“THE PRESIDENT IS DEAD!” blasted the headlines.
The operators wheeled the gurney over to the ambulance and started to lift it into the truck, but Palmer stopped them. She unzipped the bag and laid her forehead against the president’s forehead. Mallory’s torso was a bloody mess. A moment later, Palmer zipped the bag and the operators lifted the gurney into the truck. She tried to climb up also but nearly collapsed, so an operator lifted her and helped her into the ambulance. The door closed, but the truck sat still as the operators slowly retreated to their armored vehicles. They clearly were in no hurry. The president was dead.
Inside the ambulance, Palmer ripped off her bandages and stripped down to her black sports bra and panties. One of the medic operators tossed her a plastic bag from which she retrieved a change of clothes. The other medic cracked an ampule of smelling salt formula and waved it under Mallory’s nose. The president was awake in an instant. She tried to sit up, but the medic held her down.
“Lie still for a moment, Madam President. Let me check your vitals.”
McGrath’s voice came over the comm net. “You okay, Shirley?”
Rubbing her neck, she looked over at Palmer and said, “She hit me!”
“It was Aaron’s idea.” Palmer tapped her own collarbone. “Brachial plexus nerve bundle. Had to get you unconscious, and I couldn’t tell you it was coming.”
Palmer smiled as she used wet wipes to get the blood off her skin. The TER operators had been well prepared. They’d dug a hole in the debris over the basement entrance and carried down bandages and blood to create the illusion that Palmer was seriously wounded and the president had died.
“By the way,” McGrath said. “That was a nice bit of acting, opening the bag and mourning over the president. A lot of cameras picked that up.”
Palmer nodded at Mallory. “Had to make Rainman’s people believe they succeeded in killing you, or we’d have been hit by another missile by now.”
“Yes,” McGrath added. “But that helpless I’m-hurt-carry-me-into-the-ambulance move was kinda over the top. Trying for an acting career next?”
Palmer grunted. “Can’t get a man to carry me across the threshold unless he’s in full battle gear.”
Mallory chuckled and sat up, then rubbed her neck again. The medic handed her a plastic bag that held a black two-piece outfit like Palmer’s with a high-neck T-shirt. The two medics turned away as the president wiped off blood and changed her clothes.
“So, what’s our next step? They’re going to come after us again as soon as they realize I’m not dead.”
“Agreed,” McGrath said. “Right now, your caravan is en route to Walter Reed. Your physician has already been informed and the coroner is being cleared. However, you’re going to stop at a subway entrance in a few minutes, and Agent Palmer is going to get you underground. At that point, the hunt will be on again, so Johnson and I are working on a plan to get you safely out of DC.”
Palmer explained Rainman’s use of a stealth fighter with a rogue pilot.
Mallory said, “You can’t just order all aircraft grounded?”
“I already have, but Rainman clearly still has loyal high-ranking officers on his team. That stealth fighter is in combat mode with no radar emissions and its transponder is off, so we have no way to track it. But it won’t be able to track your radioactive signature if you’re underground, so you’ll be safe for a while. That’ll give us time to get you out of reach of missiles.”
“Us?” the president said, focusing her gaze on Palmer. “Aaron and Carl haven’t exactly been working well together.”
Palmer nodded. “I’m…managing the situation. We will all do whatever is necessary to get you to safety.”
“I don’t want to be safe! How many people died back there? I want everyone to be safe. I want these bastards found!” Mallory sucked in a deep breath and shuddered. “Before they kill more people.” President Mallory clasped her hands together and gasped in frustration.
Palmer knew the president was reacting to the stress of the attack. From her jump seat, she reached out and laid a hand on top of Mallory’s fists.
The truck slowed to a stop and the driver said through the open slider, “Red light. Caravan is stopping.”
“Copy that,” Palmer said.
McGrath added, “Stay frosty, Agent Palmer. You must be ready to get underground with a moment’s notice if we detect a threat.”
President Mallory looked like she was going to stand up, but Palmer held out her hand in restraint. “Stay on the cot. We don’t know what the resolution of the jet’s detector is or how sensitive it is. The pilot might see you moving inside this stopped truck.”
Mallory nodded.
“Green light,” the driver said just before the truck accelerated. “We’re on the move. Your stop is in two miles. Get ready to exit the vehicle.”
“Copy,” Palmer said. “Did you bring the weapons package for me?”
“As requested,” a medic operator replied, handing her a black satchel.
When Palmer examined its contents, she found a PDW with its stock folded—a weapon choice she’d borrowed from Carl—a Glock, spare mags for both, a sheathed eight-inch combat knife, a dozen grenades of the flash-bang and lethal variety, and an M-203 grenade launcher with a dozen shells.
Mallory said, “Let’s hope you won’t need all that.”
“We will.” Palmer looked at her as she holstered the Glock on her thigh and zipped the satchel. “I wish I had one of Carl’s armored battle suits, but I figured the Secret Service would search and clear the restaurant before you entered. I figured I could blend in with the staff, but not if I had armor.” She sighed. “Didn’t figure they’d blow up the whole block.”
She took a deep breath as much to steel her own resolve as to impart confidence to the president. “Anyway, as soon as we move, they’ll realize you’re alive. Depending on how far away that stealth fighter is, we might have twenty or thirty seconds max to get underground. Since the fighter can’t hit us underground, Rainman will send in a ground team to do it the old-fashioned way.”
McGrath added, “If Rainman is thinking like us, then his ground team is already in play, probably on standby like the jet until they verify you’re dead, Shirley.”
Palmer nodded to the president. “Aaron’s people can jam the subway surveillance system, but it’s only a matter of time before they hem us in.” She raised the duffel. “Then we’ll need this.”
Mallory nodded at the operators. “Are they escorting us?”
Palmer shook her head. “A big crowd of armed agents will be easier to find. We’ll be on our own until Aaron and Carl figure out a way to get us out of DC.”
“We’re working on that,” McGrath said. “Have the medic withdraw half a pint of blood from the president for a missile decoy.”
Palmer relayed the instructions, and the medic quickly attached a clear plastic tube to an IV bag, then gingerly stabbed Mallory in the forearm with the needle. For nearly half a minute, her blood filled the bag. Then he taped the tiny puncture site with gauze and covered it with a Band-Aid.
“Ten seconds!” The ambulance swerved to the right. “Subway entrance will be ten meters to your left as you exit the rear door. Good luck, Agent, Madam President.”
The medic grabbed the plastic blood bag and glanced at Palmer.
She nodded. “Let’s do this.”
The ambulance jerked to a stop, an operator flung open the door, and Palmer and the medic leaped out. The president stepped out of the ambulance and screamed in pain, collapsing as soon as her foot touched the pavement.
Agent Palmer caught the president just before she fell over sideways, but Mallory’s scream of pain made it clear she wasn’t going to be running. Palmer grabbed the bag of blood from the medic and shifted the president’s weight to him.
“Carry her,” she ordered. “And let’s move with a purpose. We’re on the clock here.”
She knew they had only a few seconds bef
ore the pilot of the fighter jet would realize Mallory was not dead, that her movement was not consistent with the ambulance. He’d need a few more seconds to clear his next action with Rainman, then he’d send another missile to their location. They had thirty seconds…at best.
The plan had been for Palmer, the president, and the medic to get underground fast. Then the medic would rush back to the ambulance with the decoy bag of blood, not to fool the pilot but to draw away the fire-and-forget missile that would be homing in on the last known location of the radioactive signal from her blood. That would avoid a direct hit on the train station. Now that part of the plan was no longer possible. Palmer knew it and the medic knew it.
He huffed and puffed carrying Mallory down the entrance stairs. At the bottom, he unceremoniously dumped the president to the concrete floor, then sprinted back up the steps three at a time.
“Blood!” he hollered. Palmer tossed it in his forward path and he snatched it from the air.
Palmer hefted Mallory to her feet and they fled as fast as she could limp away from the entrance.
The president said, “He’s not going to make it, is he?”
The blast came before Palmer could answer. The sound was tremendous, even though the TER agent likely got the decoy blood a hundred feet from the subway entrance. But the tactic was successful, and they avoided a direct hit on the station. Dust blasted into the ticket kiosk area behind them, the concrete structure rumbled, and some art-deco tiles popped off the walls, but that was the extent of the damage. It wasn’t even enough to set off any alarms that automatically interrupted the movement of the trains.
With the emergency over for the moment, Palmer slowed their pace. Their ride arrived a few seconds after they got to the platform. The electronic sign on the front of the train and on the side of every car of the train flashed red: NOT IN SERVICE. That was Aaron’s idea.
The doors opened and everyone got off the train. Many of the passengers seemed displeased even though an announcement informed them that another train would pick them up in two minutes.
Palmer and Mallory stepped onto the train and the doors closed. Palmer quickly got Mallory into a forward-facing seat and then the train accelerated. She knew Aaron was watching because the train hadn’t moved until Mallory was seated.
Palmer unzipped her duffel and pulled out a military first-aid kit. She gave Mallory three painkillers and wrapped two chemical ice packs against her swollen ankle as tightly as she could. Then they sat in silence and waited.
“All those men,” Mallory said. “All those people, dead because of me.”
“Not because of you.” Palmer reached over and held her hand. “Every TER field agent has read Carl Johnson’s after-action file. They all know what he sacrificed for you. Even though Carl was classified as a terrorist, he inspired people—mercenaries, an FBI director, USAF Colonel Vesario Reichert, even Agent Cummings. Carl set the bar extremely high when it comes to protecting you, and those TER agents back there gave their lives to do exactly that. It’s what we do for our president.”
Palmer looked at Mallory and squeezed her hand. “It’s what we do for you because you aren’t just the president. You’re special.”
Carl’s voice came on the net. “That’s right, Shirley. You are a role model for more people than any other world leader in history. More than Obama, more than Gandhi, more than Mother Teresa. Little girls all over the world now believe they can grow up and become the president of the United States or leaders of their countries. We cannot allow the bad guys to win. I cannot begin to imagine how dangerous the world will become without you as president.”
McGrath added, “And if we all have to die to keep you alive, that’s what we’ll do.”
Palmer patted Mallory’s hand and released it. She knew what Mallory was feeling. The president was the leader of the free world, a master politician and statesperson, but she wasn’t a combatant. She’d been the target of multiple assassination attempts during the release of the Contagion, but she’d been unconscious during that event. Now she was in the mix, and the most powerful person on the planet was running for her life while her enemy, Rainman, now controlled the Secret Service, the very agency sworn to protect her.
Palmer shook her head as she considered the irony of the president’s protectors. The train strategy was Carl’s idea, and it was McGrath’s idea to use the decoy blood bag to give them time to get underground. Two men were sworn enemies who at one point wanted to kill each other for what each had done to the other’s adult child. Carl’s son had died in an ill-fated sting that turned into an ambush. McGrath’s daughter survived Carl’s wrath, but she and her family would be traumatized for life by his actions. They were two of the smartest and most dynamic tacticians Palmer had ever known, one trained by a long covert government career and the other accidentally thrust into the world of terror eight months ago. Now they were working together to save the president.
“Carl,” Palmer said. “I assume you’ve connected our comm circuit to the rail system? The security and surveillance systems are under Wizard’s control?”
“Correct. It won’t take Rainman’s people long to locate your train, even though they don’t have access to the subway system cameras. DC isn’t that big. They’ll eventually just start sabotaging tracks manually, and then you’ll be stranded. So you can’t hide from that stealth fighter for more than a couple hours.
“Right now, you’re on the Red Line, but soon we’re going to divert your train onto the Yellow Line. The enemy is smart enough to figure our best bet is to get Shirley out of DC, so they’ll be watching Reagan National Airport because the subway stays underground all the way to the airport. The Metrorails to the other airports all become surface tracks outside DC, so those airports are not options for us. That leaves the municipal airport at College Park, so…” Carl’s voice trailed off.
McGrath added, “So you are on the decoy train...to Reagan. In about ten minutes, we’re going to land a fully armed F-22 Raptor at College Park. The two tactical helicopters that are now flying parallel with your decoy train will bug out at the last moment and provide cover for the F-22 when it lands. The two APCs that were escorting your ambulance survived the second missile attack, though the ambulance did not, so those APCs will converge on a subway station near that little airport, ready to rush you onto the tarmac, get you on that jet, and then provide tactical support.”
Carl added, “When we leave Reagan airport completely without tactical support, they’ll realize they’ve been had. They’ll think you’re going to College Park airport.”
Palmer nodded and looked at the president. “That’s an elegant head fake, Carl. So, by directing all our assets to College Park, you’re hoping to pull Rainman’s assets over there too.”
“They’ll see College Park as the only obvious choice to get the president in the air,” Carl said. “When they redeploy, we’ll launch the F-22 for intercept duty and hope they would also have redeployed their stealth fighter to that area. When it detects Shirley’s isotope back at Reagan, it will launch missiles. When it does, we’ll have its position and the air force can kill it. The choppers will be on antimissile defense duty. We’ll throw up a curtain defense between you and the stealth fighter.”
“No, I forbid it,” Mallory said. “What if all these missiles hit the ground? Too many good men and women have died already.”
McGrath countered, “Shirley, Rainman is going to attack, so our only chance to prevent more deaths is to destroy those missiles before they hit you or the ground.”
The president leaned her elbows on her knees and buried her face in her hands. She didn’t seem to realize Carl and Aaron could see her through the surveillance system, so Palmer put her hand on her shoulder.
“No.” Mallory shook her head. “Aaron, I order you to stop this madness.”
Carl said in a flat tone, “McGrath is not running this op, Madam President, and you should know by now that I take orders from no one.”
�
�But you don’t understand! These are real people dying because of decisions you’re making two thousand miles away!”
Palmer heard a noise in the background like Carl slammed a cup down or hit his desk. He shouted at the president. “Who the hell do you think you’re talking to? I know exactly what our people are sacrificing.” Carl took a deep breath that was audible over the channel, then sounded calm again. “Shirley, the young men and women who are dying…they’re soldiers and agents. This is what they signed up for. My son was innocent, and now he’s dead because our enemy doesn’t care about collateral damage. Your daughter almost died because of these people.”
Palmer understood that being in combat, or being a victim or target of combat, is traumatizing. The president had made many life or death decisions from her office. Now, however, when thrust in the middle of it, she was in shock. Carl Johnson was probably the only person who could reach her. He was the only one who could disobey her if that became necessary.
Carl spoke softly. “All the lives lost won’t matter if Rainman wins. All the things Aaron and I have done to each other won’t matter. All the people I’ve killed…”
Palmer sensed Carl was finding, at that very moment, his reason for living.
Carl continued, and his voice carried more compassion than Palmer had ever heard from him before. “These people—Atlas and Rainman—they must be stopped, but there has to be something beyond the killing. There has to be a reason for all this, Shirley, and you are that reason. You. Must. Live.”
The comm net was silent for a long time.
Palmer looked sideways at Mallory, who looked sideways back at her. She said, “Madam President, you have an extraordinary weapon in Carl Johnson because he doesn’t follow any standard rules of engagement, but you have to make the call, and you have to make it right now.”
American Terrorist Trilogy Page 83