“Walk,” said the agent. “I won’t tell you again.”
He gave a shaky nod and stepped back toward the door, counting down the seconds. I still have a chance to flee. When the moment comes.
* * *
Someone was shouting at Marc to come out of the vehicle with his hands up, but then their words were lost in the brassy roar of a military band striking up the opening bars of “Hail to the Chief.”
Without hesitating, Marc slammed the SUV’s gears into “drive,” his hand falling to the starter button. He mashed it with his finger, but nothing happened. Marc’s gaze dropped to the ignition and he belatedly realized there were no keys in it.
More people were closing around the vehicle now, other agents and cops with their pistols at the ready.
“Oh, shit…” He bent forward and played the last option he had. Securing his safety belt, Marc jammed the X2’s sparking contacts against the metal head of the ignition cylinder and mashed the taser’s trigger over and over, sending powerful jolts of electricity directly into the sensitive innards of the starter system, overloading it.
The dials on the SUV’s dashboard flickered as the engine gave a sluggish grunt, choked and then finally turned over. Now the brass band was joined by the roar of an excited crowd, and the first report of a pistol went unheard. Marc saw the blink of the bullet’s discharge off to his right, but he felt the vehicle absorb the impact of the round as it cracked into the armored glass of the windscreen.
He pressed his weight down on the accelerator pedal and the SUV lurched forward, kicking up shreds of turf.
That was all that was needed for others to open fire. Marc flinched as bullets smacked into the frame and the windows, shots that—if he had been behind conventional glass and unarmored doors—would have ended him in seconds.
The vehicle sideswiped a police cruiser as it surged away, shouldering the car aside. Marc aimed the SUV at the gap between two plastic barriers and crashed through. The wheels skipped as he guided it over the sidewalk and straight across 3rd Street. Like a black missile, the jammer vehicle thundered away from the stage in the direction of the great domed senate building.
Police officers and federal agents scrambled to pursue it. More shots chopped at the tires, but the vehicle was equipped with run-flats that could absorb a dozen rounds and keep going.
Marc slapped at a switch on the dashboard and switched off the SUV’s automatic traction control. The vehicle bounded back up off the road on the far side of the street, mowed down a temporary chain-link fence and scrambled over the grass, toward the serene mirror of the Capitol Reflecting Pool. On the far side of the water, Marc glimpsed the grand statues of Ulysses Grant and James Garfield silently observing the unfolding chaos.
He stabbed at the button that lowered the power windows and gave his seatbelt a last tug to make sure it was secure. Something sharp cracked off the door frame, and he guessed it was a high-caliber rifle round, ignored it.
With a savage right-left twist of the steering wheel, Marc forced the SUV into a skidding, swaying turn, then violently pulled it back in the opposite direction. With a high center of gravity, the vehicle reacted poorly and rose up on two wheels. Marc felt it pass the point of balance and start to tip just as the front bounced over the concrete lip at the edge of the reflecting pool.
He lost all sense of direction as the SUV surrendered to gravity, and flipped over. Crashing through the still waters, the vehicle made one complete roll before it settled hard on the driver’s side, its wheels still turning in the air.
Through the opened windows, water rushed in and washed over the sensitive electronics of the signal jammers, causing brilliant discharges as short-circuits flashed through the equipment.
His body alight with new pain from the impact shock, Marc coughed and took in a lungful of brackish water, clawing desperately at the airbag that had blown out to smother him. The ornamental pool was less than a meter deep, but it was still enough for a trapped man to drown in.
* * *
Jadeed took a step away from the school bus, and suddenly he was aware of a ripple of consternation running through the assembled law enforcement officers. Voices heavy with distortion crackled through their sat-com radios, calling out warnings across the only open channel. It was the opportunity he had been waiting for.
From the corner of his eye, he saw the female federal agent raise a hand to touch the plastic earpiece she wore, her brow furrowing in concern. He made his move.
Holding on to one end of the string of metal beads in his hand, he pivoted swiftly on his right foot and let the misbaha snap like a short whip, slashing them down the woman’s face.
She cried out and reeled back as the makeshift lash cut a bloody line across her temple and cheek. Jadeed was already on her, coming in fast to loop the heavy gauge cord over her head with one hand and grab at her gun with the other. He performed the move flawlessly, a short and brutal dance as he used the beads to choke her and forced the agent’s weapon into the soft flesh of her bare throat.
“Get away!” he bellowed, dragging the woman out of the line of sight of any rooftop snipers, into the shadow cast by the bus. “I will strangle this stinking whore unless you drop your guns!”
“You’re a class act, motherfucker.” The dark-skinned woman with the bound wrists had somehow got behind him, and he shifted, pulling tight on the beads and dragging the agent up to shield his body.
“Keyes, stay back!” called the older man, but she didn’t acknowledge him.
Jadeed wanted to be in control, but he could feel that slipping away, second by second, vanishing like the ticks of the countdown clock. He let out a brittle laugh. “You will weep,” he snarled. “The sword will find your throats!”
The woman raised her hands in a dismissive gesture, and he saw they were strapped together with a thick plastic zip-tie. “So says the coward who sends children to die in his place.”
His fury peaked, and in that moment all Jadeed wanted was to take a life, an American life, here on the hallowed streets of their capital city. To commit the first act of aggression this day, in Al Sayf’s name.
He turned the pistol toward the dark-skinned woman, but she was already spinning, bringing up her leg in a blur of motion. The sweeping kick cracked Jadeed hard on the nerve cluster in his elbow. A shock of numbing pain ran down his gun arm, and his finger deadened on the trigger.
His prisoner joined in the assault and smashed the heel of her shoe down on his instep, breaking bone. Jadeed cried out and she slipped from his grasp, tumbling away to the sidewalk.
The woman with the bound wrists was agile despite her enforced handicap, crossing the distance to him in the blink of an eye. Her arms locked together, she sent her fists into his face as if they were propelled by a piston. Warm, wet fluid gushed from his nostrils and Jadeed choked. Her foot hooked his ankle and the world turned around him, the asphalt of the road coming up to slam into his back.
“No…” he managed, scrambling to get back up.
“No,” said the older man, coming into view, aiming down at him along the line of his sidearm. “Where are the carriers?”
A ring of figures surrounded Jadeed, and he coughed out a snigger. If he had to surrender, it would be with hate in his eyes.
“They are already dead,” he spat.
* * *
The folding multi-tool on his belt saved Marc’s life. Thumbing open the blade, he used it to slice through the jammed seatbelt holding him under the water and pushed away, scrambling around inside the overturned vehicle. His chest was filled with jagged nails, pain slashing back and forth as he moved.
Hands shaking, Marc reached up for the passenger side door and levered himself up and out. The last thing he did before rolling off the stalled SUV was to pull Nash’s smartphone from his pocket, holding on to it with a white-knuckle death-grip.
Marc fell back into the water with a heavy splash. He rolled, soaked through, lolling against the side of the crashed vehicle,
and brought the phone up to his face. People were calling out, figures were moving on the edge of his pain-blurred vision, but he ignored them. Their shouted commands didn’t penetrate his awareness, the voices very far away, strained and alien and incomprehensible.
Time. Was it time? The moments seemed to pass sluggishly as he woke the smartphone with a touch and peered at the tiny screen. The seven clocks were there, one stacked on another, twenty-eight seconds on the uppermost. Now twenty-seven, then twenty-six, twenty-five …
The countdown was mesmerizing, and his body ached so much, the effort to lift his finger and find the button like moving an impossible weight.
ARM. SAFE. ZERO.
SAFE ALL. Marc found the tab and prodded it. There were full signal bars, full connection for as long as it lasted. He grinned weakly, imagining hundreds of people on the far side of the big screens, their phones suddenly bleating into life with the unexpected arrival of dozens of stalled calls and delayed text messages.
Are You Sure? read the screen. Yes/No?
“I’m sure,” he slurred and tapped the button again.
Connecting … He held his breath. The voices were clearer now, and Marc could make out figures in dark uniforms wading through the reflecting pool toward him, an army of guns turned in his direction.
Command Sent, reported the device, and without further ceremony the seven bombs became inert, and the crowd kept clapping and the world on the far side of the giant screens rolled on regardless.
Marc didn’t look up as the last ten seconds counted down. He needed to see them fall to zero, to know for certain.
But the bullet that entered his chest brought a storm of fire that shocked him out of consciousness, and Marc plunged into a drowning, chilling darkness that went on forever, the cascade of numbers shattering like glass.
TWENTY-EIGHT
The pain came in waves, soaking deep into him with each surge.
He couldn’t sort any of it into a rational order, there were just the flashes of agony and the moments of sensory recall that jumbled into a mess of sound, color and smell.
Blood and chemical cleaner-stink. Hard, bright light that prickled like needles. A horrible, drug-fogged sense of dislocation.
Marc rose up through the levels of awareness from the black, abyssal depths like a swimmer pushing toward the surface of an infinite sea. The real world gradually sketched itself in around him, starting with the feel of cotton against his body, of clothing and sheets and the steady pressure of a mattress against his back. There was noise—the soft and steady chimes of a heart monitor, the low rush of voices like distant breakers—and the faint medicinal odor he associated with sickness and death.
His eyes opened and he saw a hospital room of pale greens and cream, shadows of nighttime cast through the window blinds. Marc heard a woman speak.
“He’s awake. Call Langley.”
It was an effort to shift his weight, and when he did he realized he felt cold all down one side. Marc reached for the place where that burning, shrieking pain had cut into him in the reflecting pool and found a wad of bandages, the outer layer dotted with tiny spots of blood.
The dark sea came up again, and for Marc the transition seemed to happen instantly. One moment it was night, and when his eyes opened again a heartbeat later, the room was filled with honey-gold morning light.
A doctor leaned away from him, and his eyes fixed on a single detail. She had a military identity tag on her white coat. “He’s all yours,” she told someone, and stepped out of the room.
Marc blinked and focused as a man came into view. He wore a dark suit and a plain tie, and he had the bland good looks of a mid-list television actor. The sort of person who might play the handsome husband on a soap opera.
The man put a cup of water on the bedside table and gave Marc an appraising look. “Welcome back, Mister Dane. How are you feeling?”
Marc realized how thirsty he was and he gulped down the water. “Like fifty miles of bad road…” He managed.
“Being shot will do that,” said someone else, and Marc blinked, finding a second man standing at the back of the room. Although he was dressed similarly to his associate, this guy was more muscular. He’d be the thug ex-boyfriend of the pretty female lead …
He shook off the mental image. Marc was still a little dopey from whatever drugs had been pumped into his system, and his train of thought was in danger of running off the tracks. “How … long was I out of it?”
“You’ve been sleeping it off for three days,” said the first man. “I’m Cahill, and that’s my colleague Durant. You have some questions to answer.”
The background tension of pain in Marc’s side was returning as his body gradually woke up. He shifted position and winced. “Where am I?”
“Walter Reed Medical Center,” said Cahill.
“Under guard,” added Durant.
Marc took this in. Walter Reed was a military hospital a few miles outside of Washington DC, and if he was there, it meant that there was a ring of Army steel surrounding him. It was likely that no one outside would have the first clue about his location.
He studied Cahill, trying to get a handle on his situation. “So. You lads aren’t Homeland Security. I’d say CIA, at a push.”
Durant turned to look at him. “We are the people holding your scrawny neck in our hands. That clear enough?”
Marc glanced at Cahill. “Are you actually doing the good cop, bad cop thing?”
Cahill smiled slightly. “Why mess with the classics?” He took a seat near the bed, while Durant hovered nearby. “A lot of people want to talk to you, Marc. Can I call you Marc?” He didn’t wait for him to reply. “There’s a long list of folks who you’ve pissed off.”
Marc settled against the headrest, catching sight of his pulse flicking up and down on the medical monitor. It was smoother than he expected, even though calm was the last thing he should have been. He chalked it up to the soporific effects of the medication and said nothing. Silence was always a powerful weapon in the push and pull of any interrogation.
“We know all about you,” Durant offered. “We got your computer, your phones…”
“Nice work there, by the way,” said Cahill. “Our tech guys are cursing a blue streak trying to break through the encryption you have on that laptop.”
“So,” continued the other agent. “That puts us in a difficult position. You’re a real problem. You and your friend Keyes.”
At the mention of Lucy’s name, he tensed. “Where is she?”
“Alive. Well. In cuffs,” snapped Durant. “Like the convict she is.”
Marc’s brow furrowed. Had he misheard? “Convict?”
Durant nodded. “Guess she don’t talk about that much, huh? Keyes is a federal fugitive.”
On the road from New Jersey she had talked about being on a wanted list. Marc hadn’t pressed the issue, surmising that she had gone AWOL from her Army career, but Durant’s manner suggested something else entirely. Before he could digest that, Cahill was talking again.
“Let’s look at what we have. Marc Dane, rogue British Intelligence officer, disavowed by his own government and wanted by Interpol. Lucille Keyes, a disgraced former Delta Force sniper and escaped prisoner. Both in our custody after attempting to disrupt a major security operation involving the President of the United States.”
“Disrupt is not the word that I would use,” Marc managed.
Cahill went on. “We have two dead men disguised as police officers. One is an ex-NCO in the South African Army, who apparently took the quick way down from the roof of the Willard Hotel in downtown DC. The other, shot dead at close range in the hotel maintenance room, is a man with the kind of deliberately fragmented record in the British military that usually indicates a Special Forces operator. Then there’s our other two prisoners. A known criminal with ties to several private military contractors, and the other…” He trailed off.
“A Saudi national with a permanent spot on Homeland Security�
��s watch list,” said Durant, his tone severe. “An operative of the Al Sayf terror group.”
Cahill nodded. “We’re in the process of rounding up more. A group of mercenaries who entered the country illegally on a ship that docked in New Jersey. You know something about that?”
Marc could feel a steady pressure building behind his eyes, like the onset of a migraine headache. “Did it happen?” he asked, the question falling out of him. “The bombs, did they go off?”
“They didn’t detonate,” Durant replied. “And right now, nobody even knows they were there.”
A wave of relief washed over him. “That’s … good.”
Durant shook his head. “Not for you.”
“Here’s how I think it went,” said Cahill, gesturing with one hand. “You and Keyes are on the outs, and you got recruited into this nasty little plot cooked up by Al Sayf. But you both got cold feet. You couldn’t go through with it, so you turned on your pals. You wanted to make yourselves the heroes of the day.”
Marc looked away, incredulous at the agent’s reading of the situation. “What I want … is answers. I want Jadeed Amarah and Omar Khadir…” The mention of Khadir’s name sent a charge through the room, as Cahill and Durant exchanged glances. “And I didn’t want anyone else to die,” Marc concluded.
“Amarah’s not gonna be getting any visitors,” Durant told him. “Ever. He’s going to a place that makes Gitmo look like Club Med, and he’ll be there for a long time.”
“We did what we did to stop them,” Marc pressed on. “People I care about were killed. The life I had was torn up. My family were threatened!” He summoned the strength to glare at the agents. “That’s not something I was going to let slide, you get me?”
“So out of the goodness of your hearts, you and Keyes came all the way to DC to warn us about a terror strike?” Cahill leaned in. “Couldn’t just phone it in like a concerned citizen?”
Marc shot him an acid look. “Don’t take the piss.” His jaw hardened. “I’m not saying anything else until I see Lucy.”
Nomad Page 46
