Authors: Stephen England
Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Metro cops running toward them.
Not soon enough
, he thought as they lowered Gilpin to the ground. Not nearly soon enough.
And then he heard it, the sickening sound of a slug smashing into flesh—glanced up to see Carol staring at him, eyes wide.
God, no
.
He saw her body sway, her legs seeming to give out from under her. She collapsed into his arms, her head against his chest as they both fell, into the shadow of the ambulance.
His hands came away from her back, fingers wet and sticky with blood.
Her blood
, he realized, feeling as if he moved in a dream. The rifle bullet had slammed into her back, penetrating through layers of ballistic vest and into her body.
No exit wound. He could have staunched the bleeding from her back and it would have done nothing—the internal damage had been done.
He heard a voice on the radio, a raw, inhuman voice—screaming for the paramedics. His own.
“Stay with me, Carol,” he breathed, his hand leaving a bloody smear as he caressed her cheek. “Dear
God
, please stay with me.”
Nothing else in the world mattered in that moment, all the noise…the shouts fading away into the distance. Only them.
“I’m…sorry.” She opened her mouth, struggling to continue, but he shook his head, tears rolling down his face as he held her body close to his…knowing that she was dying—his heart rejecting the truth.
“Don’t give up,” he whispered, his voice hoarse with desperation. “Don’t you dare give up—
please
, don’t give up on me now.”
“
…
there will be a future—for
us
. Beyond all the fighting. All of the war.”
All the hopes, all of the dreams—dreams worth more than life itself. All of them gone.
No future, nothing beyond this moment. He could feel her growing weaker, struggling to breathe. Those eyes that had once shone with defiance now fading…becoming glassy.
He bent down, kissing her softly, her lips still warm but no longer responsive to his touch.
Always kiss them goodbye
.
Even this last of all goodbyes.
He looked up to see Han kneeling there in the shelter of a vehicle not ten feet away, a look of reproach in his eyes.
Where you go, Death follows
…
Gunshots in the distance, he felt movement around him as the paramedics moved in, taking Carol’s body from his arms.
He heard their voices as if through a haze clouding his mind, tears of anger and grief cascading down his cheeks as he watched, clinging to her hand as to life itself. Heard the barked orders, words of detached professionalism as they endeavored to perform a miracle—to bring her back from the grave.
But all to no avail. Miracles? There were none to be had…not on this Christmas Eve.
“She’s gone,” he heard one of the paramedics announce. Felt the man’s eyes on his face.
No
.
He struggled to his feet, letting go of her hand with painful reluctance. She looked beautiful laying there, golden hair splayed out over someone’s jacket. Asleep.
Dead
.
Brushing the tears from his cheek with an angry gesture, he strode out into the open road, the sirens ringing in his ears, the nighttime breeze rippling through his hair.
Red lights illuminating the face of death.
He might have been exposed to the sniper—might have been in his very cross-hairs, but he paid it no heed, walking as if lost in a nightmare.
None of that mattered.
Not now
. Not with her dead.
The end of all dreams…
11:32 A.M., December 31
st
NCS Op-Center
Langley, Virginia
“It’s good to have you back, Ron.”
Yeah
, Carter thought, glancing around at the familiar cubicles, the screens lit up with intel streaming in from around the world. “Good to be back, Danny.”
It was, wasn’t it?
All of this…and they had failed.
Over three hundred of their fellow Americans dead…two hundred and thirty-three of them aboard the doomed Delta flight. Souls flying into the night. To their deaths.
Perhaps
he
had failed.
All of this—and they had managed to completely lose the man responsible for all of it. The man whose praises the keyboard jihadis had been singing for the last six days.
The shaikh.
“Tarik Abdul Muhammad…how did we let him get clear?” Carter asked quietly, glancing away from the screens and back to Lasker.
“Based on what intel we have, I’d say that no one was looking for someone in a police uni.” Lasker’s face darkened. “We still haven’t even confirmed that he was actually the shooter. No prints beyond Sergeant Zimmerman’s on the gun. Nothing on surveillance.”
“How does that happen?” Carter ran a hand through his hair, quietly cursing.
Helpless
.
It was a sick feeling, coming from deep within. Reminding him of the night Caruso had died in his apartment, bullets churning the air. “Forget
Ocean’s Eleven
—these resorts have the best video surveillance in the world. How does a man get in…
and
out, without his face ever appearing on tape?”
“Yet another question we don’t have an answer to.”
Wrong answer
.
Hands trembling with anger, Carter stalked out into the open area of op-center, in front of the big screens—his sudden movement drawing the attention of the rest of his analysts. His team.
“Listen to me,” he began, tears streaming down his cheeks as he turned back to face them. “I don’t want to hear any more excuses—any more of what we don’t know. We are going to find the…people who did
this
to our country. And we are going to see them burn.”
6:37 P.M.
The apartment
Manassas, Virginia
Returning home after a mission was always difficult. The innocent cheer in the eyes of those you met on the street, the realization that everyone had gone about their lives without you.
Unmissed. And unmourned.
This time was different, Thomas thought, closing the door of his apartment behind him. He slid the deadbolt into place, placing the case of vodka in his hand on the kitchen counter as he shrugged off his coat.
This time the
people
were different, haunted even—by their awakening to reality. The malls were deserted, signs for post-Christmas sales hanging forlorn in the windows.
Because they had failed. The night had come to their shores, and they had failed to stop it.
With Congresswoman Gilpin still in the ICU, clinging to life, it was hard to say exactly what they
had
accomplished.
He unsealed the first of the small bottles of vodka, feeling the fiery liquid sear his throat. It was cheap stuff, not much better than lighter fluid—but it was good enough for its purpose.
To make him forget.
That’s all he wanted—really all he had wanted since Jerusalem. When all of the betrayals had begun.
One bottle down. Eleven to go before morning. Or before he passed out—whichever came first.
He sat down on the couch, his tired muscles settling against the smooth leather as he reached for the TV remote.
“…of the intelligence community in the wake of the Christmas Eve attacks. Senator, you are on the record stating that these attacks could have easily been prevented. What do you believe should have been done differently?”
Easily prevented
. The camera panned to the pasty-white face of a politician, eyes full of righteous indignation. Eyes that had never seen the darkness—never looked into the face of the enemy.
He began talking, but Thomas couldn’t focus on his words, sipping slowly on the second bottle of vodka. Watching as the screen changed, to cell-phone video of Delta Flight 94 going down…exploding in the skies over Las Vegas. The same images, over and over again. Over and over.
He buried his face in his hands, feeling suddenly nauseous—struggling to clear the image from his mind.
The people you couldn’t save
…
Thomas walked into the bedroom, into the adjacent bath, turning the faucet on hot. Bloodshot eyes stared back at him in the mirror as he ran his hands through the stream, as if striving to scrub them clean.
His cellphone was on the dresser in the bedroom as he walked back out. His personal cellphone, the one he always left behind when he went into the field.
“Your voicemail has two new messages
,” a computerized voice informed him as he walked back into the main room of the apartment, glancing at the now-darkened TV.
The first one was a woman’s voice, rather loud, shrill even—the woman who’d spent the night with him just hours before all of this had begun.
Before David Lay had been the target of assassins. Before Nichols had disappeared.
Michelle? Marisa? Monica? Her name had started with an “M,” that much he could recall, and nothing more. He tilted the bottle of vodka back as he hit the button to erase her message. Not worth remembering.
“Thomas, you don’t know me—but our friend Harry gave me your number.”
Harry
. He hadn’t said a word on the military flight back to the East Coast, eyes empty of emotion, staring down at his hands. The Air Force C-130 had run into turbulence and Nichols hadn’t even flinched.
As if he simply didn’t care.
“You can call me Walter…I’m his pastor. You probably don’t want to hear what I have to say, but I was where you are once. And it cost me everything I valued in life. I think I can help you—or more importantly, that I know the One who can.”
There was an earnestness in the pastor’s voice…a strangely compelling honesty.
Thomas glanced from the phone to the bottle of vodka in his hand. As nearly empty as the void within him.
His finger slid clumsily across the touchscreen, selecting the “Call Back” button. And he listened as it began to ring…
8:31 A.M. Eastern Time, December 30
th
Camp David
Frederick County, Maryland
“Pull!”
An orange disc flew from the low house with a
whirring
sound, cutting through the clear, cold morning air.
Senator Roy Coftey snapped the Krieghoff K-80 over-and-under to his shoulder, leading the clay as it spun through the air.
The thunder of a shotgun blast rent the dawn air, the clay disintegrating into a thousand pieces as the shot hit it square.
“I see you’re still smokin’ them, Roy.”
Coftey lowered his shotgun, popping the empty shells out of the breech as he turned to face the newcomer.
“As ever, Ian—can’t lose my touch. I’m assuming that you got my message?”
The President’s chief of staff nodded, rubbing his gloved hands together. “Pretty cryptic, if you ask me. You’ve been hanging out with the spooks for way too long, Roy. Starting to act like them.”
“I do what’s necessary,” the senator replied coolly, slipping another pair of 12-gauge shells into the Krieghoff before pulling the break-action closed. He ran a finger along the engraved receiver—silver with accents of gold, the scene a covey of pheasants rising from the brush. “You’ve always known that.”
Cahill nodded, eyeing him carefully. “Yes, you have. And it’s that character trait that has rendered you invaluable to your President—to your party. What’s this all about?”
President. Party
. Coftey glanced up the rising ground toward the helipad, Marine One glistening there in the early morning sun.
What were any of those worth…really? A man’s soul?
“Hancock is through, Ian,” he responded, choosing his words carefully. “His time as president of this country is over.”
Cahill’s face was the picture of surprise. He took a step toward Coftey, his voice lowering despite the fact that they were alone. “I thought you told me everything was settled with the Chief Justice—that you’d spoken with him?”
“I did,” came the even reply. “And then I spoke with him again. Made it clear that he will cast the tie-breaking vote
against
Hancock. Told him why.”
The chief of staff swore, cutting loose with a string of obscenities. “
Why
? Are you out of your ever-loving mind, Roy?”
Shifting the shotgun to his left hand, Coftey reached into the pocket of his sporting jacket—handing over a USB thumb drive.
“Earlier this year, Roger Hancock made a deal with the devil. Iranian oil was to flow into the United States markets at discounted prices—enough to make everyone involved look the other way. Enough to not only ease the ‘pain at the pump’, but to provide the economy with a shot in the arm and propel Hancock back into office.”
He looked Cahill in the face, a cold, menacing glance. “Any of this sound familiar, Ian?”
The mask of the street-tough Chicago politician was slipping ever so slightly, something that looked distantly like fear entering Cahill’s eyes. “No, nothing… .go on, Roy.”
“In exchange, Hancock promised that when Iran struck at Israel, the United States would stay out of it. Not interfere. And when a CIA spec-ops team got in the way, he sold them out. Operation TALON.”
“Dear God,” the chief of staff breathed, shaking his head. “That can’t be…I mean—”
“Is it all coming back to you?” Coftey demanded, taking a step closer. There was fire in the old soldier’s eyes as he glared at Cahill.
“No…that is, all through the campaign, Hancock acted like he had an ace up his sleeve. All the way up till October, and then it all seemed to fall apart. You remember how it was then, Roy.” He’d never heard the chief of staff like this before—almost plaintive. “But I didn’t know what it was.”
The senator shook his head. “Come on, Ian—don’t give me this ‘I didn’t know’ bullcrap. You’re only the President’s chief of staff…Hancock doesn’t take a dump without you knowing about it. You think I’m new to this town or something?”
Cahill started to say something, then seemed to think better of it, looking up the slope toward Marine One. “You and I both know I’d do a lot of things to win an election, Roy. Lie, cheat, steal—it’s the name of the game and no one plays it better than I do. But I lost a cousin when the towers came down on 9/11. I’d burn in those fires myself before I’d join forces with
them
…”
Truth? It was hard to say. The strange mixture of cunning and “open” arrogance that was Cahill.
The senator shook his head. “You’re his closest adviser, Ian…or we all thought you were. Are you going to ask me to believe that even as his plans fell apart around him, even as he was in danger of being exposed—he didn’t turn to you?”
“What do you mean?” Cahill demanded, shoving his hands deep into the pockets of his coat.
“Hancock got careless—someone uncovered his role in betraying TALON. And that someone was David Lay.”
The chief of staff sucked in a breath of ice-cold air, shooting him a look. “You’re not suggesting…”
The senator just nodded. “I am. And now Hancock has a choice. He can concede the election and retire to private life. Or I can burn his life down around his ears.”
“The evidence you have here,” Cahill began, looking at the USB drive in his hand. “Will it hold up in court?”
Coftey shook his head. “You and I know it doesn’t have to. Once a politician has been tried and found guilty in the kangaroo court of public opinion…he’s radioactive. You want to wait around for the fallout, Ian?”
There was no response for a long moment as Cahill looked down at the drive, a canny look returning to his eyes as he rolled it between his fingers. “Do me a favor, Roy. Hold off on this—until Hancock takes the oath again. After that…it will be a simple matter for
him to step aside and allow the Vice President to finish out his term. And the party holds the White House.”
The Faustian bargain…so tempting. As if sensing his hesitation, Cahill took a step closer. “I’ll see that you don’t regret it, Roy. Do it for the party.”
He’d made hundreds of such deals over his decades in Washington, trading away little pieces of his soul—what was one more?
Coftey lifted his head, staring the president’s chief of staff in the eye. “The devil take the party.”
11:51 A.M., January 20
th