A few more shots. I was listening for the sound of a machine gun, but I hadn’t heard it yet. “Who did this?” I asked.
“Sweatt had it done. Wanted a confession. Said if I didn’t sign, he was going to personally help beat me to death tomorrow.”
“So we’re right in the nick. You lucky dog.”
Now I heard the stutters of a machine gun.
Armanti Hall had set up the M279 beside a small wooden building with a good view of the guard towers and the barracks. The fact that the only lights were in the compound and the towers were backlit probably helped. The guards, one in each tower, were looking into the light, watching the people in the compound and smoking. Armanti got the belt arranged in the gun and chambered a cartridge. When he had that attended to, he gave Willie Varner four hand grenades.
“I want you to go around on the other side of this building,” Armanti said, “where you can see the front of the barracks. Then put all four of your hand grenades on the ground. Wait until I fire, then pick up one grenade. See this pin on each one — hold the lever, pull the pin, then wind up and throw it in from the outfield. Pick up another, pull the pin, and throw it. Do it until you have thrown all four. Then lay down, right where you are, and don’t move a muscle until you hear me call your name. I don’t want you running around out here in the dark. I’ll be shooting at everything that moves. If anyone comes up on you, play dead.”
“Okay, man.”
“Can you do it?”
“I guess.” Willie Varner took a deep breath and exhaled explosively.
Five minutes later the shooting started, and to Armanti’s amazement, the man in the north tower climbed down and ran for the barracks. The man in the south tower wasn’t far behind. Thirty seconds later, as gunfire popped in the front of the compound, guards in FEMA green came running through the compound toward the back gate, jerked it open — apparently it wasn’t locked — and ran for their cars or the barracks.
Armanti waited until no one wearing green wanted out of the compound, then opened fire.
I heard the M279 open up, followed by grenade blasts. I hoped that was Armanti Hall behind the compound gunning every FEMA guard who had came out the back gate and jumped in a car or pickup. Or anyone who wanted out of the barracks to join in the fray, if there was a barracks back there.
When I finished with the tape, Grafton said, “Cut this jumpsuit off. I shit in it.”
I knew that by the smell, but was too polite to mention it. After I used my knife and he was naked except for the tape, I got a look at his swollen balls. They were bruised almost black. I helped Grafton to his feet. “You’re going to have to walk, Admiral.”
“Give me a shoulder to hang on to.” I put the medic bag over my shoulder, put my left arm around Grafton, and took an experimental step. He wasn’t going to go down; that was one tough man. I drew the Kimber and led him down the hall.
Silence had descended on the compound. Sweatt was still in his chair, holding his ear. Blood was oozing through his fingers and running down his neck, staining his collared shirt.
Grafton paused in front of the desk and picked up a watch, put it on. Then he reached for a cell phone and handed it to me. He put a hand on my Kimber and I gave it to him.
“Sluggo, you were born eighty years too late,” Jake Grafton said as he looked down to check the safety on the .45. “You should have been an SS colonel in charge of Auschwitz or Dachau.”
He pointed the pistol and shot Sluggo in the center of his forehead. The back of the man’s head exploded onto the wall and his body rocked back in the chair. The corpse stayed in the chair, its arms dangling, its eyes pointed at the ceiling.
Grafton handed me back my gun.
“Let’s go, Tommy. Sarah.”
We both helped him down the steps and into the right seat of the pickup. Then Sarah ran around and entered through the driver’s door and scooted over.
A knot of civilians was standing there. Willis and Travis were policing up weapons and tossing them into a stack in the yard.
Jack Yocke and Sal Molina came over to the right-side window, which was down. “We want to go with you, Admiral.”
“Get in the back.”
I addressed the crowd while Yocke and Molina climbed over the tailgate. “Folks, your guards have skedaddled or died, I am not sure which. Help yourselves to the weapons. You must decide if you wish to remain here or take your chances outside. We can’t stay, and you know they’ll be back, sooner or later, when they figure out what went down here. All I can tell you is, good luck.”
I got in the pickup, carefully backed up, then put it in drive and steered toward the gate. I ran over a body of a FEMA warrior sprawled there because I was in no mood to get out and move the corpse or wait for someone else to do it.
“Who’d you shoot?” I asked Sarah.
“A couple of men who thought I wouldn’t.”
“Good.”
“This pistol doesn’t kick as much as I thought it would.” Oh, man! I glanced at her, but she was looking straight ahead at the road.
The breeze coming in the open windows felt good.
“Where are we going, Tommy?” Grafton asked.
“A place I know. You need a vacation and Sarah needs access to a real bathroom.”
“Where?” he said. That was Jake Grafton. No nonsense at all.
“The CIA safe farm near Greenbank.”
He grunted. Then his head tilted back onto the headrest and he was asleep, or maybe passed out. He had had a really bad time.
NINETEEN
Congressman Jerry Marquart was one of the civilians who watched Tommy Carmellini and the gunmen depart through the gate and down the road into the night. He recognized Jake Grafton, former CIA director, and Sal Molina, who was presumably no longer employed at the White House. The fashionably grizzled younger man who climbed into the back of the pickup with Molina he didn’t know.
Jerry was in his late thirties. He was an ROTC grad, had spent six years in the Marines, had done the Afghanistan gig twice, and then had gotten out and gone into politics in Iowa. He was in his second term in the House of Representatives when FBI agents arrested him and brought him here. He didn’t even bother to ask why. He was no friend of the Soetoro administration and denounced their policies at every opportunity. He actually had a lot of opportunities, because he was one of the very few members of congress with recent military experience. Or any military experience, for that matter.
He looked at the pile of carbines the attackers had left behind, walked over, and picked one up. Worked the action, checked the magazine, then went over to one of the bodies and helped himself to several full magazines.
Another man came over and asked him, “You know anything about guns?”
“A little.”
“I’m from New Jersey, and I don’t know shit about guns.” He was about twenty-five pounds overweight, had saggy jowls, and combed his hair over his bald spot. He picked up a carbine and hefted it. “But I don’t think I want to stay here.”
“Don’t take one unless you’re willing to use it.”
“I’m getting there. Name’s Evan Bjerki.”
“Help yourself to some ammo,” Marquart advised. “The price is right.”
Jerry Marquart went into the admin building and spent two seconds looking at the remains of Sluggo Sweatt. He had seen a lot of corpses so Sluggo’s didn’t affect him one way or the other. Nor did the two dead men sprawled on the floor of a room with cots and porn mags scattered around. He helped himself to a pistol belt that he had to pull off one of them, strapped it around his middle. He checked the pistol, a Beretta, made sure it was loaded, then moved on. The cell gave him pause. He smelled the feces, saw the jump suit on the floor, connected it to the naked Grafton, and walked back through the building and out into the compound. Knots of people, maybe a hundred by now, were talking earnestly and loudly to each other and gesturing. Bjerki trailed along behind Marquart.