Lynchburg, Virginia
Lieutenant Tyrone Moseley and Sergeant Ernesto Menendez stood before their fellow AWOL Rangers—one man short, another injured. “What’s the plan now, Major?” Moseley asked. “We go ahead one-third short-handed?”
Major Randall Darby sat on a K-Mart couch, hands in his lap but near enough to reach the M-9 slung beneath his right arm if he had to. Ranged behind him, standing, were Colonel Andrew Knowlton, with a bandaged side, and Captain Walton Tanner Jr. None of them held long guns, but their meeting still reminded Darby of a gunfight in the making.
“Do we go ahead?” he asked his two dissenters. “Why, of course we go ahead. What other choice remains?”
“Pull back, regroup, and pick another target, sir,” Moseley replied.
“That’s unacceptable,” Darby stated. “We’re already standing on the mark, ready to go.”
“Not ready, sir,” Menendez answered. “Whittled down, to say the least.”
Darby saw fit to quote a portion of the Ranger Code. “‘Gallantly will I show the world that I am a specially selected and well-trained soldier.’”
“That’s something else I guess we need to talk about,” Moseley replied.
“Meaning?”
“My brother Jesse wasn’t any kind of well-trained soldier. Wasn’t in the game at all.”
Darby knew what was coming, dreaded it, but couldn’t let the knowledge surface on his face. Instead he challenged Moseley, saying, “And you bring him up because...?”
“It was on the news this morning,” Moseley answered. “As I was coming back from Central Park and that diversion, right? Somebody tapped him out in Newark. Cops are calling it some kind of gang-related deal, but that’s bullshit. Begging your pardon, sir.”
“What makes you sure of that, Lieutenant?”
“Because I knew my brother. He was clean and coming up in Newark, that means something. Plus...”
“Plus, what?” Darby already knew the rest of it, had braced himself for this part, but that didn’t make it any easier.
“Plus my Juanita, Major,” Menendez added, chiming in. “Government has her now, I figure. But somebody sent the colonel and Rashid to pick her up, yeah? Now Rashid’s dead and the colonel’s got a hole in him.”
Darby’s hand moved another millimeter closer to his pistol, staying casual about it, as if he’d just shifted on the couch. Whatever was about to happen, it was coming in the next few seconds.
“Okay, you’re right,” he told the men who stood before him. “That was my idea, to keep her safe until we’re done.”
“‘Safe’ nearly got her killed, sir,” Menendez said. “Hell, the way things stand today, she still might get deported—or, worse yet, packed off to Gitmo, if they can’t nail us.”
“I thought we’d have more time, a better opportunity,” Darby said truthfully. He didn’t bother spelling out more time for what.
“And Jesse?” Moseley challenged him.
This would be make or break time, Darby understood. “Lieutenant, I don’t know what happened to your brother.” He fought the urge to tack on “honestly,” which always marked a liar covering his tracks. “When we get done, if you want to hang around and spend your share tracking his killer, be my guest. The rest of us, we can’t have any part in that.”
Time trembled on a razor’s edge. Darby could see Menendez smoldering, while Moseley mulled his words. Could still go either way. At last, their lone black Ranger said, “I just might do that, sir. A billion dollars goes a long way toward payback, no matter who’s responsible.”
Darby allowed himself a small sigh of relief, knowing the next few hours would resolve his problems once and for all time.
“Okay, then,” he said finally. “Let’s go over the plan once more, before we roll.”
Richmond, Virginia
Airborne in the Bell chopper, Bolan scanned the busy streets below. Virginia’s capital wasn’t the Old Dominion’s largest city, but it still had an estimated 224,000 year-round occupants, on top of an estimated million tourists per year. East Byrd Street ran for eight long blocks, from South Second down to South Twelfth Street, in the shadow of Richmond’s Downtown Expressway. The Fed for Richmond’s district covered forty-nine counties in four states, plus the District of Columbia, with major branch banks in Baltimore and Charlotte, North Carolina.
“A lot of traffic down there,” Grimaldi observed. “And quick access to the expressway.”
“Not to mention graveyards,” Bolan said.
“I’m trying not to,” the Stony Man pilot replied.
Not far west of the “Fed,” Hollywood Cemetery sprawled in Richmond’s Oregon Hill district, entryway on South Cherry Street, overlooking the James River. Two miles farther on lay Woodland National, closed to new interments and administered by the Department of Veterans Affairs, containing graves of Union soldiers who had fallen taking Richmond back from the Confederacy in the Civil War’s last days. Despite its close proximity to Washington, Richmond had managed to repulse invaders during four long years and suffered mightily as a result.
This day, Bolan surmised, it would be suffering again, though hopefully upon a smaller scale.
“No matter how they duck and dodge on surface streets,” Grimaldi said, “the money has to end up here.”
“They’ll try to jack it sooner, if they’re smart,” Bolan replied.
“When we swoop down or meet them on the street?”
They could have armed the Bell 205 like its Huey ancestor, with a couple of 7.62 mm M-60 machine guns or a matched pair of M-134 Miniguns in the same caliber for a higher cyclic rate of fire, or possibly two 7-round pods of 70 mm Hydra rockets with high-explosive warheads. When he thought about the chaos hellfire from above would cause on Richmond’s streets, however, Bolan couldn’t justify the risks—not even with billions of dollars at stake in the heist yet to be.
“Ground confrontation only,” he told the pilot. “Too much collateral the other way.”
“Sounds right,” Grimaldi said none too cheerily.
Their long guns would be Austrian Steyr AUG bullpup assault rifles, chambered for 5.56 mm NATO rounds carried in translucent box magazines. The AUGs featured progressive triggers, wherein pulling the trigger halfway produced semiautomatic fire, while pulling it back all the way to the rear unleashed full automatic fire.
In addition to their chosen sidearms, Bolan also wore an IMI Desert Eagle Mark VII semiauto pistol on his right hip, the replacement for his one-time venerable AutoMag, which packed eight .44 Magnum rounds in its grip plus one up the spout.
Add on a mix of frag, smoke and incendiary hand grenades, and the warriors were good to go. Dressed to kill.
Only how many would survive the day remained in question now.
Baltimore, Maryland
Established in 1922 as the White House Police, the US Secret Service’s Uniformed Division adopted its present name fifty-five years later, after a stint protecting foreign diplomatic missions in the District of Columbia and their occupants from outside attack.
The SSUD was regarded as a security force similar to the US Capitol Police or Department of Homeland Security Federal Protective Service, with a stated mission to safeguard facilities and venues secured for Secret Service protectees. Its agents were also detailed on occasion to escort shipments of currency, new or withdrawn, from their sources to secure final locations.
Like today.
This day’s escort included twelve men, four on each armored truck collecting mutilated cash, with four more in an SUV trailing behind to cover the bills slated for incineration on arrival in Richmond. Three drivers carried sidearms, the standard SIG Sauer P-229 chambered in .357 SIG cartridges, while backup weapons included futuristic-looking FN P-90 submachine guns chambered in FN 5.7 mm cartridges, more traditional Heckler & Koch MP-5 submachine guns, 12-gauge Remington 870 shotguns, and at least one custom-built .300 Winchester Magnum-chambered, bolt-action rifle, described in the ranks as JARs, for “just another rifle.”
The team had manpower, firepower and will to succeed, but its members had also been briefed on their opposition: five skilled US Army Rangers. That naturally put the team on edge while they collected the tons of money slated to be burned.
Leading the team on this day was a captain, backed by a lieutenant, two sergeants and eight officers. Throughout their run, they’d be in radio contact with an inspector, who reported in turn to a deputy chief at headquarters in Washington.
Captain Dillon Elsberry watched members of his team roll two loaded wooden pallets from the bank’s back door, received there by a forklift that relayed the pallets to the open rear doors of an armored vehicle. Ringed by small arms and wary eyes, the money swathed in shrink wrap disappeared inside the truck as more hands grabbed the pallets, hauled them out of sight, then slammed and locked the truck’s door from inside.
Above him somewhere, Elsberry first heard, then saw, a circling Bell 205 helicopter. More cover, he surmised since he’d been warned of an impending raid against the convoy this trip, damn near guaranteed.
And that was just exactly what he didn’t need, with nineteen years of duty underneath his belt and thirteen more remaining until mandatory retirement from the Service. Losing a cash shipment this size, whether to theft or by having it shot out from under him, would be a career killer. Elsberry wouldn’t be fired, more than likely, but he could look forward to assignments in the smallest, most remote field offices available—maybe in Anchorage, Alaska, or on Guam, where he could finish out his tenure filing, checking phony leads on fugitives and testing bills to see if they were counterfeit.
Don’t blow it, then, Elsberry thought. How hard is that?
The simple answer: he had no earthly idea. Facing a team of US Army Rangers, anything could happen, and he knew none of it would be good.
Airborne Over Baltimore
“No sign of any trouble yet,” Grimaldi said, stating the obvious. “They could be watching, though.”
“I’d count on it,” Bolan replied. “One pair of eyes, at least.”
“Radio contact with the rest, setting it up.”
“Ready to jump when it looks clear enough to take the risk, but not too close to home,” Bolan agreed.
“Twelve agents with the trucks already. They’re outnumbered more than two to one.”
“That’s nothing to a Ranger,” the Executioner pointed out. “I’d hate to lose those agents.”
“Sure, but they’ve been briefed, right? To the limit, anyway?”
“They have,” Bolan confirmed.
The limit being “need to know,” without invoking any real or smokescreen threats to national security from possible jihadists wearing Army green. The Secret Service Uniformed Division’s agents would be armed, well trained and all, but still...
“I’m still thinking about the ground action,” Grimaldi said. “Hal couldn’t have a ride on standby, right, for fear of tipping off the other side. I get it. But we set down in the street, or wherever we can, and then it’s us on foot against whatever vehicles they bring—or if they’ve jacked the armored trucks already.”
“If it comes to that, we can’t allow them past us.”
“Right.”
Small arms aside, the Bell’s cargo included something extra for the armored trucks, in case it went to hell. The trucks in use were armored GM Canyon models, “bulletproof” as most civilians understood the term, which meant withstanding most civilian sporting rounds and military combat rifle ammunition. They were not impregnable, though, where shoulder-launched weapons were employed, ranging from Russian RPGs to “obsolete” M-72 Light Anti-Tank Weapons—LAWs—or Alcotán-100 recoilless, single-use antitank rocket launchers. Any one of those, or a dozen others in current usage worldwide, would crack open a GM Canyon like a sardine can, kill or disable anyone inside and give the bandits free access to whatever they could carry from the scene.
Unless, of course, they were stopped cold.
To that end, just in case the Rangers managed to hijack the trucks somehow without disabling one or both of them, Bolan had brought along his own Main Battle Tank and Light Anti-Tank Weapon—MBT LAW—from a contingent stashed at Stony Man Farm. The launcher weighed close to twenty-eight pounds, measured forty inches overall, and fired a 150 mm subsonic warhead out to a maximum range of one thousand yards.
The MBT could absolutely stop an armored transport carrier, and by the time it came to that, if Bolan had to use it, everyone inside would be hostile. No Secret Service agents left to suffer friendly fire.
Bolan wasn’t a praying man, but every fiber of his being hoped that it would never come to that.
Bon Air, Virginia
Cruising through the upscale suburb of some sixteen thousand people in a hot Cadillac Escalade, its price tag and cold plates providing all Darby could wish in terms of personal security, the major heard the walkie-talkie crackle in Captain Tanner’s hand. After a burst of static, Tyrone Moseley’s voice came through, saying, “We’re still on track, no cover I can see but what we counted on.”
“Copy,” Tanner replied and cut the link at once.
Behind them, Colonel Knowlton occupied the Escalade’s backseat with automatic weapons and spare magazines; grenades including antipersonnel, incendiary and CS; plus a Russian RPG-32 Barkas handheld antitank grenade launcher, lifted from the Ranger training arsenal at Fort Benning when no one was looking. The Barkas helped their paper cause by seeing widespread use in Jordan and the United Arab Emirates, courtesy of Moscow, and would be the only thing besides their manifesto linking Darby’s Rangers to the cause of Allah when the smoke cleared this afternoon.
By then, it wouldn’t matter who still bought the cover story and who thought it was a pile of crap.
“Sounds like we’re good to go,” Knowlton said, barely wincing when he shifted on the seat and got a quick jab from his gunshot wound.
While Moseley operated solo in a stolen Honda CR-V, Sergeant Menendez would be running parallel to him in a Saturn Outlook SUV, no longer manufactured but maintained in tip-top shape from its last owner, who’d be pining for it now and hoping the police came up with something soon.
Fat chance.
Between their SUVs, Darby knew they could carry most of the old currency slated for burning, but he also understood there was a fifty-fifty chance that one or more of the hot cars would be disabled, whereupon they’d have to try an end run with the GM Canyon armored trucks and make it out that way. Plan B. The whole thing was a gamble, as it had been from day one, but they were all committed now. No turning back.
Well, maybe all but one.
Menendez was the major’s nagging headache now, still smarting over what they’d tried to pull with his fiancée, even though he should have understood the absolute necessity behind it. Love was truly blind in some respects, Darby supposed, but if he planned to screw them near the finish line, how would Menendez pull it off?
Just watch him, Darby thought, and take him down the first false move he tries to make.
Simple. Except that the sergeant had been trained with the best of them, adept with any weapon he could reach and cool at thinking on his feet. At least it seemed that Tyrone Moseley had accepted Darby’s lie about his brother in Newark—and if he hadn’t, what the hell. If Darby’s plan succeeded, only two Rangers would ride into the sunset with enough money for six or seven lifetimes, come what may.
And years from now, unless some unforeseen calamity stepped in to cut life short, who would be laughing then?