'You said you knew about my father.' She was hauling herself into the front, one hand on the passenger seat, one hand on his. She vaulted through like a gymnast, her left leg trailing slightly, but still making the move.
'What do you know?' she said, settling into the seat beside him and fixing him with a bold stare.
'He's involved with something – some people – who were hijacking the planes.'
'And where is he now?'
'I don't know.'
'Well, where are these people?'
Jesus. And he thought he was going to be a hero for getting her away from the airport.
He looked across. She was still staring at him.
'Where are they?'
'He said they were in a warehouse just north of the city.'
'How far away?'
'Ten minutes from here.'
'So that's where we're heading.'
It wasn't a question.
Delaney swung the truck across two lanes. She was right – why stop now? This would be his retribution. And his rehabilitation. He would leave her in the truck, out of harm's way, and go and sort out this mess.
'That's where we're heading,' he said.
Finally, she stopped looking at him, and glanced at the road ahead.
'That's where he'll be,' she said. 'In the middle of everything. I guarantee it.'
Delaney stepped up the pressure on the accelerator and set his jaw. The streetlights flicked past, lighting up his way. This felt like destiny now. In this moment, with this kid sitting here beside him, he felt like he had a purpose again.
CHAPTER 88
THOMAS WHEELAN COULD HEAR nothing but the hiss and crackle of the machines. The lights on the consoles behind Born's prostrate body were still flashing, but the Situation Room had long fallen silent. They were out of there now; there was only static. Wheelan looked at his watch again. A few minutes and his people would be here.
This would all be wrapped up in a few hours, then there'd be the inquiry, then the plaudits and praise for his operation, and then he could slip away to Vermont, to the clinic. A few weeks and he would be clean. Maybe Eleanor could go with him, now that she had no husband to look after. She'd need a vacation, once the funeral was over.
The journalist was staring straight down the barrel of Marinov's gun. They could get rid of him now, but there was no hurry. It would be more convincing to have his time of death coincide with the cavalry's rush into the building. They could wait. This would be Virgo's death-row experience. Another innocent man dead. At least, for once, it was a white man.
No, Eleanor wouldn't come with him to rehab, of course; she still had little Jennie to look after. He felt a twinge of regret at his niece's loss. No one should lose their daddy at that age. But it was for the greater good; she would grow up in a better world because of that loss. He would make sure of that. Gabriel MacIntyre's death would be of more use than his life.
It was a shame there were no surviving witnesses to the power of the quantum computer. It would have to be just his word that stood up for the idea. It wasn't a disaster; he'd simply have to play it right. And he could do that, no problem. He would get a quantum cryptography network out of it, and they would begin to take the drugs trade apart. And he would win the next race for the White House. America had no choice when there was a God-fearing, tough-talking national hero on offer.
Wheelan checked his watch again. He would kill Virgo as the troops stormed the building. He would do it himself; Virgo's would be his last murder. No one would describe killing Vasil Marinov as murder.
CHAPTER 89
AS THEY SPED THROUGH the dark, Katie tried not to think about her mother. Without immediate danger, the scenes of the past day were rushing in on her, assailing her mind. She saw the body lying there in the grass. She wondered whether anyone had found it yet. She would make sure they went back to get it. She would stay focused now, hold it together, find her dad. Then, when all this was over, they would grieve together.
She turned to Delaney. 'So, you have a team in place?'
He glanced back at her with a shifty look. 'I'm on my own,' he said. He hesitated, then got his answer in before she asked. 'Long story.'
She left it at that.
'How did you find me? How did you know what I looked like?'
'I googled you. The Bureau's computer system is a crock of shi–' he pulled out, pretty much too late. 'It's pretty lame, but at least we have internet access. There's a picture of you on your local paper's website. On an athletics track. You're quite the achiever.'
She knew the picture. She saw it again in her mind, and the focus zoomed in on her mother. She ran her fingers through her hair. Anything but that thought.
'But how did you know the plane was coming in here, to Boston? We were meant to go to Montreal.'
'Two planes get blown out of the sky in one night, everyone's watching the next one. The wires were full of it. Once your change of heading was posted, it wasn't hard to figure out where they'd bring you down. Anyway, I think someone wanted you brought into Boston if you got out of this alive.'
Her stomach took a leap. 'Two planes got shot down? Is that what all that stuff at the airport was about?'
Delaney looked across, a grim frown on his face.
'I don't know what's going on, but your old man's gotten himself into something very nasty here.'
She didn't know what to say. How many people were on those planes? Was this all about her dad? Or was he an innocent bystander in all this? If it was limited, if there was a fence around it, just her and her mum and dad, she could maybe have coped. But hundreds of people she had never met, and their families and their friends were all pulled into this, too. A tear rolled down her cheek. She wiped it away, trying to stop the madness, the despair reeling through her mind. This was spilling so wide. If all these people's lives were thrown into destruction and heartbreak because of them, then . . . then what? What could she do? What could anyone do? Lie down and die?
No. She wouldn't do that. She could fight. She couldn't do anything for the people whose lives had been shattered in the past few hours. But she could make sure she didn't let the chaos rip any more of her own world apart.
After a couple of minutes of silence, Delaney looked across again. 'I haven't asked you if you're OK. You've had a hell of a ride.'
Katie shrugged.
'I'm OK.'
CHAPTER 90
WITH A SUDDEN JERK, Delaney pulled the truck off the road and brought it to a halt. There was nothing but dark woods ahead.
'If I'm right, the complex is just past the trees. I don't know what the reception'll be like. I'll just have to wait and see.'
'We,' Katie said. She stared at him defiantly. 'We'll have to wait and see. I'm coming too.'
'No,' Delaney said. 'You're staying here. Where it's safe.'
'Try and make me.'
She saw Delaney hesitate. His gaze shifted to her leg.
'Can you do this?'
'I can do anything,' she said. The words came out cold, determined. She was ready. She reminded herself that she had handled things, done things, in the past twelve hours that she would never have dreamed were within her abilities. But that was the beauty of necessity. Nothing seemed impossible, distasteful, immoral even. Survival was everything.
'We're going to have to be quiet,' Delaney said, opening his door. She forgave the patronising tone. Forgiveness, too, was easier when it helped get an essential job done. She jumped out and the undergrowth crackled beneath her feet. Delaney shot her a warning glance. Fair enough. She'd keep the noise down.
They moved quickly. The sky had cleared, and the moon shone bright through the trees. She was surprised how agile Delaney seemed; she was struggling to keep up with him, and while she tripped and fell a couple of times, he never lost his footing. Suddenly, he pulled her up sharp and pressed her down into a crouch. They had reached the end of the trees. A hundred metres of grassy scrub stretched ahead of them, and then there was
a tall chain-link fence. She looked across at Delaney; she could climb it, no problem. But him? He didn't look so agile.
If she had to leave him behind, so be it.
'What do you know about the inside of that building?' she said.
He looked at her, blank-faced. 'Nothing.'
'OK. Stay here.' She stood up and coiled for a sprint. Delaney grabbed her arm.
'What are you doing?'
'I'm going in.'
'Without me? Unarmed?'
'What have you got?'
Without letting go of her, Delaney pulled a shining black handgun from a holster on his chest, then reached into his jacket. He had a knife too, an eight-inch hunting blade. She took the knife.
'Can you handle that fence?' Katie said.
'Climb it, you mean?'
She nodded.
'You want to climb a twenty-foot fence in the moonlight?' Delaney looked at her, incredulous. 'With your leg?'
His grip tightened around her bicep. 'Listen, Katie. You're a hell of a girl, but you're no use to your father shot dead on the fence. I'm no action hero, but I know what I'm doing. I've got cutters. We'll be under in five seconds. Now, keep low and stay with me.' He pulled her out from the trees.
It was the longest hundred-metre sprint of her life.
CHAPTER 91
SHE HAD TO ADMIT it: Delaney was right. It took him three seconds to cut a hole in the fence. She crouched and dragged herself through first, then held it up for him to follow. They were at the side of what seemed to be the main building. On the roof, she could see satellite dishes and aerials. Now they had to find a way in.
There was no door on this side, and the front entrance was out of the question. They hadn't seen any guards yet, but they'd be there, at the front, if anywhere.
She let her fingers run over the steel cladding. If there wasn't a door, there wasn't a door. The rivets would give her enough purchase to climb onto the roof; perhaps there was a way in from above?
Delaney was moving down to the back of the building. He paused at the corner, his gun held straight out in front of his face, then swung quickly round. He pulled back, and beckoned for her to follow. She ran to him.
'Anything?' She whispered, almost mouthed the words. Delaney shook his head.
It was time to go upwards. Alone. She pointed to herself, then to the roof. He looked at her, puzzled.
'I can do it,' she whispered.
She could do it. Her prosthetic was no good for climbing, but she had three other limbs. They were strong, and she was light. It might give her the edge; they wouldn't be watching the roof. The steel bit into her fingertips. These were terrible holds. But her muscles were good enough. She winced at the stretch, the pain of forcing her weight onto a single joint of a single finger. But she had known worse pain. It would be gone in a moment. After every moment of pain came a moment of relief, and each time she was nearer the roof.
A piece of cladding shifted under her weight; the millimetre of movement was enough for her toe to slip off its rivet. The ground was ten metres down now, and she was hanging on by her calluses. The moon went behind a cloud, and the shadows of the rivet heads above her disappeared. Now, she was climbing blind. She shut her eyes.
Concentrate.
Four more reaches, four more agonising pulls against gravity, and she allowed herself to look again. The lip of the roof was just beyond her fingertips. She was there. One last toehold, and she could grasp at the protruding roof sheets.
She looked down. The shadowy head of a rivet stuck out from the steel. She sank her right foot onto it, then pushed. It was moss, not a rivet. It gave way without even a scrap of resistance, and she began to fall.
The cartoons she and her friends sometimes watched on lazy Saturday mornings were right. Something about falling gave you an extra moment of realisation, time to think. It also gave you an extra reach. As she hung by one arm from a piece of plastic roof sheeting, Katie was grateful for that.
Below her, Delaney was nowhere to be seen. The tendons in her arms were screaming in the dark and her head was filled with the sound of rushing blood. But that didn't stop her from hearing the trucks.
They sounded distant. It was nothing more than a rumour of a rumble, like a resonance between the tyres on the road and the vibrations of the building held in her fingertips. But she knew that they were coming this way.
Contracting her bicep enough to give her free hand a hold was going to be painful. She wasn't heavy, but this was just physics. They had studied this in class last year, and for once she'd been paying attention. The laws of levers meant that her arms were going to have to strain to the limit.
In her head, she counted to three, then moved.
It hurt, burned like hell. But now she had two hands on the roof. More leverage, a risky torsion in the wrist, and she could get her elbows up there too. On three, again. Seconds later, she was up, stepping carefully along the edge of the roof. Katie could see the lights now – the trucks were maybe a couple of kilometres away. She knelt down to examine the roof panels. Flat-head screws held them in place; Delaney's knife would make short work of lifting a panel to get her in. How far inside had he got? She hadn't heard a gunshot yet – maybe that was a good sign.
It was raining again, and her hair slapped and stuck on her face as she worked. The second screw put a notch in Delaney's blade, but the rest turned easily. The panels overlapped, but there was no sense trying to get two free. She'd lever up this one and get in before the rain made her clothes too heavy. She slipped in, dragging her prosthetic behind her, without making a sound. So far, so good.
It took a moment to filter out the drumming rain. The gantry seemed secure enough; she crawled gingerly away from the outer wall. There was some give, but her instincts had been right: there was no indication it would buckle under her weight. She just had to be careful not to move too fast: slow and steady.
The rain was getting harder and louder. She heard engines now, not rumbles. And she could hear conversation. It may have been from further ahead; it may have been from below her feet.
There was only one way to find out.
The knife slid into the ceiling tile without a sound. She hooked it up, pulled it free and squinted through the gap. And then she saw him.
He looked terrible. There was blood all over her dad's face, and he was pale and bruised. But he was unflinching, his eyes focused on the face behind the gun. They were ten metres away maybe. She looked up again, across the gantry. The struts got very thin towards the centre of the ceiling – too thin. She would need to get up onto the central girder that ran above them. How much time did she have? There was no way of telling.
CHAPTER 92
NATHANIEL VIRGO STARED AT the pistol barrel.
Get out of there. What did Imogen's message mean? Things were going to get worse? Or things were going to get wrapped up, so don't get caught in the crossfire? Well, thanks for the warning, Imogen, but it was academic now. Staring a 9 mm pistol in the face, Virgo knew that getting out of there was a distant dream.
He had done what he set out to do. Katie's plane had landed, and she would be in some FBI holding pattern now until someone could corroborate her story. Delaney, maybe? Once the hijacks had started, surely Delaney would have realised he hadn't been making it all up. The luxury of another phone call would be good right now. Just to check Katie was home and dry.
But he had saved her. She may never know, but he'd done it. In the end, that was what mattered.
Saving himself was going to prove a little harder. He hadn't expected Marinov to shoot Genovsky so quickly. No goodbye, not even a hint of regret on the man's face. It seemed to Virgo that he felt more regret, more guilt about Genovsky's death, than Marinov.
Those weird eyes were narrowed and cold now, intent on the next shot. Him. But Wheelan would be the one to call it – he clearly had the masterplan. Yes, getting out of this was really going to take some doing.
'So all this is for a quantum cryptography
network?' Virgo forced his eyes to flash at Wheelan, but the gravity of the gun barrel quickly pulled them back.
Wheelan walked over to stand beside Marinov. 'You make it sound like a bad thing.' He looked like a man without a care. 'We can do it – there just isn't the political will. Tomorrow, there will be.'
'Surely, there's a better way than shooting planes full of people out of the sky?'
'You know of one?'
'I think it's called democracy. People elect a government to make difficult decisions. Like whether there's a credible threat to justify the expense of a dedicated quantum cryptography network.'
Pompous, but provocative.
Wheelan eyed Virgo reproachfully, his head on one side. Like he'd just asked a stupid question at a press conference. 'You don't think the fact that we have been listening in on the White House shows there is a credible threat? Gabriel Mac- Intyre knew I was right. For the first time in his life, he made a decent choice.'
'You make it sound like you're all heroes. But you're not going to do badly from this, are you? You'll be the man, after all. The guy whose operation exposed the quantum computing threat. Competing for the top job with someone?' He thought back to where this had all started, Imogen's NSA buddy, the leaked report. What was the name? That was it. Time for the long shot. 'David, for example?'
Wheelan's face went blank. Not the desired effect. There was no way to go but forward.
'Well, let's hope David doesn't find Marinov. It'd be a disaster if it all started to unravel. What with him being the only weak link left.'
He saw Marinov's finger squeeze on the trigger. Then it relaxed. 'David?' he said, his eyes flicking to Wheelan.
There wasn't anything more. That's all he knew: David, something in the NSA. That's all she'd ever said. Virgo felt a tremble through the floor. Time to speed things up. Time for an ad lib.
'David doesn't think much of the advanced projects, does he, Thomas?' Wheelan's face didn't flicker. 'He doesn't like the ridiculous stuff: entanglement generators and the like.' He was warming up now. 'It's like he sees right through them – he knows that buying an agent is easier than buying a quantum computer. You don't crack codes, you find a crack in the wall.'
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