“Thanks, Jack,” Dan laughed.
“Think nothin’ of it, son. Glad to help. Oh, and Dan, one more thing.”
“Yeah?”
“Watch yourself. Don’t underestimate those fanatics in the Shasta Brigade. They won’t look kindly upon those who get in their way.”
“Believe me, I know it. And the sheriff’s telling me the same thing. On his advice, I’ve started carrying a pistol in my vehicle. You’ve carried one as long as I can remember.”
Jack nodded. “He’s probably right. Now, c’mon back to the house and let’s rustle up some dinner.”
Just after 10 p.m., Dan drove past the rural area adjacent to Yolo County Airport on his way home after leaving Jack’s house. When he saw a van stopped crosswise in the center passing lane of the highway, blocking passageway in both directions, Dan slowed his Blazer. The van’s flasher lights were activated, and it looked like a minor accident had occurred.
Approaching carefully, he stopped about ten yards short of the vehicle, just off the southern end of the single airport runway. About fifty yards away, just inside the fence line, a small Cessna was on the edge of the main runway, with two men silhouetted in the cockpit, the engine idling. He couldn’t see the driver or passengers from the van, but the vehicle lights were still on, and he could see slight exhaust fumes from the tailpipe, as if the vehicle engine was also running. Dan’s instincts went on full alert, and he reached into the glove box to retrieve his Beretta and an extra clip. The intuitive response action saved his life.
Two men came out of the ditch to the far side of the van, each wielding pistols and approaching Dan’s car from both angles. Each man wore a balaclava that covered his face. Instinctively, Dan floored his Blazer, ramming the back of the van, pushing it toward the edge of the road, but still not leaving enough room for Dan to drive around it without dropping into the three-foot-deep ditches.
Several shots rang out, and the rear window of Dan’s Blazer collapsed in a shower of glass shards. Dan slid across to the passenger seat, exiting his vehicle and taking cover beside the right front fender between the Blazer and the van. The two attackers closed to the back of Dan’s car, one of them shouting a warning.
“Come out with your hands high, and we won’t shoot. We don’t want to hurt you.”
Dan remained silent.
One of the men crept around the front end of Dan’s car, exposing his upper body and pointing his weapon at Dan. “I said stand up and put your hands on your head.”
From a kneeling position behind his vehicle, Dan fired one round, which struck the man in the center of his chest. He dropped his weapon, remained upright for several seconds, and then fell to the pavement. The second man fired several shots, which struck the Blazer, and then he jumped over the ditch, running toward the airport runway, firing back toward Dan as he ran.
Dan stood behind his vehicle and took aim, but decided to hold fire as the man ran away. Suddenly, the door on the Cessna opened up, and an automatic weapon appeared, a volley of shots striking the Blazer and the van. Dan ducked down again behind his vehicle. The shots ceased, and Dan carefully looked over the hood of the car. The fleeing man had climbed the fence and nearly reached the airplane when a quick burst from the automatic weapon dropped him instantly. He fell on the pavement, close to the end of the main runway.
Dan remained behind his car as the Cessna revved up its engine, quickly pulled onto the runway, and began the takeoff run, lifting into the air and banking west into the darkened sky. It had been too dark to observe the tail number of the aircraft, but within seconds everything was quiet. Dan checked the pulse of the man he had shot and took a quick look inside the van. The driver was dead, and the van was empty. It appeared that only the two men, plus those in the aircraft, had been present. He stepped back toward the driver’s side of his car and retrieved his cell phone, dialed 911, and reported the shooting, calling for an ambulance.
In less than fifteen minutes, Sheriff Tony Sanchez arrived, followed by three of his deputies, and the Fire Department ambulance that had already arrived on the scene. Just over an hour later, Special Agents Samuels and Bentley arrived at the Yolo County Sheriff’s office to join in the questioning. The man who attacked Dan was dead, the other critically wounded. Absent the balaclava, the wounded attacker, who had been shot by his own people, was immediately identified as Kenny Bailey, Dan’s brother-in-law. He had been transported to Woodland Memorial, but was in critical condition and unable to speak.
At the end of three days in a coma, Kenny Bailey died in the hospital. Investigators determined that both the van and the aircraft had been stolen. The Cessna was located at a small, rural airport near Santa Rosa, cleaned of all fingerprints and identifying evidence. In a subsequent interview with both the FBI and Sheriff Sanchez, Dan was advised that the attack gave all the appearances of an attempted kidnapping, as the van contained a body bag and a vial of anesthesia, plus a syringe. Agent Albert Samuels told Dan he’d had a lucky escape, while Sheriff Sanchez told him that he had done well, that his quick reaction had clearly saved his life.
All Dan knew for certain was that he had shot and killed a man, that his brother-in-law was involved in the attack, and that he, too, was now dead.
Chapter 9
CIA Headquarters
Langley, Virginia
Nearly three thousand miles east, Marine Corps Colonel Pug Connor picked up his notepad and headed down the hall toward an impromptu staff briefing called by the director of Central Intelligence.
Five years earlier, U.S. President William Eastman had appointed a former federal judge, Clarence Wentworth, as director of Central Intelligence, known internally as the DCI. The current rumor in the agency was that with his health failing, the judge had finally decided to hang it up. The office pool favored an outside appointee, but most of the old-time management level staff favored Wentworth’s DDO, Grant Sully, to replace the director. Organizationally, the CIA had a director, a deputy director of intelligence (DDI), a position held by retired Air Force Lieutenant General William Austin, and deputy director of operations (DDO), the post held by Sully, a career CIA employee. Sully’s impressive field record, commencing immediately after his hire in the late seventies, included service in the East German and Russian Cold War campaigns, where he had been trained by the old-boy network of former OSS agents, some of whom had been Jedburghs through the close of WWII. Stories abounded regarding Sully’s early “wet work” operations, but only a few operatives from those ruthless hit teams remained to confirm the stories. In light of current political expediencies, those who could confirm preferred to keep their prior involvement quiet.
Colonel Connor’s immediate boss was Bill Austin, the deputy director of intelligence. Austin’s staff was large and mostly located within the complex in Langley. There, they analyzed information gathered from all sectors of the world, providing “best-guess” scenarios for any given international situation. Austin often equated his work to that of the world’s economists, who rarely agreed on monetary policy and who, in retrospect, were generally way off-base.
Sully and Austin, although nearly the same age, had distinctly different management styles. About two-thirds of the headquarters staff seemed to prefer Austin. But many still admired Sully, who commanded a great deal of respect, especially among the old time CIA managers, as someone who had gone from a slick-haired Yale preppie to DDO in an impressive, action-packed thirty-two years.