Armed Response

by Janie Crouch

  “Muir, what are you doing?” Saul yelled.

  Jace met Derek’s eyes as they hoisted the seventh passenger—a large man who barely fit through the opening—out of the elevator. Jace already knew what Lillian was doing. She knew they weren’t going to be able to get the last guy out, so she was looking for other solutions to the problem.

  “She’s searching for the device,” he muttered to Derek.

  “What device?” the man they’d just pulled through asked. “A device? Like a bomb?”

  The other people gasped and the elderly lady grasped her chest. “There’s a bomb?”

  Derek and Jace ignored them. “Disarming is the only option if we can’t get everyone out,” Jace said. “I’m going in with her.”

  Jace glanced at his watch. Eight minutes.

  The civilians were now crying. Derek turned to Saul. “Lead them down the stairs.”

  The older woman gripped her chest again, her breathing ragged. Jace studied her briefly before turning back to Derek. “Saul isn’t going to be able to get them all down.”

  Derek nodded. “I’ll help him. You’re the explosives expert. I sure as hell hope you can work a miracle.”

  Jace did, too.

  Derek stepped closer. “But if you can’t, then you make sure the body count is as low as possible, you understand? One is bad enough. We don’t need to make it three.”

  “Agreed.”

  “Lillian won’t see it that way.”

  “Lillian already almost died once in the past twelve hours. I’m not going to let it happen again now.”

  Derek nodded curtly and moved to help the other civilians. Jace lowered himself into the elevator.

  “What the hell is going on here?” the man too big to fit through the opening said loudly, sweat pouring down his face. “Why is SWAT here rather than the fire department?”

  Lillian was ignoring him. She was using an electric screwdriver to open panels on the elevator, searching for the bomb.

  “Fire department is busy in other parts of the city, sir,” Jace responded to the man.

  “Well, then get a damn elevator repairman out here. Whatever this girlie is doing can’t be helping. A woman with power tools always makes me nervous. One in a broken elevator is downright terrifying.”

  Now Jace understood why Lily was ignoring the sexist jackass.

  She turned to him. “These panels are all clear. Nothing. I didn’t think it would be here, but it was worth a shot, since that would’ve been the easiest access.” She pointed to the roof panels. “Hoist me up.”

  They both ignored the man, who was still spouting off from the corner. Jace linked his fingers by his knees and Lillian immediately stepped into his hands. He lifted her until she could reach the ceiling panels and unscrew them. A few moments later she grasped the sides of the opening and lifted herself through.

  Her muttered curse told him the news was not good.

  “Tell Derek to let the other locations know there’s a primary device on the main cable and a second one on the emergency break,” she said down to him.

  “Device?” the guy yelled. “What kind of device?”

  They ignored him again.

  Jace relayed the message to the team leader, then continued, “This is beyond my pay grade, Derek. No way I’m going to be able to defuse this in time.”

  The big guy went crazy, became livid. “There’s a bomb up there? Don’t you think you should’ve told me about that, you bitch?”

  What was it with this sexist freak? Jace pointed a finger right in the middle of his chest. “You know what? There’s only one person stuck in this elevator without a way out. It’s not me and it’s definitely not her.” He pointed up to where Lillian was on the roof. “So shut the hell up and help us save your life.”

  The man shut up and nodded, thankfully.

  “Lillian, I’m coming up.” Jace crouched and jumped, catching the opening in the ceiling and pulling himself the rest of the way through. Lily was shining her flashlight on the small explosive device.

  “Four minutes.” He shone his own light at the secondary device on the emergency brake.

  “Hell, I don’t even know what I’m looking at, Jace. The entire team knows that explosives aren’t my specialty. I don’t have the patience for it. Tell me what I need to do.”

  Jace studied the bomb in front of him. There wasn’t time to inspect both separately. He would have to work on his and walk Lillian through hers at the same time. “Tell me what you see.”

  What was in front of him was a hot mess. Definitely not something crafted with care. It almost seemed to have been thrown together.

  Derek’s voice came in through his earpiece. “Report, Jace. You’re running out of time.”

  “This device isn’t what I was expecting, especially for someone we would’ve thought had been planning this since the summit was announced. This device is almost haphazard.”

  “The other three buildings couldn’t find any explosive devices in the elevators. Looks like the bomber was just using those as decoys to spread rescue personnel more thinly.”

  “It worked,” Jace muttered, still studying the messy IED in front of him. “Something about this whole thing is off, Derek.”

  “That’s not going to stop us from being less dead in three minutes if we don’t get this figured out,” Lillian quipped.

  “You focus on the task at hand,” Derek’s voice said in his ear. “We’ll figure out what doesn’t fit later.”

  “Roger that,” Jace muttered, clicking off his transmission. “Lil, I need you to figure out the four main parts of your bomb. Main charge, a trigger switch, the ignitor and the power source for the switch.”

  “Okay.”

  “We’ve got to separate the trigger switch from its power source.”

  Lillian blew out a frustrated breath. “So this is going to be more than just cut the red wire or the blue wire?”

  “Actually, believe it or not, it is a case of just cutting a wire. But if your IED is anything like mine, it’s a mess. Bomber didn’t take much care with this explosive. But like you said, it will still get us just as dead.”

  “We’re under two minutes, Jace. Which wire am I supposed to cut?”

  They both heard the guy in the elevator start crying, promising God he would go to church every day for the rest of his life if he survived this.

  “Tell Him you’ll stop making sexist remarks, too. Maybe that will help,” Lillian called down to him.

  Jace grinned. This woman.

  He couldn’t wait to get her back in his bed. All the thoughts about keeping his distance from her seemed ridiculous now.

  The bomb was messy, but still cleverly put together. Not easily disarmed. Jace gently pried the battery—the trigger switch’s power source—away from the main charge. He barely saw the tiny aluminum wire attached to the bottom of the red wire—the one that would need to be cut to separate the trigger from its power source.

  A fail-safe. If that tiny wire got cut by accident—by someone who didn’t see it—the explosive would detonate. The person who built this might have been in a hurry, but he was very smart.

  They were in serious trouble.

  “Lil, you need to go.”

  She didn’t even look up. “Like hell I will. Especially not without you.”

  “Negotiator was right. Whoever rigged this didn’t plan on anyone surviving here today, no matter what demands he gave.”

  Guy below them began crying louder.

  “Is it possible to defuse it?” she asked. Their eyes met across the roof of the elevator. Hers were calm, like his. Lillian could handle it.

  “Yes, but it’s tricky.”

  She grinned. “Tricky is my middle name, Eakin. What do I do?”

  He quickly explained about the aluminum wire, the need
to separate it gently from the other wire that had to be cut. It was glued and nearly impossible to do. Just getting the device in front of him defused would take all his time. There was no way he’d be able to help Lillian with hers.

  “Okay, I see it.” She muttered a curse. “I really don’t like whoever put this damn thing together.”

  “You found the adhesive, I see. Forty-five seconds.”

  “Yep, damn it. Wanna race?”

  Jace couldn’t keep from chuckling. Lily. God, if he had to go out, there was no one else he’d rather go with.

  Guy inside was wailing now.

  Jace carefully eased his blade through the tiny wire, using the utmost caution not to cut the aluminum wire around it. He took in a breath to focus and then made the final cut.

  “Clear,” he breathed.

  He looked over at Lillian. They had less than fifteen seconds. Jace stayed where he was. The best thing he could do now was let her do her job. Trust her to do it. And he did, he realized. She was crouched there, small flashlight now in her mouth pointing down at the device, completely focused on the task at hand.

  That was the Lillian he’d always known. Able to handle anything.

  C’mon, Tiger Lily. Save our lives.

  He’d no more than finished the thought when she looked up, grabbed the flashlight out of her mouth and grinned.

  “Clear.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  “Canceling the LESS Summit is not an option,” Congresswoman Christina Glasneck said an hour later, since she had decided to attend the SWAT debriefing to provide her own input. Colorado was her state and LESS was her baby.

  And she wasn’t happy.

  “Omega Sector is supposed to be made up of the best agents the country has available for service. So, can you handle this or not?”

  Lillian would’ve told the woman off, but Derek remained unflappable. “Yes, ma’am. We can handle it.”

  Congresswoman Glasneck tapped a heeled foot as she leaned back against the conference-room chair. “So we had a break-in at city hall last night and a bombing scare today. Are the two incidents related?”

  Lillian was glad she’d worn a high-necked dry-fit shirt under her gear. The bruising around her neck was extensive. And although Derek had let the team know she had thwarted some sort of break-in at the City and County Building, he hadn’t provided many details.

  Although someone—probably someone sitting inside this very room—knew many more details about last night than they were letting on.

  “It’s too early to ascertain with any certainty,” Derek responded to Glasneck. “But as of right now, we have nothing to suggest the two events are related.”

  Lillian glanced over at Jace. His face was stoic, as were the faces of the entire team. The congresswoman had requested everyone be here for this meeting, which wasn’t normal protocol and was a waste of time. There was a crap ton of more useful things the team could be doing than sitting here listening to a lecture from someone who wanted to feel like she had a finger on the pulse of law enforcement.

  It gave Lillian a new respect for Derek, who had to sit through these types of meetings all the time.

  “As you know,” Congresswoman Glasneck continued, “LESS has been my project from the beginning. I pushed it through Congress to get the necessary funding.” She looked over at Philip Carnell. “Mr. Carnell, you’ve been instrumental in the setup of the system, and I know a number of other members of Omega Sector have worked tirelessly across the country to make sure this system happens. I think you helped, too, didn’t you, Mr. Poniard?”

  Saul nodded. But Carnell, true to form, barely even acknowledged the congresswoman’s words. He sat with his arms crossed over his chest.

  Derek nodded. “We all understand the importance of LESS, Congresswoman. And of protecting the summit. None of us want it to be canceled, but we do need to decide on a final location. Right now it seems the primary and secondary locations have been compromised.”

  The congresswoman’s lips thinned. “I agree that this federal building is out. After the elevator incident today, I’m sure no one wants to place a large group of VIPs here. But I disagree about city hall. That’s one of the oldest buildings in Denver. Iconic.”

  Again, Lillian wanted to jump in and argue why the outer appearance of a building should be the last thing they were concerned about. This was why Derek had told the entire team to just keep quiet unless they were asked a direct question.

  “It is a beautiful building,” Derek conceded. “But the fact is, it was compromised. We had eyes on someone infiltrating the building, but that person got away.”

  “I’m not trying to tell you how to do your job, Agent Waterman, but isn’t it true that we have no credible intel on what the person who slipped into that window was doing? We don’t know if the perpetrator had anything to do with today’s bomb scare, nor do we have intel suggesting it was someone with nefarious purposes aimed at the LESS Summit. As a matter of fact, a broken cash box in the café on the first floor suggests it might have been a burglary. Perhaps even a juvenile.”

  Lillian had had enough. “Like hell. That was no kid I fought last night—”

  Derek held out a hand and Lillian quieted.

  “Agent Muir is one of our top team members, Congresswoman Glasneck. I trust her implicitly. If she says it was an adult she fought, even though the perpetrator was wearing a mask, I believe her.”

  Glasneck glanced over at Lillian and gave her a slight nod. “I appreciate any woman who works and fights in the midst of what is primarily a man’s world. I know a little about that. So I’m honestly not trying to be disrespectful when I say that I’m sorry the perpetrator was able to get the best of you in a fight.”

  “Guy had the help of a Taser,” Jace said.

  “That’s just about the only way someone would get a jump on Lillian otherwise,” Saul insisted. Everyone else nodded.

  At least Lillian knew her team felt she was fully capable of taking care of herself in a situation. Derek hadn’t provided any details about what had happened after the guy had Tasered her. Lillian didn’t know if Congresswoman Glasneck knew, either.

  Not that it mattered. The long and short of it was, Lillian had gotten her ass handed to her. And almost died because of it.

  “I’m sure that’s true,” Glasneck said. “But the point is, Agent Muir wasn’t in any shape to ascertain the perpetrator’s true intent. It quite possibly could’ve been a burglar she stumbled in on.”

  “The facts of the situation let us know that it was definitely not a simple break-in,” Derek said.

  Lillian knew he was trying to keep the details about the “suicide” note confidential.

  “Suffice it to say we have definite cause to believe the person who broke in was someone who knew Lillian. Was probably a terrorist named Damien Freihof that has been plaguing Omega Sector for months.”

  The older woman huffed out a breath. “But you have no proof of that.”

  Derek remained steady. “No, no proof. But we also know, based on evidence left at the scene, it was someone acquainted with Agent Muir. So although it may not have been Damien Freihof, it also means it wasn’t a simple break-in.”

  Derek definitely wasn’t mentioning the mole was probably sitting somewhere inside this room. That would not instill confidence.

  “Okay, it wasn’t a burglar.” The congresswoman held out her hands in front of her. “But you can agree that maybe it was someone with a vendetta against Agent Muir. And that it had nothing to do with the summit itself.”

  Derek nodded shortly. “Yes. That is possible. But I can tell you that hosting the summit at the Denver City and County Building, no matter how picturesque, is a mistake. Someone wanting to attack the summit has had too much time to prepare. Moving to an unknown secondary location will put any potential attacker back at square one.
”

  “Also puts us back at square one,” Carnell muttered. “Finding a suitable replacement, getting all the plans, figuring out the details...that’s going to take time we don’t have, considering the summit is tomorrow.”

  A lot of that work would fall on Carnell because of his computer skills, so Lillian couldn’t blame him for his frustration. Neither option—sticking with the building they were familiar with, but so was their enemy, or moving to an entirely unknown place—was very good.

  “Agent Waterman, we have dozens of important people from all over the country coming to witness the initialization of the LESS system. And that doesn’t include the thousands of other government officials and law-enforcement officers who will be watching from their stations as LESS goes live.”

  “We’re all aware of the VIPs, Congresswoman. You’re one of them.”

  “I’m least of them,” the woman said, and laughed. “But thank you. I don’t want this summit to take place in some back room across town just because of what might be a potential threat, but might not be. The very purpose of LESS is to show terrorists and criminals that law enforcement will not cower. We will face terror and crime head-on, standing together.”

  It was a rousing speech, one the woman obviously already had planned before this debrief had started. But Lillian could see her point. Looking around, she saw it was obvious the rest of the team could, too.

  “Yeah, boss,” Saul said. “Let’s prove what we can do. What law enforcement can do. We don’t cower.”

  Lillian almost had to roll her eyes again, but she couldn’t fault the newbie’s enthusiasm. Evidently, neither could Derek.

  “All right, Congresswoman, since we don’t have conclusive evidence of any upcoming attack, we’ll keep the summit at city hall. But you have to understand that if intel changes, so will security plans. I won’t put people at undue risk just for some photo ops.”

  Glasneck nodded. “Agreed. And I wouldn’t expect you to. Now, I’m sure your team has better things to do than sit around and talk to me. I’ll let you get to your business and I’ll handle mine.” The woman nodded, then left, her aides and Secret Service agent, on special loan for the summit, following behind.