FREDERICKSBURG, VIRGINIA
Monica moved out quickly the moment traffic stopped, as police helicopters swarmed the highway from the west. Their rotor noise echoing across the valley, they landed in the gap between the stalled traffic and the cars north of the EMP radius, which continued undisturbed toward the nation’s capital.
Police cruisers and three SWAT vans rushed into the gap from seemingly nowhere, blocking the way. Doors swung open. Armed law enforcement officers jumped out, taking position, aiming a deadly mix of rifles, submachine guns, and semiautomatic pistols at the vehicles in the kill zone.
Another gap in the highway had been created south of the stalled traffic by two unmarked police cruisers. They had driven side by side well under the speed limit for the prior five minutes. In doing so, they forced everyone to slow down behind the targeted truck and its surrounding cars. More police helicopters and SWAT teams descended on this second quarter-of-a-mile space, further isolating the target vehicles, some expected to belong to innocent civilians.
The late-afternoon sun in her face, the breeze swirling her hair, Monica rushed across the edge of the tree line separating the highway, alongside Hagen. They covered two hundred feet of sloping terrain in twenty seconds, reaching the edge of the highway’s wide shoulder. It was lined with clumps of boulders amidst knee-high brush skirting towering pines. Ryan Hunt and a pair of snipers from a D.C. SWAT team had already taken their positions on thick branches overhead with clear lines of sight into the kill zone.
Armed men exited the sedan directly in front of the truck, leveling their weapons—ironically mostly UZI PROs—at the north blockade. A second group jumped out of another sedan two cars behind the truck and turned their weapons to the SWAT team moving up on the southern gap. The driver of the truck and its passenger also leaped out of the cabin and joined the group facing the north blockade.
“They’re trying to buy time,” she said to Hagen as they reached a boulder outcrop a couple dozen feet from the rear of the truck.
The police used a loudspeaker to urge civilians to lock their doors and hide in the vehicles. Some did, but others panicked and sprinted away from their cars, running for cover.
The police ordered the terrorists to put down their weapons, but they answered by opening fire against the southern roadblock. Their rounds ricocheted off asphalt, pounding police vehicles, shattering glass, and puncturing metal. Some bullets even hit a couple of the civilians running away. Their cries as they rolled bleeding on the asphalt mixed with sirens and gunfire.
The second group also opened fire against the northern roadblock with matching intensity, their muzzle flashes stroboscopic, pulsating, deafening.
Porter arrived a moment later, huddling behind them as both blockades reciprocated, peppering the vehicles around the terrorists. Two police helicopters hovered somewhere off to their right, firing from above, forcing some terrorists to duck behind their vehicles.
A hundred feet north of them, Stark, Larson, and Danny also reached their position, covering the second group of terrorists.
The perimeter secured from all angles, Stark gave the signal and the group opened fire from the edge of the road. They flanked the terrorists, some caught by surprise, their heads exploding before dropping from view.
“Cruz! Get your ass inside that truck and finish this!” Porter shouted while firing his semiautomatic into a pair of terrorists hiding behind a sedan.