The Regent

by Marcus Richardson

  Danika took a deep breath, then stood. She fired a quick burst, the empty casings flinging off to her right out of the corner of her eye. The attackers ducked, so she paused, waiting. Two heartbeats later, a pair of heads rose up behind the car in the street. She fired twice. The first head vanished, leaving behind a lingering pink mist where a face had been a second before. The second veered sideways as her round clipped the man’s ear.

  “Two more out of the fight,” she reported, ducking back under a hail of rounds. She closed her eyes, ignoring the searing burn on her left arm. One of the attackers had winged her. A quick glance told her it was no more than a grazing wound.

  Ignore it. Stay in the fight.

  “Don’t look now, but they got some friends coming,” said the driver, nodding down the street around the corner.

  “Dammit!” Danika blurted, watching as three more men came trotting down the road carrying rifles. She tried to take aim, but the angle was too great and the men across the street kept up a withering fire. She could barely move without getting hit, let alone pull up her rifle and sight on the running men.

  “Where the hell’s our backup?” demanded the senator. He fired a three-round burst and took cover again.

  “There’s some incident at the parliament building,” Danika said, her voice far more calm than she felt. “This was well planned. We’re not going to get help until my partner shows up…”

  “If he shows up,” the driver said. “He didn’t sound too convincing on the radio.”

  “See if you can get the chief of staff out of the backseat,” Danika said, giving the man something to do other than remind her of their dire situation. “At least shut him up!”

  “I’m bleeeeeding!” the chief of staff wailed from the backseat of the car.

  An indistinct shout echoed across the street between gunshots. It was Russian.

  Of course it’s the Russians.

  If it was who she thought it might be—Gregor Ilyanovich—then she had a chance to get some payback. Ilyanovich had blown one of her ops in Syria years ago and she’d never forgiven him for his mistake—nor, she thought, had the Council.

  If he were in the tunnels hunting the Senator, that meant he was back in the Council’s good graces. Jayne was the only person capable of pulling off this ambush. Their attackers had already lost three men—most hired guns would tuck tail and run at such stiff resistance.

  Not Gregor.

  Cursing her luck—again—Danika steeled herself to raise and fire once more. She ejected her magazine and checked inside. “I’ve only got a few shots left,” she announced to no one in particular.

  “Me too,” the senator replied. His voice wavered, but the look in his eye said he wouldn’t go down without a fight.

  “You hear that?” the driver said, appearing from the passenger door.

  “Yeah, gunshots, and he’s still screaming back there,” Danika replied, taking aim at the spot across the street where she’d just seen someone. The attacker appeared again, weapon raised, but he never got off the shot. Danika dropped down in time to see her casing hit the cobblestone next to her.

  “No…an engine. A big one. Sounds like a diesel redlining. I think we got incoming.”

  “What now?” asked the senator.

  Danika turned in time to see a green-and-white trash lorry barrel down the side street—she thought it had been blocked by a car earlier—and caught a glimpse of the driver.

  “Get down!” she yelled, throwing herself at the senator.

  With a crash that tore at the fabric of the world, the lorry plowed into men and cars alike in the middle of the street. Just before impact, she heard gears grinding.

  Crazy son of a bitch is shifting gears!

  Men screamed, tires squealed, metal shrieked. Plastic, glass, trash, and broken car parts sailed through the air and skidded across the street as the lorry plowed through the blockade like it wasn’t even there. It continued right through the intersection shedding car parts and body parts until it smashed into and through the building across the street, taking most of one car with it. Finally coming to rest halfway into the building, a cascade of stone and rubble collapsed on top of it, the flashing yellow strobe on top illuminating the nightmarish scene like a lighthouse.

  In the eerie silence that followed the crash, Danika heard moaning and coughing, the whine of the lorry’s engine as it died, and the clunking of bricks and stones dropping to the street in ones and twos.

  “They stopped shooting,” the senator observed.

  “No shit…I think they stopped breathing, too,” replied the driver.

  The three of them stood and surveyed the carnage. A smear of red mingled with the black oil from the obliterated cars and trailed the lorry into the building. Smoke billowed from the ruined structure. A severed arm lay in the middle of the now deserted road amid bits of garbage and newspapers.

  “Holy shit…” muttered the senator. “What was that?”

  A figure emerged from the wreckage, limping and coughing, wearing a torn-up business suit. He sported wrap-around armor and dragged an M4 carbine through the rubble. He turned in the street and glanced back at his handiwork, coughing again and staggering like a drunk. A second figure emerged from the other side of the lorry, in a dusty business suit, holding a radio like it was the Holy Grail. He leaned against the truck and wretched loudly.

  The first man turned, wearing a ridiculous grin on his face.

  “That, Senator, is the cavalry,” Danika replied with a face-splitting smile.

  “Hooyah!” the man in the street bellowed. “That was funner than pig shit!”

  “Senator Tecumseh,” Danika said, slinging her rifle over her shoulder. “Meet my partner, Cooper Braaten.”

  “Jesus H. Christ,” the driver said, taking a better look at the carnage in the street. “Grand Theft Auto much?”

  Braaten limp-jogged across the street and leaned against the car. “Senator, you okay, sir?” he asked.

  “I’m fine, but my chief of staff is injured; we need to get him to a hospital. Nice entrance, by the way.”

  “Oh God, get me out of here!”

  Braaten leaned in the ruined rear window and peered at the man in the backseat. “Is that where you were hit?” he asked. “Anywhere else?”

  “N-no! Help me!”

  Braaten straightened up. “He’s fine. Let’s move,” he said, catching Danika’s eye. “I think I bought us some time, but they’re really going to come after us now.”

  “You bring any more weapons in that piece of shit?” asked the driver, nodding at the half-buried lorry.

  Braaten glanced over his shoulder as the second man hobbled up next to him. “No…but I did bring this cop with me. Does that count?”

  “Angus?” asked Danika, recognizing her Scotland Yard liaison. “What are you doing here?”

  “Rescuing you,” he said around a cough. He wiped his mouth on his dusty coat sleeve. “Obviously.”

  “Surface streets are going to be crawling with bad guys soon,” Braaten warned, peering around the intersection. “There’s big kerfluffle goin’ down at the parliament building…looks like half the cops in Scotland are protecting it.”

  “It’s a lockdown—we’ve got to make our way back there,” Angus confirmed. “Most of the summit leadership is there.”

  “Fine—but how? I think Mr. Braaten’s right,” the senator said, clutching his rifle across his chest.

  “Cooper,” Braaten said.

  “Cooper, sure,” the senator replied. “We’re not getting any help any time soon, and more of them will be here before long. Where do we go?”

  Angus scrunched his face in thought, looking at the grisly scene in the road. “Underground.”

  “Come again?” asked the driver.

  “Edinburgh sits on one hell of a large underground network of tunnels and catacombs. It goes back to the medieval town. A maze, really…we can lose ourselves down there.”

  Cooper’s face looked
green. “I fucking hate tunnels.”

  “Why’s that?” asked Angus as he helped the chief of staff out of the car. “Come on, there’s an entrance down this alley…I think.”

  “I had a bad experience back when I blew up the White House,” Braaten responded. “Wait, you think it’s over there?”

  “You blew up the White House?” asked Senator Tecumseh. He looked at Danika. “Who the hell is this guy?”

  Danika grinned. “He’s—”

  “Wheels! We got incoming!” Braaten announced from the corner. “Move, move, move!”

  15

  The Briefing

  President Orren Harris looked up from his daily briefing paperwork and removed the round, Truman-esque glasses from his face. “You want to run that by me again?” he asked, leaning back in his simple desk chair. After six months, he had still not requested funds to finish furnishing the new Oval Office in the Underground. He swore an oath to the American people that he would put his own creature comforts last and not worry about the way the Oval Office looked until the new Capitol and White House was reestablished on the surface, in Denver.

  “Sir, Senator Tecumseh is missing.”

  The president stood, placing both hands flat on his desk. He leaned toward his chief of staff. “Is this verified? What do the British have to say about it?”

  “There’s some kind of disturbance going on in Edinburgh.”

  “Someone’s trying to disrupt the summit?” asked the president.

  His chief of staff nodded. “Our British counterparts are still trying to sort things out, but it appears to be some sort of concentrated attack on the Scottish National Parliament Building. The situation is very much dynamic at the moment, sir.”

  The president picked up his glasses and stepped away from the desk, examining a map of the world displayed on the screen behind him. “Do we know who’s behind it?”

  “We have some theories,” the chief of staff said, shuffling through stacks of paperwork in his hand.

  “I’m not interested in theories, George. If we don’t have facts, then tell me what your gut says.”

  “The Council.”

  The president turned and arched an eyebrow. “I was led to believe we had pretty much wiped them off the face of the earth. How is this possible?”

  Chief of Staff Revellue nodded. “Your coalition has met with astounding success, sir, there’s no denying that. Our allies in Europe have done a fine job dismantling the rest of the Council’s network. But they’re still very much alive and well in Asia and the Southeast Pacific. We’re doing our best, but China is still suffering in the grips of the flu and they’ve never been one to cooperate with us. Especially not with the North Korean crisis.”

  “You’re telling me there some sort of East Asian influence in all this?” the president said, turning back to the map.

  “Not necessarily, sir,” Revellue replied cautiously. “NSA has picked up some interesting transmissions. Highly encrypted, utilizing sourcing we’ve only seen one other time.”

  The president put his hands on his hips. “Well, don’t keep me waiting; spit it out already.”

  “Jayne Renolds.”

  President Harris stared for a second, but not at Revellue. He slowly sank into his chair, exhaling. “Jayne Renolds,” he whispered, as if the name itself might invoke the bogeyman. “So she’s finally come out of hiding, has she?”

  “We have no hard proof of it, but my hunch is…yes.”

  The president drummed his fingers on the big desk, thinking. After a long moment, in which his chief of staff shifted his weight on his feet several times, the commander-in-chief finally spoke up. “It makes sense. She would have the most to gain in all of this. We already know of the Council’s involvement with North Korea—we just don’t have the proof we can take to the U.N. yet.”

  Chief of Staff Revellue nodded. “And because of that, we have no way of legally delaying the vote, short of using our veto power.”

  President Harris shook his head. “I seem to recall you telling me that would be a terrible move, under the circumstances.”

  “I think those were my exact words, sir, yes.” The chief of staff frowned. “If they can disrupt this vote, it will essentially force our hand.”

  The president grunted. “Shit or get off the pot—I get it.”

  “Taking out a sitting United States Senator.…that goes a bit beyond the pale though, doesn’t it?”

  The president frowned. “I have learned that nothing goes beyond the pale with that bitch. She killed a President of the United States.”

  “The illegal president of the United States.”

  Harris glanced up at his chief of staff. “George, the legality of Barron’s term in office is something for scholars to argue. We damn near had an outright shooting civil war because of her. As far as the American people are concerned, Barron was legitimate.” He shook his head. “How the hell it got that far I’ll never know, but there it is. I’m not going to waste time arguing technicalities and whether or not he was actually constitutionally appointed or not…it’s behind us,” he said, waving one gnarled hand. “The man’s dead, his family’s dead—let them rest in peace. However…the woman who killed him…”

  Chief of Staff Revellue flipped open a folder. “We’ve already got her at the top of our Most Wanted list. The current manhunt makes the one for bin Laden look like someone searching for a lost child in a supermarket…”

  “Whatever it takes, she must be brought to justice.” President Harris rubbed a hand across his jaw. “But Senator Tecumseh worries me. He’s one of the new bloods…a celebrity.”

  “Not to mention one of your chief supporters.”

  “I assure you, I’m well aware of that fact,” the president mumbled. “Beyond all that, he’s a good man. We need to do whatever we can to help him. Is there any indication that he’s been targeted specifically?”

  “At this point, the British are being kind of closed-mouthed about it. We’ve re-tasked some satellites and picked up some disturbing images,” the chief of staff said, handing over a glossy 8 x 10 photograph.

  The president adjusted his glasses and peered down at the photograph in his hands. “What am I looking at here? Looks like something off Google Maps.”

  Revellue grunted. “In a way it is—Google uses the same kind of satellite. What you’re looking at is an extensive traffic accident. It just happened—perhaps less than an hour ago—we don’t have an exact timeframe, but the smoke indicates that the wreckage is fresh.”

  “It looks like someone drove a dump truck through a building.”

  “Near as we can tell,” Chief of Staff Revellue said, “that’s just about exactly what happened. But what interests NSA the most are the two vehicles across the street from that. See how one of them is smashed up against the building there and the other is parked at an oblique angle?”

  “I do.”

  The Chief of Staff nodded. “NSA analysts—and CIA agrees—that was set up to make a safe zone for survivors. They’ve taken a look at all the data we’ve been able to gather, and near as they can tell, there was definitely a gunfight here.”

  “Then the dump truck ended it…I can see that.”

  “The problem is, we don’t know who was where. Around the same time that the Scottish National Parliament building was locked down, the GPS trackers in the senator’s vehicle went offline.”

  The president looked up from the pictures in his hands. “Then how can you be sure that these vehicles were part of his convoy?”

  “Because about ten minutes ago, whatever device that had been jamming the GPS signals went offline itself. That vehicle right there,” Chief of Staff Revellue said, leaning over the desk to point at the black sedan parked next to the one crumpled against the wall, “is Senator Tecumseh’s vehicle. It appears the dump truck took out whatever device was jamming his GPS signal.”

  “Was this by accident or chance?” asked the president, looking down at the photograph aga
in.

  “Impossible to tell sir. Without feet on the ground, we’re forced to allow the Brits to spoon-feed us on this one.”

  “How soon can we have someone over there?”

  “State is still working out the details, but I have an FBI special forensics unit on hand and ready to go.”

  “Send them,” the president said.

  “But sir, State says—”

  “I know what the State Department says—they want us to wait and talk through everything, they want us to be patient, with this vote coming up we’ve got to cross our ’T’s and dot our ‘I’s…I know.” The president put the photographs down. “But I also know a sitting member of the United States Senate has come under attack, and could very well be dead. We don’t know where he’s at or what’s happened—and dammit, I’m going to find out. I am sick and tired of people taking shots at this country and this government. Send the forensic team.”

  “Consider it done, sir,” Chief of Staff Revellue said, pulling out his cellphone.

  “And while you’re at it, make it clear that we’re not afraid to send some muscle to back them up.”

  “Muscle? Sir, we’re going to have to clear that through the British—”

  “I understand, but get the ball rolling. I want the message received in London, loud and clear: if you can’t keep our people safe, then by God, we will.”

  16

  The Vaults

  Cooper guarded the entrance to one of the myriad alleys the Scots called closes and wynds. He didn’t know the difference and didn’t care—it was a long narrow path between streets and bordered by towering stone buildings. It felt claustrophobic and he needed to keep the group moving.

  “Go, go, go! They’re right behind us—we’ve got to get inside.”

  13 brushed past, charging into a darkened stairwell on the right and vanished, quickly followed by Angus, and the senator’s mumbling, whining chief of staff. The senator was the last to reach him.

  “Sir, follow them,” Cooper said, stepping away from the door and peering down the alley.