Enemies Domestic (An Alex Landon Thriller Book 1)

by Gavin Reese

  When only a few stairs separated them and their impact became clearly unavoidable, the man found a small opening in the crowd and lunged upward toward him. Duke leaned back and to the right, and used his left hand to deflect the attack. Further screams and panic erupted around them, the physical altercation having given those nearby an additional source of fear.

  Just as Duke drew a subcompact pistol from his right pants pocket, the man trapped his left hand and reached out to push against Duke’s right shoulder. Fighting against his efforts, Duke tried to get the pistol in his right hand back toward his assailant. As the crowd above him continued to force Duke’s descent and pressed him against the humanity on his right, he raised the pistol and swung his right arm in an upward, arcing motion before driving the black pistol downward toward his opponent’s head. The man’s left forearm briefly deflected the gun up and away, but, because Duke remained above him, he could not quickly transition to control either the gun or Duke’s right arm. Moving very quickly to press his positional advantage, Duke stepped down with his body weight to drive the gun past the block.

  The business end of the gun barrel swiftly passed the man’s left forearm and struck him hard on his left temple, which briefly pushed the slide back and caused the pistol to malfunction. Duke had just then roughly pressed the three-pound trigger, but the pistol, with its internal pieces disconnected by the misplaced slide, failed to fire. The man reflexively pulled his head back away from the gun and again swung his left hand toward it.

  Eighty

  Northwest stairwell, American Bank Tower. Phoenix, Arizona.

  Despite the chaos inside the stairs, the fire klaxon, the din from the panicked crowd, and the free-flowing overhead sprinklers, Jonathan McDougal distinctly heard the pistol’s trigger click when it had failed to fire. He had kept his own handgun tucked away because he needed both hands to pull himself up the railing and ascend the stairs against the crowd. The maniac had drawn his own weapon so quickly that Jonathan had no time to react and retrieve his own. Despite his initial confidence that he could subdue the man with empty-hands combatives alone, the terrifying click made Jonathan realize he was losing this battle and had to make up ground.

  Jonathan’s visual and auditory perception slowed, limiting his input to what it determined he most badly needed to survive. His left arm successfully pushed the weapon away from his head. Jonathan heard the trigger reset, but the processing speed of his auditory nerve proved far slower than the sound of the pistol discharging a nine-millimeter bullet into his head at just over 1,400 feet-per-second.

  Eighty-One

  Northern interior perimeter. Downtown Phoenix, Arizona.

  Alex abruptly stopped his unmarked Dodge Charger and roughly slammed its transmission into Park, having determined he couldn’t reasonably get any closer to the Incident Command Post. The roadways near that area had become parking lots, as many drivers had chosen to simply abandon their cars in stopped traffic to flee an unknown and long-feared terror on foot. Emergency vehicles from every nearby police and fire agency had already begun plugging the remaining holes around the Command Post, which Alex saw significantly delayed the civilian vehicle exodus, and nearly cemented the squad cars and fire rigs in place. The still-dense outbound foot traffic here surprised him, but Alex reminded himself that many thousands of people normally occupied each of the downtown high-rises, all of which had been simultaneously evacuated onto no more than two dozen outbound streets to escape the area only a few minutes prior.

  “You guys good to walk from here?” Alex looked around the car’s interior, and briefly awaited a response from each of his five passengers, whom he had picked up after seeing them individually struggling to evacuate themselves from the potential blast zone on foot. After getting a solid round of confirmations, Alex popped the matte black door, stepped from the sedan, and prepared to leave them behind to again fend for themselves. “You folks all keep heading north, alright? At least another four or five blocks north. Anybody think they can’t do that on their own?”

  “I imagine we’ll stick together Detective, so we’ll take care of each other. You’ve got far greater things to worry about than us.” The front seat passenger, an older gentleman Alex now knew as Murray, offered as he pulled himself up and out of the cop car. “God bless you, and those like you. I pray he grants you the opportunity to exact vengeance on His behalf.”

  “Go get these assholes, Detective, ain’t nobody gonna care if you find ‘em dead or alive, neither!” Roger, an aging actuary and decorated combat Vietnam Vet, said as he emerged from the back seat. “Be safe, son, and if you can’t do that, be deadly.”

  “Take care, gentlemen! Call us if you see anything, and lock my car up, Murray!” Alex turned and double-timed north toward the Incident Command Post, where he hoped to find Jonathan McDougal. He had almost covered the three city blocks when his cell phone rang and “Ron B” appeared on his caller ID screen. Slowing to a fast walk, he scanned the area and answered his partner’s call. “Ron! Have you seen or heard from McDougal?”

  “Goddamn! Glad you’re okay, too, Landon, and thanks for turning off your radio and cell for the last twenty minutes, it’s been fuckin’ awesome thinkin’ you might be dead.”

  “Sorry, Ron, I can better explain in person.” Alex heard the anger and frustration in Berkshire’s voice, reached to the radio pouch on the left side of his tactical vest, and turned the radio’s selector switch back ‘on.’ “You at the Command Post?”

  “Yeah, just got to the C-P about ten ago, and I’ve been trying to raise you ever since. The boss almost cleared me to take a couple guys and go in after you, you fuckin’ prick!”

  Alex understood Ron’s anger, and he imagined he’d feel the same way if the roles had been reversed, but he hoped Ron wouldn’t fault his logic and decisions once he had the chance to talk him through it…unless, of course, something happened to McDougal… “I’m almost there myself, can we do this in person?”

  “Head straight here. You can tell it to the L-T, and I’ll just eavesdrop.”

  Alex heard a click as the call disconnected, and he hoped to find Lieutenant Dobbins in a better mood than Berkshire at that moment. He picked up his pace while navigating around throngs of pedestrians trying to walk beyond the mandatory evacuation point. As he neared the CP, he saw two Phoenix PD patrol cops with slung AR-15 rifles standing post at the entrance. Having been thrown up so urgently, Alex saw the Command Staff worked out of the back of a Phoenix PD Sergeant’s Tahoe for the time being; all the vehicles that had first responded to the scene had formed something of a defensive ring around the Tahoe, and someone had since cordoned off the area with yellow police tape. Alex jogged toward the two cops, but didn’t bother reaching for his pocketed credentials. They’re already on high-enough alert, he thought, and the raid vest and badge ought to be enough to get me through.

  “You Landon?” The one without a balaclava called out to him, while his partner kept tracking Alex’s advance toward them.

  “Yeah…” Fuck, that’s not good, he thought, I don’t know these guys.

  “First name?”

  “Alex!” He had reached a sidewalk only a dozen feet from the two cops, and they’d given him no indication he needed to slow down.

  “C-P is that Tahoe with all the brass dancin’ around. I’d get there quick before they fuck up your case. Good work today, brother.”

  “Thanks, long way to go yet,” Alex replied as he passed between them, and jogged on toward a swarm of supervisors and command personnel gathered and milling around the encircled Tahoe. Most of them spoke on their cell phones, and several engaged in heated discussions and arguments with one another. As he neared the agitated hive, Alex saw Dobbins and Berkshire near its epicenter; calmly speaking with a Phoenix PD sergeant, they stood beneath the partial shade of the Tahoe’s raised rear hatch and focused on a white dry-erase board propped up inside the open cargo area that displayed a hastily-drawn, multi-colored ove
rhead schematic of the affected downtown area.

  Berkshire saw Alex approach, and met his gaze; Alex saw the frustration on his face briefly turn to relief as he tapped the back of Dobbins’ right shoulder. The lieutenant turned to face Alex just as he reached their group and slowed his jog. “God damn, man, what the fuck happened in there?”

  “Had nothing but bad options, sir, and we went with what--”

  “WE? Who the fuck is ‘we,’ Landon?” The LT stood upright and squared his shoulders up on Landon, which gave the appearance of having prepared himself for a confrontation.

  “Sir, the short story is that McDougal and a Marine-vet security guard were going up to find the guy regardless of what I did or ordered them to do, and there was no fuckin’ way I was gonna forcibly evacuate ‘em.” Alex saw their conversation had suddenly attracted the attention of almost everyone around them.

  “Jonathan McDougal, our felony D-V suspect, the one with the active arrest warrant for Child Neglect?”

  Alex knew he would have normally responded a bit sheepishly to the lieutenant’s antagonism, but he simply had no time for meekness and strict paramilitary bearing today. “Yessir, one and the same, and I think we can better deal with this on another day.” He mirrored the lieutenant’s body language, squared his shoulders to his superior, stood ramrod straight, and spoke with the confidence afforded by his intrinsic moral authority. “A bullshit, politically-motivated warrant based on unrealistic technicalities pales in comparison to the terrorist threat McDougal volunteered to help us fight. I doubt we disagree on that, do we, sir?”

  He watched the lieutenant’s eyes shift from his own to the watchful, gathering crowd, and then back to him. “Yeah, we will deal with that another day. The benefit of being right about this is that it’ll be a few days until we run out of bigger fish to fry.” Alex saw his body language soften, and he stepped back further beneath the open Tahoe’s hatch as though inviting Alex to follow him. “In addition to all the evidence you and your boy Davis over at D-P-S uncovered, Phoenix Fire just flew a drone by the 23rd floor and identified a bunch of potential I-E-Ds strapped to the support columns. You’d know that, you know, if you’d followed orders, left the building, and kept your fuckin’ radio on.”

  Alex had grown tired of the petty sniping, especially when no one had bothered to ask why his actions had been necessary. “Yeah, well, it’s back on now, sir. I had to turn it off to go upstairs to pursue the unidentified suspect, and I went back down to the lobby to meet up and make sure the three of us got out, but McDougal never came back down, so I waited for a few minutes, and then evacuated with the security guard and drove straight here.”

  “Your radio would have likely helped you make the decision to leave sooner, if it’d been on.” Dobbins paused, and then softened a bit further. “You’re gonna be sorry to hear this, and I’m sorry to tell you, but McDougal was shot in the head, presumably by your suspect. The employees evacuating from one of the stairwells reported a loud boom and suffered some hearing loss, apparently from a single gunshot inside the confined stairwell. We’re still interviewing anyone who shows up and reports having suffered internal ear injuries, but, so far, we haven’t found anyone who saw the shooter. Even the three or four guys who carried McDougal out didn’t see him. The flash, yes, but no one saw the man. Seems suspicious that we have no idea who the suspect is, but McDougal was able to find him in a packed stairwell among hundreds of other people.”

  “Is he alive?” Alex had feared the worst when McDougal didn’t show back up in the lobby, but he enjoyed the brief ability to rationalize the man’s absence for other reasons.

  “He still had a pulse when the ambulance drove him off, but I understand it was a pretty bad head wound, Alex. At this point, we still don’t know if he’s a hero or a suspect, and we may not ever get the chance to interview him and find out for sure. It’s gonna be best for you to deal with this when the case is over. He’s got the help he needs now, and we’re not it. Know that he was alive when he left, and there’s nothing any of us can do for him. Put it away, in a mental box, seal that shit up tight for the time being, and get back to work.”

  Alex felt Berkshire’s empathetic hand on his right shoulder, but didn’t have time to absorb the lieutenant’s words before Chief McNulty strode up from behind and stood next to him.

  “Damned good blessing to see you three alive. Anybody hurt or bleeding?”

  Berkshire responded for the small group. “One civilian down, apparent gunshot wound, sir, but he’s already been rushed to surgery. The rest of us are as good as we could be right now, and as ready to do God’s work as ever, Chief.”

  Alex saw McNulty look from Berkshire, to Dobbins, and, then, to himself. “That true of everyone here?”

  “Yessir, it is.” Striving to truly put aside the news of Jonathan’s shooting and potential demise, Alex steeled himself with the understanding that many more thousands of lives remained at risk.

  “I expect we’re only going to run our part of this investigation for the little time required for the FBI Supervisory Special Agent in Charge to drive over here. With a clear link to terrorism, whether foreign or domestic, they will now have primary jurisdiction. I’d like to hand this over to them in the best possible condition for public welfare and to give them the greatest probability of immediate success.”

  “To that end, sir, we’re inevitably going to have to hand them a helluhva laundry list to finish up.” Dobbins sounded exasperated, overwhelmed. “The devices Fire thinks they found on the 23rd floor of American Bank Tower are gonna have to be rendered safe in place. The suspect has yet to be identified, we don’t know where he got his materials and aid, and it appears he’s in the wind. The entire downtown has to be swept for I-E-Ds, and that’ll have to be made the utmost priority because of the economic devastation of leaving it uninhabitable. That search alone’ll require every explosives canine team and bomb squad in the state, and probably every available team in the region. Fire’s talkin’ about getting teams from L-A, Dallas, Salt Lake, Albuquerque, Denver, El Paso, and Las Vegas to pitch in. Given that the roughly three dozen high rise buildings in the vicinity average about twenty-five floors apiece, the basic math says about nine-hundred floors have to be searched, and that doesn’t even account for actual square footage.”

  “I don’t think it’s quite that bad, Lieutenant,” McNulty quickly and confidently countered, “as I understand it, we know where this scrotebag lived and where at least a few of his friends can be found. The F-B-I will certainly take over command of clearing downtown, but I think we know a SWAT team or two that would like to get some work done in the next couple hours out West. I’m certain the feds would greatly appreciate us having an actionable plan in place to break some doors and make some immediate progress we can report to calm and assure the public.”

  Berkshire chimed in as though to give Dobbins a moment of reprieve from his rising anxiety, “I agree, sir, if I understand you correctly, that we should focus on the few, narrow aspects of this investigation with which we can make the most difference? Leave Phoenix Fire and the bomb squads to sort out the downtown mess, and go take our problems out on a couple singlewides in the desert?”

  “Exactly, Ron, and I understand Lieutenant Herrmann’s already called all our SWAT guys in to brief and gear up at the station for some immediate entry work. I expect most SWAT teams around the Valley are doing much the same thing right now, just in case they can help with immediate warrant service to speed this investigation along. No sense giving these mutts time to stockpile or flee.”

  “Chief, I think we need to send them to the bomber’s place first,” Dobbins offered, his confidence seemingly restored, “the one up on Sunvalley, but we’ll want to get an eye on Ned Foster’s trailer out off 411th. The bomber probably lived alone and didn’t trust many folks, so it seems unlikely he would be at either place if he thinks we’re looking for him. Probably holed up somewhere we don’t know about yet.”
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  Alex paused for a moment while trying to anticipate their needs for the coming hours. “L-T, I’d suggest bringing in additional SWAT teams, maybe from Buckeye, MCSO, or Goodyear, to hit Foster’s place at the same time, instead of having us spend bodies to keep an eye on both places.”

  “I agree,” Dobbins offered, “and I’ll run all that through Herrmann, Chief, and let you know what else we need. Thanks for your help and support Chief, as always.”

  “You, too, Lieutenant, happy to help whenever I can.” McNulty waited until Dobbins walked away to make his phone calls before addressing Landon and Berkshire. “This could’ve been much worse. Only because of you two that it wasn’t. You and a handful of your guys just saved thousands of lives, hundreds of millions of dollars in property damage, and kept our entire country from plunging back into the grief, outrage, and reckless vigilantism we witnessed after 9-11. Now, let’s stop fellating each other and do whatever’s necessary to find this clown,” McNulty said and offered Alex his right hand, “and I do still mean whatever’s necessary, Landon.” With that, he turned to depart their company and find the heads of the other agencies involved in various aspects of the investigation and recovery efforts.

  “What about you, Ron, do you need anything before I start driving back west?”

  “No, I won’t be far behind you. I’m gonna have to brief the other local agencies and J-T-T-F, delegate a few tasks based on their available resources, and prepare a national BOLOs for the bomber and members of The Chosen Few that the F-B-I can get out as soon as they take over.”

  “Be safe, I’ll head out to brief Herrmann and the other SWAT teams, and start typing the search warrants for the two properties.” Alex turned and jogged back toward his Charger.

  “No knock, Landon,” Berkshire yelled after him, “make sure they’re fuckin’ no-knocks!”