“Huh?”
“Campus politics get ugly. You’re in a very competitive business. You’re already attracting jealousy. Self-appointed enemies, at your level, and up.”
Jeffrey felt a shiver along his spine. This was something he hadn’t even thought about.
“Not everybody loves a winner, son. That bauble around your neck could turn into a lightning rod for resentment by the people who come in second or third.”
“Are you saying this for a reason, Dad?”
“Obviously you need better antennae. Didn’t you see those sidelong glances back at the hotel?”
“Frankly, no.”
“I’ll do what I can from where I sit,” Michael Fuller said. “I know what you aren’t good at, son.”
“That’s a rather odd way to offer a relative help.”
“You’ll get pigeonholed behind your back, if you aren’t careful. As a war fighter who’s reached his peak of competence, topped out at the single-unit operations level… Washington isn’t a family business, Jeffrey. But every connection helps. You’re my kin, my own flesh, even if we didn’t talk for so long… Maybe especially because we didn’t talk. I’d hate to lose you now, sunk in the ocean. But I’d hate almost as much to see you break your heart dead-ended on the beach, after going out there again and then coming home safe.”
Jeffrey hesitated. There’d been deep worry, poorly disguised, in his father’s tone of voice. “Dad, do you know something you’re not supposed to know?”
Michael Fuller shook his head. “Remember, I’ve got a security clearance too, and ‘up there’ contacts in the Pentagon. My work at homefront conservation, fuel allocations and lubricants and all that, depends a lot on knowing supply and demand, the total picture. I therefore cannot do my job without access to the needs and plans of the fleet. The very near-term plans.” He gave Jeffrey a meaningful look.
“I really can’t comment, Dad.”
“Then don’t. Just remember, son, for later, God willing, the games they play in this town, they play very rough.”
Jeffrey’s procession halted at a red light. Cross-traffic moved, using the opposing green. One big truck rolled into the middle of the intersection. It reminded Jeffrey of a traveling carnival ride, painted in moving, gaudy red and yellow triangles. Then he realized it was a cement mixer. Jeffrey’s traffic light turned green, but the cement mixer still sat there.
Spill-back. Washington rush-hour traffic jams are infamous. Still, you’d think that with carpooling, and gas rationing, in a residential neighborhood…
Jeffrey glanced behind him. He saw the town car with Wilson and Ilse, and the other police car, and craned his neck to see behind him more. Past the rear of their little motorcade, in the far intersection, was a fire engine — a long and heavy ladder truck. No sirens, but its flashers rotated as if it was returning from a run.
In front of Jeffrey’s car, the cement mixer hadn’t moved. The big hopper holding the wet cement continued to revolve. The red and yellow of the hopper, the bright red of the fire truck, and the flashing lights of the fire truck and the police cars gave the scene a strangely festive look. Jeffrey turned and watched as six firemen dismounted and opened equipment bays in the side of their truck.
Jeffrey’s heart leaped into his throat as his bodyguard shouted into a walkie-talkie. The firemen now held assault rifles and rocket launchers. Three more armed men left the cement mixer’s cab. They took up firing positions under the massive vehicle. Things hit the front of Jeffrey’s car with terrible force. Jeffrey and his father flinched and ducked.
Despite himself, Jeffrey looked up. The glass was pockmarked but the bullets hadn’t penetrated the armored windshield — yet. Now Jeffrey recognized the unmistakable rapid-fire boom-boom-boom of AK-47s. He saw glass in the police cars shatter, the cars jumping and sagging as their tires were ripped to shreds. The policemen tried to shoot back, using their riot shotguns and pistols. The noise of the firefight grew. It was a very uneven contest. Bullet-riddled men in blue collapsed to the asphalt, writhing in expanding pools of blood.
CHAPTER 5
“Sit tight,” Jeffrey’s driver shouted. “We’re armored all around!” A voice crackled over the bodyguard’s walkie-talkie, something unintelligible to Jeffrey.
“Christ,” Jeffrey’s father said as he stared back at the fire engine. “He’s aiming a rocket launcher.”
Jeffrey saw a fireman crouch on the ladder truck. He held a long tube over one shoulder. At the front of the tube was the bulge of an ugly warhead. It looked like an RPG-7, Russian made — aged, like the attackers’ rifles, but flooding the world’s arms markets and impossible to trace.
There was a flash and a blast of smoke and dust. The warhead tore at Jeffrey’s car, skimming over the intervening vehicles.
Jeffrey heard a ripping sound overhead. The incoming rocket missed the top of his car by an inch and kept going. As Jeffrey watched, it hit the cement mixer in the side.
There was a deafening concussion and a flash of searing flame. Shrapnel flew, pelting other vehicles, breaking windows in nearby buildings, chipping bricks on their facades.
The hopper of the cement mixer continued to revolve. There was a four-inch hole in its side, and wet gray concrete poured from the hole as the hopper turned around and around.
Bullets continued to crack through the air. Jeffrey’s car jumped with every impact. He saw the fire truck taking hits, and silvery dents appeared in the red of its sheet-steel side. Pedestrians on the sidewalk cowered, pinned down; some were trying to use their phones, but hysterical fumbling and frustrated rage seemed to show that the cell phones were jammed. Both sides of the street were littered with now-abandoned civilian cars.
One of the attackers climbed higher on the fire truck with another rocket launcher, trying to get a better shot at Jeffrey’s vehicle.
Jeffrey’s bodyguard saw it too. He hefted his Uzi and did a calculation. Enemy bullets were grazing the auto from both front and behind — to crack the door invited instant death.
Just one of those rocket-propelled shaped-charge warheads will turn this car into an inferno.
A wounded cop emptied his revolver at the enemy with the rocket launcher. The launcher fired at the same time the man who held it fell straight back off the truck. The warhead came in at an angle, barely missing the left side of Jeffrey’s car.
The warhead detonated against the pavement. The blast lifted Jeffrey’s town car violently. It bounced down on its reinforced suspension. Jeffrey’s arms and legs felt numb from the punishment. His ears ached from the noise. The side windows of his car on the left were pitted by sharp steel fragments, and the glass was partly obscured by soot. Other autos — private cars and taxis — were starting to burn.
“We can’t take any more of this,” Jeffrey’s father said.
Again the bodyguard’s walkie-talkie crackled.
“Sit tight,” the driver yelled. “Help is coming!”
Jeffrey watched in horror as a spray of bullets ricocheted off Ilse’s and Wilson’s car. He saw the headlights shatter, chrome molding twist and break, sheet metal tear, and fiberglass fracture. The whole vehicle shivered on its springs.
The sound of firing suddenly intensified.
The three men under the cement mixer turned and aimed the other way, away from Jeffrey. The ground around them was slippery as concrete continued to pour from the hopper — it still rotated mindlessly, coated more and more by the clinging goo.
Those three attackers opened fire again, shooting at something or someone on the far side of the cement mixer, where Jeffrey couldn’t see. There was another hard concussion. The three attackers disintegrated. Fresh concrete quickly covered the gore. The hopper finally stopped; the cement mixer’s powerful diesel engine was burning now, and soon the entire front of the truck was engulfed in roaring red flames. The flames reached threateningly for the fuel tank down behind the cab; the tank was leaking from shrapnel punctures. Jeffrey felt the radiant heat through the windows of his car.