Patriot Games jr-1

by Tom Clancy

  "Robby, get us the hell outa here!" Jack moved on hands and knees to the other side, making sure that everyone's head was down.

  Jackson moved into the driver's seat and searched for the ignition. It was set up just like a car, and the keys were in. He turned them, and the engine coughed to life as yet another burst of fire came from the other boat. Ryan heard the sound of bullets hitting the fiberglass. Robby cringed but didn't move as his hand found the shift lever. Jack brought the gun up and fired again.

  "Men on the cliff!" the Prince shouted.

  O'Donnell gathered his men quickly and gave out new orders. All the security men were dead, he was sure, but that helicopter had probably landed to the west. He didn't think the missile had hit, though it was impossible to be sure.

  "Thanks for the help, Sean, they were better than I expected. You have them in the house?"

  "I left Dennis and two others. I think we should leave."

  "You got that right!" Alex said. He pointed west. "I think we have some more company."

  "Very well. Sean, you collect them and bring them to the cliff."

  Miller got his two men and ran back to the house. Alex and his man tagged along. The front door was open, and all five raced inside, turned around the fireplace, and stopped cold.

  Paulson, his spotter, and another agent were running too. He led them along the woodline to where the driveway turned, and dropped again, setting his rifle up on the bipod. There were sirens in the distance now, and he wondered what had taken so goddamned long as he tracked his night-sight in a search for targets. He caught a glimpse of men running around the northern side of the house.

  "Something feels wrong about this," the sniper said.

  "Yeah," his spotter agreed. "They sure as hell didn't plan to leave by the road—but what else is there?"

  "Somebody better find out," Paulson thought aloud, and got on his radio.

  Werner struggled forward on the south side of the yard, trying his best to ignore his throbbing back as he led his group forward. The radio squawked again, and he ordered his other team to advance with extreme caution.

  "Well, where are they, man?" Alex asked.

  Miller looked around in stunned amazement. Two of his men were dead on the floor, their guns were gone—and so were…

  "Where the hell are they!" Alex repeated.

  "Search the house!" Miller screamed. He and Alex stayed in the room. The black man looked at him with an unforgiving stare.

  "Did I go through all this to watch you fuck up again?"

  The three men returned a few seconds later and reported the house empty. Miller had already determined that his men's guns were gone. Something had gone wrong. He took his people outside.

  Paulson had a new spot and finally could see his targets again. He counted twelve, then more joined from the house. They seemed to be confused as he watched the images on his night-sight gesture at one another. Some men were talking while others just milled around waiting for orders. Several appeared to be hurt, but he couldn't tell for sure.

  "They're gone." Alex said it before Miller had a chance.

  O'Donnell couldn't believe it. Sean explained in a rapid, halting voice while Dobbens looked on.

  "Your boy fucked up," Dobbens said.

  It was just too much. Miller slipped his own Uzi behind his back and retrieved the one he'd taken from the Secret Service agent. He brought it up in one smooth motion and fired into Alex's chest from a distance of three feet. Louis looked at his fallen boss for a second, then tried to bring his pistol up, but Miller cut him down, too.

  "What the hell!" the spotter said.

  Paulson flipped the rifle's safety off and centered his sight on the man who had just fired, killing two men—but whom had he killed? He could shoot only to save the lives of friendlies, and the dead men had almost certainly been bad guys. There weren't any hostages to be saved, as far as he could tell. Where the hell are they? One of the men near the cliff's edge appeared to shout something, and the others ran to join him. The marksman had his choice of targets, but without positive identification, he couldn't dare to fire a shot.

  "Come on, baby," Jackson said to the engine. The motor was still cold and ran unevenly as he shifted to reverse. The boat moved slowly backward, away from the beach. Ryan had his Uzi trained on the other boat. The man there appeared again, and Ryan fired three rounds before the gun stopped. He cursed and switched magazines before firing a number of short bursts again to keep his head down.

  "Men on the cliff," the Prince repeated. He'd taken the shotgun and had it aimed, but didn't fire. He didn't know who it was up there, and the range was too great in any case. Then flashes appeared. Whoever it was, they were firing at the boat. Ryan turned when he heard bullets hitting the water, and two thudded into the boat itself. Sissy Jackson screamed and grabbed at herself, while the Prince fired three rounds back.

  Robby had the boat thirty yards from the beach now, and savagely brought the wheel around as he shifted the selector back into drive. When he rammed the throttle forward, the engine coughed again for one long, terrible moment, but then it caught and the boat surged forward.

  "All right!" the aviator booted. "Jack—where to? How about Annapolis?"

  "Do it!" Ryan agreed. He looked aft. There were men coming down the ladder. Some were still shooting at them but missing wildly. Next he saw that Sissy was holding her foot.

  "Cathy, see if you can find a first-aid kit," His highness said. He'd already inspected the wound, but was now in the stern, facing aft with the shotgun at the ready. Jack saw a white plastic box under the driver's seat and slid it toward his wife.

  "Rob, Sissy took a round in the foot," Jack said.

  "I'm okay, Rob," his wife said at once. She didn't sound okay.

  "How is it, Sis?" Cathy asked, moving to take a look.

  "It hurts, but it's no big deal," she said through her teeth, trying to smile.

  "You sure you're okay, honey?" Robby asked.

  "Just go, Robby!" she gasped. Jack moved aft and looked. The bullet had gone straight through the top of her foot, and her light-colored shoe was bathed in dark blood. He looked around to see if anyone else was hurt, but aside from the mere terror that each felt, everyone else seemed all right.

  "Commander, do you want me to take the wheel for you?" the Prince asked.

  "Okay, Cap'n, come on forward." Robby slid away from the controls as His Highness joined him. "Your course is zero-three-six magnetic. Watch it, it's going to get rough when we're out of the cliff's lee, and there's lots of merchant traffic out there." They could already see four feet of chop building a hundred yards ahead, driven by the gusting winds.

  "Right. How do I know when we've arrived at Annapolis?" The Prince settled behind the wheel and started checking out the controls.

  "When you see the lights on the Bay Bridges, call me. I know the harbor, I'll take her in."

  The Prince nodded agreement. He throttled back to half power as they entered the heavy chop, and kept moving his eyes from the compass to the water. Jackson moved to check his wife.

  Sissy waved him away. "You worry about them!"

  In another moment they were roller-coastering over four- and five-foot waves. The boat was a nineteen-foot cathedral-hull lake boat of a type favored by local fishermen for her good calm-seas speed and shallow draft. Her blunt nose didn't handle the chop very well. They were taking water over the bow, but the forward snap-on cover was in place, and the windshield deflected most of the water over the side. That water which did get into the back emptied down a self-bailing hole next to the engine box. Ryan had never been in a boat like this, but knew what it was. Its hundred-fifty-horse engine drove an inboard-outdrive transmission whose movable propeller eliminated the need for a rudder. The bottom and sides of the boat were filled with foam for positive flotation. You could fill it with water and it wouldn't sink—but more to the point, the fiberglass and the foam would probably stop the bullets from a submachine gun. Jack checked h
is fellow passengers again. His wife was ministering to Sissy. The Princess held his daughter. Except for himself, Robby, and the Prince at the wheel, everyone's head was down. He started to relax slightly. They were away, and their fate was back in their own hands. Jack promised himself that this would never change again.

  "They're coming after us," Robby said as he fed two rounds into the bottom of the shotgun. " 'Bout three hundred yards back. I saw them in the lightning, but they'll lose us in this rain if we're lucky."

  "What would you call the visibility?"

  "Except for the lightning" — Robby shrugged—"maybe a hot hundred yards, tops. We're not leaving a wake for them to follow, and they don't know where we're going." He paused. "God, I wish we had a radio! We could get the Coast Guard in on this, or maybe somebody else, and set up a nice little trap for them." Jack sat all the way down, facing aft on the opposite side of the engine box from his friend. He saw that his daughter was asleep in the arms of the Princess. It must be nice to be a kid, he reflected.

  "Count your blessings, Commander."

  "Bet your ass, boy! I guess I picked a good time to take a leak."

  Ryan grunted agreement. "I didn't know you could handle a shotgun."

  "Back when I was a kid, the Klan had this little hobby. They'd get boozed up every Tuesday night and burn down a nigger church—just to keep us in line, y'know? Well, one night, the sheetheads decided to burn my pappy's church. We got word—a liquor-store owner called; not all rednecks are assholes. Anyway, Pappy and me were waiting for them. Didn't kill any, but we must have scared them as white as their sheets. I blew the radiator right out of one car." Robby chuckled at the memory. "They never did come back for it. The cops didn't arrest anybody, but that's the last time anybody tried to burn a church in our town, so I guess they learned their lesson." He paused again. When he went on, his voice was more sober. "That's the first time I ever killed a man, Jack. Funny, it doesn't feel like anything, not anything at all."

  "It will tomorrow."

  Robby looked over at his friend. "Yeah."

  Ryan looked aft, his hands tight on the Uzi. There was nothing to be seen. The sky and water merged into an amorphous gray mass, and the wind-driven rain stung at his face. The boat surged up and down on the breaking swells, and for a moment Jack wondered why he wasn't seasick. Lightning flashed again, and still he saw nothing, as though they were under a gray dome on a sparkling, uneven floor.

  They were gone. After the sniper team reported that all the terrorists had disappeared over the cliff, Werner's men searched the house and found nothing but dead men. The second HRT group was now on the scene, plus over twenty police, and another crowd of firemen and paramedics. Three of the Secret Service agents were still alive, plus a terrorist who'd been left behind. All were being transported to hospitals. That made for seventeen security people dead, and a total of four terrorists, two of them apparently killed by their own side.

  "They all crowded into the boat and took off that way," Paulson said. "I could have taken a few out, but there just wasn't any way to figure who was who." He'd done the right thing. The sniper knew it, and so did Werner. You don't shoot without knowing what your target is.

  "So now what the hell do we do?" This question came from a captain of the State Police. It was a rhetorical question insofar as there was no immediate answer.

  "Do you suppose the good guys got away?" Paulson asked. "I didn't see anything that looked like a friendly, and the way the bad guys were acting… something went wrong," he said. "Something went wrong for everybody."

  Something went wrong, all right, Werner thought. A goddamned battle was fought here. Twenty-some people dead and nobody in sight.

  "Let's assume that the friendlies escaped somehow—no, let's just assume that the bad guys got away in a boat. Okay. Where would they go?" Werner asked.

  "Do you know how many boatyards there are around here?" the State Police Captain asked. "Jesus, how many houses with private slip's? Hundreds—we can't check them all out!"

  "Well, we have to do something!" Werner snapped back, his anger amplified by his sprained back. A black dog came up to them. He looked as confused as everyone else.

  "I think they lost us."

  "Could be," Jackson replied. The last lightning flash had revealed nothing. "The bay's right big, and visibility isn't worth a damn—but the way the rain's blowing, they can see better than we can. Twenty yards, maybe, just enough to matter."

  "How about we go farther east?" Jack asked.

  "Into the main ship channel? It's a Friday night. There'll be a bunch of ships coming out of Baltimore, knocking down ten-twelve knots, and as blind as we are." Robby shook his head. "Uh-uh, we didn't make it this far to get run down by some Greek rustbucket. This is hairy enough."

  "Lights ahead," the Prince reported.

  "We're home, Jack!" Robby went forward. The lights of the twin Chesapeake Bay Bridges winked at them unmistakably in the distance. Jackson took the wheel, and the Prince took up his spot in the stern. All were long since soaked through by the rain, and they shivered in the wind. Jackson brought the boat around to the west. The wind was on the bow now, coming straight down the Severn River valley, as it usually did here. The waves moderated somewhat as he steered past the Annapolis town harbor. The rain was still falling in sheets, and Robby navigated the boat mostly by memory.

  The lights along the Naval Academy's Sims Drive were a muted, linear glow through the rain and Robby steered for them, barely missing a large can buoy as he fought the boat through the wind. In another minute they could see the line of gray YPs—Yard Patrol boats—still moored to the concrete seawall while their customary slips were being renovated across the river. Robby stood to see better, and brought the boat in between a pair of the wood-hulled training craft. He actually wanted to enter the Academy yacht basin, but it was too full at the moment. Finally he nosed the boat to the seawall, holding her to the concrete with engine power.

  "Y'all stop that!" A Marine came into view. His white cap had a plastic cover over it, and he wore a raincoat. "Y'all can't tie up here."

  "This is Lieutenant Commander Jackson, son," Robby replied. "I work here. Stand by Jack, you get the bowline."

  Ryan ducked under the windshield and unsnapped the bow cover. A white nylon line was neatly coiled in the right place, and Ryan stood as Robby used engine power to bring the boat's port side fully against the seawall. Jack jumped up and tied the line off. The Prince did the same at the stern. Robby killed the engine and went up to face the Marine.

  "You recognize me, son?"

  The Marine saluted. "Beg pardon. Commander, but—" He flashed his light into the boat. "Holy Christ!"

  About the only good thing that could be said about the boat was that the rain had washed most of the blood down the self-bailing hole. The Marine's mouth dropped open as he saw two bodies, three women, one of them apparently shot, and a sleeping child. Next he saw a machine gun draped around Ryan's neck. A dull, wet evening of walking guard came to a screeching end.

  "You got a radio, Marine?" Robby asked. He held it up and Jackson snatched it away. It was a small Motorola CC unit like those used by police. "Guardroom, this is Commander Jackson."

  "Commander? This is Sergeant Major Breckenridge. I didn't know you had the duty tonight, sir. What can I do for you?"

  Jackson took a long breath. "I'm glad it's you, Gunny. Listen up: Alert the command duty officer. Next, I want some armed Marines on the seawall west of the yacht basin immediately! We got big trouble here, Gunny, so let's shag it!"

  "Aye aye, sir!" The radio squawked. Orders had been given. Questions could wait.

  "What's your name, son?" Robby asked the Marine next.

  "Lance Corporal Green, sir!"

  "Okay, Green, help me get the womenfolk out of the boat." Robby reached out his hand. "Let's go, ladies."

  Green leaped down and helped Sissy out first, then Cathy, then the Princess, who was still holding Sally. Robby got them all behind
the wood hull of one of the YPs.

  "What about them, sir?" Green gestured at the bodies.

  "They'll keep. Get back up here, Corporal!"

  Green gave the bodies a last look. "Reckon so," he muttered. He already had his raincoat open and the flap loose on his holster.

  "What's going on here?" a woman's voice asked. "Oh, it's you, Commander."

  "What are you doing here, Chief?" Robby asked her.

  "I have the duty section out keeping an eye on the boats, sir. The wind could beat 'em to splinters on this seawall if we don't—" Chief Bosun's Mate Mary Znamirowski looked at everyone on the dock. "Sir, what the hell…"

  "Chief, I suggest you get your people together and put them under cover. No time for explanations."

  A pickup truck came next. It halted in the parking lot just behind them. The driver jumped out and sprinted toward them with three others trailing behind. It was Breckenridge. The Sergeant Major gave the women a quick look, then turned to Jackson and asked the night's favorite question—

  "What the hell is going on, sir?"

  Robby gestured to the boat. Breckenridge gave it a quick look that lingered into four or five seconds. "Christ!"

  "We were at Jack's place for dinner," Robby explained. "And some folks crashed the party. They were after him—" Jackson gestured to the Prince of Wales, who turned and smiled. Breckenridge's eyes went wide in recognition. His mouth flapped open for a moment, but he recovered and did what Marines always do when they don't know what else—he saluted, just as prescribed in the Guide Book. Robby went on: "They killed a bunch of security troops. We got lucky. They planned to escape by boat. We stole one and came here, but there's another boat out there, full of the bastards. They might have followed us."