by Dale Brown
“Mr McLanahan,” the obstetrician began, not looking up from his work, “this is Dr Jemal, our chief of surgery. 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,” Jemal 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 Jemal 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 white-and-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 four-hundred-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.”
From 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 east- and westbound lanes of I-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 two-mile-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 Sheriff’s 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.”
Chapter Two
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 Sheriff’s 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 US 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 flag, 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 turned 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 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 a 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 VIPs 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.
Barona put a fatherly hand on Paul McLanahan’s right shoulder and bent down to talk to him. “It’s all right, Officer,” Barona said, his voice sympathetic. “Your partner is in God’s hands now. You’re relieved of duty for now.”
Patrick was surprised by Barona’s response. Why was he denying Paul this simple request? It didn’t make sense. “Sir,” Patrick said, raising his voice so more people could hear him, “Officer Paul McLanahan respectfully requests permission to stay by his partner.”
“I’m sorry, but I can’t allow…”
“Chief Barona, please let Paul stay.” It was Craig LaFortier’s widow, seated in the front pew directly behind her husband’s casket. She stood, bent down to hug Paul gently, gave him a kiss on the cheek, returned to her seat, then reached over to hold his bandaged arm as if prepared to keep him in place should the chief try to pull him away. All eyes were back on him again, Barona realized, as if waiting to see what he was going to do.
What had started out as if it might be some sort of grandstanding demonstration had turned into a scene deeply touching to those in the church, and it appeared as though Chief Barona was trying to prevent it. Patrick-who had objected from the start to his wounded brother’s leaving the hospital and, after losing that argument, had insisted that he accompany him to the service-watched Barona as in sequence anger, then confusion, then embarrassment and worry passed across his face. The chief felt very exposed; he had to extricate himself from this scene gracefully-and fast. He put on his best fatherly expression, gave permission with a nod, and laid his hand on Paul’s right shoulder again before returning to his seat.
Being the chief of police for the capital of California, a city of almost half a million people, was certainly no popularity contest, Patrick acknowledged, but shouldn’t the guy at the least recognize one of his own officers, especially one who had been wounded in the line of duty, and not object to his display of loyalty?
The ceremony was designed to move and uplift the listeners. The amplified voice of the bishop of the archdiocese of Sacramento sounded the reassuringly familiar prayers. The music of the organ resonated through the great space. The speakers told of how LaFortier had killed one attacker before he was murdered, and they spoke about the heroic but futile actions of the police and sheriff’s units as they tried to stop the heavily armed robbers. Inevitably, politics entered into some of the eulogies. There were appeals for a total confiscation and ban on all assault rifles in the state of California, and calls for more prisons, more executions, and more funding for everything from the police to education to welfare programs-even a call to close the downtown entertainment complex for fear it might attract further violence. Patrick ignored it all. What moved him were not the voices or the prayers or the ceremony or even the organ, but the bagpipes.
When the two uniformed officers, one from the Sacramento Police Department and the other from the Sacramento County Sheriff’s Department, played their bagpipes, the keening soared above the utter silence throughout the huge cathedral. There was something about the sound of a bagpipe, Patrick thought, that reached very deep into the soul. The eerie wails were sad yet stirring. Haunting. That was the word. The sound of the bagpipes mesmerized him. Patrick knew that for centuries armies of Scotland, England, and even America had marched into battle with bagpipes blaring, the sound inspiring and terrifying at the same time.
As he looked at the coffins, then at his injured brother in the wheelchair, he felt the anger surge in his chest. The wail of the pipes touched a rage within him, something evil, something angry. He had been away from Sacramento for many years, but it was still his home-and his home was under attack. For US Air Force Brigadier General Patrick McLanahan, the pipes were not a tribute to the fallen police officers-they were a rallying call. The homeland was under siege. It was time to take up arms and defend it.
The ferocity of the assault on the police had startled Patrick. He knew of nothing else on so drastic a scale within the United States. He had fought with ex-military drug smugglers when he flew for the Hammerheads of the US Border Security Force, but Salazar and his former Cuban-military “Cuchillo” pilots had not dared to venture into America’s cities. Henri Cazaux was the only exception, but he had confined his attacks to simple kamikaze-like aerial bombardments of major airports, quickly stopped by federal and military forces. The recent robbery-shootings in Hollywood, in which heavily armed gunmen kept a hundred police at bay for nearly thirty minutes, were little more than a “suicide by cop” incident-the robbers wanted to shoot up the city, and they wanted the police to kill them.
From press accounts of the shootout, the guys who robbed Sacramento Live! were clearly military. They certainly hadn’t used pure military tactics-marching out into the open in columns of two abreast with guns blazing had not been used in combat since the redcoats were kicked out of the Colonies. But their weapons, their armor, and their brazenness meant they knew right from the start that they had the upper hand.
How would the police stop nutcases like these guys? Would cops on the beat now carry automatic rifles? Would armored vehicles replace squad cars to protect against anti-tank rockets? What if the robbers decided to use even heavier weapons? Would the streets of Sacramento eventually turn into a battlefield? Would the National Guard or the regular Army replace the police?
Patrick McLanahan knew military combat strategies. He knew what would be needed to analyze the enemy and plan an offensive. But he had to have information, intelligence, and reconnaissance. He had to find out more. He would get all the information he could from the police and the federal authorities investigating the attack, and then map out a counteroffensive strategy of his own.
Patrick could see that Paul, now white with fatigue, was paying the price for leaving his hospital bed to co
me to the memorial service. After the ceremony, Patrick allowed him to accompany Craig LaFortier’s casket-empty, of course, since the terrorists’ brutal attack left no remains-down the aisle and to the outer doors of the church. But as the caskets were borne to the hearses, he turned the chair and wheeled Paul out a side entrance to a waiting police department ambulance, which raced Code Three back to the University of California-Davis Medical Center in downtown Sacramento. Paul, now barely conscious from exhaustion, was quickly taken back to his room.
Patrick stayed next to his brother until a doctor examined him. The doctor ordered complete bed rest and no visitors for the next twenty-four hours. A police officer on duty outside his room was given strict orders not to let anyone inside but medical personnel.
Patrick made his way to a nearby waiting room, got a cup of coffee from the vending machine, and sank wearily into a chair. The TV in the room was set to a local channel and showed aerial shots of the funeral procession, nearly a mile long, as it moved through downtown Sacramento toward City Cemetery. They also showed the Sacramento Peace Officers Memorial in Del Paso Heights, which was getting ready for its own memorial service for the three slain officers. The memorial was ringed by Ionic columns, with a tall stone obelisk in the center of the circle and bronze plaques of Sacramento’s slain officers on the outside of the circle. As the sun moved across the sky, the shadow created by the obelisk pointed at each officer’s plaque at the precise time he had died. Spotlights on the columns created the same effect at night.
