A powerful engine thrummed beneath the hood, the touch of the gas pedal making the Beast leap forward like a race horse at the gate.
A wrecked squad car went by on the left.
A police motorcycle pinned beneath an overturned auto parts truck flashed by on the right.
People ran in the street, and other people – with their arms outstretched – ran after them. Several went to the pavement, their pursuers atop them and instantly ripping and feeding. The limo driver tried to avoid a middle-aged man chasing a screaming woman, but the man had no concern for the racing vehicle and ran right in front of it, despite the driver’s swerve. The body hit with a sickening crunch and was thrown sideways, sparing the fleeing woman from his reaching arms.
It didn’t matter. Out the side window the driver saw the woman run straight into a trio of people that killed her almost instantly.
The Cleveland PD squad car that had followed them out of the plaza was keeping up, staying close with its lights and sirens blasting. It tried twice to move into the lead position, the cop probably thinking he could clear the way, but the limo’s driver wouldn’t permit it. After what he had seen, he’d decided that he wasn’t slowing down for anything or anyone – not even terrified pedestrians – and besides, the streets were getting too crowded for even one vehicle, much less another attempting to pass.
The dash-mounted radio crackled with a few panicked voices, not nearly as many as there had been only ten minutes ago, and nowhere near as many as there should have been. He needed both hands for the wheel, but a voice-activated mic clipped to the driver’s lapel caught his transmission to the secure field where Air Force One was waiting.
“Angel One, this is Stagecoach. We’re on extraction-two, inbound to your location, ten minutes out.”
There was static, what might have been a voice, but no intelligible response.
The driver repeated his message, dodging a man in a dark suit (was that agent Rickover?) stumbling into the street, holding his head in his hands. In his side-view mirror the driver saw that the police car behind him did not manage to dodge, and took Rickover out at the waist with its front bumper, hurling him like a ragdoll across the street and painting the hood of the squad car red. The police unit swayed, fell back and almost lost it before the cop recovered and rejoined the pursuit.
Another call to Air Force One yielded nothing, so the driver radioed for Gulfstream, the identical back-up aircraft that traveled with her sister VC-25. No response there, either.
“Shotgun,” the driver called, reaching out to the USSS mobile command center back at the plaza, “Stagecoach requesting immediate assistance, condition critical.” Up ahead he saw an ambulance and two police cars blocking an intersection, a group of what had to be twenty civilians battling with the first-responders. The cops fired into the crowd, and the medics tried to scramble up onto the roof of their vehicle. All were pulled down.
The way ahead was blocked, no chance to get through.
“All posts,” the driver broadcast, “extraction-two is compromised. Redirecting to extraction-three.” He cut the wheel hard left just as he reached the emergency vehicles and the homicidal mob, tires screeching and the heavy car leaning into its suspension as it raced up a side street.
He hit the gas.
The chills and a painful headache hit him back.
Garrison simply couldn’t lie on the floor between the seats anymore, and Agent LaBeau was in no condition to tell him otherwise. The President braced himself against the sudden maneuvers of the car and levered into the seat that faced backward, LaBeau in front of him. The agent was bleeding badly from numerous bite wounds, and now his bald, black head was beaded with sweat, his eyes taking on a hazy look.
Going into shock. The President squeezed the big man’s knee. “Hang in there, LaBeau. We’re almost out of here.” He keyed the intercom so he could speak directly to the driver. “How far are we from Air Force One?”
“About five minutes, sir,” came the tense reply.
Garrison left him alone to concentrate on his driving. Over LaBeau’s shoulder, out the small tinted window at the rear of the limo, he could see the Cleveland police car weaving as it tried to keep up. The horrors the driver was seeing coming at them appeared to Garrison in reverse, retreating behind the limousine. New horrors followed the previous; people killing one another in the street, fleeing people falling to the pavement to be torn apart and…eaten.
Impossible. Something from a movie.
But he was seeing it.
Biological attack? Chemical warfare? Doctor Rusk’s fears about Trident come to pass? He thought about his family. Were they safe? He had personally met with each member of their Secret Service Details, and the organization’s Director had assured him that every man and woman in those teams would, without hesitation, lay down their lives to protect the President’s family.
But what if their Details are like mine? Suddenly gone mad and turned dangerous? Images of Tommy Barrow being devoured by a bodyguard flashed before him, of his supervisory agent and body man turning into savages. White House insiders, attacking without reason or warning. His family was surrounded by them. How could they possibly be safe?
He wanted to use the intercom again, have the driver contact someone and get some information about his family, but he resisted. The man could not afford to be distracted, and if he was a really good agent – as the President knew he was – he would politely but firmly tell his Commander-in-Chief to shut up and let him drive.
Plague. Bio-war. Garrison knew he should be thinking about the country and its three hundred million citizens, but right now he was simply a husband and father, and all he could see were the faces of his wife and children.
Out the back window again, in the air above and behind the chasing police car, he saw the Secret Service’s Black Hawk swing in to line up with their street, closing rapidly.
Someone’s still on the job.
And then Marine One, the blue and white Sikorsky SH-3 Sea King helicopter, appeared in the frame, coming in from the left in a crazy, nearly horizontal high-speed bank. It slammed into the Black Hawk, and suddenly there was an airborne bloom of red and white fire so intense it hurt the eyes. Then debris was falling, trailing black smoke.
“Oh, God,” Garrison whispered.
A moment later the squad car swerved and jumped a curb, slamming into a store front and flipping onto its side.
“LaBeau…” the President started, looking over at the last member of his protective detail, but then stopped when he saw him. The man was slumped forward, hands dangling between his knees but one still gripping his pistol. His head was down, chin bouncing off his chest, and stringers of both blood and grayish drool were dripping to the carpet between his shoes. The President grabbed the agent’s arm and shook it, bracing himself with his other hand as the limo went through a tight turn. “Labeau,” he said. “Labeau!”
The agent looked up at him slowly, circles like smudges of black ink ringing his glassy eyes, not bothering to wipe at his chin. “Mr…President…” he said thickly.
Garrison didn’t know what to do for him.
LaBeau shook his head, then keyed the intercom. “Driver…stop.”
The limo kept going. “Are you nuts?” came the reply.
The big agent bellowed, loud enough that he probably could have been heard through the bulletproof divider without the intercom. “I said stop right now!”
The Beast braked hard, shimmied and came to a halt in the street.
“I’m…compromised,” LaBeau said into the intercom, then opened the rear door. He set his pistol on the leather seat beside him. “Lock it…behind me…” Then he got out, slamming it closed even as Garrison shouted his name. The President saw him stumble away a few feet, holding his head, and then the big man stiffened, turned and threw himself against the side of the limousine, clawing, bared teeth scraping the window glass.
Garrison jerked back, and the driver hit the accelerator, leaving
Agent LaBeau behind. The last Garrison saw of him, the man was stumbling after the limo down the center of the street, reaching out as if he could catch and stop the fleeing vehicle.
A shiver ran through the President, and he switched to the seat LaBeau had recently occupied, picking up the Sig-Sauer nine-millimeter the agent had left behind. A quick check showed him that about two-thirds of a fifteen-round magazine was left, with one round in the chamber.
He shoved the magazine back in and hung on as the Beast raced through Cleveland.
They were on the final stretch, out of the city itself and on the access road that would take them to the private part of the airport where Air Force One and her back-up twin were parked within a secure perimeter. There was silence now on the radio, no one responding to the driver’s repeated calls for assistance.
The road curved, leading to a gatehouse with a high, chain-link fence stretching away into the distance on either side, high weeds blowing in a breeze along its length. Beyond was a flat expanse of concrete, where the two magnificent blue and white birds – each with UNITED STATES of AMERICA emblazoned down their lengths – were parked some distance from one another.
The driver’s vision blurred. His body shook with chills and the pounding of a headache felt like it would drive his eyeballs right out of his skull. He squinted and forced himself to concentrate, gripping the wheel tighter.
A camouflage-painted Humvee with a uniformed gunner standing behind the turret-mounted machine gun shot toward the gate from the other side, and for a moment the limo driver thought it might stop, blocking the road to intercept them. It should have. It didn’t. The Humvee blew by on the limo’s left, passing them and driving at high speed back down the access road toward Cleveland.
The driver caught a glimpse of the gunner’s dazed expression, of spent brass shell casings covering the vehicle’s hood and rattling off onto the road. Why were they leaving? They had to have been put on alert, couldn’t have not recognized the car.
The striped bar that would deny traffic entry was in the raised position and the small gatehouse was unattended, so the driver shot right through, aiming for the big white aircraft in the distance on the left. There were a few black vehicles parked around the two planes, and he noticed dark lumps scattered across the concrete near them. His vision swam in and out, making it hard to focus, hard to think.
Bodies. Those are dead bodies.
Empty shell casings from a thirty-caliber machine gun – like the one mounted in the Humvee – glittered on the pavement in the morning sun. Not everyone was down, he saw, his vision cloudy as if he had opened his eyes underwater in a heavily chlorinated swimming pool. There were people in dark suits, Air Force uniforms and civilian dress moving around the two aircraft, and a few coming down the stairway pulled up to the door of Air Force One.
All of them swung in the limo’s direction at the same moment, and started moving in that direction.
I made it. He’s safe.
It was the driver’s last conscious thought, and like a switch being thrown, his body jerked, his right leg reflexively stiffening, jamming the accelerator to the floor. He took his hands of the wheel and twisted in his seat, clawing at the smoked glass partition that separated the driver from the passenger compartment.
Food back there.
Kill it.
The Beast sagged to the left, the steering wheel turning on its own, and began a high-speed curve to the right across the field of concrete.
Garrison Fox felt the vehicle shift, the sickening sway and speed of a car out of control, and he gripped the door handle, bracing his feet against the other seat. Part of the driver’s face appeared beyond the partition, a slavering, snarling thing twisted into a mask of rage. He clawed the glass, but couldn’t attack it completely; his seatbelt restricted his movement. He also was no longer driving.
He can open the partition with a button, Garrison thought, and started to raise the pistol. If he comes through, I’ll have to-
There was impact, a flash of white and Garrison was flung across the passenger compartment.
Then only darkness.
-17-
SIERRA-3
Cleveland, Ohio – October 28
David King, Secret Service shooter, widower and only days from retirement, burst through the fire door at the bottom of the stairs and into a marble-floored hallway. Daylight flooded in through high windows from the lobby to his right, and he moved in that direction on the run, his nine-millimeter in one hand. As it was Saturday, the office building atop which he and his Sierra team had taken up position was empty, and his rubber-soled combat boots made a thudding, squeaking sound on the polished floor as he ran to the light. He passed banks of elevators on his left and right, then moved into an airy, three-story lobby with a glass wall facing Key Plaza.
He could see people running in every direction outside, heard the muffled and distant pop of gunfire. Single doors flanked a trio of large, revolving doors in the center of the glass wall on the other side of a circular reception desk, and he curved around to the left to reach them-
-and saw the dead security guard on the floor, his chest cavity open and exposed.
Saw the pool of blood, reflective on the marble.
Saw the young man rising from where he’d been crouched over the body, now up and moving toward David. He was a well-groomed twenty-something in skinny jeans and loafers, a light blue button-down shirt with a big red, white and blue RE-ELECT FOX pin on the pocket. One of those enthusiastic young campaign volunteers who tirelessly went door-to-door promoting a candidate. Only this young man’s shirt was spattered red, and blood smeared his hands and face.
David slid to a halt on the marble and his pistol came up. A double-tap, deafening in the quiet lobby, but the volunteer was fast, coming up under his extended arm and moving inside, one bullet tearing through a shoulder – he didn’t even flinch – the other missing completely and punching a hole in the glass wall, creating a dizzying spider-web of cracks. The kid hit him hard, a full tackle, and they crashed to the floor, the campaign worker snarling and raking his fingers down David’s black nylon combat vest. The Secret Service man shoved back with his other forearm, trying to keep those snapping teeth away from his face.
The kid grabbed the arm with both hands and sank his teeth into the wrist.
David howled in pain, then rammed the muzzle of the nine-millimeter into one of the kid’s eyes and blew skull, scalp and brains across the polished marble floor.
Shrugging out from under the body, David looked at his wrist; it was bleeding from where the teeth had broken the skin. He cursed, wanted to kick a boot into that dead and frozen expression of rage on the kid’s face, but figured the bullet had been retaliation enough. He ran for the doors, finding one of the singles unlocked, and headed out into Key Plaza.
The last transmission he’d heard from Stagecoach had been a plea for all agents to converge on the airfield where the President’s planes waited.
“Sierra-Three to Stagecoach, what’s your location?” he called into his handset. There was no reply to that call, or the next two he made. He knew where the airfield was, though, and had reviewed the main and alternate extraction routes. Now he just needed to get there.
A quick look at the carnage on Key Plaza told him there was nothing else he could do here.
David sprinted across the grass in the general direction of the stage and Bamboo, the presidential motorcade that had gone nowhere and remained parked where it had been when the Beast roared out of the plaza. There were agents moving around over there, but after what he’d seen from the rooftop he could no longer consider them friendlies.
He needed a vehicle, and he’d have to fight too hard to get one from the motorcade. Instead he veered left and put on speed, passing fallen bodies that were clearly dead and others with terrible wounds that were nonetheless climbing to their feet. A pair of civilians ran toward him across the grass to his left, and a bloody Cleveland cop came in fast from the ri
ght. All three were savaged and bitten, grayish drool slinging back from gaping mouths as they ran. All three would reach him at about the same moment.
David King stopped, assumed a shooting stance and fired twice to the left. The two running civilians crumpled. He pivoted right and fired, catching the cop in the chest. The man staggered but kept coming.
Bulletproof vest. Stupid.
He raised his aim and fired twice more, one round hitting the cop in the throat and putting him down.
Then he was sprinting again, his objective sitting where it had come to rest against the trunk of a tree. The black Suburban with the turret-mounted mini-gun sticking out through the roof – the CAT vehicle – sat with all four doors and its rear hatch open, engine idling. As he reached it, he first found a mauled and dead CAT operator lying on the rear seat beneath the open turret, so savaged that it was difficult to determine his race, or even that he’d been human. David grimaced and grabbed the corpse by its boots, pulling it out of the blood-slicked interior and out onto the grass. There wasn’t time for it, and it made no practical sense, but he was moving out of a primal instinct to distance himself from a corpse. Then he ran a lap around the vehicle to slam all its doors.
Another CAT operator was waiting for him when he rounded the hood to reach the driver’s door, the team commander, an agent with whom David had been friends for many years. The man was bloody, his eyes glazed and not processing as they once had, and there was something dark and wet in his right hand, something with a bite taken out of it.
Is that a liver?
The team commander opened his mouth and a stream of dark blood and drool spilled down his chin. He let out a throaty chuckle and attacked.
CANNIBAL KINGDOM Page 12