by Stuart Gibbs
One agent, an older woman who appeared to have some seniority, stopped to inform the reporters that the president was fine—“thanks to the brave actions of the Secret Service”—but that no further questions would be answered at this time.
A black sedan with tinted windows skidded to a stop in the driveway between the West Wing and the EEOB. I was tossed into the backseat and locked inside.
The car was quite luxurious, but there was no doubt that I was trapped in the back. There was that same plate of thick, impenetrable glass between me and the front seat, but this time there were no locks or handles on the inside doors for me to let myself out. I was basically in the world’s fanciest squad car. After the cacophony outside, it was surprisingly quiet. The din of the reporters was now only a distant murmur.
In the new silence, I realized my ears were still ringing from the explosion. There was a low, constant hum inside my head.
A tough-looking agent in his mid-twenties with a crew cut and sunglasses, despite the fact that it was cloudy and gray outside, sat at the wheel of the car. Another agent, this one looking older and even tougher, slid into the passenger seat. “Go,” he ordered.
The driver hit the gas and the car lurched forward. Two black SUVs, identical to the one I’d been in with the president, swerved into position in front of us and behind us. Sirens on them wailed and the traffic in the street obediently pulled over. Our small motorcade raced off the White House property.
I swiveled around to look out the back window. The Oval Office was still on fire, sending clouds of smoke billowing into the sky. A gaping hole had been torn in its famous curved white wall, like a handful gouged out of a wedding cake. A flaming footstool, flung out by the explosion, was lodged in the branches of a jacaranda tree.
Oh boy, I thought. I’m really going to be in trouble for this one.
The previous fall, I had accidentally blown up the school principal’s office and had been punished with immediate expulsion from spy school. Now I’d blown up the most famous office in America. For all I knew, I’d get kicked out of the country for that.
Hundreds of passersby had become spectators. They crowded the sidewalks, taking pictures with their phones. Thousands more were coming, pouring out of office buildings and rushing over in waves from the nearby monuments to see what had happened. Some paused to photograph my motorcade, thinking it might be important, then went right back to photographing the burning Oval Office again.
I scanned the crowds, hoping that Cyrus or Erica might be among them, but I didn’t see a single familiar face.
The motorcade raced past the Ellipse to the south of the White House grounds and hooked a right onto Constitution Avenue, skirting the edge of the National Mall.
“I didn’t try to kill the president,” I said to the agents in the car. “I was only used as a pawn by people who did want to kill him.”
I figured they probably wouldn’t believe me, but it couldn’t hurt to try. I didn’t even know if they could hear me through the glass barrier between us.
They could. The older agent in the passenger seat turned to face me. Despite the dreary day, he was wearing sunglasses too, but I could tell he was glaring at me from behind them. “Who are you working for?” he asked.
Unfortunately, I couldn’t tell him the truth. My mission for the CIA was unofficial, my status as an agent-in-training was classified—and chances were, he’d never believe it anyhow. Instead, I said, “I’m not working for anybody. I’m a friend of Jason’s.”
“You two didn’t look like friends to me.”
“Whoever did this planted a bomb in my jacket,” I insisted. “I’m guessing they waited until they knew I was inside, then used a remote radio trigger. That means they were probably close to the White House, keeping an eye on me. If you don’t act now, they’ll get away!”
“Remote radio trigger?” the older agent asked suspiciously. “You know an awful lot about how bombs work for someone claiming to be innocent.”
“I am innocent! The real bad guys are still out there!”
“I’m sure they are,” the older agent agreed. “No kid could mastermind an operation like this. Which is why you need to tell us who you’re working for. Now. If you don’t . . . there will be consequences.” He said the final word as ominously as he could.
“Consequences?” I repeated. “Like what?”
The agent didn’t reply. Instead, he gave me a malicious smile.
The motorcade veered past the Vietnam Veterans Memorial and onto the road that looped around the Lincoln Memorial.
Which meant we were heading out of Washington, DC, and toward Virginia. Most of the U.S. government operated inside the city, but there were several departments located on the other side of the Potomac. The Secret Service worked for the Department of Homeland Security, which was headquartered in the Pentagon, which I could see across the Potomac River in the distance: an enormous squat building surrounded by acres of parking lots. The CIA also had its headquarters a bit farther away in Virginia, at Langley.
“Where are you taking me?” I asked.
“Where we can get the truth out of you,” the older agent replied.
“I’m telling you the truth,” I pointed out. “You’re just not listening to it.”
The motorcade passed the Lincoln Memorial, veered onto the Arlington Memorial Bridge—and stopped dead in traffic. A massive road construction project was under way, doing repair work to the bridge. Two construction cranes loomed overhead, maneuvering heavy loads of metal and cement. One side of the bridge was completely shut down to traffic and was instead filled with dozens of trucks and hundreds of workers. Traffic was forced onto the other side of the bridge, which narrowed to one lane in both directions. Even though we had our sirens on, there was no shoulder for the cars ahead of us to pull over on.
“Instead of dragging me all the way to Virginia,” I said, “why don’t you call Cyrus Hale at the CIA? He’s a friend of mine. He’ll vouch for me, and we can get this whole thing straightened out.”
Once again, the older agent didn’t reply. Although this time, he wasn’t doing it to make me uneasy. He was distracted by the traffic. “Why’d you go this way?” he asked the driver angrily. “You know this road’s a mess.”
“I was following them,” the driver said, pointing at the big black SUV in front of us. “If you’ve got a problem with the route, talk to those guys.”
“There’s like a hundred apps that tell you the fastest way from place to place,” the older agent griped. “Those guys can’t figure out how to use one of them? There’s a national security crisis happening and we’re stuck in traffic.”
I began to grow nervous, and it wasn’t merely because I’d been framed for the attempted assassination of the president and arrested by the Secret Service. All that was bad enough, but now we were sitting ducks. We were out over the river, boxed in on both sides by our own SUVs, and SPYDER was on the loose. Given everything that had happened that day—and Erica’s concern for my safety that morning—it seemed our current position was a very bad place to be.
I glanced all around us, on the alert for trouble. The roadwork appeared to be progressing normally, with trucks hauling loads and construction workers jackhammering and welding. . . .
Except for one spot. Behind us, on the mainland, by the base of one of the cranes, some of the workers were looking about worriedly, as though something had startled them. I caught a glimpse of someone darting through the construction equipment.
I turned back to the front seat, where the agents were still bickering about the traffic.
“We should’ve taken the Teddy Roosevelt Bridge,” the older one was saying. “This one has been a disaster for months.”
“Then why didn’t you say something before we got onto it?” the driver asked.
“I was busy intimidating the suspect!” the older one exclaimed, then pointed to the SUV ahead of us. “They were supposed to be driving! If they wanted me to do the driving, they
can feel free to do the intimidation.”
“Uh, guys,” I said. “I really think we need to get out of here.”
“That makes two of us,” the older agent said. He leaned over and pounded on the car horn.
“What’s that gonna do?” the driver asked. “We’ve got all these sirens going already. We’re obviously government vehicles. You think now that you’ve honked, all the other drivers are going to say, ‘Oh, now I see it’s an emergency’ and drive off the bridge?”
The older agent simply honked the horn again.
All the other drivers started honking too, pounding on their horns in frustration. The bridge became a cacophony of car horns.
Amid all the clamor, I heard a dull thud right beside me.
I spun around to see a web of cracks spreading across the car window, radiating out from a central divot in the glass.
A year before, I wouldn’t have had any idea what could have caused that. But now that I’d lived through multiple action sequences, I knew all too well.
In quick succession, several more objects thudded into the windows of the car, making a series of webs across the passenger side.
The Secret Service agents instantly forgot all about the traffic.
Someone was shooting at us.
DEATH TRAP
Arlington Memorial Bridge
Washington, DC
February 11
1630 hours
I dropped onto the backseat and curled into the fetal position.
Another line of bullets thunked across the windows, leaving even more webs in the glass. The gunfire then moved on to the SUV ahead of us, riddling the vehicle with golf-ball-size dents.
“Don’t worry!” the older agent told me. “This entire car is bulletproof! As long as we stay in here, they won’t be able to get us!”
I noticed that, despite his assurances, he was still ducked down below the windows, which made me think that, after a certain number of hits, they might stop being bulletproof.
Unfortunately, there wasn’t much I could do except stay in the car. I was locked in the back and we were trapped on the road. Many of the innocent drivers ahead of us, who didn’t have bulletproof cars, had abandoned their vehicles and leapt into the Potomac. Without drivers, their cars were going to keep sitting there in our way, meaning we were going to stay boxed in and at the mercy of the shooter.
The driver was on the radio, calling for backup. “This is Gamma Team. We are with the package on the Arlington Bridge, stuck in traffic and sustaining heavy fire.”
“The Arlington Bridge?” the radio dispatcher replied with disbelief. “That thing’s a mess. Why didn’t you take the Roosevelt?”
“Because we didn’t!” howled the driver. “We need backup right now!”
“Can you tell where the assault is coming from?” the dispatcher asked.
“Not exactly,” the driver reported. “Most likely from the construction site.”
I chanced a look back through the window, which was now so webbed with cracks, it was like trying to see through a kaleidoscope. The construction workers were all running for cover, but it was impossible to tell where the shots were coming from. There were a thousand places for shooters to hide: stacks of iron beams, pallets of concrete, dozens of construction vehicles.
More bullets rattled the car.
“Why are they shooting at us?” the driver exclaimed. “We’re not with the president!”
The older agent peered over the front seat at me, a sudden realization in his eyes. “They’re not shooting at us,” he said to me. “They’re shooting at you! Your associates know you can name them and now they’re trying to make sure you don’t!”
Which was what I’d deduced myself. Sort of. I wasn’t working for SPYDER, but it made sense that they wanted to get rid of me.
If everything had gone the way SPYDER had planned, the president and I both would have been blown to bits—and I’d have looked like the bomber. This fit SPYDER’s standard operating procedure: Commit a crime, frame someone else for it, and leave no trace of their own involvement. However, I’d thwarted their plans yet again. The president was still alive and so was I—the only person who knew what SPYDER had actually done and how they had done it. So they had to whack me before I spilled the beans.
Unfortunately, SPYDER knew how to take care of business. They had manipulated Cyrus into inserting me inside the White House, then tricked me into taking in the bomb. Now they’d picked the perfect spot for an ambush, and chances were, they were well aware I was inside a bulletproof car. Which meant they probably had a plan to deal with it.
I looked out through the front window, to where the other drivers had leapt into the Potomac. It wasn’t the safest escape strategy imaginable, but it was the best at hand. “We need to get out of here!” I told the agents. “We’re not safe in this car!”
“We’re safer in here than we are outside it,” the older agent insisted. “I told you, this thing’s bulletproof. It can stand up to anything they throw at us.”
A mechanical groan echoed across the construction site. I turned back that way to see that one of the big cranes was now in motion. The long arm was swinging our way far more quickly than it should have been, whipping the giant metal hook in our direction.
“Can this car stand up to that?” I asked.
“Er . . .” The older agent gulped, worry creasing his face. “Maybe not.”
“Then unlock the doors!” I screamed.
The agents did. Except, they only unlocked their doors. They might have sworn to protect the president with their lives, but they were apparently perfectly willing to let me die on their watch. They scrambled out of the car and fled down the bridge, leaving me trapped in the backseat.
The cable connecting the giant hook to the crane played out, then stopped short with a sudden resounding twang. As the crane’s arm came around, the hook arced through the air on a collision course with the car.
I dropped into the footwell between the seats, curled into a ball, and hoped for a miracle.
The hook slammed into the car. There was a rending of metal and a tinkle of glass. The sedan jolted wildly, then stopped abruptly as it crashed into something. The entire impact took less than a second.
I felt a blast of cold air.
I’d been jostled hard by the impact, but was otherwise all right, save for the sudden chill. Wishing I still had my winter jacket (without the bomb), I unfolded myself to see what had happened.
The roof of the car was no longer there. Instead, there was only slate-gray sky above me.
I cautiously got to my feet.
The crane’s hook had sheared the roof right off the sedan, turning it into a convertible, and then thrown the car itself up onto the guardrail. The car’s entire front end now jutted off the side of the bridge, the tires dangling over the water.
Meanwhile, the hook—with the car’s roof still speared on it—reached the high point of its trajectory over the river and swung back toward me. It was coming in fast, as big and deadly as a wrecking ball.
As if that wasn’t bad enough, the sedan suddenly tilted forward and began sliding over the guardrail. It was about to tumble into the river—with me in it.
I judged the pitch of the car, the speed of the hook, and the depth of the water below, then quickly calculated the optimal moment to leap from the car and not get killed.
Then I leapt.
The hook and the car roof whizzed back mere inches above me, then collided with the rest of the sedan as it tumbled off the guardrail. I didn’t see the results, as I was currently plummeting toward the water, but I felt it. The gas tank ruptured and the sedan exploded, sending a wave of heat, fire, and auto parts into the air.
I plunged into the river. The water was murky and opaque, darkened with mud and silt and the poop of a million Canada geese, but I went as far down as I could anyhow. Above me, flaming bits of sedan plunked into the river, so hot that they sizzled as they sank past.
The current grabbed me and whisked me downriver. I held my breath and drifted as far as I could before surfacing.
Back on the bridge, things were even more chaotic now than they had been before. In addition to the panic induced by SPYDER, there was now the flaming wreckage of the car and the crane hook swinging about wildly. People were running every which way, and the Secret Service agents—easily visible since they were the only ones wearing sunglasses—seemed to have forgotten all about me for the moment.
SPYDER probably hadn’t, though.
I dove back down into the water again and swam with the current. It was hard going and the water was freezing, but I wanted to stay out of sight as long as I could. The murkiness now worked to my advantage. I didn’t have to go far below the surface to vanish from sight.
I couldn’t stand the cold for very long, though. In the icy water, I felt like I was turning into a Popsicle. I lasted until a point about an eighth of a mile from the bridge, then swam to the bank behind the cover of a clump of trees. I was still within sight of the bridge, but several other people who’d jumped off it were climbing out of the water there, so I was able to camouflage myself among them. I clambered up the bank and bolted across the riverside road, angling back toward the city. A cold wind knifed through my damp clothes, but I kept running as fast as I could, hoping to leave both the Secret Service and SPYDER behind.
No one shot at me. No one even seemed to notice me.
Or so I hoped.
Thirteen months earlier, Erica Hale had rescued me from SPYDER at virtually the exact same spot where I’d climbed out of the river, then led me to safety in one of the strangest places I could have ever imagined. Now I retraced our steps. I cut across the baseball fields in Potomac Park, crossed Independence Avenue, and ducked into the small fringe of woods that lined the south side of the Reflecting Pool.
Tucked away in the trees, overlooked by tourists and forgotten by locals, stood a small monument to President Chester Alan Arthur. I made sure no one was watching me, then twisted a ring on his stone finger, exactly the way Erica had.