Chapter 3
“On your feet, Ullrich!” the guard at the cell door snapped tersely.
Ullrich sat up on his bunk and swung his feet to the floor and ran his fingers through his cropped grey hair. Squinting, he looked up out of the gloom of his cramped cell to the three guards standing in the open doorway, framed by the streaming sunlight.
He stood and the guards entered, the chains and cuffs rattling in their hands. While one watched, baton in hand, the other two shackled the prisoner, ankles and wrists, fastening the chains to the harness about his waist.
“Let’s go!” snapped the lead guard.
Ullrich edged awkwardly through his cell door, his steps cut to a shuffle. The head-guard led the party down the main stairs, the other two hovering at the prisoner’s elbows.
Milling prisoners eyed the group as they made their way through the main prison complex, then they passed into the long, dark maze-like passageways beneath the prison, heading out of the main buildings. Pausing at a guard’s station, the officer in charge of the escort signed for the prisoner and a heavy metal door ahead ground open with a loud electrical wail. The party stumbled out, blinking into the fierce desert sunlight.
The yard was a hive of activity. Guards and other assorted uniformed and suited men bustled back and forth, and while Ullrich and his escort waited, he carefully surveyed the scene. At the centre of the yard was a large bus, painted a dull grey with metal grates over all the side and rear windows. Around it were three cruisers, marked as Federal Marshals, a single unmarked sedan and way over the other side a black van. Guards patrolled the walls overhead and others were stationed in the yard itself, almost all heavily armed. However they were just bit players. The Federal Marshals were taking charge, ready for the transport. They were all dressed identically in pale blue shirtsleeves and lightweight dark blue windcheaters, dark baseball hats atop their heads, emblazoned by a single star. All wore sidearms and carried an assortment of pump-action shotguns, Uzis and AR15 rifles. Clustered around the black van were a group of figures all dressed in dark overalls, wearing combat boots, body-armour and Kevlar Fritz helmets. These men moved with a silky assurance, wearing their tough authority with pride. They carried Colt XM177 Commando compact assault rifles, foreshortened M16s, or MP5 sub-machine guns, mostly the short MP5A3 with retractable butt or the ultra-compact MP5A4 with no butt and a fixed forward grip. All the men were checking their weapons, seating magazines, the rattle of bolts carrying across the yard. Ullrich noted their sidearms, SIGs, and the grenades strung from their vests, and began assessing their number.
“Good Morning, Mr. Ullrich!” AD Lowell approached Ullrich, escorted by two tough-looking young FBI Agents.
“Lowell, I might have known you wouldn’t have missed this.” Ullrich sneered. “No Agent Parsons this morning?”
“He does have other work to do, and now you’re all wrapped up, he has bigger fish to fry.”
“Stop, you’re hurting my feelings!”
Ullrich jerked his head towards the black van and it’s passengers. “Your HRT, or Special Operations Group from the US Marshals?”
“SOG, this is the Marshals show, I’m only hear as a spectator.”
“And I bet you’re loving every minute of it. These two boys your bodyguards or just your latest catamites?” Ullrich laughed, rattling his chained wrists.
“Get this piece of shit on the bus, now!” Lowell shouted, and two Deputy Marshals appeared, grabbing the prisoner by the elbows and dragging him onto the bus, the doors hissing shut behind him.
Still manacled, Ullrich was shoved through a wire cage door and into a seat, one of the Deputies slapping him across the face for good measure. Laughing the two men retreated, slamming the door of the cage behind them, one taking up station at the door with a shotgun, the other taking a seat behind the driver.
Ullrich straightened up in his seat and rolled his head, loosening the muscles in his neck and checking out his surroundings. The rear three-quarters of the bus was caged off, the windows heavily barred and the guard at the gate had a clear view of everything. He also noticed, somewhat to his surprise, that he was not the only prisoner aboard. At the rear was a tall, rangy, balding man, head down, but Ullrich recognized as a notorious paedophile kidnapper/murderer. A wiry black youth, no more than 19, head shaved, sneered back at him from several seats back. Nearest Ullrich was the young white prisoner from the fight in the yard, staring out of the side window.
“Hey, man, don’t I get the fucking bus to myself?” called Ullrich to the guard at the gate.
“Other people gotta ride, we ain’t just gonna lay on a ride for you, then have to sort out these motherfuckers later. That okay, bigshot?” snarled the guard.
“Hell, you lay on all this security for me, then I have to share the ride?”
“Shut it, Ullrich, I don’t wanna have to listen to your shit all the way to LA!”
“Here we go!” called the driver and with a loud hiss the bus lurched forward and the convoy rolled out of the prison gates. Ullrich craned his neck, checking front and rear. Two of the cruisers took up the lead; behind the bus followed the black van, the unmarked sedan carrying Lowell and his agents and the final cruiser riding the tail.
Gradually the convoy picked up speed, tearing through the flat, arid landscape, the Sierra Nevada behind them, fading into the distance. Sun dazzled brightly off the vehicle windows, thick golden dust swirled in their wake.
Ullrich leant across the aisle in the bus.
“Hey, man, how you doing, remember me?” he called out to the young white prisoner, sotto voce.
“Sure.” he turned, eyeing Ullrich coolly, his clear, grey eyes unwavering.
“The name’s John Ullrich, friends call me Jack.” He smiled and nodded.
“Paul Riesman.” He nodded in return.
“Where they taking you?”
“Preliminary Hearing; bank robbery, firing on federal officers, attempted murder.”
“You must be looking at least twenty years!”
“No shit, got me dead to rights. Trying to cut a deal, but the asshole prosecutor ain’t playing ball. You?”
“Much the same.”
“Hey, you two lovebirds, shut your fucking mouths!” shouted the guard on the door, slamming his shotgun butt against the cage.
Ullrich straightened up in his seat, fixing his cold eyes on the smirking guard.
“Brrr! Don’t scare me, Mr. Ullrich, sir!” the guard shuddered in mock terror, laughing over his shoulder to his friends up front.
Ullrich remained still, smiling thinly, biding his time.
* * *
The convoy had been travelling for around half an hour and the landscape around them had gradually changed; the flat, barren desert giving way to more undulating ground, the road edged by sloping, rocky rises, the vegetation more verdant.
The driver and guard up front were chatting amiably, their laughter carrying down the length of the bus, while the guard at the door whistled tunelessly through his teeth, staring vacantly into space.
Ullrich checked his fellow passengers. The paedophile still stared down at his shoes, the black youth slouched across his seat, drumming his hands to some imagined rhythm and Riesman gazed out at the scenery streaming by.
Ullrich settled in his seat, placed his hands on his thighs and braced his sneakered feet slightly apart. He waited.
The lead cruiser erupted in a fireball, no one saw the hand-launched missile before it struck, the white vapour trail following it as it streaked in from the right, it’s detonation immediately igniting the car’s fuel tank. The car shuddered and halted dead in its tracks, the tattered, blackened shell engulfed in flame, the four Deputy Marshals aboard killed instantly.
The second cruiser slammed on its brakes, skidding wildly, fishtailing as it halted. The rest of the convoy followed suit; the screech of brakes filling the air, then a crash as the van rear-ended the bus. A second RPG streaked down from the right, this time from the rear, slamming into the cruiser on the tail-end of the convoy. The detonation of the explosive warhead blew out all its windows and tore off three of its four doors. The trunk flew open and smoke and dust swirled around the twisted wreck. Coughing and retching, a single bloody figure stumbled from the front passenger seat, his uniform blackened rags and his right arm a bloody stump. He stumbled and fell to his knees just feet from the wreck, then the car’s fuel tank detonated. The blast threw flames in all directions, the man engulfed, his screams swallowed by the inferno.
“Holy Fucking Shit!” screamed the bus driver as his passengers hit the deck.
The convoy was hemmed in by the two blazing wrecks, and the rises on either side were too steep for them to climb. They were trapped.
The remaining cruiser up front gunned its engine as the driver tried to straighten his vehicle.
“You three get out and cover me, I’ll try and ram the wreck clear!” the driver yelled, his voice almost cracking.
His three fellow Deputy Marshals burst from the vehicle and stationed themselves around it, uncertainly eyeing the slopes on either side. The lead deputy dropped to one knee and with his Mini-Uzi in his right hand and signalled the other two to fan out left and right. The two Deputies, one with an AR15, the other with a pump-action shotgun, began moving tentatively, weapons up, feet grinding the loose shale. The driver gunned his engine and rammed forward into the blackened wreck blocking the road, reversing then ramming again, metal screeching against metal.
The rear of the van popped open and the dark-suited SOG officers spilled out, weapons ready. They trained their guns on the slopes, eyes scanning below their Kevlar helmets and beneath their goggles. The officer in charge climbed from the front of the van and circled to the rear.
“All right, listen up. Surround the bus, dig in and keep your heads down. I want total coverage of those hillsides. Anything moves, waste it. OK, let’s go!” the team moved off.
Suddenly the hillsides exploded with automatic gunfire, the intense fusillade ripping into the convoy.
The two Deputies moving up the slopes were cut down before they could get off a single shot. The officer on the road opened up with his Uzi, climbing to his feet and backing off, squeezing off short bursts, but before he could empty his 32 round magazine a volley of shots tore across his chest, the Teflon-coated rounds easily penetrating his Kevlar vest. His Uzi spun away through the air as he crumpled.
The driver of the cruiser saw the deaths of his fellow Deputy Marshals. Screaming with fear and rage, he shifted gear, slamming his foot down on the accelerator, the car lurching forward, crashing into the wreck blocking the road. Gunfire from either side concentrated on the cruiser, ripping it apart. Bullets tore through the windshield, doors, and chassis, the interior of the vehicle an explosion of metal, glass and blood as the driver was shredded, jerking and shuddering beneath the repeated blows, his howls choked off by blood and finally death. When the gunfire ceased the cruiser was riddled from nose to tail, a twisted wreck.
Further back the SOG men came under intense fire before they could encircle the bus. Their commander was cut down by a single round from a sniper, ripping through his throat. As he lay drowning in his own blood, his men were chopped down around him. They moved in small tight groups up the side of the bus, squeezing off bursts from their weapons. Half their number were left dead or dying in their wake before they were in position.
While the SOG team was coming under fire, Lowell and his men made their break. The driver provided covering fire with his stubby MP5KA4, firing over the hood into the left hillside, where the heaviest firing seemed to be coming from, while the other two agents hustled Lowell toward the cover of a distant hollow camouflaged by bushes and boulders. Covering Lowell with their bodies, one armed with a Micro-Uzi, the other with a Smith & Wesson semi-automatic pistol, the agents dragged the AD over the exposed ground and tossed him down into cover, diving in on top of him.
Back at the car, the FBI driver dropped to one knee, popped his empty 30 round clip and rammed home a fresh one. He yanked back the cocking handle and rose, ready to make a fighting retreated. As he cleared the hood, he came face to face with another figure, seemingly rising out of the dirt on the opposite side of the road. The two men stared at each other; the grimy suited agent and the soldier dressed in sand-coloured fatigues and floppy bush hat. The agent stared into the face, covered with brown and green paint, and was stunned to see a smile flicker across it. The driver brought up his MP5, but the soldier just squeezed off a burst from his M4, dropping the agent dead. The soldier trained the M203 grenade launcher slung beneath the rifle’s barrel on the sedan and fired a single round. The grenade detonated, lifting the car several feet into clear of the ground, before crashing back down in a tattered heap.
On the bus, Ullrich kept his head down, but thus far not a single round had penetrated the passenger compartment. Suddenly a heavy burst of fire ripped through the bus cab, shredding the driver and the marshal up front, blood splattering the riddled windshield.
“Oh Fuck!” moaned the Deputy left by the cage. He squatted and clutched the shotgun closer to his chest.
“This is not happening! This is not happening!” he kept mumbling, over and over, like a deranged mantra.
“Just keep cool, man!” whispered Ullrich, in an attempt to soothe the increasingly jumpy guard.
The Deputy Marshal spun around, jacking a shell into his shotgun with a savage pump, unaware that there was already one in the breech, the unused round ejected, spinning through the air, hitting the floor and bouncing away. The guard trained his gun on Ullrich’s chest.