Joe said, “Okay, agreed, but Quantico itself is safer than the fricking Mint. How can this goon imagine he’d actually get in here, no matter how crazy he is?” He was silent a moment. “I’ll bet he’ll leave us lying out here for a week, just laugh and watch us. I wonder how long Giffey Talbot is going to wander around outside the Jefferson Dormitory before Savich finally calls this off.
“I was thinking about Giffey—quite a thing, offering yourself up as bait.”
Dave shifted a bit more underneath a bush that barely covered him, and swept his eyes westward. “Hey, we’re bait too, we’re just armed with sniper rifles. Savich said he could be an expert sniper, who the hell knows?”
Joe was listening to Dave shifting in the bushes when he heard some branches snapping off to the side. “Did you hear that, Dave? Hey, look at three o’clock. I saw something moving. All of our people are supposed to stay down, but I saw something move. Just beyond those pine trees.”
Dave Dempsey squinted in the watery sunlight toward the hillock, didn’t see anything. “Who do we have over there?”
“Luther Lindsay.”
“I don’t see anything, but call him now, Joe. This isn’t the time for second-guessing.”
Dave heard Joe whisper urgently into his radio, “Luther, movement in your area. What have you got over there? Luther? Dammit, talk to me. Luther!”
Both Dave and Joe could hear their own breathing. Luther was a fifteen-year man, married with two teenage girls, solid as a rock, and he could hear footsteps on a carpet. Günter couldn’t have gotten to Luther.
Joe repeated, “Luther? Dammit, talk to me, Luther.”
Dave Dempsey was on his own walkie-talkie, calling command. “Captain Ramsey, possible situation. Lindsay isn’t answering. Joe swears he saw some movement over there where Luther’s supposed to be. He can’t raise Luther. We’re moving out.”
Within seconds six SWAT team members were moving fast, bent over, with only the sound of the branches crunching underfoot as they converged on Lindsay’s location.
A shot rang out, then another.
As they climbed the knoll, Joe Boyle could see down into the Quantico quadrangle. Giffey Talbot, her two FBI agent guards behind her, was standing in front of the entrance to the Jefferson Dormitory. She was weaving, looking down at her bloody hands over her chest, the agents behind her were shouting, their guns drawn, jumping in front of her. He watched Giffey fall, one agent catching her before she hit the ground. They both covered her with their bodies as shouts filled the air.
Joe yelled, “Oh Jesus, Dave, he’s near Luther’s location, and he shot Giffey! Get him!”
“Luther!” Dave Dempsey dropped to his knees beside Luther, one of the best of the best, a dead shrub half covering him. He was shaking as he pressed his fingers to the pulse in Luther’s neck. His fingers sank into his flesh to touch the silver wire embedded deep in his neck. Luther was dead.
Within moments, using a general mayday to every SWAT team member, Chief Ramsey deployed them all in twos and threes, to close in on where the shot had been fired. He prayed as he barked out orders that they wouldn’t find any more men dead.
Six minutes later, Dr. Clyde Peterson, the surgeon stationed at Quantico for the duration of Operation Flower Girl, came out of the small exam room, peeling off his blood-covered surgical gloves, and said to Savich, “Agent Talbot is alive. We’re stabilizing her, then getting her to Bethesda. I won’t lie to you, Agent Savich. It’s a large caliber bullet, slowed down some by her vest, but still real close to her heart. She’s actively bleeding and it’s going to be close. It’ll depend on exactly what it hit. So pray. I’ll keep in touch.”
Pray, Dr. Peterson wanted him to pray. Savich watched two men roll Giffey by on a gurney on a dead run. She as white as the sheet pulled up to her neck, an oxygen mask over her nose and mouth, blood running into IVs in her arms. Her own blood was everywhere, surely more blood than a body could lose. If Giffey died, it would be his fault, because he’d been arrogant enough to assume three SWAT teams could control the perimeter, could protect Fleurette—Giffey—from this monster. Dear God, not Giffey. She was a good agent, he’d watched her volunteer for a myriad of assignments, always eager, ready to take on the world.
Savich stood with his back against a brick wall, aware of all the activity going on around him as the helicopter lifted off the pad right outside the Jefferson Dormitory. He knew that Captain Ramsey was searching methodically, that the captain knew a lot more than he did about how to cover the grounds as quickly and efficiently as possible to find Günter. There was nothing he could do to help out there. All he could do was stand here like a dolt and know that he’d been the one to bring it all about.