Noble Intentions: Season Three (42 page)

“Unless she has a plant,” Jack
said.

They all turned toward the door at
the sound of echoing gun fire. The radios lit up with calls of
shots fired.
Three men rushed into the room. Could any of them be trusted? Jack didn’t think
so and apparently Jon didn’t either.

“Everyone out,” Jon said. He drew
his gun and stood in front of Alex. His own men were a risk at this point.

The men backed up, guns aimed at
the floor. They stared at Jack and Bear.

“Not them,” Jon said. “You three,
out. Now.”

The men cast confused glances
toward the Prime Minister as they left the room. It went against everything
they had been trained to do, leaving him alone during a time of crisis. A time
when the man’s life was on the line. He’d survived one attack today. How many
more would there be?

Jon pulled out his phone and began
placing calls. He reached a man named Wells, put him on speaker phone.

“What do you have down there, Wells?”
Jon said.

“We don’t know who it is, sir. Big
guy, red beard. He bypassed the initial security and made it into the room.”

The sound of five people drawing
their breath in filled the room.

“How did that happen?” Jon said.
“The one person we were sure wouldn’t show up did, and we missed it?”

“We’re trying to figure that out,
sir.”

Jack noticed that Jon’s face had
turned bright red. The veins on his neck stood out. They pulsed so quickly that
Jack figured the guy’s heart was pumping over one-hundred beats a minute.

“Don’t worry about that now,” Jon
said. “What happened?”

“I heard the machinery power down,
looked in, saw him in there. He held a pillow to the guy’s head. We took him
out right there.”

“Christ. Is he dead?”

“Yes, sir.”

Jon looked up. “Dammit, we needed
him.”

“Sorry, sir.”

“It’s all right, Wells. You did
what you had to do.” Jon hung up and looked at Alex. “Satisfied?”

“What if there’s more?”

“All the more reason to get you the
hell out of here, Alex.”

This time, Alex did not protest.

“I need to check on Erin before we
leave,” Jack said.

“Already did,” Jon said. “She was
taken away earlier.”

“She was cleared to leave already?”

Jon shook his head. “Didn’t say
that.”

Jack ran a hand through his hair,
grabbed the back of his head. “I don’t believe this. This whole time, they were
both right there, right under my nose.”

No one said anything for a moment.
Jack felt the weight of their stares upon him. He turned in a half-circle, made
eye contact with each. He stopped when he reached Bear.

“Who?” Bear said.

“Dottie and Leon. They were in this
together.”

“You sure about that?” Bear said.

“Yes… No. I need to see Leon.”

“We’ll find them,” Jon said.

“How?” Jack said.

“We’ve got all the man power and
brain power in Great Britain available to us. There’s no way they can get
away.”

“I managed to get in,” Jack said.

“Not without us knowing,” Jon said.

Bear’s phone rang. He answered,
then said, “Hold on.” Then he looked at Jack and said, “It’s for you.”

Jack took the phone. “Yeah?”

“It’s Clarissa,” she said.

He said nothing.

“I know it’s not a good time, but,
I think I can help you.”

“How so?”

“Jesus, I don’t have long, Jack.
Look, I had the girls with me when they were taken. Leon gave me a piece of
paper. He said directions to where he wanted me to take Mia and Hannah were
written on that paper.”

“Where?”

She read off the information on the
page. Jack repeated the address.

“That’s an hour away, at most,” Jon
said.

“Dottie’s probably almost there,”
Jack said.

“If she’s going there,” Sasha said.

“She is,” Jack said.

“We need to get going,” Jon said.

“Clarissa, where are you?”

“I can’t say, Jack.”

“Why not?”

The line went dead.

“Clarissa?” He waited a moment,
then handed the phone to Bear. “Can we trace that call?”

“No number,” Bear said.

“We’ll help you find her when this
is over,” Jon said.

“OK. Let’s go put an end to this.”

The five of them walked down a
flight of stairs, through a hall, then down two more flights of stairs. One
level below the ground floor of Number 10, they entered the network of tunnels.
Two more agents met them there. Jon refused to allow Alex to travel without
them there to protect him. They walked as a group, then split up after fifty
yards or so.

Jon, Alex and two agents took the
east fork. Jack, Sasha and Bear went west.

Sasha led the way. She knew the
codes. She had the keys. Jack and Bear followed close behind. They entered the
same garage he had parked the Audi in earlier. It was the only vehicle in the
room.

“Get in, guys,” she said.

Bear took the back seat. An odd
choice, given his size. But he liked to kick one leg up when he had a rear seat
available to himself. Jack headed around the trunk to the passenger side. He
opened the door, but did not get in. Sasha unlocked and opened a locker. He
watched on as she removed several weapons.

“Want help?” he said.

“No,” she said. “Get in.”

He continued to watch her load
three M4s, three MP7s, and six pistols into the trunk. She made one last trip
for extra magazines for the MP7s.

“Expecting to face an army?” Jack
said.

“I thought I said get in,” she
said.

Jack raised his hands in surrender,
then lowered himself into the passenger seat. The car had a citric smell that
he hadn’t noticed earlier.

“You smell that, Bear?”

Bear lowered his chin to his chest
and his nose to his armpit. “It’s not me.”

This elicited a chuckle and head
shake from Jack. “Never mind.”

Sasha pulled the driver’s door open
and stuck her head in. “Just one more thing.”

Jack watched her walk back to the
locker, close it, then open another. He couldn’t see what she pulled from it,
or put in it.

She came back to the car and said,
“Either of you unarmed?”

Neither Jack nor Bear spoke up.

“OK, good.” She slipped behind the
wheel and fired up the V-8 engine. A button press, then the wall lifted and she
pulled through into the empty level of the parking garage. Jack wondered what
they did when the garage was full. Perhaps they had a system to prevent that
from happening. Maybe someone went up there and put up a sign to barricade the
bottom level.

A few minutes later they were on
the city streets of London, a good half-mile from Number 10. They used the
siren and the strobes to get them through the city and to the M25. The motorway
was only half-congested. In most cities, that meant bumper to bumper, but in
London there was plenty of room in between cars if you had a motorbike. Also,
the shoulder made a great way to do eighty when everyone else alternated from
brake, gas, brake. From the M25, they exited and merged onto the M3, which took
them west and away from the city.

Sasha cut the siren and switched on
the radio. It had been previously tuned to a Jazz station.

“This OK?” she asked.

Bear shrugged. “I can live with
it.”

Jack nodded. “I love it.”

“Really? That surprises me.”

Jack shrugged, turned toward his
window, then back at her. He opened his mouth to give her a hard time.

She glanced over and offered him a
half-smile. “Me, too.”

“I didn’t always,” Jack said. “My
dad forced us to listen to it when I was a kid.”

“Us?”

“My brother and I.”

“What’s his name?”

“My dad?”

“Your brother.”

“Sean.”

“And I bet your dad’s name was
John, wasn’t it? And you were named after him, so that’s why they called you
Jack. But, John and Sean? Sean’s the Irish form of John. Did your parents want
you two to have the same name?”

“Cute, isn’t it?” Bear said.

Jack glanced over his shoulder and
shook his head at Bear. Then he switched his gaze to Sasha and said, “My dad’s
not John and neither am I. Jack isn’t a nickname for anything. It’s just my
name. Always been that way. Says so on my birth certificate.”

“Who’s older?”

“Him.”

“By how much?”

“Two and some change.”

“Years?”

“Would’ve been a medical marvel if
otherwise.”

She rolled her eyes. “Do you get
along?”

“We did.”

“Now?”

“We talk.”

“How often?”

“Occasionally.”

“Do the conversations go like
this?”

“More or less.”

“So, back to jazz.” She turned the
volume up a notch.

“Grew up on it. Miles Davis, Stan
Kenton, Ralph Sutton, Tristano, Stan Getz.”

“All the big names of the fifties
and sixties then.”

Jack nodded.

“Do you listen to anything new?”

He shrugged. “Whatever’s on or
whoever’s on stage.”

“Always better live,” she said.

“Yes, it is,” Bear said.

“Goddamn right,” Jack said.

He eased back and listened to the
angst ridden tones of Miles Davis and his trumpet. Coltrane complimented with
his tenor sax. Smoother than butter. Finer than silk. Jack wished he could fast
forward to midnight right about now. The music, created during a time of unrest
and filled with an undying passion, still evoked long buried feelings and
memories within Jack. Fortunately, he’d become more than capable of brushing
them aside when necessary. And most times, it was necessary.

They exited onto the M27 in
Eastleigh. A few miles later the motorway ended and they drove along a dual
carriage way that Jack didn’t bother to get the number of. There was no point.
He wouldn’t have to navigate back unless something bad happened. And if
something bad did happen, he knew it would involve him anyway.

A jazz-filled half hour passed.
Traffic continued to thin until they were basically alone on the road. They
reached their turn, made a left onto a narrow one lane that could accommodate
two cars traveling in the opposite direction so long as one pulled into the
grass to let the other pass. Jack looked back and saw that Jon and Alex were
close behind.

And the two agents.

Seven people, which Jack figured
was about four too many.

Up ahead, warning lights blinked at
a railroad crossing. They had a full view of the oncoming train. Probably three
hundred cars long and moving slow, like a caterpillar stuffed fat and ready to
hibernate.

“Speed up,” Jack said.

“What?” Sasha said.

“You heard me.”

She glanced over at him. Had both
hands on the wheel. Her knuckles were white. “Why?”

“We need to get a few minutes
ahead.”

“Have you gone mad?”

“Do it, Sasha.”

She shook her head, pressed the
accelerator. The car picked up speed, but due to the curve in the road and the
curve in the track, he couldn’t work out the angles in his head. Would they
beat the train? If the train reached first, they might have been traveling too
fast to stop in time.

“I don’t like this, Jack,” she
said.

He studied the distance again. The
train had the edge. “Faster, Sasha.”

Her foot went down, the car went
faster. Jack felt his seat inch back, looked over his shoulder, saw Bear’s
large hand next to his head. The big man leaned forward in between Jack and
Sasha. If adrenaline had a defined look, it was the one plastered on Bear’s
face.

“You might want to strap in,” Jack
said as he lifted his seat belt around his abdomen to show it off to Bear.

“It ain’t gonna make a difference
if we hit that train,” Bear said.

“Point taken.” Jack reached for his
seatbelt release.

“Don’t you dare,” Sasha said. She’d
also had the foresight to buckle her seatbelt.

The car went faster.

The train plowed forward.

The tracks approached.

The road straightened.

It would be close.

Too close?

Jack wasn’t sure.

He looked to his left. In the side
mirror he saw that Jon and Alex had fallen far behind. Headlights flashed, then
remained on. High beams followed. Sasha’s phone began to ring. Had to be them.

“Don’t answer,” Jack said.

“Like I’m taking my flipping hands
off the flipping wheel.”

Jack grinned. If ever there was a
time to curse, that would have been it. He didn’t figure her to be so proper.
He glanced at her. A sheet of sweat covered her forehead. Her eyes were narrow
and focused. Jaws locked, small muscles rippled. Her hands were wrapped around
the wheel, knuckles white.

Gun to his head, he’d admit she
looked attractive.

The car went faster.

The train plowed forward.

The tracks were a hundred feet or
so ahead.

Who would get there first?

The train’s conductor stood
wide-eyed. His mouth hung open like he he’d become locked in a perpetual
scream. Of course, nothing could be heard over the roar of the train, not even
the warning bells anymore. It sounded like an F5, as best Jack could guess.
He’d only ever encountered an F3.

The Audi crashed through the thin
guard rail painted red and white. They hit the asphalt hump that housed the
tracks doing over one hundred miles per hour. He could no longer see the
conductor. Probably better that way. The guy might be having a heart attack,
and the last thing Jack needed today was added guilt.

He looked to his left as the car
launched a foot or so off the ground. He’d passed the train, but Bear and the
rest of the Audi hadn’t yet. Death would still be the result as the impact
would spin the vehicle around sending him and Sasha face first into the solid
steel engine. And if that didn’t kill them, surely the force of Bear crashing
into them would.