by David DeLee
She’d discarded her dark pantsuit jacket. Her white blouse was damp and clung to her form, revealing the outline of a dark bra underneath. Her blond hair, previously in the tightest bun Bannon had ever seen, had fallen. It cascaded over her shoulders in bouncy damp curls.
Without her sunglasses, he could see her clear blue eyes.
In them, he could see she meant business.
“I have to say. I didn’t see this coming.” Bannon shifted his stance, continuing to shield Robin Larson. She clutched his shoulders from behind. He could feel her hot, rapid breathing on his neck.
“It’s not what you think,” Holloway said.
“They all say that,” Bannon countered. He gauged her grip. It was two-handed and steady as a rock. The Secret Service did tend to train their agents well. “I wouldn’t understand, but I do. In the end, it comes down to one of two things: ideology or money.”
“Not this time.”
He ignored her protest. “Which is it, agent? Do you love money or hate your country?”
“You’ve got it all wrong.”
“Oh, I get it,” Bannon said, stalling while trying to figure a way out of this situation. “You love your country but we’ll all misguided idiots and you’re going to fix everything. You and Lang are going to put us back on the right path.”
“Shut up! You’re wrong.”
“Then why are you pointing a gun at us?” Larson said.
“I don’t have a choice.” For the first time, the gun wavered. “But you’re not entirely wrong. It is about love.”
“Love?” Bannon cocked his head. “You and Lang? Sucre?”
Holloway’s stoic features screwed up in disgust. “God, no.”
Bannon relaxed his grip on the machine pistol, letting it hang loose at his side. He could read the torture in the woman’s eyes. “Then what is it, Kate. Tell us what’s going on.”
Larson tentatively moved out from behind his cover. Holloway looked behind her. She hesitated, then lowered her pistol and nodded, indicating they should move to the left. Bannon assumed out of camera view.
“They have my family,” she said. “My husband and my little girls. They’re holding them hostage.”
Saying the words broke open the dam she’d clearly erected. Tears fell down her cheeks.
“They?” Bannon said, taking a step forward. “Lang and Sucre?”
She nodded.
“How? When?”
“I don’t know. After I left home this morning.” She looked at her watch. “Yesterday morning. Thugs invaded my home. Armed. A woman and two men. They beat up Roger. He’s taped to a chair. They sent me a video, to show me.”
Afraid to ask the question, he said, “Your girls?”
“They’re not hurt. Scared out of their minds.”
“You said they sent you a video. How?”
“On my cell phone. While we were still on the Putnam. And again, just now in Ops. Lang’s got a sat phone there.”
“Your phone,” Bannon asked. “Do you still have it?”
She nodded.
“May I see it?”
She handed Bannon her phone. He played the video, keeping the sound low. Over his shoulder, Larson gasped and covered her mouth as the video played. It lasted for just a few seconds, but with the voiceover, the threat was clear. More than enough to get the job done.
“My little girls…they’re so scared, who knows what they’re doing to them.”
Bannon reached out and gripped her arm, reassuringly. “Nothing.”
She looked at him like he was deranged.
“They won’t harm them as long as they need you.”
“And when they’re done with me?” she said, venom in her voice. “Then what? They’re dead and I’m powerless to stop them.”
“We won’t let that happen,” Bannon said. He squeezed her arm.
Her you’re delusional expression returned. “What can you do about it? A retired Coastie. Owner of a seaside bar.”
At least she didn’t call it a dive bar, he thought.
“We’re stuck down here on the ocean floor. You’re so far out of your depth, Bannon, you’re not even being rational. No pun intended.”
“Listen to me. I can help. I can.”
“How?” Fresh tears rolled down Holloway’s face.
“I do more than own the Keel Haul. I work for Grayson. I have a team. We handle special assignments for her, problems outside the normal purview of Homeland Security operations.”
From her expression it was clear Holloway wasn’t buying it.
“Remember the incident with the Oceanic Princess last year?”
Publicly the attack on the ocean liner had been reported as a catastrophic engine failure. Gas fumes trapped in the engine compartment sparked and exploded. A lie close to the truth. Tara Sardana had caused just such an explosion on the terrorist ship she’d been trapped on. The damage to the Oceanic Princess had been the result of those same terrorists attacking the ocean liner in an attempt to destroy it. As the agent in charge of the President’s personal protection detail, Holloway had category one Yankee White clearance, like Bannon, the highest security clearance in the nation. As such, she’d have been fully briefed on what really happened that day, but with Bannon and his team’s identities redacted.
She’d know the story to be true, and the only way for Bannon to know about it in detail was if he’d been there. “The railguns? That was you?”
“With the help of some very close friends. Those same friends are out there, doing what they can to save us. I’m sure of it. They can save your family, too. If we can contact the surface.”
He knew he could use an ally in his fight against Lang and Sucre, but more importantly, the last thing he needed was another foe. “What do you say?”
After Bannon had escaped and Kingsley, Grayson, and the others were recaptured, they were forcibly taken to a lower level. Grayson tried to keep track of where, definitely the north section of the facility, but she hadn’t had a chance to study the layout of Tiamat Bluff, and now all she knew was she didn’t know where she was.
Getting old, she told herself.
They arrived at a closed door. In Spanish, Sucre ordered the armed men with them to take the prisoners inside.
She, Kingsley, and the others were roughly pushed through the open door. The doors closed behind them and they found themselves inside an opulently decorated restaurant. Three-quarters of the large open space was walled by glass with a magnificent view of the ocean outside.
Two young men with olive skin and black hair were posted at the door. Like the others, they held their machine pistols at the ready and wore serious expressions.
There were two dozen more people inside, mostly sitting at curved patted dining booths or along a large bar that doubled as a brightly lit fish tank. Another fish tank served as a backsplash to the shelved bar. Among the prisoners was the pilot of Seaview-One, Trevor Garcia.
He looked up from the booth where he sat and rushed over. “Madam Secretary. Mr. President. You’re safe. We’ve been so worried.”
“Thank you,” Kingsley said. He swiped his damp gray hair from his forehead. “Everyone here is okay? Unharmed?”
“Yes. They have not harmed us.” Garcia glared at the men at the nearby door. Grayson noticed another guard by a wide, carpeted spiral staircase that led up to the next level.
“Come,” Garcia said. “Sit. They have given us water.”
Grayson and Kingsley sat down. Still wet, Grayson shivered and Garcia ordered someone to get her a blanket. He draped it over her shoulders while another man gave them bottles of water.
“Thank you,” Grayson said. “What can you tell us?”
Garcia sat down opposite them. “Not much. We have been locked up here since they took you away.” He surveyed them. “It seems you have more of a tale to tell than we do.”
“The park. It’s been destroyed,” Grayson said.
“A rescue attempt gone wrong,” Kingsley added
. The responsible he felt for the loss of life was apparent in his drawn features and slumped shoulders. A businessman and an academic before his run for the White House, he’d never experienced anything like this before.
Grayson leaned forward and lowered her voice. “Mr. Garcia, in an emergency how would Tiamat Bluff be evacuated?”
“We have six operational midget subs, ma’am, modeled after the Navy’s Deep Submergence Rescue Vehicles. The DSRVs crews with a pilot and co-pilot and can accommodate up to twenty-four passengers. If we could get to them.”
Grayson looked around. “Let me worry about that.”
“Liz, what do you have in mind?” Kingsley asked.
“I don’t know yet,” she said honestly. But she did feel an idea percolating.
She stood up and paced the room. Two ways in and out. The doorway they came through and a steel spiral staircase leading upward in the corner. Both under heavy guard.
Returning to the table, she asked, “Where do those stairs lead?”
“Up to Ops,” Garcia said. “It is directly above us. But even if you got past the man with the gun, the door’s locked with a two-tier biometric lock. Only senior personnel have access.”
She spotted a dark brown dome in the ceiling. The size of a softball. Inside it was a camera. A camera watching their every move. Her idea—too early to be called a plan—was coming into focus. But first, she needed to get to the men in charge; Sucre and Lang.
She didn’t know if it would work, but she had to try. She looked at the camera and steeled herself for what she had to do next.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
“I think I have an idea,” Robin Larson said, looking from Agent Holloway to Bannon.
They remained huddled in the corridor, hugging the curved interior wall. Larson assured them it was a blind spot between cameras. Bannon questioned the lack of continuous coverage. Larson took exception to the criticism. “Tiamat Bluff’s not a military installation, Commander. The cameras are in place to facilitate safety and regulate living conditions, not monitor people like they’re prisoners.”
“Understood,” Bannon said, actually welcoming the blind spots. “Your idea?”
“Remember the rescue subs we were discussing earlier?”
“Sure.” They were key to his plan for getting POTUS and Grayson to safety.
“They have independent power and communications onboard. If we can get to one, from there we can contact the Putnam.”
“If they’re not already heavily guarded,” Holloway said. “Lang’s people would be all over us in seconds.”
“There’s a bigger problem than that,” Larson added.
“Of course. Why wouldn’t there be?” Holloway said.
“Access is controlled and monitored from Ops with an in-tandem locking system.”
Bannon explained for Holloway’s benefit. “Requires two people to gain access from remote locations. One person in Ops and the other at the hatch.” To Larson, he said, “What about a power surge?”
She shook her head. “The system is EMP resistant, with redundant backups.”
“Okay,” Bannon thought. “Still, there would be a small window between when the power went down and the backups activated. Assuming the system is fail-safe and not fail-secure.”
Electronic locks were designed to operate in one of two ways during a power failure event. Either they remained locked, called fail-secure, or they were fail-safe, meaning the locks automatically disengaged if the power were cut. It made sense the sub hatches would be fail-safe, allowing personnel to escape in the event of an emergency.
“Fail-safe, of course,” Larson confirmed.
One problem licked, Bannon thought.
“But,” Larson said.
Because there was always a but, or a however.
“The time between…we’re talking seconds,” Larson said. Her brow furrowed as she worked the problem. “And, any power failure, alarms will sound in Ops.”
“That’s where she comes in,” Bannon said.
“Me?” Holloway said.
“I can save your family, Agent Holloway,” Bannon said. “but I need your help to do it.”
“No.”
Bannon blinked. “Excuse me. What do you mean no?”
Holloway’s blue eyes blazed angrily. “You’re talking about putting the President and others on a submarine and then contacting someone topside who may or may not be able to save my family. No. Lang will retaliate. He’ll kill my family and everyone left down here. No. I won’t risk it.”
“I’m staying here. I’ll make sure that doesn’t happen,” Bannon said.
She raised her pistol. “I’ll take my chances turning you over to Lang then figure out a way to keep POTUS and my family alive from here.”
An orphan growing up in the system, Bannon had no family of his own. He wondered what he’d do, put in the impossible situation Holloway faced. And so, he found it hard to judge her too harshly. He raised his hands. “I get it. But we’re onto something. We just need to finesse the plan.”
“Ensure me my family’s safe, then we’ll talk,” she said.
“I can do that,” he said with all the confidence he could muster.
“How?”
Bannon glanced over to Larson then back to Holloway. “We get on the sub. We make the call. You keep Lang distracted.”
“How do I know you won’t just leave?”
She didn’t know Bannon. She had no reason to trust him. Again, he got it.
“Instead of liberating the hostages first,” he said, which had been his original plan. “We’ll go to the sub first, make the call and get the ball rolling on saving your family.”
Holloway chewed her lower lip considering his plan. “How do I distract Lang from a massive power outage?”
Larson spoke up. “I can make it look like a series of rolling blackouts. We had to contend with them a lot when we were first up and running. Diverting power from system to system as needed when our output was low. The system’s designed to do that.”
“You think Lang’s going to fall for something like that?” Holloway asked.
“He’s using my people to monitor and operate the systems up there,” Larson said. “They’ll see it that way. No reason they wouldn’t. At least in the short term.”
“Enough time to get our message out,” Bannon said.
Holloway lowered her gun, thinking. Finally, she stared hard into Bannon’s eyes. “Okay. But there’s one more thing we need to do.”
“What’s that?” Bannon asked.
“The cameras will have picked up our initial meet up. If I’m to convince Lang you legitimately escaped from me, I’ve got to sell it.”
“What do you want me to do,” Bannon asked. “Shoot you?”
“I was thinking something less drastic.” She leaned in and jutted out her chin. “Slug me. A good one.”
Bannon frowned. “I can’t do that.”
“Oh, for Christ’s sake.” Larson stepped forward and swung her fist hard and fast into Holloway’s left eye.
“Oww!” The Secret Service agent staggered backward, covering her eye with her hand. She leaned over and groaned. “That hurt more than I thought it would.”
With little conviction, Larson said, “Sorry.”
“That’s some right hook,” Bannon said, impressed.
“That’s what two years of kickboxing aerobics will do for you.”
“Get out of here,” Holloway said. Her eye already bloodshot and swollen.
They turned to leave.
Holloway called out. “Don’t mess this up, Bannon. My family’s counting on you.”
He nodded and they ran, her words echoing in his ears. Silently, he promised, her family would be fine.
“We need to stay away from the cameras,” he said to Larson.
“Stay close to the interior corridor walls,” she said taking the lead. They bypassed an elevator as she directed him to a service stairwell. She unlocked it by placing her hand a
gainst the black biometric pad.
Unlocked, they slipped inside.
“The subs are docked on the lowest level.” They raced down five flights of stairs.
When they reached the bottom of the stairwell, they paused at the door.
“You wait here until I’ve cleared the place.” He clutched the machine pistol at the ready and nodded for her to open the door.
She did so.
He rushed into the corridor beyond. He swept the weapon left then right, but there was no enemy to engage. Bannon was grateful by that, relieved at not exposing their presence via a gun battle, but concerned by the carelessness of it. Was Lang so confident he’d leave such an obvious means of escape unprotected? He didn’t strike Bannon as being that foolish.
Maybe he simply didn’t have enough men. Were his resources more finite than Bannon had first thought? At the moment it didn’t matter. He waved for Larson to join him.
“No one’s here?” she asked, sounding as surprised as he was. Her voice low.
The corridors were dimly lit with just a strip of icy blue running lights along the floor. This far down there were no windows. Absent was the reddish glow from the panoramic ocean views the upper levels had. Bannon heard the low hum of engines and felt a faint vibrating under his feet.
“This way,” Larson said. Bannon followed as she let him south along the corridor. “If you recall, the northern most section of Tiamat Bluff is embedded into the sloping grade of Georges Bank. The subs are docked this way where the lowest level is still above grade.”
The corridor curved toward the left.
A five-minute walk brought them to the first DSRV hatch.
Larson rushed at it, suddenly agitated. She looked through the portal. “No.” She looked again as if she couldn’t accept what she was seeing. “No.”
She rushed to the next one. And the next. “No. No. No.”
There she stopped and turned. By then Bannon had glanced through the first portal and saw what had upset her so.
“That explains why there’s no guards down here,” he said.
“They’re gone,” she said. “They’re all gone.”
“All of them? Are you sure?”
She frowned, apparently frustrated with his lack of faith in her assessment. Then as if to prove herself right, she stormed down the concave corridor peering through each portal she came to. “Gone. Gone. Go—” She turned her mouth open in surprise. “This one! It’s still here. The only one left.”
