Suburban. They found a driver, unconscious but alive, in the front seat-and a headless mannequin, dressed in a hospital gown, in the backseat. The vehicle had taken a point-blank hit from an anti-tank rocket yet was undamaged. Swearing hotly in German, all four ran off to waiting escape vehicles nearby and disappeared.
The wheelchair was just reaching the private helicopter waiting on the roof of the Wells Fargo Building, several blocks west of the UC-Davis Medical Center, when the first reports of the attack came in. “Holy shit!” Hal Briggs shouted. “Both the decoy ambulance and the decoy car were ambushed!” With his.45-caliber Colt automatic in his hands, he checked in with his security team on the rooftop and stationed around the building, and received an all clear. “The ambulance drivers made it out okay; the Suburban driver is hurt but he’ll be okay,” Briggs said to Patrick McLanahan as he received more updates. “That BERP stuff you put on the Suburban saved his life.”
While Paul and the other security men were being loaded aboard, Patrick turned to Briggs and shouted over the roar of the idling helicopter, “What about the security units at the apartment? Have they checked in?” Members of Hal Briggs’s ISA action team were stationed at Paul McLanahan’s apartment in Old Sacramento, where Patrick, Wendy, and their baby had been staying. Hal keyed his microphone, ordering all his security units to check in.
All the teams checked in except one.
Hal Briggs and two of his Madcap Magician commandos, both of them experienced US Marine Corps Special Operations Capable soldiers, moved as one through the stairwell and hallways of the third floor of the Harman Building in Old Sacramento, above the Shamrock Pub. Patrick followed, carrying a SIG Sauer P226 9-millimeter handgun, which looked like a popgun compared to the commandos’ Uzis and MP-5 submachine guns.
There was no sign of the commandos assigned to guard the third floor and the apartment itself. They reached the front door and Briggs tried it silently. It was unlocked. Patrick had briefed the team on the layout, so they were all familiar with the traps inside the apartment: lots of big closets and cabinets, lots of windows on the river side, a large porch on the west side, thin walls, multiple doors to many of the rooms.
Briggs slid a flat fiber-optic camera beneath the door and activated the TV monitor. He gave hand signals to his commandos of what could be seen within: two hostages, one target visible, straight ahead in the living room. Nothing else visible. Open doorways all along the hallway on both sides-an almost impossible gauntlet. Bad guys could pop out of half a dozen doorways the minute they entered.
Briggs’s mind was racing, trying to formulate a plan, when the front door swung open. Guns snapped up to the ready, safeties flicked off…
“Only McLanahan may enter,” the astonished commandos heard, in a British-accented voice. “If anyone else tries to enter, Mrs McLanahan and the child die.”
“Shit,” Briggs whispered. He looked around the entryway as if expecting to spot the wireless TV camera or microphone the intruders used to see them coming. He adjusted his earset commlink and…
“Don’t,” Patrick McLanahan whispered, touching Hal’s shoulder. “I’ll go in. Alone.”
“It’s suicide, Patrick.”
“If he wanted to kill us, I think we’d already be dead by now,” Patrick said. He stood, the P226 in his right hand. He raised it, imitated Hal Briggs’s Weaver pistol grip as best he could, and entered. The sight before him made his blood turn cold. Wendy was seated on a dining room chair, holding the baby, duct-taped in place with more duct tape over her eyes and mouth-both of them covered in blood. Blood was everywhere-down the hallway, splattered across the walls, all over the floor. “Jesus, Hal,” he whispered over his earset commlink. “Wendy, Bradley… my God, I think they’re already dead.”
“Oh Christ!” Briggs cursed. “God, no…”
Patrick continued forward, past the hall closet-empty-past the open door to the first bedroom on the left- empty-and then to the kitchen on the right. There he saw the two Madcap Magician commandos, their throats slit, staring lifelessly into space. The floor was slippery with their blood. On the left the guest bathroom was empty, as was the…
“Please put the gun down, General McLanahan,” the British voice said.
Patrick spun toward the dining room to the right-empty. But as he turned, he felt the barrel of a gun on the back of his head. The guy was
“Please don’t do anything rash, General, or more will be hurt needlessly. Decock your weapon, and keep your hands extended.” Patrick thumbed the decock lever on the SIG Sauer P226, which dropped the hammer without firing the weapon. “Very good. Now hold still or you will die.” A gloved left hand reached out and, as the muzzle of the gun continued to press into his head, closed over Patrick’s SIG and plucked it from his hands. “Thank you. Fine weapon. Step forward, hands behind your neck… stop right there.”
Patrick was facing the dining room, but out of the corner of his eye he could see his wife and baby. The hatred and anger bubbled up from his chest and came out in a low growl. “You bastard!” he said. “First a cop-killer, then a baby-killer. You had better kill me now, because if you don’t, I’ll dedicate the rest of my life to hunting you down and killing
“Give me a bit more credit than that, General McLanahan,” the voice answered. “I would never purposely kill non-combatants, especially women and babies. Your wife and beautiful child are alive and sleeping-sedated. I set up this little display for you in case I was not here to greet you upon your return. But I promise I will kill you without hesitation if those men in the hallway try to enter the apartment. I would hate to have noncombatants hurt in a gunfight.” Patrick closed his eyes and said a silent prayer.
“Let me go and check my wife and child.”
“All in good time, General,” the terrorist said. “I have a proposition for you first.”
“Who are you?”
“My name is not important, although I have a feeling you or your associates in the hallway will soon match a name with the voice. You seem to be a very resourceful man.”
“What in hell do you want?” Patrick barked. “You already killed my brother…”
“Nice try, General. I wish that were true,” the terrorist said, “but my men report that we missed. Two decoy vehicles-very clever, very effective. I believed you would not use more than one. And the actual escape was not from the hospital heliport, which we had covered as well. This company you work for, this Sky Masters, Incorporated, appears to be serving you well.
“But the men you had stationed here to guard your family were obviously professional soldiers, highly trained and well-equipped, although young and inexperienced,” the voice went on. “So you appear to still have some connection to the military. Curiouser and curiouser, as they say.”
“Why don’t you just leave us alone?”
“I would be most happy to leave you and your beautiful family alone and conduct my business,” said the Brit, “but you apparently chose to personally involve yourself
“We could have passed that little episode off as the deranged, futile efforts of a vengeful sibling, and left it at that. But once we found out who you were, we performed with our usual due diligence and began to discover some very unusual and interesting facts about you-or, to be precise, even more interesting was what we did
“What do you want?”
“A simple request, General McLanahan: We form a partnership. You obviously have special military contacts, far more extensive and secretive than I could ascertain in a short period of time. All you need to do is sell some weapons or information to me. I guarantee to make it worth a great deal to you.”
“What in hell makes you think I have access to anything of value to you?”
“An educated assumption on my part,” said the voice. “But I have learned that general officers typically have access to things that sometimes even they are not aware of. My network is vast and growing quickly, and your access combined with others all over the world may prove very valuable. I would be willing to share the profits of our association with you, a fifty-fifty split, if you agree to join me. I can guarantee that you will make hundreds of thousands of dollars a month-in fact, I am so sure of it that I am prepared to advance that amount to you. I can
