Ryan watched in mute rage. The gunmen knew exactly what they were doing, and that reduced his number of options to exactly zero. There were six guns on him and his guests, and not a chance that he could do anything about it. To his right, Cathy held on to their daughter, and even Sally kept quiet. Neither Miller nor his men made any unnecessary sound.
“Sean, this is Kevin,” Miller’s radio crackled with static. “We have opposition in the treeline. Do you have them?”
“Yes, Kevin, the situation is under control.”
“I need help out here.” “We’re coming.” Miller pocketed his radio. He pointed to his comrades. “You three, get them ready. If they resist, kill them all. You two come with me.” He led them out the broken glass doors and disappeared.
“Come on.” The remaining three gunmen had their masks off now. Two were tall, about Ryan’s height, one with blond hair, the other black. The other was short and going bald — I know you, but from where? He was the most frightening. His face was twisted with emotions that Jack didn’t want to guess at. Blondie threw him a bundle of rope. An instant later it was plain that it was a collection of smaller pieces already cut and meant to tie them up.
Robby, where the hell are you? Jack looked over to Sissy, who was thinking the same thing. She nodded imperceptibly, and there was still hope in her eyes. The short one noticed.
“Don’t worry,” Shorty said. “You’ll get paid.” He set his weapon on the dinner table and moved forward while Blondie and Blackie backed off to cover them all. Dennis Cooley took the rope to the Prince first, yanking his hands down behind his back.
There! Robby looked up. Jack had set his shotgun on the top shelf of the walk-in closet, along with a box of shells. He had to reach to get them, and when he did so, a holstered pistol dropped to the floor. Jackson winced at the sound it made, but grabbed it from the holster and tucked it into his belt. Next he checked the shotgun, pulling back the bolt — there was a round in the chamber and the gun was on safe. Okay. He filled his pockets with additional rounds and went back into the bedroom.
Now what? This wasn’t like flying his F-14, with radar to track targets a hundred miles away and a wingman to keep the bandits off his tail.
The picture . . . You had to kneel on the bed to see out of it — Why the hell did Jack arrange his furniture like this! the pilot raged. He set the shotgun down and used both hands to slide the picture aside. He moved it only a few inches, barely enough to see out. How many . . . one, two . . . three. Are there any others . . .? What if I leave one alive . . .?
As he watched, Jack was being tied up. The Prince — the Captain, Robby thought — already was tied, and was sitting with his back to the pilot. The short one finished Jack next and pushed him back onto the couch. Jackson next watched the man put hands on his wife.
“What are you going to do with us?” Sissy asked.
“Shut up, nigger!” Shorty replied.
Even Robby knew that this was a trivial thing to get angry about; the problem at hand was far worse than some white asshole’s racist remark, but his blood turned to fire as he watched the woman he loved being handled by that . . . little white shit!
Use your head, boy, something in the back of his brain said. Take your time. You have to get it right on the first try. Cool down.
Longley was beginning to hope. There were friendlies in the trees to his left. Perhaps they’d come from the house, he thought. At least one of them had an automatic weapon, and he counted three of the terrorists dead, or at least not moving on the grass. He had fired five rounds and missed with every one — the range was just too great for a pistol in the dark — but they’d stopped the terrorists cold. And help was coming. It had to be. The radio van was empty, but the FBI agent to his right had been there. All they had to do was wait, hold on for a few more minutes . . .
“I got flashes on the ground ahead,” the pilot said. “I –”
Lightning revealed the house for a brief moment in time. They couldn’t see people on the ground, but that was the right house, and there were flashes that had to be gunfire, half a mile off as the helicopter buffeted through the wind and rain. It was about all the pilot could see. His instrument lights were turned up full-white, and the lightning had decorated his vision with a stunning collection of blue and green spots.
“Jesus,” Gus Werner said over the intercom. “What are we getting into?”
“In Vietnam,” the pilot replied coolly, “we called it a hot LZ.” And I was scared then, too.
“Get Washington.” The copilot switched frequencies on the radio and waved to the agent in the back while both men orbited the helicopter. “This is Werner.”
“Gus, this is Bill Shaw. Where are you?”
“We have the house in sight, and there’s a goddamned battle going on down there. Do you have contact with our people?”
“Negative, they’re off the air. The D.C. team is still thirty minutes away. The state and county people are close but not there yet. The storm’s knocking trees down all over the place and traffic is tied up something fierce. You’re the man on the scene, Gus, you’ll have to call it.”
The mission of the Hostage Rescue Team was to take charge of an existing situation, stabilize it, and rescue the hostages — peacefully if possible, by force if not. They were not assault troops; they were special agents of the FBI. But there were brother agents down there.
“We’re going in now. Tell the police that federal officers are on the scene. We’ll try to keep you informed.”
“Right. Be careful, Gus.”
“Take us in,” Werner told the pilot.
“Okay. I’ll skirt the house first, then come around in and land you to windward. I can’t put you close to the house. The wind’s too bad, I might lose it down there.”
“Go.” Werner turned. Somehow his men had all their gear on. Each carried an automatic pistol. Four had MP-5 machine guns, as did he. The long-rifleman and his spotter would be the first men out the door. “We’re going in.” One of the men gave a thumbs-up that looked a lot jauntier than anyone felt.
The helicopter lurched toward the ground when a sudden downdraft hammered at it. The pilot wrenched upward on his collective and bottomed the aircraft out a scant hundred feet from the trees. The house was only a few hundred yards away now. They skimmed over the southern edge of the clearing, allowing everyone a close look at the situation.
“Hey, the spot between the house and the cliff might be big enough after all,” the pilot said. He increased power as the chopper swept to windward.
“Helicopter!” someone screamed to O’Donnell’s right. The chief looked up, and there it was, a spectral shape and a fluttering sound. That was a hazard he’d prepared for.
Back near the road, one of his men pulled the cover off a Redeye missile launcher purchased along with the rest of their weapons.
“I have to use landing lights — my night vision is wasted,” the pilot said over the intercom. He turned the aircraft half a mile west of the Ryan house. He planned to head straight past the house; then he’d drop and turn into the wind and slide up behind what he hoped was a wind shadow in its lee. God, he thought, this is like Vietnam. From the pattern of the flashes on the ground, it seemed that the house was in friendly hands. The pilot reached down and flipped on his landing lights. It was a risk, but one he had to accept.
Thank God I can see again, he told himself. The ground was visible through a shimmering curtain of rain. He realized that the storm was still worsening. He had to approach from windward. Flying into the rain would reduce his visibility to a few feet. At least this way he could see a couple of hundred or so — what the hell!
He saw a man standing all alone in the center of the field, aiming something. The pilot pushed down on the collective just as a streak of red light rocketed toward the helicopter, his eyes locked on what could only be a surface-to-air missile. The two seconds it took seemed to stretch into an hour as the missile passed through his rotor blades and disappeared overhead — he immediately pulled back on the control, but there was no time to recover from his evasion maneuver. The helicopter slammed into the middle of a plowed field, four hundred yards from the Ryan house. It wouldn’t move again until a truck came to collect the wreckage.