At Homeland the two staffers with Director Hall watched as the green 95 Ford Explorer left the cover of the tree canopy, crossed the field and regained speed on the road. Lopez was busy with a pressing matter of a downed helicopter and at least one injury.
Chapter Twenty
A Jeep approached the downed helicopter, bouncing over the clods of earth from the recently plowed field. The driver, a teenage farmhand, pulled up near the men standing alongside the aircraft. He could see one man with a bloody arm being attended to. When he noticed the men were armed he had second thoughts about being here.
“Are you folks all right?” the farmhand nervously inquired.
A tall athletic-looking man approached him and reached for something in his jacket pocket. The farmhand swallowed and thought about how far he could get if he put his foot down. In this plowed field, it wouldn’t be far!
“Homeland Security, we could do with your help.”
Lance McAllister felt a surge of relief. Identification flashed before him.
“Yeah, sure, um, what would you like me to do? I can go get help or something?”
“What’s your name?” asked Matt Lilburn.
“Lance. Lance McAllister, sir.”
“OK, Lance, here’s how you can help…”
The farmhand gave an awkward wave as four Homeland Security agents left in his boss’s Jeep driving across the field without him. He sat down on the earth next to his bandaged patient propped up against the helicopter. He looked at the pilot curiously. Never seen a man with a gunshot wound — well, not in real life.
“Does it hurt, mister?”
“Only when I laugh, Lance. You know any jokes?”
“Yeah but you just said…”
“Just kidding. Let’s hear one. We have a bit of time to fill.”
“Well, all right then, let me think.” Lance McAllister tipped his black cowboy hat back on his head and recited what he remembered of the first, and the crudest, of his repertoire. Eskimo Nell. “From over the hill in a sawn off creek, came a sawn off…”
The driver stopped the Jeep as he reached the gravel roadside, all the men grateful they’d finished driving over the backbreaking plowed field. In the front passenger seat, Lilburn had his mobile phone to his ear.
“We’ll have another chopper and a pilot with the downed machine ASAP. The terrorist cell is continuing to head in an easterly direction and the Reaper has them in its sights. We have local units implementing a road block ten miles from you.”
Lilburn made notes as Director Hall spoke. When the conversation was finished he applied the grid reference given for the road block to his map. At their fastest speed the best they could hope for was to get there as local enforcement were mopping up. If the objective of taking the cell into custody was met cleanly and efficiently then Lilburn had no problem not taking credit for the capture. The problem was, when the hackles rose on the back of his neck, as they did just before the pilot was shot, then the stakes were higher. Lilburn suspected one of the three terrorists was playing on a totally different level — a very dangerous level.
Lilburn felt for the Sig Sauer on his hip. The bulk and weight felt good.
The Jeep was driven by a man who enjoyed the thrill of drifting an automobile around the dusty dirt road corners, one who worked the manual gears with dexterity, getting the best performance. Lilburn’s job, to read the map and choose the right roads, wasn’t easy — especially when he was also having to hang on. Five miles ahead two patrol cars had set up a roadblock at the end of a long straight.
In the distance the officers could see a cloud of dust approaching. They waited, standing behind and in front of their cars, pistols and shotguns at the ready. Unseen, the Reaper drone circled overhead.
Akins Bomani drove on. While his two young Takfir apprentices in the rear seats gazed out the windows daydreaming, Bomani never allowed himself such luxury. While his eyes were on the road his mind was on the mission. For him strategy and the continual rethinking of that strategy was everything. The drone didn’t worry him unduly — it was no more than a pesky hindrance, something he had to live with, accommodate and ultimately deceive. He was on American soil carrying a virus, so a bomb strike was unlikely. They can watch, he thought to himself, watch and learn.
As Bomani turned into the long straight, sunlight glinted off something in the distance. Reaching into the glove compartment, he pulled out a pair of small binoculars and held them out behind him. “Quickly, one of you tell me what is up ahead.”
Bashir responded and hastily focused in on the road. “A roadblock, two police cars.” Bomani slowed down, just enough to keep ahead of the dust cloud. He checked his phone, there was no text, no missed call; someone had let him down. He would deal with it later. Ordering the two young men to drop one of their rear seats and hang on to whatever they could, he increased speed.
At three hundred yards the four state-troopers started getting nervous; the green-colored four-wheel drive was still speeding towards them. The two troopers in front of their cars with handguns started to look for escape routes, just in case. The other two with shotguns leaning over their car bonnets fumbled nervously while keeping aim; one turned his head to the side and spat before rolling the chewing tobacco in his mouth.
At two hundred yards the troopers on the ground had real concerns; the men leaning on the bonnets stood up and took a few steps backwards. The patrol leader’s radio squawked; he didn’t dare take his eyes off the oncoming vehicle to respond.
At one hundred yards most standard police issue handguns are at their maximum effective range. Much less for shotguns, even loaded with buckshot. Bomani locked the brakes and put the Ford into a spin at just shy of one hundred and fifty yards.
The state troopers watched as the oncoming Ford jammed on its brakes. They were, to a man, thankful they hadn’t had to deal with the onslaught of a vehicle ramming them at high speed and the chaos that would have brought. Now what?
The cloud of dust had caught up and engulfed the hurtling Ford and carried on through, totally immersing it from view. The troopers looked up from the barrels of their weapons; there was calmness over the rolling hills, the odd bird called out.
One of the troopers out front of his vehicle lowered his gun and looked over to his comrade, still in a shooting stance, legs apart, two hands on his pistol. “What the fuck?” He turned back to the dust bomb which now slowly dissipated. An image was starting to slowly appear, dust particle by dust particle. The officers saw the rear of the green Ford Territory facing them with its rear window opened upwards. At one hundred and fifty yards, what was less apparent was the barrel of a scoped .308 rifle.
Bomani had all four men in his view. He chose the men handiest to cover and slightly further away. The two standing officers heard the crack of the first bullet speeding past them. By the second crack they had assessed the situation as critical and taken evasive action, but only two of the four remained alive. The trooper out front, who made a beeline for the vehicles behind him, took the right course of action. His colleague, however, who chose to dive to the side of the road, lay still on the ground. The four — to nine-power variable rifle scope proved his undoing as the shooter twisted the power ring of his scope up to maximum.
The patrol commander hiding behind his vehicle panted, his chest heaving, his heart palpitating as he looked at what was left of his colleagues’ heads. He was suddenly, horribly, alone. He reached for his radio transceiver and pressed the speak-to-talk button. A bullet thudded into the patrol car; he had to press the button again. A second bullet ripped through the car’s outer skeleton. By the time the trooper had reached base on his radio a third bullet ripped through the metal skin of the vehicle and pushed its way through to its objective — the petrol tank.