Chapter 36

It was a year later. Kelly had delivered a beautiful baby boy who was now over six months old, Mikhail Adams Callahan, called Mickey. Although the plan for Camille to be his wet nurse hadn’t worked out, the girl slept in the nursery with the baby and normally had taken care of his two o’clock feeding. Kelly thought about her pregnancy with some amusement. She remembered telling everyone she would be a mess — a happy mess, but a mess. She never was. In fact on the day of her delivery, she appeared to be just starting to show her pregnancy. The delivery itself was nearly as fast and easy as Cathy’s had been.

She smiled to herself. She had just learned that Cathy was expecting another child and the Adams were ecstatic about the prospect. Kelly was on her way to her office because Camille was wheeling Mickey in his baby carriage over to see his mother. Kelly thought about her son. He looked exactly as Selma had predicted: He had dark hair and blue eyes. She thought of him as a baby Mike and adored him.

She opened the door to her outer office and encountered resistance. The door would not fully open. After pushing her way in, she found Rita lying unconscious on the floor in a pool of her own blood. Quickly, Kelly grabbed the phone and called the emergency number. She called for security and an ambulance on the double. Then she grabbed the first-aid kit and knelt beside the girl. As she did, Rita’s eyes fluttered open.

Kelly heard her say in a hoarse voice, “They got him, Kel! They got Mickey...” The girl fainted again.

Kelly straightened the girl out on the floor and saw she had been shot twice. One bullet hole was dangerously close to the heart while the other was in her shoulder. As she applied compresses to try to stop the bleeding, Pete Martin ran in. He stopped and dropped to his knees. He put his finger on her pulse. It was there, but weak and thready.

They heard the sound of approaching sirens and moments later hurrying footsteps as the EMTs — emergency medical technicians — arrived. As soon as they took over, Kelly went into her office. There was Mickey’s baby carriage sitting beside her desk, empty. Camille was gone, too.

Kelly picked up the phone and called Security. She said, “This is General Jackson. There has been a shooting and a kidnaping. Seal the post immediately. No one is to enter or leave without full identification. I mean no one, particularly any civilian vehicles that might be on the post for routine deliveries. I want all posts on the alert and I want the full security unit on duty with loaded weapons. Whoever did it has shot one person already. Since no one heard it, I assume they’re using silencers. Consider them to be armed and extremely dangerous.”

Kelly depressed the hook on her phone and then called her home. Selma answered it. She told the woman that Cami and Mickey had been kidnaped. Selma was silent for a moment. Then she said in the strange tone of voice she used when she was seeing things in her mind, “Look near the commissary — a dark panel truck.”

The timbre of her voice changed back to normal. “Horace will be right over.”

Kelly hung up.

As she was changing into her BDUs, Pete came in the office and found Kelly only wearing her bikini pants. She smiled, but it was a grim smile. As he watched she slipped on her combat jacket, then put on her Kevlar vest and tightened the straps to fit her body. She then checked the load in her pistol. Finally, she slipped four more loaded clips into her jacket pocket.

She looked at Pete and asked, “How’s Rita? It looked to me like she lost a lot of blood. And I didn’t like the looks of that chest wound at all!”

Pete looked grim. He said that the EMTs thought she would make it. He had his dress uniform on and asked her to wait for him to change.

She shook her head. “Pete, first, call Security and tell them to look for a dark panel truck that’s over near the commissary. Then I want you to stay here and watch things until Kevin gets back. When he does, go to Security headquarters and coordinate this operation from there. This place should be crawling with special units any minute now. Ask Kevin to call Mike and Sam Adams. Meanwhile, get on the phone and call the FBI. I want to find out the status of my dear friend, Clarence Klein. They’re supposed to have him under surveillance. And ask about the Hostage Rescue Unit!”

She got into her staff car, drove close to the commissary and parked. When she got out, she worked the slide on her automatic to jack a round into the chamber, and started walking towards the commissary. As Selma had predicted, there was a dark panel truck parked beside it with its motor running. To reach it she had to pass by the corner of an adjacent building. As she got close to the corner Kelly saw movement in the shadows beside the building. Thinking of gunmen waiting for her, she moved away from the side of the building to be about thirty feet away from it as she reached the corner. She made sure her shoes made noise on the pavement as she walked so they would know she was coming.

When she reached the corner, two men armed with automatic weapons moved out and opened fire. One round hit her vest, and Kelly rolled with it, bringing her weapon up at the same time. It coughed twice and red holes appeared in the foreheads of the two gunmen. They folded and collapsed. Just then the panel truck started to move, headed toward the gate.

Kelly ran back to her car and grabbed the radio microphone. She identified herself and reported, “Kidnappers are located. They are in a dark blue panel truck, Virginia license 495-BKG, now pulling away from the commissary moving towards Gate 4. Do not let it through the gate. Occupants are armed and extremely dangerous. Shots have been fired and two of them are down.”

She started her car and went after the truck. As she came up behind it near the gate, the truck suddenly stopped. Kelly slammed on her brakes and dove out the door just as her windshield was shattered into thousands of tiny pieces by automatic-weapons fire from gunners in the back of the truck. As soon as the truck stopped, they had opened the back doors and started shooting. From her position flat on the ground partially shielded by the door of her car, she returned fire. Two gunmen fell from the truck with bullet holes in their heads.

She heard firing from security forces at the gate responding to automatic weapons fired from the front of the truck. She stood up and started to move slowly toward the back of the truck. When she was still about thirty feet away, Clarence Klein emerged from the back. He was holding Camille in front of him, while she held the baby carefully in her arms. Klein had his left arm around her neck and was using her tall body as a shield. Then he fired at Kelly. She felt the bullet glance off the left side of her vest and ricochet into her left arm.

Kelly remembered the terrorist firing course she had shot at Quantico and more recently, at Fort Campbell. Klein was lining up another shot when she put a bullet between his eyes. As at the two firing ranges, the bullet hole made a third eye, exactly centered between the other two.

Cami calmly stepped away as Klein’s body collapsed behind her. At the same time, she was still cradling Mickey, and trying to comfort him. The baby was screaming because of the loud noises from the gunfire. Kelly suddenly realized she was bleeding badly from her wounded arm. When one of the security guards came running up, she told him to get a first-aid team, on the double. She went to Cami who now had the baby calmed down. She whispered to him, and he reacted immediately to his mother’s voice with a big smile, and he waved his arm. Kelly slipped her automatic back in her holster and took the baby in her good right arm and kissed him while she held him tight.

She smiled wanly at Camille and said, “Cami, I guess you had better take him. I don’t want to get blood all over him.” Just then an EMT came running up. He put a combat dressing on her arm, which was all she would allow him to do at the time. She said she would turn herself in at the hospital later. Just then they heard a short burst of automatic-weapons fire followed by the loud barking of a .45 automatic. More security people were coming up. One took Camille into his vehicle and headed back for Kelly’s office. Cami winked at Kelly as she left.