Honor Bound

by Radclyffe

  Cam didn’t hesitate. “Grant, evacuate now. Repeat, evacuate now.”

  On Stark’s frequency, she ordered, “Institute retrieval. Recover your package now.”

  Switching yet again, she said, “Doyle. We’ve been made. He has visual. We are evacuating.”

  No one answered. She frantically opened all frequencies and transmitted again.

  Nothing.

  She stepped to the edge of the platform and dropped to the ground. She landed a few feet from Savard. “Anything?”

  Savard shook her head, her expression grim. “Commander, I don’t see her. I’m getting no response on any channel. Comm links are all down.”

  “God damn it! Loverboy’s jamming us,” Cam snapped angrily. “Let’s go get her.”

  For an instant, their eyes met. And then they turned, shoulder to shoulder, and raced through the gates of the decaying amusement park into the darkness beyond.

  As they passed under the archway, Cam tried once more to reach Grant or Doyle. Her transmissions were met with silence. She looked ahead, but all she could see was the blue-black of the night sky broken by the silhouettes of the detritus of the abandoned park.

  “Savard,” Cam whispered as they rushed forward. “Swing right and cover our flank. If he’s here, he’s going to go after one of us. Let’s not give him too many targets in one place.”

  Immediately, Savard melted away into the darkness.

  The refreshment stand was fifty yards in front of her. She would be there in less than sixty seconds. Sixty seconds.

  Jesus, where is Grant?

  Cam looked to the high ground, which was where she would have positioned herself if she had wanted to command the battle. In this situation, the best vantage point was on top of a building, but the ones still standing in the arcade were in clear view of Doyle’s men on the warehouse, and they hadn’t seen him. Still, out of habit, she scanned the structures with a sightline to the refreshment stand. Nothing.

  Where the fuck is he?

  She was almost there. Still no sign of Grant. The night had grown eerily still, yet she couldn’t hear anything except her own heart pounding in her throat. She ran, her skin prickling with apprehension. She thought she saw a figure moving in the shadows by the side of the building. She raised her gun, slowing minutely, struggling to see through the shifting shadows.

  There! Coming closer.

  She sighted, her finger depressing the trigger just short of the firing pressure, when another movement far off to her right caught her eye. She jerked her head around in time to see the top car on the Ferris wheel swinging lazily, seemingly suspended in midair with only shafts of moonlight to hold it aloft.

  “Savard,” she called into the dark, not bothering to lower her voice. She was fully exposed and, at this range, defenseless. If he was going to fire at her, there was nothing she could do. At least she could make sure he didn’t get away.

  “He’s on the Ferris wheel. Go!”

  Just then, Grant appeared out of the shadows in front of the refreshment stand, calling, “All clear here, Commander.”

  Cam’s shout to take cover was lost to the night as the building disintegrated in a flash of orange flame and flying debris.

  A rushing tornado of hot air hit Savard from behind, momentarily lifting her off the ground. She tucked her head and dove into a forward shoulder roll, letting the momentum of the blast carry her back onto her feet. Her gun was out and in her hand and, miraculously, she had managed to hold on to it. She refused to think about what had just happened. She couldn’t think about Grant and Roberts now. She had only one thought.

  Get him.

  As she approached the Ferris wheel, she saw a thin shadow nimbly descending the exterior frame. She was fifty yards away, and at that range—in the dark—she wasn’t certain she would be able to hit him. If he made it to the ground, he would quickly disappear amidst the jungle of twisted metal and tumbled-down structures.

  She tried again to notify Doyle and the SWAT team of her location, but there was no response. Communications were still blacked out. They were probably converging, but they would never engage in time.

  Running hard, she closed the distance and got a quick glimpse of the figure that had just reached the ground. For a split second, she hesitated. He was wearing a uniform.

  Is he an advance lookout Doyle didn’t brief us about? Or one of our own people who just wandered too far into the perimeter?

  When he turned and fired, she realized her mistake, but that second of uncertainty cost her. By the time she registered the muzzle flash, she’d been hit and was already falling, a hot flash of pain spearing her left shoulder.

  God damn. It was much worse than she ever imagined.

  The force spun her around and knocked her flat on her back. For a second she couldn’t breathe at all. When she finally got her air back, she had to swallow a scream. Then she blanked her mind of everything except the image of him turning and firing—at her.

  Bastard.

  The pain receded on the wave of anger. She was furious at him for shooting her, and even more furious at herself for letting him take her by surprise. Ignoring a swell of nausea, she rolled to her side and got her feet under her.

  In the next second, she was moving again. Her left arm hung uselessly, but her gun hand still worked. She could see his back as he agilely vaulted a turnstile that had once been part of an admission booth. In another instant, he’d be gone. Her vision was starting to blur, and she was running out of time. Her arm was soaked with blood; she could feel it streaming off her fingers onto the ground.

  She drew down and fired.

  The second explosion was even larger than the first. And this time, the shock wave catapulted her into oblivion.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Mac worked furiously to reestablish contact, but no one was answering him.

  “Commander? Stark?”

  Blair continued to type queries to Loverboy, but there were no further responses.

  “What’s happening?” she asked urgently. The three agents looked grim, and the eerie quiet that hung in the air made Blair’s blood run cold. She struggled for composure and lost. “What the hell is going on?”

  “All our communication lines are down,” Mac said grimly. “Loverboy was probably transmitting from a wireless connection at the rendezvous site. He’s there, and he knows that you’re not.”

  Blair got to her feet, her entire body trembling. “Someone better find out right now what’s happening out there, or I’m going myself.”

  “Ms. Powell,” Lindsey Ryan said calmly, putting her hand on Blair’s arm very gently, almost as if she were afraid of startling her, “we’ll get word here faster than anywhere else. Give Mac a minute.”

  Mac switched to the speakers and attempted to boost the signals. “Stark, come in please. Do you copy? Stark, God damn it! Do you hear me?”

  A garbled, fitful transmission crackled through. At first, all Blair could make out were fragments of words, but what she could hear was enough to take her legs out from under her. She reached blindly for a chair and sat heavily.

  “...explosion...shots fired...agents down...”

  “Who?” Blair asked faintly, her eyes moving from one agent’s face to the other, trying desperately to read their expressions. “Mac, ask her who.”

  “Can you clarify?” Mac asked woodenly, forcing down the quick surge of panic Stark’s message produced. He clenched his fists and concentrated, straining for her words.

  More static, then “...Evacuating injured...will advise.”

  Then there was only silence, a silence so profound that the three of them—impotent witnesses to a nightmare—stood numbly, not looking at one another. Blair closed her eyes and wondered how it was that she could still feel her heart beating, because something inside of her was dying.

  The icy stillness was shattered by the ringing of the land-line. They all stared at it for a second, and then Mac snatched it up.

  “Ph
illips.”

  Blair watched him anxiously, hoping for some sign that her fears were unfounded, but the grim set of his jaw never changed. He replaced the receiver and stood up.

  “That was Fielding. Ambulances are en route with the injured to the trauma unit at Beth Israel.”

  “Who?” Blair asked quietly, prepared, she thought, to hear him say the words. She must be ready, because she was so cold inside. Frozen. “Please...who?”

  “No ID yet,” he answered, looking around for his blazer, “but Stark went with one of the ambulances, so I assume some of them are our people.” He pulled his jacket on as he turned toward the door. “I’ll call you as soon as I have any information, Ms. Powell.”

  “You can’t be serious.” Blair moved quickly, blocking his way, an incredulous look on her face. “I’m going with you.”

  Mac stopped short and, although it took effort, said as calmly as he could manage, “I’m afraid you can’t do that, Ms. Powell. I don’t have a full complement of agents available now, and I don’t even know the status of the rest of the team. I can’t provide security. I can’t...”

  “Mac,” Blair said tightly, wondering how it was that she hadn’t begun screaming, “either you take me or I get a cab. But there’s no way I’m not going.”

  “He’s right, Ms. Powell,” Felicia Davis said emphatically. “We’re shorthanded, and we don’t even know if the UNSUB has been apprehended. It’s not safe. The commander will have Mac’s...uh...head if he takes you out there. It’s going to be chaos.”

  Blair almost smiled, imagining Cam’s expression, and thinking that Davis was probably right—her lover would be seriously annoyed. And then she realized she might never see Cam again, might never touch her again, and the cold dark place where she locked away her fears began to bleed. When she spoke, she couldn’t quite hide the pain.

  “I’ll make sure Commander Roberts knows it was my doing.”

  Perhaps it was the way Blair’s voice broke when she said Cam’s name, or maybe it was just that Lindsey Ryan knew that the president’s daughter was going to the hospital with or without protection, but she spoke up. In a voice not only calming, but also comforting, she said, “Agent Phillips, there are three of us here. We certainly should be adequate security for Ms. Powell’s transport to the hospital. Once there, I assume there will be other members of your team available to assist.”

  Blair shot her a grateful look.

  Mac relented, because he couldn’t physically restrain the first daughter. And it was finally plain to him that she was going, one way or another.

  “All right then, let’s do it.”

  At first, all Blair could see through the Suburban’s window as they approached the hospital was a plethora of emergency vehicles parked haphazardly in the small lot in front of the entrance. Light bars atop ambulances and police cars sent intersecting beams of red and blue strobing wildly into the night sky to reflect eerily off the double glass doors of the trauma bay.

  Hospital personnel and law enforcement officers of all description rushed everywhere. She searched the crowd of state police, plainclothes federal agents, and SWAT team members in full riot gear, but the one unmistakable form she sought was absent.

  God damn it, Cam, don’t you dare do this. Don’t you leave me now.

  Blair realized that she wasn’t breathing. She also realized that there would be reporters at the hospital by now. And photographers. By the time Felicia Davis held the door open for her and she stepped from the car, she had composed herself. When reporters caught sight of her and converged, she kept her head up and her eyes forward. She made no comment.

  The federal agents triangulated on her in close formation—Mac on her right, Lindsey Ryan just behind her left shoulder, and Felicia Davis clearing the way in front. When they reached the sliding glass doors that marked the trauma entrance, a large, harried-looking hospital security guard blocked their way.

  “Sorry. You folks can’t go back there.”

  Mac extended his right hand with his badge, but the guard’s attention shifted and he focused on Blair. His eyes widened slightly, and he said in a slightly awed tone, “Miss Powell! I...uh...I didn’t recognize you...sorry...just one minute. I’ll get a detachment to escort you.”

  “No,” Mac said sharply. “That’s not necessary.” The last thing he wanted was a bunch of star-struck guards trying to be helpful and making his job more difficult. “We just need to get back to the triage area. Can you direct us?”

  The security officer looked as if he were about to protest, but he must have seen something in Mac’s face that made him change his mind. “Yes, sir. Straight on through, past the automatic doors at the end of the hall. It’s a mess back there, though.”

  Quickly, they crossed the hall and stepped into the relative quiet of the main admitting region. No press had yet found their way back, but there were still scores of people, most of them looking like law enforcement personnel, clogging the hallway, and emergency carts and equipment were everywhere. Blair stared at the floor and realized that the congealing trails of crimson were blood.

  “Oh God,” she whispered faintly.

  Lindsey looked at her in concern. “Why don’t we find some place less public to wait while Mac finds the others?”

  “This is still way too public out here. Let’s get back to the treatment area, and I’ll see what I can find out,” Mac agreed. He was feeling a little overwhelmed. And worried. The fact that he hadn’t heard anything else from his team members did not bode well.

  He and Ellen Grant had worked together for several years, even before Egret’s detail, and they were friends. He liked Renee Savard. And the commander—how he felt about her was too complicated to explain. He just knew he didn’t want to think about her going down again.

  When they stepped through the solid gray doors bearing the sign, “Trauma Admitting—Authorized Personnel Only,” he was relieved to see a familiar figure braced in the doorway of one of the treatment cubicles.

  “Stark!”

  Blair and her entourage hurried toward her. Stark stared at them silently, her expression dazed. There was blood on her shirt and hands, and a darkening smear along the angle of her jaw. Before she could respond, she was forced to step aside as a transport team came out of the room behind her, pushing a stretcher bearing a portable respirator, bags of intravenous fluid and blood, and a cardiac defibrillator.

  Barely recognizable in the midst of the equipment lay Renee Savard. Blair caught only a brief glance of Savard’s pale, unresponsive face as the medical team rushed her down the hall toward the elevators.

  Stark started after the stretcher, but a nurse gently took her arm and murmured something to her. A moment later, the elevator doors slid closed and Savard was gone. Stark’s shoulders slumped, and she leaned heavily against the wall.

  Mac reached for her arm. “Stark! What...”

  “Just a minute, Mac,” Blair said quickly. “Let me talk to her.”

  “Right, okay.” He turned to Davis. “You have Egret. I’ll go find someone who can tell me what’s going on.”

  Blair stepped forward and put both hands on Stark’s shoulders. She looked intently into her face. “Paula,” she said gently, “are you hurt? You’re covered in blood.”

  “It’s hers,” Stark said, her voice choked and low. Her gaze met Blair’s, a world of agony swimming below the surface of her dark eyes. “There was so much of it. I tried...the best I could. It wouldn’t stop.”

  “You’re sure you’re not hurt?”

  Stark stared at the blood caked on her hands, turning them over, back and forth. “No.”

  “Where is Cam, Paula?” Blair asked, trying hard to keep calm. Let her be here. Just let her be all right. “Agent Stark?”

  Stark was clearly in shock, but if someone didn’t tell her something soon, Blair was afraid that she might start running up and down the halls screaming out Cam’s name. She was about to come apart, and she was scared to death that she would neve
r get the pieces together again.

  “Paula,” she whispered desperately, “please.”

  “I think...I think,” Paula Stark began, then lost her thread.

  She was having trouble thinking about anything except how pale Renee had looked and how much blood there had been on the ground and on her clothes and how cold Renee had felt in her arms. Stark had put her arms around the injured agent and held her until the evac team arrived.

  She hesitated and swallowed, trying to get control of her racing heart and her shaking legs. Finally somewhat in focus, she cleared her throat and forced herself to straighten up. “Grant and the commander were caught in the blast. I didn’t see either of them, but to the best of my knowledge they were both transported here, too. Grant went to the OR right away, I think. I’m not sure about the commander.”

  Caught in the blast. Blair closed her eyes, refusing to think what that meant. No. She’s alive. She must be alive. They wouldn’t bring her here if she wasn’t. Would they?

  “Thank you,” Blair said softly after a moment. She looked over her shoulder and motioned to the two agents behind her.

  “Agent Davis, would you please take Agent Stark someplace where she can lie down for a few minutes?”

  “I’ll do that,” Lindsey Ryan said quickly to Davis. “You should stay with Ms. Powell until the situation is clarified.” And a few more Secret Service agents show up. Where the hell is everyone?

  As Lindsey put her arm around the unresisting dark-haired agent, she saw Mac approaching at a near run.

  “I found Fielding,” he announced breathlessly. “All he knows is that Savard’s in the OR, listed as critical with a gunshot wound to the shoulder. Hit just where her vest stopped and she almost bled out. Goddamned lucky shot,” he added bitterly. “Grant’s unconscious with a skull fracture and a collapsed lung. She’s in Critical Care. The commander is...” He stopped and Blair’s heart stopped, too.