Hard Target

by Tibby Armstrong

  “What if…” Simon shook his head. No, that wouldn’t work.

  “What if what?” Gun’s giant loafers reentered Simon’s view.

  Simon stared into his future and saw torturous days and nights without the woman he loved at his side. He lifted his head. “What if I agreed to trade myself for her? Along with the documents?”

  Sympathy, stark and raw, deepened the lines around Günter’s eyes and thinned his lips.

  “If that’s what you need to do,” he said after a pause.

  Simon nodded. “It’s what I need to do.”

  “There may be another way…” The thoughtful quiet with which Ryan spoke drew Simon’s attention.

  Pulling the slender handcuff key from his pocket the agent approached Simon, who held up his still-throbbing wrists. The metal fell away, landing on the carpet with successive quiet thumps as Ryan ran through the fundamentals of his plan.

  “You really think it could work?” Simon rubbed his wrists and experienced the first surge of hope he’d had since finding Lily drugged but otherwise unharmed in Downing’s bedroom.

  “It’s got to, doesn’t it?” Günter asked, the rhetorical question one of the English traits Simon found simultaneously infuriating and amusing.

  “Yeah.” Simon nodded, needing to hear the answer from his own lips. “It does.”

  * * * * *

  Human voices rose and fell in a buzzing hum as Simon waited in shadows in the basement beneath the stage at Carnegie Hall. The president’s arrival imminent, he had only minutes before Ryan’s cue. If the Secret Service caught him it was all over. For both him and Alex, not to mention Ryan’s career.

  They’d let Downing choose the place for the exchange and agreed to his terms—only Simon and Simon alone was to enter the little subterranean room beneath the main portion of the hall. At one time used for dramatic mid-crowd entrances, the trap door connecting the room with the hall above had long since been sealed off as part of a renovation and remodel. Only a little door off a twisty passage led in and out of the tiny room where Alex supposedly awaited him. Simon was to leave the documents in the room and take her with him. Any failure to follow precise instructions would result in—as Downing had put it—his very messy and untimely death.

  They had one advantage—a thorough knowledge of the Secret Service’s routes, station points and schedule, in addition to correct blueprints of the building. They all knew Downing planned to kill him and Alex, they just didn’t know how, where, or when. Here was hoping he, Günter and Ryan had managed to plan one step ahead.

  A sloping hallway led from Simon’s present position to the little room where, if Downing told the truth, Alex waited for him at this very moment. Once he found her they’d have to wait several hours until the banquet ended to make their escape. Several long hours during which anything might happen.

  Simon adjusted the pack on his shoulders and felt the pile of documents shift along with his tools and the first-aid kit he’d thrown inside. He still hadn’t emptied the thing since Lily’s rescue and it weighed heavy, cutting into his shoulders despite the padded straps.

  “I didn’t think you could get me in here,” Simon whispered into his mic.

  Ryan snorted. “You’re not the only genius in a five-hundred-mile radius, you know.”

  Applause thundered overhead. Simon’s cue that the introductions and speeches had begun. Now there would be enough noise to cover any ruckus he made if he needed to use tools to open the chamber door.

  “Wish me luck,” he said.

  Jogging along the short passage, Simon noted no disturbance in the dust on the floor. Shining his flashlight behind him he saw only the tracks he’d made. What if she wasn’t here? What if Downing hadn’t held up his end? No. Downing was smart. He’d obviously brought in manufactured dust to cover his tracks so the Secret Service wouldn’t become suspicious.

  “Ryan?” Simon pressed his fingers to his earpiece in an attempt to contact the agent above the thunderous clapping.

  No use. He shook his head, knowing he wasted precious time, and continued down the incline. A tiny door, almost two thirds of his height and made of gaping boards, came into view on his left. Simon stopped, shone the light around every crack, examining for booby traps. Wires, grease, anything that might give away an explosives device. Nothing.

  Shining the light through a wide gap between the boards, he glimpsed a figure slumped in a chair, something square and large just behind. When the light passed over the form again, she moved, her head lifting to stare at the beam. Hair, matted and stringy, flopped in front of a pale face. From behind the bedraggled curtain, dark eyes shone with a heartrending mixture of terror and hope.

  Alex…

  Simon reached for the doorknob without thinking. It twisted with the motion of his wrist, admitting him easily. Too easily. He cringed, reflexively turning his head away against an explosion that never came. Gun withdrawn, he executed an otherwise perfect entry into the small space, sweeping the weapon and flashlight in precise movements designed to illuminate any other occupants. Finding none, he said a second prayer of thanks.

  The door swung shut behind him automatically, as if on springs. A red light flared to life, illuminating Alex’s face with a bloody glow. Simon halted and, as if in slow motion, looked over his shoulder. What he saw perched above the doorway made his heart fall to the vicinity of his stomach.

  A block of C4 studded with ball bearings, attached to a sensor that would activate the blasting caps the moment anyone so much as jarred the door a second time. Sick fucker that Downing was, he’d designed a spotlight to trip on Simon’s entrance, illuminating the bomb in red.

  “Ryan!” Simon pressed his hand to his ear. The little earphone crackled with interference.

  Please don’t let the Secret Service come to check this door now. Turning to Alex he sucked in a breath. Face swollen and bloody, arms dangling as if they belonged to a puppet, she was barely recognizable. He was amazed she could open her eyes wide enough to track his movements.

  “Bomb,” she said, the word coming out thick, as if her lips had forgotten how to utter the sound.

  “I know, sweetheart,” he said, quiet and low. Soothing.

  “No.” She shook her head though the motion obviously cost her. “Bomb.”

  He frowned, thinking her delusional until his flashlight brushed past the object chained to her chair…chained to her. It was the painting and the frame. The one that should’ve been upstairs with the president and Boswani. No alarm had been raised about the missing painting. If this was the original, then Simon had to wonder if Downing had readied a forgery for the event.

  “Shit, Alex. This was all a setup. Downing wanted to make it look like we put that bomb in the painting. He rearmed it when it was cleaned…” Simon closed his eyes at his stupidity. He knew something had bothered him about the timeline. If only he’d been thinking more clearly. “We were the only ones alone with it before then. He probably caught our whole op on video.”

  He didn’t bother to say it, but if that bomb went off and they weren’t killed? The FBI might let them swing rather than take the hit. Downing probably knew this too.

  “Routine check. Your location.” Ryan’s broken, static-ridden words cut into Simon’s world, renewing his urgency.

  With shaking fingers, Simon slid the pack off. He’d handle one bomb at a time. Then figure the rest out as he went. With fingers so calm they seemed to belong to someone else, he withdrew a knife from his boot to make short work of splitting the frame apart. Sounds of cracking and splintering wood echoed in the small space, but he had little attention to spare for thought of it carrying through the floor to the event above.

  Another round of ear-splitting applause concealed the worst of the noise. C4 exposed—this time armed with a more complicated series of wires designed to trip an explosion if disarmed—Simon grabbed the thermos of leftover liquid nitrogen from his pack and unscrewed the cap. As he worked, a cold calm blanketed his mind and
body.

  With insides as chilled as the liquid he poured, Simon held his flashlight in his teeth and covered the blasting caps, wires and secondary incendiary device with the liquid nitrogen he doubted even Downing knew he still carried. Glowing-red vapors curled upward as the liquid hit its target, freezing it inert. Lastly, he severed the chain connecting Alex’s torso to the frame.

  Sitting back on his heels, he capped the thermos and swiped a hand over his forehead.

  “Doing great,” he said, reassuring himself as much as Alex. “One more to go.”

  Rising, he could only stand partway in the cramped room. At least the tiny space allowed him face-to-face access with the bomb over the door. An evil design, it would likely blow most of the place to hell. Including the president and every living soul sitting directly above.

  “Fuck me with a pogo stick,” Simon said.

  Alex grunted. He turned and gave her the biggest smile he could manage.

  “Piece of cake,” he said.

  Problem was, he didn’t have a serving knife, and this fucker wasn’t going to budge without one very specific tool. Not with the wiring snaked where he couldn’t reach and two extra sensors poised to gauge any little disturbance. Liquid nitrogen, even if he had enough, wouldn’t reach where he needed it to go, and he had a sick feeling that if it didn’t freeze all the wires simultaneously the thing was rigged to blow.

  Moving to Alex, he crouched low and brushed her hair gently from her eyes. “I can cover you. But it’ll hurt when I put you on the floor and lie on top of you.”

  Even then she likely wouldn’t survive the rubble that came crashing down. The slow blink she gave him told him she knew it but thanked him anyway. Using that same expressive gaze, she looked upward as if beseeching the heavens for help. When she didn’t look down again, he followed her line of sight and his brain clicked into overdrive before his heart nearly burst with joy. He took her face in his hands as gently as he could and kissed the tip of her nose with the barest touch of his lips.

  “You’re brilliant,” he said. “I love you, Alexandra Valentine.”

  She blinked twice. Then looked up again.

  He didn’t have a saw, but he had the next best thing. A crowbar. Using the straight end, Simon rammed at the cracks that had formed in the plaster around the little trap door. Bits rained on Alex and he paused to shift her chair. She cried out as he moved her, but he’d say his apologies later. There was no time to lose.

  “Coming your way!” Ryan said in his ear, voice crackling like an old phonograph.

  “Bomb. Above the door,” Simon tried as he continued prying at old plaster and lathe, but only static greeted him. He had no way of knowing if Ryan had received his warning.

  One last chunk of plaster fell with a giant crack to the concrete floor, its dust clouding everything and coating Simon’s lashes. He wiped his face with the back of his wrist and peered up. The door was still there. Likely next to the edge of the orchestra pit.

  “Well if this isn’t a Mongolian clusterfuck…”

  He hoped the Secret Service had trainees on duty tonight because he didn’t like the odds of being killed by them any better than being blown to bits. Either way he was bound to play Humpty Dumpty, but at least Alex would survive.

  Taking a deep breath, Simon brought both hands upward and shoved. Nothing happened. He shoved again as footsteps sounded in the hall, only feet away. A great creak, then a booming crack preceded bits of wood and plaster raining in brown and white chunks. The three-by-three-foot door sailed upward to land several feet from the pit.

  In the split-second pause before the chaos began, Simon shouted, “Door down here is booby trapped with a fucking bomb!”

  Live. On national television.

  Shoot me now, he thought as all hell broke loose. Or Tallis will.

  Turned out the Secret Service didn’t have to shoot him. They tased him instead. Flopping like a fish, white-hot pain short-circuiting his nervous system, his only thought was for Alex. If they did this to her too, in her condition, it could kill her. He tried to tell them to go easy on her, but his jaw muscles locked with the current.

  Flashes of color, the screams of guests and a man saying, “Bomb squad” drifted like shreds of confetti through Simon’s haze-coated mind. By the time he could move again, the Secret Service had him in cuffs.

  “How do we disarm the bomb?” one of the agents—a dark-haired man in his late thirties—asked.

  “Can’t. I didn’t make it… John Downing’s guys.” He managed to roll his head to look at the hole through which they now lifted Alex, still tied to the chair. The pack he didn’t remember resting in her lap still balanced there. “There’s a disk in that bag. Proof.”

  The agent asked his earpiece, “Did you get that?”

  A man closer to Alex nodded and took the bag.

  “You’d better be telling the truth.” One arm draped over his knee, the agent crouched low. “Or you’re going away for a long, long time.”

  Simon nodded. He’d known from the start of this job his chances of not wearing orange again were slim to none.

  “Do you think you could have me home by breakfast?” Simon asked. “You guys have awful tea.”

  Against all odds—and likely in violation of genetic programming—the guy cracked a smile. Quickly stowing the expression, the agent asked, “What’s your name?”

  “Dr. Simon Jakes, ex-CIA.” Simon grunted as two agents hauled him to his feet.

  “Well, Dr. Jakes, you’re in for a long night,” the agent said, “but we’ll see what we can do about the tea.”

  The long night turned into three days of nonstop questioning. By the time they released him, Simon had no clue about the day of the week or even the way home. He stopped at Alex’s building first and broke in. No sign of her whereabouts were on her machine or in her mail. He dialed FBI HQ and looked around the place she’d called home. Wondered if given the state she’d been in if she’d ever call it home again. His stomach lurched.

  “FBI, how may I direct your call?”

  “It’s Dr. Jakes. I need to speak with Special Agent Dare.” He dropped into a half-upholstered chair and closed his eyes as he waited for the call to connect.

  “I’m sorry, Dr. Jakes, Agent Dare is unavailable.”

  Simon rubbed a hand over three days’ beard growth. “How about his boss?”

  “I’m sorry, sir, the Assistant Director is unavailable.”

  The receptionist’s tone was polite enough. Professional enough. Still, the trained operative in Simon recognized the runaround. “Tell me. Will either of them be available, say, in the next decade?”

  “May I take a message?”

  Doubting the woman could see his middle finger over the phone, even if she was FBI, Simon settled for, “Where’s Alex?”

  “May I take a message for the AD, sir?”

  “Yes.” He fisted one of Alex’s silk scarves and stuffed it in his pocket. “Tell him if he wants my cooperation on his continued investigation into John Downing’s activities he’ll call me.”

  He hung up. Took one last long look around, and returned to the sunlight. Its rays, though strong on the cloudless day, didn’t warm him. Couldn’t reach the part of him he locked away in the darkness with his fears he’d never see Alex again.

  The taxi dropped him off at Tallis’ building where a lone reporter camped.

  “Where are the rest of your friends?” Simon asked, the question biting, though the poor jerk didn’t deserve his animosity. “Did they resurrect Elvis on national television?”

  The journalist gazed up at him, bleary eyed and took a halfhearted picture. “Tallis said he’d drop his piano off the roof on us if we didn’t leave. Then he gave us all an interview.”

  Simon glanced up, just in case. The morning light was bright, the sky blue, the view unimpeded by a falling Steinway grand.

  “Why didn’t you leave?” He frowned down at the man who still sat on the sidewalk, suddenly glad to have
something else to focus on besides the demons raging in his head.

  “I don’t like Elvis.” The man’s lips widened, emphasizing three day’s worth of dark stubble. “Besides, you’re the real story.”

  Simon smiled and the flitting expression felt strange, as if it might strain muscles he hadn’t used in five or six days. “Come by tomorrow. You’ll have your story.”

  Without glancing behind, Simon pushed into the lobby. He slept on the elevator ride up to the security flat and prayed Tallis hadn’t thrown all their stuff in a Dumpster. He’d need those computers if he was going to find Alex. And he would find her. Even if he couldn’t see her, he had to know where she was. Know she was all right.

  Distracted, he punched in the code to the security flat—a number he could recite in his sleep—six times before getting it right.

  “Ten digits are excessive, don’t you think?” Not bothering to wait to see if anyone was actually there to listen, Simon spoke as he walked into the flat.

  “Only if you’re waiting for your brother to get them right so you can hug him for the first time in seven years.”

  A vision in a white sundress, dark-red hair cascading to her waist in soft waves, Lily stood in the center of the room. Simon froze as his mind attempted to make sense of the moment and the woman before him.

  “Lily?” Her name came out a choked whisper.

  She nodded, her answering smile tear-filled and brilliant, before she rushed forward and threw herself into his arms. All traces of tiredness gone, because surely he slept now and must be dreaming, he lifted his little sister off her feet. Clasped tightly to him, she smelled of sunshine and cinnamon. Could it really be her? Or was he delirious enough to have fabricated an alternate and much more preferable reality?

  Slim arms tightened around his neck and the sweetest voice he’d ever known said his name over and over. Crystal clear and ringing with laughter. Reluctant to set her down, Simon clasped Lily tight and prayed the moment would never end. With a heart bursting with love, he finally allowed her to lean away so he could look into green eyes so much like his own.