Athena Force 7-12

by Carla Cassidy, Evelyn Vaughn, Harper Allen, Ruth Wind, Cindy Dees

  “Satchel charge!” he roared as the next limo in line came to an abrupt halt.

  A single thought pierced her panic. What a brilliant move. The backup limo’s engine block and heavy, armor plating would absorb a tremendous amount of the explosion and protect not only Gabe, but the crowd, from the worst of the blast.

  All four doors of the backup limousine opened, and men in suits poured out of the vehicle, stumbling and falling over each other in their haste to get away from the metal death trap their car had just become.

  And then the backpack blew, sending out a blinding flash of light from under the car. A millisecond later, a tremendous orange fireball erupted, throwing the limousine’s front end straight up in the air. The vehicle paused for an endless second, balanced vertically on its back fender like a rearing stallion. Then it slammed down to the ground with a tremendous crash, sending debris outward in all directions.

  Burning fuel sprayed the crowd in a deadly blossom of orange, and shrapnel ranging in size from tiny slivers of glass to entire doors flew out into the crowd. Flames enveloped the vehicle and a wall of heat and concussion slammed into her, flinging her backward into a screaming mass of human flesh.

  The wall of bodies collapsed behind her, and she fell softly on top of a stack of humanity at least four people deep. Oh, Lord. Somebody was going to be crushed! She scrambled forward on her hands and knees, despite the heat scorching her face from the inferno in front of her.

  Dear God, please let Gabe be okay. And please let everyone have gotten out of that ruined hull of a limousine alive.

  She looked left at Gabe’s limousine. A dozen Secret Service agents lay all over it, using themselves as human shields. A noble sentiment, but wasn’t the thing armored already? But then, she knew from the balcony earlier that Secret Service agents were all about putting their bodies between their charge and harm. The Presidential limo’s engine revved powerfully and it accelerated away from the chaos behind it, laying down twin trails of rubber as it peeled out. Thank God. Gabe’s limousine was unhit enough to get out of here.

  One of the grim Secret Service agents clinging to the rear trunk of the vehicle, his arms splayed out across the rear window, looked her way. She’d swear it was Owen Haas. But then the vehicle tore out of sight.

  Noise registered in her consciousness. Screaming. Lots of it. Bystanders by the hundreds screaming in panic. Injured people moaning and crying out. Stunned and bloody people staggering around shouting the names of lost loved ones. A handful of overwhelmed police officers trying to control the crowd by bellowing over the top of the entire din.

  And then motion registered. People moving, surging backward, running away from the site of the disaster. She looked around, trying to get her bearings. And caught a glimpse of just the right shade of brick brown. Her head whipped in that direction. But it wasn’t the bastard who’d done this. It was a man stumbling past her, his shirt partially burned off, its tatters covered in blood.

  She scanned the crowd quickly. Where was Albadian? He’d been right up front, not far from the blast. He had to have taken some sort of damage. As people streamed away from the street, scattering in a starburst of panic across the frozen Mall, she cast her gaze back toward the explosion site.

  There. Climbing to his feet. Staggering toward one of the abandoned mopeds. The dark-haired terrorist in his brown coat.

  She looked around for the cop she’d dropped seconds ago. No sign of the guy. There was no sign of any policeman anywhere near her. And the few uniforms she saw were either too far away or heading straight for the burning limousine behind her.

  Albadian righted one of the mopeds. Twisted the throttle frantically. No! He was going to get away! She took off running toward him. Below the high-pitched screaming of the crowd, she heard the low cough of the moped as its engine caught and turned over. It revved up, sounding more like a chain saw than a motor vehicle. She dived for it, and her hand grazed the rear fender as the moped jerked forward. But it lurched away from her hand. Damn!

  She hit the ground hard, knocking the breath out of herself. She sucked hard, dragging air into her lungs by main force. She rolled on her side, looking around frantically. Over there. One of the other mopeds. She pushed painfully to her feet, her chest as sore as if an anvil had just landed on it. Even with adrenaline flooding her body, she still had to forcibly order her feet to move toward the motorized bike.

  She finally got a full breath of air and picked up speed, darting for the moped. Bending down, she heaved the conveyance upright and flung her leg over it. Where was the starter switch on this thing? She fumbled around with the controls and managed by some miracle to get it going. She twisted the hand throttle and it leaped forward, nearly unseating her. Whoops! She regained her balance and looked up.

  Over there. She located the chain saw-like sound of Albadian’s moped off to her left, heading toward the Capitol Building. She pointed her scooter that way and clumsily got into motion. The moped bumped over the frozen, dead grass, but she hung on grimly, gunning the thing after Albadian.

  As she figured out the balance of the moped she opened up the throttle, racing across the Mall. The screams and sirens diminished behind her as her quarry raced toward the Capitol. The wind generated by her flight was arctic, and her cheeks went numb in a matter of seconds. Even inside her gloves she lost most of the feeling in her fingers.

  Albadian veered to the south side of the Mall, clearing the worst of the crowds and popped out onto Constitution Ave., which ran east-west, paralleling the south side of the Mall. The bulky white marble structure of the Smithsonian’s Air and Space Museum flashed past as she opened up her moped’s throttle all the way. She accelerated to nearly thirty miles per hour. Probably by virtue of her weighing less than the guy she was chasing, her moped not only kept pace with Albadian but began to gain on him bit by bit. Another couple of miles and she’d have him.

  Albadian raced east around the south end of the Capitol building. People milled about like a herd of agitated and confused sheep down here, unsure of whether to head toward the fireball in the distance to help or whether to run like hell from the point of the attack. She had to slow down to nearly a walking pace to weave through the thronging pedestrians choking the streets. Fortunately, so did Albadian.

  She almost missed him when he cut left on 1st Street SE toward the Library of Congress, but a tiny gap opened in the crowd and she glimpsed the red moped. Honing in on her target again, she raced north, toward the Supreme Court building. The steep uphill slope slowed him down and she spurted closer to him, but then her moped hit the hill and she lost most of the ground back. C’mon. Go! She leaned down low over the handlebars to improve her aerodynamic drag. She inched a little bit closer.

  Albadian looked back over his shoulder at her as if he’d heard her back here and realized he was being chased. Crud. He turned to face front, crouched low, as well. She gritted her teeth against the frigid windchill and prayed her numb fingers wouldn’t slip off the handles. Albadian’s driving became erratic, filled with the desperation of a man running for his life. But then, her gut seethed with the implacable fury of a woman who’d just witnessed an attempt to murder someone she cared about. It was about an even match.

  Albadian swerved around yet another milling crowd of people, and she did the same, temporarily losing sight of him. She gunned the moped past the pedestrians and searched frantically. Over there. Heading east. She yanked the moped to her right.

  Cripes! Her rear tire slipped on a patch of ice, shooting out from underneath her. It was a miracle she managed to stay atop the bike. But, as she straightened out the front tire, the back end fishtailed wildly beneath her. She fought it like a bucking bronc and managed, barely, to bring the cantankerous moped back under control. Definitely not designed for snow-and-ice operations.

  She looked up. Damn. She’d lost valuable ground on Albadian.

  Of all things, her cell phone rang in her pocket. She couldn’t spare a hand to answer it just now
. Whoever it was would have to wait. She had a terrorist to catch before she could take any calls.

  She had to do something to break this stalemate. Their mopeds were too evenly matched for one of them to win this contest. As her target led her down one street after another, she kept an eye out for something, anything to help her.

  She blinked in shock as Albadian turned down a set of stairs, for goodness’ sake, and rattled down the icy descent. Grimly, she pointed her bike after him and bumped and jarred her way down the staircase after him. He shot out into a residential street, and she did the same. A car swerved wildly to miss them both, its horn blaring behind her. Man, that had been close!

  What the hell was she doing? She was going to get herself killed out here! But it wasn’t as if the idea of giving up this insane chase was gaining any foothold against her grim rage. She was going to take this guy down if it was the last thing she did.

  Albadian turned down a narrow alley and slid on a patch of loose gravel. Warned by his skidding recovery, she took the turn carefully and picked up several yards on him. But as he blasted past a row of trash cans, he reached out with his left hand and knocked over the last one, spewing trash all over the asphalt in front of her.

  An empty milk jug exploded beneath her front tire, but she crashed through the mess without slowing down significantly. She shot out into the street, praying like crazy that no oncoming vehicle would wipe her out. Thankfully, there wasn’t any traffic.

  This guy was insane! But then, that sort of went without saying. He’d just tried to kill the soon-to-be most powerful, and arguably best protected man in the world. Maybe fanatic was a better word for Albadian. Soon-to-be-dead fanatic if she had her way. As her frustration grew, so did her rage. She was going to rip this guy’s head off when she caught him.

  Apparently, Albadian had a death wish of his own, however, and he led her ever deeper into residential side streets yet to be cleaned off after the snow several days ago. A packed sheet of ice covered the streets, and both mopeds slid all over the place. It was going to be a miracle if they both didn’t break their necks on this damned skating rink. Even Albadian was forced to slow down on the ice, and their slow-motion chase began to take on a Chaplin-esque quality as he fled for his life and she chased him determinedly at something like fifteen miles per hour. And even that speed was suicidal in these conditions.

  She knew this area. There was a police precinct house just ahead. Hmm. Ignoring the ice, she leaned low over the handlebars, opening up the throttle and urging the moped forward with every ounce of horsepower it had. Horsepower. She remembered abruptly that the police station in front of her was also the headquarters for a mounted police unit. She toured it a while back…

  It was worth a shot. As Albadian went straight through the intersection in front of the police station, she swerved to the right just shy of it, shooting down a short alley beside the building. She roared around back, startling the heck out of several horses tied at a hitching post beside the building. A cop lounging in front of a heater by the back door lurched to his feet as she burst into view.

  She dumped the moped on the ground, more thankful than she could imagine to get off the damned thing in one piece. She raced toward the biggest horse of the bunch, a long-legged chestnut that looked like a Thoroughbred-Quarter Horse cross. Perfect. She needed the fastest horse they had.

  She shouted at the cop, “I’m Army Intelligence, and I’m chasing the guy that just tried to blow up Gabriel Monihan. Follow me!”

  And with that, she yanked the big, red horse’s reins free from the wooden rail they were looped around and flung herself aboard the animal. The stirrups were too long, but she didn’t care as she jammed her feet into them awkwardly and reined the horse sharply out of the alley.

  The horse’s cleated shoes clattered on the hard ice, but dug in sure-footedly as she buried her heels in his ribs. He leaped forward, his haunches bunching and stretching beneath her, shooting her down the alley like a cannon. She careened out into the street.

  Thank God. She glimpsed a streak of red and brown about a block ahead of her. She’d lost valuable time and distance, but she estimated this horse could do close to thirty miles per hour over this ice, and Albadian could only pull off about half that speed and hope to live.

  She’d have one shot at this. Her horse would have one, maybe two, all-out sprints in him before he’d tire, and Albadian probably had plenty of gas left in his tank.

  She gave the horse his head, lying low on his neck like a jockey and urging him forward with shouts of encouragement. The horse pinned its ears back, and accelerated as if he’d been shot out of a cannon. That would be his Quarter Horse ancestry showing through. But then, he stretched out into the fluid gallop of his Thoroughbred ancestors and gobbled up the gap between her and Albadian with an impressive display of power.

  Albadian looked back over his shoulder and gaped in shock. Glaring, he turned to face forward again. He accelerated to a beyond stupid pace on the ice.

  But still the powerful horse gained on him. In a full-out run, now, the animal was pushing thirty-five miles per hour, and continued to gain steadily on the moped. As if he sensed what her target was, the beast stretched his neck out even lower, his head pumping up and down with his effort to overtake the moped.

  His nose almost touched Albadian’s back now.

  But she also felt her horse beginning to strain, his muscles beginning to tire as oxygen debt and fatigue set in.

  “C’mon, just a little more, fella,” she urged her mount.

  As if he understood her, he put on one last burst of speed and pulled up beside Albadian. Without stopping to consider the insanity of what she was about to do, she kicked her right stirrup free and let go of the reins. And slid off the left side of the horse.

  She wrapped her arms around Albadian’s neck and tackled him like a steer she intended to wrestle to the ground. The force of the impact knocked over the moped, slamming them both to the ground. They rolled over and over, and she hung on for dear life as they tumbled down the icy street.

  “Bitch!” Albadian gasped.

  “Bastard!” she snapped back.

  He threw an elbow backward at her, and she absorbed the blow with a grunt, too mad to feel the pain that should’ve accompanied the shot to her ribs. She let go of his neck with her right hand, making a fist in front of his face with the tip of her thumb sticking out. She jabbed it up and back, into his right eye socket.

  He howled with pain and fury and heaved beneath her, struggling to throw her off. He fought like a maniac on crack. She slammed her forehead forward into the base of his skull, nearly knocking herself loopy in the process. She blinked hard as she saw stars. That blow should have knocked him out cold, but still he fought on. She hung on grimly, but began to doubt her ability to subdue this lunatic.

  And then she felt his coat go slack in her arms. The bastard had unzipped it and was slipping out of it! She let go of the soft fabric and rolled to her knees, popping to her feet at the same instant Albadian did. She could see it in his eyes. He was going to run. Dammit.

  “Don’t even think about running away from me,” she bit out. “I ran the Boston Marathon last year and finished in the top fifty women.” It was a blatant lie, but what this asshole didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him.

  It worked. Instead of fleeing, he dropped into a half crouch, his lips pulled back from his teeth in a snarl a pit bull would have been proud of. This was more like it. Unless this guy was a Krav Maga master, she had him. Not even the traditional martial arts stood up well to the vicious, dirty style of street fighting. She was going to hurt him now.

  In a blindingly fast move, his hand jerked. But not toward her. He whipped it behind him. And whipped it back out in front of him—with a handgun in it. Pointed directly at her face.

  “Die, you bitch.”

  2:00 P.M.

  Gabe had slammed into the limousine’s seat cushion as somebody landed on top of him. Jeez. That was the se
cond time today someone had tackled him like a damned linebacker. And this time it wasn’t a gorgeous, sexy blonde who made him think completely inappropriate thoughts.

  But then a tremendous explosion had sounded outside the car. Really damn close.

  “Are you hit?” someone barked in his ear.

  “I don’t think so,” he’d managed to gasp, in spite of the Secret Service agent crushing him.

  “Go, go, go!” a voice had shouted from outside the car, right behind him. That sounded like Owen Haas. The limousine had jerked beneath him, accelerating like an Indy race car. Who’d have thunk one of these tanks had it in them? The vehicle squealed around a corner. And around another.

  The earpiece of the guy on top of him had vibrated with a cacophony of voices shouting through it. Men down. Civilians hit. Screams for emergency response vehicles. Jesus Christ. What happened back there?

  He hadn’t wanted to distract the grimly silent man on top of him, but as the car screeched around a third corner and the earpiece went relatively silent for a moment, he’d taken the opportunity to ask, “What the hell just happened?”

  “Satchel charge got tossed at your car. One of the guys, Haas, I think, picked it up and tossed it under the backup vehicle before it blew.”

  “A satchel charge?” he’d asked incredulously. “As in a bomb?”

  “Yup. One of the agents on scene is estimating it was a standard military load.”

  “What does that mean?” Gabe had asked tersely, already not liking the sound of it.

  “Twenty pounds of C-4,” the agent answered.

  Mother of God. Someone had just lobbed twenty pounds of high explosives at him? “How many people are hurt?” he’d bitten out.

  “No damage assessments yet. One of the guys says he counts about fifty people down on the ground. So far, most of them seem to be alive.”

  Fifty? Fifty? Fifty Americans injured or killed because some crazy had it in for him? Deep in his gut, anger had begun to simmer. “I assume you guys know what to do next with me?”