Mark Greaney - Full Force and Effect

Over a dozen Mexican Federal Police motorcycles had managed to keep up with the black Suburban as it left the blast zone, and two more Suburbans full of special agents were a few hundred yards back and blasting through lights and stop signs to stay with the evac.

In the backseat Linklater had finished his initial assessment of his protectee, and he called it in to the aircraft so Ryan’s personal doctor, Maura Handwerker, would be ready for him when he arrived.

When Linklater finished with his transmission, Ryan reached out and grabbed the lapel of his suit coat. “How many dead, Davis?”

“I don’t know, sir.” He shook his head. “A lot.”

“Tell me what you saw.”

“I was in the chase car two back from you. It was an IED. The SUV in front of me was down. I didn’t see anyone bail. I saw Ambassador Styles. He appeared deceased. The driver of your vehicle . . . he was deceased.”

Jack shut his eyes. “Delaney.” Mitch Delaney had been on his detail for two years. He’d been alive when Ryan saw him, but that was before the RPG struck the Beast.

“Yes, sir.”

“What else did you see?”

“CAT came up and wasted a bunch of fuckers. Sorry, sir. Just a little adrenaline.”

“It’s okay, Davis,” Ryan said as he patted the man’s lapel back in place. “Whoever they were, they were most definitely fuckers.”

60

Jill Crosby had spent the past minute and a half lying flat on the ground next to the Mobile Command and Control Vehicle that everyone called the Roadrunner. A fierce gun battle raged all around her. She’d been on the other side of the vehicle when the Suburban raced backward along the sidewalk to the upturned limousine and then continued backward behind her, so she’d seen none of that.

But even if she had not been shielded from the SUV, she still might have missed it, because her eyes were fixed firmly on the wreckage just seventy-five feet away. It was the Beast, it was split in half and burning, and smoldering, charred bodies sat in the backseat.

This was Crosby’s first time in the presidential motorcade, and she had no idea there were actually two identical limousines. She was certain the vehicle in front of her was the one the President had been traveling in.

The gunfire and explosions abated after two minutes, and almost immediately after that she saw Secret Service men in dark suits and sunglasses race to the burning limo in the middle of the road and begin spraying it with fire extinguishers. Other CAT men appeared and covered them, unsure if there were any more threats in the buildings.

The fact there was such an effort to put out the fire convinced her of what was going on. She had no doubt in her mind she was looking at the bodies of U.S. Ambassador Horatio Styles and President of the United States Jack Ryan.

She filmed it all with her camera phone, but when she heard a voice on the phone’s speaker, she quickly brought it back to her mouth, ending the shot.

She’d wanted to send a live video feed from her phone to be broadcast, but the producer told her to just record for playback so they could control what made it on the air.

The anchor in Atlanta set up the phone call quickly on live TV. “CNN’s Jill Crosby is on the phone with us from the scene in Mexico City, where the presidential motorcade has just come under attack. Jill, are you there?”

“I’m here, Don. I am in the center of a continuing, protracted ambush of the presidential motorcade. There was a bomb or a missile, some sort of massive explosion, and that was followed quickly by more shooting and smaller explosions. The motorcade stopped moving, so I left the press-pool van to try and get through the smoke to see the President. I saw wreckage and bodies, and then I had to take cover where I am right now.”

“Are you able to see the President?”

She filmed again for a moment, then brought the phone back to her mouth. The sounds of sirens, shouting and screaming, and the low-flying helicopters meant she had to yell. “The limousine is on fire. There are two bodies in the back of the limousine that I can see. At least one in the front.”

“Let’s be very careful. Are you certain the President was in that limousine?”

Jill didn’t understand the question. Where else would the President be but in the limo?

She answered authoritatively. “I saw Ryan and Ambassador Styles get into this vehicle. I believe I am filming their bodies right now, Don.”

The anchor in Atlanta cautioned the audience that there had been no confirmation, and reports from the scene were apt to change quickly.

But it didn’t matter. Within three minutes and twelve seconds of the IED’s detonation on the corner of Vidal Alcocer and José J. Herrera, a reporter on live national television proclaimed that the President had been assassinated.

—

General Ri Tae-jin wanted CNN to show video, but instead he saw an American man with black skin sitting at a desk and talking. He then heard the breathless voice of a woman shouting English above the sounds of sirens, and he listened to his translator’s rendition of the woman’s words. He nodded, over and over, as the unconfirmed report came that the attack had been successful.

Within seconds the video came, but it was from a helicopter. The translator said that it was from Mexican television and was being fed into CNN. There was a huge cloud of smoke over a sunny street. In the distant haze the massive sprawling city lay out across the bottom of a valley. The camera zoomed to show the burning wreckage of several vehicles, some more cars and SUVs tossed about haphazardly, and rushing first responders moving in every direction.

Ri was satisfied. There was a massive zone of destruction. He’d been military intelligence, not infantry, but he had done his share of battle damage assessments, and he noted the zone was much larger than that from the impact of a round of field artillery.

No one in the middle of that would survive.

Ri felt certain the assassination had been carried out, but there was one more critical component to Operation Fire Axe that he would need confirmation of, so even though it was well after three in the morning, he knew neither he nor his translator would be leaving his office for some time to come.

—

The American Secret Service liaison at the airport had told the Mexican Federal Police official in charge that the vehicle carrying the President would come through the north VIP gate in five minutes, and if anyone at the gate tried to stop it, the men in the vehicle would open fire.

The Mexican authorities at the airport had the good sense to stay out of the way, but as it happened, Lead Special Agent Dale Herbers drove in the middle of a motorcade of fourteen vehicles, some containing other members of the Secret Service but most driven by Mexican police, who were fully involved in the evacuation of the American President. Together they all raced through the gate with sirens and lights blaring, and they all screeched to a halt at the aircraft. Though most of the U.S. security force was still on its way back from the ambush site, there were still more than twenty-five armed Secret Service men around the plane, and every last one of them had a hand-gun or a long gun in their hand and their heads on swivels as they checked the area for threats.

Linklater, Herbers, and the two CAT agents helped the President out of the back of the vehicle. Two Air Force chief master sergeants who served as stewards on the aircraft were waiting with a stretcher, but the President walked on his own power to the stairs. He moved hunched over slightly, his right arm hanging and the expression on his face pained, but he was strong enough to make it all the way up to the cabin door of the 747 with only minimal help from the stewards at his side. Ryan was trailed up the stairs by a phalanx of men with assault rifles on their shoulders, all of whom walked backward and trained their holographic weapon sights on the distant terminal or the fields around the airport.