V-Day

by Cooper-Posey, Tracy

  Right until now, as she walked away from him, Chloe had not realized she—the great lone wolf and recluse—had begun to think a sense of belonging might be a good thing.

  Parris Graves was suited up, her helmet on, moving among her team and giving orders, when Chloe reached them. Parris ran her gaze over Chloe, assessing. “Ready?”

  “Yes,” Chloe said.

  “Where is Cristián, then?”

  “Coming, I suppose,” Chloe said dully.

  Parris lifted her brow.

  “Sir!” One of the tall Rangers strode up to her, a laptop in one hand. “They want to know if the hand-held targeter will do or if you want the heavy pack?”

  “I need the range the heavy pack can give us. Tell them to strap on another parachute and drop it. I want it here by tomorrow…never mind, I’ll tell them.” She held her hand out for the computer.

  “Tell them you don’t need anything,” Cristián said, from right behind Chloe.

  Chloe jumped.

  Parris rolled her eyes again. “More gadgets?” she guessed.

  “It works. We’ve used it before and we can paint a target from a mile away. Can yours?”

  Parris considered him, then turned the laptop around in the Ranger’s hands and tapped the space bar with a heavy prod. “Sorry to bother you, Major. It appears we have this sorted out. Local equipment we can have in hand inside five hours.”

  The major nodded. “Best I can do is fifteen hours. Good luck.” The screen went blank.

  Parris snapped the laptop shut and looked at Cristián with a hard stare. “If your stuff doesn’t work, it won’t be me sawing off your balls. It’ll be the Insurrectos, and they won’t use a sharp blade, either.”

  Cristián didn’t smile. “I hear you,” he said.

  “Right. Let’s get this dog and pony show on the road.” She lifted her voice. “Up and at ‘em, gentlemen! The Marines won’t wait for us!”

  “Wait! Please! Just one moment!” The call came from behind them.

  Everyone turned.

  Cristián’s mother and two women, both identical to Téra in appearance, were hurrying toward the cleft.

  8.

  DUARDO NEVER THOUGHT HE WOULD want to go back to the eighteen hours he had sat in the command Hummer and listened to General Thorne’s bad rhetoric. Only, they had been moving then. Slowly, at the walking speed a column of men could manage through a high mountain pass, yet it had been progress.

  He and Aguado had watched with interest while Thorne took the call directly from the Situation Room in the White House in Washington, telling him to halt and wait for further orders. They had been less than a mile away from the top of the Freonegro pass and Thorne’s face turned an interesting shade of red. He actually spluttered.

  Then he slammed the phone back into its holder with enough force to break the plastic casing.

  That had been three hours ago. Thorne had become unbearable after the call. The columns of men had fallen out and relaxed, most of them sleeping with their heads on their folded arms. Thorne, though, had marched. Twelve paces one way, twelve back. All the while, he muttered, his full mustache twitching. Whenever he came within hearing distance, Duardo heard about the stupidity of politicians, the lily-livered constitutions of bureaucrats, and the lack of backbone of the “others”, by which he assumed Thorne meant Duardo and his men, and Aguado’s regiment.

  When a forward sentry reported on movement on the road down from the high pass, Duardo volunteered to check it out, deep relief blossoming. He grabbed a rifle his non-comm held out to him and jog-trotted the mile to the top of the pass where the forward posts had settled. Aguado fell in beside him, one of the Mexican Army’s FX-05 Xiuhcoatl assault carbines slung over his shoulder.

  They wiggled on their bellies up to the sentry post. Duardo took the field glasses first and zeroed in on the road down into the valley. He had traveled through this pass when he was a child—perhaps eight or ten years old. His parents had taken the family to the Big Rock for a camping holiday. On the way back, Duardo could remember the car coming over the crest of the pass and the view down into the valley. When he was ten, the valley had been filled with trees and fields and paddocks with cows and sheep and goats.

  Now, the far end of the valley glinted with white flecks and silver. The houses at the edge of the city spilled out this far.

  “Are those la Colinas homes, down there?” Aguado asked.

  “I suppose they are part of the city, yes,” Duardo said. “The center is still nearly fifteen miles away.”

  Aguado whistled. “Your little town went and exploded, didn’t it?”

  “This war will slow things down for a generation,” Duardo said sourly. “Or more.” He handed the glasses to Aguado. “On the main road. They’re walking, just as we are, but it’s them.” He rolled onto his side, to relieve the strain on his neck.

  “Insurrectos?” Aguado looked through the glasses. “Jesus Maria! How many of them are there? It looks as though…hell, did Serrano empty out the city?”

  “He got wind of our numbers,” Duardo said. “And he knows Thorne is pinned down and can’t move. Of course he knows—he’s the bastard doing the pinning.”

  Aguado put down the glasses and looked at him. “We can move, though.”

  “Yes,” Duardo said, as thoughts and possibilities occurred to him. “Yes,” he breathed, a smile forming.

  *

  DANIEL PUT HIS BACK TO the wall, just as the other two Secret Service agents were doing. Rosa Bergen had also taken up a post in one of the four corners.

  In the center of the elongated room, dozens of senior staff settled around the long tablet-shaped table. They were talking among themselves, ignoring the admin and security staff standing along the walls, including Daniel. Rosa was right—he was invisible.

  It allowed him to relax and study the people around the table. He could match nearly all of them to profiles which had been in the documents the President had sent for him to study.

  Doug Mulray was the most interesting one in the room and not just because of his carrot-colored red hair. His behavior was descriptive.

  The chair at the head of the table was for the President and no one had the guts to sit there. Doug walked into the room well after most of the chairs were taken. He walked straight up to the staffer sitting in the chair to the immediate right of the President’s and patted his shoulder and looked at him.

  He didn’t speak, yet the staffer scrambled to pick up his files and move, pushing his glasses up his nose nervously.

  Doug had settled his papers on the table while joking and talking to the senior staff at the table. Just before lowering himself into the chair, he reached over the table and slapped knuckles with the man opposite—someone in Communications, a senior officer, Daniel thought. Horner or Hornsby. The name would come, although it wasn’t important because Daniel had already put the man on the harmless side of the list.

  Doug smiled as he sat. He looked like the king of the mountain, prince of his own domain, his confidence unshakeable. The smile was unforced and brilliant as he turned his head to survey everyone at the table.

  Daniel slid his gaze to Rosa Bergen, to see if she was taking in the performance, too.

  Her expression was neutral. It was hard to judge who she was watching. By the fixed direction of her chin, Daniel suspected she was watching Doug Mulray just as closely as he was. Daniel had primed her to watch the guy, although Mulray was giving off power signals a blind person could pick up.

  Through the open door of the conference room, Daniel spotted another door opening across the corridor. Two people stepped out, one of them President Collins, the other his private secretary, carrying a bunch of files.

  They moved through the conference room doors. The room grew quiet and everyone got to their feet.

  The secretary moved over to stand by the wall just behind the President, as he pulled out the chair at the end of the table and sat. She still held the files. An open notebook sat
on the top, with a pen resting in the spine.

  The demarcation between grunts and non-grunts couldn’t be more obvious, Daniel reflected. No wonder Doug Mulray looked as though he’d eaten all the bacon. He was standing on the top of the biggest heap.

  Collins waved everyone to sit down and cleared his throat. “I need to bring you up to date on current developments. This is rumor control, so you can squash some of the incorrect hysteria floating about the building.” He paused, although he didn’t have to. Everyone watched him with total attention.

  “Twelve hours ago, a heavy payload military grade drone was spotted entering US airspace near Galveston. It is leaking gamma radiation, enough to convince experts there is a high possibility the drone is carrying a nuclear payload—a warhead or dirty bomb. Eight hours ago, the leader of the Insurrecto faction in Vistaria sent a message indicating the drone was under his control, and unless we withdrew all military forces from the main island of Vistaria, he would direct the drone to drop its arsenal upon the White House. Of course the drone would be redirected from the no-fly-zone over the White House, but military advisors tell me it can launch a bomb from outside that perimeter that will still reach us here.”

  The reaction around the table was about what Daniel had suspected it would be. Shocked expressions, some nods of acknowledgement where suspicions had been confirmed, and a general air of stiffening backs and resolves. These were the cream of America’s public service people. They wouldn’t buckle under at the threat of a dirty bomb.

  No one was running for the door, either.

  Daniel checked Doug Mulray. The dirty bomb may or may not be news to him.

  His smile had gone. He was staring at Collins, his throat working.

  Interesting, Daniel decided. Unexpected, too. Cold fingers walked up his back. Something was wrong.

  Collins was doing his own assessing. He was a good people person. He could measure reactions, too. He nodded, apparently satisfied at the lack of outcry or panic. “I have not withdrawn our troops, of course, although I have halted their progress toward Lozano Colinas, the capital, while we combat this thuggery.”

  A few smiles. Weak ones.

  “We cannot shoot down the drone, for it would do the Insurrecto’s job for them.”

  “More than that,” the Communications guy on Collin’s left said. “If the wind is right, we could scatter radiation across a greater portion of the DC area—even farther than the bomb could spray it, if it went off at ground level.”

  Still no one broke out into hysterical protesting. They watched the President calmly, although Daniel could see pulses throbbing in necks and lots of tendons flexing under pressure. Damn, these people were good.

  Collins nodded. “We can’t take back control, because the drone has been recalibrated. It will reach Washington DC airspace in three hours. Its direction has been confirmed by the Air Force, who are monitoring closely.”

  Doug Mulray looked as though he was about to throw up. He wasn’t just white. His cheeks and the skin around his mouth had a blue cast. Sweat popped on his temples.

  Daniel shifted, turning his shoulder enough to look directly at Rosa. He tilted his head just enough to point in Doug’s direction.

  Rosa nodded. She eased her one good hand up and unbuttoned her jacket.

  It wasn’t slow enough. Mulray was on the edge of panic, every sense hopped up and hyper-alert. He jerked, his whole body almost leaping out of the chair, as he lifted his head to look at Rosa on the other side of the room.

  Collins, who had been about to speak again, hesitated. “You have something to say, Doug?”

  Doug swallowed and in that controlled calmness, the sound of his throat working was loud. Everyone studied him, now.

  His hand did a skittery dance over the files in front of him, as if he didn’t know what to do with it…or he did but was suppressing the impulse.

  All three agents in the room took a half-step forward, their finely honed instincts alerted. Rosa put her hand under her jacket.

  “Christ on a pony…” Doug Mulray breathed and lurched to his feet, knocking the chair over.

  “Not in here!” Rosa shouted, as people around the table sucked in shocked gasps. She was keeping her head, telling the agents not to fire in a room full of people, including the President.

  Mulray bolted, his hand slapping the door open.

  Daniel didn’t have a gun to use. Instead, he swore and took off after the man, giving it his all. This wasn’t the jungle or sloping mountainside with soft soil killing his traction. It was high quality, tough commercial carpet, giving his treaded shoes plenty of grip.

  Mulray was fast—he was running on a mix of adrenaline and cortisol, every muscle primed and pumping. It meant it took three seconds longer than it should have. Daniel bulleted down the corridor after the fleeing man, as staffers flattened themselves against the wall.

  As soon as he was close enough, Daniel threw himself forward. It wasn’t a rugby tackle—he’d never played the sport. He used his body as a projectile, ramming into Doug’s back and taking him off his feet. They flew through three yards of air and landed heavily. Daniel didn’t mind the heavy landing, as Doug was under him and it was his skin which got scraped across the carpet.

  Daniel got a knee under himself for leverage and flipped Doug over. He pinned down the man’s right arm and looked around for the other agents, the ones with the guns. This was not his country. He couldn’t arrest the guy or do anything with him other than bring him to a halt.

  Rosa ran up to them, waving at everyone standing in the corridor watching. “Go back to your desks!” she shouted at them. “Stay out of the way! Go!”

  Reluctantly, the staff left.

  Rosa pulled out her gun as she reached them and pointed it at Doug’s face. “We need to talk, Mr. Mulray.” Her gun was a little Glock .22, which was useless in most situations, and just about the perfect weapon for inside a jammed building like the White House. Its effective range was maybe six feet and only if the user had perfect aim. Daniel knew Rosa’s aim was good enough. The soft tissues of a body would halt the bullet’s trajectory. On the other hand, a .45 fired in this place would drill through walls and take down bystanders before it came to a halt.

  Doug saw the Glock. His eyes shifted and skittered. Full blown panic.

  “Where did the other two go?” Daniel asked Rosa, when the corridor behind her remained empty.

  “They got the President out of the room,” Rosa said. Her gaze didn’t shift from Mulray, who was tossing his head from side to side, his throat and mouth working silently.

  “You got him?” Daniel asked.

  “Yeah.”

  He got to his feet, taking his weight off Mulray. “What the hell were you thinking?” Daniel asked him, his disgust making his tone withering.

  “We’ll interrogate the suspect, Mr. Castellano,” Rosa said stiffly.

  Daniel opened his mouth to assure her he wasn’t trying to horn in, only Mulray gave a cry of panicked alarm at Rosa’s mention of interrogation.

  She tightened her grip on the gun, pulling her injured arm out of the sling to rest the butt in that hand, which would keep it nice and steady.

  Mulray moaned. It was a heart-rending sound, which was about right—the man was face to face with the real consequences of his choices. Like many such men, he was collapsing, unable to cope with it.

  He sobbed, his eyes screwing up and his chest hitching.

  Rosa’s gaze met Daniel’s. He could see his disgust mirrored in her eyes. She turned her attention back to Mulray. “There’s a bunker in the basement, where we can take him for questioning. I can’t let you down there, Castellano, so when another agent gets here, we’ll take him down—”

  “It was supposed to be Minnesota!” Doug Mulray cried, with a wretched hitch of his breath. His fist pummeled the carpet. “It was supposed to be me who saved the country. Not here! Not where I am!”

  Daniel almost laughed. Almost. “Ask him where the drone is
being directed from,” he urged Rosa. “Now, while he’s talking.”

  She nudged Mulray with her shoe. “You heard him, Mulray,” she said. “Where is the control room for the drone? Mulray? Doug!”

  Mulray hitched in another wet breath, and his gaze swiveled toward Rosa. From where he was laying, the muzzle of the little pistol would be all he could see. For someone in his position, with his lack of fortitude, it would look like the mouth of a canon.

  For the first time, intelligence showed in his eyes. He was processing details again. He was thinking.

  Daniel settled squarely on his feet. Doug was an inactive chair jockey. He couldn’t spring up from the floor and not take a week doing it. Daniel rocked onto his toes, anyway, ready to take him out all over again if he twitched in the wrong direction.

  “Where is the control room, Doug?” Rosa repeated.

  “Los Alamitos, they said,” Doug whispered. “They probably lied about that, too, right?” Weary cynicism touched his face. He glanced around the now-empty corridor, at Daniel, then back at Rosa.

  His fingers curled into his palm.

  “Don’t be stupid, Doug,” Daniel growled. “She only has a .22. She has to go for the kill shot to stop you.”

  “Please don’t, Mr. Mulray,” Rosa added, her voice soft and completely neutral. She was as braced for action as Daniel.

  “I’m not waiting here for a toxic shower,” Doug said. He surged up, his hand flashing toward his jacket.

  The quiet cough of the Glock tossed him back on the floor, flinging his arm out to rap against the carpet.

  A neat black circle sat just over his left eye. It turned red, the blood welling. It didn’t run, because Mulray’s heart had already stopped pumping blood around his body.

  “Fuck,” Rosa whispered, her gun dropping.

  Daniel straightened up. “He wanted it. If you hadn’t done it, I would have had to break his neck to stop him.”

  Rosa nodded.

  Daniel didn’t finish the rest of his thought. He suspected, though, that when they searched through Mulray’s clothes in a few minutes, they wouldn’t find a gun on him. Rosa didn’t need to hear that right now.