A voice came through his earpiece, shouting something that seemed like it was a warning, but right now it seemed as if one hundred car alarms blared in a half-dozen different singsong keys, each bleat trying to shout over the other, and Herbers couldn’t make out the call.
He saw no threats, so he turned away from the crowd and continued on toward the last known location of the Beast, running flat out in his dress shoes and business suit. His earpiece mike was alive now with calls, but he hadn’t heard a word from O’Day, the President’s lead agent.
Just as he reached the edge of the thick cloud of smoke and ran into it, he heard pounding gunfire behind him. Even before he turned around, he recognized the weapon from its distinctive sound. It was an AK-47, a rifle carried by no one in the Secret Service or in the Mexican federal forces. He shouted into his wrist mike at the same time as dozens of other men and women. “Contact!”
Instantly he heard the high-pitched snapping of bullets flying past him in the street, coming from the direction of the crowd.
In the back of the smoke cloud, an entire city block from where Herbers now stood in the street hunting for the source of the gunfire, Secret Service men who were still alive stumbled from their vehicles and began moving toward the cloud. They had no choice but to dismount, because burning vehicles in front of them blocked the way. The Roadrunner was down and on its side. No one had climbed out of it yet, though it had been a full thirty seconds since the massive blast.
The members of the counterassault team who had not died in the explosion or were not now wrapped up and disoriented in the dark cloud raced forward with their M4 rifles, desperate for any information, either through their eyes or through their headsets.
In the smoke, guns swung around in all directions looking for targets, and men reached out in vain, trying to find anyone or anything close by to help orient them.
Suddenly, seconds after the sound of AK fire south of their position sent the men scrambling, more gunfire erupted from the north, behind them. It was more automatic AKs along with staccato snaps from handguns as Secret Service agents returned fire.
The counterassault men at the northern edge of the cloud turned to engage two pickup trucks approaching from a side street, but the smoke and dust behind them enveloped them as the cloud grew.
Over the sound of the new multidirectional gunfire a single screamed report filled every earpiece, headset, and vehicle radio of the massive Secret Service contingent.
“RPG!”
Jack Ryan opened his eyes and blinked away what he thought were tears. He brought his hand to his face and rubbed it, and he noticed his glasses were gone. He pulled his hand back and saw he was bleeding from his head.
He was wholly unaware there had been an explosion. He saw no flash, he heard no loud noise. He wondered if they had been in some sort of traffic accident. Right now he was only aware that he lay awkwardly on his right side, his legs higher than his head. Ambassador Styles’s body was crumpled next to him. There was little light, which was odd, because the last thing he remembered from before he blacked out was that it had been a beautifully sunny afternoon.
The Beast was upside down, this became clear after a few seconds more, but even through the vehicle windows all he saw was a deep gray, as if they had somehow crashed into a dark lake.
That couldn’t be. He wondered if he was dazed, so he shook his head to clear it, and only then did he feel the dull but pervasive pain on his right side.
“Mr. President?”
“Yes, Andrea. I’m okay.”
He wasn’t okay, but he was alive, and Andrea Price O’Day was in the front seat, herself upside down. She needed to hear his voice, so he complied.
Now Ryan reached forward and put his hand on the back of Horatio Styles. He was lying almost flat on the limo’s ceiling, and he wasn’t moving. Ryan meant to give him a shake to wake him up, but when he did so the man’s head lolled to the side, facing Ryan’s. His eyes were open and his pupils rolled back. Ryan could see his neck was broken.
“Styles is dead!” he called to O’Day, but she was transmitting on her mike and she did not respond.
Ryan heard gunfire outside the limo now, and it sounded like it was coming from two directions. A larger explosion, this sounded like an RPG hitting a vehicle, came from close behind.
O’Day said, “We’re staying in the vehicle. We’ve got oxygen and armor, and as long as we…” She stopped talking.
Jack rolled himself onto his left side now, and then onto his knees. He felt like his right arm was not cooperating, but it was there, still in his suit and not gushing blood, so he wasn’t sure what his problem was.
He looked up to Andrea and then he saw why she stopped talking. Smoke began filling the interior of the car.
She turned to him. “Listen carefully. Stay where you are. I’m coming around to your door.”
She didn’t wait for Ryan to respond. Instead, she kicked open her front passenger door, rolled out onto the ground.
Ryan called out to the driver now. “Hey, Mitch! You okay? We’ve got to go!” The man hung upside down from his seat belt. He turned his head toward Ryan, but he did not reply.
Andrea appeared at Ryan’s window. She yanked hard on the upside-down door and it opened with a creak.
Ryan rolled out onto the street now; he was surprised to find the limo had been thrown all the way to the curb, probably twenty feet from where it had been in the middle of the road.
Ryan coughed out the smoke he had inhaled inside the vehicle, and then he began to stand. O’Day shielded him against the side of the limo, kept him on his knees, and he looked around for the first time. Two men in the tactical gear of the counterassault team came running through the thick smoke, their weapons high and their laser targeters cutting through the cloud like lightsabers. They formed on Ryan and they, too, made a cordon around him, and tried in vain to scan for targets in the massive amount of smoke and dust.
A third special agent, this one in a suit and tie, appeared. His face and leg were covered with blood but he was ambulatory, and he opened the driver’s-side door of the upturned limo to help Special Agent Mitch Delaney out, but Ryan saw the man was heavily disoriented from the impact of the flipping limo.
O’Day was calling for a vehicle, any vehicle, to make its way slowly into the blast zone, through the half-dozen or so burning pieces of wreckage, and up to the Beast. She had to evacuate SWORDSMAN, preferably in something armored, but at this point she’d settle for anything with four wheels and a motor.
Ryan tried to pull out Ambassador Styles, but the agents around him kept him covered tightly. The smoke was obscuring their view of the attack that was taking place from two compass points, and this added to the confusion, but it was also obscuring the attackers’ view of the blast area, so they couldn’t possibly know the President was more or less out in the open, kneeling at the curb.
And then, from the south, came a racing, hissing sound that approached through the smoke. No one saw it, and no one identified it in time to do little more than crouch.
The RPG hit the side of the limousine and exploded, throwing everyone around it to the ground.
The two sixteen-passenger media vans had been well behind the explosion, but still the shock wave shook the vehicles on their chassis, and debris pounded them and cracked the windshields in several places. The windows along the passenger sides were shattered when the rearview mirrors were struck by flying debris and went flying into the sides of the vans. The incredible sound of the detonation and the subsequent impacts of shrapnel and car parts sent the passengers covering their heads and scrambling to get low.