Fanfiction Idol entry...
Hello, all...
Here I go with my entry into the big game...
This is actually the first chapter of a planned 50-chapter series based around the G.I. Joe fandom. This chapter constitutes about 6,000 words. Of course, the fic is still not complete, and a prequel is already being written to further expand it.
Of course, for Miss Manners' sake, I'm putting it in a HUGE lj-cut.
Quotations and or extracts for critiquing are permitted for the Fanfiction Idol group.
"Cause and Effect"
Prologue
United States Senate Chambers
The Capitol, Washington, DC
April 29, 2002
The Vice-President of the United States, who also served as President, Pro-Tem of the U.S. Senate, rapped his gavel hard on the podium in front of him. He looked out at the one hundred Senators that comprised the senior lawmaking body in Congress. Quickly, the Vice-President raised his voice to call the monthly reporting meeting to order and quell the numerous side conversations that had begun as the legislators traded shop talk among themselves.
"Order!" the VP shouted, banging on his gavel. "This meeting is called to order!"
The talking in the main space of the chamber died out, as the Senators took their seats and settled in, with documents and pens in hand. Members of each Senator's entourage scurried around the room, delivering last minute telephone messages and pouring glasses of water for their respective bosses.
"Thank you for arriving so promptly today," the VP began. "I hereby declare this meeting to be in session. Sergeant-at-Arms, please secure the doors and escort all non-voting parties to the observation gallery."
Another minor display of movements around the chamber's periphery signaled the official closing of the meeting to outsiders. The entry doors clicked shut, and the remaining press photographers and reporters were patiently hustled away to the Press Corps Waiting Room or the observation gallery one floor above. Only a handful of unobtrusive television personnel, manning three live broadcast cameras for C-SPAN, remained among the Senators.
"Fortunately, we have only one committee report to hear for this meeting's agenda," the VP stated. "The floor recognizes Senator Charles McLaughlin of New York State."
Senator Charles McLaughlin stretched his muscles as he brought his six foot, two inch frame out of his chair among the senior Senate Democrats. As the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, his job was to provide oversight for the many organizations and elements that comprised the Department of Defense, including approving funding for all aspects of the American military.
Because the Armed Services Committee had authority over almost a trillion dollars' worth of Federal funds, leadership had to be entrusted to a senior Senator. McLaughlin was already into his second term in New York, and had been a friend to the military. He was a hands-on leader, making time to send commissions out on inspection tours and evaluations of the performance of Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine units worldwide.
When McLaughlin reached the speaker's podium, the Vice-President stepped to one side and took a chair. The NY Senator cleared his throat for a moment, and set his notes down, preparing to speak.
"Good morning, Mister Vice-President, and fellow Senators," McLaughlin began. "It is a pleasure to be reporting to you today concerning one very important issue that faces our military: the fight against international terrorism."
"Recent events, which I won't re-state since we are all aware of them, have made it necessary to re-think how America combats the threat of terrorism, and how to prevent future attacks from happening within our sovereign frontiers. To that end, our Committee, in joint resolutions with the House Armed Services Committee, fully approved the budget that General Gibbs and Major General Abernathy submitted for Special Operations Counter-Terrorist Force Delta, more commonly known as G. I. Joe."
"We have drafted a Special Appropriation, to be voted on in three months, which will include provisions for a discretionary spending budget of one hundred million dollars, spread out over the next four years, to supplement the G. I. Joe requested budget. Our counterparts in the House of Representatives are in full agreement."
McLaughlin raised a thick document, whose cover was emblazoned with the seal of the Senate Armed Services Committee. "My office is now distributing the details of the budget request and the Special Appropriation, for each of you to review prior to the vote that will come up in joint session on July 15th. You may contact my office to have any of your questions answered."
Some of the Senators buzzed with conversations for or against the funding request, and the small talk continued for a few moments, until the Vice-President used his gavel. "Order! Please bring the meeting back to order!"
"I have invited the commanding officer of the G. I. Joe Team to this meeting, to address you concerning the budget request," McLaughlin said. "I understand that the initial numbers that are being distributed in the finding are rather high, compared to previous budgets for this unit since its reinstatement in 2001. However, General Abernathy has convinced our Committee that support for his program is critical to the defense of our homeland."
McLaughlin extended his hand towards the center aisle of the Senate chamber, which looked very much like the larger, Congressional chamber that the public frequently saw on television, and motioned for his guest to come forward and take the floor.
Major General Clayton Abernathy, code name Tomahawk, approached the speaker's dais with a measured gait, his expression aloof to the applause of the assembled politicians. He briskly shook Senator McLaughlin's hand and greeted the Vice-President before standing up to the podium microphone.
"Thank you for inviting me to speak to you today, Senators," Tomahawk said. "And thank you all for supporting our efforts to redesign America's defense against terrorists."
"Creating the Department of Homeland Security was an important start in revolutionizing our capabilities to prevent the Pentagon and World Trade Center attacks on September 11th. Now, we need to continue that tempo with the full reinstatement of the G. I. Joe Team."
"I have endeavored in the last few months to return as much talent to duty as I could from my original team, prior to its first disbanding in 1995. These courageous men and women, including several from armed forces around the world, represent G. I. Joe's fighting edge. Of the ones I've located, several have been promoted or assigned responsible positions in the new organization, to help me keep G. I. Joe the best of America's best."
"To supplement our core group of veterans, I have recruited key personnel from the younger generation of soldiers. This new blood, forming our Green Shirt force of fighting men and women, will tackle the missions that our force is up against."
"Many of you might be unfamiliar with G. I. Joe as an entity. Our original charter was written through an executive order during the Kennedy administration in the 1960's. He was a staunch supporter of special operations and clandestine forces as a means to fight the new types of warfare. Every administration since has upheld the original order, which separates G. I. Joe from the mainstream military operationally, giving us free reign to accomplish our assignments. After some time, with international commitments on a conventional level growing, G. I. Joe slowly declined into a Europe-based training team until 1982."
"With the official re-raising of the team in eighty-two, and my being placed at its head, our charter was adjusted, making us report to certain generals in the Department of Defense and the office of the Commander-in-Chief. They also added a clause that gave G. I. Joe the right to circumvent the posse comitatus law. This allows us to combat terrorist groups both domestically and abroad without interrupting our operations of capabilities to get government approval."
"Ever since 1982, G. I. Joe has been fighting a semi-covert war with a global terror group called Cobra. Even after your predecessors had declared victory against them in 1995, I am of the distinct opinion that Cobra has not died out. They may be smaller, and they might be working with the organizations that committed the attack on our shores. But believe you me, they are out there. And we don't want them getting a foothold here. Supporting the joint resolution, and getting as many of your friends in the House to do the same will ensure America's protection against these very bad people."
Most of the assembled Senators cheered Tomahawk's rousing speech; however, some only clapped respectfully, since they questioned the money or didn't necessarily believe what Tomahawk was saying about the re-emergence of Cobra. Tomahawk thanked the assembly for their time, and stepped away from the podium to shake hands a second time with Senator McLaughlin.
"Great speech, Clayton," McLaughlin said over the noise of the applause.
"I just hope it's enough to get the votes, Senator," Tomahawk replied. "You know, there's going to be a backlash, from both the political side and the Jugglers. I can still deploy a close protection team for you."
"It's okay, Clayton," McLaughlin said. "The DOA close protection team that's been assigned to me was trained by your former First Sergeant… Hauser, I believe? While he was working for the CIA?"
"Right," Tomahawk replied. "Then you shouldn't have a problem. Master Sergeant Hauser is back in the fold, getting the new force manned up and ready. All we need is the money to keep the program going."
"We'll get it for you, General," McLaughlin said. "You just worry about keeping your end of the bargain. Your people have the harder job."
"The Joes will be ready," Tomahawk replied. "You can count on us."
***
Level Five, E-Ring (Top Security Section)
The Pentagon
Armed guards stood a very careful watch over the inner working spaces of the Jugglers, the secret cabal of military leaders that often worked as a government within a government. They had the power and political leverage to make almost anything happen. They could also make or break anything from a single soldier's career to an entire covert combat unit.
General Gibbs, a four-star general ostensibly assigned to the senior administration of the Department of the Army, was also the power-hungry head of the secret junta. He was spending his morning at his desk, taking calls and going over a number of urgent files that required his attention or signature.
The door to his private office, which opened up to an anteroom where his secretary and chief of staff normally sat, was flung open accidentally by a flustered office assistant.
"I- I- I'm sorry, General Gibbs," the assistant stammered. "Someone is on your private line, screaming about something and demanding to talk to you."
"I'll take it, Constance," Gibbs said, dismissing the junior secretary and picking up the line on his desk phone.
"This is General Gibbs," the officer began in greeting.
"What the FUCK are you trying to do, Gibbs?" the voice on the other end of the line screamed. "You were supposed to quash the new budget request and keep the Joe Team as a really lean group. You're supposed to be using them as another budget line item so that we can funnel all that money into the slush funds!"
"Take it easy, Congressman," Gibbs growled. "The budgeting plan and stipulations were designed to do just that."
"Then why in God's name is Senator McLaughlin announcing a Special Appropriation that's being attached to the joint resolution? And, I've reviewed the language of the budget requirement. The Joes will be getting direct payments, outside of the usual Department of Defense oversight channels that we control!"
"Sometimes, you can be just too greedy, Congressman," Gibbs said. "However, this is the first I've heard of this. And I know who is probably behind it. General Abernathy and Senator McLaughlin have gotten very chummy over the topic of G. I. Joe. And a number of House members on the committees are behind them."
"What are YOU going to do about it, Gibbs?" the Congressman shouted.
"I am going to do nothing at all," Gibbs replied calmly. He opened a locked cabinet to extract a wireless PDA, that was connected to a special private line. "Not one thing. I have business to attend to, Congressman. I must go."
Before the Congressman could continue his tirade, Gibbs hung the telephone up and began to draft a message on the PDA. After completing the dispatch, he sent the e-mail and tucked away the PDA. Without missing a beat, Gibbs returned to his paperwork after taking a sip of his coffee.
***
“Cause and Effect”
Chapter One
Assassination in the Big Apple
Yankee Stadium, Grand Concourse, Bronx, New York
Summer, 2002
“Good afternoon, baseball fans, and welcome to Yankee Stadium! I’m Marty J. Riccardi, the new radio voice of the Bronx Bombers and your official greeter to the house that Babe Ruth built! We’ve got one helluva game in store for the fifty-five thousand plus visitors expected to join us here today! It’s the first game of this year’s New York Subway Series, with our hometown Yankees playing the cross-town rivals from Shea Stadium in Queens, the ‘Amazing’ New York Mets!”
Cheering crowds were filling the seats of the venerable old Yankee Stadium in the Bronx, just a half-hour ride by car from the U.S. Army Reserve’s base at Fort Hamilton in Brooklyn, home of the G.I. Joe team’s temporary New York staging facility. As the thousands of regular spectators began to occupy the cheaper seats, Master Sergeant Conrad S. “Duke” Hauser brought hot dogs and two large stadium cups full of beer from a concession stand to where his teammate and significant other, Staff Sergeant Shana M. “Scarlett” O’Hara, was waiting for him in a VIP sky box. As he stumbled up to her, Scarlett was quick to offer a giggle and a helping hand.
“Duke, I know we haven’t had much chance to go out on real dates lately, but dragging me to a baseball game really takes the cake this time as an excuse to get me alone with you. Why didn’t you invite Flint or Beach-Head, or one of the guys who actually likes this stuff?”
Duke smiled as he took his seat in the sky box and scanned the neighboring VIP accommodations. “Hawk gave me the tickets and expressly told me to bring you along before jetting off to Washington for Round Thirty-Five with the Jugglers. He was sort of evasive concerning exactly why, but there had to be some reason he wanted us here. Seats to these games are virtually impossible to get at the last minute, even for G.I. Joes, and to be in a VIP sky box no less... This took a lot of juice. I’m shocked that Hawk didn’t take advantage of this himself.”
Scarlett shrugged and smiled, as she looked out over the large cement and steel structure, and the forms of the two baseball teams’ players filing onto the field in their signature uniforms.
The announcer’s voice boomed across the open-air baseball stadium as the umpires and coaches slowly made their way onto the ball field and flags on tall poles reaching up to the clouds whipped in the wind as silent guardians of the sports venue. “We here at the New York Yankees would like to extend a special welcome to our VIP sky box spectators, including our very own New York Senator Charles McLaughlin, who is up from our nation’s capital to join us for this historic clash of New York’s boys of summer!”
Senator Charles McLaughlin, a Caucasian male in his early fifties, made his way into the sky box right next to the one Duke and Scarlett had been given when they arrived. The Senator had left much of his normal entourage behind for his visit to Yankee Stadium, trusting that the NYPD could handle security like the best of them.
He did, however, have his confidential secretary along, a voluptuous and busty brunette named Mandy Pepperidge that drew glances from men in many of the surrounding sky boxes. A single burly bodyguard kept the crush of visitors and media out of the sky box, standing outside of its privacy door and keeping it locked. Stewards and liaisons provided by the Yankees took up the slack for McLaughlin’s personal staff, bringing a deluge of refreshments and food to the couple, and attending to any of their other needs.
Scarlett looked across the short gap to McLaughlin’s sky box and regarded the pair as they settled into their seats. She noticed his secretary had gotten very comfortable as McLaughlin wrapped his arm around her. She leaned up to face him and within moments, their lips were locked together and she was quite obviously French-kissing him passionately.
Scarlett jabbed Duke in the ribs, nodding in the direction of McLaughlin’s sky box and remarking, “Hey, Duke. Isn’t it funny that Mrs. McLaughlin is nowhere to be found on this ‘homecoming’ trip for the Senator?”
Duke looked across and noticed that the secretary had slid off her chair and was on her knees in front of McLaughlin. The edge of the sky box obscured much of the view, but the secretary’s head was moving up and down in front of the Senator, and his look of absolute pleasure gave the whole game away.
“He doesn’t seem to mind being without her one bit,” Duke hissed with disgust. “That chippie of an assistant takes her job really seriously.” He turned to Scarlett and gave her a warm peck on the cheek as she picked up some binoculars to watch the game with. “But rank hath its privileges, n’est-ce pas?”
Scarlett nodded, returning Duke’s kiss with a brush across his lips with hers. “Absolute power corrupts, my dear,” she replied simply.
The announcer’s voice came up once more. “Ladies and Gentlemen, would you all please rise to sing our national anthem?”
The baseball teams took the field and lined up along the first and third base lines, with the Yankees facing their dugout and the Mets facing the visiting dugout. Before the first strains of music were ready to play, the pro ball players doffed their baseball caps and covered their hearts with them. As the stadium speakers echoed with the first few orchestral notes of The Star Spangled Banner, the entire population of Yankee Stadium came to their feet and began to sing. That is, all except one confidential secretary and her Senatorial benefactor.
Scarlett noticed that a slight smile was crossing Duke’s lips and his eyes were still fixed on the lip service the brunette secretary was giving to Senator McLaughlin. She jabbed him again in the ribs with her elbow, also burning her gaze into his eyes when he looked down at her. “You’re staring, Duke. Don’t let them notice you. And no, I will not perform the same to you out here while the game’s going on. That’s just the ultimate in couch-potato wishful thinking!”
Softening her voice and batting her eyelashes as Duke turned his attention back to her, Scarlett added, “... But you never know what we might do back at Fort Hamilton with you, me, a couch and our TV set.”
The announcer changed the main sound feed from his box high above the field to a radio used by the lead umpire at home plate and broadcast his instructions. “Okay, everyone, listen up! Players, take the field, and the Yankees starting lineup is up to bat! Let’s PLAY BALL!” Cheers arose from the stadium as the Subway Series kicked off with a roar.
***
Atop the roof of Yankee Stadium, a stealthy figure crept along its edge until he had a commanding view of the VIP sky boxes. He had entered using the identity of a maintenance man from Brooklyn who worked for the Yankees getting the field set up in between games.
The thirty-five year old maintenance man had met his maker more than twenty-four hours earlier, courtesy of the impostor’s silenced 9mm Makarov automatic. All it took was a simple knock at his apartment door near the old Brooklyn Army Terminal, two puffs as the pistol was fired point blank into the front of his skull, where the bullets penetrated the bone and smashed the frontal lobe of his brain, and then the deed was done. The Brooklynite’s lifeless body was left to lay right where it fell, as bits of blood and brains drained out onto the man’s apartment floor.
The ersatz maintenance man on the stadium roof had exchanged the workman’s coveralls, which he had been wearing when he entered the stadium, with a tight-fitting, one-piece, zippered combat suit colored in a black and dark green geometric camouflage pattern.
From a hidden panel at the bottom of the large toolbox that he had brought on site, he assembled the components of a small and highly accurized Anti-Materiel Rifle, much more than just any sniper’s rifle. The man’s AMR fired a subsonic 0.50-inch caliber (12.7mm) Browning round, originally designed for the much larger and long-serving Ma Deuce (M-2) heavy machine gun. It was capable of hitting targets at ranges of over half a mile, and penetrating hardened surfaces such as rolled steel armor plating, civilian cars, or poured concrete structures, to ensure a ‘hard kill’ on the intended victim.
Resting the AMR on its folding bipod atop the hot metal roof of the stadium and rolling out a thin foam sheet to dissipate the reflected summer heat so it wouldn’t scald his body while he lay prone, the sniper flipped down an integral range finder and telescope that was affixed to his lightweight headgear on a pair of hinges and settled onto his mat in a comfortable position.
Scanning the sky boxes with his specially shielded telescopic lens, the sniper was able to look through the many faces of the spectators for his quarry, without giving off a telltale reflection in the hot summer sunlight. He smiled to himself, as he settled on the Senator’s box, where the confidential secretary was still knelt between McLaughlin’s thighs and bobbing her head up and down. With a much better view of the action than any of the other patrons of the stadium, the sniper watched as the buxom assistant serviced her boss orally. The action was also the sniper’s signal to strike.
Raising his telescope visor and switching to the long-range scope on the AMR, the sniper sighted in on a spot right between the pinched-shut eyes of the Senator, as the infiltrator made his usual sniper’s preparations to fire. In seconds, he had ticked off the range, direction, elevation, prevailing winds and firing arc in his head that would hit the Senator in a single deadly head shot without taking out the girl between his knees.
***
Top of the first inning:
The first few pitches had been only marginally amusing for Duke as he watched the Mets’ star pitcher strike out the first two Yankee batters in a row. He peered through the binoculars in order to see the action up close and personal, while Scarlett yawned in the seat next to him and tried to enjoy the sun on her face and a stadium hot dog with the works.
The loud crack of a bat against a hardball aroused a cheer from the crowd as the third batter on the Yankee lineup scored a double and sprinted halfway around the baseball diamond. The cracking sound of the hit echoed all the way up to the stadium roof, where it temporarily distracted the sniper. But he never lost his fix on the Senator’s head.
The weather report for game day over the Bronx was clear skies and wispy clouds, but to the sniper, a simple change in the wind would ruin his single chance at completing his mission. So he decided to bide his time and let the game progress a bit before he determined that the conditions for the shot were optimal.
He pulled out a small, orange plastic flag on a wiry shaft and jammed it vertically into a small crack in the roof. It was very much like the small flags used around construction sites to mark buried power lines and the like. For the sniper, it was a reliable, low-tech solution to his windage problem, since he could tell at a glance if the moving air had changed.
The sniper knew he had time - no Senator in his right mind would decide to get up and bolt when he had a hot woman giving him oral pleasures during the middle of a baseball game. He re-checked his figures mentally at least twice more, almost cursing to himself when he thought he saw the plastic flag flap in a new direction. But the wind held its direction and speed, and the other conditions didn’t change.
Everything in life to a sniper centered around two things, stealth and the shot. Stealth was required because no sniper can surprise a target when he himself is making all manner of noise and confusion. And the shot was everything. All snipers that were worth their salt worked alone or with a spotter who was both bodyguard and assistant. Even the spotter was less important than the shot, since a spotter was often expendable or used as a decoy to keep an enemy away from the shooter.
“One shot, one kill,” echoed in the sniper’s mind as he began a series of slow breathing exercises to get the final calibration he needed between his body, his mind and the hair trigger of his AMR.
***
Bottom of the first inning:
Although the Yankees had two runners advance onto bases, they were unable to score due to a ballsy double play. The players hurriedly changed places as the Mets starting lineup came up to the home plate.
The Senator began to twist his face into odd contortions, probably because his secretary was bringing him to orgasm and he didn’t want to cry out. Eventually, his face muscles relaxed into a soft, satisfied grin as he let out a guttural moan of delight. The secretary silently moved her mouth away from Senator McLaughlin and spat disgustedly into a paper napkin, quickly wiping some excess spittle from around her face.
Her makeup had been smudged, and her lipstick needed some adjusting, so the secretary got to her feet and set about excusing herself for a much needed trip to the VIP restrooms on the uppermost level.
Although she and the sniper knew each other, for purposes of their own protection, neither had chosen to choreograph when and how the actual shot would occur. But to the sniper, her departing the sky box would make conditions for his shot optimal and he was going to take the opportunity to fire.
Smoothing her miniskirt and tight-fitting halter top, the secretary was moving to leave when the Senator grabbed onto her arm and turned her around. “You’re not done yet, are you, Mandy?” McLaughlin lecherously grinned at the secretary and slid his hand up her miniskirt. He pointed to his open fly, indicating he wanted to be pleasured in another way.
Mandy firmly pushed McLaughlin’s hand away from her butt and continued to walk towards the sky box’s privacy door. “Sorry, Chuck-baby; I have a headache, so that’s all you’re getting right now.” She gathered up her purse and small makeup bag and proceeded to exit the sky box.
Senator McLaughlin sighed as he raised a glass of wine to his lips. The thought, “Women, can’t figure them out,” crossed his mind as he glanced about his surroundings. He noticed the cheering fans everywhere, some looking distinctly in his direction, and didn’t seem to care whether they saw him getting his rocks off with Mandy or not.
Looking to his left, the Senator spotted a blond, well-muscled man peering down at the field through binoculars in the neighboring sky box, and his exceptionally gorgeous, redheaded girlfriend snoozing in her seat.
One of the Mets’ best hitters was at the plate with his bat at the ready, the end moving up and down slightly as it hung in the air over the batter’s right shoulder. The Yankee pitcher wound up and delivered a ‘two-knuckled’ fastball at over 85 miles an hour. Because of the way it was released, the ‘two-knuckle’ would fly straight and true, until its backwards spin caused it to lose momentum and drop from its straight path, hopefully just as the batter swung the bat to meet it. The Mets hitter swung and connected, letting out a loud crack as the wooden bat impacted at full speed with the solid core of the hardball and sent it flying up into the air and towards the outfield.
As the cheers of the Mets fans rose with the hit, Senator McLaughlin’s head exploded in a mass of blood, bone and brain matter. The sniper’s shot was off by a fraction of a millimeter for his angle and the bullet grazed the cement overhang of the row of sky boxes above the Senator’s level before it hit. The grazing only served to make the incoming bullet tumble in flight, rendering it about three times as damaging when it hit the Senator’s soft tissue and skull. The round went in right between the eyes and came out explosively through the base of his skull, taking McLaughlin’s life in that instant.
Everyone, including Duke and Scarlett, only heard the crack of the bat. The silencer on the AMR and the special subsonic powder charge made the shot virtually undetectable as it lanced through the air and into the Senator. But the sight of McLaughlin’s head exploding and the decapitated body sliding lifelessly to the floor of the sky box in Duke’s peripheral vision caught his attention immediately.
Accidentally jabbing Scarlett in one of her breasts with his elbow, Duke leaped to his feet and crouched behind the cement front wall of their sky box. He trained his glasses across the stadium and up, to see if he could identify a shooter.
Scarlett rubbed her chest with a pained look as she was shaken awake, and when she saw Duke crouched down and scanning, her own combat instincts took hold. “What the hell just happened?” she asked, promising herself to give Duke a painful jab when he wasn’t expecting one.
“Look to your right, Red. Someone up high just blew Senator McLaughlin’s head right off. It had to be a large-caliber weapon, like Low-Light’s Barrett Mark 84. I’ll bet the shooter’s up on the roof somewhere.”
Scarlett gathered up her handbag and made sure her military ID was handy. “I’ll grab a cop and spread the word. Maybe we can even scare up a weapon and shoot back.”
Scarlett ran out of their sky box and grabbed a convenient NYPD patrolman, brandishing her military ID. “Hey, you there, Police Officer! I’m Staff Sergeant O’Hara with the U.S. Army. There’s been a shooting! Get help on the radio and follow me!”
She led the bewildered, yet alert, young officer to the privacy door for the Senator’s sky box, where the bodyguard was stoically manning his post. Reaching the bodyguard, she tried to shove him out of the way and get the privacy door open. The large man didn’t budge, and the NYPD patrolman wasn’t really helping.
“Dammit, open this door up! The Senator’s been shot!” Scarlett pleaded as the bodyguard shook his head no.
The bodyguard looked at Scarlett like she was crazy, even though the white and green military ID was unmistakable. “The Senator’s been in there by himself since his secretary left for the bathroom. No one else entered. How are you sure he was shot?”
Scarlett gathered up more energy, hunched her shoulder and shoved the bodyguard aside and into a support column. “You fucking idiot! It was a sniper!” She felt that the bodyguard had a sidearm under his windbreaker, and she withdrew it with lightning speed. “Go see for yourselves!” Scarlett ran back to the sky box Duke was in as the bodyguard and police officer traded looks and then cautiously opened the privacy door to have a look.
Meanwhile, the sniper had retreated from the edge of the broad sloping stadium roof. He was far enough back down the slope that no one from the stands could see what he was up to. He shimmied back into the maintenance worker coveralls and broke down the AMR. Getting back into character, he worked his way down from the roof access through a closed side stairwell and down to the ground level.
Scarlett had returned to Duke’s side in the sky box, locking and loading the bodyguard’s Smith & Wesson Model 1076 10mm automatic. It was marked as a former FBI weapon that had been refurbished and sold in the civilian market, having been originally built without a magazine-connector safety feature for that agency. The civilian models could not be fired if the pistol’s magazine was removed, but the FBI weapons stayed hot. She pointed the former Bureau-issue weapon towards the opposite roof edge, and asked, “Spot anything yet, Duke?”
Duke shook his head no, and sighed. “I’ll bet the crafty bastard’s already making his escape. We need to lock this place down immediately.”
To the Joes’ right, the bodyguard and young patrolman finally barged into the sky box and halted immediately as their shoes made slurping sounds. They trod right through the blood and gore that was McLaughlin’s brain matter, and saw the limp, grossly twisted and headless body bent backwards across the sky box seats. The deceased Senator’s fly was still open and his recently-serviced, flaccid member hung out for all to see. Gasping with fear, the patrolman finally raised his radio to call downstairs to his security supervisor.
***
A cluster of NYPD officers assigned to crowd control and safety at Yankee Stadium stood by their patrol cars, drinking cans of soda and listening to the game inside with portable transistor radios. They didn’t mind not being able to go inside and watch the game, because the time and a half special duty pay could keep them in cold sodas and radio batteries for a long time.
Every NYPD officer’s handheld radio squawked at the same time when the alarm was sounded from Senator McLaughlin’s sky box. Every officer around the stadium quickly went into an alert mode, waiting for a supervisor to issue instructions.
From up in the sky box, Duke located the small folding cellular phone in his pocket and dialed a preprogrammed number. As soon as the greeting started and a beep came across the line, he yelled into the handset.
“This is Duke! Scramble all New York Joes immediately! Scarlett and I are at Yankee Stadium on the VIP level. Senator McLaughlin’s been murdered. Order all Joes to report to Yankee Stadium armed and ready to shut the place down and to do a physical security sweep for the sniper-assassin. Get your sorry asses mobilized YESTERDAY!”
The voice mail message was instantly transmitted to the Communications-Operations room, a small ten-foot by ten-foot room at Fort Hamilton where the Joes staged for their local missions. The duty controller heard Duke’s call, and sounded the general alarm to get every trooper he could find prepped and on the road to the Bronx.
***
A female NYPD officer in a Sergeant’s summer uniform of short-sleeved white shirt and blue trousers came out of the stadium’s security office and started barking out orders.
“This is an emergency lockdown situation! Call back to your team leaders and then to your precinct houses for all available backup! Contact the Bronx ESU platoon and the crime scene team and get them rolling ASAP! I’m going to get the maintenance man so we can lock off the stadium gates and form a security perimeter. No one leaves this stadium until an incident commander arrives and starts a security sweep!”
The NYPD Sergeant pointed to one of the patrol cars as she went to find the maintenance office. “Have that RMP running and the trunk popped when I get back! Move it!” The RMP driver fished out his keys and started the engine on the 2002 Chevy Malibu ‘Radio Motor Patrol’ car. He had the trunk raised seconds later, and stepped out of the car to await the Sergeant.
The female Sergeant entered the maintenance office cautiously, and felt an arm snake about her neck from behind. She could feel the hot breath of a man behind her and the musky scent of cheap aftershave on his coveralls as he smoothly pulled the automatic pistol from her hip holster and jammed it into the small of her back. “Don’t make a sound and you’ll be okay.” The voice was even and monotonous. “If you so much as twitch wrong, I’ll do you right now.”
The Sergeant’s voice changed from a typical New Yorker’s accent to her own natural one, that of an Irish or English woman with a hint of Cockney, a blending characteristic of her Australian heritage. “You know that it’s me, Bloodpool. It’s Zarana. Let me loose; we’re leaving right now.”
Bloodpool, the sniper, transferred everything that could be linked to the assassination into a large duffel bag or his false-bottomed tool box and then held the duffel open as Zarana stuffed her secretary’s disguise in with the gear. Bloodpool then gathered up the bags and followed Zarana out to the waiting RMP.
“Toss your stuff back there. We’re in a hurry,” Zarana said, returning to her New Yorker accent. As the RMP driver leaned over to climb into his car, Zarana grabbed his shoulder and turned him to the side. “You stay here and help with crowd control. The maintenance man and I will start locking the gates.” She turned to the other waiting cops, who were adjusting bullet-proof Kevlar vests and loading their police-issue automatic pistols. “Do any of you have an ETA from the CSU and ESU?”
One of the officers spoke up as Bloodpool got into the passenger’s seat of the running RMP. “Sarge, the Crime Scene Unit will be here to set up a cordon in the sky boxes in twenty minutes. There are a couple of Army types and the Senator’s bodyguard up there with one of ours keeping the place closed for now. The first responders from the Four-Truck Emergency Service Unit’s assault platoon will be here in five minutes. Adam Four-Three and a district deputy chief will be setting up the incident control point.”
Zarana climbed into the driver’s seat of the RMP and rolled down the window. “Very well. Secure the stadium itself for now and keep the crowds under control. When Adam Four-Three and the IC arrive, work your way out to the parking lot perimeter and close it down. We’re going to lock off as many gates as we can in the meantime.”
As the other NYPD officers milling around Zarana and Bloodpool nodded their understanding, Zarana turned on the RMP lights and sirens and roared off for the outer gates of Yankee Stadium. From there, they turned out onto the Grand Concourse, and by way of back streets and passable alleys, they got onto the Cross Bronx Expressway.
NYPD mobile units, RMP cars and specially outfitted pickups belonging to the city’s Bronx-based ESU SWAT platoon began converging on the stadium to seal it off, while Zarana drove their purloined Impala northwest towards Yonkers. They eventually abandoned the patrol car in a rest area on the New York Thruway just north of the city.
Zarana and Bloodpool had a legitimate car waiting for them in the service area parking lot, which they drove up to the sleepy town of Rhinebeck, along the Hudson River, to report their successful kill in to Cobra Commander and to await further mission instructions.
Here I go with my entry into the big game...
This is actually the first chapter of a planned 50-chapter series based around the G.I. Joe fandom. This chapter constitutes about 6,000 words. Of course, the fic is still not complete, and a prequel is already being written to further expand it.
Of course, for Miss Manners' sake, I'm putting it in a HUGE lj-cut.
Quotations and or extracts for critiquing are permitted for the Fanfiction Idol group.
"Cause and Effect"
Prologue
United States Senate Chambers
The Capitol, Washington, DC
April 29, 2002
The Vice-President of the United States, who also served as President, Pro-Tem of the U.S. Senate, rapped his gavel hard on the podium in front of him. He looked out at the one hundred Senators that comprised the senior lawmaking body in Congress. Quickly, the Vice-President raised his voice to call the monthly reporting meeting to order and quell the numerous side conversations that had begun as the legislators traded shop talk among themselves.
"Order!" the VP shouted, banging on his gavel. "This meeting is called to order!"
The talking in the main space of the chamber died out, as the Senators took their seats and settled in, with documents and pens in hand. Members of each Senator's entourage scurried around the room, delivering last minute telephone messages and pouring glasses of water for their respective bosses.
"Thank you for arriving so promptly today," the VP began. "I hereby declare this meeting to be in session. Sergeant-at-Arms, please secure the doors and escort all non-voting parties to the observation gallery."
Another minor display of movements around the chamber's periphery signaled the official closing of the meeting to outsiders. The entry doors clicked shut, and the remaining press photographers and reporters were patiently hustled away to the Press Corps Waiting Room or the observation gallery one floor above. Only a handful of unobtrusive television personnel, manning three live broadcast cameras for C-SPAN, remained among the Senators.
"Fortunately, we have only one committee report to hear for this meeting's agenda," the VP stated. "The floor recognizes Senator Charles McLaughlin of New York State."
Senator Charles McLaughlin stretched his muscles as he brought his six foot, two inch frame out of his chair among the senior Senate Democrats. As the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, his job was to provide oversight for the many organizations and elements that comprised the Department of Defense, including approving funding for all aspects of the American military.
Because the Armed Services Committee had authority over almost a trillion dollars' worth of Federal funds, leadership had to be entrusted to a senior Senator. McLaughlin was already into his second term in New York, and had been a friend to the military. He was a hands-on leader, making time to send commissions out on inspection tours and evaluations of the performance of Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine units worldwide.
When McLaughlin reached the speaker's podium, the Vice-President stepped to one side and took a chair. The NY Senator cleared his throat for a moment, and set his notes down, preparing to speak.
"Good morning, Mister Vice-President, and fellow Senators," McLaughlin began. "It is a pleasure to be reporting to you today concerning one very important issue that faces our military: the fight against international terrorism."
"Recent events, which I won't re-state since we are all aware of them, have made it necessary to re-think how America combats the threat of terrorism, and how to prevent future attacks from happening within our sovereign frontiers. To that end, our Committee, in joint resolutions with the House Armed Services Committee, fully approved the budget that General Gibbs and Major General Abernathy submitted for Special Operations Counter-Terrorist Force Delta, more commonly known as G. I. Joe."
"We have drafted a Special Appropriation, to be voted on in three months, which will include provisions for a discretionary spending budget of one hundred million dollars, spread out over the next four years, to supplement the G. I. Joe requested budget. Our counterparts in the House of Representatives are in full agreement."
McLaughlin raised a thick document, whose cover was emblazoned with the seal of the Senate Armed Services Committee. "My office is now distributing the details of the budget request and the Special Appropriation, for each of you to review prior to the vote that will come up in joint session on July 15th. You may contact my office to have any of your questions answered."
Some of the Senators buzzed with conversations for or against the funding request, and the small talk continued for a few moments, until the Vice-President used his gavel. "Order! Please bring the meeting back to order!"
"I have invited the commanding officer of the G. I. Joe Team to this meeting, to address you concerning the budget request," McLaughlin said. "I understand that the initial numbers that are being distributed in the finding are rather high, compared to previous budgets for this unit since its reinstatement in 2001. However, General Abernathy has convinced our Committee that support for his program is critical to the defense of our homeland."
McLaughlin extended his hand towards the center aisle of the Senate chamber, which looked very much like the larger, Congressional chamber that the public frequently saw on television, and motioned for his guest to come forward and take the floor.
Major General Clayton Abernathy, code name Tomahawk, approached the speaker's dais with a measured gait, his expression aloof to the applause of the assembled politicians. He briskly shook Senator McLaughlin's hand and greeted the Vice-President before standing up to the podium microphone.
"Thank you for inviting me to speak to you today, Senators," Tomahawk said. "And thank you all for supporting our efforts to redesign America's defense against terrorists."
"Creating the Department of Homeland Security was an important start in revolutionizing our capabilities to prevent the Pentagon and World Trade Center attacks on September 11th. Now, we need to continue that tempo with the full reinstatement of the G. I. Joe Team."
"I have endeavored in the last few months to return as much talent to duty as I could from my original team, prior to its first disbanding in 1995. These courageous men and women, including several from armed forces around the world, represent G. I. Joe's fighting edge. Of the ones I've located, several have been promoted or assigned responsible positions in the new organization, to help me keep G. I. Joe the best of America's best."
"To supplement our core group of veterans, I have recruited key personnel from the younger generation of soldiers. This new blood, forming our Green Shirt force of fighting men and women, will tackle the missions that our force is up against."
"Many of you might be unfamiliar with G. I. Joe as an entity. Our original charter was written through an executive order during the Kennedy administration in the 1960's. He was a staunch supporter of special operations and clandestine forces as a means to fight the new types of warfare. Every administration since has upheld the original order, which separates G. I. Joe from the mainstream military operationally, giving us free reign to accomplish our assignments. After some time, with international commitments on a conventional level growing, G. I. Joe slowly declined into a Europe-based training team until 1982."
"With the official re-raising of the team in eighty-two, and my being placed at its head, our charter was adjusted, making us report to certain generals in the Department of Defense and the office of the Commander-in-Chief. They also added a clause that gave G. I. Joe the right to circumvent the posse comitatus law. This allows us to combat terrorist groups both domestically and abroad without interrupting our operations of capabilities to get government approval."
"Ever since 1982, G. I. Joe has been fighting a semi-covert war with a global terror group called Cobra. Even after your predecessors had declared victory against them in 1995, I am of the distinct opinion that Cobra has not died out. They may be smaller, and they might be working with the organizations that committed the attack on our shores. But believe you me, they are out there. And we don't want them getting a foothold here. Supporting the joint resolution, and getting as many of your friends in the House to do the same will ensure America's protection against these very bad people."
Most of the assembled Senators cheered Tomahawk's rousing speech; however, some only clapped respectfully, since they questioned the money or didn't necessarily believe what Tomahawk was saying about the re-emergence of Cobra. Tomahawk thanked the assembly for their time, and stepped away from the podium to shake hands a second time with Senator McLaughlin.
"Great speech, Clayton," McLaughlin said over the noise of the applause.
"I just hope it's enough to get the votes, Senator," Tomahawk replied. "You know, there's going to be a backlash, from both the political side and the Jugglers. I can still deploy a close protection team for you."
"It's okay, Clayton," McLaughlin said. "The DOA close protection team that's been assigned to me was trained by your former First Sergeant… Hauser, I believe? While he was working for the CIA?"
"Right," Tomahawk replied. "Then you shouldn't have a problem. Master Sergeant Hauser is back in the fold, getting the new force manned up and ready. All we need is the money to keep the program going."
"We'll get it for you, General," McLaughlin said. "You just worry about keeping your end of the bargain. Your people have the harder job."
"The Joes will be ready," Tomahawk replied. "You can count on us."
***
Level Five, E-Ring (Top Security Section)
The Pentagon
Armed guards stood a very careful watch over the inner working spaces of the Jugglers, the secret cabal of military leaders that often worked as a government within a government. They had the power and political leverage to make almost anything happen. They could also make or break anything from a single soldier's career to an entire covert combat unit.
General Gibbs, a four-star general ostensibly assigned to the senior administration of the Department of the Army, was also the power-hungry head of the secret junta. He was spending his morning at his desk, taking calls and going over a number of urgent files that required his attention or signature.
The door to his private office, which opened up to an anteroom where his secretary and chief of staff normally sat, was flung open accidentally by a flustered office assistant.
"I- I- I'm sorry, General Gibbs," the assistant stammered. "Someone is on your private line, screaming about something and demanding to talk to you."
"I'll take it, Constance," Gibbs said, dismissing the junior secretary and picking up the line on his desk phone.
"This is General Gibbs," the officer began in greeting.
"What the FUCK are you trying to do, Gibbs?" the voice on the other end of the line screamed. "You were supposed to quash the new budget request and keep the Joe Team as a really lean group. You're supposed to be using them as another budget line item so that we can funnel all that money into the slush funds!"
"Take it easy, Congressman," Gibbs growled. "The budgeting plan and stipulations were designed to do just that."
"Then why in God's name is Senator McLaughlin announcing a Special Appropriation that's being attached to the joint resolution? And, I've reviewed the language of the budget requirement. The Joes will be getting direct payments, outside of the usual Department of Defense oversight channels that we control!"
"Sometimes, you can be just too greedy, Congressman," Gibbs said. "However, this is the first I've heard of this. And I know who is probably behind it. General Abernathy and Senator McLaughlin have gotten very chummy over the topic of G. I. Joe. And a number of House members on the committees are behind them."
"What are YOU going to do about it, Gibbs?" the Congressman shouted.
"I am going to do nothing at all," Gibbs replied calmly. He opened a locked cabinet to extract a wireless PDA, that was connected to a special private line. "Not one thing. I have business to attend to, Congressman. I must go."
Before the Congressman could continue his tirade, Gibbs hung the telephone up and began to draft a message on the PDA. After completing the dispatch, he sent the e-mail and tucked away the PDA. Without missing a beat, Gibbs returned to his paperwork after taking a sip of his coffee.
***
“Cause and Effect”
Chapter One
Assassination in the Big Apple
Yankee Stadium, Grand Concourse, Bronx, New York
Summer, 2002
“Good afternoon, baseball fans, and welcome to Yankee Stadium! I’m Marty J. Riccardi, the new radio voice of the Bronx Bombers and your official greeter to the house that Babe Ruth built! We’ve got one helluva game in store for the fifty-five thousand plus visitors expected to join us here today! It’s the first game of this year’s New York Subway Series, with our hometown Yankees playing the cross-town rivals from Shea Stadium in Queens, the ‘Amazing’ New York Mets!”
Cheering crowds were filling the seats of the venerable old Yankee Stadium in the Bronx, just a half-hour ride by car from the U.S. Army Reserve’s base at Fort Hamilton in Brooklyn, home of the G.I. Joe team’s temporary New York staging facility. As the thousands of regular spectators began to occupy the cheaper seats, Master Sergeant Conrad S. “Duke” Hauser brought hot dogs and two large stadium cups full of beer from a concession stand to where his teammate and significant other, Staff Sergeant Shana M. “Scarlett” O’Hara, was waiting for him in a VIP sky box. As he stumbled up to her, Scarlett was quick to offer a giggle and a helping hand.
“Duke, I know we haven’t had much chance to go out on real dates lately, but dragging me to a baseball game really takes the cake this time as an excuse to get me alone with you. Why didn’t you invite Flint or Beach-Head, or one of the guys who actually likes this stuff?”
Duke smiled as he took his seat in the sky box and scanned the neighboring VIP accommodations. “Hawk gave me the tickets and expressly told me to bring you along before jetting off to Washington for Round Thirty-Five with the Jugglers. He was sort of evasive concerning exactly why, but there had to be some reason he wanted us here. Seats to these games are virtually impossible to get at the last minute, even for G.I. Joes, and to be in a VIP sky box no less... This took a lot of juice. I’m shocked that Hawk didn’t take advantage of this himself.”
Scarlett shrugged and smiled, as she looked out over the large cement and steel structure, and the forms of the two baseball teams’ players filing onto the field in their signature uniforms.
The announcer’s voice boomed across the open-air baseball stadium as the umpires and coaches slowly made their way onto the ball field and flags on tall poles reaching up to the clouds whipped in the wind as silent guardians of the sports venue. “We here at the New York Yankees would like to extend a special welcome to our VIP sky box spectators, including our very own New York Senator Charles McLaughlin, who is up from our nation’s capital to join us for this historic clash of New York’s boys of summer!”
Senator Charles McLaughlin, a Caucasian male in his early fifties, made his way into the sky box right next to the one Duke and Scarlett had been given when they arrived. The Senator had left much of his normal entourage behind for his visit to Yankee Stadium, trusting that the NYPD could handle security like the best of them.
He did, however, have his confidential secretary along, a voluptuous and busty brunette named Mandy Pepperidge that drew glances from men in many of the surrounding sky boxes. A single burly bodyguard kept the crush of visitors and media out of the sky box, standing outside of its privacy door and keeping it locked. Stewards and liaisons provided by the Yankees took up the slack for McLaughlin’s personal staff, bringing a deluge of refreshments and food to the couple, and attending to any of their other needs.
Scarlett looked across the short gap to McLaughlin’s sky box and regarded the pair as they settled into their seats. She noticed his secretary had gotten very comfortable as McLaughlin wrapped his arm around her. She leaned up to face him and within moments, their lips were locked together and she was quite obviously French-kissing him passionately.
Scarlett jabbed Duke in the ribs, nodding in the direction of McLaughlin’s sky box and remarking, “Hey, Duke. Isn’t it funny that Mrs. McLaughlin is nowhere to be found on this ‘homecoming’ trip for the Senator?”
Duke looked across and noticed that the secretary had slid off her chair and was on her knees in front of McLaughlin. The edge of the sky box obscured much of the view, but the secretary’s head was moving up and down in front of the Senator, and his look of absolute pleasure gave the whole game away.
“He doesn’t seem to mind being without her one bit,” Duke hissed with disgust. “That chippie of an assistant takes her job really seriously.” He turned to Scarlett and gave her a warm peck on the cheek as she picked up some binoculars to watch the game with. “But rank hath its privileges, n’est-ce pas?”
Scarlett nodded, returning Duke’s kiss with a brush across his lips with hers. “Absolute power corrupts, my dear,” she replied simply.
The announcer’s voice came up once more. “Ladies and Gentlemen, would you all please rise to sing our national anthem?”
The baseball teams took the field and lined up along the first and third base lines, with the Yankees facing their dugout and the Mets facing the visiting dugout. Before the first strains of music were ready to play, the pro ball players doffed their baseball caps and covered their hearts with them. As the stadium speakers echoed with the first few orchestral notes of The Star Spangled Banner, the entire population of Yankee Stadium came to their feet and began to sing. That is, all except one confidential secretary and her Senatorial benefactor.
Scarlett noticed that a slight smile was crossing Duke’s lips and his eyes were still fixed on the lip service the brunette secretary was giving to Senator McLaughlin. She jabbed him again in the ribs with her elbow, also burning her gaze into his eyes when he looked down at her. “You’re staring, Duke. Don’t let them notice you. And no, I will not perform the same to you out here while the game’s going on. That’s just the ultimate in couch-potato wishful thinking!”
Softening her voice and batting her eyelashes as Duke turned his attention back to her, Scarlett added, “... But you never know what we might do back at Fort Hamilton with you, me, a couch and our TV set.”
The announcer changed the main sound feed from his box high above the field to a radio used by the lead umpire at home plate and broadcast his instructions. “Okay, everyone, listen up! Players, take the field, and the Yankees starting lineup is up to bat! Let’s PLAY BALL!” Cheers arose from the stadium as the Subway Series kicked off with a roar.
***
Atop the roof of Yankee Stadium, a stealthy figure crept along its edge until he had a commanding view of the VIP sky boxes. He had entered using the identity of a maintenance man from Brooklyn who worked for the Yankees getting the field set up in between games.
The thirty-five year old maintenance man had met his maker more than twenty-four hours earlier, courtesy of the impostor’s silenced 9mm Makarov automatic. All it took was a simple knock at his apartment door near the old Brooklyn Army Terminal, two puffs as the pistol was fired point blank into the front of his skull, where the bullets penetrated the bone and smashed the frontal lobe of his brain, and then the deed was done. The Brooklynite’s lifeless body was left to lay right where it fell, as bits of blood and brains drained out onto the man’s apartment floor.
The ersatz maintenance man on the stadium roof had exchanged the workman’s coveralls, which he had been wearing when he entered the stadium, with a tight-fitting, one-piece, zippered combat suit colored in a black and dark green geometric camouflage pattern.
From a hidden panel at the bottom of the large toolbox that he had brought on site, he assembled the components of a small and highly accurized Anti-Materiel Rifle, much more than just any sniper’s rifle. The man’s AMR fired a subsonic 0.50-inch caliber (12.7mm) Browning round, originally designed for the much larger and long-serving Ma Deuce (M-2) heavy machine gun. It was capable of hitting targets at ranges of over half a mile, and penetrating hardened surfaces such as rolled steel armor plating, civilian cars, or poured concrete structures, to ensure a ‘hard kill’ on the intended victim.
Resting the AMR on its folding bipod atop the hot metal roof of the stadium and rolling out a thin foam sheet to dissipate the reflected summer heat so it wouldn’t scald his body while he lay prone, the sniper flipped down an integral range finder and telescope that was affixed to his lightweight headgear on a pair of hinges and settled onto his mat in a comfortable position.
Scanning the sky boxes with his specially shielded telescopic lens, the sniper was able to look through the many faces of the spectators for his quarry, without giving off a telltale reflection in the hot summer sunlight. He smiled to himself, as he settled on the Senator’s box, where the confidential secretary was still knelt between McLaughlin’s thighs and bobbing her head up and down. With a much better view of the action than any of the other patrons of the stadium, the sniper watched as the buxom assistant serviced her boss orally. The action was also the sniper’s signal to strike.
Raising his telescope visor and switching to the long-range scope on the AMR, the sniper sighted in on a spot right between the pinched-shut eyes of the Senator, as the infiltrator made his usual sniper’s preparations to fire. In seconds, he had ticked off the range, direction, elevation, prevailing winds and firing arc in his head that would hit the Senator in a single deadly head shot without taking out the girl between his knees.
***
Top of the first inning:
The first few pitches had been only marginally amusing for Duke as he watched the Mets’ star pitcher strike out the first two Yankee batters in a row. He peered through the binoculars in order to see the action up close and personal, while Scarlett yawned in the seat next to him and tried to enjoy the sun on her face and a stadium hot dog with the works.
The loud crack of a bat against a hardball aroused a cheer from the crowd as the third batter on the Yankee lineup scored a double and sprinted halfway around the baseball diamond. The cracking sound of the hit echoed all the way up to the stadium roof, where it temporarily distracted the sniper. But he never lost his fix on the Senator’s head.
The weather report for game day over the Bronx was clear skies and wispy clouds, but to the sniper, a simple change in the wind would ruin his single chance at completing his mission. So he decided to bide his time and let the game progress a bit before he determined that the conditions for the shot were optimal.
He pulled out a small, orange plastic flag on a wiry shaft and jammed it vertically into a small crack in the roof. It was very much like the small flags used around construction sites to mark buried power lines and the like. For the sniper, it was a reliable, low-tech solution to his windage problem, since he could tell at a glance if the moving air had changed.
The sniper knew he had time - no Senator in his right mind would decide to get up and bolt when he had a hot woman giving him oral pleasures during the middle of a baseball game. He re-checked his figures mentally at least twice more, almost cursing to himself when he thought he saw the plastic flag flap in a new direction. But the wind held its direction and speed, and the other conditions didn’t change.
Everything in life to a sniper centered around two things, stealth and the shot. Stealth was required because no sniper can surprise a target when he himself is making all manner of noise and confusion. And the shot was everything. All snipers that were worth their salt worked alone or with a spotter who was both bodyguard and assistant. Even the spotter was less important than the shot, since a spotter was often expendable or used as a decoy to keep an enemy away from the shooter.
“One shot, one kill,” echoed in the sniper’s mind as he began a series of slow breathing exercises to get the final calibration he needed between his body, his mind and the hair trigger of his AMR.
***
Bottom of the first inning:
Although the Yankees had two runners advance onto bases, they were unable to score due to a ballsy double play. The players hurriedly changed places as the Mets starting lineup came up to the home plate.
The Senator began to twist his face into odd contortions, probably because his secretary was bringing him to orgasm and he didn’t want to cry out. Eventually, his face muscles relaxed into a soft, satisfied grin as he let out a guttural moan of delight. The secretary silently moved her mouth away from Senator McLaughlin and spat disgustedly into a paper napkin, quickly wiping some excess spittle from around her face.
Her makeup had been smudged, and her lipstick needed some adjusting, so the secretary got to her feet and set about excusing herself for a much needed trip to the VIP restrooms on the uppermost level.
Although she and the sniper knew each other, for purposes of their own protection, neither had chosen to choreograph when and how the actual shot would occur. But to the sniper, her departing the sky box would make conditions for his shot optimal and he was going to take the opportunity to fire.
Smoothing her miniskirt and tight-fitting halter top, the secretary was moving to leave when the Senator grabbed onto her arm and turned her around. “You’re not done yet, are you, Mandy?” McLaughlin lecherously grinned at the secretary and slid his hand up her miniskirt. He pointed to his open fly, indicating he wanted to be pleasured in another way.
Mandy firmly pushed McLaughlin’s hand away from her butt and continued to walk towards the sky box’s privacy door. “Sorry, Chuck-baby; I have a headache, so that’s all you’re getting right now.” She gathered up her purse and small makeup bag and proceeded to exit the sky box.
Senator McLaughlin sighed as he raised a glass of wine to his lips. The thought, “Women, can’t figure them out,” crossed his mind as he glanced about his surroundings. He noticed the cheering fans everywhere, some looking distinctly in his direction, and didn’t seem to care whether they saw him getting his rocks off with Mandy or not.
Looking to his left, the Senator spotted a blond, well-muscled man peering down at the field through binoculars in the neighboring sky box, and his exceptionally gorgeous, redheaded girlfriend snoozing in her seat.
One of the Mets’ best hitters was at the plate with his bat at the ready, the end moving up and down slightly as it hung in the air over the batter’s right shoulder. The Yankee pitcher wound up and delivered a ‘two-knuckled’ fastball at over 85 miles an hour. Because of the way it was released, the ‘two-knuckle’ would fly straight and true, until its backwards spin caused it to lose momentum and drop from its straight path, hopefully just as the batter swung the bat to meet it. The Mets hitter swung and connected, letting out a loud crack as the wooden bat impacted at full speed with the solid core of the hardball and sent it flying up into the air and towards the outfield.
As the cheers of the Mets fans rose with the hit, Senator McLaughlin’s head exploded in a mass of blood, bone and brain matter. The sniper’s shot was off by a fraction of a millimeter for his angle and the bullet grazed the cement overhang of the row of sky boxes above the Senator’s level before it hit. The grazing only served to make the incoming bullet tumble in flight, rendering it about three times as damaging when it hit the Senator’s soft tissue and skull. The round went in right between the eyes and came out explosively through the base of his skull, taking McLaughlin’s life in that instant.
Everyone, including Duke and Scarlett, only heard the crack of the bat. The silencer on the AMR and the special subsonic powder charge made the shot virtually undetectable as it lanced through the air and into the Senator. But the sight of McLaughlin’s head exploding and the decapitated body sliding lifelessly to the floor of the sky box in Duke’s peripheral vision caught his attention immediately.
Accidentally jabbing Scarlett in one of her breasts with his elbow, Duke leaped to his feet and crouched behind the cement front wall of their sky box. He trained his glasses across the stadium and up, to see if he could identify a shooter.
Scarlett rubbed her chest with a pained look as she was shaken awake, and when she saw Duke crouched down and scanning, her own combat instincts took hold. “What the hell just happened?” she asked, promising herself to give Duke a painful jab when he wasn’t expecting one.
“Look to your right, Red. Someone up high just blew Senator McLaughlin’s head right off. It had to be a large-caliber weapon, like Low-Light’s Barrett Mark 84. I’ll bet the shooter’s up on the roof somewhere.”
Scarlett gathered up her handbag and made sure her military ID was handy. “I’ll grab a cop and spread the word. Maybe we can even scare up a weapon and shoot back.”
Scarlett ran out of their sky box and grabbed a convenient NYPD patrolman, brandishing her military ID. “Hey, you there, Police Officer! I’m Staff Sergeant O’Hara with the U.S. Army. There’s been a shooting! Get help on the radio and follow me!”
She led the bewildered, yet alert, young officer to the privacy door for the Senator’s sky box, where the bodyguard was stoically manning his post. Reaching the bodyguard, she tried to shove him out of the way and get the privacy door open. The large man didn’t budge, and the NYPD patrolman wasn’t really helping.
“Dammit, open this door up! The Senator’s been shot!” Scarlett pleaded as the bodyguard shook his head no.
The bodyguard looked at Scarlett like she was crazy, even though the white and green military ID was unmistakable. “The Senator’s been in there by himself since his secretary left for the bathroom. No one else entered. How are you sure he was shot?”
Scarlett gathered up more energy, hunched her shoulder and shoved the bodyguard aside and into a support column. “You fucking idiot! It was a sniper!” She felt that the bodyguard had a sidearm under his windbreaker, and she withdrew it with lightning speed. “Go see for yourselves!” Scarlett ran back to the sky box Duke was in as the bodyguard and police officer traded looks and then cautiously opened the privacy door to have a look.
Meanwhile, the sniper had retreated from the edge of the broad sloping stadium roof. He was far enough back down the slope that no one from the stands could see what he was up to. He shimmied back into the maintenance worker coveralls and broke down the AMR. Getting back into character, he worked his way down from the roof access through a closed side stairwell and down to the ground level.
Scarlett had returned to Duke’s side in the sky box, locking and loading the bodyguard’s Smith & Wesson Model 1076 10mm automatic. It was marked as a former FBI weapon that had been refurbished and sold in the civilian market, having been originally built without a magazine-connector safety feature for that agency. The civilian models could not be fired if the pistol’s magazine was removed, but the FBI weapons stayed hot. She pointed the former Bureau-issue weapon towards the opposite roof edge, and asked, “Spot anything yet, Duke?”
Duke shook his head no, and sighed. “I’ll bet the crafty bastard’s already making his escape. We need to lock this place down immediately.”
To the Joes’ right, the bodyguard and young patrolman finally barged into the sky box and halted immediately as their shoes made slurping sounds. They trod right through the blood and gore that was McLaughlin’s brain matter, and saw the limp, grossly twisted and headless body bent backwards across the sky box seats. The deceased Senator’s fly was still open and his recently-serviced, flaccid member hung out for all to see. Gasping with fear, the patrolman finally raised his radio to call downstairs to his security supervisor.
***
A cluster of NYPD officers assigned to crowd control and safety at Yankee Stadium stood by their patrol cars, drinking cans of soda and listening to the game inside with portable transistor radios. They didn’t mind not being able to go inside and watch the game, because the time and a half special duty pay could keep them in cold sodas and radio batteries for a long time.
Every NYPD officer’s handheld radio squawked at the same time when the alarm was sounded from Senator McLaughlin’s sky box. Every officer around the stadium quickly went into an alert mode, waiting for a supervisor to issue instructions.
From up in the sky box, Duke located the small folding cellular phone in his pocket and dialed a preprogrammed number. As soon as the greeting started and a beep came across the line, he yelled into the handset.
“This is Duke! Scramble all New York Joes immediately! Scarlett and I are at Yankee Stadium on the VIP level. Senator McLaughlin’s been murdered. Order all Joes to report to Yankee Stadium armed and ready to shut the place down and to do a physical security sweep for the sniper-assassin. Get your sorry asses mobilized YESTERDAY!”
The voice mail message was instantly transmitted to the Communications-Operations room, a small ten-foot by ten-foot room at Fort Hamilton where the Joes staged for their local missions. The duty controller heard Duke’s call, and sounded the general alarm to get every trooper he could find prepped and on the road to the Bronx.
***
A female NYPD officer in a Sergeant’s summer uniform of short-sleeved white shirt and blue trousers came out of the stadium’s security office and started barking out orders.
“This is an emergency lockdown situation! Call back to your team leaders and then to your precinct houses for all available backup! Contact the Bronx ESU platoon and the crime scene team and get them rolling ASAP! I’m going to get the maintenance man so we can lock off the stadium gates and form a security perimeter. No one leaves this stadium until an incident commander arrives and starts a security sweep!”
The NYPD Sergeant pointed to one of the patrol cars as she went to find the maintenance office. “Have that RMP running and the trunk popped when I get back! Move it!” The RMP driver fished out his keys and started the engine on the 2002 Chevy Malibu ‘Radio Motor Patrol’ car. He had the trunk raised seconds later, and stepped out of the car to await the Sergeant.
The female Sergeant entered the maintenance office cautiously, and felt an arm snake about her neck from behind. She could feel the hot breath of a man behind her and the musky scent of cheap aftershave on his coveralls as he smoothly pulled the automatic pistol from her hip holster and jammed it into the small of her back. “Don’t make a sound and you’ll be okay.” The voice was even and monotonous. “If you so much as twitch wrong, I’ll do you right now.”
The Sergeant’s voice changed from a typical New Yorker’s accent to her own natural one, that of an Irish or English woman with a hint of Cockney, a blending characteristic of her Australian heritage. “You know that it’s me, Bloodpool. It’s Zarana. Let me loose; we’re leaving right now.”
Bloodpool, the sniper, transferred everything that could be linked to the assassination into a large duffel bag or his false-bottomed tool box and then held the duffel open as Zarana stuffed her secretary’s disguise in with the gear. Bloodpool then gathered up the bags and followed Zarana out to the waiting RMP.
“Toss your stuff back there. We’re in a hurry,” Zarana said, returning to her New Yorker accent. As the RMP driver leaned over to climb into his car, Zarana grabbed his shoulder and turned him to the side. “You stay here and help with crowd control. The maintenance man and I will start locking the gates.” She turned to the other waiting cops, who were adjusting bullet-proof Kevlar vests and loading their police-issue automatic pistols. “Do any of you have an ETA from the CSU and ESU?”
One of the officers spoke up as Bloodpool got into the passenger’s seat of the running RMP. “Sarge, the Crime Scene Unit will be here to set up a cordon in the sky boxes in twenty minutes. There are a couple of Army types and the Senator’s bodyguard up there with one of ours keeping the place closed for now. The first responders from the Four-Truck Emergency Service Unit’s assault platoon will be here in five minutes. Adam Four-Three and a district deputy chief will be setting up the incident control point.”
Zarana climbed into the driver’s seat of the RMP and rolled down the window. “Very well. Secure the stadium itself for now and keep the crowds under control. When Adam Four-Three and the IC arrive, work your way out to the parking lot perimeter and close it down. We’re going to lock off as many gates as we can in the meantime.”
As the other NYPD officers milling around Zarana and Bloodpool nodded their understanding, Zarana turned on the RMP lights and sirens and roared off for the outer gates of Yankee Stadium. From there, they turned out onto the Grand Concourse, and by way of back streets and passable alleys, they got onto the Cross Bronx Expressway.
NYPD mobile units, RMP cars and specially outfitted pickups belonging to the city’s Bronx-based ESU SWAT platoon began converging on the stadium to seal it off, while Zarana drove their purloined Impala northwest towards Yonkers. They eventually abandoned the patrol car in a rest area on the New York Thruway just north of the city.
Zarana and Bloodpool had a legitimate car waiting for them in the service area parking lot, which they drove up to the sleepy town of Rhinebeck, along the Hudson River, to report their successful kill in to Cobra Commander and to await further mission instructions.