Mark Greaney - Full Force and Effect

Zarif pressed the button on the phone and connected the call.

Even here in the Starbucks, more than three blocks away, the explosion was deafening.

58

Adark gray cloud covered everyone and everything.

The entire street, the side streets around, the edge of the street market on the west, and the open parking lot on the east—everything in a twenty-five-yard radius from the blast site—was completely obscured by smoke and dust and tiny airborne particles of concrete.

Many outside the impenetrable cloud for another twenty-five yards in all directions were dead or dazed or disoriented by the force of the blast. Eardrums were stunned and ringing. Equilibrium was disrupted by the concussion.

Another twenty-five yards in all directions was consumed by wrecked vehicles or other confusion. Shrapnel this far out still caused death, windows were shattered, car alarms blared.

No one screamed for several seconds, the confusion and disbelief overpowering the natural sensation of fear.

Secret Service Agent Dale Herbers was one of five men in a Suburban six vehicles ahead of SWORDSMAN. The blast behind them had sent debris raining down on the roof of his SUV, but the driver looked back in his rearview and prepared to stomp on the gas. If they were under attack, the first rule was to get POTUS out of the engagement area as quickly as possible.

But the sheer size of the rolling cloud of destruction behind him caused him to doubt standard protocol. Would the Beast even be able to roll out of the kill zone?

The driver called into his mike, trying to find out what he needed to do, but he did this simultaneously along with thirty other agents, and his transmission was walked over.

Herbers was the lead agent in the vehicle, so in the absence of any other instruction, he knew he’d need to lead the four men with him. He realized from the size of the blast that his vehicle might possibly be the closest to the President that had not been destroyed. But there was no way he was going to order his driver to back into the cloud to go looking for SWORDSMAN, because for all he knew, the President was lying injured in the street.

Instead, Herbers made a brave call. “Pull over to open the lane, then everyone bail, cover, and evacuate!”

The driver raced the vehicle to the side of the six-lane road, giving as much open space as possible for any cars behind to continue on if they were able. The five agents then unloaded quickly, drawing their SIG Sauer pistols as they did so. This action put them in danger, of course, but there was no way they were continuing on without knowing if the Beast was operable or even intact. And all Secret Service agents knew their primary job was to cover and evacuate the principal, so Herbers and the others began sprinting toward the massive gray cloud.

Almost instantly Herbers saw his call to pull to the side of the road was folly. Nothing was going to be rolling to the south on Vidal Alcocer. They passed wrecked Suburbans, lying on their sides or perpendicular to the traffic lanes, windshields shattered, tires ripped apart and smoking. These SUVs weren’t moving without a dozen men pushing them out of the way, and there was no time to stop for that until SWORDSMAN was safe.

Here and there a few men had climbed out of the damaged vehicles, but Herbers also saw bodies in the road and slumped over steering wheels.

On his right a crowd that had gathered behind the barricades on José J. Herrera looked like a massive tangle of prostrate bodies. Herbers slowed here to train his gun on any potential threats, but the only movement he saw was a little writhing and staggering by a few survivors in the midst of the stillness of death in the crowd.

A voice came through his earpiece, shouting something that seemed like it was a warning, but right now it seemed as if one hundred car alarms blared in a half-dozen different singsong keys, each bleat trying to shout over the other, and Herbers couldn’t make out the call.

He saw no threats, so he turned away from the crowd and continued on toward the last known location of the Beast, running flat out in his dress shoes and business suit. His earpiece mike was alive now with calls, but he hadn’t heard a word from O’Day, the President’s lead agent.

Just as he reached the edge of the thick cloud of smoke and ran into it, he heard pounding gunfire behind him. Even before he turned around, he recognized the weapon from its distinctive sound. It was an AK-47, a rifle carried by no one in the Secret Service or in the Mexican federal forces. He shouted into his wrist mike at the same time as dozens of other men and women. “Contact!”

Instantly he heard the high-pitched snapping of bullets flying past him in the street, coming from the direction of the crowd.

—

In the back of the smoke cloud, an entire city block from where Herbers now stood in the street hunting for the source of the gunfire, Secret Service men who were still alive stumbled from their vehicles and began moving toward the cloud. They had no choice but to dismount, because burning vehicles in front of them blocked the way. The Roadrunner was down and on its side. No one had climbed out of it yet, though it had been a full thirty seconds since the massive blast.

The members of the counterassault team who had not died in the explosion or were not now wrapped up and disoriented in the dark cloud raced forward with their M4 rifles, desperate for any information, either through their eyes or through their headsets.

In the smoke, guns swung around in all directions looking for targets, and men reached out in vain, trying to find anyone or anything close by to help orient them.

Suddenly, seconds after the sound of AK fire south of their position sent the men scrambling, more gunfire erupted from the north, behind them. It was more automatic AKs along with staccato snaps from handguns as Secret Service agents returned fire.

The counterassault men at the northern edge of the cloud turned to engage two pickup trucks approaching from a side street, but the smoke and dust behind them enveloped them as the cloud grew.

Over the sound of the new multidirectional gunfire a single screamed report filled every earpiece, headset, and vehicle radio of the massive Secret Service contingent.

“RPG!”

—

Jack Ryan opened his eyes and blinked away what he thought were tears. He brought his hand to his face and rubbed it, and he noticed his glasses were gone. He pulled his hand back and saw he was bleeding from his head.

He was wholly unaware there had been an explosion. He saw no flash, he heard no loud noise. He wondered if they had been in some sort of traffic accident. Right now he was only aware that he lay awkwardly on his right side, his legs higher than his head. Ambassador Styles’s body was crumpled next to him. There was little light, which was odd, because the last thing he remembered from before he blacked out was that it had been a beautifully sunny afternoon.

The Beast was upside down, this became clear after a few seconds more, but even through the vehicle windows all he saw was a deep gray, as if they had somehow crashed into a dark lake.

That couldn’t be. He wondered if he was dazed, so he shook his head to clear it, and only then did he feel the dull but pervasive pain on his right side.

“Mr. President?”

“Yes, Andrea. I’m okay.”

He wasn’t okay, but he was alive, and Andrea Price O’Day was in the front seat, herself upside down. She needed to hear his voice, so he complied.

Now Ryan reached forward and put his hand on the back of Horatio Styles. He was lying almost flat on the limo’s ceiling, and he wasn’t moving. Ryan meant to give him a shake to wake him up, but when he did so the man’s head lolled to the side, facing Ryan’s. His eyes were open and his pupils rolled back. Ryan could see his neck was broken.