Lady Liberty

by Vicki Hinze

  “We were already out. I was trying to position myself so the chute could open without killing us both.”

  He had crawled up her legs, had screamed orders at her to pull the chute cord, and she had tried, but the briefcase had made it impossible for her to reach. Fortunately, he had managed to get his hands on the ripcord. Stunned at having been dragged out of the plane, terrified by the lightning and thunder, and reeling at the reality of freefalling back to earth, she supposed the planet could have blown up and it might not have registered with her.

  Dear God. Seven. Seven dead. Images of their faces ran through her mind. Regret and anger battled inside her. She should have done more. Taken a different flight. Something. But she hadn’t, and now she had to live with their blood on her hands for the rest of her life. She’d never again be clean. Not after Austin, and never after this. “It’s my fault.”

  “It’s not.”

  “It is. I knew something was going to happen. I knew, Westford.”

  “You had a hunch.” He gave her a steady look. “You did all you could.”

  Absolution? True or not, it surprised her. It warmed her, too, and she needed warmth. Inside, she felt ice cold. Westford had always treated her with respect and compassion. Even during the divorce when nearly everyone’s favorite activity was ripping her to shreds. But seven lives just … snuffed out. Fingers of pain squeezed her heart. “I should have done something different. Something more. I should have—”

  “Sybil, shh.” Jonathan cupped her chin in his hands. “Listen to me. Listen.” He stroked her jaw with his thumb. “You did everything you could. Probably a lot more than you should have done based only on a hunch.”

  Blinking hard, she took his words in and drew them down deep. “Maybe.” With or without trust, what Jonathan thought mattered; it always had. Raw and wounded, she met his gaze, let him see her agony. “Oh, God, I hope you’re right.”

  “I am.” He scanned the immediate vicinity for the third time, then circled her shoulders with a steadying arm. “Come on now. We have to keep moving.”

  Taking solace in the comfort of his arm, she walked on.

  Sometime later he stepped away and shielded his ear. “Conlee.” He confirmed an incoming transmission. “They’ve verified the explosion. Search and Rescue and the Safety Board have convened. They’re ready to dispatch, but Conlee has them on a weather hold. Severe thunderstorms.”

  Considering she and Westford were standing in the middle of that storm, relaying that information seemed redundant. “What does Intel anticipate they’ll find?”

  “Wreckage strewn three to five miles.” His expression became grimmer. “A satellite isn’t due to pass for another seven minutes, but with the cloud cover, they’re doubtful they’ll get much.”

  Sybil’s stomach sank. “They don’t know we bailed out.”

  “No confirmation either way, but before we left the plane, I gave the commander a heads-up, so I’m sure he considers it possible, and Intel recorded gunfire on board before the explosion.”

  “What about the ELT?” The emergency locator transmitter was in the tail section of the plane. In crashes, the tail typically remained intact, but even if it hadn’t, odds rated high the ELT had survived the explosion. “Aren’t they picking up its signal?”

  He gave her a negative nod. “The weather—”

  Or the bomb. “Damn it. No one knows we’re alive out here, or that there could be survivors on the plane.”

  Jonathan rubbed at his neck, his expression a cross between dread and pity. “They know you culled the flight to skeleton crew only and delayed the return of staff and press until Monday. The CIA facilitated the order through Conlee.” His eyes glossed over. “He also knows there are no other survivors, Sybil. All aboard are presumed dead.”

  Including them. “Is that the White House’s official position?”

  “It will be soon.”

  Great. Fabulous. Austin would love this. Her best hope was to get back to Washington and resolve the crisis before he heard that she was dead. “I see.”

  “The news will panic the public, but the alternative is unacceptable. If later they’re informed that you’re alive, then they’ll rejoice.”

  “But what if I’m not?”

  Something akin to anger flashed in his eyes. “You will be.”

  “But what if I’m not? What if I don’t get back with the case?”

  “Then the White House told the public the truth.”

  “This doesn’t feel right.” She fisted her hand and rubbed at her knuckles. “Is this one of Barber or Winston’s screwy ideas?”

  “President Lance’s senior advisor and press secretary were not involved in making the decision, ma’am. Commander Conlee made the call. By publicly announcing your death, there’s a slim chance the terrorists won’t pursue you.”

  “But the White House has never notified the press of a death without it first being verified.”

  “Exactly” Westford nodded. “Conlee expects we have seven dead. He doesn’t want there to be nine.”

  Seven dead. What could she have done differently? The security breach at top-secret Facility A-267 calling her home had demanded her actions. Already key advisors had determined that no one employed outside of the government would have all the security clearances necessary to gain access to every facet involved in this Code One crisis, which meant someone inside the system, occupying a high-level position, had initiated the A-267 security breach.

  Sybil ran the mental gauntlet, and, at its end, her conclusions remained the same. She couldn’t have changed a thing.

  Westford walked in a small circle and stared into the woods. It was the third time she had noticed him doing that. “What do you keep looking for, Westford?”

  “The two terrorists who integrated as crew members.”

  Infiltrators. Gregor Faust was notorious for infiltrating. “Who?”

  “Mark was one of them.” He named the relief copilot. “I didn’t get a firm fix on the second one.”

  “But they were on the plane.” He claimed there’d been no other survivors.

  “They chuted out right behind us.”

  She darted her gaze, straining to see through the shadows. “You mean they’re terrorists and they’re out here, too—with us?”

  “Why do you think I’ve been pushing you so hard to keep moving?”

  Her heart banged against her ribs, throbbed at her temples. With everything else going on, they also had to contend with stalking terrorists?

  Get out of here, Sybil. Now. The briefcase!

  Listening to her instincts, she took off walking, pulling Westford with her. “Is this north?” She glanced back at him. The damn rain persisted, blocking out the deepening twilight haze. Without the sun, she didn’t have a hint. “It seems like it should be north.”

  “More or less.” He spun her ninety degrees left. “Maybe we’d make better time if you followed me.”

  No complaints from her. She was a survivalist in her world, but her world didn’t exist out here. Here there was marsh and mud and only God knew what kind of wildlife. As she recalled from a piece of wetland preservation legislation a few years ago, alligators, wild boar, black bears, and snakes. Lots of poisonous snakes. Her skin crawled. She rubbed at the gooseflesh peppering her arm and chided herself because, as ridiculous as it was, she felt tempted to add dragons and the bogeyman to the swamp’s resident list.

  “It’ll be all right,” she said out loud. Whether to reassure herself or Westford, she didn’t know. But they both could use the lift. “Home Base will activate my tracker and—”

  “They won’t do that, either.” He pulled back a path-encroaching limb, waited for her to pass, and then let it loose. Rain gathered on its leaves slung in a stinging spray. “The terrorists could follow the signal as easily as Search and Rescue could.”

  He was right, of course. Who knew how far national security had been breached? David had a country to protect; he couldn’t risk losing
everything.

  “My guess is they’ll monitor the emergency channel and continue to transmit updates until the search team is on the ground.”

  “Why will they stop transmitting then?”

  “If we’re dead, why would they continue to transmit? They might as well phone the terrorists and tell them we’re still alive.”

  “So we don’t dare let Search and Rescue know we’re okay, either?” God, they had to avoid their allies, too?

  “No one. Not yet. But we have an ace. The president will flash-activate my tracker.”

  “You have a tracker?” Sybil was surprised. It wasn’t SOP for Secret Service details. But did standard operating procedures apply? Westford had been assigned to the elite Special Detail Unit for years. Few people, including the operatives on general Secret Service assignments, knew the operational procedures for SDU.

  “The president considered it prudent. We were going into a situation that could explode into war at any moment, which is why only he, the surgeon who implanted it, and Commander Conlee know I have a tracker.”

  Sybil digested that. “So Conlee will know you’re alive and are trying to get back but he won’t know my status.”

  “He and the president will assume that if I’m alive, then you are, too.”

  “Why would they make that assumption?”

  “Because they know I’ll protect you or die trying.”

  Something good warmed inside her. Wishing it hadn’t, and certain she couldn’t trust it, she shunned it and stepped past a hole filled with water. “These terrorists had to infiltrate our government at a high level.”

  Westford agreed. “The question isn’t if, but where. FBI, CIA, White House staff, Cap Marlowe’s pack? Could be anywhere.” He slapped at a bug on his arm. “Until we identify the enemy—in or out of our own troops—we’re on our own.”

  The bottom fell out of her stomach. “Against Faust?”

  “Or PUSH. I’m certain it’s one of the two of them.”

  “Gregor Faust did this,” she insisted, again trusting her intuition. “It fits his profile. High-level infiltration, a security breach, the Code One—but most of all, because the waiter who cut me with the knife spoke with no dialect. His English was too perfect. Only Faust pays that kind of attention to details.”

  “So you’re convinced the Band-Aid incident was an attack?”

  “I never doubted it,” she admitted. “Faust wanted my blood. The question is: Why?”

  “I wish I knew.”

  “We will,” she insisted. “But right now we’ve got a more immediate problem.” They were on their own. She glanced pointedly down at the briefcase and bitter panic ripped through her. “We can’t walk all the way back to Washington, Westford. There isn’t time.”

  “We won’t. Just to the first town.”

  “I’m telling you, we can’t. We have to get back as soon as humanly possible.”

  “We don’t have a lot of choices.” He lifted a hand. “Do you see anything closely resembling Hertz or Rent-a-Wreck in the immediate vicinity?”

  Surrounded by swamp and creek and too many fragrant trees, she slipped into despair. “Oh, God.” She sent him a desperate look. “We’ve got to hurry”

  “Why?” He stopped moving.

  “Think Code One calls, Westford.”

  “I have. Code Ones can be handled in D.C. by a number of people. Your summons home wasn’t due to the Code One.”

  “This time it was.”

  He stared at her, letting her know in no uncertain terms that he felt she was holding out on him and, in this situation, he considered withholding unacceptable.

  She grabbed his arm, urging him to go on, but he refused to budge. It really wasn’t fair to keep him in the dark, considering the consequences. Knowing them sure as hell motivated her to keep moving, though her feet felt as if they had been through a meat grinder. “We’ve got to hurry because of this.” She lifted the briefcase.

  “I figured out that much on my own. What’s in it?”

  For a brief moment, she hesitated. She owed this man who had bailed out of a plane without a parachute to save her life, this man who faced annihilation along with the rest of the world. But she couldn’t disclose specifics unless it became absolutely imperative to accomplishing the mission. “Just help me get home before Saturday night, Agent Westford.”

  “I’ll do all I can.” Understanding flickered in his eyes. “At least Austin won’t learn about your death on the news.”

  “What?”

  “The president is going to call him.”

  “Oh, hell.” She walked into a spiderweb spun between two trees. Swiping at her face, she muttered. “This is not good, Westford.”

  He didn’t ask why, but she read the question in his eyes.

  “I still own fifty-two percent of Secure Environet. If I die, my stock automatically goes to Austin.” Weary in spite of the gallons of adrenaline shoving through her veins, she sighed. “He really wants that stock.” He wanted it, and she couldn’t risk giving it to him. Not after what he’d already done. “In less than twenty-four hours, he’ll drain my assets.”

  “President Lance won’t let that happen. He’ll handle Austin.”

  As executor of her estate, David did know about the stock struggle, and he would protect her assets as best he could. But would his best be better than Austin’s? That was the question. Austin was a clever bastard—clever, cunning, and ruthless—and he would do anything to anyone to get what he wanted. Knowing David was genuinely mourning her and public focus was slivered, Austin would use every means at his disposal to bleed her dry. Every means.

  Better than anyone else, he knew how much she loved America and the people in it. He knew how much she had sacrificed for the privilege of serving them. Just as he knew her drop in the polls proved that the Americans she loved were willing to support a man in public office who was deceiving them and his wife but were unwilling to tolerate a woman in public office who had the integrity and character to divorce her deceitful husband.

  Oh, yes, Austin would exploit this opportunity. He would raid Sybil’s assets, dispose of them, and hide the funds in some offshore account where no legal authority could touch them. Then he and Cap Marlowe and their reporter buddy, Sam Sayelle, would discreetly celebrate their victory.

  Austin would take everything, and by the time she could act, it would be too late to do a thing to stop him. Knowing it raised the most chilling question of all.

  Had Gregor Faust planned this financial devastation, too?

  Chapter Six

  Thursday, August 8 First-Strike Launch: 54:00:12

  Gregor made his way through the remote desert compound’s series of well-lit tunnels that led to his command center.

  Over the years, he had established three such centers, each a mirror image of the others, each twenty-two feet belowground with four-foot-thick, steel-reinforced walls, each located in a different host country he paid well to be friendly to him and to everyone in Ballast.

  In his business, a man needed multiple retreats. When Interpol and the CIA got too close, going underground quickly proved to be as essential to survival as extensive armed protection and top-notch security. When a U.S. Special Detail Unit got involved, the stakes got even higher. These SDU details operated in small, stealth groups and with one goal: Accomplish the mission by any means necessary. Only a handful of Americans knew they existed. If caught, detail members were officially deemed rogue mercenaries who happened to be Americans. West-ford had been SDU for a decade. Unfortunately, President Lance had assigned him to guard Lady Liberty, which made him legitimate with the Secret Service and made it imperative for Gregor to take every security precaution possible. Host countries tended to be greedy when Ballast waited to arrange for a safe haven after one was needed.

  Gregor had been a heavyweight in the arms dealing business for over a decade, and he had seen to it that neither he nor his organization was left vulnerable. Security inside the compound was
tight; armed guards were plentiful, motivated, and heavily armed with the best weaponry and technology Austin Stone could design. By making the centers identical, even his men had no idea which of the three compounds they were occupying. Just two people in his entire organization knew their specific, current location and host country: the pilot who had flown his blindfolded men to the facility and Gregor himself. Only in the case of his death was his second-in-command, Patch, to be told. As a rule, Gregor was rarely challenged by his men. He attributed their allegiance mostly to his reputation for executing offenders swiftly and decisively. Yet he preferred minimizing risks whenever eliminating them proved impossible.

  In the command center, Patch sat alone at a long desk, facing the dozen monitors receiving real-time visual data from key locations around the world.

  Gregor grabbed a yellow stress ball from his desk. “Where are the men?”

  “Resting while they can.”

  “Good.” Squeezing the ball, he moved to Patch’s side and glanced at the monitors, halting his gaze on an old man in a black rumpled coat, standing in front of the Vietnam Wall in Washington, D.C. Gregor recognized him from reconnaissance reports as Lady Liberty’s contact. Unfortunately, the man remained unidentified and the nature of their contact had not yet been determined. Her consistency in meeting the old man, however, intrigued Gregor enough that he had ordered a Ballast contact on the Hill to monitor the activity. That contact had discovered someone else already monitoring the events at the Wall: a junior reporter named Sniffer, who supposedly shared news of the encounters between the old man and Sybil Stone with his coworker and mentor, Sam Sayelle.

  “Any updates from the field?” Gregor asked Patch.

  “Not yet.” Patch sipped a steaming cup of coffee. He hadn’t slept much in the last two days, and his bleary eyes showed it. “They’re on schedule for another forty minutes. The U.S. Search and Rescue team hasn’t been dispatched.”

  That caught Gregors full attention. “Why not?” Typically, Search and Rescue were airborne within minutes of notification of any Class-A mishap, and this one involved their vice president. By now they should be on-scene.