by AD Starrling
The door slammed shut in his face seconds before he reached it. The lock turned. A dull scrape followed from the other side as something was dragged and jammed against the closet entrance.
Conrad twisted the handle frantically and slammed his shoulder against the wood. It refused to budge. He swore and rammed into it again. Footsteps rose behind him. Stevens appeared at his side. Anatole was nowhere to be seen.
‘She’s in there!’ Conrad bellowed.
He raised his semiautomatic at the lock and squeezed the trigger repeatedly. Stevens took out his FN Five-seveN and joined him. An echo of shots accompanied the barrage of bullets from their guns. Conrad thought he heard glass shattering inside.
The lock fell off. They jammed their shoulders against the door and pushed. Something heavy ground across the floor on the other side. It gave away without warning. They stumbled into the closet.
Conrad’s eyes locked on the blinds fluttering in a mild breeze. He dashed to the broken window and looked outside. The woman was rolling off a canvas awning three floors below. She landed nimbly on the ground and sprinted toward a car park at the front of the building.
Stevens staggered to a stop at the immortal’s side, glass crunching beneath his shoes. ‘Shit!’
Conrad tucked his gun in his rear waistband and climbed over the windowsill. The jagged pieces around the frame bit into his palms as he balanced on the outer ledge.
‘Hey, what the—?’ started Stevens in a choked voice.
Conrad jumped.
His body dented the awning a couple of heartbeats later. Air left his lips in a harsh exhale. He twisted to the end of the green canopy, grabbed the edge, and flipped down. His boots touched the asphalt just as the powerful growl of a motorcycle erupted from the left. He looked around.
A black Ducati superbike emerged from the shadows under the trees. Conrad’s eyes widened when he saw the figure atop it. He cursed and started to run.
The motorcycle flashed past yards ahead of him. Conrad caught a glimpse of the woman’s narrowed gray eyes through her open, black helmet before she brought the visor down. The superbike roared, the front tire lifting briefly off the ground. Its rider leaned into the corner and headed for the avenue.
Conrad angled toward the park in front of the building. He bounded over a row of seats and raced across an expanse of freshly mown grass, his heart thundering inside his chest. He hit the blacktop seconds later.
The Ducati was moving rapidly up the road on his right. He bolted after it. The woman spotted him in her side mirror. She glanced over her shoulder, gunned the engine, and accelerated. Conrad’s stomach lurched as the distance between them widened. He clenched his teeth and willed his legs to move faster, his breath coming in hard, hot gasps.
Tires suddenly squealed somewhere on his right. Stevens’s black Suburban appeared on a service road running parallel to the avenue. The SUV climbed a narrow embankment and plowed through a hedge. It rocked on its suspension before shooting out onto the road a dozen feet ahead of him. The brake lights came on and the passenger door popped open.
‘Get in!’ Anatole shouted from behind the wheel as Conrad came abreast of the vehicle.
He grabbed the interior armrest and hopped inside just as Anatole hit the gas. The Suburban lurched forward.
‘You got the keys off Stevens?’ Conrad panted.
‘Didn’t have time! I hot-wired it!’ Anatole glowered at the road. ‘Dammit! Where’d she go?’ He maneuvered sharply around a bus.
A grunt left Conrad’s lips as he slammed into the window. He slid back into the seat, clipped his belt in, and looked through the windshield. The Suburban was hurtling toward a junction with the signals on red. The bike had disappeared.
Anatole switched on the SUV’s flashing forward lights and siren, clutched the steering wheel, and weaved violently between two braking cars. They shot across the intersection to a blast of horns and shocked screams.
Conrad caught a flash of black out the corner of his eye. He looked to the right. ‘She’s cutting across the park!’
The Ducati was disappearing between the trees at the south end of a green area containing an elaborate central water feature and fountains. He spotted a signpost on a pole.
‘There’s a bike trail to the east! That’s where she’s headed,’ he said grimly, his gaze focused on the back of the woman’s helmet.
‘Hang on!’ yelled Anatole.
Conrad’s eyes shifted to the avenue in front. ‘Oh fu—!’ he started and braced himself against the dashboard and roof of the vehicle.
The shriek of tires drowned out the rest of his words. The Suburban cut through a flock of scattering pedestrians in the middle of a crosswalk, sending several people hurtling to the ground as they leapt out of the way.
A driveway materialized on the right. Anatole took a tight turn into it. Another signpost appeared up ahead. He jumped the curb, twisted the steering wheel, and sent the Suburban careening down a short walkway toward a train station entrance. The crowd standing on the concourse moved back in a horrified wave. The vehicle streaked through the open gates and drove off the edge of the platform.
Conrad picked up a shrill screech of metal amidst the terrified shouts of the commuters. A shadow eclipsed the sky on their left. His knuckles whitened on the dashboard as he looked past Anatole and saw the train heading inexorably toward them.
The Suburban sailed a few feet past the leading edge of the locomotive before bouncing down on the far side rail track. Anatole revved the engine, drove onto an overgrown trail, and turned right.
Conrad tasted bile at the back of his throat. ‘Next time you decide to pull a stunt like that, warn me,’ he muttered, his heart thumping erratically against his ribs. ‘In writing, preferably.’
Anatole grinned and accelerated. The biking trail appeared on their left after several hundred feet. He guided the Suburban onto it and drove down a steep embankment. Riders veered out of their way as the vehicle shot along a path between the trees. They emerged from the coppice and went under the George Washington Memorial Parkway.
Conrad spotted the black Ducati winding up a trail through some trees to the south. He gripped the dashboard, his nails digging into the plastic cover.
The woman hunkered low over the handlebars of the superbike. She looked around at the sound of their engine, her black helmet gleaming in the sunlight. She swung the Ducati to the right and came off the track, the tires biting sharply into dirt and grass.
Anatole yanked the steering wheel and drove onto the turf. A grim smile twisted his lips as he gave chase. ‘This chick is seriously starting to push my buttons!’
He sent the SUV hurtling up the incline and darted beneath an overpass. They emerged into sunlight and curved sharply back onto the path at the top of the slope.
Metal shrieked and sparks rose from their left as the Suburban scraped along the guard rail separating them from the expressway. Anatole righted the vehicle and headed for a narrow bridge crossing over one of the motorway exits.
Alarm froze Conrad to his seat when he saw the figure in their path. ‘Watch out!’ he bellowed.
The man in the running shorts and T-shirt looked around at the blare of the siren. He gaped when he saw the Suburban barreling toward him, grabbed the guardrail, and vaulted up the brick wall on the side of the bridge.
Conrad looked back as they flashed past and saw the guy fall onto the grass embankment next to the motorway. He glared at Anatole.
The immortal glanced at him. ‘I wish you’d stop bitching about these close calls. It’s not like I ran him over.’
The trail turned between some trees and climbed toward another overpass. The Ducati was disappearing over the rise. The SUV bolted onto the concrete bridge and headed over a motorway entrance. The north end of Ronald Reagan Airport appeared on their
right as they neared the peak of the incline.
By the time they bounced back onto the ground on the other side, the bike was nowhere in sight.
Anatole cursed. ‘Where the hell did she—?’
‘There!’ Conrad indicated the fresh tire tracks carved in the ground to the right.
Anatole rotated the steering wheel and sent the Suburban into a hairpin skid. The tires screamed before finally gripping the asphalt, the smell of burning rubber flooding the air. The vehicle shot onto the side trail heading into the airport grounds.
The Ducati was already halfway across the parking lot that lay beyond the path. It curved sharply around the fence at the end. Anatole raced onto the blacktop and followed speedily, his fingers white on the steering wheel. He negotiated the turn, swore, and slammed on the brakes. Conrad grunted as he jerked forward against the seat belt.
The Suburban screeched to a halt an inch from a security barrier. The Ducati had slipped through a gap at the edge of the roadblock and was racing across the airport vehicle lanes beyond.
‘Oh no, you don’t!’ snarled Anatole.
He reversed sharply, spun the wheel, and aimed for an opening on the right. They headed past a row of emergency vehicles parked in the shadow of a hangar and bolted onto the tarmac.
Up ahead, the superbike shot under a taxiing airplane and accelerated toward a wide grass belt north of the airport grounds. A runway shimmered beyond it.
Tension suddenly knotted Conrad’s stomach. ‘Shit.’
A roar from the right rattled the windows of the Suburban. He looked around and saw a large Airbus jet making its way up the strip for takeoff.
‘Anatole!’ he barked warningly.
The red-haired immortal glanced at the approaching plane, a muscle jumping in his jawline. He clenched the steering wheel and stamped the gas pedal to the floor of the vehicle. The Suburban juddered onto the grass.
The Ducati crossed the strip of green and hurtled over the tarmac some five hundred feet in front of the airliner.
Conrad’s mouth went dry. ‘Oh God!’ he whispered. His words were drowned by the growing boom of the approaching aircraft.
Anatole swore viciously. He stepped on the brakes and twisted the wheel. Chunks of dirt and grass rose in violent arcs around them as the tires tore through the earth. The Suburban spun through a one-eighty revolution and slipped onto the tarmac. It shuddered to a halt on the edge of the runway.
The Airbus thundered past less than a hundred feet from the SUV, its port wing casting them in brief twilight. The vehicle rocked violently on its suspension in the downdraft from the plane’s powerful engines.
Conrad’s fingers ached where they braced against the dashboard and the door. He twisted around and made out the vanishing shape of the Ducati and its rider in the distance. Movement in the sky drew his gaze. His pulse stuttered.
A black helicopter was dropping down ahead of the superbike. It landed on a ribbon of land bordering the Potomac River. The woman braked and jumped off the motorcycle. She threw her helmet on the ground and ran toward the aircraft. The two immortals watched her climb inside.
Anatole glowered. ‘I am officially pissed off.’
They ignored the emergency vehicles converging on them from across the airport grounds and stared at the helicopter as it rose and turned toward the river.
PART TWO: FREEFALL
Chapter Thirteen
‘We got anything on the bike?’ snapped Connelly.
‘It’s a 848 Evo Ducati,’ said the Sit Room communications assistant. ‘It was hired from a bike shop in Arlington at 14:55 today. We’ve got a picture of the person who leased it on the store’s security camera.’
A video rolled on one of the screens on the walls. The communications assistant froze the clip. Conrad stared at the image of a slender figure in a black biker’s suit and sunglasses in mid-stride on the floor of a brightly lit show room. His hands fisted at his sides when he registered her face.
Although a sports cap obscured half her features, there was no mistaking the woman who had infiltrated the US Secret Service holding facility in Arlington just over an hour ago and killed the assassin he had captured at the FedEx Field.
‘Information’s coming through from Crystal City,’ said Stevens. He was talking to someone on a Sit Room phone. ‘They just found the body of a female nurse shoved inside a locker in the clinic’s changing rooms.’ His eyes darkened. ‘She had her throat cut.’
Stony silence followed. Although it was anger that turned Conrad’s blood cold, he was alarmed at the speed with which the enemy was moving. That they had gotten so close so fast not only indicated the enormous resources they had at hand, but also that their spy was deep inside the task force.
‘How are we doing with finding our mole?’ he asked Connelly stiffly.
‘We’re going through the list of people who may have had access to President Westwood’s itinerary,’ replied the Director of National Intelligence. ‘Considering the number of agencies involved, it’s going to take a while to check everyone’s background.’
‘You need to be looking closer to home,’ Conrad said in a low voice. ‘I think their informant might be someone in our immediate team.’
Connelly observed him for silent seconds before nodding.
‘What about the helicopter?’ said Anatole.
Conrad glanced at the red-haired immortal. It had been a long time since he last heard such thinly veiled fury in his friend’s voice.
‘From your description of the tail boom, we know it’s an MD aircraft, likely the 520N or the 600N model,’ replied the Sit Room intelligence analyst. ‘The company that makes them is based in Arizona.’ He made a face. ‘Unfortunately, without the registration number, it would be damn near impossible to identify it.’
Conrad frowned. ‘Get a list of all the helicopters fitting that design from the manufacturer. I want to know who owns the ones currently licensed for use inside the US.’
The agent picked up a phone. Sarah Connelly turned to Conrad.
‘That was some stunt you guys pulled at the airport,’ she said through pinched lips, her cool gaze swinging to encompass Anatole. ‘I had the FAA Administrator shouting in my ear for almost ten minutes. The guy almost had a coronary. He demanded I fire the, I quote, “two assholes who almost caused one of the worst accidents in US aviation history.”’ She glared at them. ‘I sure as hell hope this is not a taste of things to come.’
Anatole shrugged. ‘Hey, we almost caught the suspect.’
Connelly’s expression grew stormy.
Conrad raised a hand in a pacifying gesture. ‘Look, I’m sorry we—’ he started to say.
The Sit Room door opened. Laura walked in ahead of the FBI and CIA lead agents.
‘We got something interesting from the stadium,’ she announced without preamble.
A phone rang on the other side of the room. The communications assistant lifted the receiver.
Laura’s eyes gleamed with ill-concealed animation. ‘We found the rifle used by the fourth assassin. It was on the second level concourse.’ She smiled, a forbidding flash of white teeth. ‘It’s identical to the one we got off the sniper who died at the scene. She took the shot from inside a banner stand about two hundred feet from the north field tunnel.’
Conrad tensed. A dark intuition shot through him. ‘She?’
A low mumble of conversation rose from the front end of the Sit Room. The communications assistant clutched the phone and bent over the console.
‘Yes, “she,”’ said Laura. ‘We caught an image of her on one of the stadium cameras.’
Conrad’s misgivings deepened. ‘What does this woman look—?’
‘Director Connelly, I think you should see this,’ interrupted the communications assistant shakily.
The man had risen to his feet. He clasped the telephone receiver to his ear and lifted a remote control toward the monitor that took up most of the wall at the head of the conference room. The screen flashed on. A patchwork of live feeds appeared across it.
Stunned silence fell over the room as they stared at the images being broadcast over several major, international news channels. Icy fear filled Conrad’s veins when his brain finally registered what he was seeing. He felt Laura stiffen on the other side of the table.
‘Turn up the volume,’ Connelly ordered, her face ashen.
‘—although information is still coming through from our sources, the authorities have yet to confirm the veracity of the reports being relayed by local reporters in London.’ An anchorman’s voice overlaid the video on the far left display. ‘Once again, John Cunnington, the prime minister of the United Kingdom, was the victim of an assassination attempt during a dinner held in honor of wounded British soldiers who served in the Afghan Civil War. The prime minister insisted on attending the event despite rumors that the president of the United States was himself the victim of a terrorist act this afternoon. The prime minister was allegedly shot in the chest as he left the building and is said to be in a critical condition in one of the major trauma centers in the city—’
The camera had captured the scenes of chaos outside one of London’s iconic Victorian establishments. In the middle of the screen, an ambulance raced away into the night, surrounded by a protective police escort. Vehicles from the London Metropolitan Police occupied the cobbled road in front of the brightly lit edifice. Grim-faced officers in tactical gear were on the ground, their postures tense as they clutched their firearms. Crowds of onlookers gawked at them from behind a line of barricades.
The communications assistant increased the sound on the second feed. Conrad felt his limbs go numb as the newscaster’s voice rose above the British anchorman’s ongoing announcement.
