King and Maxwell

by David Baldacci

  In disbelief Sean watched as Dana darted toward the man and hit him with her purse. “Dana, no!” shouted Sean.

  The man turned and shot Dana in the chest. She stood frozen for a moment and then dropped to the floor.

  Sean lined up his shot and put a bullet right into the man’s brain.

  He lowered his weapon and stared down at Dana on the floor, the blood pouring from her wound.

  Sean ran toward her. “Dana!”

  CHAPTER

  24

  WHEN SEAN HAD REACHED DANA he used every procedure he had learned from his Secret Service days to stop the bleeding. But she had still lost a lot of blood, perhaps too much. Then she stopped breathing and Sean performed CPR on her, and finally her lungs expanded and her heart restarted. The paramedics arrived, took over, and stabilized her. Sean rode over in the ambulance while Michelle followed in her truck.

  Sean and Michelle were now in the waiting room at the hospital. They had been interrogated by both local Virginia police and federal authorities. They told some but not all of what they knew. It was fortunate that witnesses to the events at the mall had uniformly reported that the three dead men were the aggressors and that Sean and Michelle’s actions had been in self-defense, and had actually saved the life of one of the police officers.

  That still did not buy them many points, particularly with the Feds.

  A despondent Michelle looked up when she heard the door to the waiting room open. She hoped it was a doctor with good news. But her features grew even more depressed when she saw who it was.

  Agent McKinney from Homeland Security stood there.

  “What part of ‘stay out of it’ didn’t you get?” he barked.

  “We were just at the mall having coffee,” said Sean wearily. “If there’s a law against that, I must’ve missed it.”

  McKinney plopped into a chair across from them. “You know exactly what I’m talking about. The woman who was shot? She just happened to be the wife of an Army two-star and your ex?”

  “I was meeting with Dana, yes,” Sean said stiffly. “She was helping us out on something.”

  McKinney snapped, “On the Wingo something? The something I told you to stay the hell away from?”

  “I don’t remember you being appointed to tell us which cases we could or couldn’t take,” said Sean sharply.

  “Oh, I’m exactly that person. So you got her to help. How? Getting info from her hubby? Did you really stoop that low? Because it looks like you might have killed her in the process.”

  Sean said nothing to this, because McKinney was actually right. He had used Dana and she’d been shot and might not live. All because of him. What had seemed like a fairly innocuous way to get some helpful information now seemed like the most insane idea he’d ever had. And the most selfish.

  They heard a noise at the door and looked up. General Curtis Brown stood there in full uniform, red-eyed, his lean face sagging with despair. He had obviously heard this exchange.

  “Sean King?”

  Sean rose, his face pale. “Yes? How’s Dana?”

  In answer Brown lunged and slammed a fist into Sean’s face, knocking him over a chair and onto the floor.

  Michelle instantly put herself between the general and Sean.

  “Back off!” she snapped.

  “I’m going to kill you,” screamed Brown, and he tried to lunge past Michelle to get to Sean. She gripped his wrist and twisted it sideways and ripped his arm behind his back. He gasped, bent over in pain, and then with a massive effort broke free. When he took a swing at her, Michelle ducked and neatly clipped Brown’s legs out from under him. He fell heavily to the floor. She put a boot on his back.

  “Stay down,” ordered Michelle.

  When Brown tried to rise again, Michelle kicked him to put him back down.

  “Stop, Michelle, just stop.”

  Sean had gotten to his feet. His face was cut and bruised and already swelling. Brown rose, too.

  Sean stood in front of him. “You want to take another swing, go ahead. I deserve it. Go ahead.” He grabbed the general’s hand and made a fist with it. “Go ahead,” he shouted.

  But Brown backed away, obviously confused by Sean’s outburst. He sat heavily in a chair, put his face in his hands, and silently wept.

  McKinney stood, flashed his ID although Brown wasn’t even looking at him, and said, “General, I’m with DHS. My sincerest apologies for what happened to your wife. Please rest assured that I will do all I can to make sure everyone responsible for this horrendous state of affairs is held fully accountable.”

  He glared at Sean when he spoke this last part.

  Sean stood there, his face bloody and puffy. He looked at no one other than Brown.

  The door to the waiting room opened. The surgeon appeared, still in his operating room scrubs.

  “General Brown?”

  Brown looked up, his eyes wet with tears. “Yes,” he said shakily.

  The surgeon moved over to him and spoke in a low voice, but one that Sean and Michelle could still hear.

  “Your wife is out of surgery. She did well. Now, the bullet did quite a bit of damage and she’s still not out of the woods, but I’m hoping for a fairly complete recovery.” He added, “It was a miracle she didn’t bleed out. Whoever stopped the blood loss right after she was shot saved her life.”

  Michelle glanced encouragingly at Sean, but he was now staring at the floor.

  “Would you like to see her?” the surgeon asked Brown. “She’s not conscious of course, but—”

  Brown quickly said, “Yes, please.” He followed the surgeon out of the room without a backward glance at any of them.

  Sean sat down while Michelle grabbed some tissues out of a box on a table, wet them at the water fountain outside the door, and used them to clean Sean’s face. He neither stopped her nor assisted her. It was as though he didn’t even know she was doing it.

  McKinney sat down across from them. “Damn, he really cleaned your clock. Can’t blame him, though.” He added snidely, “Good thing you had your partner here to defend you or else you might be in the hospital too.”

  Michelle snapped, “Sean didn’t exactly fight back, did he? And just for the record the person who stopped her bleeding out is this guy,” she added, pointing at Sean.

  “But she never would have been shot in the first place if not for him.”

  “Actually, he was the one who told her to get the police and then go to her car and drive to the Pentagon. If she had listened to him, none of this would have happened.”

  “No, if he hadn’t gotten her mixed up in this none of it would have happened.”

  “He’s right, Michelle,” said Sean. He pushed her hand away from his face and stood. He looked down at McKinney. “You’re right.”

  “Glad we agree on something. Now let’s get down to it.”

  “To what exactly?” said Michelle since Sean did not appear to be listening.

  “To what exactly you two are involved in.”

  “We already told you that, Agent McKinney,” said Michelle in exasperation. “This all started with Sam Wingo disappearing and then coming back from the dead.”

  “Back from the dead?” said McKinney.

  Sean looked down at him. “Why were you called in on this to shake us down? Who made the call?”

  “I’m not going to answer that.”

  “Well, you should at least try to answer it for yourself. Any IDs on the dead guys?”

  “Part of an ongoing investigation and thus not any of your business.”

  “They looked like military but they had no ID,” said Sean.

  “Military like Wingo?” asked McKinney curiously.

  “Who wasn’t really in the reserves at all.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “That’s confidential and I keep confidences. So, did some higher-ups at the Pentagon sic you on us?”

  “That is no concern of yours.”

  “Oh, it’s very mu
ch a matter of concern for me. Those men were going to kill us, Agent McKinney. And they almost did kill someone I care about. I always take things like that very personally.”

  McKinney grabbed Sean’s arm. “If you keep this up, I will have your ass arrested.”

  Sean pulled McKinney’s hand off. “And if you keep stomping on my constitutional rights I will have a field day with you and DHS both in court and in the press.”

  Sean rubbed a trickle of blood off his face and started for the door.

  Michelle glanced at McKinney. “You really are a piece of work.”

  McKinney ignored this and said, “Hey, King. What’s next for you? Getting the kid shot?”

  Sean kept walking.

  Michelle followed and slammed the door behind her.

  CHAPTER

  25

  SEAN SAT IN THE truck, Michelle next to him. They were in the hospital parking lot. Sean hadn’t yet started the vehicle.

  Michelle said, “Just take deep breaths. And we need to get some ice for your face before it gets really swollen.”

  “This was my fault, you know that, right?” He kept staring straight out the windshield.

  “No, I don’t know that. I think it was the fault of the prick who shot her.”

  “She never would have been involved in this except for me, Michelle.”

  “Actually, I think I was the one who forced you into calling her. So if you want to place blame, lay it on me. But this kind of talk isn’t getting us anywhere. If you really want to make it up to Dana, then I say we need to get to the bottom of what’s going on.”

  Sean started the Land Cruiser. “Your logic is overwhelming, but logic is not going to cut it this time. We are going to attack this thing, though. Only not head-on.”

  “Why not?”

  Sean pulled out of the parking lot. “Three guys at the mall. They weren’t Feds. They looked to me like ex-military. They had the beef, the buzz cuts, the firepower, the veneer of authority.”

  “Ex-military. What would ex-military be involved in here?”

  “Well, Sam Wingo wasn’t in the reserves. He was regular Army. The DoD built a subterfuge and put him on a mission to deliver something. That mission got screwed and Wingo is off the grid. He contacted his son to tell him he was sorry. So, what was he delivering and who has it now?”

  “Do you think Wingo took it?”

  “I don’t know. You vet a guy for a mission like that, you must feel he’s pretty solid.”

  “So maybe the mission was a setup from the get-go and Wingo the fall guy. That might explain the email to Tyler.”

  Sean nodded in agreement. “The man Tyler described to us does not sound like a traitor. But if the mission had gone off as planned, what would the Army have told the Wingos? That Sam was KIA? MIA?”

  “If that was part of the plan,” said Michelle, “I’m betting a dad like Sam Wingo would have wanted someone there to be with Tyler. They don’t have any other family, so…”

  “So enter Jean Wingo as the stepmom.”

  “Which would explain the weird circumstances of the wedding. Tyler not even being invited. It being before a judge and all.”

  “Hell, they might not even be married,” pointed out Sean.

  “Right. I doubt Jean is even her real name.”

  He said, “So much deception, whatever that asset was it must’ve been really important.”

  “But now we have possible former military in the mix. What could they want?”

  “You think they might have the asset?”

  Michelle shrugged. “Maybe. But if so, do they also have Sam Wingo?”

  “He got the email off to Tyler. What if he escaped and is now on the run?”

  “Then he has the military and these other guys on his butt.”

  “Lucky him.” Sean looked out the window. “We almost bit the bullet today too.”

  “I know. It was close.”

  “So these guys are good.”

  Michelle said, “More than good, I’d say.”

  “But we can take them. We did take them, in fact.”

  She glanced at him. “In the future it depends on how many of them there are. I left my superpowers back on my home planet.”

  “Well, they have three fewer bodies to throw at us after today.” Sean rubbed his swollen jaw.

  “When General Brown hears all the facts, Sean, he’ll be sorry he punched you.”

  “I seriously doubt that. The next time the guy might just shoot me.”

  “So how are we going after this if we can’t hit it straight-on?”

  “Tyler is vulnerable, Michelle. If they went after us, they’ll go after him in a heartbeat.”

  “So we stay away from him?”

  “No, I think we need to be his protection detail.”

  “We can’t cover him twenty-four seven,” countered Michelle.

  “No, but we can do our best.”

  “And solving the case?”

  “I have an idea,” he said.

  “Care to share?”

  “If Sam Wingo communicated with his son?”

  Michelle caught on instantly. “Then Tyler can communicate with his dad by hitting reply.”

  “That’s right. Only we’ll be asking the questions.”

  “Sean, what do you think is going on?”

  He drew a long breath. “Like Dana told us, I think the Army had some top-secret mission and it all went to hell in a handbasket. And whatever Wingo was brought in to deliver is out there in the wrong hands.”

  “But what could it be? A nuke? A biological agent?”

  “I don’t know, Michelle. I really don’t know. But if it is a nuke or some turbocharged version of the Black Plague, we might find out about it a lot sooner than we’d like.”

  “Why do we humans make things so complicated?”

  “Because we’re afraid that keeping things simple makes us unsophisticated. And uninteresting.”

  “You could be a philosopher. But how do we engage Tyler without making him a target?”

  He said, “There’s no way to do that. So we have to keep him safe at the same time he’s helping us.”

  “But he lives with his stepmother.”

  “Did I say it was going to be easy?”

  Sean gazed gloomily out the window. This was as bad as he had felt since, well, since watching Michelle fighting for her life in a hospital bed. He blamed himself for that one, too. If he had figured things out faster, she never would have been harmed.

  “Why don’t you text Tyler and see if he can meet us later? We’ll have to keep it under the radar.”