Strike Force Charlie s-3

by Mack Maloney

  Inside the limo, the Rushton clan sat, sullen and silent, exhausted from these frequent excursions they’d been making with their father. They arrived at the driveway of their very tony 12-room house. This was an expensive property, in a very expensive area, what would seem way beyond the means of an Army general, even one as high up the food chain as Rushton. Truth was, the general was deeply in debt, and getting money, quickly and quietly, had been a motivation over the past year or so. But he had other aspirations these days as well.

  The limousine turned into the driveway, but any hopes of respite the Rushton kids might have held were dashed at first sight of their front lawn. About fifty people were assembled here. They were contractors and lobbyists for the defense security industry. They were having a late-afternoon catered barbecue at the general’s house. As before, attendance for the Rushton family would be mandatory.

  The limo pulled up into the house’s gravel turnaround. The bodyguards in the Suburbans dismounted and headed for the kitchen in the rear of the house. They hadn’t had breakfast yet, never mind lunch. The police car left them here, retreating back down the long driveway and going on its way.

  The two policemen inside the cruiser did not think suspicious the white van parked across the street from the bottom of the driveway.

  * * *

  Ozzi was behind the wheel of the van, the same vehicle that had carried them twice up 1-95 to the New York-New Jersey area. They’d been dumping it at various spots around D.C., praying each time that it would be there when they returned.

  Ozzi was dressed in his Kmart duds now, but his make shift combat suit was folded underneath the front seat. He was trying his best to look like a flower deliveryman, and indeed the van was filled with bouquets, all stolen earlier that day from fresh graves in cemeteries in the area. He had a clipboard in one hand and a cell phone in the other. He was having an imaginary phone conversation; the cell phone wasn’t even turned on.

  All this was a cover for what Hunn was doing in the back. The Delta soldier was lying atop a bed of dying lilies, facing a hole they’d drilled in the van’s rear door. A balancing bar fashioned from an armrest taken from an old chair in Li’s house was duct-taped to the floor. A pair of very cheap binoculars was jammed into an indent on the other side of which the van’s license was fastened. Two holes had been drilled here as well. Hunn’s eyes were pressed up against the binoculars, looking up at Rushton’s mansion. The house was painted white, the perfect background for what Hunn was about to do.

  They’d been parked here most of the afternoon. No one had questioned them; no one had given them as much as a second look. They knew the always-moving Rushton would have to return home sooner or later; this was better than trying to track him down all over D.C. On first coming here, they’d thought they’d probably have to wait until nightfall, in hopes of catching Rushton then. But when they saw the crowd start to gather on his lawn shortly after they arrived, they felt their luck was staying good.

  And good luck was essential for any sniper mission.

  It was actually a perfect scenario for them. Rushton’s front yard ran 400 feet down to the road. Hunn’s hunting rifle was accurate at 2,000 yards. Getting a powerful enough shot would not be a problem. And once the trigger was pulled, Ozzi could have them on the Beltway in less than a minute. Plus the van itself was a great cover. There weren’t just thousands of white delivery vans in the D.C. area, driving its streets at any time of day. There were tens of thousands of them, as plentiful as yellow cabs in New York City. D.C. was a place that ran on local delivery. It would take months to stop them all or track them all down, as the local law enforcement agencies had discovered several years before.

  Even the fact that a large number of people were on the general’s lawn was a point in the team’s favor. The more witnesses, the greater chance for different accounts to police afterward. More confusion usually resulted.

  Eliminating Rushton had always been one of the ghost team’s key objectives since leaving Gitmo. They’d suspected his involvement in the Stinger deal all along, and the information they’d found in Palm Tree’s PDA and in Ramosa’s laptop more than confirmed those suspicions. Just a few months before, Ozzi would have dropped a dime on this whole thing, would have called the cops at very first wind of it, thinking that killing a U.S. general was a very un-American thing to do, not to mention highly illegal. But he’d changed; he did not feel any guilt now. Rushton was the one doing un-American things, consorting with terrorists and backstabbing foreign governments. That bullshit had to stop. Capping him now was the most efficient and quickest way to that solution. Rushton with a bullet between his eyes might stop the terrorists’ operations in their tracks. It might save hundreds of people on a targeted airliner. It might even save thousands if what the ghosts feared the second bus was up to — that is, some kind of mass destruction — was true.

  Ozzi wasn’t proud of the way he felt; he just didn’t feel bad about it. That’s just the way it was. Plus it was really Hunn doing the dirty work. If it was up to Ozzi to actually pull the trigger, well … he wasn’t sure he could do it.

  They waited for Rushton to come out of the house and onto the lawn. He finally appeared after five minutes or so. Those assembled for the barbecue gave him a hearty round of applause; many of them were privy to his secret agenda, too. Ozzi started the van’s engine. If they were going to do this, it was essential they do it quick. They were aligned for a perfect shot. The rear of the van facing slightly uphill, the great background, and no heat distortion in the mild summer air.

  “Get ready,” Hunn whispered as he inserted the rifle barrel in the hole, the outside of which was further camouflaged by a spare tire.

  Ozzi gripped the steering wheel tighter. His own family didn’t live very far from here. He’d traveled this street many times growing up. But that was another thing he couldn’t start thinking about now.

  “I’ve got a good mark on the fat bastard …” Hunn said after a few moments devoted to the aiming process. “Good distance. OK, here we go. Three … two … one … damn!”

  Ozzi had already braced himself for the sound of the shot. But no such sound came. All he heard was Hunn swearing.

  “What’s going on?” Ozzi hissed over his shoulder to the Delta soldier.

  “His damn kids,” Hunn hissed back. “They keep getting in the way ….”

  Ozzi dared to look up on the general’s lawn. Hunn was right. Rushton was there, but it was obvious he was going to great lengths to keep his coterie of kids around him.

  “What’s up with that?” he said. “You think the last place he’d drag his kids to would be something like this. Unless …”

  Then it hit him.

  “That bastard …” Ozzi whispered. “He knows we’re on to him. He knows that we know. Palm Tree. Ramosa. Our guys preventing the missile teams from shooting. He knows it all and he figures we’ll get around to popping him, too—”

  “ … so he’s using his kids as shields,” Hunn finished the sentence for him. “Can a human being get any lower?”

  But it was a problem. They stayed in position for a few more agonizing minutes, Rushton moving in and out of range, always keeping at least a handful of his children tightly around him, and frequently holding one in his arms.

  Finally, Hunn just gave up.

  “Damn, this is no use!” he cursed, pulling the gun in. It was like all the air suddenly went out of him.

  “I’m sorry, Lieutenant,” he said to Ozzi. “But I just can’t take the chance of shooting a kid ….”

  * * *

  They drove around Bethesda for the next three hours, keeping an eye on Rushton’s house, watching for any new developments. They kept the van’s radio turned on the whole time, tuned to the news. They’d heard the first sketchy reports that an airliner was almost shot down out in Denver — it sounded as if their comrades had stopped another Al Qaeda missile team from fulfilling its mission. But then came the rumors that the special ops team might h
ave been killed in the incident. At the very least, their infamous big white copter had gone down somewhere near Denver Airport.

  This was a blow; Ozzi felt like he’d been punched in the stomach. They scoured the radio dial, hoping to learn more, but it was not to be. The FBI had put a news blackout on the entire incident, so all they heard was the same initial report over and over again. Finally, they just turned the radio off. They knew that the first reports from any kind of incident like this were usually wrong. And the copter crew was resourceful; they’d been to hell and back several times without getting singed. But even if it was a disaster and the copter team had all been killed, Ozzi and Hunn would still have to carry on with their own mission. Not to do so would make the whole enterprise a waste of time.

  Rushton’s lawn party broke up at around 7:00 P.M.; most guests were gone by half past. Thirty minutes later, Rushton’s motorcade began assembling once again. Two more trips around the block and Ozzi was just able to catch sight of the general’s limo plus the two Suburbans leaving his home. They were heading for the Beltway. A Bethesda police cruiser met them and provided escort for the short distance to the expressway. When the police car turned away, Ozzi steered the van up onto the Beltway. They fell in behind Rushton’s limo.

  It led them on a long rambling route around D.C., into Virginia, back to D.C., back into Maryland, and back to D.C. again. This was a security procedure, to lose anyone who might be tailing them, Hunn explained. He’d been trained by Delta in both sniping and stalking techniques, and his patience was longer, more durable, than Ozzi’s. On his instructions, Ozzi stayed back in the traffic, at times barely keeping the three target vehicles in sight.

  Finally, the limo and its escorts returned to D.C., Ozzi and Hunn still in pursuit. It was now 9:00 P.M. Thunderstorms were sweeping over the area.

  * * *

  Rushton’s limousine and its escorts circled the streets close to the White House for another 30 minutes.

  The traffic was brutal again, even for this time of night. They went up and down Pennsylvania Avenue no less than a half-dozen times, passing by the security barriers near the executive mansion, zooming by traffic cops trying to sort out the mess, and even traveling on the tail of a small convoy of Army trucks for a few blocks.

  All this suddenly changed just about nine-thirty. They were driving along the reflecting pool, the limo, the two Suburbans, and Hunn and Ozzi about ten car lengths behind. Coming up on an intersection, the limo took a sudden right, going through the red light, while the Suburbans went left. Ozzi was at a loss for a moment — what just happened here? Hunn urged him to follow the limo.

  Doing so meant Ozzi had to run the red light, too, which he did with ease. They were now right behind the limo.

  “Something weird’s going on,” Hunn said. “Stick to him like glue.”

  This became a problem, though, as the limo began speeding up. They reached the center of D.C. again. The limo went through a red light on Connecticut Avenue, nearly demolishing a taxi. Ozzi went through the light as well, only to wind up in another traffic jam at the next light. They were right in back of the limo now, Ozzi’s apprehension calming a bit when Hunn pointed out that just within this one block alone they could see at least a half-dozen more white delivery vans. They were blending right in. Or so it seemed.

  The snarl had started inching forward when suddenly Ozzi heard a tapping noise on his window. He turned to see a D.C. policeman standing next to the van. He was a huge African-American guy his uniform soaked from the recent rain. A bright red ruby stud sparkled from his right ear.

  “Just stay cool, Lieutenant,” Hunn urged Ozzi, under his breath. “We’re delivering flowers here, remember?”

  Ozzi lowered the window as calmly as possible.

  “Is there a problem?” he asked the cop.

  “You boys just ran a red light,” the cop replied. “That’s the problem.”

  Ozzi was not unprepared for this. He was a resident of D.C., so he had his D.C. license on him. And as the van was a rental, the agreement came attached to the registration. But if the cop ever ran a check on Ozzi’s license, God knows what would happen. After all, he was technically an escaped felon. The same was true if, for some reason, the cop wanted to search the van.

  But before Ozzi could hand his papers over, the traffic started to move. Hunn saw an opportunity and interceded.

  “Look, pal,” he said to the cop. “We’ve been riding around with these flowers all day, fighting this traffic. Everything’s dying and we still got a bunch of deliveries to go. The kid just got a little anxious, you know?”

  It was not so much what Hunn said but how he said it. He did have a certain amount of charm and he could lay it on thick at times. In this case, the cop fell for it.

  “OK,” he said. “I’m too wet to write you a ticket anyway. Just watch yourself.”

  With that, he walked away.

  Ozzi felt his shoulders sag in relief. He looked over at the hulking Delta soldier and smiled. Hunn smiled back, a very rare occasion.

  “It’s called the ‘power of persuasion,’ Lieutenant,” Hunn said. “It comes along with being a bullshit artist.”

  At that moment, the traffic started to move for real. Ozzi hit the gas and they were back on the limo’s tail again.

  * * *

  The slow-motion chase ended five minutes later when the limousine turned back onto Connecticut Avenue and pulled into an alley next to an old redbrick building. This was the Oak House, a very famous, very private club that was a favorite of Washington’s elite, or at least those lucky enough to gain membership.

  Hunn recognized the place and pumped his fist.

  “There’s no way his kids are going in there,” he said. “I’ll bet not even his bodyguards can get in.”

  And he was right. They rolled past the alley just in time to see Rushton emerge alone from the limo and duck into the club’s side door.

  Hunn was already looking at the buildings bordering the alleyway.

  “Oh yeah,” he said, clapping his hands together. “We got plenty of places to pop him up there.”

  * * *

  They drove the van to a multilevel parking garage one block away. It was conveniently located, as its roof was adjacent to the roofs of buildings facing one side of the alley.

  Parking the van on the top floor of the garage, Ozzi and Hunn quickly changed into their black combat duds, then took the sniper rifle, Ozzi’s weapon, the armrest, and the binoculars and walked to the edge of the garage’s roof. There was about a six-foot separation between the garage and the top of the building they wanted to get to. Hunn made the leap first, jumping with no more concern than if he were jumping over a puddle in the street. Ozzi, however, made the mistake of looking down between the buildings before he made his move. It was at least 50 feet to the bottom, with nothing but cobblestones and asphalt waiting below.

  Ozzi knew he wasn’t going to sprout wings in the next few seconds. So he backed up, took a deep breath, then took a running leap. He flew out into space like Batman, arms spread, feet together. He landed, hard, face-first on the gravel and tar roof of the next building over. Hunn just looked down at him.

  “You might want to work on your approach, sir,” he said drily.

  They crept to the opposite side of the roof. It overlooked the alley and the side entrance to the Oak House. It seemed to be the ideal sniper’s post. They could set up, get a good aiming point down in the alley, and still remain in the shadows. What’s more, the other roofs around them were very dark, too.

  “Perfect,” Hunn whispered. “We might be able to put two into him from up here.”

  Ozzi helped him set up the rifle rest. A few loose bricks on the roof’s artifice further stabilized the weapon. The thunderstorms had passed over, and even though the roof was wet, the sky above was clear and the stars had come out. Two fighter jets passed over, their engines sounding muted and dim, even though their navigation lights were flashing madly. Somewhere off in the
distance, a siren was blaring.

  The limousine was still parked in the alley below, its engine running. This led them to believe that Rushton might be in the club for only a short time.

  Hunn checked his weapon over and over again. The bolt, the ammo supply, the armrest. He was a hulking individual, big hands, big head, big everything. But he handled the gun like a mother handled a newborn baby. Ozzi thought perhaps all this attention was a way to divert the fact that he was about to take a human life. A repulsive human life, but a life nevertheless. But to get that deep with the big Delta soldier was the last thing Ozzi wanted to do at the moment.

  They lay in wait for the next 15 minutes, getting their clothes wet, not speaking, Ozzi counting the number of times the two fighter jets passed overhead.

  Then they heard a thump and a slight electrical sound, like a fan had been turned on. Ozzi peeked over the edge of the building and saw the limo driver, only his hands visible through the windshield, adjusting the limo’s air conditioner. This convinced them Rushton was about to emerge from the club.

  “Can we go over the egress again, Lieutenant?” Hunn asked, never taking his eye from the rifle scope.

  They had gone over their escape plan already, just after setting up the weapon. Once Hunn took the shot, they would quickly disassemble the rifle and shove the individual parts down the chimneys and water pressure pipes, of which there were many on the roof. Then they would shed their black camos and dispose of them in a similar manner and jump back over to the garage roof. They would retrieve the van and leave, all before the crush of police and security vehicles arrived, they hoped.

  Ozzi had begun to recite their escape procedure again when suddenly they heard: “Hey! What are you guys doing here?”

  They both spun around to see a cop walking toward them, flashlight in one hand, service revolver in the other.