The Fallen: A Derek Stillwater Thriller (19 page)

They locked eyes. Swenson slowly nodded. “Go for it, Khournikova.”

She grabbed a canvas shoulder bag and retrieved several flash grenades, carefully placing them in the bag. She said, “I can do this better alone.”

He paused, thinking it over. “You can trust my people.”

“Maybe,” she said, “but I think I can only trust you. And I think you can only trust m e.”

He nodded. “You’re Special K. Understand?” He held up his radio. “These channels are just for you and me. I’m Superman.”

“With the S on his chest,” she said. “For Swenson.”

“Bingo.”

“I’ll be in touch.” And the Russian agent sprinted out of the MCU toward the International Center. In the surrounding hillsides she heard the sound of gunfire as a firefight started between the enemy snipers, the snipers on top of the buildings, and the Colorado National Guard. Richard Coffee had thought of everything.

Except Derek Stillwater, she reflected. Maybe Coffee hadn’t thought of everything.

Derek took Maria’s hand and pulled her into the hallway, which was lit up with fluorescent lights. He felt very exposed, but saw no one.

Maria tapped a finger to her ear. “That’s weird.”

He shot her a sharp look. “What is?”

“The radio’s all staticky.”

Derek flicked his radio on and listened to the static. “That’s interesting,” he said, and clicked it off. “I think it’s being jammed.”

“Jammed?”

“Yeah. They don’t want anybody to communicate with each other.”

“They? The Fallen Angels?”

“No,” Derek said. “The good guys don’t want The Fallen Angels to communicate with each other. The government’s jamming communications. That usually means some sort of op is starting.”

Behind him he heard a light thunk, as if someone were stepping onto the roof of the elevator.

Derek rushed toward the far hallway, his injured leg throbbing, causing him to lurch along like Frankenstein’s monster. He stopped. The steel doors were shut, and they were wired with Semtex. He spun and raced in the other direction, if his stiff, lumbering shuffle could be considered racing. Here, too, the hallway doors were shut and wired with explosives.

“Are we trapped?”

Derek glanced nervously toward the entryway to the elevator lobby. Was there someone in there?

He lunged across the hallway into the open door of a meeting room. Carefully he closed the door except for a crack. He brought the MP-5 around and crouched down, waiting. Sweat beaded on his forehead, dripped into his eyes. His lungs burned, his stomach churned, and his
ribs, head, neck, back, and leg hurt. He was a fucking mess, and he knew it.

He waited, ignoring his body’s signals of pain and discomfort, his body telling him to take a break, to quit, to get help. He waited.

It only took a few seconds. A dark-clad man flitted into the hallway. He had an MP-5 raised and he moved like liquid silver, quick and silent. The man disappeared from view. Maria started to say something, but Derek placed fingers against her lips.

Bang!

She jumped, crying out.

The Angel was starting with the meeting room at the opposite end of the hallway.

Bang!

Derek, expression grim, shut the door, locked it, and limped to the opposite side of the room and struggled on top of a folding table. He lifted aside an acoustic tile, shined a flashlight around, then helped Maria up next to him. He caught her around the waist and lifted her into the crawl space. Reaching up, he hauled himself up, and shifted the tile back into position.

This crawl space was tighter than the previous one they had been in. Only about three feet high, with no catwalk. There were I-beams and supporting walls and heating ducts and electrical wires and fiber-optic cables. There was a metal rectangular gridwork that supported the lights and ceiling tiles. They weren’t designed to support the weight of a man or even a slender woman.

Derek spidered along until he was balanced on an I-beam, Maria perched beside him.

Bang!

The third meeting room.

Derek studied the space, and pointed toward the far wall. In her ear he whispered, “One at a time. Very careful.”

He edged out on the gridwork, which wobbled beneath him. Only about eight feet and he would be at an I-beam that ran parallel to where he was now. He knew it delineated the back wall of these meeting rooms. On the other side of the wall was another hallway bordering the building’s power plant.

He was about four feet from the I-beam when—

Bang!

The terrorist was in the room they had just vacated.

Derek clicked off his light, balanced on the metal braces, an awkward, uncomfortable position, his gun strapped on his back where he couldn’t reach it. The crawl space was plunged in darkness, lit only by slivers of light around the edges of the acoustic tiles and the fluorescent lights. Maria was a good five feet away from him.

Light footfalls drifted up from the room below.

Silence. Then the sound of movement.

Suddenly an acoustical tile exploded upward, the crawl space filled with light. The Angel burst upward into the space, MP-5 held aloft.

He was right in front of where Maria crouched.

Derek saw the MP-5 swing toward him. This was it, he thought. Nowhere to go. Maria brought a knife down in a vicious arc, slamming into the terrorist’s shoulder. The man screamed, falling backward, the assault rifle rattling out a torrent of bullets that chewed up the ceiling tiles.

“Come on!” Derek screamed, reaching out his hand.

Maria scuttled across the tiles and caught his hand.

They leapt from wire to wire, a daddy longlegs dance, until they were on the I-beam.

Derek slammed an elbow through the fiberboard walls, once, twice, then kicking at it. Finally, in frustration, he took out the MP-5 and fired half a magazine until there was a large hole. He stuck his head through, saw empty hallway, grabbed Maria, and tossed her through it.

He turned to see the Angel clambering awkwardly up into the crawl space. Derek fired off a burst and dropped down next to Maria. His leg nearly collapsed beneath him. The pain of impact made him cry out, but he gritted his teeth, caught her arm, and rushed toward the door leading into the power plant of the Cheyenne Center. In a guttural, German-accented snarl, the Angel said, “Run away my little kitties. The Mad Dog is nipping at your heels. Run!”

Secretary of the Treasury Donald Sloviak took off his horn-rimmed glasses, studied the paper in front of him, then looked back up at the table occupied by members of President Langston’s cabinet. Sloviak was a stoop-shouldered, bow-tie wearing wonk, totally charisma-challenged, but for some reason Vice President Newman had asked him to chair the meeting.

Secretary Johnston glanced at his watch and growled, “For God sakes, Don. Just read it and get on with it. Or have the vice president read it.”

Sloviak looked uncomfortable. He was balding with steel-gray hair that flaked dandruff onto his shoulders, his eyes were muddy, and he wore a perpetual puzzled expression on his face. He perched the glasses back on his nose and sighed. “It saddens me to—”

Vice President Newman cleared his throat. “Secretary Johnston, do you have an objection?”

“No. It’s probably the appropriate course of action. But we’re in the middle of crisis operations and protocol can drag on and get in the way of what we’re trying to do. Come on, Don. Move it along.”

Sloviak hesitated. “It saddens me to suggest that under Section Four of the Twenty-fifth Amendment to the Constitution, the cabinet needs to instate Vice President Alexander Newman as acting president until duly elected President Jack Langston can be reinstated to office.”

Newman said, “Read Section Four, please.”

Johnston sighed. Operation Tagger was underway. He really needed to get back to the PEOC.

Newman snapped, “Secretary Johnston, is there a problem?”

“Keep it moving, Mr. Vice President. We have an operation starting as we speak.”

“Who authorized that?”

Johnston glared at the vice president. “I did.”

Secretary of Defense Marlon Sandhill said, “As did I. Along with General Puskorius. We alerted your office. You weren’t available.”

Vice President Newman seemed momentarily speechless, the silence in the room as thick as Texas chili. Finally Newman said, “Mr. Sloviak, read Section 4.”

In his reedy voice, Sloviak read:

Section 4. Whenever the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive departments or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall immediately assume the powers and duties of the office as Acting President.

“Very good,” said Vice President Newman. “Because President Langston is currently incapacitated due to the terrorism crisis, I invoke the Twenty-fifth amendment of the United States Constitution under Section Four. Upon majority vote of this cabinet, I will assume the duties of the acting president. Let’s us begin the vote.” He looked to Secretary Sloviak.

“Do you vote to invoke the Twenty-fifth Amendment of the United States’ Constitution?”

Sloviak swallowed. “Aye.”

One by one the cabinet members present voted to turn control of the government over to Vice President Newman. The secretary of state and the secretary of transportation were patched in via teleconference. The final cabinet member to vote was Secretary Johnston. He hesitated before nodding. “Aye.”

“So be it,” said Vice President Newman. “We’ll get the chief justice in here, send written notice to the speakers, and we’ll get a press conference going as soon as—”

The door to the room opened and a tall, angular woman with gray
hair to her shoulders hurried over to Secretary Johnston. She handed him a telephone. “It’s Agent Swenson, sir.”

“Johnston here.” Johnston held up a hand to the group, asking them to wait. He listened for a moment then nodded. “Okay. Keep me informed.” He hung up.

Everybody waited.

“Operation Tagger was a disaster,” he said slowly. “The Fallen Angels had snipers up in the hills around the resort. When the Delta Force troopers parachuted in, the snipers took out every single one of them.”

Vice President Newman, face slowly turning red, said, “This is your disaster, Jim. Yours!”

Johnston shrugged. No kidding, he thought. Homeland Security oversaw the Secret Service. Secret Service oversaw the summit security. He was screwed.

Now-President Newman said, “What else?”

Johnston said, “Several more Secret Service agents have gone missing trying to retake the security office in the International Center. There was an active firefight between the enemy snipers, the FBI, and the National Guard. They think there were four, and they’ve killed three. The fourth is fleeing into the mountains. Our people are in active pursuit.”

He paused. “We’ve received intelligence that the numbers of terrorists inside the ballroom continues to drop, now to nine. Dorfman, the German, left to pursue the rogue agent who is picking off their people.”

“What is your plan now?” President Newman demanded.

Johnston raised an eyebrow. “Plan?”

“You have a Plan B? A contingency plan?”

“We’ll have to discuss it with General Puskorius and my people.” He looked at his watch. “But the next deadline is coming up in less than twenty minutes. You need to make a decision whether or not we meet their demands, or at least as much of them as we possibly can.”

“Me?”

“Yes— Mr. President.”

Newman seemed startled that along with the title came the responsibility of this decision. He frowned. He turned to Secretary of Defense Sandhill. “They wanted those people out of Gitmo and on a chopper headed toward Colombia. Make it happen.”

Sandhill said, “Sir?”

“Do it.”

“They wanted two choppers and clear passage into Colombian air space,” Sandhill said. “We can’t guarantee Colombian air space.”

Newman grinned like a barracuda, all teeth and aggression. “We’re buying time here. Give them their fucking helicopters. Let them fly out of there. Keep some F14s on their asses ready to blow them out of the air as soon we can. Got that?”

Secretary Johnston said, “We’ve still got the Nadia Kosov problem.”

“Deal with it!” President Newman spun on his heels and walked out of the room.

Johnston looked over to Sandhill and Attorney General Norris Penderton. Penderton looked thoughtful. He said, “I hope he realizes that nobody seems to be negotiating with these guys. You think Coffee will give us some breathing room if we release his people?”

Johnston shook his head. “I think if we can’t produce Nadia Kosov, nothing else matters.”

Derek had his keys in his fist as he and Maria approached the door to the power plant. Fumbling with the key ring, the first key didn’t fit. He nearly dropped the entire ring. Maria caught his hand. “Steady,” she whispered.

He nodded, took a split second to look at the number on the lock, then plucked a key out and slammed it home. With a turn of the key the door opened and they slipped inside just as he heard a thud. Derek glanced over his shoulder to see the terrorist dropping to the floor thirty feet away. He pushed Maria inside and followed, pulling the door closed and clacking the lock shut.

Furnaces and boilers roared. The temperature was a dozen degrees higher than it had been in the rest of the building. The metal flooring trembled beneath their feet. Maria stood just inside the power plant, chest heaving as she dragged in air. Her dark curly hair was a snarl of tangles, her face smeared with grime and blood, clothes torn, bloodied, and matted with dirt.

“You’re beautiful,” Derek said. “You know that?”

She giggled. “You know how to show a girl a good time, big boy.”

“Yeah. Come on. It won’t take him—”

A round of gunfire slammed into the door near them.

Maria screamed and turned to run. Derek caught her and brought her close. He pointed upward. The power plant was a large sunken part of the building. On their immediate level a four-foot wide walkway stretched in two directions. Four metal risers dropped down to the main floor. Bordering three sides was a four-foot catwalk of steel mesh, no railing. The main floor of the power plant was crammed with massive furnaces, air-conditioning units, and giant red-painted tanks for hot water. It was the trunk line for the heating, cooling, plumbing, and electrical— the space was crisscrossed with hot and cold air ducts.