“It’s an outdoor walkway, Harry, lined with columns.” The weariness was obvious in Jack’s voice.
“I see. Think they named it that because of all these columns?”
Fleming closed the side door of the van, stared at the phone once again, then set up her laptop. Still a black screen on the video feed.
“Look at all those flowers,” McGlade said, no doubt eyeing the famous White House Rose Garden. “Our tax dollars at work. Is there a bathroom nearby?”
“There are several in the West Wing.”
“When the president pinches a loaf, does he call it an executive action?”
“I don’t know.”
“Can we see the button? The one near his bed that he uses to launch a nuclear attack? I promise I won’t press it.”
“What? I don’t think there is such a button.”
“Did you ever ask?”
“No, I haven’t.”
“Ever ask him about Area 51? The aliens?”
“No.”
“I heard they’re mating with attractive earth women. Don’t worry, Jack. You’re safe.”
“And you’re an ass.”
“I also heard the government has Satan locked up in a secret compound in New Mexico. Any truth to that?”
“Look, I’m just an aide to Senator Crouch.”
“Does the senator ever touch you in the bathing suit area?”
“Is he for real?” the aide asked.
Jack sighed. “Unfortunately. You might try ignoring him, but it hasn’t worked for me so far.”
“Because I’m persistent,” Harry said.
“I’m guessing,” said Jack, “that in a previous life I was Attila the Hun, and this is some sort of karmic payback.”
“I heard the government cloned Attila the Hun,” Harry said. “Any truth to that?”
Strangely enough, Fleming had heard that one as well. Hopefully McGlade wouldn’t ask about seven identical sisters who worked for a secret government agency.
“Who’s this guy?” McGlade asked.
“Marine sentry.”
“He just stands there, staring straight ahead?”
“That’s what sentries do.”
“Can’t we go back to the library, get the poor guy a book?”
“That’s a great idea, Harry. Give the guy guarding the president a distraction.”
“It’s not like guards helped the last guy. Boom!”
“You really have no sense of decency, do you, Harry? He was the president of our country.”
“I voted Libertarian. Let’s stop invading foreign nations, legalize drugs and prostitution, and limit the federal government to running the post office.”
“And the military? You know, the armed forces that protect our country?”
“Disband it. Then give every citizen a Mac-10 and require them to carry it at all times.”
“That’s insane.”
“Really? Think of how polite everyone would be if, at any moment, any person could shoot anyone else. I think we’d all get real Zen real quick. Especially with legal weed and ten-dollar BJs.”
The video feed came to life, and Fleming stared at a room with an elongated table. Jack had the pen out at waist height; the fish-eye lens on the top made everything wildly distorted, but Fleming could see this was the Cabinet Room.
“This is the Cabinet Room,” the aide said. He was a weaselly little guy who looked like Peter Lorre.
Harry made a face. “I don’t see any cabinets.”
“It’s called the Cabinet Room because—”
“Yes, fascinating, so where’s that shitter? The brown turtle is poking out his head. He’s touching cloth here.” He grabbed his rear end, possibly for emphasis.
“Are we going to be able to see the Oval Office?” Jack asked.
“I’m sorry, but no. The washroom is this way. Please follow me.”
The aide turned, leading the way. Harry gave Jack an obvious nod, and Jack set down the pen next to the wall. Fleming watched them follow the aide out of the Cabinet Room. Then she brought up a pdf floor plan of the West Wing, and the remote control program.
Here we go…
Fleming pressed the W on the keyboard.
Nothing happened.
Fleming felt her breath catch. Had she missed something? Could the White House have some RF shield? Was there—
The camera moved forward.
Lag. It took a few seconds from the control to go through the Internet, to the transceiver on the lamppost, to the pen. Not a long delay, but she should have expected it.
Dividing her attention between the floor plan and the camera, Fleming inched her way out of the Cabinet Room, checked the hall for people, and then beelined toward the Oval Office. When she reached the corner, she pressed S to back up, doing half of a three-point turn. As expected, a Secret Service agent was stationed outside the Oval Office.
Fleming took the pen behind a marble pedestal with a bust of some important dead guy on top; she couldn’t make out whom from this angle. Now she had to wait until someone opened the door and gave her a chance to get inside. A huge risk, but she had no other options. And if she did manage to make it, then Fleming had to hope the pen wasn’t immediately discovered. It couldn’t be traced back to her, and Jack was smart enough not to leave fingerprints, but that bug was the only chance they had of figuring out Ratzenberger’s plan, and Julie’s location.
She heard faint voices in her earbud.
“I can’t believe you clogged the White House toilet.” Jack Daniels talking.
“What’s the big deal?” Harry. “They probably have a full-time plumber on staff. I bet they have two, considering how much this administration is full of shit.”
“I’m never going anywhere with you again.”
Fleming watched them walk past, the aide looking embarrassed.
“You say that. But within a few weeks, you’ll call me to get your ass out of some trouble. That’s how it always works. Some crazy-ass killer will have you up against the wall, and then it’ll be, ‘Please come save me, Harry.’”
“I’d rather jump naked into a thornbush than ever ask you for help.”
“Kinky. Can I watch?”
Their bickering continued until they were out of the microphone’s range. They’d done their part. The rest was up to her.
Less than five minutes passed before fortune smiled; a chef walked by, pushing the president’s breakfast. Fleming gunned the servo and got the pen under the wheeled cart, moving with it all the way into the Oval Office. The agent checked the food, knocked, and announced its arrival. Once inside, Fleming made a beeline for the nearest dresser, to the left of the desk where the president sat, and backed the pen up against the wall while the chef presented eggs Benedict, grits, orange juice, wheat toast.
The president ate in silence while going over some papers, stopping often to pick his nose. Class act.
Then, appearing so suddenly Fleming actually flinched away from her computer, a big, furry face filled the screen, wide yellow eyes staring.
Oh, shit. A cat.
A paw shot out, whip-quick, batting the pen to the side. The camera turned upside down, rendering the wheel and servo useless.
Another swipe and the pen was pulled forward in the cat’s claw.
Fleming hit the W key, hoping for a miracle. The pen somehow righted itself and shot forward, coming out from under the dresser. The cat pounced in front of it and struck a stalking pose, down on its front paws, eyes gleaming and tail swishing.
Fleming backed up, the pen turning, and headed for the drapes behind the desk.
The cat batted the pen once more, sending it rolling to the wall.
“Goddammit, Chaz! Someone get this cat out of here!”
Fleming once again tried the servo, but it didn’t move. The cat had broken the motor, and the pen was lying right there on the floor, in plain sight.
A moment later there was a knock, and a smartly dressed woman came in, making kis
sy sounds and reaching for the cat. She scooped it up under her arm and began to walk away.
Then she stopped. Turned around.
Looked directly into the pen.
“Just leave it,” Fleming said. “Please.”
But the secretary didn’t leave it. She bent over, grabbed the pen—
—and placed it on the president’s desk.
Fleming now had a fish-eye close-up of the POTUS as he continued to shove eggs into his mouth. He didn’t seem to notice the pen at all.
Close call. Damn close.
Sasha rubbed against Fleming’s legs, demanding to be stroked. Fleming blew out a stiff breath and dropped her hand to pet the vixen’s luxurious mane. It made her think of Bradley, which made her look at Scarlett’s cell phone.
Don’t turn it on, she told herself. Stick with the mission.
A long minute passed.
Then another.
Fleming reached for the phone.
“It’ll be Bradley in pain,” she said aloud. “I don’t need to hear that, because there’s nothing I can do.”
She put the phone back down, stared at her laptop, and waited.
Hammett
“Everybody dies,” The Instructor said. “Life is all about putting that off for as long as possible.”
Hammett figured her odds at surviving were damn near nil. Good thing she was the kind of girl who liked a challenge.
As she went over the brink of Niagara Falls in a funeral shroud of freezing water, Hammett drew her arms into her chest, holding her sides. She crossed her ankles, clenching her buttocks hard as she could, blowing out air as she fell, expecting to splatter against the rocks, or at the very least break her legs and ribs and spine as she hit the water’s surface.
The free fall lasted longer than she expected. Perhaps it was the adrenaline slowing down her perception of time, or maybe the lack of visual cues while encased in a waterfall gave her no reference points, but as Hammett plummeted she had several distinct, complete thoughts.
First, if she lived she wanted to make sure Julie’s dog, Kirk, was OK.
Second, she knew that if she died, Chandler and Fleming would probably be killed by The Instructor, but strangely that thought brought Hammett no satisfaction. Her sisters were her enemies, and she’d have to kill them both sooner or later, but the bigger enemy was The Instructor, and Hammett was pissed that asshole would get away.
Third, she felt some regret for trying to nuke London. Not because it would have killed a lot of people, but because of all the dogs that would have died.
And finally, if her last vestiges of humanity were wrapped up in caring more about dogs than human beings, it was probably best that she died when she struck—
SMACK!
Hammett had been knocked out a few times in her life. The brain just switches off consciousness, which fades out like a dimmer switch, making thoughts all dream-jumbly right before the blackness hit.
Hammett was also no stranger to having the air knocked out of her. The panic that ensued from not being able to draw a breath was similar to drowning.
Hitting the bottom of the falls gave her a great big wallop of each sensation. First, the little air she had left rushing out of her lungs as if squeezed like toothpaste, diaphragm contracting, ribs snapping, every tense muscle being slapped at once. That was joined by the hazy, about-to-fall-asleep feeling of oncoming unconsciousness, the shock of the long fall sucker-punching her with the strength of a mule kick.
Choking woke her up.
Hammett sucked in the cold murk of the Niagara River, her limbs feeling both frozen and on fire at the same time, her chest painfully screaming at her as her oxygen-starved brain went crazy with terror. She clawed at the water, not knowing which way was up, caught in some hellish undertow. The water beat on her face and shoulder like a flurry of fists, and she gasped again, coughing and sputtering, unable to focus on anything until a tiny bit of consciousness peeked through the encroaching darkness.
The water is falling on me. I’m at the surface, but still under the waterfall.
She pinwheeled her arms, scissor-kicking through the pain, the strap from the duffel bag full of weapons digging into her shoulder, then the current took her in the opposite direction and she was suddenly in calm water, alternating throwing up with gulping in air.
Squinting through the freezing mist, the wind whipping her hair and the roar of the falls deafening, Hammett sighted the shoreline to the northwest. Still coughing, she did a body inventory. Legs and arms were numb from the cold, but seemed to be working OK. Head ringing, and dizziness, perhaps a concussion. Several ribs very sore, perhaps broken or detached or both. Somehow she’d missed the rock and managed to survive a fifty-meter drop. Maybe the falling water broke the surface tension, making for a softer landing. Maybe she was indeed superhuman, which Hammett would admit she sometimes believed. Whatever the case, it was Hammett 1, Niagara Falls 0.
And her luck continued to improve. Twenty meters away was a boat. It had a rounded bow, almost like a ferry, and both decks were loaded with people in blue raincoats.
The Maid of the Mist. A sightseeing boat. It had ST. CATHARINES painted on the side, meaning it was Canadian.
Hammett swam for it. When she got within five meters she was spotted, an incredibly lucky event because all eyes were on the falls. With much shouting and activity, she was thrown a lifesaver and pulled aboard. People wrapped her in blankets and threw questions at her, and Hammett said, in French, how she’d leaned too far over the side of the boat and fell in but was OK.
When the boat went back to dock, she strongly refused all assistance, pulling away from those trying to help her, and hurried ashore, up the pier, through the gift shop, and into the parking lot, where she collapsed behind an SUV. The cold scents of pavement and exhaust folded over her. She couldn’t stop shivering, and even more embarrassing, Hammett realized she was crying.
She sniffled, brushing away the tears, wondering what the hell was going on. Hammett certainly was not the pussy Chandler was, but she had been under similar stress. Was it survivor guilt? Doubtful. Hammett didn’t have a guilt reflex. Relief she was still alive? Also doubtful. Hammett didn’t view life as a gift. To her, it was more like a game to try and win, even though there was no real winning.
So what was with the dramatics? She was in pain, but managing it. She’d been close to death before, but hadn’t reacted in this way. So what was it?
Hammett stopped pushing away the pain to allow her mind to focus on the problem. Not the easiest of tasks, because each breath was like being spiked in an iron maiden. But after a few moments of meditation, she was able to tune in to her tiny remaining nub of emotion, to focus on what she was crying about.
A man’s face appeared in her mind.
The Instructor.
Hammett forced the image to go away, and then went back to dealing with her broken rib pain. But the image made complete sense. She was crying out of happiness, because she had a second chance at revenge.
And she wasn’t going to let that chance get away.
The White House
Ratzenberger finished a mediocre breakfast and thought about firing the entire mess staff and starting fresh.
A fresh start. It’s what his administration, and this entire country, needed. But the people he had helping him were doing a piss-poor job. When was the last time he had an MD2 update?
His irritation rising, he picked up his phone and dialed the familiar number.
“Did you find them?”
“Not yet, Mr. President. But things are proceeding as planned.”
“And Hydra? Have you corralled the three rogues?”
“Not yet, sir. But we’re working on it.”
The president looked around. He was alone, and the Secret Service swept twice a day for bugs, but he still didn’t feel comfortable talking about this on the phone. Still, he was the goddamn president of the United States of America, the most powerful man in the world, and if he co
uldn’t speak his mind in the Oval Office, what the hell was power for?
He gripped the phone tightly, snarling at the man known as The Instructor.
“I don’t need to tell you how important this is—not only to me, but to this country.”
“Yes, sir.”
“We’re changing the world, here. Making history.”
“I understand that.”
He said he did. But did he really? To Ratzenberger, The Instructor was just another one-note warmonger, polishing his gun and teaching kids how to kill. How could he understand what making history really was? All he knew how to do was fight.
“We got Alaska in 1867. Paid the Russkies two cents an acre. Even less than we paid for the Louisiana Purchase, sixty-three years earlier. You know I’m a big fan of Jefferson. The man had vision, like me. But his vision was limited. He should have taken more when he had the chance. But the world is changed now. You can’t buy land to increase the size of your country. And in this current global climate, invasion is frowned upon. Hell, what has the US acquired recently? Hawaii, Puerto Rico, Guam, the Virgin Islands. Islands and atolls. A little bit of territory here and there. That’s what it’s all about, you know. Territory.”
“I know, Mr. President.”
“China. Those yellow bastards are a bigger threat than Russia ever was. A billion people. The have about the same amount of land as we do, but triple the population. And the industry they have. Those people are workers. We used to be an industrial nation. Now we import everything, including labor. Let me tell you, it isn’t a war that will topple our country. It’s the economy. That’s why we’re doing this.”
“It’s going forward as planned, Mr. President.”
But Ratzenberger was on a roll now. The excitement, the passion, was taking over. He wasn’t about to be placated.
“Forty million people in Canada. Another four hundred in Central and South America. We can’t get bigger by going to war. No land grabs. No conquering territories. Those days are over. But this way we can almost triple our population, our landmass, our workforce and industry, our military. Manifest Destiny Two. The United States of Americas. That’s plural, son. The Pacific to the Atlantic, the Arctic to the Antarctic. A whole hemisphere of God-fearing democracy, from sea to shining sea, to shining sea, to shining sea.”
Flee, Spree, Three (Codename: Chandler Trilogy - Three Complete Novels) Page 85