The Fallen: A Derek Stillwater Thriller (29 page)

Stanchfield frowned and looked around. The sky was clear and blue, Pikes Peak visible in the distance. The roof was flat, covered with black tar that absorbed the sun and felt mushy beneath their feet. A satellite dish and radio antennas bristled skyward from the low, flat elevator housing. “How’d you get up here?”

“Up the elevator. There’s a work area that overlooks the ballroom. Once the elevator hits the top, you can enter the work area. If we could get in there, we can see down over the ballroom. It’ll be a great sniper nest. From the work area you can access the roof through here, but it’s locked and we have reason to believe—”

Stanchfield interrupted. “You can’t tell if it’s wired from this side?”

“Come look.”

Stanchfield followed the Secret Service agent— Cauldwell— over to the square cinderblock elevator structure. Cauldwell wore black sniper gear and moved with a bowlegged stride. Stanchfield wasn’t sure he trusted him, and flashed his team to watch his back. These snipers had been up here all this time and never tried to enter the building. He understood they had been directed to stay put, and dynamic entry wasn’t their job, but still— He didn’t get it. It made him suspicious.

Cauldwell pulled open the steel door to reveal the motor housing for the elevator. There was another steel door across from him, but it wasn’t what attracted Stanchfield’s attention. It was the six monofilament wires that crisscrossed the room around the motor housing.

“Not too subtle,” Stanchfield said. Now he understood why they hadn’t tried entry.

“No. And if you carefully lean over this way—” Cauldwell showed him, “— and shine a light, you can see at least one of the detonators and Semtex.”

Stanchfield followed his directions and could, indeed, peer through a square opening in the housing and see where one of the wires was attached to a device linked to a packet of plastic explosives. He stepped back and waved over Furilla, his demolitions expert.

“Check it out,” he said, but was distracted when his radio chattered. It was Agent LeVoi.

“Alpha, this is base. Hold. I repeat. Hold operation. Bravo has encountered Stillwater and what appears to be a biological bomb. Bravo is attempting to defuse weapon. I repeat. Hold operation.”

Stanchfield clicked on the radio. “Alpha One here, Base. Confirm.”

Cauldwell said, “One damned thing after another.”

Stanchfield nodded. He pointed a finger at Furilla. “Get set up.”

With a nod, Furilla waved over one of his teammates, Johanssen, and took off his backpack and withdrew a fiber-optic scope. He attached the pack to his belt and studied the wires. “I’m going to lie down,” he said. “I need some help keeping it steady because of the wiring.”

Johanssen nodded. He was the youngest member of the team and looked it. He was twenty-three-years-old, blond-haired, blue-eyed, originally from Minnesota. There was a guileless, naïve quality to his appearance that was a total crock, but he used it to his advantage with women, who liked to baby him. Furilla said, “You know the drill.”

The fiber-optic scope was about eight feet long and Furilla could control its direction. It had a telescoping wand so it could be extended into different sites like locked rooms, air vents, gas tanks, or automobile interiors. It was one millimeter in diameter and he could slip it under most doors, if necessary. Furilla didn’t have that in mind. He was going to push it through the hole in the housing they had used to see the detonator.
He just wanted help holding it steady so they didn’t accidentally bump the tripwire.

Sprawling on the floor, Furilla settled down, holding the scope’s small, handheld monitor in front of his face. With Johanssen’s assistance they inched the snakelike scope toward the opening. Once there, he peered at the image.

“Another inch or so straight in.”

The scope moved forward into the opening. He could manipulate the lens at the end of the scope to peer around 360 degrees. He studied the obvious detonator, then started a slow counterclockwise rotation.

“There’s number two. And three. I can see the wires, but not four. I think there are five.” He scanned further. “Okay, pull it out.”

They pulled back. Stanchfield, standing nearby, cocked his head, asking for an update. Furilla tapped his pointed chin and pursed his thin lips. He had pale blue eyes beneath a heavy brow, which was wrinkled in worry. He licked his lips and looked at Johanssen and shrugged. “Can’t disarm it. Probably have to blow it. I think that’ll make the elevator go crashing to the basement.”

“They have brakes,” Johanssen said. “Elevators don’t crash.”

“Yeah, but I’m looking at probably half a pound of Semtex that I can see. I think it’ll tear that elevator car loose from its moorings with probably about two or three thousand pounds of counterweights, not to mention most of this structure.” He gestured at the cinderblock room.

Johanssen nodded. “So we follow it down. Put the snipers into the work area, the rest of us drop straight down the shaft.”

Stanchfield said, “Which might be so filled with debris we can’t get through.”

“Hmmm.”

Furilla said, “I want to see if I can scope the door.”

Stanchfield frowned. “Could you see it before?”

Furilla shook his head. “No.”

They moved their gear over and Furilla crouched down by the door. He moved the scope along the bottom edge, which had a tiny space between the bottom and the concrete floor. He scanned along the door without seeing anything.

“Okay. In we go.”

He nudged the scope through the crevice, quickly meeting some resistance.

“Does it fit?” asked Johanssen.

“I’m not sure. It should. I’m going to move it over—”

The explosion was immediate and devastating.

Derek crouched uncomfortably over the bioweapon with the screwdriver in his hand, very gently unscrewing a plate off the back of one of the lasers. He had to hold things as still as possible so as not to jerk the laser off its receiver, which would trigger the bomb.

An explosion shook the entire building. Startled, Derek fumbled the screwdriver, dropping it. It clanked off a wire support and dropped harmlessly to the tile.

He overbalanced, falling backward. He pushed off so he would fall away from the bomb and not onto it. With a thud he landed on a tile. It held for about one second before collapsing beneath his weight. He crashed eight feet onto the hard floor and lay there for a moment, waiting for the bioweapon to explode directly over him.

It didn’t.

A screech of metal reverberated from somewhere in the building, shrieking like demons. It was followed by a grinding roar that gained volume as it went, suddenly ending in what sounded like an enormous collision of metal on metal. The entire building shook again. A wall of dust rolled down the hallway.

He struggled to his knees, his back protesting. Derek’s heart pounded, chest swelling. He shut his eyes and turned his face into his sleeve as the dust covered him. For a moment he was totally blind. The dust started to settle, but the air was still filled with a gray fog that smelled of dust and mold and smoke. He coughed and spat, his mouth tasting dry and chalky.

“Everybody okay?” he shouted.

“Derek? You’re alive?” It was Irina’s voice.

“Yeah. Sort of.”

A babble of voices drifted over from the other side of the wall.

Finally, McCormack’s voice rose over them. “Where the fuck are you, Stillwater?”

“I fell through the ceiling.”

“What’s going on with the bomb?”

“What the hell happened?”

“We’re on it, Stillwater. Focus! Check the bomb!”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” he muttered. “I’m not dead, am I?” Limping to a chair, he climbed on it and boosted himself back into the crawl space. It was harder than it had been. His energy was ebbing fast. He spidered his way back to the weapon, every muscle, bone, and nerve ending in his body protesting.

“It didn’t blow up,” he said.

“No vibration sensor then. What about the lasers? Are they still aligned?”

Derek studied the bomb. On one end was a small plastic square. Before the explosion a tiny light had glowed red. Now it was blinking.

“It’s armed!” he shouted. “Take cover. It’s armed!”

McCormack shouted, “Is there any—”

Derek didn’t listen to him. He reached out, grabbed the bomb, hefted it with both hands, eyes closed, expecting it to detonate immediately. When it didn’t he tucked it under one arm like a football and jumped through the hole in the ceiling, landing hard on his feet. He took off at a sprint, ducking into the door for the power plant. He ripped open the door to the janitor’s closet and dropped the weapon in a bucket. He snagged two bottles of Clorox bleach, ripped open the caps, and poured them both on top of the weapon.

The red light continued to blink, mocking him.

He spun on his heel and leapt through the door, sprinting for the far end of the corridor. The explosion behind him blasted a hole in the wall and knocked him off his feet. He was stumbling upright when a second explosion at the tunnel end of the hallway erupted. The percussion wave caught him and flung him to the floor. Everything went red, then black.

In the ballroom, the first explosion blew a small hole in the corner of the roof, letting in shafts of sunlight that pierced the dust. Fist-sized chunks of debris dropped to the floor. The lights flickered off, on, then returned before a third of the lights went dim, casting the room in shadow. The crowd screamed, many cowering, hands over their heads. Some of the more savvy bureaucrats, suspecting that a rescue attempt was being initiated, threw themselves to the floor or ducked beneath tables.

Pablo Juarez also suspected it was the beginning of a rescue attempt. He leapt onto the stage and stood next to President Langston. “So, your Secret Service has decided it is time to risk your life rather than negotiate or capitulate.”

President Langston raised his chin. “You had no intention of negotiating, and if you expected the United States or any other government to give in to your demands, you were a fool.”

Pablo jammed the barrel of his gun into President Langston’s throat. “Who’s the fool, El Presidente? The one tied to the chair or the one with a gun in his hand?”

A high-pitched, heavily accented voice said, “I am willing to negotiate directly with you.”

Pablo turned to stare down the row of world leaders to Crown Prince Talal, the current head of Saudi Arabia. He wore the traditional white cotton thobe, with tagiyah, ghutra— head scarf— and agal, the thick cord that held it in place. A short, heavyset man, he was sixty-four years old and considered to be a moderate reformer in many ways. Pablo strode over to him.

“What did you say?”

“I will negotiate with you,” said Crown Prince Talal.

“What could you possibly have to negotiate with?”

“We are a very rich country. Although Colombia has significant oil supplies, we can open markets for you. We could apply pressure to the current regime to get them to promise— how do you say?— certain concessions to your organization.”

“Concessions.”

“Yes.” Crown Prince Talal licked his lips, his head shaking slightly with nervousness. “And— or perhaps instead— we could arrange for funds to be delivered into a bank account of your choosing.”

Juarez grinned. “You’re bribing me.”

Crown Prince Talal stood straighter. “I am negotiating, sir.”

President Langston said, “You can’t negotiate with a terrorist. He’s not—”

“Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!”

President Langston cocked his head. “Mr. Juarez, you can’t believe you’ll survive this. Your people are stretched too thin. This can’t continue. Now would be a good time to surrender.”

“Surrender?” Pablo stalked back toward President Langston. “Surrender? You think we have done all this only to surrender? I will never surrender! Never! Do you understand me?”

President Langston said nothing. Pablo screamed, “Do you understand me?”

“All too well.”

Crown Prince Talal interrupted. “And my offer? Will you con sider it?”

Pablo grinned. It was the toothy, carnivorous grin that had earned him the nickname El Tiburón, the shark. There was no humor in it, only predatory hunger. He moved back toward the crown prince. He cocked his head and rubbed his chin in a parody of consideration. “Hmmm, will I consider your offer? Let me think. Ah. No.”

And he raised his gun and shot the Saudi prince twice in the head.

Juarez stepped back and glanced up and down the line of world leaders. “Does anyone else wish to negotiate with me?”

Silence.

“Then we understand each other. The die has been cast. Events are in play that can’t be stopped.” He locked eyes with President Langston. “They cannot be—”

Another explosion, this one almost directly beneath them, rocked
the building. The lights flickered again before shutting off completely. The ballroom was lit only by emergency lights along the walls and the sole shaft of sunlight through the hole in the roof.

Juarez staggered, face growing pale. Puzzlement danced across his features. Turning, he looked up at the hole in the ceiling, then around at his men. He withdrew the PDA from his belt, tapped it on, and brought up an image. He walked back and forth, studying the screen.

He pointed to his men. “Be prepared to deal with—”

Another explosion rocked the building and this time he was ready. He studied the PDA screen and said, “I think your people are dying to rescue you, Mr. President.”

Pain. It was the first sensation Derek felt. It was followed by pressure, as if a cow had fallen on him. Slowly, he started sorting through the various sensations, trying to figure out what had happened. But the sensory information was overpowering his more rational thinking. He didn’t think he had blacked out for very long. But the first thing he felt was weight on his body and pain that shot out from the back of his head. His ears ached, too.

Blinking, he looked around. The hallway was almost completely black. Here and there were emergency lights, but they only seemed to glow in the darkness and the dust, providing little in the way of illumination. The explosion knocked out the electricity, he thought, but somehow the backup generator’s still running. At least for a while.