Damien took the lead and forced a path downward.
She did her best to shout an apology to the offended as they moved.
The base of the stairs turned and fanned out into the main hall. Those last ten steps were a solid mass of humanity.
She despaired of finding a way through them.
The sound was a palpable force against them. The tuning instruments were breaking into snatches of carols. The crowd was alive with excitement.
They were running out of time, and options.
“There!” Damien fought his way to the outside banister and glanced over the banister to where an arch opened away from the main floor. Empty. A ten foot drop.
“Climb up then give me your hands,” he didn’t give Cornelia a choice. Wrapping his hands about her waist, he lofted her up until her feet were over the banister and she was sitting on it. Then he shifted to grab her hands and used his hip to nudge her butt off the edge.
The yank on her arms must have hurt, but if she cried out in complaint he couldn’t hear it. Wouldn’t hear a scream of agony in all this racket.
He dangled her as low as he could, then let her go.
She landed clean, ten feet below.
He swung over, catching himself for a moment with his hands on the banister, then dropped down beside her.
They rushed down the side hall toward the meeting rooms.
The first room was crammed with tuba cases. At least the sound reverberating about the Great Hall was far enough away now that he could hear himself think.
He began shaking one case after another.
Empty.
Empty.
Empty.
Cornelia kicked at the first in a long row of them.
It fell and tumbled into the next. Like dominos, a whole line of them went down knocking one after another down. More importantly all of them fell as if they were empty.
He did the same to a row in front of him.
Nothing.
“Next room!” They raced back into the hallway and into the next room.
More cases, each the size of a man’s torso.
He tumbled them about, knocking them over and mixing them together. There were going to be some very upset tuba players at the end of the concert. Cornelia didn’t have any better luck.
In the next room were the Marine Corps Band’s cases, each clearly labeled.
He hated to do it, but he kicked at the stack. They all tumbled aside.
“Maybe we were wrong.”
He turned to Cornelia who was working her way down the other side of the room. The Marine Corp Band used rolling road cases for the sousaphones because they traveled so widely. Each was three feet wide, two deep, and almost four high with aluminum corners and heavy latches.
She bumped and nudged her way along them, knocking their metal corners against the walls and leaving scuffs and dings in the wood. He was about to tell her to ease off when she practically bounced off one that barely moved.
“Check the rest of them,” he instructed as he moved in.
When he nudged the case, it moved, but it was very heavy—far heavier than a sousaphone could ever be.
“The rest are empty,” she called from the end of the row.
“How long to the bomb squad?”
“I’ll find out,” Cornelia pulled her phone, dialed the general and connected immediately. “We found a case, much heavier than it should be, in the meeting room off the west side of the Great Hall. Bomb, a nuke, an incendiary—we don’t know.”
“Roger that.”
As the general told her that help was about to enter the front of the building, she turned to face back toward Damien.
He was hunched over the case, inspecting it carefully.
Close behind him, a Marine Corps band member stood frozen in the doorway.
She saw everything in a gestalt moment.
He wore the trademark blue pants, red jacket—and white hat.
Never worn indoors unless wearing a sidearm.
A glance down. No sidearm. No pistol belt.
Back to his face.
Grim. Angry. Determined.
“Imposter!” She screamed out the warning to Damien just as the man dove toward him.
“What the hell?” General Arnson shouted in her ear.
Damien turned just far enough that he dodged the worst of the assailant’s blow. Still, he was slammed brutally against the case and the wall.
Dazed for a moment, he struggled to his feet.
For lack of any other weapon, the assailant grabbed a folding metal chair.
Cornelia was too far away to get there in time, so she heaved her phone right at his face.
Her aim wasn’t that good, but when it struck his neck, his momentary flinch was all the opening Damien needed. His fist drove so hard into the man’s face, that he let go of the chair. It was a miracle he didn’t fall down dead with the force of the blow.
The chair banged off Damien’s shoulder as it fell, but not hard enough to do any damage.
With a cry of rage the man managed to deliver a punch to Damien’s solar plexus that sent him staggering back against the wall.
As he moved in once more, Cornelia raced toward him to intercept, having no idea what she’d do when she got there.
When she was still three steps away, there was a soft spitting sound and blood erupted from the man’s shoulder, spraying a pattern on the wall before he collapsed to the carpet screaming.
Roy Beaumont stood in the doorway holding a handgun with one of those long silencers on it.
“I take it that he’s your problem,” Roy said as he checked the area out in the hallway and then looked back into the room.
“Not really,” Damien groaned though he still leaned with his back against the wall, gasping for air. “This is,” he pointed at the sousaphone case.
“Excuse me?”
“If this is all plastique,” Damien knelt down with a knee in the middle of the downed man’s back who cried out again. “This could hold…let’s see. Half kilo per M112 demolition block? A thousand blocks easy. Call it a half ton. At least this end of the building would probably be destroyed. If it’s something worse than C-4…” he shrugged.
Two more Secret Service agents rushed into the room and took charge of the prisoner.
The distant sound of the impending concert caught Cornelia’s attention. She snagged her phone from the floor and looked at the time.
“Whatever it is, I think we have less than eight minutes to deal with it.”
Then she thought she heard a tiny voice coming from the phone and she put it to her ear.
“Hello?”
“Ms. Day,” the general called out, “are you okay?”
“We’re fine, except for a bomb that will probably destroy the Library in less than ten minutes.”
And then she heard it, in the background, but clear. A sound she knew because she had flown in his helicopter just three long weeks ago.
“Where are you?”
“About a minute out. I didn’t know if you’d need air assets, but I went aloft in case you did.”
“Damien?”
“Huh?” He looked up from where the two Secret Service agents were binding the assailant’s wounds none too gently. He was refusing to speak or make any sound. He appeared ready to go to his heaven along with the bomb. She wasn’t having anything to do with that.
“How do we get this out of here?”
“I’m not sure it’s even safe to move.”
“Well, the bomb squad is going to get here just in time to die with the rest of us. Sitting still isn’t an option. Besides, we’ve already moved it some.”
He looked around as if searching his memory with his eyes. “There’s a wheelchair ramp that way, but it’s right through the crowds.” He scanned further. “Or… Second street, East Entrance.”
He jumped up, kicked a half dozen tuba cases out of the way and began shoving against the rolling sousaphone case.
“You heard?” Cornelia shouted into the phone.
“Meet you there,” the general concurred.
She stuffed the phone in her pocket and called for Roy’s help. She ran to get the door and they raced down the hall.
Damien couldn’t seem to get his wind.
The man had been a trained fighter and his massive blow had driven all the air out of Damien’s lungs and maybe cracked a few ribs.
The other thing that took his breath away was Cornelia. She hadn’t flinched. Not from the moment of her timely warning until she’d rushed bare-handed at an assailant five times her strength. Now she raced ahead of them opening doors as she went.
When one was locked, with a keypad code beside it, she stepped aside and waved them on.
Out of options, he and Roy used the still-rolling mass of the bomb case as a battering ram and blew the door off its lock, practically off its hinges. He’d closed his eyes at the moment of impact, but was still alive to reopen them a moment later. A good indicator that it was just C-4 wired to a timer. But with the chance of a booby trap on opening the case, going after the timer itself would be too risky.
They got the case rolling fast enough that Cornelia had to sprint to keep ahead of them. She was a whirlwind: flashing on lights, shoving aside chairs, flipping a folding table aside where it had been set up for some talk.
No time to admire the stunning architecture this time as they raced through. He didn’t even dare take a moment to look at his watch. Far behind them, the concert was clearly about to begin, the fading sounds becoming more coherent.
At the northeast corner of the building, they almost ran the case into the Children’s Literature Center where the hall took a ninety-degree turn. It was only with a hard scramble that they managed to make the corner and roll the case toward the East Entrance, the one away from all of the people.
They made it down the wheelchair ramp and hit the street at the same moment as the helicopter. It was a Bell helicopter, but a different one. This was a UH-1 Huey, the warhorse of the Vietnam era.
“Good choice,” he shouted at the general as they rolled up to it. “I think this is too heavy for the one we took to New York.”
The general yanked open a side door and they rolled the case up to it. But even with all three of them grunting against it, they couldn’t tip it up into the helicopter’s bay.
“Six minutes,” Cornelia called out.
“Shit!” Damien looked down at the landing skid he’d been stumbling on while trying to get good footing for the lift. “How strong is that?”
General Arnson looked down at the skid, then nodded. “Strong enough.”
In less than a minute they had one set of wheels hopped over the skid and a length of sturdy cable running around the case and tied off inside the cargo bay.
“That’s way off center. I need counterweights if I’m going to fly this damn thing. All aboard and stay up against the far side, as far from the case as you can.”
He and Roy scrambled aboard. Staying away from that damn thing wasn’t a problem.
Then Cornelia started to follow them.
“Hey! You can’t—”
“Don’t be an idiot, Damien,” she shoved past his protest and they headed aloft.
And she was right. She’d been in just as much danger all along as he had. And he’d never find a braver woman than the one now huddled beside him.
Somewhere along the way, they’d lost their coats and the wind roaring past the open cargo bay door sucked the warmth right out of them.
Cornelia had yanked on a headset and was talking to the general. He couldn’t spot another headset, so he only heard her half of the conversation.
“Four minutes. Only if I’m right about the timing.”
…
“Yes, it could be less, but then we’ll be dead anyway.”
…
“No, we don’t know what kind of bomb it is.”
…
“Well, if we’re wrong and it doesn’t go off, they can always send a team down to figure it out later.”
…
“If we can get there in time, we could drop it at—”
…
“Exactly.”
The general must have had the same idea she did and said it the moment before she could. This wasn’t the time to ask what they were thinking.
“Two minutes. Get ready!” She shouted to him and Roy.
He nodded. Every second they got it further away from Washington, DC the better. If it was nuclear, there would be no way to save themselves no matter how fast they flew. Best to use every second to save the city.
For half a second he hoped that Cornelia hadn’t figured that out, then he laughed.
“What?” she shouted at him.
He swung her boom microphone out of the way and dragged her in to kiss her and kiss her hard.
Of course she’d known that. She’d probably figured it out before he had. Probably before she’d forced her way onto the helicopter. And yet she’d come anyway. Knowing she could have been safe, she had to see it through to the end.
“I love you,” he shouted at her.
She nodded. Then her eyes unfocused for a moment as she listened. She nodded her head and shouted, “Got it!” not realizing that her mic boom was still swung out of the way and the general wouldn’t hear her in the cockpit.
That’s one on you, Cornelia.
“Let it go!”
Damien yanked the knot loose and the case began tipping away.
Roy slid across the deck plating and planted a boot on it to hurry it on its way. It seemed to take forever to finally lean away and slowly fall off the skid. But once it did, it plummeted downward.
It was probably a stupid thing to do, but all three of them huddled in the chill of the open cargo doorway and watched the case as it tumbled down out of the sky. The general brought the aircraft to a hover well to the side and turned on a searchlight to follow it down.
Down into the Potomac. It was perfect. Between Cornelia and General Arnson, they’d decided to dump the case into the Potomac, it would at least buffer the explosion.
The splashdown sent a plume of spray aloft.
They waited and waited. It was the longest minute of his life.
“Maybe the fall destroyed the mechanism and it—”
A shaft of foaming water exploded upward. It rose well over a hundred feet high and just as wide at the center of a mile-wide stretch of the river.
It wasn’t nuclear, or they’d be dead by now, but it was one damn big hole in the water.
He reached out to close the cargo bay door. As he did, he saw exactly where they were. Damien could only shake his head.
The Marine Corps at Quantico were going to have some explaining to do tomorrow about why they were detonating high explosives where a civilian river ran so close beside their own base.
Chapter Thirteen
Only by lack of a bridesmaid dress had Cornelia been able to beg off from becoming a member of Sienna’s and Roy’s State Dining Room wedding on the First Floor of the Residence.
“Besides,” Cornelia had told her, “I’m nearly a foot taller than you are. I’d look ridiculous.”
“No, you’d look lovely. Besides, are you saying that I’ll look ridiculous when I’m bridesmaid at your wedding?”
That was no longer as uncomfortable a thought as it had been.
“I’ll make sure there’s time for all of us to get dresses,” she retreated to her earlier excuse and Sienna was too happy to protest Cornelia’s escape.
The three days after the explosion had been incredibly busy, even by her new standards.
Debriefing, closing the files, and sending a very back-channel thank you to President Madani and his son-in-law had occupied the first day. She’d sent them a large Katz’s gift basket, with no card, delivered by Swiss Diplomatic pouch.
The second day had been the aftermath: twelve more arrests of three different bombmakers, that had then branched out into m
ateriel providers. That was the only part of the entire operation to receive any news coverage: “arrest of suspected terrorists.”
On Christmas Eve Day, an answer had come back from President Madani in the form of a beautiful, hand-illuminated copy of the love poems by the ancient Sufi poet Hafez. He had inscribed it with: “C.D., This is my favorite translation. Please share it only with a man filled with the common sense to appreciate you, J.M.”
“New world meets the old world, pastrami and poetry,” Damien had joked, but he’d handled the book just as reverently as she had.
Christmas Eve itself had been a very quiet, very loving night at his apartment. He’d served her a roast beef and Yorkshire pudding picnic—spread on the carpet before a small but colorful Christmas tree.
Damien had proven his ability to cook a wonderful meal and she had proven her complete inability to be of much help.
They’d laughed together through When Harry Met Sally, but there was nothing fake about what happened between them later that night.
She’d found a copy of Landmarks for him and he’d given her The Gatekeeper.
“Missy LeHand was called FDR’s personal secretary. You may be the first woman to bear the title, but she was really the first female Chief of Staff. Hell of a legacy you’ve stepped into. I can’t think of a woman more capable of doing it.”
The way Damien saw her never ceased to amaze her.
The Christmas Day wedding party itself had grown all out of hand. According to Sienna, she still had no idea how it had happened and Cornelia had better be careful or it would happen to her.
The out-going President and First Lady had insisted that Sienna and Roy hold their wedding in the Residence. Members of the Cabinet, the entire Joint Chiefs of Staff, and a small phalanx of Roy’s Secret Service friends had joined in, as well as all of the senior staff.
Cornelia’s own inclusion in the immediate wedding party, if not the ceremony itself, had been a foregone conclusion. She, Anne, Alice, and Geneviève had gathered about Sienna. Wine and merriment had flowed thickly among them.
“No wine for me,” Anne had declared.
Without hesitation, Genny had squealed more like a little girl than a dignified First Lady. “There will be another baby in the White House! Yes, this is perfection.”
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