by David Archer
Suddenly, a man walked onto the stage and approached the lectern.
“Students, welcome guests,” he said, “we are most delighted to bring you a pair of distinguished visitors, today. Everyone please stand for a moment and show a warm welcome to the Prince of Wales and our own Prime Minister.”
The formerly quiet students all leapt to their feet and began shouting and applauding, and it took only a few seconds for the rest of the guests to join in. Noah and Sarah stood as well, clapping and cheering with the rest, even as Noah pretended to stretch his back in order to look around at his suspects. All of them were in place, and everyone sat down a moment later.
This would be the moment, Noah thought. If Adrian was going to strike, if you were going to detonate the bombs he’d arranged, it would probably be shortly after the two world leaders appeared on it. Noah craned his neck to watch his suspects as first Prince Charles and then the Prime Minister walked onto the stage.
“I’d like to take this opportunity,” Charles said, “to thank all of you for coming today. There is little more important, in my opinion, then to instill in our youth a thorough and complete understanding of how our government functions. Only with that understanding can they truly attain to be productive and valuable citizens of our great nation, and so it is with great pride that I stand here before you today in my humble attempt to impart a small bit of wisdom to our future generation.”
The crowd broke into applause again, and the Prince stood there, smiling and waving and waiting for the noise to die down. It took a long moment, and Noah glanced around at his suspects again.
One of them was moving. A man of the proper build, with black hair and a neatly trimmed beard, had risen from his seat and was headed toward the exit. As Noah watched, he glanced at the stage and the expression on his face was one of excitement, almost as if seeing his victims was giving him some sort of thrill.
Noah tapped Sarah on the shoulder and pointed surreptitiously. “That’s him,” he said. “I’m going after him.” He stood and began making his way to the aisle, but suddenly he realized Sarah was right behind him.
“Not without me, you’re not,” she said. He kept his eyes on his man and let her follow without saying a word.
Adrian—Noah was certain of it, now—would get to the exit at least thirty seconds before he and Sarah would reach it, simply because he had been sitting closer to an aisle and didn’t have to fight his way past other seated guests. He considered shouting to try to get his attention, but decided against it. If anything happened to incite the crowd into a panic, Adrian would certainly be able to escape.
Noah finally reached the aisle and began walking as fast as he could, hearing Sarah’s footsteps moving just as quickly behind him. Adrian slipped through the exit, and Noah broke into a light jog. He managed to cut Adrian’s lead by several seconds, but by the time Noah got through the door, he was nowhere in sight.
A policeman was standing by the door and Noah turned to him. “Pardon me, guv,” he said, “my mate was feeling ill and came out just a moment ago. Red shirt, got a fluffy beard, did you see which way he went?”
The officer smiled. “Yes, sir,” he said. “He went that way, toward the car park.” He pointed in the general direction of the parking lot.
Noah didn’t even bother to thank him, but started jogging in that direction. Sarah made it out of the auditorium just then, and began running after him.
Noah passed a delivery truck and suddenly saw Adrian again. He was standing 50 yards away, and seemed to be trying to make a phone call. He was looking down at a phone in his hand, pressing a button, but then he looked back toward the auditorium and Noah realized that the phone was actually the detonator.
Adrian saw him coming, then, and even from that distance, he saw the large nose and build, and realized that he was suddenly facing the very imposter who had tried to take his place. He had pushed the red button on the phone a half-dozen times, but there had been no explosion. Seeing that bloody imposter told him why. The bastard had somehow learned what he was doing and managed to stop it.
Adrian, who had never been very well hinged to begin with, suddenly snapped. He dropped the phone and took off running, surprising Noah with his speed. Noah leaned into his run and began kicking for all he was worth. There was still a good 50 yards between him and Adrian, and he was doing everything he could to make it up.
One of the many police officers saw them running and stepped out in front of Adrian, ordering him to halt. Instead, Adrian ran head-on into him, knocking him to the ground and stumbling over him, but managing to grab the short assault rifle he was carrying and snatch it away. He ran a few more steps, then turned and pointed the weapon at Noah.
Noah had snatched his pistol out as he ran, and quickly snapped off three shots toward Adrian. He missed, but Adrian flinched and then turned and ran to the side. Another officer ordered him to halt, but Adrian fired a quick burst and put him down. He kept running, and Noah rounded the corner just in time to see him step over the fallen officer and snatch open one of the emergency exits of the auditorium. It would put him just inside, at the very back behind the audience seating. Noah ran harder, but then thought to pick up the fallen policeman’s own rifle as he ran past, shoving his pistol back into its holster.
He caught the door just before it closed and snapped it open again, expecting to see Adrian standing just inside and firing toward the stage. Instead, he saw absolute pandemonium. Someone had seen Adrian with the rifle and screamed, and now the entire crowd was trying to find its way to the exits.
Noah cast a glance at the stage and saw that security personnel had grabbed the Prince and the PM and were covering them with their own bodies as they hustled them off the stage and through the side door that would get them out of Adrian’s line of fire. Noah whipped his head from right to left, and finally saw Adrian running down the far outer aisle. The people in the seats on that side were stampeding away from him, but there were too many of them clambering about for Noah to get a clear shot. He turned and ran for that side of the room, intending to follow Adrian.
Adrian suddenly turned into the seats and dropped down behind them. He popped up quickly and snapped off a short burst in Noah’s direction, but there were too many people behind him for Noah to be able to return fire. Adrian shouted something, but there was no way Noah could make it out over all of the screaming, so he crouched low and continued moving toward where the man was hiding.
Adrian wasn’t holding still, however. He had moved down the row of seats and suddenly popped up again. Another three-round burst struck the wall just above Noah’s head, but he still didn’t have a clear shot.
“Noah!” he heard, and suddenly saw Moose up near the stage, his Glock in hand. Noah pointed to where he had last seen Adrian, and Moose nodded as he turned and ran along the front row of seats. Adrian was staying low, and neither of them could see him at the moment.
Suddenly, Adrian popped up and fired again, this time shooting into the fleeing crowd. Several people fell, and Noah decided it was time to risk returning fire. He slid to a stop and raised the rifle to his shoulder, aiming at the seat that Adrian had dropped down behind and squeezing off a three-round burst of his own.
“He’s moving, he’s moving,” Moose shouted, but Noah kept the weapon to his shoulder. He was scanning the seats, waiting for Adrian to show himself again, but to no avail. Moose had his pistol in hand, and suddenly began climbing over the seats to try to get to the man.
“I see him,” he shouted, and leveled his pistol to squeeze off a shot. He shook his head, indicating that it missed, and suddenly a new voice rang out. “Right there,” Neil shouted, pointing, “he’s right there.”
Adrian suddenly popped up again, but this time he wasn’t looking toward Noah. The rifle was aimed at Neil, and Noah swung his own weapon and squeezed the trigger, but Adrian leaned at the last second and his shots plowed into empty seats behind. Noah could see Adrian focusing on Neil, but Moose was raising hi
s pistol again. He fired once but the shot went wild, and then Adrian spun and fired, and Noah saw Moose go down.
Everything went into slow motion. Noah heard a scream from Sarah, behind him, but kept his eyes focused on Adrian as he tried to turn and drop at the same time. Noah lowered the barrel of his rifle and squeezed the trigger three times in rapid succession, sending nine rounds directly at his target.
Three of them struck Adrian, knocking him back. Noah took off running again, threading his way through the seats a row or two behind where Adrian had been. He knew he’d hit his target, but was startled when Adrian managed to rise once more.
Body armor, he thought, just as Sam Little had done in his own confrontation with the assassin. The bastard’s wearing body armor!
Noah tried to aim for a headshot, but Adrian’s weapon was already pointed directly at him. Noah braced himself for the impact he knew was coming, but then two other shots rang out, as first Neil and then Sarah aimed and fired, and Adrian was rocked. His aim wavered, his shot went wild, and Noah took the opportunity to center his sights on the man’s face and squeeze his trigger.
Adrian’s face exploded, as three bullets passed through his nose and each of his eyes. The body fell, and Noah hurriedly clambered over the seats to be certain Adrian was dead.
There was no doubt. The world’s most feared assassin had come up against his own agent of death, and his brains were now splattered across the seats where children had sat only minutes before.
Time sped up again, and Noah heard his name being called. He looked up to see Neil screaming at him, and he made his way to the aisle and ran down to the front as quickly as he could. Sarah reached Neil at the same time Noah did.
“I tried,” Sarah said, sobbing as she spoke. “I shot him, but he didn’t go down...”
“He was wearing armor,” Noah said. He leaned over the seat to get to Neil and Moose.
Neil was sitting on the back of one of the seats, holding Moose and screaming for help. Noah looked down and saw the jagged red hole that was just slightly off center in Moose’s chest, then looked at his face.
Moose was blinking and trickles of blood were running from his nose and mouth, but he managed to focus his eyes on Noah. He tried to speak, and Noah bent down close to hear what he had to say, but it was very faint. All he caught was five words: “... honor to serve with you...”
Moose’s eyes glazed over, and Noah quickly put a hand to his throat. There was no pulse, and Noah knew that Moose was gone.
Suddenly there was noise, and Noah looked up to see a dozen policemen surrounding them, weapons aimed directly at them. Noah lowered the rifle he was holding carefully to the floor, then reached out and took the pistol from Neil and laid it down, as Sarah lowered her own. As soon as he was finished, the officers swarmed over them all.
EPILOGUE
All three of them were arrested, handcuffed, then dragged out and shoved into separate police cars, where they sat for more than an hour while investigators tried to piece together what had happened.
Finally, they were driven to a police station and locked into separate cells. Noah and Neil were directly across from one another, but Sarah was taken to an entirely different part of the building.
Neal looked up at Noah, and his face was streaked with the tracks of his tears. “I can’t—I can’t believe he’s gone,” the boy said. “He can’t be gone, Noah, he just can’t be.”
“Yes,” Noah said, “I’m afraid he’s gone. He drew Adrian’s fire away from you.”
“But why would he do that?” Neil wailed, his anguish almost palpable. “I could have ducked, I could have run away, why would he do that?”
Noah looked at the skinny young man for a moment, and then he spoke the truth. “He did it because he loved you,” he said. “You were the one he called his little brother, remember? What else could he have done when he saw Adrian ready to shoot you down?”
“But it’s not fair!”
They sat in their cells for almost four hours before anyone came to get them. They were handcuffed again and marched through hallways into separate interview rooms, and the only good part was when Noah saw Sarah through the door of one of them.
He was handcuffed to a table and told to wait. He sat there for another fifteen minutes before a man walked in holding a single sheet of paper and sat down across the table from him.
“Are you Michael Jamison?”
Noah simply nodded. Being arrested on foreign soil meant being disavowed, he knew. Trying to tell these people the truth would not help anything.
“Mr. Jamison,” the man said, “my name is Simmons. I’m with MI6. I’ve been going over the witness statements from the events at Albemarle today, and they all seem to indicate that you fired the shots that killed a man who had apparently gone crazy, bringing a gun into the auditorium and shooting the place up. Would you care to tell me why you did that?”
Noah looked him in the eye. “It seemed like a good idea at the time,” he said.
“Mr. Jamison, I wonder if you are aware that the man you killed was in fact an extremely dangerous assassin. He had in fact been the subject of a massive manhunt over the last few days, ever since he escaped from custody. Any comment on that?”
Noah cocked his head and looked closely at Simmons. “How would I know that?”
Simmons looked down at the paper in his hand for a moment, and then looked back up into Noah’s face. “I have an agent who works for me,” he said carefully. “Yesterday, she was badly wounded when she tried to apprehend that same man. She’s currently in hospital, and still in quite critical condition, actually, but she’s conscious. She caught the news on the telly about Albemarle, and shortly thereafter began demanding a telephone. She called me, and asked me—no, she bloody ordered me—to go to one of my superiors and ask to be informed about something special about her. Do you know what my superior told me?”
Noah shook his head.
“He bloody well told me that I had better listen to anything she had to say, because she was one hell of a lot more important to him than I will ever be. He then told me to get my arse out to that hospital and find out what it was she wanted me to know. I did, I did exactly as he told me to do. Because of that, I now know that you are not in fact, Michael Jamison. I also now know that you are some sort of bloody American agent who was apparently sent here to prevent that assassin from carrying out his dastardly deeds. I know that the young man and young lady with you are part of—of whatever it is you do, as was the other young man who unfortunately lost his life today.” Simmons took a deep breath. “Now, does any of that sound familiar to you?”
Noah looked at him for a moment before speaking, thinking about what he wanted to say. Finally, he said, “Catherine is still alive?”
Simmons blew out his breath all at once. “Damned right she’s alive,” he said. “According to her, even that is thanks to you. She said it was you who convinced some drugged-out passerby to call an ambulance for her, is that true?”
Noah only shrugged.
“Well, let me tell you how this is going to go. Michael Jamison, as it turns out, is a bloody hero, as are your two young friends. You’ll be paraded in front of the Queen tomorrow morning so that she can personally thank you for saving the lives of her son and the Prime Minister, immediately after which you and your friends will be escorted onto an airplane and flown out to an American aircraft carrier somewhere in the bloody Atlantic. Your late friend, incidentally, will be accompanying you on that journey. Now, what happens to you after that, I have no idea. I’m sure I don’t even want to know, but I can tell you this: if you ever come back to the UK, it’s a bloody tossup whether you’ll be greeted with hugs and kisses or stood in front of a firing squad. Do I make myself clear, Mister Jamison?”
“Perfectly,” Noah said.
* * * * *
A few minutes after Simmons left, a policeman came in and unshackled Noah from the table. He was led out of the room and down the hall to another room wi
th comfortable chairs and asked politely to wait there for a few minutes. Less than a minute later, Sarah was brought into the room and immediately threw her arms around Noah’s neck and began to cry. Neil joined them only a couple of minutes after that.
They made it through the Royal Review the next day, with Moose represented by a tall, wooden cross that was carried by one of the Buckingham Palace Guards. The three of them walked alongside it as they were led before Queen Elizabeth II.
“I have been briefed about the events of yesterday,” the elegant old woman said to them when they stood before her. “I am aware that you are American agents, and that your mission here was to stop the assassin who was trying to destroy our country by his acts. My first words to you, therefore, are from the Crown. My nation thanks you for the courage and devotion you showed in performing your duties, and were it possible, I would see each of you created a Baron or Baroness, at the very least.”
She sighed and looked up at her son Charles, who stood just behind and to one side, then turned her eyes back to them.
“My next words are from a mother,” she said. “I must express to you my personal gratitude for the life of my son. I am told that each one of you put your own lives on the line, firing your own weapons at the man who was trying to take him from me. While your own laws prevent me from giving you any kind of official reward, I cannot allow your heroism to go completely unrecognized, and so I have hastily arranged a gift for each of you.”
She waved a hand, and a young woman stepped up beside her, bearing a silver tray. The Queen reached over and picked up a small box, then turned to Neil. “Young man,” she said, “I saw the video recording of the events, and have been told that the man who died deliberately drew the assassin’s fire away from you. This tells me that he was your friend, and while nothing can truly ease the loss you must be feeling, I would like you to have this.” She opened the box, and Neil saw, through his tears, a large silver ring. “This ring was once worn by Arthur Wellesly, the First Duke of Wellington, who commanded the armies that defeated Napoleon. It is a treasure of our country, for it speaks of courage in the face of overwhelming odds, and I thought it a fitting tribute to the man who gave his life defending not only you, but our Prince and Prime Minister. Please take it as my personal gift.”