Athena Force 11: Target

by Cindy Dees

  Albadian raced east around the south end of the Capitol building. People milled about like a herd of agitated and confused sheep down here, unsure of whether to head toward the fireball in the distance to help or whether to run like hell from the point of the attack. She had to slow down to nearly a walking pace to weave through the thronging pedestrians choking the streets. Fortunately, so did Albadian.

  She almost missed him when he cut left on 1st Street SE toward the Library of Congress, but a tiny gap opened in the crowd and she glimpsed the red moped. Honing in on her target again, she raced north, toward the Supreme Court building. The steep uphill slope slowed him down and she spurted closer to him, but then her moped hit the hill and she lost most of the ground back. C’mon. Go! She leaned down low over the handlebars to improve her aerodynamic drag. She inched a little bit closer.

  Albadian looked back over his shoulder at her as if he’d heard her back here and realized he was being chased. Crud. He turned to face front, crouched low, as well. She gritted her teeth against the frigid windchill and prayed her numb fingers wouldn’t slip off the handles. Albadian’s driving became erratic, filled with the desperation of a man running for his life. But then, her gut seethed with the implacable fury of a woman who’d just witnessed an attempt to murder someone she cared about. It was about an even match.

  Albadian swerved around yet another milling crowd of people, and she did the same, temporarily losing sight of him. She gunned the moped past the pedestrians and searched frantically. Over there. Heading east. She yanked the moped to her right.

  Cripes! Her rear tire slipped on a patch of ice, shooting out from underneath her. It was a miracle she managed to stay atop the bike. But, as she straightened out the front tire, the back end fishtailed wildly beneath her. She fought it like a bucking bronc and managed, barely, to bring the cantankerous moped back under control. Definitely not designed for snow-and-ice operations.

  She looked up. Damn. She’d lost valuable ground on Albadian.

  Of all things, her cell phone rang in her pocket. She couldn’t spare a hand to answer it just now. Whoever it was would have to wait. She had a terrorist to catch before she could take any calls.

  She had to do something to break this stalemate. Their mopeds were too evenly matched for one of them to win this contest. As her target led her down one street after another, she kept an eye out for something, anything to help her.

  She blinked in shock as Albadian turned down a set of stairs, for goodness’ sake, and rattled down the icy descent. Grimly, she pointed her bike after him and bumped and jarred her way down the staircase after him. He shot out into a residential street, and she did the same. A car swerved wildly to miss them both, its horn blaring behind her. Man, that had been close!

  What the hell was she doing? She was going to get herself killed out here! But it wasn’t as if the idea of giving up this insane chase was gaining any foothold against her grim rage. She was going to take this guy down if it was the last thing she did.

  Albadian turned down a narrow alley and slid on a patch of loose gravel. Warned by his skidding recovery, she took the turn carefully and picked up several yards on him. But as he blasted past a row of trash cans, he reached out with his left hand and knocked over the last one, spewing trash all over the asphalt in front of her.

  An empty milk jug exploded beneath her front tire, but she crashed through the mess without slowing down significantly. She shot out into the street, praying like crazy that no oncoming vehicle would wipe her out. Thankfully, there wasn’t any traffic.

  This guy was insane! But then, that sort of went without saying. He’d just tried to kill the soon-to-be most powerful, and arguably best protected man in the world. Maybe fanatic was a better word for Albadian. Soon-to-be-dead fanatic if she had her way. As her frustration grew, so did her rage. She was going to rip this guy’s head off when she caught him.

  Apparently, Albadian had a death wish of his own, however, and he led her ever deeper into residential side streets yet to be cleaned off after the snow several days ago. A packed sheet of ice covered the streets, and both mopeds slid all over the place. It was going to be a miracle if they both didn’t break their necks on this damned skating rink. Even Albadian was forced to slow down on the ice, and their slow-motion chase began to take on a Chaplin-esque quality as he fled for his life and she chased him determinedly at something like fifteen miles per hour. And even that speed was suicidal in these conditions.

  She knew this area. There was a police precinct house just ahead. Hmm. Ignoring the ice, she leaned low over the handlebars, opening up the throttle and urging the moped forward with every ounce of horsepower it had. Horsepower. She remembered abruptly that the police station in front of her was also the headquarters for a mounted police unit. She toured it a while back…

  It was worth a shot. As Albadian went straight through the intersection in front of the police station, she swerved to the right just shy of it, shooting down a short alley beside the building. She roared around back, startling the heck out of several horses tied at a hitching post beside the building. A cop lounging in front of a heater by the back door lurched to his feet as she burst into view.

  She dumped the moped on the ground, more thankful than she could imagine to get off the damned thing in one piece. She raced toward the biggest horse of the bunch, a long-legged chestnut that looked like a Thoroughbred-Quarter Horse cross. Perfect. She needed the fastest horse they had.

  She shouted at the cop, “I’m Army Intelligence, and I’m chasing the guy that just tried to blow up Gabriel Monihan. Follow me!”

  And with that, she yanked the big, red horse’s reins free from the wooden rail they were looped around and flung herself aboard the animal. The stirrups were too long, but she didn’t care as she jammed her feet into them awkwardly and reined the horse sharply out of the alley.

  The horse’s cleated shoes clattered on the hard ice, but dug in sure-footedly as she buried her heels in his ribs. He leaped forward, his haunches bunching and stretching beneath her, shooting her down the alley like a cannon. She careened out into the street.

  Thank God. She glimpsed a streak of red and brown about a block ahead of her. She’d lost valuable time and distance, but she estimated this horse could do close to thirty miles per hour over this ice, and Albadian could only pull off about half that speed and hope to live.

  She’d have one shot at this. Her horse would have one, maybe two, all-out sprints in him before he’d tire, and Albadian probably had plenty of gas left in his tank.

  She gave the horse his head, lying low on his neck like a jockey and urging him forward with shouts of encouragement. The horse pinned its ears back, and accelerated as if he’d been shot out of a cannon. That would be his Quarter Horse ancestry showing through. But then, he stretched out into the fluid gallop of his Thoroughbred ancestors and gobbled up the gap between her and Albadian with an impressive display of power.

  Albadian looked back over his shoulder and gaped in shock. Glaring, he turned to face forward again. He accelerated to a beyond stupid pace on the ice.

  But still the powerful horse gained on him. In a full-out run, now, the animal was pushing thirty-five miles per hour, and continued to gain steadily on the moped. As if he sensed what her target was, the beast stretched his neck out even lower, his head pumping up and down with his effort to overtake the moped.

  His nose almost touched Albadian’s back now.

  But she also felt her horse beginning to strain, his muscles beginning to tire as oxygen debt and fatigue set in.

  “C’mon, just a little more, fella,” she urged her mount.

  As if he understood her, he put on one last burst of speed and pulled up beside Albadian. Without stopping to consider the insanity of what she was about to do, she kicked her right stirrup free and let go of the reins. And slid off the left side of the horse.

  She wrapped her arms around Albadian’s neck and tackled him like a steer she intended to wrestl
e to the ground. The force of the impact knocked over the moped, slamming them both to the ground. They rolled over and over, and she hung on for dear life as they tumbled down the icy street.

  “Bitch!” Albadian gasped.

  “Bastard!” she snapped back.

  He threw an elbow backward at her, and she absorbed the blow with a grunt, too mad to feel the pain that should’ve accompanied the shot to her ribs. She let go of his neck with her right hand, making a fist in front of his face with the tip of her thumb sticking out. She jabbed it up and back, into his right eye socket.

  He howled with pain and fury and heaved beneath her, struggling to throw her off. He fought like a maniac on crack. She slammed her forehead forward into the base of his skull, nearly knocking herself loopy in the process. She blinked hard as she saw stars. That blow should have knocked him out cold, but still he fought on. She hung on grimly, but began to doubt her ability to subdue this lunatic.

  And then she felt his coat go slack in her arms. The bastard had unzipped it and was slipping out of it! She let go of the soft fabric and rolled to her knees, popping to her feet at the same instant Albadian did. She could see it in his eyes. He was going to run. Dammit.

  “Don’t even think about running away from me,” she bit out. “I ran the Boston Marathon last year and finished in the top fifty women.” It was a blatant lie, but what this asshole didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him.

  It worked. Instead of fleeing, he dropped into a half crouch, his lips pulled back from his teeth in a snarl a pit bull would have been proud of. This was more like it. Unless this guy was a Krav Maga master, she had him. Not even the traditional martial arts stood up well to the vicious, dirty style of street fighting. She was going to hurt him now.

  In a blindingly fast move, his hand jerked. But not toward her. He whipped it behind him. And whipped it back out in front of him—with a handgun in it. Pointed directly at her face.

  “Die, you bitch.”

  2:00 P.M.

  Gabe had slammed into the limousine’s seat cushion as somebody landed on top of him. Jeez. That was the second time today someone had tackled him like a damned linebacker. And this time it wasn’t a gorgeous, sexy blonde who made him think completely inappropriate thoughts.

  But then a tremendous explosion had sounded outside the car. Really damn close.

  “Are you hit?” someone barked in his ear.

  “I don’t think so,” he’d managed to gasp, in spite of the Secret Service agent crushing him.

  “Go, go, go!” a voice had shouted from outside the car, right behind him. That sounded like Owen Haas. The limousine had jerked beneath him, accelerating like an Indy race car. Who’d have thunk one of these tanks had it in them? The vehicle squealed around a corner. And around another.

  The earpiece of the guy on top of him had vibrated with a cacophony of voices shouting through it. Men down. Civilians hit. Screams for emergency response vehicles. Jesus Christ. What happened back there?

  He hadn’t wanted to distract the grimly silent man on top of him, but as the car screeched around a third corner and the earpiece went relatively silent for a moment, he’d taken the opportunity to ask, “What the hell just happened?”

  “Satchel charge got tossed at your car. One of the guys, Haas, I think, picked it up and tossed it under the backup vehicle before it blew.”

  “A satchel charge?” he’d asked incredulously. “As in a bomb?”

  “Yup. One of the agents on scene is estimating it was a standard military load.”

  “What does that mean?” Gabe had asked tersely, already not liking the sound of it.

  “Twenty pounds of C-4,” the agent answered.

  Mother of God. Someone had just lobbed twenty pounds of high explosives at him? “How many people are hurt?” he’d bitten out.

  “No damage assessments yet. One of the guys says he counts about fifty people down on the ground. So far, most of them seem to be alive.”

  Fifty? Fifty? Fifty Americans injured or killed because some crazy had it in for him? Deep in his gut, anger had begun to simmer. “I assume you guys know what to do next with me?”

  The agent answered dryly, “Yes, sir. We practice scenarios like this all the time. We’ve got it under control.”

  “Fifty people down damn well doesn’t sound under control to me,” he’d snapped. He’d paused. Taken as deep a breath as the two-hundred-pound man on his back allowed. “I’m sorry. Stopping nutcases isn’t your responsibility.”

  The agent replied shortly, “It is when they’re coming after you. At least we did the most important part of our job. You’re alive.”

  “Thanks,” Gabe replied seriously.

  “Thank Owen Haas. He’s the guy who dived for that charge and lobbed it away from your car.”

  “I will. The moment I see him.” And then a horrible thought had struck him. “He is okay, isn’t he?”

  “If you look up over your right shoulder, sir, you’ll see him through the back windshield.”

  Gabe had looked up, startled. Haas was plastered across the back of the car. “Is he hurt?” he’d asked his bodyguard in alarm.

  “I dunno,” the agent answered.

  “Well, hell’s bells. Stop the car, man, and find out! If he’s hurt, we’ve got to get him to a hospital!”

  “Sorry, sir. The prime directive is to get you under cover and safely secured. Haas would have my head on a platter if I stopped this car for him right now.”

  Gabe had subsided underneath the agent. The guy was right. Haas was absolutely single-minded in his pursuit of keeping Gabe safe.

  The car drove for what seemed like forever while those first few minutes after the blast ran through his head over and over.

  He closed his eyes yet again. Jesus. Fifty people. Diana had been right. She said the Q-group would try to nail him today. Good Lord! Was she hurt? When he’d called her, she said she was on the parade route near the National Art Gallery, searching for the terrorists. That was right near where the bomb had gone off. Had she found the terrorists? Was she one of those fifty people lying hurt or dead on the ground?

  “I’ve got to make a phone call,” he grunted. “Any chance you could get off of me so I can do it?”

  “Sorry, sir. You can’t make any calls right now. But, FYI, the protocol in a situation like this is to notify and lock down the current president. The members of both the old Cabinet and your Cabinet will be scattered and taken to secure locations, and NORAD will be notified to raise the DEFCON status. Like I said, everything’s taken care of.”

  “It’s a personal call,” Gabe replied wryly. “But thanks for the information.”

  “Sorry. No calls. Not until you’re off the streets.”

  “And how long is that going to take?” he asked sharply, none too pleased at being told he couldn’t call Diana to check on her.

  “A couple more minutes, sir. We’re almost there.”

  Where in the hell “there” was, was anybody’s guess. These guys knew what they were doing and had all sorts of contingency plans for situations just like this. It was their show until they deemed him safe. And until then, he was only along for the ride. Little more than precious cargo. Hell, he wasn’t even President yet.

  The bastards had tried to kill him before he took the oath of office. Why were they so damned worried about him becoming President, anyway? It wasn’t as if he had any big agenda where Berzhaan was concerned, other than doing what the Berzhaani people had been screaming for the U.S. to do already. What was it about him that had these guys so pissed off?

  The limousine made another sharp turn but this time it decelerated after it straightened out. The engine noise echoed as though they’d just driven inside a building of some kind. Then it stopped altogether.

  “If you’ll just stay put and stay down for a moment, sir, we have to secure the area before we move you.”

  Thankfully, the big agent got off him. Gabe drew his first deep breath since this whole thing starte
d. The passenger door opened briefly as the agent slipped outside. Gabe caught a glimpse of what looked like an oversize garage, dim and concrete.

  He lay there for perhaps a minute. A guy could get damned paranoid after someone tried to kill him a second time. First Chicago, and now this. It didn’t help to have these fanatical Secret Service agents hustling him around as though the sky was about to fall on his head, either.

  The car door opened abruptly, and despite himself, he jumped.

  Owen Haas stuck his head in the door. “It’s all clear, sir. If you’d please come with me.”

  He sat up, grateful to be vertical. As he slid toward Haas, he asked, “How’re you doing, Owen? Are you hurt?”

  “I’m fine, sir,” came the implacable reply.

  Right. As if the guy would admit it if one of his limbs was falling off and he had a sucking chest wound. What had he been thinking to even ask? Gabe followed the agent across the expanse of gray concrete toward a lighter gray door. A half-dozen agents ranged around the space, which was probably a small warehouse of some kind, their guns drawn. The sight of their weapons in hand reminded him sharply of the gravity of the situation.

  An agent opened the door as he and Owen reached it. He reached out to touch its surface as they hustled past it. It felt like stainless steel. In a warehouse? Clearly this wasn’t any ordinary warehouse they’d brought him to.

  Haas, already starting down the staircase that descended away from the door, looked back over his shoulder. “Hurry, sir,” the agent said quietly.

  He picked up the pace, practically running down the steps to keep up with the Secret Service agent. Lightbulbs mounted high on the wall in mesh cages lit the way at regular intervals. The stairway went on forever, down and down and down. Where in the world were they taking him?