The driver of the lead van was a member of the White House press office and not a trained security agent, but he’d been told what to do in an emergency. He was to get off the road, out of the way of security forces ahead of his van if the decision was made to retrograde out of the area, or of those behind the van if they needed to come up and assist.
Ten seconds after the explosion, however, he had not moved at all. Both of the van’s front tires had been eviscerated by high-explosive shrapnel from the rear artillery shell that had torn across the road.
Four media personnel in the first van had been cut by broken glass, and more were disoriented by shock, but CNN press-pool reporter Jill Crosby was unhurt. She was sitting in the second row of seats, just to the left of Fox reporter Jeff Harkes. Harkes caught a face full of glass, and while he grabbed at a vicious wound just over his right ear, Crosby climbed over his legs, grabbed the door latch, and flung it open. While others in the vehicle either tended to one another’s injuries or tried to get out of the van, Jill Crosby ran toward the smoke-obscured scene ahead.
She’d just pulled her phone out of her pocket and dialed into CNN’s Atlanta headquarters when the gunfire started. She arrived at a damaged Suburban that had been knocked ninety degrees and now faced west on the north-south thoroughfare. She ducked low and ran past the SUV, and on the other side of this she saw an identical Suburban fully engulfed in flames.
An explosion erupted near her, knocking her to the ground. She did not recognize that she had almost been blown apart by an RPG, so she climbed back to her feet and ran forward. All around her now there was more and more shooting.
She entered the thick wall of gray smoke just as her producer answered on the other end.
“It’s Crosby! The presidential motorcade is under attack! We’ve got to go live!”
Two counterassault team officers raced past her with their guns at their shoulders, and then they disappeared into the smoke in front of her.
Herbers had given up on getting to the President; his job now was to suppress the hostiles in the two pickup trucks on the southern side of the engagement zone. The vehicles had pulled right into the crowd of dead and wounded. Herbers lay flat in the street and engaged the driver of one of the white pickups as the man shot his AK while crouched behind his car door, incorrectly thinking it to be suitable cover. Herbers and another agent dumped round after round of .40-caliber ammo through the thin sheet metal, killing the man.
He’d heard the transmission from O’Day saying she had SWORDSMAN at the Beast, but the Beast was down. She’d called to the second limo to have it come to her, but Herbers had yet to hear a response.
He didn’t allow himself an instant to think about what had gone wrong. That would come later, much later, and it would come only for those who managed to survive the firefight. So he emptied his magazine at the threats on the side street, reloaded, and racked his pistol’s slide to engage some more. Just as he brought it back up on a target, he saw a flash of light in the shade on the far side of José J. Herrera. Instantly the flash grew in size, and he realized he was looking at a streaking rocket-propelled grenade. It raced five feet off the ground, shot directly over his head as it passed into the smoke behind him, and then he heard the impact of an explosion.
He hoped like hell the RPG hadn’t just hit SWORDSMAN’s damaged limo with the President of the United States standing next to it.
Herbers opened fire at the source of the launch, a man standing alone with an empty rocket tube, sending the man to cover.
Then he started looking around for a vehicle. He knew the President couldn’t wait around in the kill zone any longer. A Suburban with a broken windshield was upright on good tires in the road, just fifty feet away. He saw a Secret Service agent slumped over the wheel, and another man lying facedown outside an open rear driver’s-side door.
Herbers leapt to his feet and started running for the black SUV.
59
Ryan climbed back to his knees for the second time in the past forty-five seconds. His right arm hung by his side, the pain grew by the second, but through the pain he saw Andrea lying faceup on the curb, blood running from her forehead.
He blinked away the grit that had made its way into his eyes and crawled to her; she was just five feet away, but it felt like a mile.
All around him men fired weapons, alarms shrieked; a helicopter had flown so low that it whipped the smoke away in swirling vortexes. Two agents kept their hands on Ryan’s back as they kept their weapons sweeping, occasionally firing, and hot brass clanged on the street. Ryan cradled Andrea’s head in his hands. Her eyes were closed and her mouth was parted slightly. He put his head to her mouth and then to her chest, and he felt and heard nothing.
She wasn’t breathing.
A counterassault officer tried to pull Ryan to his feet now, to bring him back to the relative safety of the upturned vehicle, but Ryan swatted the man’s grip away with his left arm. Then he pinched Andrea’s nose shut and began rescue breathing.
He’d been trained decades ago, but his wife had given him a refresher when Kyle was born, so he knew the fundamentals. He pushed away the chattering gunfire, and even a third detonation of an RPG against the wall of a parking garage nearby, and he continued short powerful breaths into her mouth, followed by one-handed chest compressions.
He was on his third round of breathing when he saw a response from her, just a quick inhalation and an expression of discomfort on her face, but he knew she was alive.
He was about to talk to her when a black Suburban raced backward down the sidewalk and screeched to a stop just ten feet away. Now several CAT officers pulled Ryan away from Andrea Price O’Day.
“Wait!” he shouted, but President Ryan was not in charge.
“We’ll take care of her!” a young agent shouted, pulling the President toward the vehicle.
The back door opened and Ryan was pushed in roughly, while men with body armor surrounded him on all sides. He tried to get a look back over his shoulder at his longtime friend lying motionless in the street, but one of his protection detail was there, almost on top of him, and he shoved Ryan all the way to the floorboard and covered him with his own body.
Ryan screamed in pain.
The agent behind the wheel yelled to the other men, “There’s gunmen and wreckage ahead! Can we go back?”
The two counterassault men had come from behind in the motorcade. “Affirmative! Wreckage on the road for fifty yards, then you are clear!”
Another man shouted, “Punch it!”
The vehicle shot backward, the driver, Special Agent Herbers, looking over his shoulder as he drove in reverse, doing his best to avoid slamming into the stationary vehicles. While he drove, another agent shouted into his headset.
Special Agent Davis Linklater broadcast on the Secret Service net. “SWORDSMAN is mobile! Heading north, everybody get out of the way, and then fall in.” He looked up to Herbers behind the wheel. Herbers was in charge here. “Where we going?”
Herbers didn’t take his eyes off the road behind him. “Airport!” The Suburban sideswiped a burning counterassault vehicle lying on its side, jolting all in the SUV, but it kept moving backward at speed.
Everyone in the Starbucks three blocks away had either run outside to see the scene at the far end of the street market or else pushed themselves up to the window glass to look outside.
With two exceptions. Emilio and Zarif walked out onto José J. Herrera and turned left, away from the blast, although the young Mexican walked backward, marveling at the massive cloud of smoke.