She signaled Jojo to heel as she scrambled behind the tree, wishing like hell her one-time lover, Agent Maray, hadn’t been shanghaied by the crisis at the Capitol.
Two men were throwing open the front doors of the Hummer. She couldn’t tell if there were more in the back, certain only that at least three were still alive.
The biker on the lawn fired two more times at her, having claimed cover behind a Toyota RAV4. His second shot shaved bark off the chestnut tree inches from her head.
In the corner of her eye she saw someone snatch a toddler from the wide front window of the house fronting the shootout. A drape fell back, closing off any view of the interior.
Through the RAV4’s side windows, she saw the biker’s shoulders move, guessing he was reloading. She made a split-second decision: “Jojo, attack!”
The exceedingly fleet Malinois, moving at twice the speed of the fastest human, cleared forty feet of lawn, wheeled around the RAV4, and launched sixty pounds of rippling muscle at the masked man as he raised his weapon.
The shooter was too slow.
Thank God.
Jojo’s powerful jaws locked onto the man’s gun hand, driving him backward into a garage door. Lana could see them clearly now. It looked like the tenacious warrior was crushing bone and metal and would never let go.
The biker beat Jojo’s head with his fist — to no avail.
Rip him to pieces, Lana thought.
But she couldn’t help Jojo; she would risk shooting him by mistake at this distance, and the men from the Hummer had taken cover behind the Buick less than thirty feet away.
Vinko was so excited. I did this. He felt like a commanding officer who’d deployed his men on a vital mission. And millions would see this video. He imagined thousands already messaging friends and alerting online groups, even as he stared lovingly at his screen. But he’d also make sure no interested party would ever miss seeing the action by streaming the video over and over for years. A battle to remember, with the colonel and his closest cohorts in a position now to terminate Elkins.
What did Vinko care about the biker who was shot in the neck and now bleeding to death on the street? It was good bang-bang, as the news crews always called the battles in a war zone. And make no mistake about it, Bethesda was now a war zone. He was just as glad to see the dog hanging off the other biker’s arm because the man still had his wits about him and was unsheathing a knife.
Yes, stab the beast.
The biker was — over and over.
But not for long. The big dog fell away and the man bolted right back to the protection of the RAV4 in the driveway, switching his gun to his left hand. The right didn’t look so good anymore.
The dog—what a pathetic animal—tried to crawl after him, leaving a blood smear a foot wide behind. Vinko saw the dog’s shoulder bone glinting in the sunlight. He reached down and patted Biko. “Don’t you worry. I would never let that happen to you.”
But Biko’s eyes opened wide a beat later when the Malinois howled in pain.
Lana’s first impulse was to retreat. Where? Then she saw one of the men from the Hummer lob an object toward her.
She had time only to swear at the grenade and tuck herself tightly behind the tree before the explosive ripped apart the Prius. The blast sent plastic and metal fragments into the tree trunk with such force that the stately old chestnut shuddered and the big window where the toddler had stood shattered. Tiny bits of flaming Prius also tore into Lana’s calf. The pain was searing.
She heard footfalls and spotted one of the men from the Hummer ducking and running around the far side of the Buick. She aimed low, guessing he was in body armor, reasoning that if he’d come bearing grenades, he’d be equipped in every possible manner. As soon as he moved out from behind the roof, she fired three times, nailing both of his upper legs. The bullets sprawled him onto the pavement.
That son-of-a-bitch. The man was wearing a head-mounted camera. She aimed to kill but heard two men advancing on the lawn side of the tree.
One was the driver of the Hummer. He darted behind another chestnut about twenty feet away, making him no longer a viable target.
Elkins didn’t see the biker with the chewed-up hand. He was targeting her from the behind a big lilac bush.
“Look out!” Vinko yelled at his screen. Not out of any concern for Elkins.
A man from the house, whose big front window had been blown out by the grenade, was aiming a hunting rifle out the opening at the biker who’d just taken cover behind a lush lilac. Hard to see clearly, though: the picture was turned on its side because that was the position of the wounded colonel lying on the street not far from the man Elkins had shot in the first seconds of the attack.
Vinko twisted his screen to straighten the view just as the rifleman fired at the surviving biker. No armor was likely to stop a high-caliber bullet designed to take down a buck from five hundred yards. Vinko sat stunned as blood burst from the exit wound in the biker’s chest.
The colonel’s camera switched perspective again, jittery, bouncing, apparently moving backward. Vinko could only conclude that the driver of the Hummer was retreating, dragging the colonel with him back to the vehicle. Close shooting continued; the man laying down covering fire at Elkins or the homeowner who’d just killed his cohort.
The camera juddered again, the colonel now clearly half-sitting half-lying in the Hummer’s spacious back seat. The stout driver piled into the vehicle behind the wheel.
The windshield shattered, chunks raining into the front seat area. The colonel’s camera caught his own arm and hand as he pointed out something to the ducking driver. Vinko couldn’t make out what either of them shouted over the din of the continuing gunfire.
Now the Hummer was backing up fast, the sound of gunshots fading; but the plinking of lead into steel remained audible as the colonel and his man continued their furious retreat.
Vinko collapsed back in his chair, swiping Biko aside with his boot. He had been sure the video would show the slaughter of Lana Elkins, but the planned coup de grace had turned into a coup de disgrace. Soon to be replayed hundreds of millions of times on the small screen — but not by his followers.
The pain in Lana’s leg was excruciating. She forced herself to focus first on the Hummer to make sure it wasn’t getting ready for a drive-by. The driver was backing wildly onto a lawn five houses away, then peeling out in the opposite direction.
Now she started toward Jojo. So was the man who’d fired his rifle from inside the house. If she’d counted correctly, she had one bullet left in the gun to put the dog out of his misery. She felt responsible for his injuries, and they were horrible: the dog’s fur was soaked with blood in four places on his back and shoulder. He looked like he might have been stabbed in the spine.
Jojo was panting, tongue hanging out, flews slick with foam. His eyes were open wide, wild.
“I don’t have a vet,” Lana said to the man who might well have saved her life. “I just got him.”
“I do,” he said. “I’m on the line to her right now.” He turned from Lana. “This is Harry Riggs. I’m bringing in a Malinois guard dog that’s been knifed by a madman. This is trauma work.”
“You’ll get my dog to a vet?” Lana said after Harry hung up and called 911 for the two men sprawled on the ground.
“Of course I will. And I know who you are. It’s an honor to meet you.” Then he noticed Lana’s bloody leg and immediately dialed back 911. “We have an injured woman.” He stated the address again. “Lower leg wound. Do you hear me? A casualty who needs treatment ASAP.”