Inspector Patrick O’Day jumped across the room, kicking one, then the other rifle free of their dead owners’ hands. He gave each body a careful look, and for all the years of practice and instruction he’d given and taken, it still came as a surprise that it all had worked. Only then did his heart start beating again, or so it seemed, as a vacuum filled his chest. His body slumped down for a moment. Then he tensed his muscles and knelt beside the body of Katie Ryan, SANDBOX to the Secret Service, and a thing to the people he’d just killed.
“You okay, honey?” he asked. She didn’t answer. She was holding her arm and sobbing, but there was no blood on her. “Come on,” he said gently, wrapping his arms around a daughter who now would forever be partly his. Next he picked up his Megan and walked to the door.
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“THERE’S SHOOTING IN the building!” a voice said on the desk-mounted speaker. Ryan just froze. The rest of the people in the Sit Room cringed.
“Sounded like a pistol. Do they have pistols?” another voice asked on the same radio circuit.
“Holy shit, look there!”
“Who’s that?”
“COMING OUT!” A voice called. “Coming out!”
“HOLD FIRE!” Price called over the loudspeaker. Guns didn’t move away from the door, but hands relaxed a fraction.
“Jesus!” Jeffers said, standing and racing to join him in the doorway.
“Both subjects dead, Mrs. Daggett, too,” O’Day said. “All clear, Norm. All clear.”
“Let me–”
“No!” Katie Ryan screamed.
He had to get out of the way. Pat looked down to see the blood-soaked clothing of three agents of his rival agency. There were at least ten rounds by Don Russell’s body, and an empty magazine. Beyond were four dead criminals. Two, he saw, walking to the perimeter, head shots. He stopped by his pickup. His knees were a little weak now, and he set the kids down, sitting himself on the bumper. A female agent came up. Pat took the Smith from his belt and handed it over without really looking.
“You hurt?” It was Andrea Price.
He shook his head; it took him a moment to speak again. “I might start shaking in a minute.” The agent looked at his two little girls. A state trooper scooped Katie Ryan up, but Megan refused to leave his side. That was when he hugged his daughter to his chest, and the tears began for both of them.
“SANDBOX is safe!” he heard Price say. “SANDBOX is safe and unhurt!”
Price looked around. Backup Service agents hadn’t arrived yet, and most of the law-enforcement personnel on the scene were troopers of the Maryland State Police in
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their starched khaki shirts. Ten of them formed a ring around SANDBOX, guarding her like a pride of lions.
Jeffers rejoined them. O’Day had never fully appreciated the way time changed in such moments as this. When he looked up, the children were being let out the side door. Paramedics were flooding the area, going to the children first. “Here,” the black agent said, handing over a handkerchief.
“Thanks, Norm.” O’Day wiped his eyes, blew his nose, and stood. “Sorry about that, guys.”
“It’s okay, Pat, you did–”
“Better if I’d’ve taken the last one alive, but couldn’t … couldn’t take the chance.” He was able to stand now, as he held Megan by the hand. “Oh, damn,” he added.
“I think we should get you out of here,” Andrea observed. “We can do the interviews in a better place than this.”
“Thirsty,” O’Day said next. He shook his head again. “Never expected this, Andrea. Kids around. Not supposed to be this way, is it?” Why was he babbling? the inspector asked himself.
“Come on, Pat. You did just fine.”
“Wait a minute.” The FBI inspector rubbed his face with two large hands, took a deep breath, and looked around the crime scene. Christ, what a mess. Three dead just this side of the playground. That would be Jeffers, he thought, with his M-16. Not bad. But there was one other thing he had to do. By each of the rented cars was a body, each a head shot. Another one, one round in the chest, and one in the head, it looked like. The fourth, he wasn’t sure who’d gotten him. Probably one of the girls. Ballistics tests would determine which one, he knew. O’Day walked back toward the front door, to the body of Special Agent Donald Russell. There he turned, looking back at the parking lot. He’d seen his share of crime scenes. He knew the signs, knew how to figure things out. No warning, not a damned bit, maybe a second, no more than that, and he’d stood his ground against six armed subjects and gotten three of them. Inspector Patrick O’Day knelt beside the body. He removed the Sig pistol from Russell’s
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hand, gave it to Price, then took the hand in his own for what seemed a long time.
“See y’around, champ,” O’Day whispered, letting go after a few seconds. It was time to leave.
43
RETREAT
THE NEAREST CONVE-nient place to land a Marine helicopter was the Naval Academy, and the hard part was finding available Secret Service personnel to ride with SANDBOX. Andrea Price, senior agent on the crime scene as well as Detail chief, had to stay at Giant Steps, so USSS personnel racing to Annapolis were diverted, met the state troopers at the Academy, and took custody of Katie. And so it happened that the first team of federal officers to arrive at the scene were FBI agents from the small Annapolis office, a satellite of the Baltimore Field Division. What orders they needed they took from Price, but for the moment their duties were straightforward, and quite a few more were on the way.
O’Day walked across the street to the house which had been Norm Jeffers’ local command post, whose owner, a grandmother, overcame her shock to make coffee. A tape recorder was set up, and the FBI inspector ran through an uninterrupted narrative, really just a long ramble which was actually the best way to get fresh information. Later, they would walk him back through it, probing for additional facts. From where he was sitting, O’Day could see out the window. Ambulance crews were standing by to remove the bodies, but first, photographers had to record the event for posterity.
They couldn’t know that Movie Star was still looking down, along with what was now a crowd of several hundred, students and teachers from the community college plus others who’d guessed the nature of the event and wanted to watch. Movie Star had already seen enough, however, and he made his way to his car, picking his way across the parking lot, and then drove north on Ritchie Highway.
“Hey, I gave him a chance. I told him to drop his weapon,” O’Day said. “I yelled so loud I’m surprised you didn’t hear it outside, Price. But the gun started moving,
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and I wasn’t in a mood to take chances, you know?” His hands were steady now. The immediate shock period was over. Others would come later.
“Any idea who they were?” Price asked, after he’d gone through it the first time.
“They were talking in some language, but I don’t know what one. Wasn’t German or Russian–aside from that, I don’t know. Foreign languages sound like foreign languages. I couldn’t recognize any words or phrases. Their English was pretty good, accented, but again, not sure what the accent was. Physical appearance, Mediterranean. Maybe from the Middle East. Maybe from some other place. Absolutely ruthless. He shot Mrs. Daggett down, not a blink, no emotion–no, that’s wrong. He was pissed, very pumped up. No hesitation at all. Boom, she’s down. Nothing I could have done,” the inspector went on. “The other one had his gun on me, and it happened so fast, I didn’t really see that happening so fast.”
“Pat.” Andrea took his hand. “You did great.”
THE HELICOPTER LANDED on the White House pad, just south of the ground-floor entrance. Again a ring of agents with weapons was in evidence, as Ryan ran to the aircraft while the rotor was still turning, and nobody tried to stop him. A Marine crewman in a green flight suit pulled the door open and stepped out, which allowed the agents on the helicopter to carry SANDBOX off and hand her off to her father.
Jack cradled her like the baby she no longer was but always would be in his mind, and walked up the slope to the house, where the rest of his family was waiting under cover. News cameras recorded the event, though no reporter got within fifty yards of POTUS. The Secret Service members of the Detail were in a mood to kill; for the first time in the memory of the White House press corps, they looked overly dangerous.