Tanner raised his SOCOM and fired twice, striking the reloading gunman in the chest. Instead of dropping, the man finished loading his weapon, though his movements weren’t as sharp.
“Shit!” Liam yelled. “Tanner, Headshots! Shoot them in the head!”
Tanner shifted his aim and fired two more rounds. This time, the gunman dropped without a sound. By the time he shifted targets, another gunman went down due to headshots. The last attacker, swinging an Uzi and already suffering from half a dozen gunshot wounds, went down in a bloody heap as federal officers from the courthouse slayed him in a hail of slugs.
The silence that followed was sudden and startling. Tanner turned to one of the uniformed guards in a shocked state. “Call for paramedics and ambulances! Any of you with first aid experience, help the wounded! The rest of you spread out and secure the perimeter!”
“Tanner!”
He turned and saw Naomi and Vessler appear. “You okay?”
“We have four more downed gunmen over here!”
Two men emerged from the federal building. “We’re medical doctors,” one of them said. “Federal Occupational Health.” He took one look at the carnage. “Holy shit.”
“Tanner!” Dante shouted. “The mayor’s been hit, but she’s still alive!”
Tanner motioned to the wounded. “Go help who you can.”
“Paramedics are on the way!” a uniformed officer yelled. Sirens could be heard in the distance getting closer.
Tanner’s phone rang. He looked at the caller ID and answered it. “It’s bad.”
“Understood,” Casey replied. “I’m sending the head of the FBI office down to take charge. Think Rhee’s behind this?”
“All the gunmen were Asian, but they didn’t fight like trained combatants. Also, they only went down after we shot them in the head or put a dozen bullets into them. I think they were on something.”
Stephen motioned Tanner toward where he was crouched next to one of the dead gunmen. Tanner walked over and the former CIA agent pointed to the dead man’s wrist. Tanner saw the skin patch at once. “Hold on a second,” he told Casey over the phone.
“All four of these guys have one on their wrist,” Stephen said. “Either all four were trying to quit smoking at the same time or—”
“Or they’re not nicotine patches,” Tanner finished. He turned toward Naomi. “Nay, you and Vess check the men you downed. Look for skin patches on their wrists.”
“No need. We saw them put the patches on just before they attacked.”
Tanner went back to his phone. “We may have something. I’m going to need a full tox screen on every one of these attackers.”
“I’ll expedite it,” Casey replied. “You think the gunmen were on drugs?”
“That seems to be a safe bet.”
Liam walked over. “Better add the guys from yesterday’s attack on the pier for a tox screening. We had the same trouble with taking them down that we had here.”
“You hear that?”
Casey sighed. “I’ll add them to the list.”
Paramedics and EMTs were the first to arrive, followed shortly by multiple police units. More people came out of the federal building, mostly armed and uniformed federal law enforcement officers, and others wearing jackets that displayed their agencies. As the building housed offices for the DEA, FBI, U.S. Marshals and the U.S. District Court, there were plenty of armed agents on site.
Tanner signaled his people while speaking to Casey on the phone. “It’s getting crowded here.”
“Do what you need to do. Tell Agent Vessler to come back up to the office. We need to make sure we have the story straight before she gets waylaid by the FBI.”
“Understood. I’ll call later.”
By the time the Special Agent in Charge of the local FBI office took over, the OUTCAST team had vanished.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
OUTCAST assembled on the eighteenth floor of the Trans-Continental Marsh Hotel in Tanner and Dante’s suite. The view of the city was stunning, but their enthusiasm for it was tempered by the recent violence. The rain had stopped, but it was still overcast.
But the team wasn’t looking at the scenery. Instead, they were standing around a dining room table along with Sarah Vessler and Danny Choi. Maps were spread out on the table, along with printouts provided by Danielle. An air of purpose permeated the room.
The aftermath of the shooting was sending shock-waves throughout the city and they were moving out across the country, a political earthquake that would only get worse if the team failed in their assignment. In addition to the gunmen, ten people were dead — three reporters, a news cameraman, the mayor’s aide, four members of the mayor’s protection detail, and a woman who had come to the federal building to get a passport. Eight others were wounded, three critically, including Mayor Pagliei, and taken to area hospitals.
Board of Supervisors President Norman Kwan had assumed control of the city’s government. He immediately called for calm and sent out a plea for information about the incident.
The FBI was in charge of the investigation and had publicly called it an act of terror. Three of the gunmen, those who still had faces, had been identified as known criminals, but had been found not to be associated with the Black Dao Triad or any other Triad.
Tanner laid out the basics of the operation the team was planning. OUTCAST would strike several Black Dao holdings, shut them down, and leave a message for Hong: give up Rhee and his followers, or suffer even more losses.
Vessler listened, then shook her head. “Won’t work. Hong is old school. He won’t break the alliance without evidence that Rhee’s been screwing him and the Triad in some way. He’d lose too much face.”
“Rhee’s and his boys are on a rampage,” Liam said sourly. “Triads don’t like the attention or the heat, and it’s a sure thing Uncle Sam and the local law enforcement agencies are going to be bringing it in buckets.”
Tanner shook his head. “I think Rhee’s playing his own game, separate from the Red Ice operation, one that Hong isn’t involved in. The question is what game and what is his next move?”
“Chaos is his game,” Stephen said.
Dante nodded. “Yes, but for what purpose?”
“The North Koreans are still technically at war with both the U.S. and South Korea,” Choi said. “And they have the largest Special Forces in the world — two hundred thousand soldiers by some reports. They’ve been sending infiltrators into South Korea for decades. Imagine how much damage just a couple hundred of them could do to this country.”
Vessler frowned. “What I don’t understand are the gunmen today. They weren’t well-trained, but they didn’t go down easily.”
“I think Rhee’s recruiting locals,” Tanner said. “Using money from Red Ice sales to hire local thugs and finance his operations.”
Liam nodded. “Use the locals as cannon fodder, while keeping his own soldiers in reserve for important missions. Also makes it harder to pin down incidents involving him.”
“Rhee’s going to need bodies when he faces off against the Mexican cartels for control of the meth market, so it makes sense.”
Tanner’s cell phone trilled. He saw who the caller was he answered it. “Yeah?”
“I’m calling with an update,” Casey said. “I’m still here at the DEA office and I don’t plan to leave for a while. Preliminary tox screens came through — had to call in a few favors to get it done this fast — but there is definitely some sort of drug in the bloodstream of the people who tried to kill the mayor and the ones Liam and Stephen handled yesterday. And it’s the same substance in all of them. But it’s going to take days, if not weeks, to determine what drug it is. It’s definitely some form of amphetamine, but that’s all they can be sure about at the moment.”