Red Cell Seven (8 page)

CHAPTER 8

“G
O, GO,
GO!
”
shouted the leader over his shoulder as the van skidded to a stop at the outer edge of the strip mall parking lot.

Twelve minutes ago the three men in the back had opened fire with automatic weapons inside a huge Minneapolis mall that was now two miles away, spraying the holiday shopping crowd with a deadly hail of bullets. They’d killed nine people in the assault and wounded fifteen more, four critically.

When they were done, the three assassins had raced out of the mall and into this brand-new white van that the driver had waiting for them at the curb just outside the entrance.

“Come on!”

The three men piled out of the van and into the back of another van, which was parked in the spot immediately adjacent to the one they’d just pulled into, while the driver, who was the leader of the squad, raced from driver’s seat to driver’s seat. This second van was old, rusted, and painted a faded robin’s egg blue. The leader figured it would make for perfect cover with its dented sides and the ladder on top. He’d added that detail this morning just before the attack. He’d stolen the ladder from a painting company down the block from the Eden Prairie ranch house they’d been using for the last three months.

As the leader revved the engine of the second getaway vehicle, he glanced through the windshield. Two boys were straddling their bikes less than fifty feet away. Neither of them was more than ten years old, he figured. But they were both aiming cell phones directly at the two vans, obviously taking videos. They would die for it. And their parents would regret giving them such expensive toys at such young ages. Having so much money wasn’t a good thing. Flaunting it was worse. This population needed to understand that.

“Kill them!” he yelled, stabbing his finger wildly at the boys.

Two of the men jumped out of the back and fired. Job finished, they climbed into the van again as the leader sprinted to where the boys lay, grabbed their phones off the blacktop, and sprinted back to the van.

T
HE CHAOS
at the edge of the parking lot had attracted attention. A man coming out of a dry cleaner’s in the middle of the strip mall had witnessed the horrific scene of the boys being shot off their bikes. He’d called 911 immediately, contacting the emergency service as the leader was running back to the van after scooping up the boys’ cell phones.

Fortunately, a local policeman who hadn’t been called to the shooting two miles away was emerging from the post office beside the dry cleaner just as the witness was connecting with the 911 operator. The witness alerted the policeman to what he’d seen, and the cop made it to his squad car before the van had even exited the strip mall parking lot.

The chase was on.

A
GENT
R
ADCLIFF
burst into the Oval Office without knocking. “Mr. President,” he called loudly as he stopped just in front of the eagle woven into the carpet. “Sir, it’s important.”

“What is it?”

President Dorn sat in the wheelchair behind his desk, studying a piece of paper inside an open folder that Stewart Baxter had just placed in front of him. Baxter stood on one side of Dorn while Jane Travanti, secretary of Homeland Security, stood on the other. Travanti was tall and angular with straight blond hair cut short in a pageboy so it fell to just above her slim shoulders.

Next to Travanti was Wes Dolan, the director of National Intelligence. He was short, nearly bald, and had an all-business air about him.

A television sat on a table beside a wingback chair off to Radcliff’s left. It was turned on, but the volume was low, and no one seemed to be paying attention to it.

“You need to see something, sir,” he said, pointing at the TV.

“We’re about to go down to the Situation Room, Agent Radcliff. Can it wait a few minutes? I can watch whatever it is down there.”

Dorn looked exhausted, even more so than he had when Radcliff had wheeled him down here from the residence, and that had been only a few minutes ago. There were deep, dark circles under his eyes now, and he had a gaunt look about him, like he’d quickly gone from predator to prey. Or he had the weight of the world on his still-weak shoulders.

Which, of course, he did.

The president’s nurse stood near the table littered with medical supplies. She didn’t look much better. There was fear in her eyes, too, though it was a different kind. It seemed like she’d finally gotten the responsibility she’d been wishing for all her career—and now she was wishing she hadn’t.

Radcliff hustled to the wide-screen TV in his purposeful, ex-military stride and boosted the volume. The TV was already tuned to an all-news channel, so he hadn’t needed to run through the guide. Every news channel in the world had to be carrying this, he figured, as the sound from the two speakers grew quite loud. It was the story of the millennium.

“No, Mr. President, you need to see this
now,
” he called out over the newscaster’s voice.

“What are you doing?” Baxter demanded indignantly as he looked up from the folder. “We don’t have time for—”

“Minneapolis police are chasing a van they believe is carrying the terrorists who just attacked the Mall of America,” Radcliff explained in his most formal voice as he pointed at the screen and the view from above of a light blue van racing crazily around and past cars on a double-lane highway. “The Twin Cities airport is close to the MOA, and a chopper that flew over to cover the aftermath of the attack peeled off when they heard about the chase. They picked up the van’s trail a few minutes ago heading north. This is happening as we speak.”

“My God,” Travanti whispered as she moved slowly away from Dorn and toward the TV. “We must take them alive, Mr. President. We must be able to interrogate these people. All the others have gotten away. This could be our best chance to stop any more attacks.”

Dolan grabbed a phone on the president’s desk. “This is DNI Wes Dolan,” he barked at the White House operator. “Get me Rick Burns in my office immediately.” Dolan nodded to Travanti as he slipped a hand over the mouthpiece. “Burns is from St. Paul. He’ll know how to get to the cops out there fast.”

“L
OOK AT
THIS
, D
AD
.”
Troy gestured at the TV. Through a Secret Service agent, the president had asked them to stay, so they were using a small room down the corridor from the Oval Office. Bill was speaking to someone over the landline in the room, and Troy had turned on the flat-screen bolted to the wall. “Jesus.”

Bill ended his call quickly. “What is it, son?”

Troy was standing beside the TV, and he pointed at a light blue van that was racing down a highway, weaving dangerously in and out of traffic with police cars in high-speed pursuit. The view of the chase was from above. “They think the guys in this van are the ones who just attacked the Mall of America in Minneapolis. They shot more than twenty people.”

“Sons of bitches,” Bill muttered as he rose and moved to where Troy was standing. “They’d better take these guys alive. I mean, they haven’t caught anybody else so far, right? Have they mentioned anything about that?”

“All the other shooters got away from the scenes. No reports of any arrests yet.”

“Yeah, we’ve got to interrogate at least one of these guys. What’s the latest count overall?”

“Eleven malls were attacked,” Troy answered. “All in big cities, and the attacks all happened within a few minutes of one another. No announcement from any terrorist group claiming responsibility, and no official confirmation yet. But there’s no doubt they were coordinated. Everyone agrees on that.” Troy glanced at his watch. “It’s been twenty-five minutes since the last one. Hopefully it’s over.”

Bill shook his head. “Maybe for today, but not for good. This is obviously not a suicide thing. Which means the plan is probably for these squads to carry out more attacks. Flying airliners into buildings is shocking, but this is much more effective. This is the nightmare scenario,” he added quietly.

“It shuts the country down,” Troy agreed. “No one’s going to leave their house if they think death squads are going to attack the mall they’re headed to.”

“Or the Exxon or the Ruby Tuesday or the Home Depot. See, that’s what they do next. They go to smaller, more specific targets. Maybe they hit nothing but Ruby Tuesdays for a few days and basically shut the chain down because no one will go there. And if they’re smart, they’ll take it to small towns, too. They show the country that no one is safe. The killings are obviously the worst part of the attack, but—”

“But it tears the economy to shreds, too,” Troy broke in, anticipating where his father was going with this, “especially at the holidays. Every mall in the country will be a ghost town.” He glanced from the screen to Bill. He was thinking about that accusation Baxter had hurled at them as Radcliff was wheeling President Dorn out of the storage room. “Had you heard anything about this?” he asked. Bill had been the de facto head of Red Cell Seven since Roger Carlson’s death a few weeks ago. He’d admitted as much to President Dorn a short time ago. “Anything at all?”

Bill watched the van dodge several cars. Then his eyes moved deliberately to Troy’s. “Had you?” he asked without answering.

After twenty-eight years of dealing with his father, Troy was accustomed to that habit of answering a question with a question. “I’m a Falcon, Dad. I don’t hear as much as you. The division heads seem to do a pretty good job of compartmentalizing. There’s some crossover as far as info goes, but not much. And remember, my leader was Maddux. He was especially good at that. He didn’t tell us anything.”

“Still.”

Troy shook his head. “Nothing.”

“What about a mutiny inside the ranks?” Bill asked. “What about some of the guys in Red Cell Seven defecting to go with Maddux?”

Troy nodded this time. “I’ve heard a little along those lines since everything went down, but I thought it was just crap. I figured Maddux was out there on his own with only that kid Ryan O’Hara.” He hesitated. “Is it true? Did more people go with Maddux than just O’Hara?”

Bill was about to answer when the van clipped the back of a tanker truck and veered left toward a railroad bridge abutment. “Look at this, Troy!”

“Oh my God.”

T
HE LEADER
struggled frantically to regain control of the van as it hurtled toward the concrete bridge abutment. He’d been distracted for just a split second as he searched on his iPhone for the best way to exit this road. But that single second had been enough. He’d nicked the back of the tanker truck with the van’s front bumper. He figured cops would be throwing down spike strips on the highway somewhere up ahead, no more than a few miles or so. So he had to get off fast or face the unpleasant prospect of four flat tires and almost certain capture—which was not an acceptable outcome. That had been made very clear by his superior many times.

He cursed loudly. He’d barely tagged the tanker, but it was enough to send the van careening to the left, out of control.

At the last moment he swung the vehicle to the right, narrowly avoiding an impact with the abutment, which would have disintegrated the van and killed them all. They raced beneath the railroad bridge, still out of control. The sudden twist in direction sent him and the other three men barreling back toward the truck trailer they’d just clipped. He wrenched the steering wheel back to the left. He had no choice. Otherwise they would have smashed directly into the trailer, which could be carrying thousands of gallons of gasoline.

The van fishtailed wildly for a hundred feet and then went up on its right two tires, beside the truck. For a few seconds the leader believed he could bring his vehicle back under control. But then it tipped over and everything turned to chaos. Bodies, weapons, and ammunition flew everywhere inside the van. However, the vehicle didn’t tumble. And that was key, the leader realized even as the crash unfolded. That gave them a chance.

The van slid along the highway on its passenger side as the truck driver jammed on his brakes. The big rig jackknifed, careened off the road, slammed into a wall—and exploded.