by L. T. Ryan
Twenty minutes later they entered the hospital parking lot. The front entrance was jam-packed with news trucks that had their booms and antennas extended into the sky. Reporters and cameramen hovered outside the front door. Police created a barricade. A disaster, really. Those who needed help from the hospital would have trouble on this day.
So the driver continued around to the side where four police officers waited for them. One came up to the passenger side of the SUV, the side that faced the hospital. He opened the front and rear doors. The man extended his hand for Sasha. She angled her body to avoid him.
The cop stepped back when Bear stuck his leg out.
“What, no hand for me?”
The cop looked unsure of what to do next. Bear’s laughter sent him back toward the unassuming hospital door propped open an inch.
“Follow me,” the cop said as he stepped inside. He led them through empty passages. The guy’s partner picked up the rear.
Jack figured the halls were empty on purpose. He’d inconvenienced not only the sick who needed the hospital today, but also the staff. Nothing new, in a way. He’d become used to being a nuisance.
They reached a hallway where four agents Jack recognized from Number 10 stood. This had to be where Alex was being kept.
“Right in there,” the guard said, his finger extended.
Jon entered the room first, then Sasha. When Jack entered, Alex greeted him with a nod and slight smile.
“How’s it feel?” Jack said.
“Pretty bad,” Alex said. “But, they’ve numbed it up and given me some pain killers. Nothing too strong, though, so don’t ask for any. This isn’t over.” Alex paused and waited until everyone smiled or laughed at his joke. “Fortunately, I’m left handed, so my shot won’t be affected.”
“You’re not involved in this anymore,” Jon said.
“Like hell I’m not.”
“Alex, listen to him,” Sasha said.
“I want to face her and ask her why. Why did she want to kill me? Why did she threaten this man’s child in an effort to have me dead? Surely there had to be better ways than this.”
No one said anything.
“What’s the plan now?” Jack said.
“We’ve got bait in another hall,” Jon said.
“Meaning?”
“A man, brain dead after an accident. He’s bloated and unrecognizable and on life support. He’s got hair like Alex’s though, so—”
“He’s being passed off as the Prime Minister, near death,” Jack said.
Jon nodded. “We figure she’ll send someone to take care of him.”
“Who’s watching?” Bear said.
“Plenty of people,” Sasha said. “A whole damn team is set up near the room.”
“We should get Alex out of here then,” Jack said.
“No,” Alex said. “Not yet. I want to question whoever is sent.”
“Those pain killers are going to your head,” Jon said.
Alex smiled. Upon further inspection, Jack would agree with Jon’s statement.
“Surely Dottie would expect that you’d be heavily guarded,” Jack said.
“I think she’s lost it, Jack,” Jon said. “She’s acting completely irrational. How did she plan to ever get away with this? It’s impossible.”
Jack wondered if she did plan to get away with it. Any of it. The whole thing, he realized, had been a setup, right from the very beginning. She hadn’t brought him here to kill Thornton. She already had that planned. She brought him here so he could die. Why?
“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.”
CHAPTER 67
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 seatbe
lt 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?
CHAPTER 68
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.
Sasha screamed. So did Bear. Jack clenched his jaw for a tense few seconds. Then he yelled. The sound inside the car matched that of the first couple of seconds after the lead car on a roller coaster crept over the edge of the first big drop. The feeling, not so much.