Stephen Coonts
Under Siege
DEDICATION
TO MY PARENTS,
GILBERT AND VIOLET COONTS
EPIGRAPH
Government is not eloquence. It is not reason. It is a force. Like fire, a dangerous servant and a fearful master.
Of all the tasks of government, the most basic is to protect its citizens from violence.
CHAPTER ONE
Walter P. Harrington was eastbound on the inner loop of the beltway around Washington, D.C., this December evening, in the leftmost lane. He kept the speedometer needle rock-steady at fifty-five miles per hour. Traffic swirled past him on his right.
Harrington ignored the glares and occasional honks and upthrust fingers from drivers darting into the middle lanes to get around and kept his eyes firmly on the road ahead, though he did occasionally glance at the speedometer to ensure the needle was on the double nickel. It usually was. Maintaining exactly fifty-five was a point of pride with him. He often thought that if the speedometer ever broke he could nail fifty-five anyway. He had had plenty of practice.
He also ignored the car that hung three feet behind his rear bumper flashing its lights repeatedly from low to high beam and back again. His rearview mirror had been carefully adjusted to make such shenanigans futile.
Walter P. Harrington had absolutely no intention of moving into the middle or right-hand lane. He always drove in the left-hand lane. Walter P. Harrington was obeying the law. They weren’t.
The car behind him darted past him on the right, the driver shaking a fist out his window. Harrington didn’t even glance at him. Nor did he pay any attention to the next car that eased up behind him, a white four-door Chevrolet Caprice.
In the Chevy were two men wearing surgical gloves. The driver, Vincent Pioche, muttered to his passenger, “It’s him, all right. That’s his car. A maroon Chrysler. License number’s right and everything.”
The passenger, Tony Anselmo, swiveled his head carefully, scanning the traffic. “No cops in sight.”
“What’cha think?”
“Well, we could just pass him and be waiting for him when he gets home.”
“Neighbors, kids,” Vinnie Pioche said disgustedly.
Both men sat silently staring at the back of Walter P. Harrington’s balding head. “Little jerk driving fifty-five in the left lane,” Tony said.
“Yeah, he’s an asshole, all right. The problem is, he may swerve right and nail us before we can get by.”
“He won’t,” Tony Anselmo said thoughtfully. “He’ll go out like a light. Won’t even twitch.”
“In his neighborhood, there may be a cop two blocks away and we won’t know. Or some broad looking out the window ready to call nine-one-one. A kid screwing his girl under a tree. I hate the fucking suburbs.”
They followed Walter P. Harrington for a mile, weighing the risks.
“I dunno, Vinnie.”
“In a right-hand curve, with him turning right, when he goes out the car will tend to straighten and go into the concrete median. I’ll floor this heap and we’ll be by before he smacks it and rebounds.”
“If he comes right he’ll clip us,” Tony objected.
“Not if you do it right. Stick it in his ear.” When Tony didn’t move, Vinnie glanced at him. That moved him.
Tony Anselmo crawled across the passenger seat back and flopped onto the rear seat. He paused to catch his breath. He was getting too old for this shit and he knew it.
Under a blanket on the floor were two weapons, a twelve-gauge sawed-off pump shotgun and a Remington Model Four Auto Rifle in .30–06 caliber. Both weapons were loaded. After he rolled down the left rear window, Tony Anselmo picked up the rifle and cradled it in his arms. He flicked the crossbolt safety off. The shotgun would be easier, but the buckshot pellets might be deflected by the window glass. It would take two or three shots to be sure, and they didn’t have that kind of time.
“Okay,” he told Vinnie. “Get in the next lane, pull up beside his rear bumper, and sit there until you see a right curve coming. Try to let some space open up in front of you.”
“Got it.” Vinnie used his blinker to ease into a space in the traffic on his right. That stream was flowing along at sixty-five to seventy miles per hour but he was still doing fifty-five, so a space quickly opened as the car in front pulled away.
Tony scanned the traffic for police cars. He saw none, nor did he see any cars that might be unmarked cruisers. Harrington was plainly visible, his head about twenty to twenty-five feet away, his hands in the ten-and-two position on his steering wheel. He was concentrating on the road ahead, looking neither left nor right.
“Looks good. Any time.”
“Curve coming up. Fifteen seconds. Get ready.”
Anselmo scooted to the right side of the car, then leaned left, resting the barrel of the rifle on the ledge of the open window. “I’m ready.”
“Five seconds.”
Anselmo concentrated on the open sights of the rifle. This was going to be a shot at a bouncing, moving target smaller than a basketball at a range of about a dozen feet, from a bouncing, moving platform. Not a difficult shot, but tricky. An easy shot to miss and wonder why.
“Here we go.” Anselmo felt the engine rev. Out of the corner of his eye he saw they were gaining on Harrington’s Chrysler.
Then they were there, right alongside, passing with a three or four mile per hour edge, Harrington’s head plainly visible. Tony could feel the centrifugal force pushing him toward Harrington’s car, feel the Chevy heel slightly.
Tony swung the rifle gently, adjusting for the jolts of the car. His finger tightened on the trigger.
Harrington’s head exploded as the rifle bellowed.
Vinnie floored the accelerator and the Chevy began to pull away. As expected, with a dead hand at the wheel, Harrington’s car eased left, toward the concrete median barricade.
“Get by, get by,” Tony shouted.
In the car immediately behind Pioche, the horrified passenger screamed at her horrified husband behind the wheel. He swerved right as far as he could and still stay in his lane. It wasn’t enough. The rear end of Harrington’s decelerating Chrysler swung ponderously into the traffic lane as the front ground spectacularly on the concrete barrier. The left rear fender of the maroon Chrysler kissed the left front corner of the swerving vehicle, a gentle impact that merely helped the Chrysler complete its 180-degree spin.
The wife screamed and the husband fought the wheel as their car swept past the Chrysler, which, with its entire right side in contact with the barrier, rapidly ground to a smoking halt as pieces of metal showered the interstate.
In the backseat the two teenagers cursed and looked back at the receding Chrysler. The wife’s screams died to sobs. “Did you see that man shooting, Jerry? Jerry? My God!”
Behind the wheel of his car Jerry McManus of Owosso, Michigan, strove manfully to keep the vehicle going down the highway in a straight line as he began to feel the full effects of a massive adrenal shock. In front of him the white sedan that contained the gunman accelerated and pulled away. A moment later another vehicle, a van, swung left into the widening gap and McManus lost sight of the gunman.
Jerry McManus had just been driving down the road on the way back to the motel, comfortably following these two cars at fifty-five miles per hour while all the locals played NASCAR in the right lanes and the kids in the backseat hassled each other and his wife gabbled on about her rich great-aunt who lived in Arlington or someplace.