The Target

by David Baldacci

  “I know that, Robie.”

  “I’m thinking I have about another year of doing this and then I’m calling it a career.”

  She looked surprised. “When did you decide that?”

  “It seems like just now, but I’ve been thinking about it for a while.” He stretched his arm where the burned skin was. “Your little booby-trap on the Eastern Shore made me think about my life, I guess.” He smiled to show her he was kidding, but Reel did not return the look.

  “I can’t tell you how awful I feel about almost killing you.”

  “We were on opposite sides back then. It happened. I made it out. We’re okay.”

  She looked at his arm and leg where she knew the burns were. “I’ll make it up to you somehow, Robie.”

  “I think you already have.”

  “How?”

  “Well, most recently, North Korea.”

  “Doesn’t seem like enough.”

  “Trust me, it was,” he replied.

  “Are you really serious about getting out?”

  “I am very serious.”

  “What will you do?”

  He shrugged. “Who says I have to do anything? I’ve saved enough money. I live simply. I’ve seen the world, or at least the bad parts of it. I might just do…nothing.”

  “You don’t believe that, Robie. Not for a second.”

  “I might do nothing, for a while. And then I’ll figure it out.” He studied her. “What about you? You were all fired up to call it a career.”

  “Yeah, but then you said we could continue our careers and have a normal life. You made me believe that was possible.”

  “I still think it is.”

  “But now you’re quitting,” said Reel in a tone that indicated she felt he was betraying her.

  “I said I’m leaving in a year. In our line of work a year can be a lifetime. What about you?”

  “What about me?”

  “I know Evan Tucker had a private discussion with you. What did he say? That no matter how long it takes he’s going to bring you down?”

  She let out a long breath and shook her head. “No, he basically apologized for all the stuff he’d done.”

  “What?” said Robie, looking stunned.

  “He said I was right and he was wrong.”

  “Had he been drinking? Did his pupils look normal?”

  “I think he knew exactly what he was saying, Robie.”

  “Well, how the hell do you like that? I wonder what happened for him to change his mind like that.”

  “He said he’d reviewed all the evidence and had given it a lot of thought. Plus you and I had almost gotten killed trying to stop the conspiracy Gelder and Jacobs were involved in. And you and I risked our lives in Syria and in North Korea. I guess it all added up for him.”

  “So does that change things for you?” he asked.

  “How so?”

  “You going to stay on for a while?”

  “I don’t know. Probably not. Especially if you’re not going to be around.”

  He put an arm around her shoulders. “Well, you’ve got a year to think about that.”

  “Yeah, if I live that long.”

  Chapter

  73

  MIN HAD NEVER HEARD OF Halloween.

  She had never worn a costume.

  She still didn’t understand what Halloween was, though Chung-Cha had tried to explain it to her. But she now had on a costume and she had been given Halloween candy. They were at a small café on the main street of the downtown area that had been turned into a kids’ party room before the parade was to start.

  Chung-Cha had taken Min, who was dressed as a frog, her face hidden behind the costume, only her eyes and mouth visible. Chung-Cha was in the costume of a pirate. The café was filled with children in a wide variety of outfits. At first Min had been terrified to have the frog costume on. But once Chung-Cha had shown her it was only plastic and cloth and couldn’t hurt her, she allowed Chung-Cha to dress her up.

  At the front of the café, giving out candy, were the Cassions. When Chung-Cha saw this she panicked slightly. She had seen security people roaming outside, but she never thought that meant the first family would be handing out candy.

  She said to Min, “Go get your candy, I will be back.” Then she hurried to the far corner of the café, quickly becoming lost among all the other costumed folks.

  Min looked around frantically for her. With the frog costume covering her ears, she had barely heard what Chung-Cha had said, and then when she saw that she was gone, she started to panic. However, she was being herded with the rest of the kids to receive her candy from the Cassions.

  As she got to the front of the line, Min was badly scared. She could not see Chung-Cha anywhere, and kids and their parents were crowding in on her from all sides.

  When she looked up she was standing directly in front of Tommy Cassion, who was, as he had said, dressed as Wolverine. She looked at him and he looked at her.

  “Nice frog,” said Tommy as he held out a handful of candy.

  Out of Min’s panicked mind came one thought. She said, “My name is Min. I am ten. Will you help me?”

  Tommy looked at her strangely as he dumped the candy into her pumpkin bucket.

  Then Min said something else, but it wasn’t in English. She had reverted to Korean.

  “Are you okay?” asked Tommy.

  “My name is Min. I am ten. Will you help me?”

  Tommy started to say something, but a hand reached out and pulled Min away so that other kids could get their candy.

  Min looked around the room and breathed a sigh of relief when Chung-Cha rushed over to her. Before she could say anything, Chung-Cha knelt down and hugged her.

  “It’s okay, Min. I’m right here. It’s okay.”

  Chung-Cha led her outside and then down the street away from the crowds. They reached an alleyway where there was a little brick stoop. Chung-Cha perched next to Min on the bottom step. She had made certain that none of her team had seen them. They also didn’t know that Min was dressed as a frog. Chung-Cha would carry out her mission, but Min would be safe. Min was not going to die. Not by Chung-Cha’s hand.

  “Min, you have to listen to me very carefully, okay?”

  Min nodded, the frog head bobbing up and down.

  “I have to go away for a little bit.”

  Min started to jump up, but Chung-Cha held her back.

  “Just for a little bit.”

  From the alleyway she looked across the street where the town police station was located.

  “Do you see that place over there?” She pointed.

  Min looked past her and nodded.

  “I want you to take my watch.” She slipped it off her wrist and handed it to Min. “Now, when this little line gets here, I want you to go over to that place and tell them what I told you to say. You remember it? In English? Can you say it for me?”

  “I am Min. I am ten. Will you help me?”

  “That is perfect, Min. Perfect. Now, remember, when this line reaches this point, that is when you will go.”

  Chung-Cha was indicating an hour from now.

  “But where will you be, Chung-Cha?”

  “I have a few things to do. But I know those people over there will take care of you until I get back. They are good people, Min. They will help you.”

  “But you are coming back, aren’t you?” said Min fearfully.

  “I will be back,” said Chung-Cha, forcing herself to smile. And then she thought to herself, Please forgive me for that lie, Min. And please don’t forget me. I only want your life to be a good one.

  Min reached out and wrapped her arms around her. Chung-Cha returned her hug, fighting back the tears.

  “I love you, Chung-Cha.”

  “And I love you, Min.”

  Fifteen minutes later Chung-Cha joined her team near the target location. They were all dressed in costumes.

  Jing-Sang came up to her. “Ready, Comrade?”
r />   “Of course.”

  “And Min?”

  “She is back at the cottage. She drank her milk…and went to sleep.”

  Jing-Sang smiled. “Then let us do this great deed. To the glory, Chung-Cha.”

  “To the glory,” repeated Chung-Cha.

  Out on the main street the elements of the parade were assembling. There were motorized vehicles with floats built on them, a high school band, dozens of costumed zombies, and a plethora of other colorfully clad Halloweeners.

  There was also a long Chinese dragon that had emerged from an alley. Underneath its cover one could just make out a number of sneakered feet marching along.

  “We ready to move to the town hall, Sam?” Eleanor Cassion was looking at her protection detail leader.

  He spoke into his walkie-talkie and then gave her a thumbs-up. “We’re ready to roll, ma’am. Side entrance over there. Two-minute walk to the left and up the front steps.”

  He and another of his men stood on either side of the Cassions as they filed toward the door.

  Sam gave Robie and Reel a high sign. They nodded and fell into step behind the Cassions.

  Claire was dressed in a poofed-out long blonde wig with a headband and skinny jeans. She turned and looked at Robie, who wasn’t in costume. “Can you guess who I am?”

  He shook his head while Reel, who had also decided against dressing up as Maleficent, looked on, a curious expression on her face.

  “Stevie Nicks. She was a singer with some band way back.”

  “Uh, that some band would be Fleetwood Mac,” said Reel.

  “Yeah, them. They were apparently really popular at some point.”

  “I thought you were going as some TV character from way back in the early 2000s,” said Robie.

  “I was, but I couldn’t think of any. My mom told me about this Stevie person and she had a blonde wig.”

  “Yay for Mom,” said Reel.

  The local police and the Secret Service detail surrounded the Cassions as they walked down the street toward the town hall. The sun was setting and the sky looked nearly molten. The wind was picking up and there was the threat of rain later that evening, something the parade organizers were desperately hoping would not happen.

  Chapter

  74

  THEY WERE NEARLY AT THE town hall when Robie spotted it. The Chinese dragon marched into place near the front doors of the building. He observed the great many feet under the dragon’s skin.

  He looked at Reel, whose gaze was also on the dragon.

  “Better to be safe than sorry,” he said, and Reel nodded in agreement.

  He spoke into his walkie-talkie, and a minute later the Cassions were being hustled into the town hall. Several deputies raced over to the Chinese dragon and started pulling up the dragon’s “skin.”

  Robie saw astonished faces revealed when they did so.

  They were teenagers. American teenagers.

  Robie smiled at Reel. “Okay, I’m officially paranoid.”

  “You think?” she replied.

  They entered the town hall and Robie said to Sam, “Dragon was a false alarm. Sorry, kind of like the car backfire.”

  “No harm, no foul,” replied Sam, though he looked a bit put off.

  Eleanor came over to them. “What is going on?”

  “False alarm, ma’am,” said Sam. “We can proceed on schedule and—”

  He didn’t get a chance to finish as a round hit him in the head, spraying everyone with blood.

  Robie grabbed Eleanor and jerked her downward as Reel turned and fired shots in the direction from which the round had come.

  Making her stay low, Robie pushed Eleanor toward the others. He yelled to one Secret Service agent who was shielding the two children, “Get them through that door. Now!”

  Another agent came up to help, and together they pushed the kids ahead of them.

  Claire started crying as she saw Sam dead on the floor. Tommy looked too afraid to make a sound.

  Eleanor called out to her children even as one of the agents with them was hit in the back of the head and went down, falling over a stack of chairs.

  A body came tumbling down from the second-floor balcony and hit the floor hard. It was one of the deputies from the local police. He’d been shot in the forehead.

  “They’ve got the high ground,” yelled out Reel as she kept backing away, acting as the rear guard and firing widely angled shots at the balcony to provide cover.

  “Move, move!” Robie urged Eleanor as more shots rang out.

  The other agent with Claire and Tommy went down with a bullet in his spine.

  “Reel!” yelled Robie.

  Reel catapulted across the room and hit the man who had just appeared in the doorway. Her kick crushed his face and sent him flying backward, his weapon sailing away. Before he could try to get up, Reel had fired a bullet into his head.

  The next instant she was falling backward as another man struck her low, driving his shoulder into her gut. She hit the floor and spun away on the smooth wood. She still had her gun and was preparing to fire when a shot rang out. The man who had hit Reel stood there stiffly for a second and then toppled forward, his face largely gone from the round Robie had fired into it.

  Claire and Eleanor screamed as another man raced into the room brandishing an MP5 submachine gun. But before he could fire, Robie forced him to take cover when he emptied his clip at the man. Robie pulled Eleanor along and through a doorway as Reel sprinted across the room, hurdled a table, grabbed both kids, and propelled them into the same interior room, kicking the door shut behind her.

  Back in the main room another Secret Service agent and a deputy raced in. The deputy was shot in the chest and went down before even firing his gun. The agent fired three shots at the second floor and a yell indicated that he had struck someone. Then he went down in a hail of fire from the man toting the MP5. But he still managed to empty his clip and killed the man who had just ended his life.

  Inside the other room Robie and Reel pulled the first family away from the doorway and flattened them to the floor just in time. MP5 rounds ripped through it, spraying metal and wood in all directions.

  As soon as the shooting stopped, Robie and Reel led Eleanor and her kids through another interior doorway. Robie locked the door and then surveyed the room. It was small, windowless, and there was a set of