Even after exhaustive measures, the police were reduced to responding to the threat rather than preventing it.
Chase still considered himself an outsider. His partner, a fellow by the name of Robison, had tossed him a load-bearing ballistic vest with pockets full of ammunition, radio, and flash bangs. But beneath the vest, Chase’s fatigues were Navy issue with a different camouflage pattern than the fatigues worn by the SOT team. He was content to remain low-profile, as long as he felt that he was avenging Jesse’s death.
The team leader, Captain Lewis, paced between Dean Cannard’s office and the Information desk, where the phones rang nonstop. Civilians were responding to the wanted posters dispersed throughout town by the uniformed division.
But even now, eight hours into Columbus Day, the police had few solid leads. The skinheads were still at large, and their target was a big fat question mark.
Hannah stood over the fax machine, arms akimbo. Wearing FBI-issue battle dress, including a Magnum holstered to her chest, web belt loaded with ammo, and calf-high boots, she looked like a redheaded version of Laura Croft. Tapping an impatient toe, she waited for the fax machine to spit out paper. At last, an employee at the IRS was sending the requested copies of Willard Smith’s tax returns.
Chase recognized the exact moment that Hannah noted something of interest in the returns. She reached for her briefcase, snatching out the papers that she’d copied the other day. She took a second to compare the two. “Captain,” she called, causing Lewis to join her in a hurry. “This may be coincidental, but Will Smith and Tim Olsen both worked as landscapers at Indian Springs Golf Course. They either quit at the same time, or they were fired.”
The captain shrugged as if to say, So what?
“If their jobs were given to minorities, that’d be an incentive to strike back, wouldn’t it?” she proposed.
Lewis frowned skeptically. “A country club seems like a pretty unlikely target,” he replied.
A memory popped into Chase’s mind, prompting him to speak up for the first time. “What’s a duffer?” he asked.
Hannah, the captain, and fourteen SOT members looked over at the seemingly random question. He asked it again. “What’s a duffer?” They all looked at each other. No one knew what a duffer was.
Right then, Dean Cannard popped out of his office, coffee mug in hand. “Duffer? That was in yesterday’s crossword puzzle. It’s slang for bad golfer.”
Chase stood up and tightened his ballistic vest. “They’re gonna target the country club,” he announced with absolute conviction. “Willard Smith told Sa—Serenity that he was going to teach those liberal duffers to look after their own.”
For a second, nobody moved.
Dean broke the silence. “Well, hot damn,” he said, glancing at the captain. “That’s the break we’ve been looking for.”
Captain Lewis narrowed his eyes at Chase. “You’d better be right about this, McCaffrey,” he warned.
Chase just headed for the double doors and the van parked outside.
“Okay, let’s go,” Lewis shouted, making his decision. “Into the van,” he ordered. “Let’s stop this thing before it starts.”
Chase held the doors for the fourteen other members to file through. Hannah caught up to him, hefting her briefcase. “I’m coming, too,” she informed him.
Chase thought of the five hundred pounds of ANFO that the skinheads were purported to have at their disposal. “Keep your distance,” he warned. God forbid anything happened to Hannah on his watch. Luther’d never forgive him.
Dean Cannard caught up with them. “Mind if I catch a ride with you, ma’am?” he asked Hannah.
She slanted him a frown. “Aren’t you in the criminal investigations division?”
His smile was sheepish. “Yeah, but I get bored sitting behind a desk all day.”
“I can relate to that,” she muttered. “Sure, come on.” With a nod at Chase, she struck out toward her Mustang, leaving Chase to clamber into the SWAT van with the other scouts, snipers, and entry experts. Given their closed looks, they weren’t at all convinced yet that the country club was the target area.
Chase eased onto the narrow bench and donned the headset that Robison passed to him. The rear doors clanged shut, and they were off.
His thoughts drifted to Sara. It was his last full day in Broken Arrow. He couldn’t stop regret from stitching through him. At the same time, he was grateful for the day’s distractions. They prevented him from taking her to bed again, which was all he could think about. Why was it that making love with Sara could terrify and satisfy him at the same time?
It made him worry that he just might be in love. On the heels of love came empathy, then remorse. Moreover, love hurt—more than knife wounds, bullet wounds, or sleeping on mangrove roots. Falling in love would be suicide.
Yet no woman ever deserved to be loved more.
It put him in an awful quandary.
He couldn’t save her this time and still save himself.
The radio crackled in his ear, returning his thoughts to the present.
“Heads up, men. We have a situation at the country club. At least one shooter is firing at golfers on the green. There’s a man down on the fourth hole.”
Fourteen pairs of eyes swiveled toward Chase, who raised his eyebrows just a tad.
The team leader quickly assigned their tasks. Chase and his partner, Robison, along with one other sniper pair, would flush the shooters from the trees. Scout teams one and two would determine the status of the clubhouse, keeping an eye out for the truckload of ANFO. The five entry guys would remain on standby. In the event that the bomb was pinpointed, Flint and Sievers would be sent in to disarm it.
Chase felt the van veer off 131st East Avenue and bounce into the long drive that led to the clubhouse. It came to a halt.
“Go, go, go!” the team leader shouted.
The snipers and scouts jumped out to find themselves just down the lane from the clubhouse. Chase swept a gaze over the lush terrain. A hardwood forest framed the golf course, providing adequate cover to the shooters.
He signaled to his partner that they would cut through the woods, taking out hostiles as they came across them. Robison nodded.
Chase had been here only once before, as a boy. He waved Robison ahead of him. Together they penetrated the woods at a stealthy run.
They hadn’t covered fifty yards when the sound of a gunshot rang out, followed by a woman’s scream, then another gunshot. Then silence.
Chase pinpointed where the shots had come from. In his earpiece, he could hear the scouts giving a head count on the number of civilians rushing for the safety of the clubhouse. “Oh, shit,” one of them breathed. “There’s a closed truck with no plates parked at the food services entry.”
The unwelcome news made Chase draw his gun. He sprinted past Robison, who was heavy on his feet, determined to take out the shooter with the least amount of time wasted.
Keeping ten yards between them, they swept the area from which the shooter had fired. On this side of the golf course, vegetation was thick, with plenty of ground cover. On the other side, the woods had been thinned to provide golfers a better view of the glinting Arkansas River.
Chase was the first to spot the shooter. The man was crouched behind a bush, gun pointed toward the green. With a silent leap, Chase tackled him. In the next instant, the man’s rifle was ten yards away, his nose shoved into the moss at the base of a tree, and Chase was securing his wrists with a black nylon tie-tie.
Robison snatched up the rifle and emptied it of ammunition.
“Who’s out here with you?” Chase demanded in the man’s ear. “Where’re your friends?” He wondered if this was Timmy or Les. Bearing down on the pressure point on the man’s shoulder, he quickly got the answers he was seeking.
There were two other shooters, positioned at forty-five- degree angles around the clubhouse, a hundred yards out.
Chase secured the man’s feet so that he couldn’t
get away. Let’s go, he signaled to Robison, who left the familiar-looking Remington propped against a tree.
As they went to stalk the others, news floated over Chase’s earpiece that Flint and Sievers couldn’t get close to the bomb. An invisible sniper, location unknown, was keeping the entry guys at bay. He’d also shot three civilians trying to leave the clubhouse.
Chase altered direction. Thumbing his mike, he requested Sniper Team Two to pursue the skinheads on the golf course. He was going after Willard Smith, because that was who the shooter had to be.
And chances were it would take a Navy SEAL to catch an Army Ranger.
With Robison crashing through the woods in his wake, Chase raced toward the clubhouse at a silent run. The single-story, brick structure stood in an open area with no other buildings around it, other than an outdoor changing facility at the far end of the swimming pool.
Keeping his squad mates apprised of their location, he and Robison took cover behind an ornamental wall, a brick job that flanked the driveway. Peering around it, Chase immediately spied the three bodies on the clubhouse steps.
Shit. At least one of the victims—a small child—was still alive, making time critical. Not to mention that the fuse in the stockpile of ANFO was probably set to ignite at any moment.
A mental timer started ticking in Chase’s head. Tick, tick, tick, tick, tick. Chase’s heart was beating twice that fast.
He put himself in Willard’s position. Where would he be, if he wanted a view of both clubhouse doors, as well as the delivery bay for the restaurant?
He’d be high up in a tree, above it all.
There were only four large trees within range of the clubhouse. Chase scanned them all, his gaze settling on a large oak. He waited, his pulse bouncing off his eardrums. He watched. Come on, bastard. And then a branch moved.
It could have been a breeze but . . . no, there it was again. The shooter was propped along a branch about thirty feet up. Chase could just make him out, covered in a green mesh that camouflaged him almost perfectly.
“Sniper located,” he said into his mike. “Permission to take him out, sir.”
“Request confirmed,” the team leader replied, with relief in his voice.
Even though he’d been the spotter, Chase didn’t give the shot to Robison, who was the designated shooter. He whipped the SIG from its holster and flicked off the safety, favoring it over the MP5 which would destroy a good portion of the tree. Chase was angling for a little more finesse than that.
He broke from the cover of his hiding place and sprinted in a zigzag fashion toward the oak. He had to get close enough that he wouldn’t miss. One shot, one kill was the motto he’d abided by for sixteen years.
Braced for the impact of a bullet slamming into him, he sprinted toward the oak. A round of pellets punched into the soft soil at his feet, letting him know that Smith had seen him coming.
He accelerated in panic, reaching the safety of the oak’s broad trunk where he paused, catching his breath. He had the advantage now, and Willard knew it.
What goes up—he thought, preparing to spin around the trunk and fire—must come down.
He dodged left, praying that Willard expected him to come out the other way. He fired with his body still in motion. Bang!
An abbreviated roar assured Chase that he’d hit his mark. Willard rolled off the limb where he lay and dropped. He was probably dead before he hit the ground.
With all the skinheads believed to be accounted for, the entry team burst out of their sundry hiding places and swarmed the building.
Chase joined them. Don’t blow, he prayed, thinking of the truckload of ANFO set to explode at any minute. Sweat drenched him beneath his fatigues and heavy vest, but his training kicked in, as he focused on sweeping the child on the front steps out of harm’s way while the entry team stormed past, into the building.
With the young girl in his arms, Chase turned tail, sprinting from the building. His respect for the entry guys soared to phenomenal heights. He could hear them shouting at the civilians to evacuate. The more reluctant members had to be wrestled outside, where the dead couple still lay in a mangled heap on the steps.
Chase glanced down at the fragile life in his arms. The little girl couldn’t have been more than five or six. She’d been shot in the shoulder and was losing blood fast.
“Keep going,” he urged the civilians scurrying in panicked confusion around him. “Other side of the parking lot.”
He laid the girl in the grass. As he hunted through the pockets of his ballistic vest for medical gauze—anything to stop the blood from pouring out of her—he realized he was shaking. Badly.
Maybe it was this unlikely location—the heart of America, where shit like this wasn’t supposed to happen. It could have been the tender age of the girl herself. Whatever the reason, this situation was upsetting the hell out of him.
The couple he’d left for dead on the steps were probably her parents. Pressing a square of gauze to the welling bullet wound, he was struck by the cruelty of her circumstances.
He was feeling the girl’s weak but steady pulse when Hannah dropped onto her knees beside him.
“Oh, no.” She looked behind her at the couple still lying on the steps. “Oh, God.”
“She’ll live,” Chase said in a rough voice, though he doubted she would even want to live when she realized that her parents were gone forever.
Hannah put a comforting arm around him. “I need to see how Flint and Sievers are coming along with the bomb.”
No one would breathe deeply until word came that the detonation cord had been severed.
Chase, who’d been listening to the wail of ambulances for what seemed an eternity, waved down the first ambulance to scream up the country club’s long lane.
Two others bounced onto the golf course, toward the victims who’d been shot on the green.
“All clear,” Chase heard in his mike. “The bomb is rendered safe. The building secured.”
A halfhearted cheer went up among the SOT members and bystanders.
With relief, Chase relinquished the girl to paramedics, who packed her shoulder in ice and lifted her onto a gurney. He was still standing there with his heart in his throat when her eyes flickered open and she looked straight at him.
Something in her pretty eyes reminded him of Sara.
Disconcerted, Chase turned away to help round up the skinheads, who were promptly read their rights.
Willard Smith, on the other hand, was being zipped into a body bag.
Trying to shake off his jitters, Chase watched Hannah weave in and out of the milling crowd, making notes into a handheld tape recorder. The sudden vibrating of his cell phone had him reaching into his thigh pocket, heart rate leaping with the adrenaline that hadn’t fully receded. Who could be calling him?
He frowned at the familiar number, trying to place it. “This is Chase,” he said, needing a clue.
Heavy breathing sounded on the other end.
“Who’s this?” he demanded, unsettled by the sound.
“Tell Sara . . .”
The whispered words brought every hair on his head standing at attention, especially when it came to him that the number was Rachel Jensen’s.
He covered his other ear in order to hear over the noise around him. “Tell her what? Are you okay?”
“He’s coming . . .”
“Who’s coming?”
A muffled thud on the other end told him that Rachel had dropped the receiver. “Shit!” Chase hissed, severing the call. He immediately returned it, but the line was busy. Next he dialed the number to the ranch. “Come on,” he urged, as the phone rang and rang, “answer the phone, Sara!”
But no one answered.
“Problem?” asked a familiar voice. It was Dean Cannard, standing directly behind him. He’d just overheard Chase call Sara by her real name.
Ignoring the man, Chase hurried toward Hannah, who was helping an officer identify one of the dead civilians.
“I have to get back to the ranch,” he said, trying to keep his words from coming out with gunfire urgency. “Can I borrow your car?”
But there was Dean, right behind him. “What’s going on?” he demanded.
Chase glanced at him impatiently. “Back away, Cannard. This has nothing to do with you.”
The detective wisely took a step back.
“Chase,” Hannah admonished. Grabbing his arm, she steered him to one side. “What’s the matter with you?”
“Sara’s in trouble. I think Garret’s found her. Can I borrow your car?”
“Oh, shit,” she breathed. “I’m coming with you.” She whipped her car keys off the ring on her web belt. She glanced at where Cannard was standing, glowering at them. “He might as well come, too,” she said to Chase. “We may need police support.”
“I know who Sara is,” Cannard added, looking agreeable to Hannah’s suggestion. “If she’s in trouble, I’d like to help.”
I bet you would, Chase thought with a spurt of jealousy. “Let’s go,” he said.
With Captain Lewis taking puzzled note of their retreat, the threesome raced for Hannah’s red Mustang, parked at the country club entrance.
Chapter Sixteen
Sara carried the gardenia plant under one arm, as she and Linda Mae walked the perimeter of the yard, looking for just the right combination of sun and shade. It had been Chase’s suggestion that their neighbor be invited over while he volunteered his services with the BAPD.
His concern for her and Kendal was touching, Sara had thought. But considering that he was leaving the next day, she didn’t see what difference it made.
“It’s so nice that you like to garden,” Linda Mae commented. “So did Chase’s mother.”
Sara eyed the graveyard beneath the pecan tree. “Why don’t we put the bush by Marileigh’s grave?” she suggested.
“That’s a lovely idea!”
Sara set the pot between Marileigh’s and Blessing’s headstones. Filtered by the leaves of the mammoth tree, the sun’s rays would be constant, but never too harsh.
“Perfect,” exclaimed the older woman.
Time to Run Page 18
