Vince Flynn - Extreme Measures

“It doesn’t matter,” the man said in near perfect English. With a smile he added, “It would have only sped up the inevitable.”

Rapp moved his gun to the man’s face and tore off his goggles. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I am not afraid to die. I have already martyred myself. I have killed many Americans today. Allah will be very pleased with me.”

Rapp hated that word – martyr. He’d learned long ago that guys who liked to throw it around had a particularly crazy religious bent. The fact that this guy had just had his spinal column blown out and his left elbow shattered, and was looking up at him as if he was experiencing some kind of religious nirvana, was extremely unsettling. Rapp began looking him over from head to toe. His tactical vest was packed with extra magazines for his rifle, but not much else. At the neckline, though, he saw the seam of what appeared to be a second vest under the first. Rapp stuffed the detonator in his shirt pocket and yanked at the Velcro and zipper on the man’s tactical vest. The vest fell open to reveal a sight that caused Rapp’s entire body to tense for a second. There was a second vest under the first, and the pockets that were designed to hold ammunition were instead filled with blocks of pasty gray C-4 plastic explosives. Like the bombs that had been set off earlier in the day, these too had ball bearings pressed into the C-4.

In the pocket just above the man’s heart, near the neck of the vest, he found the detonator. Rapp carefully slid it out and looked down at the small digital readout as it ticked from forty-three to forty-two seconds. He resisted the urge to pull the wires from the device, knowing that it could very well trigger the explosion. Rapp looked around the room that was now swimming with the walking wounded and people crying for help. There was no way in hell he could get all of these people out of here in just over half a minute. His eyes fell on the windows that looked to the northeast. At the base of it, six floors down, was the ramp that went down into the underground parking garage.

Rapp couldn’t be certain that the glass was blastproof, but it was a pretty good possibility. Then again, blastproof glass was designed to keep the blast wave of an explosion out. It wasn’t designed to keep things in. Rapp quickly looked over the other five bodies. He had to assume they were all wearing vests.

Just as Nash came up, Rapp swung his pistol around, aimed it at the window, and squeezed off four quick rounds that punctured and spidered the glass but did not shatter it. Rapp started shooting again, the rounds popping off in rapid succession. In less than four seconds he emptied the rest of the seventeen-round magazine into a two-by-two-foot section of the window that was starting to give way.

The entire room had stopped to watch this one man shooting at an inanimate object as if he’d lost his mind.

As Rapp reached for his last full magazine, he screamed, “They have suicide vests! Art,” Rapp yelled as he hit the slide release on his gun. “I need help with these bodies! We have less than thirty seconds before these vests start…” Rapp’s words were muffled by his and Nash’s gunshots as they emptied their magazines into the window.

A jagged hole had now appeared; roughly big enough to fit a garbage can through. Rapp holstered his gun and yelled to Nash, “Grab the other side.”

They bent down and grabbed the paralyzed man by the legs and the side of his vest. They lifted him and started running across the room toward the partially punched-out window. Rapp began yelling at others who were standing by, watching. “Grab a body! Hurry up!”

As they neared the window, Rapp shouted, “Don’t slow down.”

He and Nash continued at near full speed and chucked the man headfirst into the uneven opening. The glass bent and then gave way as the body sailed past and down to the concrete ramp below. Rapp and Nash did not wait to see the impact. They turned and ran back to the floor. More men and women were jumping in to help now, some of them wounded. Rapp and Nash grabbed the last of the six men and started back across the room. Up ahead, they could see others throwing the terrorists out in the same fashion they had.

Three more bodies quickly went out the window. Rapp was beginning to think it was going to work when the people in front of him and Nash lost their grip and dropped the body. Nash started to slow and Rapp yelled, “My side,” and kept moving.

They ran around the two agents, one of whom was now collapsed on the floor with blood dripping from his right arm. The hole was now much larger, so Rapp and Nash tossed their body out the window from a couple of steps away and then raced back to help the agents who had stumbled. Others were stepping in to help at the same time. Four of them ended up each grabbing a limb as they hoisted the body toward the opening, and then threw it clear into the open blue sky.

Rapp was about to stick his head through the opening to verify that the men had in fact ended up in the concrete-walled drive that led down into the parking garage, when he realized how stupid that would be. Nash grabbed him by the shoulder and began pulling him away from the window. They pushed everybody back as they went, and then the blast echoed from below, rolling up toward the shredded window.

Rapp turned to Nash, elated that they had pulled it off. He saw his friend looking down at the ground in semi-shock and followed his gaze. There on the ground with a bullet hole in her forehead was their assistant, Jessica.

IT was almost midnight when Nash pulled into his driveway. He wedged the minivan into the garage, put it in park, and just sat there for a minute, both hands on the top of the steering wheel, his forehead resting on his knuckles. He hadn’t wanted to leave the office. It had nothing to do with not wanting to see his wife and children; he just didn’t want to leave while there was still work to be done. The death toll at NCTC had reached thirty-eight, with another seventeen injured, three of them critically. The only consolation was that it could have been so much worse.

That was the mantra that had been picked up by virtually everyone as a way to offer comfort to those who had gone through it. Men like Rapp and Nash, who had seen death up close were more equipped to deal with the situation, but for quite a few of the analysts who had witnessed close colleagues and friends blown away in the place they worked every day, it was too much. A few got back to work, because subconsciously they knew it was the only way they could take their mind off what had happened, but a surprising number either became hysterical with grief or went into shock.

As Nash helped move the mentally wounded to the cafeteria, the realization hit home that these people were civilians. They were not trained for combat like his marines. Langley sent over people to help, as did the FBI and other agencies. There had been a hell of an argument early on between Art Harris and another bigwig from the bureau who wanted to quarantine the entire Operations Center and treat it as a crime scene. Harris was adamant that they get the Ops Center up and running again as soon as possible. The other agent wouldn’t budge, however, and ordered everyone to stop the cleanup. He wanted the bodies left exactly where they were until forensic teams showed up. The two men began screaming at each other, and then Rapp decided to settle the issue. He walked over, coldcocked the agent, and ordered everyone back to work.

Nash had talked to his wife just once. He’d called her to let her know that she might start to hear some things from the press. He couldn’t talk about it, but he was fine and he would call as soon as he had a chance. Nash couldn’t even remember how long ago he’d made the call. He guessed it was probably around dinnertime. Maggie would be worried sick.