Fitzduane could hear the sound of the man's neck snapping.
Cochrane, his tie askew and his hair rumpled but ever the chief of staff, looked up at Fitzduane. "We're okay, Hugo. Check outside. There may be others."
It was a point that Fitzduane had considered. Reacting to immediate threat had been a matter of instinct. Now he left the shelter of the door frame with some caution.
There were going to be a bunch of trigger-happy Capitol police here any moment, and that thought did not fill him with a sense of well-being. Also, there could be other terrorists. There had been only two waiting in the reception area, but that did not mean that there were not more waiting nearby.
Space was so limited in the offices that his short journey from the door frame of Cochrane's office was through a corridor of filing cabinets. The distance was only about six feet until the space widened, but it represented temporary safety and Fitzduane was not enthusiastic about stepping into the unknown.
But some things just had to be done. He had to leave his steel-drawer haven and hope nobody was waiting around the corner with unfriendly thoughts. The image of Patricio Nicanor being decapitated was still emblazoned on his mind, and the unfortunate man's body and severed head lay just behind him.
He moved forward.
There was a cacophony of shouts and cries and moaning noise coming from the general office on the left, but the reception area seemed unnaturally quiet.
He tried to remember the layout.
There had been receptionists working either side behind built-in desks as he came in. One was Tanya. He did not know the others' names. There was a petite brunette in her late twenties. And there had been someone else filing, he seemed to recall. All he had seen was a man's white shirt and the kind of thick hair you have only when you are very young. An intern.
He heard a noise behind him. He had forgotten about Maury during the action. The uncharitable thought came to him that it would have been nice if Maurice had intervened earlier, but then he realized that there really had been neither time nor opportunity.
Only seconds had passed, and the leader had initially been cut off from the action by the sprawled bodies of Cochrane and Warner. So he had kept his head and moved when it was appropriate. Of course, Maury, though he was the antithesis of the man of action in appearance, had actually seen more combat than most. He knew about all this stuff, and in this situation that was reassuring.
Maury raised his fingers to his lips, indicated right and then at himself. He then indicated Fitzduane and left, and there was a question on his face.
Fitzduane nodded in agreement but felt a chill run through him.
He was getting sloppy. Congress was not in session. He had forgotten all about the empty congressman's office. Because maybe it was not empty, and if he had turned left as he had planned his back would have been to the office. He could almost feel the blade being hammered into his kidneys.
Both men were about to move when they were momentarily brought to a halt by a rivulet of crimson that flowed slowly around the last file cabinet.
Fitzduane was sick inside. He looked at Maury and held up three fingers and brought them down one by one. "Three, two, one, GO!" they mouthed silently in unison, and both moved away from the cover of the cabinets into the reception area and to left and right, respectively.
Tanya lay sprawled on the ground, her arms up in front of her face as if to ward off her attacker. The upper half of her dress was saturated with blood and the material was ripped and torn as if she had been struck a series of blows.
The other receptionist had died at her desk.
She was slumped forward over the computer keyboard, and a bloody hole at the base of her neck showed how she had died.
There was a third body in the main doorway, slain while attempting to flee. The white shirt was now crimson but unperforated.
Fitzduane followed the blood line and saw that in this case the punch dagger had been slammed into the back of the skull.
He felt nothing but sadness. The young should not die, and certainly not slain casually like animals in an abattoir.
Fitzduane moved to the general office.
Several forms were sprawled over their desks and nearly every surface was pitted as if a grenade had gone off.
Unhurt figures rose from behind desks as he looked. Several were bleeding from cuts but seemed otherwise unharmed. Certainly, there were enough fit people to take care of the injured. One was already speaking into a phone.
"Stay here for the moment," he said, "while we check a little further. We've got two, but there may be others."
Maury came out of the congressman's office. "It's clear," he said.
Cochrane emerged from his office, his shocked gaze only loosely focused on Fitzduane and Maury. "He's – I think we killed him," he said, his voice shaky. He looked around, and anger hardened his voice. "Hell, where the fuck is Security?"
He stiffened suddenly as he noticed Tanya and the other two dead staffers. He brought up his hands to his face as if to hide the horror of what he was seeing. "Oh, God!" he said. "Oh, God! Oh God!"
He slumped to his knees beside Tanya and took her in his arms, though it was clear it was hopeless.
It came to Fitzduane that these were people the chief of staff worked closely with and felt responsible for, and now he had gotten them killed. These were office staffers and interns. This was not what they had signed up for.
Cochrane was sobbing, guilt etched into his face.
Fitzduane hunkered down beside him. "Lee," he said.
Lee looked at him in agony. "Lee," repeated Fitzduane sharply. "How many were there in the Japanese party?"
Cochrane shook his head, trying to focus. "I-I don't know," he said dully. "Two, I think. Does it matter?"
Fitzduane rose to his feet and looked at Maury. "Maury," he said, "can you get me patched through to Security? Tell them the situation here, identify me, and tell them to bring along spare radios, body armor, and weapons. Do you know the right person to speak to? We need some juice here."
"There is almost certainly one other terrorist loose. There is always a watcher, and sometimes more than one. You know that. You've been there. I think we should lend a hand. These cops won't have the experience."
Maury nodded as he was picking up the phone. There were several brief verbal encounters in English, and then he broke into rapid colloquial French. " D'accord," he said finally, and put down the phone.
"Quebecois are like the Irish," he said. "We get around."
"Who is he?" said Fitzduane.
"Number two on the Emergency Response team," said Maury. "But how do we know what we're looking for? There are Japanese tourists all over the place – and the others may not even be Japanese. We could be looking for any race or creed."
Capitol police with drawn guns entered the doorway and looked around uncertainly. Maury's contact had not connected yet.
Fitzduane held up a hand just as one of the policemen was moving forward.
The policeman stopped, though he was far from being sure why he was paying any attention to a bloodstained civilian. Yet the man had a definite command presence.
Fitzduane bent down and picked up two pairs of black horn-rimmed glasses that had been placed neatly on the reception table beside two empty cups.
Maury pursed his lips, went into Cochrane's office, and then came back. "Identical haircuts, suits, shirts, ties, and shoes," he said. "A neat and simple trick if you want to avoid being recognized afterwards."
"But which may work in our favor now," said Fitzduane. "Well, it had better. We don't have much else."
A short, stocky, fit-looking man appeared through the doorway dressed in SWAT fatigues. He and Maury had a quick conversation in French before he turned to Fitzduane.
"This is Henri," said Maury, reverting to English.
"Let's go to it," said Fitzduane.
Henri shook his head. "Colonel Fitzduane, I know how you must feel, but it's more than my jo
b is worth. This thing is going to be investigated every which way by more agencies than there are letters in the alphabet, not to mention hearings on security by both houses. IF it came out that I had armed a couple of civilians and allowed them to go terrorist hunting on the Hill… Well, it does not bear thinking about. I'd be the salami and the system the slicer, and believe me, these people do know how to cut."
Cochrane had now recovered somewhat, though he still looked pale and shocked. He had covered Tanya's upper body with his suit jacket and now stood slumped against a filing cabinet, his clothing soaked in drying blood. He ran one hand wearily through his hair in a gesture of both exhaustion and sadness.
"He's right, Hugo," he said. "This is Washington. Simple direct action is not in fashion around here."
*****
Four office suites down the corridor, the watcher who Fitzduane had known would be somewhere close, was chatting to the attractive young intern he had met in Bullfeathers.
Jin Endo had felt his job done when he had spotted the target going through Security at the main entrance, and had phoned ahead to warn Wakami- san where he waited in the committee's reception. He had a note of where the intern worked and headed up to her office immediately, pausing only to discard hi weapons in a cleaner's cupboard.
The FarnsworthBuilding had been sealed off within two minutes of the killing of Patricio Nicanor and the others, and a further cordon was placed around the complex of buildings that made up the Hill very shortly after that.
Everyone within the inner cordon was identified and questioned.
The process took over six hours. When it was over, Jin Endo and his new girlfriend walked free together. Everyone in her office knew that Endo could not have been involved. The police knew the exact time of the assault and Endo had demonstrably been visiting his friend at that time, which also explained his reason for being in the building. Certainly, he was Japanese, but so were over a hundred other people who had been caught inside the cordon and whose tour of Congress had proved rather more exciting than expected.
That night the young intern, shaken by the gruesome details of the incident, allowed the handsome young lobbyist to comfort her. True, he was Japanese just like the terrorists, but you did not blame all Italians for the misdeeds of the Mafia.
Her lover was young and fit, and someone had tutored him well in the art of pleasing a woman. The intern was even younger, but sex was something you got plenty of inside the Beltway – if you were so inclined – so they were well matched. The sex was intense, dangerous, and endlessly satisfying. There was no denying it. Power was an aphrodisiac, and working in Washington was all about being close to power. The added aphrodisiac was being so close to death. They had both witnessed the aftermath of the carnage.
FBI agents, backtracking through the evidence, made the connection after four days.
It was only one of many leads, but it rang alarm bells when it was discovered that she had not turned up for work. True, quite a few House employees had taken time off to adjust to the shock after the attack, but most had telephoned in. This particular intern had not, and that was unlike her.
The young intern's family was wealthy, and they indulged their only daughter. After her internship she was due to study international relations at GeorgetownUniversity, so she had been comfortably set up in a lavishly equipped condo in Georgetown itself.
The agents had to break into the condo. They found the naked body of the intern, her throat cut, wrapped up in blood- and semen-stained bedsheets in the Deepfreeze.
Of her lover, there was no sign except for a pair of horn-rimmed glasses that turned out to be plain glass.
3
Kathleen Fitzduane, clad in a silk kimono that one of Hugo's Japanese friends had sent as a wedding present, leaned on the terrace railing of their borrowed apartment in Arlington and gazed out toward Washington.
Graced with rich auburn hair and long shapely legs, she was the kind of natural Irish beauty who seems almost unaware of her charms. She had an easy laugh and an infectious smile, and there was a caring warmth about her. Right now her face was in repose and there was concern in her eyes.
Directly in front and below her, less than half a mile away, was the Iwo Jima memorial showing U.S. Marines raising the Stars and Stripes on Mount Suribachi after the bloody conquest of the island. In the middle distance was the Potomac and the Pentagon, and beyond that Washington, D.C. itself. Nearby was ArlingtonNationalCemetery and FortMyer, the home of the Old Guard.
It was a particularly good location to inspire an understanding of American history, and, as such, was not an accident, Kathleen was sure.
Lee Cochrane had arranged it, and she had some honest reservations about the chief of staff. He was a little too dedicated for her taste – if that was an adequate word – and she was concerned about her husband.
Hugo Fitzduane had a penchant for causes and a deep affection for America. Hugo and Cochrane seemed like a volatile combination. Indeed, it had already produced a nightmare of violence, though, to be fair, she could scarcely blame Cochrane for that. Or could she?
Kathleen's priorities were strongly influenced by her biological clock. It did not show yet but she was now three months pregnant, and the thought of the man she loved not being there at the birth was disturbing.
Yet in her heart she knew she was helpless. Hugo's ancestors had held – indeed enhanced – their positions by force of arms for many centuries, and the urge to take a stand and test oneself in harm's way seemed to be programmed into him.
But there was a heavy price, and she had witnessed it. She had been there when Fitzduane had been brought in close to death from terrorist bullets.
Later, she had become involved herself when terrorists had taken her family hostage and tried to use her information to kill Hugo in the hospital. They had killed her father, and she still paled at the recollection. She had seen the true face of terrorism, and Hugo was right. It had to be stopped. But by her husband? That was another matter.
It had been a strange way to meet, and though she had fallen in love almost immediately, she had not expected it to work. It was too neat: patient and nurse. Such relationships rarely endured.
But they had gotten married and they were content, and even the shadow of Fitzduane's former lover did not intrude more than was inevitable. Etan had lived with Fitzduane and had borne him a son, but then she had chafed at domesticity and had moved on to greater heights in her media world and Fitzduane had been left to bring up Boots alone. Until Kathleen came along. Now Boots was for all practical purposes her son, and soon there would be another arrival. It was happiness beyond her dreams.
Kathleen smiled at herself. But it was literally true. It was not perfection because it was the nature of life that nothing was quite straightforward, but it truly was – beyond anything she had hoped for in the past.
She smiled to herself as she remembered Fitzduane asleep with little Boots in his arms. This big tall man with his steel-gray hair en brosse and his curiously gentle, unlined face and his wound-scarred body, and this tiny cheeky boy, hair all tousled, splayed across his father, totally secure in his arms and in his love. Of course, Boots – real name Peter – was not so small now. At five he was shooting up like a little rocket, but he was still very cuddly and still liked to be hugged.
Long may it last, she thought, they grow up so fast. If they have a chance to grow up. The shadow of the terrorist threat was ever present.
Hugo had first encountered terrorism by accident, and then curiosity followed by a disgust for what the man stood for had led him deeper and deeper into the hunt for the Hangman. It had all escalated into something much worse than anyone had foreseen, and the fact that they had eventually triumphed was of limited consolation.
With the terrorist's death, he had taken sensible precautions, but, in truth, had thought such violence was behind him. And then had come the Hangman's revenge.
Terror was just a word until you experienced it, and then you
knew that it was worse than anything you could have imagined, worse than any nightmare. Because it was not something that you were looking at in fear. It was reality and it was happening to you.
Fitzduane had just survived that second encounter, but then he had known that this was something he would have to live with – perhaps until he died. He and his family were permanently under threat.
Any day, some complete stranger, for reasons that made no sense to most civilized people, might attempt – and might even succeed – to snuff out his life.
The day was hot and humid as only a Washington summer can be, but Kathleen shivered.
When she had married Hugo, she knew, she had accepted the nature of the man and of their situation. She supported Fitzduane's decision to become actively involved in counterterrorism instead. But because it was the right thing to do, that did not mean she was happy with it. She wanted a live husband, not a dead hero.
Fortunately, Hugo's counterterrorism work was not an obsession. He did it because it had to be done, but he realized full well that such an essentially destructive activity could have a corrosive negative effect. And that was not the nature of the man. So he actively tried to do work as well that was essentially constructive. And that helped greatly. It gave their life a balance and was interesting in itself.
The threat remained. Rangers – Ireland's counterterrorist unit – now trained on the island as part of a security arrangement that Hugo had made with his old friend and ex-commanding officer, General Shane Kilmara. And Hugo's reserve status with the unit was not just a sinecure. He completed weapons practice and training daily, and was also involved in developing a new strike unit.
Hugo Fitzduane was a man of parts indeed, but, she feared, however he tried to disguise it, the warrior side of him was in the ascendant. But this was the man she had wanted and won, and despite her fears she was at heart content.
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