The Fallen: A Derek Stillwater Thriller (12 page)

With a visceral crunch the man collapsed to the ground and didn’t move.

Cautiously Derek checked the terrorist’s vital signs. There were none. The terrorist’s neck canted at an odd angle, a trickle of blood leaking from his nose, the back of his skull crushed.

Derek looked up at the crowd. “One down. Now—”

Maria, eyes wide, picked up the MP-5, aimed it toward Derek and pulled the trigger.

Robert Mandalevo sat in a chair in the ballroom, slouched forward, hands in his jacket pocket. It was a pose held by many in the ballroom— those alive. Clearly, the gas the terrorists had used had killed some people. This was, in general, a group of politicians and bureaucrats experienced with crisis behavior. Many had military training. Many of the diplomats and bureaucrats in this room were from countries with a long and active history of terrorism attacks.

In Mandalevo’s right coat pocket was his PDA, a sophisticated bit of handheld computer technology that allowed him to browse the Internet, check and send e-mail, keep track of dates, and use it as a cellular phone. It was also secure and encrypted.

Before sitting he had taken a peek to make sure his fingers were on the right buttons, then he slumped into the chair, just another frightened and demoralized bureaucrat.

But his fingers carefully moved on the tiny PDA keyboard. When he had the text message written, he clicked on send.

Bullets ripped the air by Derek’s side. Something took a nip at his hip, like a bee sting, and then he was moving, hurling himself to the floor.

As he came rolling to his feet, he noted that Maria wasn’t looking at him. Her intense gaze was focused across the room. The gun was too much for her. As she fired, hands clutching the stock, the barrel jerked upward.

Jumping toward her, Derek knocked the weapon from her grasp. Gasping, she bent over, hands over her stomach. “God! What have I done? Oh, Michael! I shot you!” Her trembling finger pointed toward his hip. His shirt and pants were now soaked with blood. The ribs hurt like hell, a jagged arc of electric pain. The hip just felt sedated, a dull ache.

Without comment he turned and, holding the weapon ready, approached Maria’s intended target. Another black-clad man carrying an MP-5. He was blond, broad-shouldered, and dead. The 10-mm rounds had started at his stomach and stitched upward, obliterating his chest, neck, and face.

Limping slightly back to Maria and the kitchen staff, he said, “Two down. But this might bring some attention. I’ve got to get you the hell out of here.”

“Who are you?” somebody asked.

“I’m one of the good guys.”

A red-haired woman in the black skirt and white blouse of the wait-staff, said, “We can’t get out of the building. There are more of them and they’ve rigged explosives on the doors and the gate’s come down over the window.”

He considered. “I’ve got an idea. Everybody, follow me!”

He moved away, leading them toward a doorway at the end of the kitchen through which the now-dead blond had apparently arrived.
Standing by the door he listened intently, crouched down, ignoring the sudden sharp pain in his side, and peeked out. This was an entry area that led to the loading dock. There was an emergency exit and beyond that another set of double doors and a utility hallway. The area was empty.

He pushed the door open, held a hand to his lips and waved for everybody to enter. To his mind they were entirely too slow and noisy, but in only a few seconds everybody was crowded into the anteroom.

Derek studied the emergency door. There were small packets of Semtex plastic explosives attached to it. Small didn’t mean harmless. Less than a pound brought down Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland. The wiring to the detonators wasn’t straightforward. They appeared to have been booby-trapped. The wide double doors leading to the loading dock seemed unmined. But Derek didn’t trust his eyes. He had no clue what was on the other side of the doors. The doors to the utility hallway, on the other hand, were definitely booby-trapped. A tangle of wires, Semtex, and a radio receiver with a red light, suggesting The Fallen Angels could turn them on or off at will. Or blow them from a distance.

“Okay,” he said, “nobody tries to leave using these two doorways. I can’t tell if this one is rigged or—”

“We can’t just stand here!” yelled one of the cooks in a panicky voice. He was a blocky man with a shaved skull, skin tanned and smooth. His eyes were wide, face stretched taut in fear. “I can’t stand it. They’re going to come after us. We can’t just stand here. We’ll be sitting ducks. All that shooting—”

He lunged toward the doors to the loading dock.

Derek spun, hand outstretched, a cry of, “Don’t—”

The cook slammed into the doors with his considerable bulk, meaty forearms crashing down on the door levers.

Derek, heart hammering in his chest, turned, caught Maria in his arms, and leapt toward the entryway. They were almost there when an explosion blasted into the crowded anteroom.

A pressure wave moving over 30,000 feet per second slammed into Derek, driving him and Maria through the doorway and back into the kitchen, followed by a rain of debris—shards of steel, brick, wood, lathe—and human flesh.

It took a few moments for Derek to come to his senses. He was lying
sprawled on top of Maria, whose eyes were closed. She seemed to be mumbling to herself.

Wincing, Derek rolled off and gently shook her. “Maria, are you okay?”

She opened her eyes. “Am I dead?”

“No. Are you hurt?”

“My ears hurt.”

Derek smiled slightly. “Yeah. Mine too.” He turned to look back toward the doorway. There was nothing there. A pile of rubble, shredded metal and wood. There were no screams or cries or moans. He and Maria had been farthest from the blast on the opposite side of approximately twenty people who had taken the full force of the explosion—saving their lives, but the others losing theirs.

Dimly, he heard the thump of feet and shouts in what he thought was Spanish coming from the opposite end of the kitchen. He quickly scrambled to the dead terrorist and flung open his black jacket. Around his waist was a communication kit, the cords trailing to his ears and a throat microphone. Deftly Derek unbuckled it, snatched up the knife the terrorist had wielded, glanced around, and dragged a steel table beneath the ceiling tile he had crashed through.

Maria was now on her feet, tears streaming down her face. He caught her by the arm and dragged her to the table. “Up you go.”

“Who are you?”

“Derek Stillwater, Department of Homeland Security. You first.”

Slowly she climbed up on the table. He boosted her through the hole, then handed her the MP-5 and the communication kit. Then he reached up, caught hold of the frame, and with a groan, hauled himself through the hole.

Below him he heard a door clang open and two of Coffee’s Fallen Angels rushed into the kitchen. Derek paused, brought the MP-5 up to his shoulder and waited.

As the men appeared before him he squeezed the trigger.

There was a loud, heart-stopping click! In the gloom Derek raised the gun to stare at the translucent magazine. Empty.

The two Fallen Angels below heard the click, stared upward, and raised their weapons. One shouted in Spanish.

Maria whispered in his ear, “’Surrender now.’”

“No damned way,” he said, gripped her arm and dragged her as fast as he could along the catwalk.

Gunfire shrieked beneath them, chewing through the ceiling tiles.

CIA Director Ballard held his phone in front of him as if it were a writhing rattlesnake, waiting for it to buzz.

FBI Director O’Malley was on his own phone, voice firing like a machine gun, “—we want a lock on that, get the NSA on the number—”

Attorney General Penderton leaned over toward Johnston and said, “He really thinks we need the NSA to pinpoint Coffee’s cell phone location? We all know where the fuck he is. I can tell him precisely where the sonofabitch—”

Vice President Newman stood up and in a loud voice said, “I think we need to invoke the Twenty-fifth.”

The room fell silent. Not a word from anybody. Newman wanted to invoke the Twenty-fifth Amendment of the Constitution, which stated clearly in Section 1: “In case of the removal of the President from office or of his death or resignation, the Vice President shall become President.”

Penderton slowly shifted aside to study Vice President Newman. He cleared his throat, tucking his nicotine gum into one cheek. “Well now, Mr. Vice President, bringing that up certainly makes some sense now, but—”

The door to the PEOC burst open and Lt. General William Akron, deputy director of the National Intelligence Directorate stepped in. He ran a long-fingered hand through his shock of gray hair, expression tense, but under control. He paused, searching the room.

Secretary Johnston said, “Oh hell, Bill. Robert’s there, isn’t he? We should have called you in immediately. Thank God you’re—”

Akron waved him off. “I need to wi-fi my laptop in. Where’s the—” He bustled over to the table, set up his laptop and tapped some keys. In a few seconds one of the wall-mounted plasma screen monitors brought
up the desktop of Akron’s computer screen. A few more key taps and he had his e-mail in-box on the screen.

“I just got this a few minutes ago—”

Director Ballard’s phone buzzed. Everyone froze. Ballard picked it up and said, “Director Ballard, Central Intelligence, here.”

He listened for a moment, nodded. “Now, Mr. Coffee, you have to understand that this is not a winnable situation—”

He looked at the phone. “He hung up. He recited the phone number and then hung up.” Ballard recited the number and everybody jotted it down, wondering exactly what good that was going to do them.

Vice President Newman, still on his feet, said, “Gentlemen, we really need to discuss invoking the Twenty-fifth.”

“Yes, Mr. Vice President,” said Secretary Johnston. “In a moment, with your permission. Bill, what’s up?”

Akron pointed to the computer monitor. “I got an e-mail from Director Mandalevo. He’s inside the ballroom. He’s got his PDA with him and he’s—look.”

They all studied the screen. The message read:

BA—Xspt 12 bogie internal. RC. Adrov&Xman rt hand. Recog 3. Aryeh. Dorf. Christo. C4?on doors/G8. FM remote. Warn SS. DS in/out? Keep posted RM

“Now what the hell does that mean?” snapped Vice President Newman. Still on his feet, he sounded more and more petulant as time went on.

Secretary Johnston, voice low, whispered, “Jesus. He’s got balls.”

“Mr. Vice President,” Akron said, “Secretary Mandalevo is feeding us intel. The BA is me—Bill Akron. Xspot means he’s at the X spot—inside the ballroom. But what’s important—”

“Secretary Mandalevo is inside the ballroom with all the other terrorists?” asked Vice President Newman. Johnston wondered about Newman’s limited grasp of the actual logistics of the crisis. He wasn’t surprised by Newman’s focus on who was in charge, but he wished that Newman would get a quicker grasp of the big picture. If they were to do anything, they needed to organize information fast and get moving. They had to be proactive, not reactive.

“Yes, sir,” said Akron.

General Puskorius said, “What else? What’s after Xspt?”

Akron said, “RC. I think that’s Richard Coffee. The Fallen Angel. Then Androv&Xman rt hand. We have a list of the intelligence agents working the ballroom from other countries. I took a look. The head of the Russian security forces is Mikhail Alexandrov. I think Bob’s telling us that Coffee’s top people—his right-hand men—are Mikhail Alexandrov and this Xman.”

“Does that correspond with anybody?” Johnston asked.

“Not that I can see. I think Xman means Bob doesn’t recognize him.”

Johnston studied the screen. “Recog. Means recognize?”

“Yes, I think so. Recog 3 means he recognizes three of the terrorists. Aryeh, Dorf, and Christo. By comparing to the list, I think they’re Didier Christophe from the DGSE and—”

Vice President Newman asked, “Who?”

“General de la Securite Exterieure,” said Akron impatiently. “French Secret Service. Franz Dorfmann with the Abwehr.” He glanced at Vice President Newman and said, “German Secret Service. And Amnon Aryeh with Mossad.” Again, he glanced at Newman and said, “Israel.”

“Okay,” said General Puskorius. “ ‘C4?ondoors/G8.’ I think I can figure that out. Plastic explosives on the doors and on the leaders of the G8. We knew about the G8, we could see it. That’s useful information. ‘FM remote?’ ”

Akron hesitated. “I can’t be certain, but I think he’s saying that they have the plastic explosive detonators set to go off with radio remote control. And ‘Warn SS’ means warn the Secret Service.”

“ ‘And DS in/out?’ ” said Puskorius. “What’s that mean?”

Again Akron hesitated. “I’m not—”

Johnston growled, “Yes, you damn well are sure. Yes. The answer is yes. I’d stake my life on it.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” demanded Director O’Malley. “What does ‘DS in/out?’ mean? Jim? Out with it.”

“I think he’s asking if Derek Stillwater is in or out. If he’s with The Fallen Angels or if he’s on our side.” Secretary Johnston waited, knowing a blowup was coming.

Akron nodded. “Yes, I think that’s what it means.”

“Derek Stillwater?” asked the vice president. “That renegade agent of yours? What, he’s involved—He can’t be, he’s dead.”

Johnston leaned forward and rested his elbows on the table. “Derek Stillwater isn’t dead. We faked his death and placed him undercover at the resort because of a fragment of intelligence we picked up suggesting Coffee was back in the U.S. and might be interested in the G8 Summit.”

Attorney General Penderton slammed his fist down on the table. When he shouted, his nicotine gum flew from his mouth and landed in the middle of the table. “Goddammit, Jim! That bastard was under investigation by me and the bureau. Are you crazy? You want to end up in Leavenworth or Guantanamo? He was in cahoots with Coffee and these Fallen Angels.”

“Oh bullshit!”

Vice President Newman shouted, “Hold it, hold it. Why wasn’t I advised of this?”