by Dale Brown
a ricochet, the bullet spinning after it hit
a wall or the ground, and not a direct hit.
Paul tried to run but then the wound got himnow
he felt the goddamn pain! He sank down to his
right knee. The gunmen were reloading, flipping the
big banana magazines upside down to reload from
fresh clips taped against the first ones. He aimed
and fired again, missing. This time they did not return
fire, evidently satisfied that they had gotten
him enough so that he was no longer a threat. He
saw them head back north on Seventh to catch up
with the others, who were still sweeping the streets
with volleys of gunfire, covering the Step Van until
it could pull up beside them.
No fucking way! Paul McLanahan shouted to
himself. You're not getting away, not after killing
my partner! But all he had was his 9-millimeter pistol-no
match for submachine guns. But something
else was. IF
Paul grabbed for his keys, thankful that he had
rubber-banded all but the car key together so he
could find it easily. He unlocked Caruthers's squad
car from the passenger side, leaned inside, started
the engine, and put it in gear. Then he laid himself
across the fr6nt seat, left hand on the steering
wheel, right hand down on the gas pedal, pushed on
the accelerator, and shot forward.
The two gunmen who thought they had disposed
of him turned, aimed, and fired, but they were too
late. Paul mowed both of them down under the
squad car, hurling them up, then under the fender
like corn stalks under a harvester. More automatic
gunfire hit the car. The windshield shattered. Without
letting up on the accelerator, Paul shifted the
car into reverse. Tires screeched. He was shoved forward
under the dash by the momentum, losing his
grip on the steering wheel. With the right front tire
shot out, the car looped to the right and crashed
into the corner of a building on K Street. The engine
died. He was trapped.
Paul looked up. There was another attacker less
than ten feet away, his submachine gun raised, aiming
right at him, moving closer for a cleaner shot.
Paul hit the tiny switch on the radio console and
the electro-clamps released on the big Remington
12-gauge shotgun mounted on the dashboard. Now
lying on his back in the front seat facing the approaching
terrorist, Paul racked the action, leveled
the shotgun, aimed for the face and neck, and pulled
the trigger.
Nothing but a dull click! Christ, the shotgun
wasn't loaded. Caruthers, doing an off-duty job, obviously
hadn't thought he needed to bother loading
it. In desperation, Paul tossed the shotgun at his assailant
. The muzzle caught the assailant right in the
middle of his gas-mask lens, shattering it.
-ich bin verlete Helft mirr The terrorist
screamed something in a foreign language-was it
German? Paul didn't know.
The gunman ripped off the broken mask, lifting
his helmet off with it. Paul got a good look at a very
young, chiseled face, square jaw, close-cropped
black curly hair, dark bushy eyebrows, and a nose
twisted awkwardly to the right, obviously broken.
The guy seemed frozen, paralyzed with fear, as if
realizing that Paul could identify him. Paul reached
for his SIG Sauer P226 sidearm . . .
but it never cleared leather. Another
masked and helmeted figure pushed the unmasked
guy aside, shouted, "Zeit zu schlafen, Schweinehund
!" and opened fire with his MP-5 submachine
gun from fifteen feet away, raking the rookie cop
with a three-second full-auto burst at point-blank
range.
Mr. McLanahan!" the nurse shouted from the
door of the operating room. "Come with me!
Hurry!"
Patrick felt his heart lurch. "Is Wendy all right?"
"Put on your mask and follow me," the nurse
ordered. My God, Patrick thought, what in hell
have we done? He didn't hear a baby's cry-what in
God's name had happened?
Gowned and masked figures surrounded the operating
table. All he could see was Wendy's head. Her
eyes were closed, and a large white drape hid her
body from his view from the shoulders down. A
plastic bonnet covered her hair, and he could see her
arms fastened down to the sides of the table with
Velcro straps. The anesthesiologist was at the head
of the table, his eyes fixed on an array of monitors
and several automatic fluid-metering devices. There
were two IV stands with empty whole-blood and
plasma bags hanging from them. He motioned Patrick
to an empty stool next to Wendy's head.
. "Mr. McLanahan," the obstetrician began, not
looking up from his work, "this is Dr. jernal, our
chief of surgei-y. I asked him to be here for this delivery
.//
"Chief of surgery?" Patrick asked. "Is Wendy all
right, Doc?"
"She suffered a uterine rupture and serious internal
bleeding at the beginning of this procedure,"
jernal began. "The scarring on her abdomen was extensive
. She must have been in some degree of pain
throughout the entire pregnancy, to have those
scars on her belly stretching like they were."
"But will she be all right?"
The anesthesiologist spoke up: "Ask her yourself
." Patrick turned and saw Wendy looking up at
him, with an expression that said nothing but love.
"Hi, sweetheart," she said. Her eyes were clear
and alert, and her slight smile lit up the room more
brightly than all the operating spotlights together.
"Wendy . . . oh God, Wendy, how are you?
Patrick asked, his eyes welling with tears as he bent
over to kiss her. He looked over at the obstetrician.
"Dammit, Doc, can you tell me what's going on
here?
"Can't . . . right . . . now . . . Dad," the doctor
said. A startled Patrick saw jernal standing on a
low stool, pressing down on Wendy with all his
might. Then the room filled with the glorious
sounds of a squalling baby.
"You've got a son, Mr. McLanahan; a nice
healthy boy." The obstetrician held the tiny form
out for the nurses. "He's just fine. The bad news is, I
think you've lost your uterus, Wendy. We'll have to
do a hysterectomy, I'm afraid. But you've made it
through okay. Congratulations!"
Patrick watched in fascination as the nurses
clamped and cut the cord, briskly rubbed the baby
down, suctioned his nose and mouth, and placed
him in a small heated booth on a table. He was
weighed, footprinted, and had silver nitrate drops
placed in his eyes to prevent infection, then swaddled
in two blankets and topped off with a whiteand-blue
knitted cap that covered his head. Then
the nurse picked up the little bundle and handed it
to Patrick.
Patrick Shane McLanahan had handled fourhundred-thousand-pound
warplanes, nuclear devices
, and multimillion-dollar weapons. Now,
holding the seven-pound bundle that was his son in
his arms, he felt helpless, stunned.
He held the baby up so Wendy could see him, and
they wept tears of joy together as the baby opened
his bright blue eyes, looked first at his mother, then
at his father, and started to cry. Patrick nestled him
back into his arms and the crying stopped. He bent
down and kissed his wife. "You did it, sweetheart,
you did it!" he said proudly. "Good job."
"We did it, Patrick." She reached for his hand.
"As soon as we get back in the room, page your
brother. I can't wait until he hears the good news."
F
rom Seventh Street, the Step Van with the
gunmen on board sped south to Capitol Avenue,
then west to the Tower Bridge. It stopped when it
was a third of the way across, and two men got out,
set four satchels on the roadway, then ran back to
the truck. Seconds after the Step Van had cleared
the bridge, the satchel charges blew, sending the entire
eastern third of the span down into the Sacramento
River and eliminating the major pursuit
route out of the city of Sacramento.
The Step Van continued down SR-275, then got
onto Interstate 80 and drove westbound on the freeway
. The pursuing California Highway Patrol and
the Sacramento police thought it was the terrorists'
first real mistake. Units from Davis to the west as
well as from Sacramento started to converge on the
Step Van. Roadblocks near Davis blocked the eastand
westbound lanes of 1-80, and dozens of units
rolled westbound on the freeway, ready to chase the
van down.
But the chase did not last long. Reports filtered in
that the Step Van had stopped in the middle of the
westbound lane on the Yolo Causeway, the twomile-long
section of divided interstate stretching
over the farmlands that formed the flood plain west
of the Sacramento River before it reached the San
Joaquin Delta. The truck was trapped. There was no
way off the elevated causeway, and no connectors
between the eastbound and westbound lanes. Police
units would arrive in a matter of minutes. If the
terrorists tried to make a run for it by climbing
down off the causeway, they'd be easy to chase
down in the flat, marshy rice and barley fields below
.
Led by the Highway Patrol, the units converged
on the Step Van. Apparently the terrorists had figured
out where they were, because they had driven
almost to the far western end of the causeway,
stopped, then thrown the lumbering truck into reverse
and headed back eastbound. Too late. There
was no escape now . . .
Several tremendous explosions shook the causeway
. Once again, satchel charges had been set, this
time at the ends of both lanes of the interstate, effectively
sealing off the lanes in both directions.
The cops couldn't get to the Step Van but neither
could it go anywhere. Before long . . .
Minutes later, the real escape plan became obvious
. A military-surplus UH-1 Huey helicopter
swooped out of the night sky and touched down in
the middle of the causeway. The police watched,
helpless, from a mile away, as the paper money was
taken out of the cash bins, transferred to duffel bags,
and loaded aboard the helicopter. A Sacramento
County Sheriffs Department helicopter with two
SWAT deputies riding the landing skids and two
more inside tried to approach, but the terrorists
were prepared. A streak of yellow fire from a Stinger
anti-aircraft missile hit the helicopter's engine,
sending the aircraft out of control and crashing into
the rice fields south of the causeway. One deputy,
riding the skids was killed by the engine explosion
when the missile hit; the other was pulled inside
the helicopter as it was falling. The three deputies
who survived suffered moderate to severe injuries
during the crash landing.
Ten minutes later, the Huey was airborne. It
headed east, flying a few hundred feet above the
ground to avoid being tracked by air-traffic-control
radar until it reached the foothills of the Sierra Nevada
Mountains. Then it vanished.
At Placerville Airport, forty miles east of Sacramento
, several trucks were waiting for the chopper
when it lit down. Major Bruno Reingruber was the
first to step off the helicopter, and he exchanged
straight-armed salutes with Colonel Gregory
Townsend. "Willkommen zuhause, Major, " Townsend
said as the terrorists began transferring the duffel
bags to the trucks. He counted the men as they
emerged, then frowned as four wounded were carried
off. "It did not go well, I take it."
"They all fought like lions, Herr Oberst," Reingruber
said grimly. "The police fought with desperation
, and they were lucky. I promise I will slaughter
ten policemen for every one of our soldiers killed."
"You will get your chance, Major," Townsend
said. "The city of Sacramento has not yet even begun
to bleed.'This is a small haul compared to the
penalty we will take from this city before we are
finished. The city of Sacramento will learn to fear
us. They will surrender to us-or the death toll will
rise. But remember our ultimate objective. Tearing
this city apart is only a means to an end."
SACRAMENTO, CALIFORNIA
TUESDAY, 23 DECEMBER 1997, 1100 PT
Over two thousand cops from hundreds of departments
and agencies throughout the United
States snapped to attention and saluted as the
three caskets carrying the two dead Sacramento
Police Department officers and one Sacramento
County Sheriffs deputy were carried into Blessed
Sacrament Cathedral in downtown Sacramento for
the memorial service. An estimated one thousand
spectators came out in the blustery cold to join the
officers and watch the solemn procession. Led by
two uniformed officers playing bagpipes, another
thousand mourners including the governor of the
state of California, two U.S. senators, all the local
congressional, state assembly, and state senate
members, and the mayor and the chief of police of
Sacramento, followed behind the caskets and took
seats inside the cathedral as they were placed before
the altar. Each casket was draped with an American
fiag, with the officer's service cap, badge, and nightstick
placed on top. The Christmas decorations in
the cathedral and on the route through town offered
a strange yet inspiring contrast to the mournful occasion
The service had just begun when there was a rustle
of surprised voices in the back of the church.
Heads tur
ned to watch as a heavily bandaged young
man in a wheelchair rolled down the long aisle. The
man pushing the chair positioned it beside the casket
on the left, and the young man laid his right J
hand on the flag. Then he sat quietly, his eyes on
the altar.
Amid the rising murmur in the cathedral, the
chief of police of the city of Sacramento rose from
his seat in i front pew and walked over to the
wheelchair. As usual, Arthur Barona. was wearing a
dark suit rather than his chief's uniform, and like
most of the higher-ranking politicians attending the
funeral, he had a bulletproof vest underneath his
jacket.
"Hold it," Barona said in a low voice. "What's
going on here?,"
The young man in the wheelchair looked up at
the chief through swollen eyes. His head, neck,
torso, left arm and shoulder, and right leg were
wrapped in bandages, but his uniform tunic was
draped over his shoulders, with all insignia and devices
removed except for the shoulder patches and
his silver badge, which had a black band affixed diagonally
over it. He saluted the chief, then looked
up at the man who had pushed the wheelchair, silently
asking him to speak for him.
Sir, Officer Paul McLanahan requests permission
to stay by his partner," Patrick McLanahan
said, his voice almost a whisper.
"His partner? Who is that? Who are you?"
"My name is Patrick McLanahan, Paul's brother,
sir," Patrick responded. "Corporal LaFortier was
Paul's partner, his training officer."
"He's McLanahan?" the chief sputtered. His face
went white as the name registered. "Wasn't he
shot?" He was confused and embarrassed. There
were so many wounded, so many press conferences,
so much to do trying to track down the suspects,
that Barona had not yet visited the hospital to
see his injured officers. "Officer McLanahan, you
should be in the hospital," Barona said.
The murmur of voices in the cathedral grew
louder. When Barona looked up he saw a sea of faces
looking at him. The sympathy for the officer in the
wheelchair was visible on the faces of the VIP's
seated in the front of the cathedral-as was the open
hostility on the faces of the Sacramento cops toward
the back.
"Sir, please-" Patrick started.
