One officer had a pistol. When the automatic bursts stopped — he thought the intruders had expended all the shells in their magazines and were changing them — he opened fire with the pistol at the spots in the darkness where the muzzle blasts seemed to have been coming from. He hit two of the gunmen, but the third one successfully reloaded and killed him with a burst of six slugs.
This man emptied his rifle and reached for another grenade. Just as he got the pin out, a private ran up to the door behind him and gave him a point-blank burst from his M-16. The grenade fell, unseen by the private, who was killed in the explosion that followed a few seconds later. From the first grenade blast to the last, thirty seconds had passed.
Outside in the parking lot the battle lasted longer. Between the machine gun and bursts from M-16s on full automatic, the number of men who were down was staggering.
Still the soldiers who were unwounded or not wounded too severely fought back. In the confusion some of the Americans shot each other.
The shooting was still going on a minute later when someone began roaring, “Cease fire, cease fire.” Then it stopped.
The sergeants were turning the bodies of the terrorists over and searching their pockets by the time that Jake Grafton got outside with his rifle. He had been in the head.
“They all look Latin, sir,” someone said to Jake.
“Here’s one still alive.” The man the soldier was referring to was babbling in Spanish. He had a hole in the center of his stomach that was pumping blood. He was staring at the wound and repeating the rosary in Spanish.
“Colombia, sí?”
The wounded man continued his prayer. The soldier grabbed his shirt, half lifted him, and shook him violently. “Colombia, sí?”
“Sí, sí, sí…”
“I hope you die slow, motherfuck!” The soldier dropped the man to the pavement.
“How many did we lose?” Jake asked the major beside him as he stared about at the carnage.
“We’re counting. Sweet Jesus, I think a lot of our guys shot each other. Everybody was shooting at everybody.” The major’s face wore an indescribable look of sadness. “God have mercy.”
Jake Grafton felt a terrible lethargy. He wanted to just turn off his brain.
“General Greer’s dead, sir.”
Jake nodded slowly. Somehow he wasn’t surprised. Toad, Rita, where were they?
He found them inside administering first aid to wounded men. Rita was working on a man with a sucking chest wound and Toad was trying to get the bleeding stopped on a man with a bullet through the thigh.
Jake left them and went to find a radio that still worked.
The radio was in the command post, its metal cover scarred by shrapnel. All over the room the medics and volunteers worked feverishly in the light of battery-powered lanterns and flashlights to save the living. The dead lay unattended in their own blood and gore. Jake Grafton fought the vomit back and held the flashlight as the technician tuned the radio to the proper frequency and made the call.
Minutes passed. The saliva in Jake’s mouth kept flowing and he kept swallowing. His eyes remained firmly on the radio.
After an eternity the chairman’s voice came over the speaker. Jake picked up his mike.
“Captain Grafton, sir. The terrorists found us. They just hit the armory about six or seven minutes ago. We think about eighteen or twenty of them. We haven’t got a good count yet, but we think we’ve got about fifty U.S. dead and a hundred wounded.”
Silence. What was there to say? When the words came it was a question: “Who’s the senior army officer over there still on his feet?”
“Colonel Jonat, I think, sir. He’s checking the wounded in the parking lot. General Greer and the two brigadiers that were here are dead.”
“I’ll be over there by helicopter as soon as I can. Right now the Vice-President wants to see me over at the White House. Tell the colonel to hold the fort.”
“Yes, sir.”
Jake went outside to find Colonel Jonat and get some air. The emergency generators continued to hum and the lights made grotesque shadows.
After a brief conversation with the colonel, who was organizing the transport of the wounded to the hospital, Jake bummed a cigarette. He was standing beside the door savoring the bitter taste of it when Rita came out. “I didn’t know you smoked, sir.”
Jake Grafton took another drag.
The distance was six hundred yards if it was an inch. Little quartering crosswind. Maybe ten knots. Let’s see — the bullet would be in the air for about a second. How much would the wind cause it to drift? He tried to remember the wind tables. Ten knots was about seventeen feet per second. Forty-five degrees off — call it twelve feet in a second. The bullet would drift twelve feet every second it was in the air, if he was right about the velocity of the wind and the direction, and if the wind was steady throughout the flight of the bullet, which it wouldn’t be.
And the trajectory drop — about nine or ten feet at six hundred yards.
An impossible shot.
Only a damned fool would try a shot like that.
Henry Charon steadied the rifle on the concrete rail and stared through the scope at the armory. The average guy was six feet tall, so twice that distance would be twelve feet.
The people looked tiny in the scope, even with the nine-power magnification.
The assassin twisted the parallax adjustment ring on the scope to the infinity setting, then backed off a thirty-second of an inch. He settled the rifle again and braced it against his shoulder and studied the scene before the door of the armory.
He had come here because he knew that General Land would come to the armory eventually. Yet with all that shooting over there a while ago — the chairman of the Joint Chiefs should be coming shortly. All Charon had to do was wait. And make this shot.
Wait a sec — that guy standing there smoking near the door? Isn’t that the officer from last night? Isn’t that the man who was standing on the street outside the house under the streetlight?
It’s him, all right. Same grungy coat and khaki trousers, same build, same shaped head.
That man hadn’t fired the shot that had hit Charon, of course, but he had sprayed a clip full of .223 slugs within inches of his head. He had certainly tried. Wonder if he would try again, given the opportunity?
The thought amused Charon.
He backed away from the scope a moment, rubbed his eyes, then settled in with the rifle hard up against his shoulder. He thumbed off the safety and, just for grins, steadied the scope crosshairs about twelve feet to the right and twelve feet above Jake Grafton’s chest. That was the spot.
He filled his lungs, exhaled, and concentrated on holding the rifle absolutely motionless while he took the slack out of the trigger.
Releasing the pressure on the trigger, Charon breathed several times as he thought about last night, about the feel of being chased.
But now — now was after. He was looking back.
What was he, Henry Charon, going to do with ten million dollars if by some miracle he got away? Sit on a beach somewhere and sip fruit drinks? Perhaps Europe. He tried to picture himself strolling the Left Bank or touring castles on the Rhine. Who was he kidding? He had never expected to get out of this alive. Thirty or forty years of boring anticlimax would be the same as prison.
He exhaled and steadied the crosshairs and ever so gently caressed the trigger with firm, steady pressure. Like all superb riflemen he concentrated on his sight picture without anticipating the moment of letoff. So he was agreeably surprised when the rifle fired.