First Family

by David Baldacci

  “Hush up now.”

  “It’s that boy you talked about. Gabriel.”

  “Yeah, it is. But somebody’s with him.”

  Quarry nudged Diane with his foot. “Get up, quick.”

  Diane rose to her feet and with Quarry gripping her arm they fast-walked down the passageway and turned a corner.

  “Please let us go,” wailed Diane. “Please.”

  “Shut up, woman or I swear…”

  Willa said, “Don’t hurt her, she’s just scared.”

  “We’re all scared. They never shoulda brought Gabriel up here.”

  “Mr. Quarry!”

  They all froze at the sound of this new voice.

  “Mr. Quarry. My name is Sean King. I’m here with my partner, Michelle Maxwell. Can you hear me?”

  Quarry remained quiet and stuck his gun into Diane’s side to make her do the same.

  “Can you hear me? We were hired to find Willa Dutton. That’s all. We’re not the police. We’re private investigators. If you have Willa, please just let her go and we’ll leave.”

  Quarry still said nothing.

  “Mr. Quarry?”

  “I hear you,” he called out. “And you’ll just walk away if I give her to you? Why do I think there’s an army of police waiting right outside?”

  “There’s no one outside.”

  “Yeah, you got no reason to lie to me, do you?” Quarry pulled Diane farther down the passage.

  “We just want Willa, that’s all.”

  “We all want a lot of things, but we don’t always get what we want.”

  Sean’s next words froze the older man.

  “We’ve been to your house. We saw the room. Gabriel showed us. We know what happened with your daughter. We know all about it. And if you let Willa go we’ll do everything we can to help the truth come out.”

  “Why you wanta do that?” he cried out.

  “It was wrong what happened, Mr. Quarry. We know that and we want to help you. But we need Willa safe first.”

  “Ain’t no help left for me. Ain’t nothing left for me. You know what I tried to do. It didn’t work. They’ll be coming for me now.”

  “We can still help.”

  Sean had reduced the volume of his voice so that Quarry would not know that they were on the move, that they were growing closer.

  “You don’t want to hurt a little girl,” Sean said. “I know you don’t. If you had, you would’ve already done it.”

  Quarry thought quickly. “Where’s Gabriel? I want to talk to him.”

  Michelle nodded at the little boy.

  “Mr. Sam, it’s me.”

  “What you doing up here?”

  “Coming to help you. Don’t want to see you get hurt, Mr. Sam.”

  “I appreciate that, Gabriel. But them folks with you, listen up, Gabriel and his ma had nothing to do with this. It’s all me.”

  “We found the letter you left,” said Sean. “We know. They’re not in trouble.”

  Gabriel said, “Mr. Sam. I don’t want anybody to get hurt. You or that girl. Would you let her go and then me and you can get on back home? Maybe we can go in the plane, like you promised.”

  Quarry slowly shook his head. “Yeah, that’d be real good, son. But I don’t really see that happening.”

  “Why not?”

  “Rules, Gabriel, rules. Thing is, they don’t apply to everybody. Some folks break all the rules and…” His voice trailed off.

  Sean said, “Mr. Quarry, will you please let Willa go? And Diane Wohl too? You have her too, right? You don’t want to hurt them. I know you don’t. You’re not that sort of a man.”

  They were close now. Sean and Michelle could feel it. They motioned to Gabriel to get behind them.

  “Mr. Quarry!”

  Quarry felt Willa clinch his neck tightly. As he looked at her, he suddenly thought he saw another little girl there whom he’d loved with everything he had and that he’d left to perish in a house of his own making. The fellow was right. Quarry was not that sort of man. At least he didn’t want to be.

  “All right. All right. I’ll let’em go.”

  He set Willa down and knelt in front of her so they were eye to eye. “Look here, Willa, I’m sorry for all that I done. If I could take it back, I would, but I can’t. See, I lost me my little girl’cause of what some folks did. And it just ate at me, made me something I never wanted to be. Can you understand that?”

  She slowly nodded. “I guess so,” she said in a tiny voice. “Yes.”

  “When you love someone you got to be prepared to hate too. And sometimes the hate just wins out. But you listen to me, Willa. You might have a real good reason to hate somebody, but you still got to let that hate go.’Cause if you don’t it’ll just tear you apart your whole life. And even worse than that, it won’t leave no room for any love to get back in.”

  Before she could say anything he spun her around to face away from him. He called out, “She’s coming toward you. Just her. Walk, Willa. Just walk toward their voices.”

  “This way, Willa,” called out Michelle.

  Willa looked back once at Quarry.

  “Just go, Willa. Go on. No looking back.” He knew when she found out about her mother that the grief would change her entire life. She would hate Quarry and she should. He just hoped the little girl had listened to his words and wouldn’t let that hate ruin her life. Like it had his.

  She hurried down the passageway.

  Quarry called out, “How’d you find me out? Was it the writing on the woman’s arms? The Koasati stuff?”

  Sean hesitated before answering. “Yes.”

  Quarry shook his head. “Shit,” he said quietly.

  “Now Diane Wohl,” called out Sean when Willa reached them safely.

  Quarry glanced over at the woman and nodded. “Go on.”

  “You won’t shoot me in the back?” she said, her voice quivering.

  “I don’t shoot people in the back. But I might shoot’em in the front if they give me reason to.” He pushed her forward. “Go!”

  She raced down the mineshaft, but turned back to yell, “You bastard!”

  But it was drowned out by another scream coming their way. It was like the cry of Johnny Reb during the Civil War right before they attacked.

  “Look out!” yelled Michelle a second later.

  “Daryl!” cried out Quarry, who’d recognized the source of the first scream. “No, boy! NO! Gabriel’s here.”

  Daryl was hurtling down a shaft with an MP5 in one hand firing away.

  “Get down!” said Michelle. She pushed Willa behind her and fired back.

  Sean ducked down as a wall of bullets sailed over his head.

  Caught in the middle, Diane Wohl took multiple MP5 rounds to the torso, nearly cutting her in half. As she fell, the woman looked back toward Quarry, her mouth half open, her eyes wide and wild. And accusing. She sank to the hard floor awash in her own blood. This mine would be her tomb.

  “Sons of bitches!” roared Daryl, who’d dropped his empty clip and shoved in a fresh one, scattering shots all over; bullets ricocheted off walls, the ceilings, and the rock floor. It was like they were trapped in a lethal pinball machine.

  Quarry jumped forward. “Daryl, stop! Stop! Gabriel…”

  If Daryl heard him he wasn’t listening to his daddy anymore. This was apparently what he had meant by “his way.”

  He dropped the overheated MP5 and pulled out twin nickel-plated semiautomatic pistols and walked forward, sending walls of fire ahead of him. When they were empty he slapped fresh mags in and blasted away. When the triggers clicked empty he pulled a shotgun from a long leather holster strapped to his back, racked the weapon, and opened fire anew. The big-bore weapon blew large chunks of rock off the walls and sent lethal shards spinning off.

  A few moments later Michelle leapt up as Daryl was reloading the ten-gauge and nailed him with a round at chest height.

  “Shit!” she exclaimed as he merely staggered b
ack after his armor absorbed most of the impact. “When am I gonna learn to aim for the damn head.”

  Sean opened fire too, trying to keep Daryl pinned down. But the man seemed unafraid of dying. He reloaded and fired off blast after blast from the ten-gauge, laughing and cursing as he did so. At one point he screamed out, “Is this what needs doing, Daddy? Huh? Your boy’s right here for you, Daddy.”

  Realizing that they simply couldn’t match the firepower arrayed against them, Michelle screamed, “Gabriel, Willa, run!” She pointed behind her. “That way!”

  Gabriel grabbed Willa’s hand “Come on!”

  They ran off.

  “Shit!” Sean grunted in pain a few seconds later.

  Michelle looked up from where she was reloading, and saw him hunched over holding his arm where one of the rock tailings had ripped across it.

  “I’m okay,” he said, grimacing.

  They couldn’t see him in the darkness but Daryl was now holding something far more terrifying than even an MP5 at close quarters. He had a small box with a toggle switch.

  “Hey, you Feds, let’s all go see Jesus,” cackled Daryl.

  “Don’t!” Quarry collided with his son right as he flipped the switch. Daryl went down hard. Quarry’s momentum carried him past his son and he rolled into and then over a pile of fallen rock.

  There was a moment of silence and then the first charge went off. The force of the nearby explosion roared down the constricted tunnel like a runaway train, pushing suffocating smoke and jet-propelled debris ahead of it.

  Daryl stood just in time to take the full brunt of it. A large flying rock severed his head completely from his shoulders. Quarry was mostly shielded from the blast by the pile of stone he’d landed behind. He rose moments later on shaking legs hacking up mine dirt.

  Quarry barely glanced at what was left of his son and then hurried down the shaft. He found Sean and Michelle where they’d been blown down the tunnel and helped them up. “Run!” he exclaimed. “Next one’s gonna go only about ten feet from here.”

  They ran as hard as they could. When the next blast detonated, the ceiling of the mine collapsed right behind them. The concussive force knocked them all off their feet again. Michelle tried to get up, but she screamed out in pain and grabbed her ankle. Quarry bent down and with his great strength picked the tall woman off the floor and slung her over his shoulder all in one motion. An instant later a huge chunk of rock struck right where she’d been lying.

  “Move, move,” he yelled at Sean, who was just ahead, holding his wounded arm. “The next one’s gonna go.”

  As the three clambered over the pile of rubble, in the smoke and confusion they didn’t see Gabriel and Willa huddled far down a side shaft, where they had retreated after the ceiling here had almost caved in on them.

  Moments later a third charge went off, and the mountain did another heave. More parts of the rock ceiling gave way and thundered down.

  Finally, they reached the entrance and were through it. Quarry set Michelle down and stayed bent over, heaving like a spent marathoner.

  Michelle held her ankle and stared up at him. He was covered with dirt and coal dust, and with his wild white hair and sun-ravaged face he looked like a survivor of some sort of holocaust. And in way he was. They all were.

  “You saved my life,” she managed to gasp.

  He eyed Sean and saw the blood pouring down his arm. He ripped off one of his shirtsleeves and fashioned a rough tourniquet above the wound. As he drew back, Sean saw the lines burned into the man’s arm. He looked questioningly at Michelle. She’d seen it too.

  Sean suddenly became as rigid as a statue. “Where’re the kids?”

  Quarry and Michelle stared all around.

  She called out, “Willa? Gabriel?”

  Quarry, however, was already looking at the mine entrance. “They’re still in there.” He turned and raced back through the door just as another explosion rocked the mine.

  Sean jumped up to follow.

  “Sean, don’t!” yelled Michelle as she clutched at his arm. “Don’t go back in there. The whole mountain’s about to come down.”

  He pulled her hand free. “I was the one who got Gabriel to go in there. I promised his mother I’d bring him back.”

  The tears were streaming down Michelle’s dirty face. She tried to say something but it wouldn’t come out. He turned and ran toward the mine.

  She pulled herself to her feet, tried to go after them, but collapsed, grabbing her fractured ankle.

  Quarry was ahead of Sean and moving fast with the energy of panic. But Sean ran like he had never run before and quickly caught up to the older man.

  They both screamed out, “Gabriel! Willa!”

  To his left, they heard something. They turned down that shaft just as a charge leveled another part of the mine. Everything was creaking and groaning with sections of rock giving way. Soon, even without any more explosions, it all was going to go.

  They found them, huddled together next to a mound of collapsed ceiling. Sean lifted Willa up while Sean grabbed Gabriel’s hand and headed back. They sprinted to the entrance.

  Another charge, not more than fifty feet away, knocked them all down again. They sat up sputtering and spitting up dust, eardrums screaming, their bodies battered to near physical failure. Getting to their feet, they somehow staggered on. The entrance was in sight. They could see the shaft of daylight. Sean suddenly ran harder than he ever had, holding Willa tight against his chest. His heart felt like it was going to burst with the effort.

  Then they were through the entrance and Sean put Willa down. “Run, honey, run to Michelle.”

  The little girl sprinted toward Michelle, who had managed to stagger up by holding on to an outcrop of rock.

  Back inside the mine, Quarry, always so surefooted, but now fatigued beyond belief, tripped and fell over a chunk of rock. Gabriel stopped and turned back.

  “Go, Gabriel, go!”

  Gabriel didn’t go. He came back and helped Quarry up.

  They ran right at the door. Right at the sunlight. The Alabama sky was beautiful, the sun rising high and warming.

  Sean was heading back in. He saw them. “Come on,” he roared. “Come on.” He grabbed Gabriel’s hand, pulled the boy along.

  Michelle and Willa watched from a distance. In the darkness of the shaft they could make out the images of the two men and the boy running with all they had left.

  “Come on!” screamed Willa.

  Michelle added, “Sean, run!”

  Two feet.

  Then one precious foot.

  Sean cleared the entrance.

  The last charge detonated.

  A flood of dirt and smoke poured out of the mountain as the mineshaft completely collapsed.

  When it finally all cleared away, Sean King lay sprawled on his back covered in dirt and rock.

  On top of him was Gabriel, still breathing.

  However, there was no sign of Sam Quarry. He was still in the mine, under tons of rock.

  CHAPTER 84

  DAN COX had been educated at some of the country’s best schools. He’d been successful at just about everything he’d attempted. As president he was as well versed in foreign policy matters as he was in domestic issues. There weren’t many holes in his intellectual armor. Yet with all that, the people who knew the First Couple well would have agreed, at least in private, that Jane Cox was probably smarter than her husband. Or at least more cunning.

  As she was flying over rural Alabama in a chopper she demonstrated the validity of this opinion. Dan Cox’s plan would not work, she decided. This matter could not simply be spun, or blamed on terrorists. There were things they didn’t know, that they simply had to know, to make an informed judgment about what to do.