He nodded at her sadly. “I’m fine. Really.”
She shook her head in frustration. “I don’t think you are, Dad. I don’t think you’re fine at all. Look at you. This is absolutely crazy! Do I need to remind you who you are? Do I need to remind you of the position you hold? I don’t know what you’re afraid of, I don’t know anything anymore, but surely the government can protect you. If things are as bad as you say they are, if you don’t trust your own people, there has to be someone—the Secret Service, maybe—someone you could trust to keep you safe.”
He waved a hand to dismiss her, then turned away, glancing back toward the window. She took two steps toward him and paused. He looked old, many years older than he had seemed just a few weeks before. She held her hand to her mouth, then folded her arms. “You’re scaring me, Dad. You’re scaring me very badly.”
He turned and walked toward her, put his hands on her shoulders, and looked deep into her eyes. “I’m sorry, honey, more sorry than you’ll ever know. I don’t mean to scare you. I don’t mean to do anything. A few more days, a few more hours maybe, and I’ll be out of your way.”
“Out of my way, Dad? What does that mean? You think I consider you a problem, something I need to get out of my way? This is crazy, Dad, crazy. I’m really worried about you now.”
He tried to smile again, a weak effort she didn’t buy. “No reason to be frightened for me,” he said in a quiet and perfectly unconvincing voice.
“Are you kidding? Either there’s a really good reason or you’ve completely lost your mind. You skulk around, hiding from your shadow, refusing to let me answer the phone. Everything’s a secret. I can’t open my front door. For heaven’s sake, Dad, you’re scared to death, and yet you dismiss your security detail, telling them all to go home. You leave your own house and go into hiding, coming here to stay with me and Kyle. Yes, Dad, I’m frightened for you. I’d be stupid not to be.”
The baby started crying from the nursery down the hall, low at first, a few grumbles that were muffled by the door, but quickly growing with displeasure as the infant sought something to eat.
The young woman tried to pull away from her father’s grip. “The baby,” she whispered when he didn’t let her go.
He tightened his hands against her shoulders, looking into her brown eyes. “I’m so sorry,” he repeated. He said the same thing to her at least once or twice a day.
She looked at him, her eyes tearing with concern. “Don’t you say that to me, Daddy. Don’t you ever say that, okay? You’ve got no reason to be sorry. Don’t you ever tell me that again.”
* * *
A small crowd of boys had assembled on the corner, watching in disbelief. A car that was working! They stared as the black SUV drove quickly up the street.
The driver pulled over two blocks from the objective and turned off the ignition. The four men sat for a moment talking, then got out. One of them turned and walked toward the group of teenagers. He said something to them and they scattered. Rejoining the group, he talked another moment with the men before three of them started walking, leaving the driver to guard the car. Very little about the men was subtle. Black suits. White shirts. Dark glasses. Black Bacco Bucci lace-up shoes. The driver had a blunt-nose, single-hand machine gun hanging from a strap around his shoulder. A thin wire ran under his dark suit to the receiver in his ear.
No, they were not subtle. But the fight was out in the open now, and they didn’t care about niceties anymore.
The war had started. It was upon them, the first battle taking shape. Both assassins and saviors were on the move now, their forces rushing together, opposing soldiers crashing toward each other on the street.
The first casualty or survivor of the battle would be the Secretary of Defense.
Whether he lived or died depended on who got to him first.
The three men walked a hundred yards together. At the corner, they split up. One of them turned east. The other two stayed together, walking toward Lawyers Street.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Vienna, Virginia
Twelve Miles West of Washington, D.C.
The single man walked toward the rising sun. Approaching the road that ran behind the target, he glanced back toward his comrades, but they had already disappeared. He turned. Walking quickly, almost jogging, he moved down a narrow driveway, then jumped a low fence and made his way through the backyard. A dog yelped at him, but he ignored it. Twenty feet from the back fence, he started running, then jumped, his powerful legs driving him up. Pulling himself over the fence, he dropped onto the other side.
A huge backyard lay before him. Lots of shrubs and oak and sycamore trees. Grass and a small goldfish pond. A large hedge along the swimming pool. He bent to his knees beside the vinca plants and studied the house. No movement. He listened. No sound. To his right, the lawn sloped away, allowing a walkout basement at the back of the house. He listened once more to the voice inside his tiny earpiece, then crouched and ran toward the door.
* * *
The Secretary of Defense watched as his daughter pulled away from him and turned for the bedroom door. Standing in the center of the room, he listened as her footsteps faded down the hall. The baby was insistent now, crying loudly, the hunger driving him, and Brucius could hear his daughter’s soft voice as she tried to soothe him, then the creaking of the crib’s wood frame as she lifted the child into her arms.
He stood for a moment, staring toward the window, then moved to the bed and sat down. His shoes had been pushed under the mattress rail and he leaned over, put them on, and tied them quickly. Straightening his back, his hands on his knees, he listened to the silence once again. The baby wasn’t crying now and he wondered how, without formula, she’d made him stop. Standing, he opened the bedroom door and moved down the hall toward the nursery. Pushing back the door, he looked inside.
No one was there.
The bedroom window was open, a quiet breeze blowing the light curtains back.
He called his daughter’s name, then heard footsteps downstairs in the kitchen and quickly moved down the hall.
“Jenny, you down there?”
No answer.
He descended the stairs, stopped at the bottom and listened again, then walked toward the kitchen. Morning light filtered through the hallway window, and shadows from the swaying oak tree in the backyard moved across the back porch. He thought he heard his daughter’s voice and walked into the kitchen.
The room was empty.
The back door was open. He glanced out. No one was in the yard.
He instantly panicked, running into the living room. No one. The house was quiet and empty. It seemed he was alone. He couldn’t be! Not so quickly! How could they have gotten in!
“Jenny! Jenny!” he cried. “Kyle! Are you here?” He ran to the front door and found it locked. He looked through the window to the front yard. Not a soul in sight. He ran toward the basement, calling their names. Pushing the door over the narrow steps, he peered into the dark. A cool flow of air blew up against his face.
* * *
The two men stopped at the intersection of Lawyers Road, standing beside a six-foot fence. The target house was halfway down the block and they studied the scene before them: rows of handsome Victorian and plantation homes, heavy trees, their leaves gold and orange and ready to fall, a dozen dead cars pushed to the curb, a quiet road, a quiet breeze.
Not a soul in sight. A quiet morning.
The leader listened to the receiver shoved inside his ear canal, pressing it more firmly into place, then cocked his head.
They couldn’t take the target until they killed the others who were also after him. They couldn’t kill the others until they found them. And they didn’t know where they were.
Eighteen thousand feet above them, a pilotless drone moved silently through the empty sky, its sensors looking down, its hypersensitive radar, visual, IR, and ultraviolet sensors scanning the two-block radius around them inch by inch. Far away—from w
hat location, the leader didn’t know, perhaps an unknown base inside the U.S., but more likely from a CIA site overseas—a military pilot controlled the drone, flying it by satellite-remote control, the drone’s sensors relaying what it sensed or saw. And the Predator reconnaissance aircraft saw everything. It could count the squirrels in the trees around them from the heat their bodies bled into the morning air, detect the coolness from the water trapped in rain gutters from the downpour the night before, sense the vibration on the front windows of the various homes enough to know if anyone was speaking inside. The man looked up, feeling naked, knowing the Predator could read the heat that escaped through his shirt collar accurately enough to estimate the heartbeats in his chest, knowing it could fire its Hellfire missiles at him and he would never know, the explosion killing him seconds before he ever saw or heard the missiles coming at him through the air.
And they would do it. If they had to, they would sacrifice the team to get the target. Everyone was expendable these days.
His earpiece crackled and he listened once again. Kneeling, he moved away from the fence, staring, his eyes squinting. “No tally,” he cut in angrily.
Further instructions from the Command Center spoke through the receiver in his ear. “Fifth house down?” he asked.
He listened.
“Copy that,” he whispered as he moved his focus farther down the road to a house across the street. “Tan house. A black Audi in the front. Two oak trees in the yard.” He demanded definite confirmation before he moved.
He listened once again, then nodded. He watched. He waited. He saw just a hint of movement, but it was enough to let him know. He crawled back and pointed for his partner. Two hundred feet down. Across the street from the target’s house. The front door partially open.
“Tally,” his lieutenant said. Before he moved, he checked his weapon. His machine gun pistol was set on double shot, allowing him to fire two bullets with a single pull of the trigger, inflicting the far more lethal “double tap.” The Heckler and Koch MP5k 9mm machine gun pistol had a twenty-round clip and pivot stock, which he kept folded, allowing him to conceal the perfectly maintained pistol at his back. Checking the clip a final time, he started walking down the street. The MP5k was stuffed inside his jacket, but only partially hidden, the blunt stock bulging at his back. He moved down the
sidewalk without hesitating, his stride long and confident, his eyes staring straight ahead. He crossed the street just beyond the target’s house and started jogging. Past the first oak tree. Toward the front door. Coming upon the front steps, he slowed to a furious walk. The front door pushed back and a single man walked onto the porch. Dark glasses. Work clothes. Something was out of place: a flash of gold. The Rolex on his wrist—what a stupid mistake. Without breaking stride, the suit man reached behind his back, pulled out the MP5k, the blunt-nose machine gun heavy in his hand. He touched the clip, aiming as he walked, his eyes unflinching, his hands sure. The man on the porch reached to his left side, but not nearly quickly enough. The assassin fired a set of rapid shots into him, the custom-built silencer spouting smoke and a muffled hiss of hot gas. The bullets penetrated the man’s face, splitting his jaw in two. The assassin didn’t even slow. Onto the front porch. Past the dead man. Through the partially open door. Another double tap, then silence, then movement near the window. The man reappeared at the door, looked around, bent over, and pulled the body inside, leaving a smear of dark blood across the white porch. He kicked the feet into the foyer, stepped out, and shut the door.
The other man watched from the end of the street, then started walking toward the house where the target had been hiding for almost three days.
* * *
The SecDef stood at the top of the basement stairs, his face frozen in fear. The cool breeze that blew up from below smelled of must and rotten leaves.
The basement door was open!
They’d found him!
They’d gotten into the house.
He almost screamed in fury, a guttered growl. “You leave them alone!” he screamed to the empty house. “You leave them be, you hear! It’s me you’re after, not my children. If you hurt them, I will kill you. I’ll kill you, every one!”
* * *
The two men moved up behind him without a sound, their shoes silent against the granite floors. “Secretary Marino,” the first man said.
Brucius spun around. He was just over fifty, but he was strong and tense as wire. He almost leapt toward them. “Where’s my daughter! Where’s my grandson!” he screamed.
The two men in black suits backed up as he ran toward him, both of them holding their hands disarmingly in the air. “Stay! Stay there, Mr. Secretary! It’s going to be okay.”
Brucius grabbed the first man by the throat and squeezed, pinching his Adam’s apple between clenched fingers. “Where’s my daughter and her family? If you hurt them, you dirty
little . . .”
The man swung an uppercut and hit Brucius hard, catching him on the jaw with a blow that dropped him to the ground.
Brucius choked, his mouth smearing with blood from his split lip. “Where . . . is my grandson . . . if you hurt him . . .
I’ll . . .”
The man dropped to one knee beside the Secretary of Defense. The other man looked suddenly to his right and placed his right hand to his ear, listening to a voice that no one else could hear. He ran toward the front window and pressed against the wall.
“Get up,” the first man commanded, dragging the secretary to his knees.
The second man peered out the window, then pulled back and dropped to the floor, crawling past the window on all fours. He joined the other man and motioned him to stay low.
The first man listened to the receiver in his ear, then turned his head as if being directed where to look. A flash of movement passed across the back window and he shoved the Secretary down, almost smashing his head onto the floor. The second man pulled a blunt-nose machine gun from under his jacket, impossibly small, black, and cold, the metal glinting in the light. He pressed a toggle near the trigger, selecting single fire, then hunched toward the kitchen window and looked out. The backyard was huge, with half a dozen mature trees, a small pond, and a couple of shrub-lined paths.
Plenty of places for a shooter to hide.
The third man suddenly emerged from the foliage of the yard, running toward the house. He crashed through the back door, almost breaking it from his hinges as the full weight of his body pushed it in, then nodded to the others without saying anything.
Seconds passed. Outside, the sound of a racing automobile pierced the air, incredibly out of place against the backdrop of silent roads and the silent world. Brucius glanced toward the front window. He reached out, part of him wanting to run, part of him still too scared to move.
The black suits listened to their earpieces, turned to each other, nodded, and ran, hauling Brucius T. Marino, U.S. Secretary of Defense, between them as they moved.
“Where’s my daughter!” Brucius screamed as they dragged him toward the front door. “Where’s my daughter! Where’s my grandson!” He struggled against them, pulling back. He was a powerful man, a little fat, thick arms, lots of weight, and the two men struggled mightily to pull him. Approaching the front door, Brucius fought again, finally pushing to his feet. The first man stopped and leaned toward him, pressing his mouth against the Secretary’s ear. His breath was hot against him. “Do you want to live!” he hissed.
Brucius pulled back and stared at him.
“If you want to live, Mr. Secretary, if you want your country to have any hope of survival, then you need to shut up and do exactly what we tell you.”
Brucius studied him, his eyes defiant.
“If you love your country, Mr. Secretary . . .”
The first man pulled again.
“Okay!” Brucius gritted between his bloody lips. “I’ll go with you, I’ll go with you, I’ll do anything you want. I just want to know about my family. I need to know yo
u haven’t hurt them. I need to know that they’re okay. They had no choice. They weren’t a part of this.”
The first man grunted at him.
Outside, the screech of tires. The black SUV came screaming down the street, then veered across the front lawn, almost smashing into the porch. The two men waited at the open door, holding Brucius, their eyes moving up and down the street. There might be others out there. They didn’t know for certain and they couldn’t take the chance. The third man took a final look, ran through the front door and across the porch, and jerked the SUV’s back door open. The others waited, looked a final time, then ran out in a crouch, the Secretary huddled between them, their arms across his shoulders, their bodies positioned to protect him from sniper fire.
They shoved the Secretary through the back door, almost throwing him inside, then jumped in and pulled the door closed.
The driver gunned the engine, his tires spinning, dirt and grass spitting across the yard.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Offutt Air Force Base
Headquarters, U.S. Strategic Command
Eight Miles South of Omaha, Nebraska
Brucius Marino, the Secretary of Defense (at least he used to be, who knew what he was anymore?) sat alone in the middle of a darkened interrogation room. It was small and square, with a cement floor (painted white) and a single solid door. He rested his arms on the simple metal table and stared across the room at the one-way mirror mounted on the wall. Were they there? Were they watching? He didn’t know.
They had taken his watch, his socks, the laces out of his shoes, his belt, and his wallet, then strip-searched him, examining every inch of his body from his toes to his hair. They had embarrassed him, taken his dignity, and he was furious at them now.
Furious. And weary.
Angry. And scared.
He was cold—the room was chilly—and he gently rubbed his arms. His hands were bandaged, but they ached, the cuts and sutures deep. He didn’t know what time it was, but he guessed it had been at least twenty-four hours since they had come for him, though it was impossible to tell. He’d been without food, without water, without sleep, and he’d never left the room.
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