Читать книгу Homeland Terror - Don Pendleton - Страница 13

Washington, D.C.

News of the attack on CIA headquarters reached Mack Bolan while he was speaking with D.C. Homicide Detective Bill Darwin in the ER waiting room at Georgetown University Hospital. They were less than a mile from where EMTs had first begun emergency treatment on John Kissinger after arriving at the blood-drenched battleground where the armorer had gone down. A surgical team was working on Kissinger in the OR, trying to pinpoint the source of his internal bleeding. X-rays had already determined that the man had sustained a concussion, as well as four broken ribs and a punctured lung, all courtesy of the fallen sign. For the moment at least, his condition was listed as critical.

When he heard about the rocket attack, Bolan’s first reaction was the same as that of Darwin, a twelve-year veteran of the Washington, D.C. police force. Both men were convinced there had to be a connection with the aborted heist in Georgetown.

“Makes sense,” Darwin said after Bolan had voiced his theory. “I mean, we know the guys here were part of this militia outfit. Going after federal buildings is just the kind of stunt they’d pull.”

“I wonder about the timing,” Bolan said. “CIA got hit right after we shut down the heist.”

Darwin checked his notes. “Yeah. Less than five minutes apart. You think whoever fired that rocket was retaliating for what happened here?”

“Could be,” Bolan replied. A part of him, however, couldn’t help wondering if the attack might have been more in response to what had gone down at the fantasy camp in Sykesville. True, the CIA hadn’t played a role in Bolan’s mission there, but he knew the militia fringe tended to see the federal government as some unified force when it came to encroaching on their rights. As such, it wouldn’t be unlike them to strike out indiscriminately looking to avenge the deaths of Jason Cummings and Mitch Brower. Bolan had already caught wind of some Web site eulogies in which the fantasy camp founders had been declared martyrs killed by the Feds because of Brower’s recent editorial campaign against calls for a national identity card.