Paul steers his Kiowa northwest. Up there outside of Rockville, Maryland, is a strip belonging to one of Global Strategic Solutions’ competitors, Tyson International Services.
He wonders if they’re hiring.
Only one way to find out.
CHAPTER 74
SO ONCE AGAIN I’m running away from danger with a protectee at my side, like the hundreds of drills and training exercises I’ve participated in, except this one is no drill, and I’m running, panting, so scared that I’m going to lose it all in the next sixty seconds or so.
I wish I had taken a couple of agents along with me, so we could be running with a protective screen around CANARY, but it’s too late for regrets or recriminations. I just want to run and drag her down the driveway, get her into the relative safety of our Suburban, and then get the hell out of here. Get someplace safe. Like Pennsylvania or Delaware, anyplace miles away from here and the District of Columbia.
“Agent … please … not so fast … please … not so fast …” Fast? I feel like we’re running in sloppy mud up to our knees, and I swerve around, looking for that military helicopter, knowing deep in my bones that it hadn’t been out here for a sightseeing trip.
But the helicopter has sped off.
Ordered off?
Or sent away because something else is coming in our direction?
I move as fast as I can dare, not wanting the First Lady to stumble and fall, wasting precious seconds in our fast exit. So many questions I want answered—from how did she end up here, to who had kidnapped her and severed her finger, and did she write that possible suicide note but—
Not enough time!
Not enough time!
I think of wasting five seconds or so, trying to raise Scotty again over my damn radio, but instead I push on, thinking that in those five seconds I’ll be that much closer to the armored Suburban and the four armed Secret Service agents within, and—
“Agent! Please!”
“Ma’am, I—”
Up ahead a small man emerges from the bush-covered slope, dressed in camo gear, carrying a long rifle with a telescopic sight, and the muscle memory from years of training kicks in.
“Gun!” I scream, and I whirl around, grabbing CANARY, protecting her with my body, enveloping her, just like the training, just like the training, just like—
The sound of the rifle shot and the hammer blow to my back happen in a brief second.
I fall into blackness.
Amelia, I think, poor, orphaned Amelia.
CHAPTER 75
MARSHA GRAY RAISES her scoped Remington, nodding with satisfaction. Dead center to the back, and the bonus is that she isn’t using a standard .308 cartridge, but rather what’s known as a frangible round, something designed to break up easily upon striking, like the cartridges the air marshals use, so any gunfire in an airliner won’t puncture the hull and cause a sudden depressurization.
Plus, this round is carrying the same type of poison that she used the other day against that poor kid Carl, back at the Hay-Adams Hotel. Any forensics testing will show that this overworked and pressured government employee had died from sudden heart failure.
She works the bolt of the rifle, ejecting the spent cartridge, and then grabs the brass and runs up the dirt road, her battle-rattle gear jostling along, not wanting to leave any evidence behind. Marsha knows she only has a handful of seconds before those Secret Service clowns back there figure something is amiss after hearing a rifle shot blast through the morning air.
Marsha gets closer. The dead agent is sprawled over the First Lady, who’s struggling to get out from underneath the taller and heavier dead woman. She brings up her rifle, doesn’t even bother using the scope, because at this range, she can’t miss. She’ll make the shot and then get the hell out, and leave behind the mystery of how a Secret Service agent and the First Lady both died of apparent heart attacks at the same time in the same place.
So what, she thinks. Folks still can’t figure out how and why Jack Ruby nailed Lee Harvey Oswald back in the day, and this will just be one more mystery for the ages.
The First Lady is talking, pleading, mouth moving, and Marsha just ignores the sounds, starts squeezing the trigger—
As the agent rolls over, brings up an automatic pistol, and shoots Marsha three times in the chest.
CHAPTER 76
I’M CONSCIOUS AND my back is hurting like hell, and I hear the rattle of someone’s camo gear as he approaches, and when I think he’s close enough to take the shot, I roll over and quickly squeeze the trigger of my SIG Sauer three times, hitting the gunman right in the center chest, three times in the 10-ring mark at a shooting range, and he flips right onto his back, even though he’s probably wearing a vest.
I stand up and go over to him, pick up his rifle, toss it down the road, as the four agents come racing up, all of them with their service weapons out, all of them moving like sprinters, and I say “Clear!” and get back to CANARY.
She’s trembling, eyes wide.
“Ma’am, are you all right?” I ask. “Are you injured?”
The First Lady shakes her head, starts to get up. I lift her up with one arm and a weeping Pamela Smithson, her detail lead, helps her up on the other side.
“No, I’m fine, I’m fine … just had the wind knocked out of me … but Agent, that man, he shot you. Are you all right?”
“I think so,” I say. I look over and see Tanya, Scotty, and Brian examining the gunman, and I take off my scarf, and then my wool coat. I wince. I feel like there’s going to be one hell of a bruise back there by this time tomorrow morning, if I’m still alive.
Pamela looks with me as I examine my coat. There’s a tear in Amelia’s scarf, and another, smaller tear in my coat, and what appear to be fragments of some ceramic that is dissolving before my eyes.
Pamela whistles. “Boss, you should buy a lottery ticket when this day is done, ’cause you’re the luckiest woman alive. That looks like a round the air marshals use, to break up on impact. It broke up, all right, on that damn thick scarf and coat of yours.”
“Not lucky yet,” I say, putting my coat and scarf back on. The other three agents are still standing over the body of the gunman, and I say, “What do you got? Does he have any ID on him?”
Scotty calls back. “He’s a she, boss, and she’s still alive, though barely. Underneath all this camouflage, she had on a Kevlar vest.”
Tanya says, “Too goddamn bad, I say.”
Smithson is now talking to the First Lady, and I go over, look down at the gunman, a slight frame that is dark-skinned, in uniform, and I think—
I have no real evidence, but I’m certain Ben’s killer is on the ground before me, unconscious.
I have to take a deep breath, focus, and restrain myself, so I don’t put a fourth round in her head.
I say, “Any ID?”
“Nothing,” Tanya says.
“Any radio, or cell phone, or anything?”
Brian says, “Nothing, ma’am. Looks like she’s clean.”
Focus, I think, focus.
“Tanya, get back down to the road, get the Suburban up here right away.”
“You got it, Sally.”