The Fallen: A Derek Stillwater Thriller (26 page)

Beam thought, nine hundred. Eight hundred.

They roared past and came back around. They were close enough that they could see dozens, maybe even a hundred small figures lining the walkways and work areas of the oil platform.

Five hundred.

Four hundred.

“CV, this is Bravo-Delta-Oscar 1762. Platform is in missile range. I repeat, platform is in missile range.”

“Bravo-Delta-Oscar 1762, pull back. I repeat, pull back.”

Beam pulled up, ascending back up to 2,000 feet and beginning a wide sweep above the oil platform. “We missed our chance.”

“I don’t know,” Stooge said. He had binoculars pressed to his eyes. “Bring it back down for a visual.”

“CV, this is Bravo-Delta-Oscar 1762. We’re dropping down to five hundred for a visual.”

A moment later Stooge said, “I see people jumping out of the chopper onto the landing pad— they’re taking off again!”

“CV, this is Bravo-Delta-Oscar 1762. Target has dropped off passengers and is leaving the area. I repeat, target has dropped off passengers and is leaving the area.”

“Hold.”

They brought it past the oil platform again.

“Come on,” Stooge said. “What’s holding up the show?”

The radio crackled to life. “Bravo-Delta-Oscar 1762, this is CV. As soon as target is out of platform’s range, you have orders to fire at will.”

“Affirmative, CV.”

The helicopter lifted off from the platform and headed northeast— toward the keys and the Florida coast. It was staying very low to the water, probably two hundred feet and it was flying fast. Stooge tracked it on radar, noting that it was catching up to the second chopper.

Stooge swore. “Radar target in sync with flight path. It’s a cruise ship.”

The helicopters were closing fast on the big white cruise ship that had sailed out of the Port of Miami several hours earlier.

“Weapons lock,” Beam said.

“I don’t know, Beam—”

The chopper veered, stopped its motion, and they overflew it again. Beam tore into a high-G turn, bringing it back around. “Lock.”

“Ship is in target range,” Stooge said. “Pull up. Pull up for god sakes!”

At the last moment they roared past the helicopter and the cruise ship.

“Bravo-Delta-Oscar 1762, this is CV. Abort. I repeat, abort.”

“CV, this is Bravo-Delta-Oscar 1762. Missile lock canceled. Targets are hovering over cruise ship.”

“The Madeleine,” Stooge said. “Carnival Cruises.”

The helicopter hovered and headed northwest again.

“Not this time,” Beam said, and brought the Super Hornet around.

“Four hundred, five hundred.” Stooge was reading the distance from the ship.

“Missiles locked.”

“Six hundred, seven hundred …”

“Fire!”

They roared past the first helicopter as the two Phoenix AIM-54s dropped from their missile carriage and jetted toward the helicopters, which were coming in very low to the water. Suddenly the helicopters veered upward. Beam and Stooge saw bodies leaping from the choppers into the blue water below.

The missiles struck the helicopters, which exploded in a pair of red and gold fireballs.

“Targets have been destroyed, CV. I repeat, targets have been destroyed.”

“Bravo-Delta-Oscar 1762, this is CV. Return to base. Good hunting. I repeat, return to base.”

Beam brought the Super Hornet around and started flying back toward Cuba, and the USS Carl Vinson.

Derek pushed his way into the power plant, slipping inside the door and standing against the wall. His gaze took in the stiffening corpse of the German, the litter of expelled shell cartridges, the drying blood.

When he was sure that he was alone, he limped over to the furnace and studied the system. From the main furnace ran two large metal ducts. One was the warm-air conduit. The other was the cold-air return. He knew there was a mechanical diverter for the air conditioning.

He tried to puzzle this out, wondering where Richard Coffee would have placed a bioweapon. The smartest thing would be to place it within the heating or cooling ducts, but to do so would require either access to the furnace room or to one of the ducts.

Derek’s gaze followed the ductwork upward to where it split and split again. At the first split there was a trunkline that ran to the air-conditioning unit. There was a mechanical distribution switch there. The switch was a motor box that flipped a vent so hot air wouldn’t get through if the air-conditioning was running, and flipped the vent the other way if the furnace was running. It had an access hatch.

Derek opened the hatch and peered in. Fishing through his pocket, he drew out a keychain. On it was a two-inch-long flashlight. He figured it would be a miracle if it hadn’t been damaged during the day’s adventures. To his surprise, a beam appeared at the touch of the button. He looked up and down the ducts. He saw nothing.

He shut the hatch and, with a sigh, climbed the stairs, stepping over the corpse of the German and letting himself out into an upper hallway. He scanned the walls in the hallway, counting two cold-air intake vents and three warm-air vents. He methodically checked each one, in two cases having to drag a bench over to get high enough to peer in. All were clean.

Coffee might have just placed it in the main ballroom somewhere all ready to go off when a rescue happened. It was possible. But it wasn’t the impression he had gotten from Juarez’s comments. Juarez indicated it was set to go off automatically if a rescue attempt was made. To Derek, that suggested it wasn’t in the ballroom.

Coffee clearly knew the Cheyenne Center well. So did Derek.

Okay, Derek thought. If I were to plant a booby-trapped bioweapon set to go off if a rescue attempt was made, where would I put it?

He ruled out the front entrance and the lobby. The steel security gate would be a tough obstacle for any Special Forces or SWAT team making a dynamic entry.

The roof?

He liked the roof. The elevator shafts were obvious weak points. He knew at least one of them was mined. And he knew there had already been an explosion in the other. If the bioweapon had been there, Pablo wouldn’t have been gloating about it still being available.

The loading dock? Same thing.

Derek considered the basement. There were two tunnels that connected to the Cheyenne Center. One led from the southwest corner of Cheyenne Hall to the International Center. The other led from the southeast corner of the Cheyenne Center to Colorado Springs Hall. The southeast corner would have been directly below the loading dock explosion.

Derek decided to investigate the southwest corner and started off in that direction. As he walked, something tickled at his memory.

He remembered passing two Secret Service agents by that doorway as he headed into the Cheyenne Center just before the summit began. One was on a ladder in the overhead crawlspace. The other—

Derek stopped, remembering. The other had been Pablo Juarez, dressed like a Secret Service agent. His partner— had it been Richard Coffee? Had he walked right past them as they were installing a biological bomb in the building?

He picked up his pace, his numerous aches and pains momentarily forgotten. Derek stopped at the closed steel doors that separated the Cheyenne Center from the tunnel to the International Center. The steel doors were wired with plastic explosives, a tangle of wires and infrared sensors.

Derek studied the wires. He was moderately knowledgeable about
defusing bombs, having studied at the Redstone Arsenal in Alabama. That didn’t mean he wanted to take on that door. He doubted if even the most expert bomb tech would want to. The thing to do would be to clear the area and set it off remotely, then rush through the breach. Which is undoubtedly why Coffee had set a bioweapon to go off during a rescue attempt.

Tricky bastard, Derek thought.

He backtracked, studying the ceiling. Slogging back to one of the meeting rooms, Derek grabbed a chair and returned. Standing on the chair, he removed one of the ceiling tiles and boosted himself up into the crawl space, a feat that got more and more difficult to accomplish as the day went on. He flashed the light around, got his bearings, and began once again to crawl along I-beams, support walls, and the drop-ceiling framework, the flashlight clenched between his teeth.

Sweat dripped down his forehead and into his eyes. Derek blinked. His ribs, thigh, and back screamed at the abuse. His vision blurred and his head pounded.

I am so tired of this shit, he thought. If I get out of this alive I am going back home, getting on my boat, and taking a long goddamned vacation someplace warm.

After about ten minutes— what seemed like hours— he saw red glowing lights, like the eyes of rats. He slowed to a crawl, studying every inch of space ahead of him, not moving until he felt comfortable with what might be there.

And then he saw it. A network of wires and photoelectric beams set up in a triangle around a cylindrical canister about one-foot long and seven or eight inches in diameter. He had found the bioweapon.

Robert Mandalevo stood up and walked toward where Maria was sprawled on the floor. It occurred to him that leaving that chair might be the bravest thing he did in his entire life. He knew by rising to his feet he was painting a bull’s-eye on his chest. He briefly thought of his daughters and kept walking.

Pablo Juarez glared at him, gun raised. “What are you doing?”

Mandalevo gestured to Maria. Everything about his body language and tone of voice was neutral and nonthreatening. At least he hoped so. “She’s injured. I’m going to help her get comfortable. May I?”

Juarez continued to stare at him. After a moment he nodded. Robert knelt next to Maria and murmured, “I’m going to help you stand, all right?”

Maria nodded.

Mandalevo got his arm under Maria’s shoulders and helped her to her feet. “Okay,” he said. “You’ve done just great. Lean on me. We’ll get you toward the middle of the room.”

They began to limp toward where Mandalevo had been sitting. Without moving his lips, he murmured, “Is Stillwater really dead?”

Maria tried not to react. Mandalevo saw her flinch, nonetheless. “No,” she said.

“Brave woman,” Mandalevo said. “Good girl. Okay, here we are. Chair or floor?”

“Floor,” she said.

Mandalevo gently set her down on the carpet. Tony Thoroughgood, an advisor with the British group, took off his jacket and rolled it up for her to use as a pillow. He shot Mandalevo a questioning look, but Mandalevo sat down, his hands in his coat pockets, working out a message on his BlackBerry.

Maria looked at him. “Thank you. Will … will this ever end?”

Thoroughgood caught Mandalevo’s eye and nodded. Manadalevo realized the Brit knew what he was doing. He nodded in return. Thoroughgood was a short, square-shouldered man in his late forties with hair the color and texture of wet straw. He knelt next to Maria. “Hi there, I’m Tony. That was a pretty brave thing you did back there. How’s your leg—”

He broke off as Pablo Juarez appeared next to them. Juarez aimed his gun directly at Mandalevo’s face. “Hands out of your pockets.”

Mandalevo froze. His heart skipped a beat and he felt a weight in his chest like a stone banging against his sternum. Slowly he took his hands out of his pockets, holding them up in the air.

“Stand up.”

Thoroughgood jumped to his feet. “Hey, what’s this—”

Juarez swung the butt of the MP-5 into Thoroughgood’s face. The British advisor’s nose went crunch and blood spurted through his fingers. Clutching his face, Thoroughgood stumbled backward, falling onto the floor with a groan.

Mandalevo climbed to his feet without a word.

Juarez waved over one of his remaining lieutenants. “Search his pockets.”

The man patted Mandalevo down, retrieving the BlackBerry, which he handed to Juarez. Juarez read the screen.

“Who are you sending this to?”

Mandalevo said nothing. His gaze was flat, giving nothing away. He understood he was balanced on a tightrope and a strong wind had started blowing.

“Who?” Juarez screamed. “Who are you in communication with?”

“My office,” he said.

Juarez gestured to his man. “Search him. Get his ID.”

Mandalevo remained motionless as he was searched. The lieutenant came up with a wallet and handed it to Juarez, who glanced through it. He held up an identification card, studying it.

“You told me you were the assistant deputy political advisor. Here I see that you lied to me. That you are, in fact, the director of National Intelligence. And you have been e-mailing data to your government.” He looked down at the screen of the BlackBerry. “What message did you send?”

Mandalevo remained silent.

Something passed between Juarez and his lieutenant. The lieutenant, a young-looking man with a barrel chest, bulging arms, and a round, dark-skinned face, punched Mandalevo in the left kidney. Electric shocks of pain spun through his back, pinwheeling in his guts. Mandalevo groaned and dropped to one knee.

“What message did you send?!” shouted Juarez.

A voice from the front of the ballroom said, “Tell him, Bob.”

It was President Langston. Juarez spun. “Ah, you speak, El Presidente.”

“Yes,” President Langston said. “Although I think it is highly unlikely I still speak for the United States. By now Vice President Newman will have invoked the Twenty-fifth Amendment and been sworn in as the acting president. Robert was doing what he does best, Mr. Juarez. He was securing information. Go ahead, Bob. Tell him what the message was. No reason to take a beating for it at this point in time.”

Mandalevo thought: Oh, yes there is, Mr. President. He said, “It wasn’t complete. I sent an incomplete message that said there were five of you here.”

The sound of muted breaking glass interrupted. There were shouts and screams, followed by silence. It came from the direction of the lobby. Juarez spun around, listening. He tapped his radio. “Manuel? Ricardo? This is Carlos. Check in. Do you read?”

Silence.

Juarez’s face grew pale. Into the radio again: “Manuel? Ricardo? Check in. Check in. Over.”