23
Nick jolted awake. He was lying face down between two thorny bushes. Before he sat up, he checked his phone. There was a missed call from Brooke. He checked the clock––he hadn’t been out long—only a few seconds had gone by as far as he could tell. As he pushed himself up to a crouch, he wondered why Nasir hadn’t killed him. Then he realized it was actually smart that he hadn’t. The blast of an unsuppressed gun would surely have gotten him caught. Nick must have been close when the cloak went away. Nasir must have seen him after he placed the bomb.
The bomb!
Brooke was calling him again, but he clicked to ignore it and quickly dialed Zeke.
“You’re okay!”
“Zeke, where is the bomb Nasir was setting the timer on?”
Zeke didn’t miss a beat. “Go to the wall of the White House across from you. About twenty feet down, the bag is nestled between two bushes.”
He had only been twenty feet from Nasir. If Nick hadn’t been so worried about security seeing him, he would have spotted Nasir and been able to take him out. But there was no time to dwell on what couldn’t be changed. Nick ran across the opening to the wall of the White House. Sure enough, there was the bag.
“Zeke, find Nasir and send his location to Brooke. I’ll call you when I need you. Be on standby!”
Nick opened the bag, and sure enough, the clock was counting down. Only two minutes to go.
"I already have Nasir. Been following him since he knocked you out. He jumped the fence and used his gun to take a car. The big guys in the Army clothes like you wear almost got to him, but he drove away. Why don't they make that fence taller if that house is so important?"
Nick ignored the last question. He was busy scanning the area for the best place to throw the bag to ensure minimal damage.
"Never mind," Zeke said. “More important, he tossed another bag right after he knocked you out. It was strapped to his back."
Nick closed his eyes and recalled the image on his phone. He did remember Nasir having something on his back.
Zeke kept talking, "So you should probably disable that one and get to the next one before it blows up."
"You know something about how to disarm it, do ya?" Nick said sarcastically. He knew Zeke didn't know anything about bombs. He picked up the bag, and started running toward the back of the White House where he knew there was some kind of park. This early in the morning, it should be pretty empty.
"No," Zeke said. "I don't know anything about them, really. But when I was doing my countdown to shut down the cloak, I had the ASE keyed in on Nasir. As soon as the cloak shut off, I watched him type in the combination on the keypad."
Just as Zeke's words registered, two armed guards at the back of the White House spotted Nick and began shouting at him. They had him dead to rights. Nick had no choice but to freeze, because if they shot him like Nick knew they would, not only would the bomb in his hand go off, but so would the other one Nasir had been able to plant before he ran. And that would have a devastating amount of casualties.
"Nick, did you hear me?" Nick could hear Zeke, but couldn't respond. "I know how to stop it!"
Nick was relieved to hear Zeke say that, but he had to survive security before he could breathe easy. He held the bomb bag up in the air. "I have a bomb! It's on a timer!" He needed to get their attention, and with that, he certainly did. The two men stopped running toward him and raised their guns. They were only about thirty feet from him. "Just listen to me. I can shut it off, but I need you to let me do it. If you shoot me, a lot of people are going to die."
"Put the bag down and step away. Now!" the man on the left shouted.
"Listen to me!" Nick shouted back. "This bomb is going to explode in one minute! Don't shoot! I'm on your side!"
The men shouted at him again, but Nick didn't have time to heed their warnings. He dropped to a knee and opened up the bag. He was looking at an electronic keypad that was attached to the front of some sort of explosive. "What's the combination, Zeke!"
Again, Zeke didn't hesitate. "5, 9, 3,7, and 5. Then push the red button below the numbers."
"Step away from the bag, right now, or we'll shoot!" the man screamed.
There was now a helicopter overhead. If he didn't hurry, Nick knew they were going to take him out. If Nick were on their side of this, he would have already shot. Good thing he wasn't. The timer was at thirty seconds.
"Just wait!" Nick shouted. "I'm shutting it down!"
In his peripheral vision, Nick could see them moving toward him. He keyed in the numbers. 5, 9, 3, 7, and 5, then pressed the red button. The clock above the numbers was still counting down.
"Zeke, it didn't work!"
Twenty seconds.
"It was right, I'm telling you, those are the numbers!" Zeke was shouting now. "Do it again, but this time press the red button twice!"
"Wait!" Nick shouted. The men were on top of him. "I'm Nick Campos! Ranger for the United States Army! Stand down!"
Fifteen seconds.
If it didn't work this time, he was going to have to run away from the White House as fast as he could and die with the blast.
He keyed again. 5, 9, 3, 7, and 5. This time he pressed the red button twice. The entire electronic face attached to the bomb began blinking red. Nick's eyes moved to the top of it. Thankfully, the countdown paused at ten seconds.
"Holy shit," one of the security guards said as he looked down over Nick. "You stopped it."
Nick let out a sigh of relief, but it was short lived. He looked up at the two security guards. "There's another bomb."
24
The security guard swallowed his fear and grabbed his radio. “We have a bomb. Go into full lockdown. I repeat, full lockdown!”
Nick was already on his feet talking to Zeke. “Where’s the other bomb, Zeke? Did you see Nasir drop it?”
“A lot of things look the same back there, but yes. After he hit you, he ran straight for the backside of the house.” Nick started jogging in that direction. “He passed the first bunch of flowers and stuff and went over to the ones in the middle.”
Nick looked to his right before the security guards were out of sight and noticed that several military men had joined them. At least Nick didn’t have to worry about friendly fire any longer—just a terrorist’s bomb outside the White House. No biggie.
“Can you be more specific?” Nick moved past the first landscaped patch like Zeke had instructed. “‘Cause this place is huge.”
“I can’t, really. I kept the ASE on Nasir. I can switch it back to you to try to help.”
Nick could see now what Zeke meant by the ones in the middle. Up ahead, after a long break, there was another grouping of flowers and bushes. Nick ran forward.
“No, keep the ASE on Nasir. You shared it with Brooke, right?”
“Right. She texted and said she tried to call you. Hasn’t found out what airport he flew into yet.”
The first trickle of doubt that he’d be able to catch Nasir before he got away seeped into Nick’s consciousness. It just couldn’t happen. It would literally mean the difference in hundreds or even thousands of innocent lives before they could catch back up to him. Now that Nasir knew for certain that the frequency jammer would keep the ASE from locating him, he would surround himself with much larger versions of it. Nick knew after Brooke got up to speed with the ASE, she would get all hands on deck in locating the car. He just hoped it would be in time. She was good. Nick needed to trust that so he could focus.
Bottom line: they couldn’t let Nasir get away. But the first order of business was disarming this last bomb. Zeke and Brooke had their eyes on Nasir. That would have to be good enough for now.
Nick was tearing through the landscaping that Zeke told him the bag was in. A lot of it was almost waist high, so the bag wasn’t readily visible. That was undoubtedly the reason Nasir had dumped it here. Nick took a deep breath, in and out, and scanned the area slowly instead of trying to go so fast he’d miss seeing it
.
“Zeke, just make sure that Brooke is getting law enforcement to ALL of the surrounding airports. I still can’t find the bag.”
Nick was looking left when his right foot kicked something solid. It was the bag. He dropped to his knees, opened the top, and found the bomb. He was relieved to see that there was thirteen minutes left on the timer. Nick figured the timers were preset, and Nasir didn’t have time to make this one shorter. Thank god.
“Okay, Zeke, I’ve got the bag. What’s the code?”
“What?” Zeke said.
“What do you mean what? The code! For the ticking bomb!”
There was hesitation. Nick’s stomach dropped.
“Nick, I don’t have the code for that one. I got lucky and saw all the numbers on the first one. Nasir typed in the code while he was running away after hitting you. There was no way I could zoom in in time to see it.”
Nick wanted to say rewind it, but as of then, there was still no way to go back in time. Though the technology was amazing, it wasn’t like the movies. You couldn’t dial up a moment in time and rewatch. All you could do was record what you dialed up live, and if Zeke didn’t see it live, he wouldn’t see it in the replay.
Nick closed the bag and strapped it onto his back. He ended the call with Zeke and immediately dialed Brooke.
“Nick! You’re all right!” Brooke answered.
“For now. Where’s Nasir?”
Nick walked out of the landscaping. The military men were walking his way.
“I just got the ASE app Zeke sent me loaded to my phone, and got it running. I didn’t know how to work it so it took a minute.”
“Do you know where he is or not?”
Brooke paused. Nick didn’t have time to worry about her feelings.
“Ummm . . . yes! He’s already at an airport!”
“Shit. Which one?”
“The only one he could be at this quickly is Reagan,” Brooke explained. “It’s just a ten-minute drive from the White House.”
“Get as many law enforcement personnel there as you can, I’m on my way!”
“Nick, you don’t have to worry. They’re already there. As soon as Zeke let me know what was happening, I dispatched law enforcement to all three airports and their private air divisions. We got a hit back on a private plane sitting at Signature at Reagan. It’s the only plane that came in from international overnight. It has to be him! We’re going to get him!”
Nick wanted to be happy, but he didn’t believe it was going to be that easy. “Hold on, Brooke.”
“I said, has the bomb been disabled?” the man shouted.
Nick’s mind was racing.
Then Nick heard Brooke shouting through the phone.“ Nick! Can you hear me?”
“Hold on, guys,” Nick said to security. When he turned his back to answer Brooke, the man grabbed his shoulder and spun him around. Nick pushed him back. “I said hold on!”
The two men raised their guns. “We need to see that bag, now!”
“Brooke, I have to go. I have a situation here.”
“Nick! I just got word there was an ambush outside of the private plane. Law enforcement there is down.”
“Down?” Nick could hardly hear her over the men shouting at him to drop the bag.
“Nasir had men waiting at the private airport in case there was trouble. The receptionist called 911. Nick, she said they’re all dead. All the police that was there! We’re close ourselves, but there’s no way we can beat him to the plane.”
The men moved toward Nick, and he backpedaled quickly.
“Brooke, do not go near him! They’ll kill you!”
The security guys were through waiting on Nick. One surged forward and grabbed his arm. Nick managed to rip his arm away, but the second man pointed his gun straight at Nick’s chest. Finally, Nick raised his hands above his head. “All right! Relax, guys! The bomb has been disabled. Damn!” He had to lie to stall.
“Give us the bag or we’ll take it.”
Nick had known better than to think Nasir wouldn’t have plans in case something went wrong. Now he had a clear lane out of the country. There was no one left to stop him, and no way for Nick to get to the airport in time and dispose of the bomb.
That was when he remembered the fob in his pocket. The first button—the cloaking device—was no help. But button number two was the only thing left that gave him the slight chance of stopping Nasir. He knew he was going to pay for it, but he didn’t have a choice. He reached into his pocket and took the fob in his hand. As the two men rushed him and knocked him off his feet, he pressed down on button number two for dear life, counting to three in his head while the men were ripping the bomb bag away from him and tearing at his hand that clutched the fob.
Out of the corner of his eye, just before the big man hit him in the jaw, he noticed the light on the top of the fob flash green.
That green light meant that something Nick would have laughed at a year ago, or called someone a child for believing in, was actually coming to help save a lot of lives. It meant that the sleigh pulled by eight majestic reindeer was on its way, and it meant he still had a shot at catching up to Nasir.
25
One of the men finally wrestled the fob from Nick’s hand, as the other opened the bomb bag.
“Joe, this thing’s still ticking down. It says there’s only six minutes left!”
Nick squirmed away when the man on top of him was distracted and popped up to his feet. Behind the men, a dozen more uniformed soldiers were running his way, along with one guy in a suit.
“Put your hands behind your head, now!” The man with the fob extended his pistol with his right hand.
Nick did as he asked.
“If you know how to shut this thing off, you’ve gotta do it!”
Nick was calm. “If I knew, it would already be disabled.”
The other men made it to where Nick was being held at gunpoint. The man holding the bomb shouted, “We need the bomb squad! We only have about five minutes!”
“You’re Nick, right?” The man in the suit stepped forward, out of breath from his run.
“Yes. You have to let me have the bomb back. I can get rid of it.”
“I can’t let you have the bomb, Nick.” Then to the man holding the gun on Nick, “But you can put the gun down, soldier. He’s on our side.”
The man began to lower the gun.
“I don’t know who you are, but I’m taking the bag,” Nick said. “It’s the only way to keep all of us from getting killed.”
The man in the suit was about to protest when Nick watched his eyes jump to the sky behind him. He could tell by the look on his face that the reindeer had just come into view. Nick was relieved to know they were about to land. All the men that were gathered around him lost track of everything but the unbelievable thing coming their way from the sky. Every single one of them watched as the reindeer landed on the south lawn of the White House. When Zeke disabled the cloaking device, it must have killed the one on the sleigh as well. And it might have just saved the day.
Nick turned to look as the reindeer and the sleigh glided onto the grass. The bells were jingling, and their hooves were pounding the ground until they came to a stop. Nick used the moment of shock to make his escape.
“Sorry, boys,” he said. Then he ripped the fob from the hand of the man in front of him. He followed that with a hard right cross to the man’s jaw that was holding the bag, and then he ripped it away from him. Before the stun of the situation could wear off, Nick was hopping up into the sleigh, and slapping the reins. “I’ve got a terrorist to catch. Ho ho ho!” He just couldn’t help himself.
The sleigh started forward. Nick looked off to his right—toward the street. There were at least a dozen people with their cell phones out, recording the first actual footage of Santa’s reindeer pulling a sleigh. There was nothing Nick could do about it, except apologize to them internally for the absence of presents under the tree tomorrow morning. Though he co
uldn’t help but think that having a president that was still breathing was surely present enough.
The sleigh sped forward and lifted off the ground. A real show for the onlookers and their Facebook followers. But that was already out of Nick’s mind. He glanced over at the bag and saw the red numbers ticking down. Only two minutes and forty-nine seconds to go. His first thought was to warp to the middle of nowhere and drop the bomb safely to the uninhabited ground below. But something down in his lizard brain was telling him there was no time, and that maybe, just maybe, the bomb could be of some use. He didn’t know if it was his combat instinct—honed over countless missions into enemy territory––that was speaking to him, or just a ridiculous bit of bravado that made him think he could do it all. Either way, he was listening to it, and he gave the command for the Signature private aviation section of the Reagan International Airport. Nick texted Brooke, telling her he was on his way.
The reindeer responded, and the torque of their pull on the sleigh snapped Nick’s neck back. The cold wind was blowing all around him as he used the short trip to start to devise a plan. He checked his belt. All he had there was a combat knife and his Beretta. Not nearly enough to thwart any sort of pushback he might have when he arrived He looked back over his shoulder and there sat the sack. The same one that had blown his mind when he’d discovered this crashed sleigh in the desert. A sack without a bottom was a hell of a thing. But when Jack showed him what it could really do, he knew one day it would be a life and death game changer.
Today was that day.
As the sleigh had already begun its descent, Nick turned and fished down into the sack. The way Jack had explained it was that it was like reaching into your closet. Whatever had been inventoried through the sack’s wormhole software, as Jack had put it, would be available in the bag, wherever in the world you were. All you had to do was picture it, then reach in the sack, and pull it out. To Jack’s chagrin, but Zeke’s delight, the first thing Nick had inventoried were the guns Zeke had procured for him. An entire closet full.
Saint Nick Page 11
