He and Jae ran the other way, and Paul felt as if he could trip or run into something any second.
Jae pulled away from Paul and said, “I’ve got to call Angela.” To Paul’s enormous relief, it quickly became clear Angela had answered.
Jae stopped and began parroting Angela to Paul. “The noise scared the children. She told them she thought it was thunder, but she knows better. Wants to know if we’ve been attacked.”
Paul took the phone. “Do you have lights, Angela? electricity?”
“Yes. The movie’s still running.”
“We took a direct hit, probably right in the middle of the compound.”
“There is a God,” Angela said.
“Say again?”
“It was providential! The kids are all here. The adults should be at the other end, ready to leave.”
“You’re assuming we won’t be hit again.”
“I’m not assuming anything, Paul.”
“We’re heading your way,” he said, as he and Jae set out again.
Soon they came to a pile of rubble that extended floor to ceiling and wall to wall. Jae immediately tried picking at the bricks and chunks of concrete, but there would be no getting through it.
“This is hopeless, babe,” Paul said.
“Don’t tell me that. I’m going to get to the kids if it takes all night. Is there another route?”
He shook his head. “I’ll see if I can get a piece of equipment sent down here.”
“I’m going to keep working at it anyway, Paul. Then you go do what you have to do. I’m not leaving here without Brie and Connor.”
“Well, neither am I, Jae, but it will take a team of people to break through this.”
“I have to try. You go. I’m serious.”
“I’m not leaving without you either, Jae.”
“Keep your phone handy, Paul. You know where I am.”
“I’ll be back.”
* * *
Paul caught up with Jack and ran into frantic parents demanding to know how to get to their kids. Paul reported what Angela had told him. “We may have not yet suffered any casualties,” he said.
“Don’t be naive,” a man called out. “We had six security personnel at the middle entrance. Anyone heard from them?”
Jack began dialing. Paul said, “Anyone heard from Greenie?” The others shook their heads. “He was supposed to come back here and accelerate the exodus.”
“If you didn’t see him on the way, Paul, that means he had to go the other way.”
That’s right. He had been going to see Angela. But she had said nothing about seeing him. He had to have been lost under the collapse of the tunnel.
The major exits used by cars full of refugees were still intact. Paul urged Jack to keep people moving out. Those who wanted to could help Jae try to get to the children, but the rest had to go, and right now. More than a dozen ran toward Jae and the rubble. At Paul’s urging, Jack called for a small front-end loader. Maybe with lots of help, it could break through the pile.
Jae called. “I just found Mr. Macintosh,” she said. “No way he should be alive, but he is. His head should have been crushed. If I ever wondered whether God was real and cared . . .”
“I’ll be right there.”
“No, Paul. We’re all right. I’ll let you know when we get through.”
“Jae, people and equipment are on their way to help.”
43
THE SECOND MISSILE HIT as Jae and Greenie and more than a dozen other parents were trying to stay out of the front-end loader’s way while still helping to dig their way through to the children. The concussion shook the corridor and sent clouds of dust rushing at them. The emergency lights went out.
“They’re going to kill us all!” a woman shouted.
“We’ll suffocate!” a man yelled.
“Cover your mouths and keep working!”
“I can’t see anything!”
Jae called Angela.
“We felt it,” Angela said. “But we’re okay.”
“You still have electricity?” Jae said.
“Yes, but the kids are scared and many are crying.”
“We’re trying to get to you.”
* * *
Paul wanted Ranold. It was as simple as that. He called Straight and told him to pull out every stop, spend whatever he had to, and get the USSATN cameraman to Washington. Paul gave him an intersection three blocks north of the National Cathedral. “Have him call me when he gets there, and I’ll meet him.”
A few minutes later, Straight called back. “This is going to cost you. A limo is on its way to PSL to pick us up.”
“Us? You’re not coming.”
“Oh yes I am, and don’t waste your breath trying to talk me out of it. Graybill is signing the guy out, and we’ll be at Midway in fifteen. We’re chartering a fast one, Paul. I assume you meant what you said.”
“About doing whatever you had to do? Yes.”
“We’ll be there within an hour.”
Jack and Paul were supervising the exodus when Paul got a call from Abraham at the salt mines. “Paul, you must not make this personal between you and the head of the NPO.”
Straight always had made a practice of pulling other elders into Paul’s business. “I don’t have time to discuss this, Abraham. It’s been personal for a long time. The man is my father-in-law, and he cares for no one but himself. Not for his own son or wife or daughter or grandchildren, and certainly not for me. Now he’s bombing our underground, and we already should have at least seven casualties. God miraculously spared one of our men, and somebody’s signaling me now with a thumbs-up about six others who were guarding the entrance where we took a direct hit.”
“So God is protecting you, Paul. Let Him deal with your father-in-law.”
“He can deal with Ranold through me, Abraham. Just because these seven were spared doesn’t mean the man didn’t want to massacre us all. Who knows how many dead we might find? If he keeps attacking, our losses could be monumental.”
“Vengeance is the Lord’s.”
“You’re suggesting I sit on my hands?”
“I’m suggesting you count on cooler heads.”
“There are no cool heads here anymore, Abraham.”
“We’re praying for you.”
“Thanks.”
“Praying you’ll do what Jesus would do.”
Save your breath, Paul thought, but he held his tongue.
* * *
Ranold sat in the passenger seat of a Jeep next to the head of a militia group he had once attempted to prosecute. A sketch of the zealot underground layout was spread across their knees. “That’s one there and one there,” the man in fatigues said. “And that’s all we’ve got.”
“What if I paid you more?”
“I told you; that’s all we’ve got and all we care to risk. You should have a 50 percent kill rate with those. If we could have launched them from the air, we could have been even more accurate.”
“You don’t know the kill rate, man. You’d have to know where everyone is down there to know that.”
“We hit as centrally as we could, General. Hang on.” He looked at his cell phone. “It’s one of my guys.” He turned away. “Go ahead, Jimmy. Which end? No, let ’em go. We’ve done all we can do.”
He clapped his phone shut, and Decenti demanded to know what was going on.
“A mass exodus,” Fatigues said. “Guess we sent ’em pouring out of the south exit.”
“You should have troops there to mow ’em down,” Ranold said.
“I’m gettin’ my people out of the area. You couldn’t afford it anyway. This can’t be from your budget, can it? You have to do this off the books.”
“I can juggle some things. What would it cost me to—?”
“Listen, we’re done here. I’ll drop you somewhere, but this was a mercenary mission for us. We’re as exposed as we want to be, and I don’t need to be seen with you.”
“D
rop me at NPO headquarters so I can get a car.”
“Yeah, right. The night the zealot underground gets bombed, I’m seen dropping you off. Get serious.”
“Well, at least take me to where I can get a cab.”
* * *
Jack pulled Paul aside and pressed him against the wall. “We’ve got to do something,” he said. “We can’t sustain another hit. This whole place is going to go. People are stampeding as it is, frantic to get out of here. How do we know we’re not sending them into an ambush?”
“I’ll do anything you suggest, Jack. I brought this on just by being here.”
“Get to Decenti and do whatever you have to do to stop this.”
“I might have to kill him.”
“It’s kill or be killed, Paul.”
“I’ll call him, but I’ll need a vehicle.”
“We’re fast running out, but maybe you can take some people with you? drop them on the way?”
“Drop them where, Jack? I can’t leave them on the streets.”
“Oh, man!” Jack said. “Do you know who we have to get out of here? Marmet!”
“You mean Wipers. He still chained to the wall?”
“Yeah, probably screaming his head off and scared to death.”
“I wouldn’t mind leaving him on the street.”
Jack handed him keys. “Go get him. I’ll have a car and a weapon waiting for you at the southeast ramp.”
* * *
Still in pitch-darkness, Jae continued to work, her nails torn and her fingers bleeding. How thick was this pile of rubble? She didn’t care. She would dig until she saw light, and then she would make a hole big enough to get through or die trying. She was sickened by the propane exhaust of the loader and was likely going to die tonight anyway, but she would not go to her grave without knowing she had done everything she could to get to Brie and Connor.
“God, help us,” she said. All around her people gasped, grunted, dug, and tossed bricks and chunks of concrete.
“It’s no use!” someone said.
Jae kept working.
* * *
As Paul sprinted toward where Roscoe Wipers was detained, he wondered if he would ever forgive himself for leaving the compound without his kids. He was desperate for news, frantic to know whether Jae had gotten through and that they were all right. But he also knew there was nothing more he could do, short of digging through the rubble himself. And there were enough doing that. Probably too many. They were likely in each other’s way.
He called Ranold.
“Surprised to hear from you,” Decenti said. “Rumor has it there’s fireworks in your neighborhood.”
“Nice try, but you missed everybody, Dad.”
“That can’t be.”
“National Cathedral in ninety minutes.”
“I’ll be there, Paul.”
Paul felt his way into the dark room.
“Who is it?” Roscoe called out, whining. “Shoot me, please! Don’t let me die like this! I don’t want to be crushed! Or starve to death!”
“Calm down, Roscoe,” Paul said. “You’re coming with me.”
“What?”
Paul took off Roscoe’s handcuff that had tethered him to the wall. “You’re not going to hurt me now, are you, Wipers?”
“Hurt you? I should kiss you! Where we going?”
“I’m trying to get to your big boss, and meanwhile I’m turning you loose.”
“You’re kidding.”
“If I was kidding, I’d have left you here.”
44
JAE HAD NEVER WORKED so hard in her life, and from the sounds of the others wheezing, she assumed the same of them. There was nothing like the motivation of trying to get to your kids.
At one point one of the men shushed everybody. “Listen!” he said. “If we can hear through the rest of this, we’ll soon be able to see light peeking through.”
They listened. Jae heard nothing. Others said they heard voices, maybe the movie. Jae believed they were imagining it and was eager to get back to work. Half the time she didn’t know if her eyes were open or closed, it was that dark. She tasted grit and blinked away dust.
* * *
Paul and Roscoe felt their way to the southeast ramp, where cars waited, headlamps illuminated. Jack was there with others who had found flashlights. He gave Paul an ancient Uzi. “Fully loaded and like new,” Jack said.
Roscoe was jabbering away, apparently intoxicated with having gone from certain death to what appeared to be freedom. But Paul wasn’t listening. He was examining his own motives. How could he leave his wife and kids in harm’s way while he escaped?
Well, it was hardly an escape. Who knew what his father-in-law had in store? But Paul would never forgive himself if he survived this and his family didn’t. He called Jae as he and Roscoe slid into the car.
“Don’t be silly, Paul,” she said. “Plead for our children’s lives.”
“I won’t be pleading for anything, Jae. It’s going to be all I can do to keep from tearing the man apart.”
“Just stop him,” she said. “That’s all. Please.”
Paul didn’t understand the traffic. He knew long lines of cars were escaping the shelter, of course, but they were all to take different routes once they reached the main roads. What was all the other traffic? It was crawling, and a light snow was making the roads treacherous. And here he was with Roscoe Wipers, neither of them wearing coats. Paul cranked the heat and settled into the traffic jam crawling south on 29.
“I don’t get it,” Wipers said. “What good am I to you? Why didn’t you just leave me there to die?”
“Like the NPO did?”
“They think I’m dead already. You accomplished that. They would have got me out before this if they’d known.”
“You really believe that.”
“I’d like to.”
“Dream on, Roscoe. Think about who’s behind this.”
“Decenti, of course.”
“Of course. You know he’s my father-in-law.”
“Yeah.”
“And his daughter and grandchildren are in there.”
“Yeah.”
“And he’s lobbing bombs on the place. You think he cares more about you?”
Wipers shrugged. “But still, if I’m you, I’m leaving me there. I helped bring this on you.”
As they crept past the Walter Reed Army Medical Center, Paul got an idea. He could shoot southwest and then west on Military Road to Nebraska Avenue, then head southwest across Connecticut to Massachusetts. The cathedral would then be just southeast of him at Wisconsin Avenue and Woodley Road.
Bad idea. Once he was on Military Road, Paul was committed, but the traffic was, if anything, worse. “What is goin’ on?” Roscoe said.
Paul turned on the radio.
* * *
Now Jae could hear something through the pile. But what was it? She didn’t want to delude herself or imagine her own kids’ voices. But neither had she ever been as focused. Every time she heard a creak or groan in the structure, Jae imagined another cave-in, or worse, another shelling.
The others heard what she heard, and she could tell they were digging faster. There had to be an end to this, and once they and the loader got through, there would be a mad dash to get the kids to an exit where cars awaited.
* * *
“So why, Stepola?” Wipers said. “That’s all I want to know. I mean, I think I know why you flipped. I studied enough religion to fool them until my so-called son got snuffed in The Incident. You’re a believer, okay, fine. But that doesn’t explain why you came for me.”
“What kind of a person would I be if I hadn’t?”
“You’d be like me, that’s what.”
“And you said yourself, Roscoe, you’re not a believer. Believers do the right thing. At least we’re supposed to.”
“That’s what you’re doing now? Looking for your father-in-law so you can give him a hug?”
Traffic was too de
nse for Paul to shoot Roscoe a look. “I might as well be. I’m no less human than the next guy, and a huge part of me would like to take him out.”
“I can imagine.”
“But I don’t plan to shoot him.”
“Yeah, right.”
“I’m serious.”
“Then you’re crazy, Doc. Really.”
“People know where I’m going and who I’m going to see. Ranold tries anything with me, he’ll never get away with it.”
“So he gets caught! You get dead. What are you thinking? You want your family left without you if they do survive?”
The news had been droning in the background, Paul listening with one ear for any explanation for the exaggerated rush hour.
Finally it came: “Traffic continues to mount from the north in Washington, D.C., where two explosions have ripped through an abandoned industrial park. The blasts sparked a panic that had many residents fearing a military attack, though there is no evidence to suggest the same. People fleeing the area have joined the normal rush at this hour in the District, causing tie-ups on every major artery.”
Paul took a call from Straight.
“You listening to the news?”
“Yep. Where are you?”
“Mr. Davis and I are where you told us to be, no thanks to the traffic. Where are you?”
“Probably still half an hour away. You want to get Davis set up in there? The doors are always open.”
“Where?”
“I’ll see if I can lure Decenti into the main narthex and close to the altar. The government has covered the statuary and icons with heavy draperies that might give Davis good cover. I have no idea how the lighting will be. Just tell him to keep the camera rolling and pick up all the sound he can too.”
* * *
Ranold did not even have to sign out an NPO sedan. The car-pool guy said he would handle the paperwork. “I don’t even have to see your license, huh?” he said, laughing and apparently trying to elicit the same from Decenti.
But the interim chief of the NPO was off without a word, even of thanks, and he wasn’t a happy man when he hit traffic. He radioed a SWAT team and told them where he’d be. “And I want no one—repeat, no one—inside without my expressly asking for it.”
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