Lady Liberty (51 page)

“That’s a surprise. And you believe him?”

“Yes, I do. He has total access to A-267, David. I imagine Austin saw to that, too. He’s feeding me the missing minutes from the inner-hub security tape, which means he has a remote viewer inside. Jonathan and I are going to view it as soon as the transmission is complete.”

She looked up at the clock and her throat went dry. Eleven had come and gone. She licked at her lips, and her tone deepened. “David, it’s time.” He had to leave.

“Yes.” His voice went husky. “Sybil…” His voice faded.

What did you say in a situation like this? Nothing was enough. Everything wasn’t enough. You lived, you loved, you shared the joys and troubles of each other’s lives, but there wasn’t anything you could say to express all your feelings in mere words. It couldn’t be done. “I understand,
David. And me, too. Just stay safe, okay?” She swallowed back tears. “And do me a favor.”

“You don’t ask for favors—ever.”

“I’m asking now.” She curled the edge of a piece of paper, her hand shaking. “Order Jonathan to go with you.” Tears fell freely to her face.

“I already did.” David’s voice turned tender. “However this turns out, I’m going to need him, and I knew you’d want him here to keep me in line—”

“I do.” The president was astute. One of his many admirable qualities.

David expelled a regretful breath. “He refused, Sybil.”

“A direct order from you?”

“He said he’d left you once and he’d never do it again.”

Her chest went tight. “Damn misguided maniac.”

“That maniac loves you, Sybil. He’s loved you for as long as I can remember.”

That shocked her, and yet it didn’t, even though Jonathan had never given her the words. “Since before the divorce?”

“Try from when you first came to the Hill.”

Knowing that made this harder. “Damn it, David. Make him go.”

“I would if I could. But short of abducting him, I can’t. Jonathan made his decision with his eyes wide open. Simply put, he’d rather be dead than alive without you, Sybil.”

“I don’t want him to die.” She swiped at her tears. “I don’t want anyone to die.”

“Me, either.” David sniffed. “I’m praying for you. For all of us.”

“Don’t stop—and get out of here, David. Do the responsible thing. Now.”

“I’ll be in touch as soon as we’re airborne.” He blew out a sharp breath. “Good luck, Lady Liberty”

She hung up the phone, slapped at her cheeks, and
ordered herself to bury her emotions deep. Now just wasn’t the time.

The phone rang again, and again she answered. “Stone.”

“Barber’s a match.”

Conlee.
She stared at the clock. Thirty minutes.
Thirty damn minutes.
“Get him down here, Commander. Fast.”

“He’s on his way, ma’am.”

“What progress have we made on the launch key?”

“With Barber’s DNA, we’ll have access to the inner hub. But the gurus say the old key to the launch station no longer fits. We don’t have the launch key”

Jonathan talked with Lieutenant Gibson at the door then came over to her, holding an earpiece transmitter. “The president is airborne. Communications are up.”

She nodded. “Commander, switch to Home Base emergency transmissions.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Sybil hung up the phone, put the transmitter on, and then spoke into the lip mike. “Mr. President, we’re up and running.”

“Good,” David said. “I understand Barber is a DNA match.”

“Yes, sir,” Conlee said.

“Is he our leak?”

“I’m afraid so, sir,” Sybil said, seesawing a pencil on the desktop.

Conlee jumped in. “Nothing classified, only insights, from what we’ve discovered thus far, but he’s the leak, sir. He’s on his way to the site now. He was a little… resistant.”

Sybil couldn’t blame him for that. She’d rather be a lot of other places herself. Near the door, Jonathan motioned to the viewer and mouthed that Gregor Faust’s film was in and waiting down the hall.

“Westford, are you copying?”

Jonathan stilled, propped his hands on his hips. “Yes, Mr. President.”

“Have you interrogated Austin Stone?”

“No, sir.”

“Do what you have to do, but find that key”

“Frankly, sir, I could beat him to death and he wouldn’t tell me.”

“What do you recommend we do, then?”

“The only thing left to do, sir.” Jonathan met Sybil’s gaze. “Hope the engineers are wrong, that Austin somehow tricked the launch system, and try the key that’s configured to open the inner hub. It’s all we’ve got.”

“Keep the line open.”

“Yes, sir.”

In the viewing room, Sybil and Jonathan sat down in the soundproof booth. Max’s voice fed in through the intercom. “Ready?”

Jonathan pressed the button on the desktop. “Go, Max.”

The clip played. Mendoza sat at the launch control desk. Cap stood in the hub, requested the reports, walked to the mail chute, inspected it, returned to the desk, and then walked out. The lockdown alarms sounded, the door slammed shut, and Mendoza breached protocol, left his seat and searched frantically for the launch key—and didn’t find it. “Air vent. Something… oh, God!” He beat against the door, slamming his fist against the panel again and again, trying to force it open. Then, in seemingly slow motion, he slumped against the wall, slid down to the floor, and died.

Sybil did her damnedest to snuff out emotion and observe with analytical objectivity, but failed.
God rest his soul.

Jonathan was on the phone with Conlee. “Run a chemical check on the inner hub.”

“It’s not a nerve agent,” Sybil said. She’d seen the
impact of nerve agents on Iraq footage. Mendoza had died an easier death.

“It’s been done. Carbon monoxide was off the scale. We’ve flushed it,” Jonathan relayed to Sybil, then hung up the phone.

“We have proof now that Mendoza was murdered.”

“But we don’t have the key” Jonathan stood up. “So do we go with what we’ve got?”

She nodded. “We have no choice.”

They walked down the hallway and into the outer rim. A small cluster of people had gathered at the door to the inner hub. The secure-device machines taunted her, and Sybil looked over at Conlee. “Get Austin plugged in for me, Commander. I have to try just one more time.” Twenty minutes.
Twenty minutes.

A moment later Austin’s voice came through the transmitter. “I’m not going to tell you, Sybil.”

“The willingness to die and dying are two different things,” she reminded him, memories of Mendoza fresh in her mind. “Who in hell are you trying to impress?”

“Don’t be absurd. I’m not trying to impress anyone.”

“Where is the key, Austin?”

“I don’t know.”

“Liar.”

“Sybil, I’m sincere. I don’t know.”

“Maybe I can assist your memory.” She clenched her fist, glared at the door to the inner hub. “We are going to survive this. You will be tried and convicted. That leaves you staring into the eyes of a lethal injection. If we have to change the law to make that happen, I’ll do it. And, so help me God, Austin, I’m going to be the person holding the damn needle. Do you hear me? The last thing you’ll see in this world is me holding the needle.”

He hung up on her.

“Oh, God, no. No.” Shaking, she looked up at Jonathan. “He really doesn’t know.”

“Then who does?”

An airman ran over with a little Ziploc bag and handed it to Jonathan. “Senator Marlowe said to put this into your hands, Agent Westford.”

“What is it?” Sybil asked.

Jonathan took a look. “The Band-Aid that came off your finger in Geneva.”

“But we ran it through our lab,” Conlee said.

They had. Sybil looked at Conlee. “I take it this means ET is one of ours.”

Conlee didn’t confirm the suspicion, but he didn’t deny it, either.

ET had let her live. That night in the swamp, hidden beneath the bushes near the helicopter. The pennies. Of course. And he’d let them know that Ballast had managed to intercept matter being transferred from one field operative to another. They needed to alter their current methods.

Evidently Gregor Faust wasn’t the only one infiltrating high ranks. ET was Faust’s second-in-command. He was also an SDU or CIA agent. And with the pennies, he had finally gotten them a positive ID on Gregor Faust. Sybil hoped Ken and Linda Dean somehow knew that.

Richard Barber arrived, looking pale and sweaty and scared stiff. Hell, they were all scared stiff. No one, with the exception of Austin, wanted to die. “Over here, Barber,” Sybil called out to him.

“I don’t understand this. Why do you need me here?”

“Austin used your DNA. His personal way of thanking you for all your insights on me. Did you share anything classified?”

“I’d never do that!”

“I’m glad you have some principles, even if loyalty to the current administration isn’t one of them.”

“I don’t like you.”

“I’m irrelevant, Richard. You promised to protect the office, and you didn’t do it.”

That remark hit him like a cold slap of water, and his indignant expression crumbled. “No. No, I guess I didn’t.”

“Well, you’re lucky. You get a chance to atone and ease the burden on your conscience.”

He clearly hated the sound of that. And feared it. “How?”

“You get to open the inner hub,” Sybil said to him, and then spoke to the president. “David, we have three minutes. We’re out of options, so we’re going with the key we have. Austin could have used it for both the inner hub and the launch key”

“What if he didn’t?”

“We don’t have anything else to try.”

“Barber, get over here,” Conlee called him to the secure device at the wall.

Sybil paused and faced Jonathan. She couldn’t let him die not knowing he was loved. “Jonathan, I—”

“I know,” he interrupted, touched her cheek. “So do you.”

Looking into his eyes, how could she not know? She nodded.

“Madam Vice President?” The Commander said.

“Right here.” She moved to Barber’s side.

“Here’s the key,” Conlee said, then shouted back over his shoulder. “Lieutenant Gibson, run a countdown for us, please.”

“One minute, fifty-five seconds.”

“Go ahead and bleed, Barber,” Sybil said.

He pricked his thumb with the lancelet, pressed its bleeding tip against the absorbent pad.

Sybil held her breath and inserted the key. Sweat trickled down between her breasts.
Please, God.

“One minute, twenty seconds.”

The red light went out.

The green light came on, and she turned the key.

The thick bolts slid free, back into the wall, the sheet of metal lifted, and the door opened.

“Let’s go.” Sybil rushed inside and stumbled over Captain Mendoza’s body. Packets of sugar littered the floor around him.

“One minute.”

Sybil swallowed hard, prayed harder, and raised the key to the control centered on the launch station desk.

“A thorn!” Jonathan screamed, lunged at Sybil, and knocked her arm away from the launch system. The key clanged on the tile floor.

She jerked around, back toward him. “What?”

“Faust insisted you view the film right away. Mendoza’s murder wasn’t urgent. What else did we see on that clip? What else did we see?”

Sybil mentally reviewed the clip, then thrust a finger toward the wall. “Cap inspected the mail chute.”

Jonathan scrambled to the mail chute, withdrew the tube, and then opened it. A second key tumbled out into his hand. He passed it to Sybil. “Compare them. Do it fast, Sybil.”

“Fifty seconds.”

“They’re different.” Mortified, she held one in each hand. “Damn it, David, they’re different.”
Think, Sybil. You’ve got to think.

“Forty seconds.”

“David.” Sweat rolled in sheets down her body. “I’m going to choose. I realize this should be your decision, but it’s not. I’m here, and I’m making the call.” She gave him absolution, freedom from the horror of living with having made the wrong choice. “I need the code.”

He reeled off the daily code.

“Thirty seconds.”

Sybil punched in the code, looked over at Jonathan, then at the two silver keys in her palm. One had a scratch. Sybil’s heart soared. Austin always had done that with his
keys. The one that was newest—
the right one
—he scratched. The mark was fresh.
A rose petal? Or a deliberate trap?

“Twenty-nine seconds, ma’am.”

She swung her gaze to Jonathan and warned him. “It’s a Hail Mary pass.”

He nodded. “Do it.”

Sybil moved back into position, inserted the key, turned it, and sucked in a sharp breath.

The flashing red countdown stopped.
Twenty-seven seconds.

She stared at it, unable to trust her eyes, to believe it was over, but the glaring digits didn’t flicker. Slowly she exhaled.

“Sybil? Sybil, are you there?”

David’s voice filled the room, breaking the silence and the dam of collective fear.

Relief flooded through her. Her eyes blurred, and she smiled at Jonathan. “Yes, David. We’re here.” A tear rolled down her cheek. “We’re all here.”

“Air Force One is coming home!”

Pandemonium erupted. On all sides of her, people laughed, whooped, hugged, shared shoulder slaps, attaboys, and high fives. Tears streaming down her face, she dipped her chin and headed straight for Jonathan. He opened his arms wide, and she stepped into them. “We made it, Jonathan.” She circled his waist and buried her face in his chest. “We really made it.”

His cheek against her hair, he hugged her hard. “We really did.”

“Nice work!” Conlee’s clap to Jonathan’s shoulder vibrated through Sybil’s chest.

“Damn nice work. You two make a helluva team.” Conlee looked down, noticed Jonathan’s bloody knuckles. His joy in the moment vanished abruptly, and he narrowed his eyes. “What happened to your hand, Westford?”

He pulled back from Sybil. “I hit a wall.”

Austin was being led out of the facility by two armed guards. Sybil saw the bruise on his jaw, knew she hadn’t inflicted it, and frowned at Jonathan. “You hit a wall with Austin’s face?”

“More or less.” Jonathan shrugged.

Conlee smiled. “Thanks for not killing him.”