deputy from the fictional town of Mayberry, because of the way he spoke.
Boxell said, “Silencers? Uh, no Mr. President, actually they’re not illegal, as long as one pays the tax, a fee, $200 I believe. That’s the same as it is for fully automatic weapons, one pays a $200 tax and they’re legal.”
“Wait just a minute! You’re telling me that silencers and machine guns are legal, if you pay $200?”
“Well, yes. That’s been the law for decades. One registers them with ATF of course, and there’s a background check, and the $200 tax…”
“That’s insane!” the President shot back. “I can’t believe what I’m hearing!”
Boxell stuttered, “W-w-well, the Schuleman Montaine Act, th-that only addressed semi-automatic weapons. It didn’t address Class Three weapons, that’s silencers and machine guns that have had their tax paid…”
“That’s ridiculous. I’ll just fix that situation with another Presidential Decision Directive.” He looked over at U.S. Attorney General Lynn Axelmann, who nodded her head up and down in assent. “I just can’t believe the whole situation! The day after Sanderson announces the new road block plan, the plan we pushed on Virginia, he’s killed by a sniper. The very next day! This situation is out of control. These secret militias have got to be stopped!”
The FBI Director cleared his throat and said, “Sir, if I may…”
“Go ahead Wayne, what? What?”
“It’s the Second Amendment people.”
“The who?”
“It’s more than just ‘militias’ sir. I wish it was just militias! Militias we could handle…but it’s the whole Second Amendment crowd. Ever since we passed the assault rifle law, we’ve been getting death threats mailed to us, emailed, telephoned… They’re calling us traitors, threatening to kill us…and they’re not only threatening. Yesterday in Dallas somebody put a round through the FBI Special-Agent-In-Charge’s window. Luckily the room was empty, and we’ve kept it quiet, but the shooter obviously knew exactly which office was the SAIC’s.
“And in Phoenix a package was found Thursday. It was placed, we don’t know how, right inside the ATF Resident Agency. They got a phone call telling them exactly where to look. It was twenty pounds of bricks in a plastic file box, and it had a note inside, it said, “The next one will be C-4.” It came with a blasting cap and a little bit of C-4 explosive in a baggie, so it was no prank.”
The President said, “You see Wayne, you’re making my point: they’re just terrorists, they’re no different from Muslim terrorists or any other kind.”
“Perhaps on one level it’s the same, but this is different too. For one thing, they didn’t explode a bomb in Phoenix, they just sent a warning. Muslims don’t warn: they just blow you up. And we’re getting hundreds of letters and calls a day, and they all say the same thing: ‘You took an oath to defend the Constitution, now you’re destroying it’ or ‘You’re a traitor, you’re a domestic enemy of the Constitution.’ Hundreds of them, thousands of them, every day.”
“All over the Second Amendment?” asked the President.
“Yes sir, and the Fourth, with the checkpoints now, but mostly the Second. They feel—strongly—that we’ve stepped over the line with the assault rifle ban. That we’ve crossed a point of no return. They’re threatening outright violence.”
“They’re doing more than threatening. Remember, that militia nutcase Shifflett started all this with the Stadium Massacre! They shot Senator Randolph, they shot Sanderson, they blew up the bridge, and they killed eight FBI agents. They’ve gone way, way beyond threatening! They’re just terrorists, plain and simple. They’re no better than any damned Muslim terrorists.”
“I agree, sir…”
“We need to crush them, ruthlessly, without mercy. There’s over a thousand dead Americans because of them, and they’ve got to pay! I’m going to make them pay!”
“Yes sir, but, but that may not be a very simple task. Sir, I’d like to show you some film that was just shot within the hour by an FBI surveillance plane in North Carolina. It shows the extent of the problem we’re up against.”
The President paused, catching his breath, and nodded.
The FBI Director made a hand signal to an Air Force audio-visual aide, and the center television screen cut to a grainy black and white aerial view with time and date numbers on the bottom. Director Sheridan said, “We’re looking at the funeral of Ben Mitchell, in Dunn, North Carolina.”
The President said, “The retired Green Beret who blew up the Wilson Bridge and wiped out the FBI agents.”
“Correct. Now you’ll note the hundreds of vehicles parked here.” Sheridan circled the area on the screen with his red laser pointer. “Quite a crowd turned out for the man. He seems to have been well known in the Special Forces community. Watch this group when the picture zooms in.”
The video was taken from an overhead angle. An open grave, a white tent and a coffin became visible, surrounded by a crowd that was comprised almost completely of men. Some of them wore suits and jackets, many were dressed casually, and a few were wearing jungle fatigues, but most of them wore berets.
“Mr. President, here’s where it gets really interesting. Now watch right here, this group.” He circled an area in the crowd with his laser pointer. All of the members of the Homeland Security Team were leaning forward, staring intently at the four foot wide video screen.
From the center of the densely packed milling group of several hundred men, black sticks emerged, aiming skyward. The video taken from the circling FBI Cessna jerked and zoomed in and re-centered on the sticks, which under greater magnification were obviously rifle barrels. Even the senior officials in the room, who had never held a rifle in their lives, could identify them by their distinctive triangular fore sights as M-16s of some type, along with others that were also obviously assault rifles.
“Oh my sweet Jesus,” whispered the President in the silent room. “Didn’t the I.R.A. used to do that?”
The seven men carrying their rifles vertically in front of their chests at the “present-arms” position formed into a single rank, the crowd around them melted back to give them room. All seven of the men had dark triangular rags wrapped around their heads masking them below the eyes like Wild West outlaws. They all wore dark sunglasses, and they all wore berets.
“Jesus H. Christ… They’re giving him a 21 gun salute.”
“That’s exactly right, Mr. President. I’ve been informed that the bandanas are from combat field dressing kits, the kind the Army uses to tie bandages in place. They’re giving Mitchell the Special Forces version of an I.R.A. funeral.”
While they watched the rifles were shouldered in unison, aimed skyward at a 45-degree angle, they were fired, brought down to present-arms, then returned to their shoulders and fired again. The members of the Homeland Security Team watched the display in mute wonderment.
The President spoke first, with a sarcastic scoff. “Well, it appears that they haven’t all turned in their assault rifles.”
After a moment to see if anyone else had a response, the FBI Director said, “No sir, it doesn’t appear so. To say the least.”
“And they’re doing all this for a bridge bomber and a murderer?”
“They’re doing it for Sergeant Major Mitchell, yes. And they’re doing it for the other old Green Beret, the fellow who was killed with his son in the jeep in Norfolk. Denton? Mark Denton. From what we’ve been hearing, these Green Berets are pretty ticked off about both of them.”
“Didn’t that one in Norfolk blow himself up accidentally? Wasn’t he part of that militia ring with Shifflett?” asked the President.
“Well, we think so, but the Green Berets…they’re another story. They think the fellow in Norfolk, Mark Denton, was murdered, that’s what our sources say. Apparently they agree with Ben Mitchell, with what he said in his D.O.L. letter. They think Denton was murdered.”
“Oh come on, murdered by whom? Those people are paranoid. They’re conspiracy nuts! They’re the black-helicopter crowd!”
“Maybe so, Mr. President, maybe so, but there’s thousands and thousands of them,” said the FBI Director.
“Well, I don’t see thousands of them on your video; hundreds maybe, but not thousands. Don’t you have FBI agents on the ground down there? Don’t you cover these things? These men have clearly broken the law. Blatantly! Why can’t you move in and make arrests?”
Director Sheridan squirmed in his seat, clearly uncomfortable. “Yes sir, we did know about the funeral in advance and we did have several teams on the ground. It’s S.O.P to cover funerals like this, the same as mafia or motorcycle gang funerals.”
“And? Did they make any arrests?”
“Uh, no sir, they did not. Evidently our Special Agents on the ground were discovered. The last word I have is they haven’t been hurt, but they were disarmed and sent away, with messages. Threats, actually.”
“Sent away? Disarmed? What are you talking about?”
“We assigned six agents to monitor the funeral on the ground, in three vehicles. Pretty standard, but we had no idea that hundreds of old Special Forces guys were going to show up…and well, our agents were ‘made.’ Spotted. There was nothing they could do. We’re lucky they were let go; some of the hot-heads in the mob wanted to lynch them.”
“Lynch them! I don’t understand?” The President was growing more and more incredulous.
“As traitors, sir. They called our Special Agents traitors. Some of them were mentioning ropes and trees, that’s my understanding sir. Ropes and trees… But calmer heads prevailed, and our agents were released… but without their pistols or submachine guns or credentials. Or their video cameras. Or their shoes.”
“FBI agents carry machine guns now?”
“Well yes, in their vehicles. They carry MP-5 submachine guns in their vehicles, yes sir.”
“And they let them be taken away? Just like that?”
“I’m sure it’ll be investigated. It just happened, but judging from the film we just saw, they had no choice. They were outnumbered and outgunned a hundred to one.”
“And they called our agents traitors? Traitors?”
“Yes sir, it’s that Second Amendment thing again. They told our agents they were violating their oaths, and they were ‘domestic enemies of the Constitution.’ It’s all of that Constitution business...”
“Traitors!” The President had slowly been building toward a rage, and his voice was raised almost to a scream. The FBI Director forced himself to meet the President’s scathing glare, but the other members of the Homeland Security Team were watching the FBI Director, or looking down at their papers.
“They’re the traitors! They’re the ones sniping at Senators! They’re the ones blowing up bridges and shooting up stadiums! And they have the brass balls to call us traitors?” The President was leaning against the conference table, looking up and down at them all. “Now listen people, and get this real clear: I want those roadblocks doubled, tripled! I want them in all fifty states, I don’t care what it takes—mobilize the National Guard, I don’t give a damn! If they think they can just drive around on our highways with guns and bombs in their cars like these Goddamn Green Berets, well, well, they’re not! They’re not! I won’t have it!”
The President brought his voice down and said in a hushed voice, “Make it happen people. Make it happen. That’s all I’m going to say.” Then he pointed his finger at his CSO Harvey Crandall and indicated that he should follow him out. The President swept out of the Situation Room through his own door, a Secret Service agent scrambled to open it without causing him a single moment’s delay, afraid of incurring his wrath.
In the walnut-lined passageway President Gilmore said to his friend, “Harry, get in touch with that Malvone. Find him now, right now. Tell him we’re taking a beating, and we can’t let these assassinations just stand out there with no response. We’re losing control of the situation, this fire is spreading fast, and we need to stamp it out now, right now. Tell Malvone we need to see concrete results, and we need to see them now, like to-day!”