John Clark, Adara Sherman, and Barry “Midas” Jankowski climbed out of Clark’s black Range Rover as it rolled to a stop at an employee entrance to Tysons Corner Center, a large shopping mall just twenty minutes from the shoot-out in Alexandria. Clark left the driver’s-side door open and a bearded man in his forties climbed behind the wheel without saying a word, and then he drove the SUV out of the parking lot and back onto the interstate.
The man was Dave Fleming, one of the Campus security officers. He would drive the Range Rover west, halfway across Virginia, to get it out of the area. He’d park the vehicle on some land owned by one of The Campus’s shell companies and then wait to be picked up by Pablo Gomez, another of the security staff. Together they’d return to the D.C. area tonight in Gomez’s silver ’69 Pontiac Firebird.
Clark, Adara, and Midas stepped into the side entrance of the mall and immediately turned into the Eddie Bauer store, just feet away. The adventure-wear location was managed by Dave Fleming’s twenty-five-year-old son, Pete. Pete was a former member of the U.S. Army 75th Ranger Regiment, who had returned to the D.C. area to work on his master’s at Georgetown with an eye toward future work with the Agency.
A quick call from Clark to Chavez, and then from Chavez to the young man running the clothing store, ensured that the manager was the only person in the store when three individuals walked in, changed into brand-new clothes, and walked out the back employee door, all within two or three minutes.
Only when the three had departed did Pete Fleming notice small blood droplets on the cheap tile floor of the stockroom.
Chavez was waiting behind the wheel of a Ford Explorer with tinted windows outside the exit to the Eddie Bauer stockroom. When he had all three loaded he drove a couple of miles to a safe house kept by The Campus on Turkey Run Road, just a few hundred yards from CIA headquarters in the unincorporated subdivision of Langley.
Jack Ryan, Jr., and Dom Caruso were already waiting at the safe house, armed with sub guns hanging from their shoulders and a hell of a lot of questions about what had just happened on the fifth day of training the team’s new recruits.
Adara came through the garage door holding a bloody compress on Midas’s arm, and she had time only to make an instant of intense eye contact with Dom before going into the kitchen and commandeering the table there to use as a treatment area for the ex — Delta officer.
While the others stood around the kitchen, Midas pulled off his shirt and dropped his pants, but only after the insistence from Adara and the gravelly seconding of Adara’s request by John Clark.
“Damn, brother,” Ding Chavez said when he saw Midas’s left hip and thigh. The area was bright purple in the center, fading to a dull gray, and the bruise was over a foot and a half in length. “How the hell did you just walk in here?”
Midas shrugged. “Nothing’s broken. It might ache a little tomorrow.”
Clark said, “You aren’t in the Unit anymore, son. You’re allowed to say ouch.”
Midas cracked a thin smile. “Well, then… ouch.”
Gerry Hendley marched through the front door of the safe house with Gavin Biery, followed by Dale Henson and Jason Gibson, two more security men from The Campus, who entered only after making sure the garage door was secure. The security officers took up positions that gave them a view out the front and back doors of the property, and they pulled short-barreled rifles chambered in the powerful 300 Blackout round from discreet deployment bags. They then slung their rifles over their shoulders and took up watch. Gerry was on the phone, but he found the group in the kitchen converged around Midas, who stood there by the table in his Lycra underwear.
“Hey, boss,” Jankowski said awkwardly.
Gerry lowered the phone for a moment while he surveyed Midas’s injury to his hip. “If I had to guess, I’d say that came from the driver’s side of a black Nissan Pathfinder.”
Midas’s eyes went wide for an instant, as did Adara’s, but almost instantly both recognized where Gerry had gotten his information.
Midas said, “Shit. Security camera?”
Gerry nodded. “Yep. Gavin had it pulled up in seconds.”
Biery said, “Nothing to worry about. The quality isn’t good enough to ID anyone from any of the angles. You guys are safe on that front. I’ve also got guys back at the office monitoring social media tags, different cloud services, and the like. If anybody puts video or stills of the event online, we’ll check them instantly to be ready to censor.”
Gavin looked at Midas, a man he’d met only once. “I’ve got to say, I’m impressed. I watched that impact about five times. You spun through the air for a second like a Marvel superhero.”
Midas looked down at his purple hip. “Thanks, but superheroes don’t slap face-first into the pavement after a second.”
Gerry stepped away, continuing his call, while the others watched Adara work on a long gash on Midas’s forearm. She then strapped a big bag of ice to his hip with an Ace bandage from her orange medic kit, transported from the office to her by Dom.
Gerry hung up the phone and walked over. “Do you need stitches, Barry?”
“No, sir. Seems Ms. Sherman has me squared away like the pro she is.”
Hendley and Clark both looked at Adara. They knew to trust her judgment on emergency medical matters. Adara wouldn’t sugarcoat things, nor would she make a bigger deal out of them than necessary.
But the blonde leaning over her patient shook her head. “He’ll be fine. But, like he said, tomorrow won’t be a good one for him. That hip is going to swell, even with the ice. He got lucky with the lacerations on his arm. He must have caught the rearview mirror or something on the SUV that hit him, but I was able to fold the skin back into place, and it will heal nicely. He has some road rash and bruising on his chest and knees, but nothing to worry about.”
Midas said, “I’ve survived six IEDs, I can survive getting knocked to the pavement by a dickhead in a Nissan.”
Clark asked, “What about you, Adara? You were right in the middle of all that.”
“I’m fine. Not a scratch.” She stole a quick look at Dom, who didn’t hide the relief he felt. She added, “I just wish I could have done something for Mr. Laird.”
Gerry Hendley said, “That tough son of a bitch survived the Tet Offensive in Vietnam in 1968 and he survived the embassy bombing in Beirut in 1983. But he didn’t survive a morning walk in Virginia in 2017.”
Adara said, “He went down fighting. He killed one of them.”
Gerry nodded. “Doesn’t surprise me at all.”
Now Gerry relayed what he learned on the phone. “D.C. police have three dead terrorists at the scene. Another possible body behind the wheel of the SUV that blew up. Two dead civilians, including Eddie Laird, and two dead D.C. transit officers. Eight other civilians injured, and a transit officer who took some shrapnel through the hand.”
“Christ Almighty,” muttered Adara.
Gerry looked at Gavin and Jack now. “Any chance Laird could be one of the intelligence professionals caught up in this big leak affecting so many the past few weeks?”
Jack hadn’t been there when it happened, but he felt like he had something worth saying. “I don’t think so.”
Chavez asked, “Why do you say that?”
“We think the leak is coming from SF-86 applications housed on a supposedly secure network at the Office of Personnel Management. The digital records only go back to 1984. If this guy was in the CIA in Nam, I’m going to assume he received his classified access a long time before ’84.”
Clark said, “There’s something you don’t know. Eddie’s daughter, Regina Laird, is also with the CIA. She was Naval Intelligence but joined the Agency five years back. Gina’s SF-86 will have her dad’s employer listed.”