Designated Survivor

by John H. Matthews

  “Dip plates on the SUVs?” Grace said.

  Netty ran the stop sign at 16th and turned left to head north.

  “Negative, running them now . . ..” There was a pause as the analyst put the tag numbers through the computer to find the owner. “Rentals. Both dark grey Suburbans, tinted windows.”

  “Okay. We might have shooters,” Grace said. “How far back are we?”

  “Only a few blocks now,” Ben said. “They’re stopped at a red light at Holly. You should be almost on them by them time the light turns green.”

  Grace scanned the split four-lane road ahead of them that ran through an upscale neighborhood. Large colonial red brick and new construction modern homes lined the right side of the road facing Rock Creek Park.

  “I see them,” Netty said.

  She let off the gas and moved into the right lane behind a minivan.

  “Avery, back off a little,” Grace said. “Don’t want to look like we’re together. Let’s just hang back and see where this parade takes us.”

  Netty kept four to five car lengths behind the grey Suburbans and Avery another few cars behind her. The white Range Rover led them north into Maryland and turned right onto Colesville Road through Silver Spring.

  They continued northeast for 15 minutes until they were into the outer suburbs where strip malls and neighborhoods were more spread out.

  “Where are you going?” Grace said. He watched out the windows at the gas stations and box stores as they drove past.

  “Chief, look,” Netty said.

  Grace turned forward and saw the trailing Suburban signal then turn right off of the main road.

  “Want me to follow?” Avery said from behind them.

  “No, let’s stick together,” Grace said. “Hopefully just means less people to deal with.”

  Another mile down the road and the Range Rover turned right, the remaining Suburban following it. Netty backed off and took the turn. There were far fewer cars to hide behind on the smaller road.

  “See why I hate red cars?” Grace said. “Too easy to spot.”

  Netty hit the brakes as the Suburban in front of them stopped, leaving only thirty feet in between. The Range Rover kept moving.

  “What the fuck,” Grace said. He pounded his hand on the dashboard. “Okay. Go around. Punch it.”

  She did as she was told and put the pedal down on the powerful V8 engine in the Cadillac. Just as the car began accelerating and she started moving into the left lane to pass the SUV, all four doors of the Suburban opened and men climbed out and raised guns at the front of the Cadillac.

  “Shit!” Netty stopped hard and everyone inside the car ducked as they worked to get their weapons out.

  The first bullets hit the windshield and Grace covered his face in anticipation of the shattered glass. Instead of traveling through the windows, the gunshots caused a series of loud thuds. Grace looked up and saw the shots striking the glass and stopping.

  “It’s armored?” Grace said.

  “How do you like red cars now?” Netty said.

  “Go!” Grace said. “The glass won’t hold much longer.” The spider webs of cracks were already beginning to appear as more bullets struck them.

  Netty sat up and pressed her foot to the floor. The rear tires of the sedan squealed as they took off. One of the gunman dove to the right to avoid being hit and she struck a second man square on, his body rolling over the top of the car. Holden turned in his seat and watched the man hit the ground behind them as the remaining men fired at the Cadillac.

  “Avery, you back there?” Grace said.

  “I’m a block over,” Avery said. “We saw it start to go down and made a turn to get around in front to help. We’ll be there in a minute.”

  “We got through,” Grace said. “Let’s just catch up to the Range Rover.”

  The sound of crunching metal and screeching tires came through the radio earpiece.

  “Avery, what’s going on?”

  CHAPTER 21

  As Avery watched down side streets to cut back over and help the rest of the team, the second grey Suburban came up behind the Mercedes he was driving, moved to the right, and then bumped the rear corner of the large black car. Avery spun his wheel left to try to compensate, but it was too late and the German sedan was sent spinning. As it came around to face the Suburban, the rear end crashed into a car parked on the side of the road and the airbags exploded open into their faces then collapsed.

  The engine died and Avery was pushing the start button over and over to try to get the motor to turn over again. The Suburban stopped 15 yards from them.

  “Everybody out,” Avery said. “Let’s take them down.”

  Chip already had his rifle up and aimed out the front window, squared on the driver of the large SUV ahead of them.

  “Go. I’ll cover,” Chip said.

  Avery rolled left out of the car and dropped behind his door as Levi went out the right side from the back seat and around to the other side of the car they’d crashed into.

  “Okay, Chip,” Avery said. “Get out.”

  “Nah, I’m fine right here,” Chip said. “I have a bead on them.”

  “Chip, godammit, get out of the car,” Avery said.

  “I can’t,” Chip said.

  Avery looked across the driver’s seat at Chip Goodson. The sniper held his rifle up to his shoulder, the front supports resting on the dashboard of the Mercedes. His left hand was covered with a deep crimson liquid.

  “Where’s the blood from?” Avery said.

  “Not sure,” Chip said. “But I can’t move. We gotta get through this first.”

  “Shit,” Avery said. “Grace, you there? We’ve been hit. Chip is hurt. We need help.”

  No answer came from the radio.

  “Looks like it’s you and me, Levi,” Avery said. “You ready for this?”

  “Sure,” Levi said.

  “Sure?” Avery said.

  “Yeah, sure,” Levi said.

  The doors of the Suburban opened and two men began climbing out. Chip squeezed the trigger on his rifle and sent a round off that put a small hole in the windshield right in front of him in the Mercedes and then into the black combat boot coming out of the driver’s door of the SUV forty-five feet away. As the driver’s foot hit the ground the ankle buckled and the man fell to the ground screaming. A second round to the head silenced him.

  The front passenger was out and moving towards the Mercedes and began firing with an M-4 assault rifle. Bullets were hitting the door in front of Avery then the shooter turned right as he heard a pistol firing to his side. Levi was running down behind the row of parked cars to Avery’s left. Avery leaned out with his Sig Sauer pistol and put a round into the neck of the shooter and watched the body fall.

  “Two down,” Avery said.

  “I see movement in the back seat,” Chip watched through the scope on his sniper rifle.

  Men got out either side of the Suburban in full tactical gear and body armor, rifles raised, and began firing as soon as they were clear of their doors. One man turned to track Levi and the other moved towards the Mercedes. Avery could hear Levi firing at the shooters but every time he tried to get out from behind the door to take a shot, another burst of bullets struck the car.

  “Chip, can you see him? Can you get a shot off?” Avery said. He turned and looked into the car and saw Chip’s chest and head slumped over the rifle. Glass from the shattered windshield covered him.

  “Dammit!” Avery stood up and jumped from behind the door and began running at the man shooting at him. His Sig aimed and unloading as he ran. The man tried to point his rifle at Avery, but his body was being thrown backwards by the force of the .45 caliber bullets striking him square in the Kevlar vest he was wearing. Bulletproof vests keep the shots from going through but don’t do anything to absorb the blunt force of a large caliber round as it slams into you. As Avery got closer, the shooter fell backwards onto the ground. Avery ran up and kicked the M-4 aw
ay from the man and pointed his pistol into the balaclava covered face.

  The other shooter saw what was happening and turned away from looking for Levi and aimed at Avery. Before he could get a round off, Levi stood from behind a pickup, aimed and fired. It took only a fraction of a second for the Federal .45 caliber 230-grain ammunition to travel from Levi’s weapon into the side of the man’s head. The hollow point round left a large hole on the other side of his skull before the man hit the ground.

  Levi heard a car engine and turned his pistol toward it to see the red Cadillac speeding up the road then turn and slide to a stop. Avery still stood over the final gunman, his pistol aimed at the man’s face.

  Holden and Levi came up on either side and began to put zip ties on the man’s hands.

  “Put it down now, Avery,” Grace said. “We have him.”

  “He killed Chip,” Avery said.

  Grace looked over at the Mercedes Benz then at the row of houses. He saw at least three people filming them with cellphones out their windows.

  “Not like this, Avery,” Grace reached out and put his hand around the still warm barrel of the Sig Sauer and held it until Avery opened his hand. Grace turned to step away and Avery brought his right leg back and kicked the man in the groin.

  “Feel better?” Grace said.

  “No,” Avery said.

  Grace pulled out his phone and dialed then waited for an answer then spoke, “We need clean up.”

  CHAPTER 22

  Ben Murray stared at his computer screen, avoiding looking over at Grace. “The diplomat plates were stolen.”

  Grace sat in a chair in the far corner of workroom at their building in Buzzard Point. He was leaned back as far as the chair could go, tossing a football into the air, each time it flying up in a spiral then stalling and coming back down to this chest. He hadn’t said anything in nearly half an hour.

  “A friend at the State department just confirmed, and the burner phone went dark just as the shooting began,” Ben said.

  “It was all a set up to draw us out,” Grace said, his voice barely audible over the hum of the fans from the large computers Ben had set up around his desk. “And it worked,” he threw the football again then caught it. “What about the Range Rover?”

  “Range Rover has had that body style for a few years. Twenty-four white vehicles of that model are registered in the District, another 40 or so in Maryland and Virginia,” Ben said. “I’ll check for reports of any that have been stolen, but don’t know where it’ll get us.”

  “Thanks,” Grace said.

  “What now?” Ben said.

  “We keep looking,” Grace said.

  “What about Chip?” Ben said.

  Grace leaned forward to look over at Ben then leaned back in the chair and threw the ball into the air. “Chip’s dead. We keep working.”

  “Just like that?” Ben said.

  “Yeah, just like that,” Grace said. “It isn’t that we didn’t like him. We did. We were all friends with him. He was the best damn weapons person I’ve ever known. But you don’t take time to grieve when enemies are out there. We’re not running a damn daycare here, people get hurt and people die.”

  Grace’s cellphone rang. He answered.

  “What the hell happened?” Arrington said.

  “We were targeted,” Grace said. “Won’t happen again.”

  “Well, thanks to your shootout, everyone here knows you aren’t sitting around doing nothing,” Arrington said. “If you show your faces in public again, it had better be to arrest or kill the people responsible for this.”

  The line went dead.

  “Doesn’t sound like that went well,” Ben said.

  “It didn’t,” Grace said.

  The door opened at the far end of the room and Holden walked in. He looked over at Grace then turned and went to Ben’s desk. “Here’s the ten cards and photos.” He handed Ben the white cards with all of the fingerprints of the men from the ambush, including the one they’d apprehended.

  “Thanks, Holden,” Ben said.

  Holden glanced back over at Grace then began walking to the door.

  “How’s everyone downstairs?” Grace said.

  The tall man stopped short of the door and looked at the floor then finally over at his boss. “Shitty,” Holden turned and left.

  Grace looked back at Ben. “Run the prints. Tell me you have something, anything, else for me.”

  “Well, actually, I do,” Ben said.

  “Show me,” Grace threw the football into the wall and watched it bounce off the red brick and slam into an unused table then walked over to Ben.

  Ben moved some windows on his screen and pulled up a website. “Cunningham Construction, same as the work shirts you found in the officer’s apartments. I looked into contracts for work on the Capitol and they came up.”

  “What kind of work were they doing?” Grace said.

  “Running wires to increase the network capacity,” Ben said.

  “So they’d have needed to tear into walls,” Grace said.

  “Likely,” Ben said. “People usually don’t want the network wires running along the wall and floor.”

  “What do we know about Cunningham?” Grace reached and pulled a rolling chair over and sat down on it backwards, leaning forward onto the back of the chair.

  “They’re based out of Linthicum, Maryland. Smaller company, maybe 15 employees,” Ben said. “They mainly use individual subcontractors under their own project managers. They got their clearance for secure government work less than a year ago.”

  “Less than a year and they got a contract on the Capitol building?” Grace said. “That seems pretty lucky.”

  “Maybe they have some good connections,” Ben said.

  CHAPTER 23

  Netty drove the van while Avery slept in back and Grace sat in the passenger seat, his eyes pointed out the side window not looking at anything. It had been 18 months since he’d lost a member of his team and before that it had been two years. It was the nature of the work. The inherent danger that draws people to it, but that could also be their ending.

  “Didn’t want the rest of the team?” Netty said.

  “Hmm?” Grace said. “Oh, no. I don’t think we needed everyone for this. I just want to get a look around.”

  The van left the toll way and merged onto the beltway headed north. She took the off ramp for the Baltimore-Washington Parkway and slipped into the left lane and matched speed with other traffic. Forty minutes later they exited into Linthicum Heights and made a few turns and caught one red light before pulling up at the edge of the parking lot to a business park.

  Grace turned to look at Netty in her green combat pants and flannel shirt left out to cover her sidearm. In the back Avery wore a white tank top.

  “Netty, you’re with me,” Grace said. “Avery, get up front and keep eyes out.” Even in a seemingly safe environment it was standard practice to have someone keep watch. Being stuck inside an unknown building and having shooters come in after you is never a position you want to be in.

  Grace and Netty left the van and walked across the parking lot to the front door of the offices of Cunningham Construction.

  “What do you think we’ll find here?” Netty said.

  “I don’t know,” Grace said. “Sometimes staring at a computer screen doesn’t work as well as knocking on doors. Just keep your eyes open for anything.”

  He opened the door and let her in first. A middle-aged female receptionist sat at a desk in the corner of the front room, a small television was on showing the ongoing news from the National Mall.

  “How can I help y’all?” she said. Grace could see her trying to size them up. He hadn’t tried to cover the Glock on his side. He pulled out a folded leather case and flipped it open to show a badge.

  “We’re with Homeland Security,” Grace said. “We just like to have a look around.”

  The woman’s head tilted as she took in the information and tried to pro
cess it.

  “Why would you need to look around here, sweetie?” she said.

  “We’re checking out all the companies that had access to the United States Capitol over the last six months,” Grace said. “Just routine based on, well, based on recent events.”

  The woman glanced at the television then back to Grace.

  “Oh, it’s horrible, isn’t it?” she said. “My son is in the Army. Thank God he’s at Fort Bragg and wasn’t . . .. All those families of the boys killed this morning, I just can’t imagine…”

  “Me either,” Grace said.

  “Just let me know if you need anything. I’m Mattie,” she said. “Nobody’s really in today, due to the explosion. We’re a Christian company, you know. The owner thought people should be with their families.”

  “What about you?” Grace said.

  “My son is my only family I have left and he’s in North Carolina,” she said. “I figured someone might as well be here to answer the phones.”

  “Well, we’re glad you’re here,” Grace said.

  “Sure enough, sweetie,” she said. “You two have a look around and let me know if you need anything. Nothing to hide here.”

  Grace nodded then glanced at Netty and they worked their way through the hallway. The first door on the right was a small conference room with nothing but the wooden table and a huge whiteboard on the wall that had been wiped clean. The next room was a small office and he motioned for Netty to check it as he kept moving.

  “There’s coffee made if you two want any,” the receptionist’s voice came down the hallway. “Just help yourselves.”

  “Thanks,” Grace said. He passed the open door to the break room on the left and smelled the coffee and was almost tempted to stop for some but kept moving. The next door was closed and he turned the handle but the door didn’t move.

  He looked left towards the front room. “Mattie, this door on the left is locked. Can I get in here?”

  Her head poked around the corner to see where he was.

  “Oh, sweetie, that one sticks a little. Just put your shoulder into it a bit,” Mattie said.