She gave him a knowing look.
That wasn’t hard to figure out, either.
“Ma’am, I appreciate it, but I’m a pilot. You saw me up in my waiting room. When the pilot gets poisoned by the fish dinner, I step in and fly the plane.” He rubbed the back of his neck. He wasn’t saying no, but he realized he wasn’t saying yes.
“When your country calls, are you letting it go to voicemail?”
He scratched his head, not sure how to answer. “What, exactly, do you want me to do?”
“Just be ready,” she said as she bounded out of her chair, seemingly sure of his answer. “When we get down to the ground, I don’t know what we’re going to find. At this point, I only ask that you watch my backside.”
She flexed her hip to one side and looked over her shoulder as she stood next to the door. She was trying to be cute in showing him the backside in question, but he purposefully avoided looking at anything below her eyes. She was the vice president of the most powerful nation in the world, not some sex symbol.
“I’ll need a weapon, ma’am.”
She acted like she was going to open the door, but then hesitated. After stepping back a pace, she hiked up her black skirt a little and pulled out the revolver. He figured she had a thigh holster.
“Here. Use this. Keep it hidden.”
He decided to show his own hand, so he spun around and lifted the hem of his long-sleeved shirt. The grip of John’s Sig Sauer pistol stuck out of his trousers.
“I guess that confirms it,” she said dryly. “If you’d wanted me dead, I’d be dead.”
“Why would I want you dead?” Ted asked with surprise.
“Oh, it’s how Auger and his people have me thinking. With the endless death threats and letters filled with mysterious powder, it’s easy to lose faith in people. When I see you and your gun, I naturally think of how easy it would have been for you to take me out.”
“Ma’am, you live and work around US military personnel. Any one of them could be trained to take you down. Our whole system is built on mutual trust.”
She nodded agreement. “And that’s why it’s so important for you to come onto my team. Here, let’s trade guns. My guys are probably up on that deck looking for it, right now. At least you know this one wasn’t used in a crime.”
They shared a laugh as they swapped. If she’d asked, he’d have preferred the Sig because it had more rounds left, but he wasn’t going to argue with her.
“This is a modified .357 Ruger LCR. Five-round cylinder. I had a laser sight put on. It’s been dialed in by the guys in Auger’s department. I’ve tested it on at least one live target.”
It was a grim reading of her self-defense shooting not fifteen minutes ago. He studied her hands, pleased to see they were no longer shaking. The talk of guns, trust, and fighting back seemed to bolster her spirits.
After he stowed the revolver, she motioned him to follow her out the door.
A short time later, they were on the flight deck behind the pilot and co-pilot. They’d regained altitude to about ten thousand feet and cruised above the irregular coastlines of the upper Chesapeake Bay.
“How’s it look at Andrews Air Force Base?” the VP asked.
“Okay, ma’am. The tower isn’t broadcasting, but the transponder is active. We’ll have to confirm the runway visually, but it shouldn’t be a problem because they’ll clear everyone in our flight path once they see us on approach. I’m not showing any weather in the area.”
“Excellent.”
Emily pulled him into the short hallway between the flight and the intel decks. “Ted, when we get on the ground, I have no idea what’s going to happen. I want you to get off the plane first and talk to Special Agent Melvin Jones. Tell him what happened up here and that I’ve lost confidence in my field detail. He’ll know what to do next.”
“He won’t shoot me, will he?” Ted smiled hopefully.
“Medals, Ted. There’s going to be a shitload of medals when this is over. You’ll have to take chances to get them.” She quietly laughed for a moment but turned reflective. “Show him my revolver. He helped me sight it. He’ll know I gave it to you, and why.”
“Um. Won’t he think I killed you and took it?”
She patted him on the arm. Because she was a bit shorter, she looked up into his eyes. “If you’d killed me, do you think the rest of the crew would simply let you walk off the plane with my gun?”
He felt like a first-year cadet for not seeing the obvious.
“Of course. It seems like you have this figured out.”
They were closer together than he thought appropriate for their respective stations, so he took a step back. However, she grabbed his arm and peered up with her steady brown eyes.
“Ted, I’m going to tell you a secret. Something I’ve never said on all my campaign stops for the president and haven’t even said since we’ve been in office. Not even during that dust-up with the Chinese.” She paused dramatically. “I’m scared shitless. I freaking killed a man. That was not what I had in mind when my job description said, ‘other duties as assigned,’ you know?”
The plane vibrated as they lost airspeed and altitude.
“Ma’am, let’s get this puppy on the ground and get you into some proper protection, then you can reflect on what you had to do. Until then, don’t think about it.”
“More good advice from my bodyguard.”
Her grin was magnetic. He couldn’t look away.
“I do what I can,” he replied.
A metallic ding meant the fasten seatbelt sign was back on.
The VP spun around and went into the intel deck. She didn’t even glance at John’s corpse still on the floor.
Bonne Terre, MO
“Are we going down there?” Audrey asked in a mouse-like voice.
Tabby realized she’d been standing there lost in thought for way too long. She’d be with Mom and Dad soon enough, so she didn’t need to see them right that second. That was her own panic creeping through the darkness.
“Shine your light down there,” she ordered the young woman.
When the light was in position, she stepped closer to the top landing. “You three were already down these steps, remember? There’s a SCUBA area. Boat dock. And there are more walking trails along the lake. There’s nothing to be scared of, except Bonnie, and she doesn’t bite hard.”
“B-Bonnie?” Audrey replied.
Tabby rolled her eyes. Clearly, she’d been expecting too much of her joke. The kids probably already forgot the name of the lone inhabitant in the underground lake.
“Bonnie is a fish, Audrey. A small, harmless little fish. You saw her on the tour, remember?”
“I fed it,” Peter bragged. He came at the right time; Dad always let kids feed the lone resident of the lake.
“Right. See? Peter fed it.”
Audrey shined her light in Tabby’s face, until she winced and turned her head.
“Oh, sorry,” the girl said. “I believe you. It’s just that it’s so dark down there.”
“C’mon, y’all. I don’t want to split up. That’s not what tour guides do.” Tabby started down the dark stairwell.
The three kids murmured among themselves but hurried down the wet stairs, as if unwilling to be left behind.
Minutes later, they were at the SCUBA and boat dock. Two long rows of tanks and regulators hung from hooks. On a normal day, there would be groups of divers who came here to get their certification. The clear, calm waters were perfect for newbies. If the lights had gone out later in the day, there might have been swimmers in the water, but the high schoolers came through on the first tour, before the place really started hopping.
“Dad doesn’t allow overly powerful lights underwater because we provide enough with the overheads. That makes it so visitors down there get the optimal experience, instead of dealing with a billion lights in their eyes.” She pulled off one of the small waterproof flashlights. “But he does let people use these pinpoi
nt lights.”
The light was attached to a thick loop that could be wrapped around the wrist. Perfect for hands-free diving when you needed to see into a dark passage or light up a piece of rusting excavation equipment. There were miles and miles of flooded passageways to explore and having hands free of gear was critical to getting around fast.
The light clicked on, illuminating the SCUBA dock in a satisfying way.
“I’ll take one!” Donovan yelped, coming out of his funk.
She handed them out like it was Halloween.
The three kids put them on their wrists, like they were going underwater. She did the same, to show solidarity. Tabby also grabbed two more but didn’t turn them on. She figured it didn’t hurt to be prepared.
“Can we go back now?” Peter asked. Of the three of them, he seemed to handle the unusual situation the best. Tabby assumed that was because he was trying to impress a girl. She was fine with that, she’d decided, if it helped keep at least one person from rocking the boat.
She tried to use that power to her advantage. “Peter, do you want to lead us back? Just follow the yellow arrows painted on the ground.” She pointed to the first one.
“Sure,” Peter replied after seeming to think about it for a few moments. “Don’t fall behind.” He looked at Audrey to make sure she was okay. Tabby noted how Audrey, for all her bluster, smiled weakly when the boy shined his light on her.
Peter then pointed his light to Donovan. The white stripes on the thin boy’s athletic shorts glowed because they were reflective.
Finally, he directed the beam to Tabby’s stretch pants.
“Peter, I’m right here,” she said in a grim tone.
“Move out!” he ordered, whisking the light from her legs.
Once on the move, and not looking at girls, Peter was a good tour guide. He kept a steady pace and didn’t dwell on the tight, dark passageway when they went up the steps between level one and two. However, when they came around the last of the big pillars, Tabby called out to him.
“Whoa! Wait up.”
Peter didn’t need to be told twice.
“What the heck is that?” he asked.
The elevator wreckage was still there, of course, but now the fire was a rager. The flow of liquid coming down the shaft had become a torrent, and the seemingly wet fire tried to climb back up the walls after it splashed all over the debris choking the bottom. Lots of it spilled out of the metal jailhouse door, and it ran down the path toward their position like liquid metal.
“I think there is something serious going on up top,” Tabby said in a calm, emotion-free tone. Her insides shook like a magnitude 9.0 plate of Jell-o, but she was always mindful of the example she set for the others.
Her memories begrudgingly went back to something Dad mentioned a year or two ago, while she listened during one of his tours. Someone asked what would happen to the mine if a nuclear bomb went off up top. His response was glib, like always.
First of all, if they dropped a nuke on Bonne Terre, they’d waste a perfectly good bomb. There’s nothing left in this town but fast food and faster salesmen on the used car lots.
The visitors on the tour laughed, as expected.
But if a bomb did drop up there, we might not even notice it down here. We have enough water to last a lifetime. Sure, we’d probably resort to eating each other once our snack packs ran out, but that’s way down the road, right?
More laughter from the crowd.
Now, seeing it as a totally plausible explanation for the molten metal coming down the shaft, Tabby wasn’t laughing.
“We have to go back,” she said with borderline panic in her voice. “This fire is spreading.”
CHAPTER 8
Newport News, VA
Kyla and Ben waited in the small berth for several minutes as the Marines moved around the hallway outside. She expected bursts of close-by shooting to begin at any second, keeping her on edge, but it never came.
The distant gunfire finally hit a lull.
“We’re going back up!” Carthager advised his Marines. “Parsons saw the enemy use the ladder about fifty yards that way.” He pointed toward the middle of the ship.
“You two should stay here,” the Marine sergeant said sensibly.
Ben nodded vigorously, but Kyla did not.
“If it’s all the same, I think we should stick with you.” Kyla glanced over to Ben. “If those shooters find us in here by ourselves, they might off us. I’d rather be close to the guys with guns.”
The other programmer didn’t look convinced.
“It’s your call,” the sergeant said with indifference before talking to his point person. “Meech. You up for some action?”
“Tell me who to fuck up,” she deadpanned.
The leader pointed above his head. “Go.”
The combat unit climbed another stairwell with the same burst of energy they’d used when Kyla met them. A trailing Marine stood at the door, rifle at the ready, like it was their last chance to join them.
“You two coming?” the man asked.
“We are,” she responded.
The Marine looked disappointed as he waved them out of the room. “Come on. Hurry.”
Kyla and Ben fell in at the rear of the contingent of bad-asses. At the front, Meechum paced them, and Carthager directed her where to go whenever they got to stairs or intersections.
By the time they’d made it to deck 1, the hangar, Kyla’s legs felt roasted.
“I see natural light,” she remarked. That was something she’d often missed while doing her work on the mega carrier. She seldom saw the sunshine.
Kyla was at the top of a stairwell that came out at a hatch next to the hangar deck. Sunlight came in through the open aircraft elevator doors, providing the rare natural light she sought. That same light also illuminated dozens of empty uniforms spread across the deck, mostly near the walls.
The Marines had spread out among a dozen compact aviation tow vehicles—the kind designed without tops so they could easily go underneath the wings of planes.
She was about to go up the last couple of steps and join them, but the deck erupted in gunfire and screams.
“Shit!” she howled in fear.
A tall, black Marine fell over when something slapped against the side of his head. At first, Kyla was sure the man was dead, but he sat up a couple of seconds later with a big divot on the side of his helmet. He grinned like it was fun.
“Stay down!” Carthager shouted.
Ben stayed on the steps below, and Kyla stayed down but didn’t hide completely. Who was shooting? Identifying the enemy would help her know who to run from, so she peeked over the lip of the top step to watch the action.
The hangar was about fifty yards across, and almost as long as the monster aircraft carrier. A group of fighter jets had been parked in the distance, but closer to the action, the chamber looked a lot like a parking garage without the cars inside. However, numerous big wooden crates had been lined up along one wall near the middle of the ship. She guessed they were about seventy-five yards from her stairwell. That was where heads poked out and sent shots their way.
“Don’t hit anything leaky,” Carthager advised his force. “We don’t want to blow up the ship.”
The aircraft carrier was technically not ready for war, but there was a big effort to get the ship seaworthy. She had no idea how many planes would be there when it was combat-ready, but there were at least fifteen or twenty already in the hangar. That probably meant there were fuel lines, oxygen tanks, and a shit-tonnage of bombs and missiles.
Ben pushed against her rump, like he wanted her to go all the way up. “What’s going on up there?”
“Hold up,” she shot back to him. “I can’t move right now.”
“They could come at us from down here,” Ben wheezed.
While looking at her friend, shouts bellowed from the boxes where the enemy was set up. Kyla shifted position to get a better view. When she peeked over the top l
ip again, she saw an unarmed seaman hobbling across the metal deck.
A man popped up by the crates and lined up a shot on the runner.
One of the Marines aimed in return. For an instant, Kyla thought he was going to target the runner, but he squeezed off several rounds that made the enemy shooter duck down behind his crate. However, by the time the injured man made it half the way across the open space, several other bad guys had beads on him. The Marines sent everything they could in the other direction, but the man fell over forward when he was struck in the back.
“Suppressive!” Carthager howled. “Dump smoke!”
The Navy man was injured in at least two places, but he continued to crawl toward safety. Kyla peered across the floor to the guy because she was down low, practically on the man’s level.
The sailor cussed with each shuffle, but he didn’t stop.
“Come on!” Kyla shouted to him.
“What’s happening up there?” Ben hounded.
She didn’t look down. “There’s a Navy dude making a run for it. The Marines are covering him.” She didn’t finish her thought. There was no way the guy was going to make it on his own.
A small puff of red smoke appeared between the boxes and the runner. It billowed into a larger red cloud in seconds.
Kyla waited for the Marines to do their bad-ass thing. They sprayed rounds by the dozens on the boxes along the wall, but there were always lulls. Those brief moments of pause allowed enemy soldiers to poke out and shoot at the downed man. Even the smoke wasn’t going to be enough to stop them.
Another shot hit the injured man. He cried out with the impact, and she thought that was it, but a few seconds later, he began to move again.
“Damn,” she whispered with awe.
Red smoke blew in funny swirls, thanks to the crosscurrents inside the big hangar. Most of it stayed where it could help, but it wasn’t perfect concealment.
The Marines relentlessly hammered the far side of the hangar. Kyla couldn’t imagine how much ammo each of them carried, because they weren’t letting up at all. Her head pounded from the assault on her ears, but she kept her eyes on the crawling man.
He was now close, maybe twenty yards from her safe little hatch, but the smoke wasn’t going to last…
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