As he drew nearer to the Friendship Heights metro station, he tried to spot undercover law enforcement agents lurking near the two lanes of nose-to-tail traffic that was now barely moving, or on the crowded sidewalks. But a cop like him didn’t have the skills or experience to clock such agents.
Even though he was wearing shades to protect his eyes from the glaring sunlight, he had to squint as he glanced at the rooftops. He couldn’t see a police sniper anywhere, but guessed the whole point was that they weren’t to be spotted.
Police sniper.
It was a sad reflection of the times that it could be considered policing to shoot a man in the head from five hundred yards away, rather than walking up to him and talking him out of doing something bad.
He supposed his style of policing was on the wane. Soon all cops would be kitted out like Judge Dredd; enacting justice with the dispassionate and unwavering logic of a robot.
He nodded and smiled at passersby, walked past the metro and parked vehicles — empty sedans and a van with a woman behind the wheel — and continued walking through the crowd toward three men who looked like young politicians or investment bankers.
It surprised him that he felt unwanted and invisible, on a patch that belonged to him.
That was a sad thought.
He checked his watch.
Ten fifteen A.M.
The men who looked like politicians passed him and kept walking toward the station.
He sighed again, because it was time to go off duty and leave this beat to visiting tourists, Republicans and Democrats who were out grabbing a cappuccino, and cops who didn’t know these streets.
They were the thoughts of an honest beat cop who’d devoted his life to ensuring that a square mile of land was kept safe.
Not that Will Cochrane would truly know how that felt.
He was just playing the part.
Will spun around, pulled out his sidearm, shot the Irish assassin in the leg, turned back, and ran south while shouting, “Three armed men! Get to cover! Run!”
Chaos erupted.
“Shot fired! Shot fired!” Duggan dropped to a crouch, ripped open the Velcro cover on his packsack, and withdrew his Heckler & Koch MP5 submachine gun. He shouted into his throat mic, “All units. Metro station. Go! Go!”
Every cop, Bureau agent, SWAT operative, and HRT agent had been given the green light to race to the place where gunfire had sounded.
“Get down! Down!” Duggan was dodging screaming pedestrians as he sprinted while holding his gun at eye level. His HRT colleagues were close by, moving in exactly the same way. “Bravo One. What do you see?”
Bravo One. The SWAT sniper.
Bravo One responded. “One man down. Civilian clothes. Pistol in his hand. Two guys with him, also armed.”
“Are they FBI?”
“How the hell would I know?”
Marsha dashed out of her vehicle, her handgun drawn. She looked up the street. Thirty yards away, with their backs to her, were the three men the SWAT sniper had referenced. One was lying injured, the other two were by his side with weapons drawn.
Her heart pumped rapidly and she said into her mic, “I can’t see their faces! If anyone’s hearing this and is injured, for God’s sake say so now because otherwise you’re likely to have your head taken off by Bravo One!”
What had just happened? She looked in the other direction. Uniformed cops were now on the avenue, rushing toward civilians to get them to cover, barking orders; everywhere was movement, noise; people were abandoning their cars and running; police sirens were sounding from every direction.
One of the uniform cops was running away from the scene, shouting at people to get to cover, his priority to get people to safety, knowing that the area around the metro was a kill zone.
Maybe he was the beat cop who’d passed her transit vehicle moments ago.
A man who was now running.
Away from the scene.
Shit!
“Bravo One. Uniform cop! Running south. I think that’s Cochrane!”
She sprinted after him.
“This is Bravo One. Which cop? Every cop I can see is running in different directions.”
Marsha cursed. The cop was at least two hundred yards away, appearing and disappearing in the writhing mass of hysterical bodies that were between him and her. She ran faster, desperate not to lose sight of him.
Scott was calm as he placed a hand on Shackleton’s shoulder and said, “Head shots to all the fuckers.”
“Damn right.” Lying on his uninjured leg, Shackleton pointed his handgun at the approaching HRT operatives while ignoring the screaming civilians all around the trio of assassins.
Scott winked at Oates. “Time to go loud. Be a good chap and take out the sniper for me.”
Both secreted their handguns and pulled out from under their overcoats SCAR-H 7.62 mm battle rifles. Not only could the devastatingly powerful weapons be fired on automatic, just one round could penetrate body armor and kill a man.
Scott stepped forward, his gun held high, and squeezed the trigger. The sustained volley tore through four HRT operatives, three FBI agents, and six civilians.
Oates got to his knee, took aim, and sent shorter, controlled bursts at the sniper nest on top of the Microsoft building. He smiled because the sniper and spotter were now dead. He stood up and opened fire at everything in front of him.
Marsha was near breathless as she shouted, “SWAT helos: I need you over Wisconsin now! In pursuit of a cop. Possible target. He’s heading south, two hundred yards ahead of me. Now, now, now!”
She crashed into a civilian, fell, rolled, got to her feet, and continued running. “Bravo One. Update!”
Silence in her earpiece.
“Update!”
It was Duggan who answered. “Bravo One’s down! We’re in a firefight with three unknown hostiles!”
Duggan dived behind a car as more bullets came his way and punched through the vehicle and the wall behind him. He knew the gunfire sound — SCAR weapons, upgraded to larger rounds; ones that don’t injure a soldier and require two of his mates to carry him off, meaning three combatants have been taken out of the battlefield equation. The bullets were killers, the same ones used by the British SAS. Lessons learned from fighting fanatics in Afghanistan who don’t give a shit about casualty evacuations of their injured comrades.
He grimaced as shards of metal raced close to his face, crouched, and spun out of cover.
A handgun bullet walloped him in the chest with the impact of a sledgehammer being swung full strength.
But the bullet was no match for the Kevlar under his jacket.
Duggan held firmly in position as he aimed his gun and sent two bursts of bullets into Shackleton’s head.
He moved his gun’s sight toward the remaining two assassins, but they were largely obscured by men, women, and kids running around like headless chickens, or crouching or standing like statues, or draped over stationary cars while waiting to die. An FBI agent and uniform cop ran from his right flank toward the gunmen. The cop flipped backward as bullets smashed into his throat and face; the agent yelped and hit the ground dead as SCAR rounds turned his internal organs into mush.
It was no good. Duggan decided he had to get much closer to the assassins.
The noise around Marsha was deafening as she ran, holding her gun while shouting, “FBI! FBI!” in case any of the numerous cops or hundreds of civilians thought she was one of the hostiles. She could still see the policeman she was pursuing as she dodged through the crowd, flapping one arm to tell people to get down. But he was faster than her, and she was losing ground. “The policeman who’s running away from me! Stop him!” No one heard her. No one cared, because all that mattered to them was that farther up the street it sounded like a regiment of Russian airborne troops was advancing on Capitol Hill.