At the sound of the firing from the porch, the black-clad jihadis scrambled to their feet, and hunched, they dashed toward the lodge. Tariq trailed their rush to the porch, his AK-47 pistol at his side and firing sporadically as they charged into the return fire coming from other agents who had burst from inside the lodge to meet the onslaught.
Tariq and his jihadis dropped to the grass, rolled sideways, and again came up firing, just as they had been trained. The agents’ bodies jerked wildly from the barrage of bullets and crumpled to the porch.
Tariq sprang to his feet and trailing several of the others, scaled the steps to the porch. They paused at the lodge’s main doors where the interior lights now blazed. Tariq shouted in Arabic, telling his men to flatten themselves against the exterior wall as they broke the porch window and tossed smoke grenades into the lobby, spewing dark smoke.
As the canisters hissed and smoke filled the lodge interior, Tariq kicked open the front doors, dove to the floor and rolled, expecting more gunfire. There was none. His men followed his lead, moving through the thick smoke, guns at the ready.
Weapons fire again erupted from the interior and a couple of his men fell, the barrage coming from the top of the broad stairs that curved to the upper floor, the shooters barely visible through the swirling smoke. A couple of the jihadis crawled past their fallen comrades and rolled, avoiding the high-caliber bullets.
Tariq clutched his AK-47 pistol, and through the thick smoke, fired blindly toward the top of the stair case. The shooting from above paused. Through the drifting smoke, Tariq discerned movement at the top of the stairs, then the thunk and tumble of a falling body.
In the next moment, the lodge fell silent as the hiss of the smoke grenades ended. Tariq listened as sporadic shooting erupted from outside the lodge and crept closer from the surrounding bungalows. “We are in! We have the lodge! Allah akbar,” he shouted.
Then Tariq heard a voice at the top of the stairs.
“Fucking bastards!”
Through the floating smoke, Tariq saw the man he would later learn was Troy Divine. The man’s belly hung over his boxer shorts, the only piece of clothing he wore other than cowboy boots and a hat, and he stood at the top of the stairs with a revolver in each hand. The pistols blazed as Divine fired alternately at the jihadis crouched at the base of the stairs, hitting two of Tariq’s men who twisted and crumpled to the floor.
Tariq and another jihadi swung their weapons to the top of the stairs and fired, making Divine’s body jerk spasmodically as bullets found their mark. Divine’s eyes opened wide and his shooting stopped. The man staggered, his eyes glazed with shock, his mouth open, his jaw slack. Divine teetered, the revolvers falling from his hands and clattering down the steps. His lifeless body fell forward, thumping and rumbling noisily down the stairs.
***
Dressed in his black cargo pants, t-shirt, and flip-flops, Raoul crouched low at the corner outside the bungalow. He held his Heckler & Koch 223 assault rifle tightly against his side, then lifted it toward the main lodge where the gunfire had just fallen silent and the lights had just gone completely dark. His heart pounded in his ears, his mind racing as he imagined scenarios as to what had just happened in the lodge. Whoever was inside had found the power box and shut it down. He raised his rifle to his shoulder and sighted along the barrel. Shoot? But at what? Raoul tried to see something, anything, as he feared the worst of all possibilities.
Kyle stepped out from the bungalow door, pulling up his pants and stepping into his shoes. Ariel was right behind.
“Get down! Get down!” Raoul shouted, waving his hand.
Kyle sank to his haunches, as did Ariel, then slowly edged along the outside wall, straining to see into the darkness, his eyes still adjusting.
Raoul squinted across the one hundred yards between him and the lodge, a futile effort to see what was going on, despite the now bright moonlight in the valley. The firing in the lodge had stopped, at least for the moment. Raoul struggled with what he feared was increasingly evident: unknown attackers now controlled the building that housed the President, the Speaker, and the Senate leader.
Then a new burst of rifle fire flashed from the lodge windows, the shots sparking in the night. Raoul lifted his weapon again to his shoulder, but didn’t fire, not knowing who was inside the lodge and who was outside. Then the communications device clipped to Raoul’s ear and crackled.
“What the hell is going on?” asked the voice of Hank Benedict. “What the hell is all of that shooting?”
His back against the outside wall of the log cabin-styled bungalow where he’d been waiting and watching, Raoul spoke calmly. “Ahhh, Hank. We got ourselves a friggin’ nightmare. It looks to me like someone…I don’t know who yet … has taken over the lodge.”
“You’re freakin’ kidding me!” Benedict shouted. “There’s no way! That’s impossible.”
“Yeah, that’s what I thought. Where are you?”
“Where I always am. At the HQ.”
“You’d better get over here, quick,” Raoul said.
“What the fuck? How could they? We had that place surrounded with some of our best men. They and the Secret Service. There’s no way!”
“What can I say?” Raoul said. “Someone, we don’t know who, is in control of the damned lodge now, best I can tell.”
“But how?”
Raoul exhaled, his stomach tight as he ran through a myriad of possibilities. He scanned the grounds. In the moonlight now, he could see about eight men lying on the ground, their bodies sprawled like logs. “I can count at least eight bodies on the ground outside the lodge,” he continued. “It looks like they’re some of our men and the rest Secret Service.”
Raoul wondered how many others were dead that he couldn’t see. He assumed they’d been killed by the attackers, but couldn’t be sure. Some may have died from friendly fire in the chaos. “It was a precision strike,” Raoul said after a pause. “It looks like they came out of the forests. They picked off the security perimeter with their first shots.” He paused again, his mind in high gear. “It came fast, Hank. They rushed the place. Broke through the doors. Once inside, well, I can only guess. They took us by surprise.”
“Jesus H. Christ,” Benedict said. “What about the guys inside?”
“Don’t know,” Raoul said. “There was shooting inside, and I figure the guys protecting the president and the others fought back. Don’t know if they made it.”
“We need to find out,” Benedict said.
“I’m going to recon the lodge,” Raoul said. “Try to figure out what happened.”
“Shit,” Benedict muttered, and clicked off. Again, the night fell silent.
From inside one of the darkened lodge windows, Raoul saw movement, the moonlight glinting as a window was thrown open. A voice shouted to no one in particular.
“We now control the lodge,” a man’s voice shouted into the night.
Raoul listened closely. It had a strangely cultured-sounding accent.
“Stay back or we will kill the president,” the voice shouted.
Raoul turned to Kyle. “Hear that? The guy sounds kinda British.”
Kyle looked at him and nodded. “Yes. Yes it does. But ….”
Raoul clicked on his com device again. “Hank. Do you read me?”
“Copy that,” Benedict said.
“They’re shouting from inside. They claim they have the president. They’re threatening to kill him if we attack.”
“Fuck that,” Benedict said. “Let’s rush the place. Overwhelming force.”
Raoul swallowed, looked at Kyle, and shook his head.
Kyle shook his head as well.
“We don’t have enough men to do that Hank,” Raoul said. “Besides, they have the damned president!” Raoul said. “Not a good idea, Hank.”
“What about the others?” Benedict aske
d. “Speaker Divine and Senator Blount?”
“Status unknown,” Raoul said.
Benedict was silent on the other end, then said, “What do you recommend?”
“Before we do anything, we need to know what kind of weapons they have and what how many are there. They may have booby trapped the place. We can’t risk an assault. Not yet, anyway. We need to know what we’re up against.”
“The longer we wait, the harder it will be,” Benedict said. Silence filled the next few moments. “Okay, Raoul. Order all of our Global men to stand down. I’ll contact the Secret Service. We need to coordinate this now.”
“Roger that,” Raoul said, clicking off. He turned a dial and changed the frequency of the com device. Raoul rose from his crouched position. “All Global personnel. This is commander Garcia. Stand down. I repeat. Stand down. They have the president.”
Raoul stepped from beside the cabin and scanned the lodge grounds. The valley remained silent as lights came on in various upper rooms in the main lodge, including the upper corner where Raoul knew the president was housed. Lights now shone from inside the surrounding cottages and bungalows, where political aides and the news media huddled and waited.
Ten minutes later, the stillness of the night was broken as a couple of Black Hawk helicopters thudded overhead, circled the lodge, low at first, then, in larger circles, rising higher and higher, then circled away from the lodge.
Chapter 17
Several hours later, the sun hanging over the nearby mountains, Kyle, Ariel, Raoul, and Hank Benedict huddled inside the Global Atlas training center office. Kyle glanced through the office window where helicopters thundered overhead. On the ground, a dozen military Humvees, gray Secret Service sedans, and a half dozen New Mexico state police cruisers crowded the drive and runway.
“They have the president and there’s not a damned thing we can do about it,” Benedict said glumly. “We should have just stormed the place when we had a chance.”
“And risk them killing the president?” Raoul asked.
“They’d love that,” Kyle said. “They’re all willing to die. They can’t wait to become martyrs.”
“We need to give them that opportunity and the sooner the better,” Benedict said.
“And if they kill the president?” Kyle said. “They’d die as the heroes who killed the Great Satan.”
Benedict shook his head in disgust. “Between Atlas Global and the Secret Service, we’ve got eight people dead that we know of,” Benedict said, unable to hide his anger, his face crimson, his ice-blue eyes ringed with red. “Four of the dead were Secret Service. We lost four of our own men. Maybe more of are inside.”
Kyle nodded. “Some of the lodge staff were probably killed, along with White House and congressional staffers.”
Benedict grimaced.
“Who would have thought that northern New Mexico could be a war zone?” Ariel asked.
They looked at her, thinking much the same thing.
“How are you going to free the president, except by force?” she asked, her eyes searching Kyle and Raoul’s faces.
Benedict nodded. “That’s what I’d like to know. If these guys are who we think they are, they’re not going to give up and walk away. They’re going to die so they can get their fifty-seven virgins, or whatever. They’ll take as many people with them as they can. Including the president.”
Kyle looked at Benedict and then at Raoul, and knew Benedict was right.
Benedict glanced at his watch. “The commander of the Secret Service contingent is due here any minute. We’re all going to be part of a video conference with the president’s Security Council in Washington. The head of the Secret Service, the director of the FBI, Justice department, homeland security, and the National Security Agency.”
“Look!” Raoul said, pointing to one of several television screens on the wall. “The news media is all over this.”
“Of course,” Kyle said.
The Wolfe News Network’s cartoonish logo of a snarling wolf, its gleaming eyes staring at the camera, filled one of the screens. An anchor came on.
“It’s a nightmare scenario that no one thought possible,” the gray-haired, blue-eyed anchor said. “Today America suffered a devastating blow from which it will be difficult to recover, if ever. Jihadi terrorists now hold the president of the United States hostage. Yes, that’s right. The president of the United States is in the hands of terrorists! What’s even more outrageous is that he’s being held in what was considered a completely secure location in the remote mountains in northern New Mexico. For a live report, we now go our correspondent who has been with the president at the Vista Verde Ranch.”
The screen cut to a reporter standing at the edge of a graveled road in the forest. “It’s too bizarre to believe, but it’s true,” the reporter said. He had sandy hair, brown eyes, and wore a western-cut shirt and jeans. “In the early morning hours, not far up this road, a force of heavily armed jihadi terrorists swept down from the surrounding mountains, killing at least eight security agents protecting the president. The dead include Secret Service agents, whose job it is to protect the president, and private security personnel who are part of Atlas Global Security. As best we can tell, the surprise attack came so swiftly the president’s security detail was unable to mount effective resistance.”
“Do we know the condition of the president?” the anchor asked.
The reporter nodded. “We know that the president was staying in one of the secure rooms in the upper floor. Also on the floor, but in separate rooms, were Senator Michael Blount, the Senate Majority Leader, and Troy Divine, the Speaker of the House. We’ve learned that Divine and an unknown number of the security agents inside the lodge may have been killed in the assault.”
“Where did these terrorists come from and how do we get the president free?” the anchor asked.
“Sources tell Wolfe News that the terrorists may have entered the US by crossing along a remote and unguarded section of the US-Mexico border. Officials believe the terrorists may be the people responsible for the shooting deaths of multiple Border Patrol agents a couple of months ago.”
“What’s the status of the president?” the anchor asked.
“We’re not really sure. All we know is that the president was in one of the upper rooms and that the terrorists now control the building.”
“Have the terrorists made any demands?” the anchor asked.
“Not yet. For the moment, it’s a waiting game. Intelligence officials are frantically trying to figure out who’s responsible for this and what they want.”
“Incredible,” the anchor said with a disgusted shake of his head. “This is a day that Americans never thought they would ever see.”
***
With a subtle nod, Raoul signaled to Kyle that he’d be briefed about the teleconference later, then Raoul sat back and watched as Kyle and Ariel were ushered from the Atlas Global conference room where a large wall screen showed the members of the Security Council taking their seats around an oval table.
Benedict and Raoul, along with a handful of Secret Service agents, CIA agents, and four other Atlas Global agents remained in the headquarters briefing room. Raoul returned his gaze to the large screen where US Vice-President James Peavey Marvin, along with key members of the White House staff and President Harris’s cabinet filed into the Security Council room. They included the Secretary of State Helen Carter; Defense Secretary, Philip Morgan; Homeland Security Secretary Harold Schmidt; and Don Prescott, Director of National Intelligence. They were joined by of the head of the Secret Service John Dempsey; CIA Director Homer Sidow; and FBI Director Frank Huntington. Each waited glumly for the conference to begin.
Marvin, a tall and aristocratic looking man with white hair and a beaked nose, yanked back his chair, and sat down with a heavy sigh. Raoul knew little about the man except that he was fr
om a wealthy and well-known family New England family with a Mayflower pedigree of the early English settlers to the original colonies. A former two-term Democratic senator from New Hampshire, Marvin was widely thought of as moderate to conservative on the political spectrum. He’d been selected as Harris’s running mate to provide balance to Harris’s decidedly liberal views on the government and society.
“Thank you all for coming,” Marvin intoned, raking his fingers through his thick white mane, looking perturbed, but in control. “With our president at the mercy of terrorists, this is certainly America’s darkest hour.” He scanned the room slowly, pausing only briefly to glance at each cabinet member. “As you all know, since you’ve all been consulted and have given your assent, I have been forced by these dire circumstances to assume the duties of the president. He’s clearly been incapacitated. This is all being done in accordance with the 25th Amendment to the Constitution, which provides for the smooth transition of power in such a situation. I want to assure you all that I will guide the ship of state with a firm and confident hand. I will be going on national television immediately following this meeting to reassure the American people about that as well.”
“But before I do,” Marvin continued, “we need to know the latest. So, what can I tell the American people is being done to free the president?” Marvin cast his eyes to the man to his right. “We’ll start with the Secret Service. Dempsey, what do you have?”
A frazzled, bespectacled, and balding man in a dark suit, Dempsey looked at Marvin and cleared his throat. “Four of our agents died protecting the president. Several others have been wounded severely.”
“We’re here to talk about the status of the president of the United States, not your department’s failure to protect him!” Marvin barked. “So, tell us. What is his situation?”
“President Harris is alive and well,” Dempsey said.
“What? Are you saying the terrorists don’t have the president?” Marvin asked.
“Well, they do, but not exactly,” Dempsey said.
“What the hell, man?” Marvin said. “Speak plainly.”
Enemy of the People Page 12
