by Rob Jones
“Mustard?”
She nodded.
He knew what she was thinking – why can’t he eat something less messy, at least in public? He knew she loved him all the same, and he loved her too – not least because she always seemed to have a paper towel handy when he needed one.
He leaned forward, close to her, and whispered so the security detail in the seats directly behind them couldn’t hear what he was going to say. Five short words later he saw the smile spread on his wife’s face. It worked every time...
“Woah!” he said, pointing at the field. “He’s going to make him pay for that – they’re down 24 – 7!”
Laura rolled her eyes again and smiled. Looking like she cared about football was part of the job. For her husband it was easy because he loved it, but on her part it was all fake, and that made it hard work. Sometimes she felt like her smile was about to fall off.
Tobin moaned as the Seahawks moved deep into Bengals territory thanks to a classic piece of misdirection play. “That is not a fair catch... come on!”
“That’s what I was going to say,” his wife said with a smirk.
He ignored her, watching with interest as the scrimmage played out and the quarterback spiked the ball after the snap.
“What does that mean?” Laura almost sounded interested.
Tobin turned to his wife and smiled at her lack of knowledge. “Technically it’s an incomplete pass, so it means the clock is stopped and the down is exhausted.” He turned back to the game so fast he missed the second eye-roll.
“Gee, thanks for that, honey,” she said. “It’s so much clearer now. It all makes sense.”
Then she stopped talking and stared at her husband, her brow furrowed in bewilderment.
A small red light was meandering its way from her husband’s sleeve to his chest. It continued on its path up his neck and over his face where it stopped on his forehead, just beneath the peak of his trusty old Bengals baseball cap.
“Honey, what the hell is...”
She never finished her sentence. Half a second later her husband was propelled violently backwards over the back of his seat and into the lap of the Secret Service agent behind, a bullet hole drilled into the center of his head.
Only then did she hear the familiar sound of the rifle shot, a second behind the bullet.
Laura Tobin screamed as a Secret Service agent pushed her hard to the ground, covering her with his body and calling in the attack over his earpiece. The other agents responded in seconds, drawing their weapons and scanning the stadium. Whoever it was, the delay between hitting Speaker Tobin and the sound of the shot meant they were a good distance away.
The crowd roared with approval, mistaking the terror attack for some kind of publicity stunt, but seconds later total anarchy came to the stadium as reality dawned on thousands of football fans and a rush for the exits ensued.
America really was under attack.
CHAPTER FOUR
President Charles Grant waved cheerily at the crowds lining the route of the motorcade as it swept along the boulevard and pulled up outside the university. Today he was going to deliver a speech at the Xavier University of Louisiana to pledge more federal funds to the city in the on-going plan to rebuild after Hurricane Katrina.
He glanced at his watch and saw the motorcade was already running six minutes late. Outside he saw those who thought his administration wasn’t doing enough to help. They were lining up outside the university entrance with their placards and chanting slogans. It was all part of his job, he thought.
Grant stepped out of the car and waved once again as his Secret Service detail ushered him up along the entrance walkway. As he went, thousands of camera shutters clicked in his face from the press pack, and then he was inside. The president of the university greeted him and shook his hand. Moments later they were moving toward the main hall – the Secret Service were anxious to get the President’s schedule back on time.
Grant got to the podium and did what he did best – charm people. He threw out a couple of well-timed jokes to relax the audience and flashed them his world-famous smile before launching into his speech. It wasn’t his grandest speech – that was next month in Florida when he planned to deliver what was already being called the greatest speech of his career. Florida was the third worst state in the country for gun murders, and Grant wanted to bring it under control. He knew he had opposition – in both the House and the Senate not to mention the NRA. Even the Constitution was against him, but a spate of recent shootings had pushed many people over to his side of the argument.
But today’s speech was important for the people of New Orleans, and that’s what mattered to him right now.
As the room settled down, he leaned closer to the microphone and began to read off the autocue. Like most presidents, all his speeches were written for him by professional speech-writers and projected on a screen which he then read. His previous career as an actor helped him not only to deliver the jokes on time but to read the speeches and make it look like he was dreaming the stuff up as he went along. Today was no exception, and he weaved his way into the speech with his usual exceptional ease and professional acumen.
At the end of the speech, he was whisked from the room in a hail of applause and walked back out along the path toward the Beast. Earlier in the day, Scott Anderson, his Chief-of-Staff had joked that the enormous seven-ton Presidential limo was probably one of the safest places in Louisiana. Grant had smiled, but not laughed. He had been lucky so far, but previous presidents had not only been attacked while in office – four had been assassinated, and the President’s safety was no laughing matter.
He moved steadily toward the limo, once again recalling Anderson’s words about its safety, and reassured by their veracity however they had been delivered. The Beast was actually one of twelve identical limos in constant rotation. The ones not in use were secured in the basement garage of the Secret Service HQ back in DC.
Grant made one final wave as Dirk Partridge, his senior USSS agent swung open the rear door of the Caddy. The senior secret service agent fired a string of words into his radio palm mic and glanced at his watch. Grant was scheduled to tour the rest of the city as well as make a special visit to the levee system before flying back to the capital before dusk. Time was short.
And that’s when it happened.
From an unknown location, someone fired a series of gunshots into the air and total panic ensued. The people lining the President’s route from Xavier to the limo screamed and scattered, raising their hands over their heads to protect themselves, more from instinct than judgement.
Agent Partridge reacted in a half-second. In a textbook manoeuvre of professionalism and bravery, and without a second thought about his own personal safety, the secret service man leaped forward and grabbed the President, moving around him like a human shield and forcing him into the back of the Beast.
Grant was in the back of the car before he had time to take a breath.
Partridge followed, throwing himself in after the President and slamming the heavy door shut behind them. He barked a series of orders into the palm mic and the driver of the Presidential limo floored the accelerator, sending the massive armored vehicle lurching forward.
In a cloud of burnout smoke from the spinning tires, the limo raced away from the university and hit Drexel Drive a few seconds later.
“Sir, are you hit?”
Grant took a second to focus on his surroundings. “No, I don’t think so... What the hell just happened?”
“Someone tried to take a shot at you, Mr President. We have to get you back to Air Force One immediately.”
Grant agreed. They’d had chatter about a serious attack, but latest intel had suggested it was going to be overseas and not in the United States. This changed things in a big way, and he had to get back to the White House. That was the best place to control things.
But then things got much more out of control.
He watched with horror as
the driver slumped over in the front seat of the Presidential limo.
He and Partridge shared a glance. “What the hell..?”
Grant looked closer the through the glass partition and saw a gas emanating from somewhere in the footwell.
“He’s been knocked out!” Partridge said. “We’re going to crash!”
The President shook his head. “He’s out cold all right but I don’t think we’re going to crash – look!”
Partridge watched with undisguised terror as the massive seven-ton Cadillac screeched along Drexel with no one at the wheel. Instead, just over the shoulders of the knocked-out driver, he saw the steering wheel jerking eerily to the left and right as someone controlled the vehicle remotely.
“What the hell is this?” President Grant muttered.
“It’s the Boston Brakes! Someone’s hacked the car, sir!” Dirk Partridge pulled at the door release but with no luck. “The locks are disabled!”
“We might not be able to get them open, but we can make sure whoever’s behind this can’t get them open either. This button locks them from the inside, so that’s something in our favour...” Grant didn’t look like he had reassured himself much.
Partridge slapped on the windows in panic. “We’ve got to get out of here, Mr President!”
Grant heard the growl of the General Motors V8 as it speeded up to power out of a corner. Normally a comforting sound, it now terrified him. “This car is completely sealed in the event of a biochemical attack, Partridge! What keeps me safe in here is now what’s keeping me prisoner – these doors are as heavy as those on a 757 jet plane, and the only window that opens is the driver’s, and then only by three inches. If you can think of a way out of here with the door locks disabled then I’m ready to hear it.”
Behind them three Cadillac Escalades rushed into view.
“Don’t worry, sir – the Secret Service is right behind us!” Partridge said.
He’d barely finished his sentence when they heard the sound of hydraulics.
“Oh no...”
The Beast fired smoke and tear-gas grenades out the rear fender. Installed as a protection device to assist the President in case of enemy pursuit, they were now being used against him.
Grant looked back and saw the Escalades skidding through the grenades’ smoke, out of control. Two of them had a collision and smashed into a bank on the side of the street, while the third maintained its pursuit.
A police helicopter appeared overhead and began to follow them, hovering just above the remaining Escalade.
They raced into an underpass where a slow-moving Pepsi truck was trundling along in the slow lane. The two captive men watched in horror as the rear of the truck lowered to the ground and an identical presidential limousine reversed out the back and skidded forward out of view along the underpass. Moments later, their own limo was controlled into the rear of the truck and the back closed up.
In total darkness, they heard the Escalade race past the truck in pursuit of the dummy limo and knew it was over. Whoever was doing this had just kidnapped the President of the United States.
CHAPTER FIVE
In the Idaho Mountains, Hawke, Alex and the Pentagon Chief dropped to all fours and crawled through the cabin on their way to the garage. Bullets flew all around them, busting the wooden panels into splinters and covering the rug in thousands of shards of glass from the exploded windows. When Alex began to slow down, Hawke pulled her along at his side. Ahead of them, Jack Brooke smashed open the internal door to the garage and tumbled down the steps.
Hawke got to his feet and helped Alex into the garage where her father was already rummaging around.
“Joe – buy me a couple of minutes.”
Hawke took cover behind a workbench and fired defensive shots from the Beretta when anyone tried to enter the garage. “They’re running around to the front, Jack!”
Behind him, Brooke snatched up a couple of empty bottles of Coors and some old rag which he tore into strips. Then he flicked open the cap of a small portable gas can and inserted some clear plastic tubing. “Bastards won’t be expecting this,” he mumbled. He sucked on the tube and drew the gas through into the bottles.
He hurled the hastily constructed Molotov cocktail into the cabin and seconds later the door was ablaze and impassable. “Now we focus on getting out of here.”
Brooke hit the electronic door mechanism and the roller doors began to wind open. Instantly they were met with more gun fire, many of the bullets blowing neat circular holes through the aluminum door while others were lower and ricocheted off the smooth concrete floor of the garage.
They dived for cover behind the workbench while Hawke scanned the area outside the garage to see where the enemy was. He located three men with machine pistols who were using Brooke’s old Winnebago across the yard for cover.
Hawke immediately opened fire with the M9 and hit one of the men in the chest, killing him instantly. The other two retreated further back in the shadow of the RV to a low wall running along the edge of the main driveway.
“Looks like the coast is clear,” Brooke said. “But for how long, I don’t know...”
“Get over to the outbuilding,” Hawke said. “I’ll slow the bastards down here as much as I can.”
Before she could object, Brooke took his daughter’s arm and pulled her away toward the line of spruce trees across the yard which divided the main property from the outbuilding where he stored his cars.
Hawke covered them as they ran, pinning down the gunmen behind the wall. Then he made a break for it, firing as he went. Two simple parkour rolls later he was sprinting through the row of spruces and heading for the outbuilding.
He heard a burst of machine pistol fire from behind him and turned to see the men closing in on him. One of the men – one with heavily gelled-hair combed back in a slick – was laughing as he fired.
“We have to get out of here, Jack!” the Englishman yelled.
“So move your ass!” Alex screamed back.
The men fired at Hawke and puffs of gravel dust flew up all around his feet. He was only just out-running the lethal rounds.
“The thought had crossed my mind, Nightingale...”
*
Angelika Schwartz watched with her usual carefully measured excitement as the battered, shot-up Cadillac DTS containing the world’s most powerful man reversed out the back of the Pepsi truck. When it hit the ground, she smiled as it crawled like a wounded bear across the loading bay of their temporary home – an abandoned paint factory in New Orleans’s Bywater district.
She was chewing gum and wore torn denim jeans and a leather jacket. Shifting her weight from one foot to the other she now stood with a Mossberg 500 pump-action shotgun casually resting on her shoulder. She ran a hand through her spikey pink hair and glanced at the platinum Rolex on her wrist, smiling – bang on time. The Boss would be impressed.
She waited with growing impatience while somewhere across town the rude Australian techie used the tiny night vision camera in the car’s front fender to control the vehicle. He brought Cadillac One to a gentle remote-controlled stop less than three yards from her biker riding boots. The engine shut down, and a dozen men armed with submachine guns encircled the presidential limo.
She walked forward and pulled the shotgun from her shoulder. Smiling, she tapped the muzzle of the gun gently on the reinforced glass of the Caddy’s rear window.
Inside, the President was in animated dialogue with his Secret Service agent.
Angelika frowned. “Out you come, Mr President. Now.” Her German accent was thick, but understandable.
The politician inside looked through the bullet-proof window at her and hesitated, thinking through his options one last time. He looked nervous, but she could see a glimmer of hope in his eyes. That would be gone soon enough.
“Three seconds or we do it the hard way.”
She raised her fingers to her mouth and wolf-whistled. A second later a man in black overalls stepped
out of the shadows. He was holding a bundle of Composition C-4 blocks in his hands, better known to the world simply as C-4, a type of malleable plastic explosive. He began to mold the explosive in specific locations around the driver’s door of the limo and then inserted several blasting caps into it before turning and giving Angelika an emotionless nod. He stepped far away from the vehicle.
Angelika pulled a detonator from her jacket and waved it at the President. “Vielen dank, Jakob... Now I will count to ten, and on ten I hit the detonator. There will be consequences for making me get you out the hard way. One...”
Inside, more heated debate, and then finally, President Grant’s shoulders visibly slumped as he turned and opened the rear door. He stepped cautiously out into the warehouse.
“You did the right thing, Mr Grant.”
“You can’t possibly hope to get away with this,” Grant said. “My people will be all over this place in minutes.”
He’d barely finished speaking when Angelika smacked him across his face with the back of her gloved hand. “Silence!”
Partridge leaped forward but his attempt to defend the President was met by a savage blow in the center of his back with the butt of one of the men’s guns. He fell forwards and hit the hard concrete floor, crying out in pain.
“No more silliness, Mr President, please,” Angelika said coolly. “Besides, if you’re referring to the tracking devices in your limousine, they are are currently residing in the chassis of the identical limo you saw in the underpass a few moments ago. That should keep your people busy for a while.”
President Grant looked crestfallen for a few seconds, and rubbed the blood from the corner of his cut, bleeding lip. Then he raised his chin and straightened his shirt before replying. “Then I wouldn’t want to be in the shoes of the man driving that limo.”
The woman from Berlin smirked. “Sadly, once again you have misplaced your hope. Like your own vehicle, the decoy car is remote-controlled by a man in the center of New Orleans. He has orders to drive it as far from the underpass as he can until the Secret Service or police catch it or until it runs out of fuel, whichever comes first... by which time, you shall be tucked away somewhere nice and safe.”