Edge of Battle aow-2

by Dale Brown

  “How do you propose to do that, Sergeant?”

  “Once we identify the organizers, talk to them, and try to find out how long they plan on being out here…”

  “You plan on talking to them all afternoon?”

  “No, sir. But talking first gives me an opportunity to collect intelligence data, plan a response, and start moving our men and equipment to this location, Mr. O’Rourke. It takes time to decide which crowd control forces to bring in—more officers, mounted units, full riot control, or SWAT—and then get them moving out here. My job is to talk with the organizers, provide an initial assessment of the situation, and make a recommendation to the special operations commander. That’s what I was trying to do before you showed up. The more time we can buy without letting the situation get worse, the better these things usually turn out. But if you insist on proceeding into that crowd with your vehicle, it could very easily escalate this situation into violence…”

  “So let me get this straight, Sergeant: I’m escalating ‘this situation into violence’ by trying to park in my own parking space, while these trespassers are just exercising their constitutional rights of free speech and freedom of assembly? Is that how you want me to characterize this situation on my show this morning, Sergeant”—he read the officer’s brass nameplate on his uniform—“Wilcox, is it?”

  “Mr. O’Rourke, you know as well as I do that these protesters are probably here because of your—shall we say bombastic statements on the air yesterday,” Wilcox said. “Don’t play innocent with me, sir, by claiming you don’t understand that the crowd is here because this is where you broadcast your show from; that your actual presence here is riling them up even more; and that you are insisting on parking right in the middle of the protesters in order to take advantage of this dangerous situation and get your face on TV.”

  “I resent that implication, Wilcox…!”

  “Mr. O’Rourke, I can order you to back this thing up and move, for your own safety…”

  “Sergeant, I’m not going to run and hide like a damned coward. If you think this situation is unsafe, I think you should do everything in your power to make it safe. If you don’t, I, the people of Henderson and Las Vegas, and my listeners all around the world will hold you and your department responsible.

  “In the meantime, I’m going to work. You can arrest me in front of all these TV cameras, so the only peaceful individual out here at the moment will be the one in handcuffs. But if you do, I guarantee you’ll make yourself an enemy to all law-abiding citizens of this country. Or you can do your job and protect me while I go into my building. Take your pick.”

  The officer took a deep, exasperated breath and affixed the nationally syndicated radio host with a dead stare, quickly thinking about his options. Finally he looked over the Excursion’s large hood and said to the officer on the other side, “Paul, get the crowd back and let Mr. O’Rourke’s vehicle pass. Then form up and let’s get him inside the building.” The other officer hesitated for a moment, silently asking if that was a good idea, and then faced the crowd head-on, arms outstretched, trying to cut the line of demonstrators in half and move his half off to the side of the driveway. A couple more officers were called in to help. The crowd kept on shouting, but they seemed satisfied to be led back by the police.

  It didn’t take long for the media to notice what was happening, and soon they were surrounded by reporters and cameramen. “Bob! Mr. O’Rourke!” one well-known female correspondent for a cable TV news channel shouted. He didn’t look in her direction until she called him “Mr. O’Rourke.” “What are you going to do?”

  O’Rourke rolled the window of his big SUV down, revved the engine, then put it into gear. “I’m going to work, that’s what I’m doing.”

  “Will the police do anything to help you?”

  “We’ll see, won’t we?” he replied, loud enough for Wilcox and the other officers to hear him. “It’s totally up to them. They can protect me, or they can stand by and watch a law-abiding citizen of the United States be assaulted and threatened with bodily harm right in front of them.”

  “Do you feel any sense of responsibility for this demonstration outside your studios today?”

  “Responsibility? I have nothing to do with any of this!” he shouted from inside his car. “If you don’t want to blame the actual people who are out here disrupting free movement in this place of business, blame that Comandante Veracruz character for inciting the crowd like this! He’s the one who should be thrown in jail for organizing this! I’m not going to be inconvenienced because some gangster from a corrupt third-world banana republic wants his name on the news!”

  “Do you think it’s wise to drive in there like that, Mr. O’Rourke? Don’t you think it’s dangerous?”

  “I trust the Henderson Police Department to maintain order,” O’Rourke said. “If they can’t do it, the mayor needs to call in the Highway Patrol or even the National Guard to help restore order.”

  The police found it relatively easy to move the crowd aside, probably because the protesters quickly noticed that they would have O’Rourke’s vehicle surrounded once it got inside the private parking lot. O’Rourke’s car was hit repeatedly by rocks, bottles, empty cans, and picket signs. He laid on the horn several times to try to move the protesters away. He had to rev the engine several times and creep forward slowly to avoid running anyone over, but soon he was in his parking spot, surrounded by two police officers.

  O’Rourke got out of his car and stood on the steel running board of his Excursion, making sure he would stay above the cameramen so he wouldn’t look any shorter on TV, and he surveyed the crowd as calmly as he could. The TV reporters were being jostled a bit, sandwiched in between the crowds behind them and the police in front. Many in the crowd wanted to get on TV just as badly as Bob O’Rourke, while others wanted to get within spitting or yelling range of the famous radio personality. So far the protesters were obeying police instructions and staying behind the invisible line projecting from their outstretched arms. A stray banana peel sailed past O’Rourke’s head—he tried to pretend it didn’t bother him.

  “Mr. O’Rourke,” one of the female reporters asked, thrusting her microphone up toward him, “are you determined to go to your studio and do your morning broadcast as usual, despite this demonstration?”

  “This is not a ‘demonstration’—this is a near-riot, bordering on complete anarchy!” O’Rourke shouted. “But I am not going to be scared away by a bunch of rabble-rousers! I’ve got a job to do.”

  “Don’t you think you should talk to the organizers of this rally?”

  “You call this a ‘rally’? I wouldn’t dignify this insane act of criminal trespass, assault, hate crime, intimidation, and conspiracy as a ‘rally.’ And I do my talking on the air, for the rest of the free world to hear—and that’s what I intend to do right now. If you want to hear what I think of these hatemongers, listen to my show, The Bottom Line, on your local radio, satellite radio, or on the Internet. Excuse me, but I have work to do.”

  He hated jumping off the tall running board, but there was no way else to get inside. Fortunately few in the crowd around them were taller than he was, and the protesters created such confusion that he hoped no one would notice how short he really was. Wilcox and two other motorcycle patrol officers began clearing a path for him toward the office building, using nothing but their gloved hands to carefully but firmly push the crowd back as he approached the short set of stairs leading up to the semicircular drive and main entranceway. O’Rourke could see several workers at the entrance and waved to them. Just fifty feet more, he thought, and I’ll be free and clear…

  But as he reached the drive, the crowd suddenly seemed to surge forward. Both police officers on either side of O’Rourke were squeezed against him, and he pushed them away toward the crowd. The push seemed to anger many of the protesters, who pushed back even harder. A can bounced off one officer’s helmet; a raw egg hit O’Rourke on the shoulder. Forty f
eet more…

  The crowd started to chant, “RA-CIST! RA-CIST! RACIST!” Before long, the chanting turned to shouting, and then to screaming, and soon the words had changed to “¡CA-GU-E-TAS! ¡CA-GU-E-TAS!” which O’Rourke knew meant one of two things in Spanish—“little child” or “coward.”

  “Hey, why don’t you just keep on walking home to Mexico or wherever you came from!” O’Rourke shouted in return. “We don’t want you! We don’t need you! Come back like real people and not burglars!”

  More eggs and vegetables were thrown at him. “Mr. O’Rourke,” Wilcox shouted behind him as he led the way toward the studios, “I’m ordering you right now to shut up. You want to address the crowd—do it on your radio show. Now is not the time!” O’Rourke swallowed nervously and fell quiet. Thirty feet…

  Suddenly from his left, a large brown malt liquor bottle flew over the crowd, hitting another Henderson police officer squarely on his left temple at full force, and he went down. The protesters surged forward once more, now close enough to grasp O’Rourke’s jacket, pull off his cowboy hat, and spin him around. Now O’Rourke couldn’t see which way to go. Several sets of hands were grabbing him, threatening to rip his jacket right off his back, threatening to…

  The gun! He had almost forgotten about the pistol in his shoulder holster! Even now he felt little dark fingers reaching for his weapon. If he let anyone grab that gun, there would be a bloodbath—he, then the cops, would certainly be the first ones to die…

  He didn’t actually remember doing so, but before he knew it, the big .45 was in his hand. He raised it up over his head and pulled the trigger, startled that it seemed to require hardly any effort at all to do so—and equally surprised that the second, third, and fourth pulls required even less. The crowd jerked down and away as if pulled by innumerable invisible ropes from behind. Women and men alike screamed hysterically. Most of the crowd turned and bolted away, trampling those too slow to get out of the way.

  Except for two persons lying on the driveway, the path suddenly seemed to open up in front of him as if two giant hands had parted the crowd, and O’Rourke ran for his office building. Witnesses standing on the steps and in the lobby ran for cover when they saw O’Rourke with the smoking gun still in his fist heading for them. He ran inside the front doors, his thin chest heaving. “My…God, they…they tried to kill me!” he panted. He couldn’t control his breathing, and he leaned forward, hands on his knees, trying to catch his…

  “Police! Freeze! Drop the gun, now!” he heard. He didn’t think they were talking to him, but someone else behind him in the crowd with a gun, so he stayed bent over until he was finally able to…

  Wilcox and another Henderson Police Department officer tackled O’Rourke from behind, running at full force. O’Rourke’s face was mashed into the tile floor, his arms pinned painfully behind his back, and the gun wrenched out of his right hand by breaking his index finger.

  “This is Mike One-Seven, inside the Green Valley Business Plaza, shots fired, one suspect in custody—it’s fucking Bob O’Rourke,” Wilcox said into his shoulder-mounted radio microphone after he and the other officer wrestled the gun out of O’Rourke’s hand, twisted his arms behind him, and handcuffed his wrists together. “I’m declaring a code ten-ninety-nine at this location, approximately two hundred individuals. I want them cleared out now before someone else decides to bring a gun out here. Over.”

  CHAPTER 10

  U.S. EMBASSY, MEXICO CITY

  LATER THAT MORNING

  As expected, the streets surrounding the U.S. embassy on the Paseo de la Reforma in Mexico City were jammed with thousands of angry protesters. Two separate groups converged on the embassy from the east and west, one carrying signs in Spanish, the other in English. There were only the usual half-dozen Federal District Police stationed at the main and employee entrances of the embassy, none wearing riot gear. By the time the police realized what was happening, the crowds kept reinforcements from being brought in. They were in control.

  The U.S. embassy in Mexico City is the largest American embassy in the Western Hemisphere and has one of the largest staffs of any in the world. As befitting a “friendly neighbor” embassy, the eight-story U.S. embassy complex in Mexico City was an “urban” model, situated in the heart of the city and set up to make it as accessible as possible without hampering security. It occupied an entire city block, but it was not centered in the block so it did not have a tightly controlled perimeter on all sides. There was an ornate twelve-foot-high spade-topped wrought-iron fence surrounding the entire complex, but in spots the fence was still very close to the building, offering little actual protection. The north and east sides bordered an open area with gardens and a small amphitheater, and there was a high wall protecting those sides with trees screening out most of the interior yards.

  The main and staff entrances were very close to major thoroughfares—the building itself on the south and west sides was less than five yards away from the sidewalk. Massive concrete planters were placed on the streets beside the curbs to prevent anyone from parking near the building or driving directly into the entrances, but they were designed to stop vehicles, not protesters on foot. The wrought-iron fence had been erected at the edge of the sidewalk, outside of which the Mexican Federal District Police were stationed every few yards. There was a U.S. Marine guard post on one side of the public entrance and a U.S. Embassy Diplomatic Security Service officer and processing agent’s kiosk on the other side. Both were vacant now, with an egg-and feces-covered sign in both English and Spanish proclaiming that the embassy was closed due to “public demonstration activity.”

  “Where are the damned federales?” the U.S. ambassador to the United Mexican States, Leon Poindexter, growled as he watched a feed from the embassy’s security cameras on the monitors in his office.

  “The crowds are preventing any more police from moving in,” Poindexter’s chief of the embassy’s one-hundred-and-twenty-person Diplomatic Security Service detachment, ex–U.S. Army Lieutenant Colonel Richard Sorensen, said. “They’ll probably have to turn out their riot squads to see if they can disperse the crowd.”

  The ambassador ran a hand nervously over his bald head, loosened his tie with an exasperated snap, and stood up and began to pace the office. “Well, if the Foreign Minister wants to meet with me in the Palacio Nacional, he’s going to have to do a better job calling out the federales to protect me.”

  “The motorcade is ready for you, Mr. Ambassador,” the outer office secretary said from the doorway.

  “No way, Marne,” Poindexter said. “I’m not moving from this office until the streets are clear—with the Mexican Army, not just the Federal District Police. I want those streets clear!”

  “Sir, there is going to be some sort of major announcement on nationwide TV in less than two hours,” his chief of staff said. “It would be advisable to confer with the president before she drafts her speech…”

  “Why? It won’t make any difference. She’ll say whatever she wants to say. Hell, anything I tell her will be used against me in any speech she gives!”

  “Sir…”

  “All right, all right,” Poindexter said irritably. “Get the Foreign Affairs Ministry on the phone, and as soon as the Federal District Police or the military gets here, we’ll go over to the…”

  “Here they come now, sir,” the ambassador’s assistant said. They looked outside. A large blue school bus with flashing blue, red, and yellow lights moved slowly down the Paseo de la Reforma, with a half-dozen men in green fatigues and white riot helmets with clear face shields, carrying M-16 rifles, jogged on either side of the bus. Behind the bus was a dark blue armored Suburban belonging to the Federal District Police, with gun ports visible on three sides.

  Poindexter turned to his aide. “What about the evacuation route…?”

  “All set up, sir,” she assured him. “There are DSS units stationed every couple blocks along your travel route, and four locations north and south of the r
oute where they can set a helicopter down if necessary. Medical teams are standing by.”

  “This is a damned nightmare,” he muttered. “Why won’t the Internal Affairs Ministry allow us to fly our helicopter in here?”

  “They said once the Federal District Police are able to control the central flight corridors in the district, they can’t guarantee safety for any helicopters, and they don’t want to have to deal with a chopper going down in the city,” his aide said. “It could take days for them to secure the Federal District.”

  “Jesus,” Poindexter groaned. He looked around at the nervous faces around him. “It’ll be okay, folks,” he said, smiling gamely, trying to be as reassuring as possible. “The federales are here, and hopefully they’ll have the crowds under control by the time we’re ready to roll. The best news is that we have sixty DSS agents arrayed along our route waiting for us. Let’s go.”

  As they headed downstairs to the parking garage, Sorensen came up to the ambassador. “Excuse me, sir, but I’m recommending we delay this convoy awhile—perhaps an hour.”

  “An hour? That’s no good, Rick. I need to try to get in to see Maravilloso before she starts throwing more firebombs on TV.”

  “As far as I can ascertain, sir, only half the normal contingent of Federal District Police are outside,” Sorensen said. “I called the Internal Affairs Ministry and they said the rest are clearing the first several blocks of the route.”

  “Sounds normal to me.”

  “The usual procedure is to have one platoon of police outside the embassy to surround the convoy as it leaves the compound. They deploy motorcycles or Jeeps to secure the route ahead of the convoy only after we’ve formed up. We’ve only got half the detail here now—and I can actually see only six. Besides, we don’t have any air support clearance yet.”