The thin rectangle of light under the closet door went away. Alyssa waited a few moments, assuming the guards would do as they had last time and go down a different corridor.
Finally, she moved to let herself out of the supply closet.
In the darkness, she bumped into a thick mop handle as she twisted the door knob and pushed it open.
The mop fell to the floor, clattering as it hit.
At once, she heard rapid footfalls as the guards returned to the hall they had just patrolled.
Alyssa grabbed the mop handle and broke it against the door frame. She gripped the end without the mop head on it in her hand like a weapon.
She stepped out of the closet and charged forward, just as the guards came back around the corner with weapons drawn.
Alyssa smacked one in the gun hand with her stick and immediately turned the stick around and did the same thing to a second guard. Both shouted in pain and dropped their weapons, squeezing their right hands.
The problem was there were four of them. The third one was bringing his shotgun around to bear on Alyssa. She kicked one of the guards she’d already injured, sending him flying into the shotgun-wielder. Both fell to the ground.
She swung her stick at the fourth guard, who leaped back out of the way. He was trying to bring his M-4 to bear on her, but the quarters were too close for him to aim the weapon properly. They struggled, gun pushing against mop-handle-turned-weapon. Quickly, Alyssa dropped her stick; it wasn’t doing any good anymore. She got the guard in the jaw with a right cross and then kicked him in the knee. The man screamed, his leg probably broken.
Seeing movement to the side, Alyssa turned to confront the shotgun-wielding guard, who was getting back up off the floor. She stripped the weapon out of his hand while he was off balance. Then she struck him in the side of the head with the butt. He went right back down.
CHAPTER 18
Vincent and Barr were backed up against the giant plate glass window, with their hands in the air. The very same bald man with the abused nose from the video stood in front of them. The difference was that, now, he was holding a full-sized, large-caliber handgun with a giant sound suppressor hanging on the front barrel.
Congressman Mike Vincent stood with a pistol aimed at his chest, but one could never have told it by his demeanor. Matt Barr saw the look of peace that always came over his friend’s face when he was praying. Silently, the reporter added his own.
Mike just looked the attacker in the eye and smiled at him.
“You must be Luther Cobalt,” Vincent said. “My opposition research guy tells me you just got fired as a Correctional Officer. I suppose that video has something to do with the reason why.”
Instead of answering him, Luther just snarled.
“Vincent, you have no idea how long I’ve been waiting to kill you.”
The Congressman lifted his eyebrows and replied, “Have we met? I didn’t even know you existed until I got the Oppo report on Doyle’s brother being fired.”
Luther grabbed Vincent by the lapel of his suit coat, turned, and threw him against the wall, aiming the gun at his face as he did so.
He shouted, “That’s exactly right! You never knew I existed! You never knew any of us existed. You didn’t care how many people lost their jobs. All you cared about was getting your headlines for being Mister Clean and breaking up a Federal contracting scandal! Never mind that I lost my job and had to scrape like a dog for every dollar. Never mind what I had to go through to come back. Never mind all the guys like me, who used to work with me, who all got put out in the cold so you could look like a hero!”
Vincent looked crossways at him. “Did you… work at Electron Guidewire?”
“That’s right! Until you needed an issue for your election and didn’t care who had to lose their job and go broke so you could get it! So you saw a little video of me talking to my brother, and you don’t like how I’m going to make up for all the years of being penniless? You don’t like how I got back on my feet? Well guess what Vincent: I care every last bit as much as you cared about me when you were getting yours. Sucks to be you.”
Matt watched with wide eyes as his friend struggled in Cobalt’s grip. He was afraid to interfere, with a gun inches from his mentor’s face and a finger on the trigger. Trying to create some kind of distraction or diversion, he decided to ask a question.
“I don’t get how the Genetic Probable Cause Bill is going to make you rich?”
“Idiot!” Cobalt growled. “The Feds pass that law, suddenly everyone — everyone! — is giving the Federal government a DNA sample. Get a DUI? DNA sample. Drunk and disorderly conduct? DNA sample. Getting a traffic ticket will get you in the Federal government’s DNA database.
“And who do you think will have the contract to store all that? Who do you think will be looking at all that? Cobalt Data Mining Systems, that’s who! I’m gonna know who’s got cancer before they do. I’m going to know who’s an alcoholic before they do.”
Luther Cobalt paused in his tirade to laugh and then finished.
“Oh yeah, your family tree? I’m going to know that way better than you do.”
He redirected his attention to Vincent and said, “Just think: you could have avoided all of that if you hadn’t wanted to be famous so bad that you cost a bunch of innocent people their jobs. Well, tonight you pay the price. Tonight you die, Vincent.”
He pressed the silencer to Vincent’s forehead.
Vincent smiled at him, and said, “OK with me. Jesus loves you, brother.”
Behind them, at that moment, the computer started buzzing an insistent alarm tone.
All of them turned to look. Cobalt turned away from Vincent, granting him at least a momentary reprieve. An icon flashed to life and filled the whole screen with a flashing red border.
The words, “Alarm activated” blinked in front of the picture that filled the screen.
That picture was video from a security camera right near where a wall-mounted alarm had been pulled.
One of Luther’s hired thugs leaned against the wall, holding his weight up by clinging to the alarm. His leg was obviously injured by the way he kept his weight off it and leaned on the wall and alarm.
Around him, three of his comrades lay on the ground, unconscious, dead, or immobilized. Their weapons were scattered around them in a haphazard pile.
For some reason, a broken mop handle lay amid the discarded weapons.
The man leaning on the alarm stared right at the security camera and, although there was no sound, he mouthed the word, “Help!”
Standing in the middle of the chaos, fists clenched at her side, panting for breath, dressed in black from head to toe, was Alyssa Chambers.
She turned to the guy leaning on the alarm and delivered a slow, beautiful, arcing crescent kick right to his head. He collapsed to the ground.
Cobalt swore and then added, “I will murder her. I’ll rip her head off.”
He sprinted out of the room.
***
With the ear-splitting klaxon of the alarm wailing in her ears, Alyssa made a snap decision. Any minute now, any guards who were left in the building would converge on her location. However, around the corner and down the hall was the door where all of the guards had previously gathered. Their behavior suggested that something interesting was behind it.
She darted back to that door.
She arrived just as it opened. A guard came up from the basement, dressed in black like all the others. He had obviously been summoned by the alarm.
His eyes went wide as he emerged from the door to run headlong into her. Alyssa reacted faster. She got in enough good hits to leave him on the ground and then ran through the door.
Behind it were steps leading down. She took them at a flying clip, three steps at a time, until she made it to the basement hallway. Once there, there was only one door with light coming from behind it. She darted over there. Just as she did, someone shut the alarm off. That probably meant she didn�
��t have much time.
Throwing open the door, Alyssa saw a nearly bare room with gray cement walls and a linoleum floor. A bare light bulb hung from the ceiling, flooding the area with harsh, unshielded light.
Most striking of all, though, was the slight frame of a small, young woman tied to a chair near the middle of the room. In addition to the cords binding her wrists, she wore duct tape over her mouth and a blindfold tied around her head. She still had on her prison khaki uniform and the ugly black shoes the government issued new inmates. Her spiky brown hair was instantly familiar.
Moira LeBlanc.
Whatever was going on, it wasn’t as plain as Alyssa thought when she left the prison. If Moira had escaped, why was she a prisoner here?
She dashed over and undid the blindfold. Moira’s eyes squinted shut against the bright light.
Alyssa’s fingers fumbled as she rushed the ropes, struggling to get the girl free as quickly as possible. One hand came loose.
As it did, she heard heavy footfalls behind her.
Alyssa had left the door open, so the sound carried clearly. Rubber soles of tactical boots thudded hard on the bare concrete.
She turned around, expecting to see more guards who had come in response to the alarm.
Standing in the doorway, looking at her with a vicious glare she had seen too many times already, was Luther Cobalt.
Alyssa dropped into a guard stance.
Cobalt looked around at the room. The only exit was the metal door frame in which he stood.
“There’s no fire alarm here that you can pull,” he said.
***
When he dashed out of the room, Luther Cobalt had pulled the door to the office shut, slamming it behind him. He was barely gone before Matt ran over to it and began trying to work the knob.
It wouldn’t budge.
He pulled hard against the door trying to open it, but it didn’t budge. From outside a guard called in.
“You two just cool your jets. Luther said not to let you out. I don’t want to have to shoot you, but I will if I have to.”
Ignoring the instructions, Matt braced himself and kicked as hard as he could right near the door knob. The wood splintered but didn’t break.
The guard shouted, “I warned you! Sit still!”
Matt kicked again and felt his foot almost break through to the other side of the door.
Outside it, they heard a voice swearing. Matt was getting ready to kick again, but Mike Vincent tackled him and dragged him away from the door.
Just in time. The guard outside fired his carbine through it, punching holes through the door accompanied by painfully loud explosive gunshots.
Vincent said, “Matt, I get where you’re coming from, but don’t get shot.”
“Mike, I’ve got to get to her. Alyssa’s here! And Cobalt is going to kill her.”
“You won’t do her any good if you provoke this guard into shooting you.”
From outside the door they heard, “That’s right!”
“We get it,” Vincent shouted back. “Don’t shoot!”
With that, he dragged Matt away from the door. When they were a few feet away, he whispered to his friend.
“I’ve got an idea. This place is just a high end executive office, not a prison. They never intended to hold people here. Follow me.”
Vincent went back to Doyle Cobalt’s desk and pulled out the center drawer. As quietly as he could, he shifted all the contents around, looking for something. He prayed and muttered as he dug. Finally, he found a small flat blade screw driver.
Vincent grinned like a Cheshire cat as he drew it out of the desk. Pressing a finger to his lips and giving Matt a very stern look, the Congressman tiptoed back to the door. Standing to one side of it, he stretched up and fitted the screwdriver into the first of three screws on the top hinge. They were meant for a Phillips screwdriver, but he didn’t let that stop him.
Silently, he worked the screws out one at a time. Then he got Matt to hold the top hinge in place while he unfastened the bottom one.
Whispering so quietly as to be barely audible, Vincent addressed his friend. He shared his plan.
“Pull the door in toward us to get the latch out of the door frame. Then we throw it as hard as we can into the outside room, hoping we hit the guard. Then we charge him.”
Matt nodded.
Vincent whispered, “We have to move like lightning. When I start pulling the door in toward us, you join in. Pull in as far as both our arms will reach, then throw back out as fast as possible. I won’t give any verbal signal; it would add to his warning time.”
Again, the reporter nodded.
Vincent hooked his fingers under the bottom of the door. Matt did the same at the top. Silently, Mike mouthed a count down.
“Three… two…”
As one, both of them drew the door into their room slightly and hurled it out. The guard cried out in pain as it hit him. The two men both shouted at the top of their lungs as they ran through the door at him.
The guard had been hit in the face by the corner of the door, and his nose was bleeding. Matt jumped on him and started punching his face, over and over again.
Vincent came out behind them and grabbed Matt by the collar, pulling him back from the guard.
“Easy. He’s down,” the Congressman said.
As Matt stopped his fist in midair and sat there panting, Vincent pulled the short-barreled M-4 carbine out of the black-clad man’s grasp.
Matt scrambled back to his feet.
“I’m going after Alyssa,” he said.
Congressman Vincent said, “Matt, you don’t know where she is.”
“Just run toward the sound of the fighting usually works with her.”
Vincent took his friend by the shoulders and held eye contact.
“Matt, listen to me. You saw Cobalt. He’s a killer. He’s a huge man, and he’s capable of murder. I was looking in his eyes while he was getting ready to pull the trigger on me. You aren’t prepared, Matt. You aren’t a fighter. Alyssa is. Let her handle it.”
Matt replied, “If all I can do is stand between her and the gun, then that’s what I’m going to do.”
With that, he turned and bolted down the hall.
CHAPTER 19
A young, female police dispatcher sat in front of a computer. She wore a headset that covered one ear and held a boom mic in front of her mouth. Her small town in Northern Virginia didn’t have a lot of crime, so she was the only dispatcher on duty that morning.
Her panel lit up, promising a more interesting day than she expected. She pressed the button to engage.
“Nine one one, what is your emergency?” she asked.
“Possible homicide in progress. My name is Mike Vincent. I’m a Member of Congress. We need a response at once.”
The caller gave an address. It came up automatically on her screen anyway, but she had found that callers usually insisted on giving it if they had it. It was a few miles out of town.
She began keying instructions into her computer, summoning county sheriff personnel to the location. It was their jurisdiction. She was about to type some more orders into her computer because the caller identified himself as a Congressman. Since September 11, 2001, there were special protocols in place for a threat that involved one of them.
Before the young dispatcher could do anything else, a hand came down over the keyboard, stopping her.
She looked up to see her supervisor. She stared at him in confusion. He pressed the mute button on her keyboard.
“Belay that call to the Sheriff,” he said.
“What? Why? Sir, he said there’s a homicide…”
The supervisor shook his head.
“I just got a call from the Secret Service,” he said. “They mentioned something called Executive Order 15342. They’re claiming jurisdiction at that site.”
The operator looked confused. “But…”
“It’s a done deal,” her supervisor said. “We’re not
allowed. This is a federal matter. Send them no help. Terminate the call.”
The operator’s conscience bothered her as she hit the disengage button. But it had been a direct order, after all.
***
Alyssa circled warily, eyes on Cobalt’s shoulders and hips, watching for hints of his intentions. There was no reason for her to leap into the fight. She could see Moira tied to a chair in the back of the room, and Cobalt couldn’t hurt the younger girl as long as he was focused on Alyssa. Delay was her friend, and she used it.
With no warning he lunged at her, hand coming in toward the midsection, trying to get under her guard. She slipped to the side, expecting to dodge a punch, but he wasn’t interested in striking. Cobalt moved his arm, grabbed hold of her jacket near the shoulder, and tried to pull her forward.
Alyssa recognized the move. He wanted to put her on the ground. At first, she didn’t panic; the counter was to let him pull her forward slightly but move her leg forward at the same time, keeping her balance and then turn what was supposed to be his throw into her pivot and punch, for a solid hit to the ribs.
The entire plan evaporated when she felt the power of his throw.
He’s so strong!
She was flying forward before the thought had time to fully form. It was all she could do to tuck her head, take the landing on her shoulder, and roll. Only by the thinnest of margins did she get back to her feet before Cobalt could fall on her.
A swift kick stopped his forward momentum and then she shuffled back.
The fight became a chess match, with Alyssa backing out of his range and circling every time Cobalt tried to get close. Having experienced the force of his arms, she had no desire to fight in close.
A quick poke to the eyes to make him block, then she dodged his hands.
She ducked under a punch, delivered a chopping hand to his groin, and scampered away to his rear before he could reach down.
She fought like a guerrilla army, striking and fading away. It was tiring for her, but he had more bulk to move. It had to be even more tiring for him. Both of them had sweat pouring off their faces.
Born with Secrets: A Political Thriller Page 14