by Eva Hudson
Ingrid squeezed between the boxes to get to the window. She tugged on the sash and it opened easily, letting in a fierce blast of December. The wind turned her sweat-soaked shirt to ice. Ingrid stuck her upper body through the opening and looked around. The window was in a dormer, an arch-shaped box protruding from a sloping roof tiled with slate. Below her, a few hardy guests were bathed in rectangles of light from the French windows in the ballroom. They dragged hard on cigarettes She leaned out further and the radio bashed into the window frame, dislodging it from her jacket pocket. It skittered down and came to rest in the guttering.
Ingrid shimmied back inside then, leaning out, reached down for it. Even at a full stretch, it was several feet beyond her grasp. From now on, she was on her own. She checked the Beretta had its safety on and pocketed it. She would need both hands to get onto the roof.
Ingrid slid her top half back out the window and hauled herself through it until she was sitting on the sill. The Beretta dug into her thigh. The Glock in her waistband pressed into her back. She reached up, gripped the wet dormer arch and pulled herself to standing. Her knee buckled, but she held on. She glanced down at the ground. The smokers were oblivious.
The window frame was slick with rain and Ingrid’s foot slipped. A burst of adrenaline fired through her veins. Her heart ricocheted inside her chest.
Easy, she said to herself. Easy. She took a deep breath.
Ingrid assessed her options. The sloping roof extended about another yard above the height of the window. The only way to get eyes on the First Lady was to climb on top of the dormer.
Ingrid moved her left foot out from the window sill and stepped sideways onto the slanted slate tiles. She pressed her shoes in hard and grasped the top of the window frame. Her fingers were so cold she couldn’t grip properly, but tile by tile, she climbed upwards until she could hook a leg over the dormer. Her breath steamed with the exertion.
Ingrid hauled herself up and straddled the dormer. She took a moment to let her lungs recover. The rain pressed through her pants, driving the cold into her thighs, but it wasn’t enough to numb the searing pain in her left knee. She pulled the Beretta out of her pocket and took off the safety. She reached up and placed it delicately on the flat roof a few inches above her head.
Here goes.
She squeezed her thighs against the dormer. Ingrid contracted her abdominals and sat up straight. She could now see over the lip of the roof. The figures of Arwa Hatoum and the First Lady were silhouetted against the lights at the front of the residence. Also black against the haze was the roof access hatch where Estevez was waiting. It protruded from the flat surface like a small garden shed. Hatoum held her hostage in front of her, jabbing Lieutenant Preston’s Beretta into her side. The First Lady’s Vera Wang dress billowed in the fierce breeze.
Ingrid wasn’t trained to use an M9. She had never fired the weapon in her hand before. Her fingers were seizing up with the cold. Her target was eighty yards away. There were trained firearm colleagues taking up position. She was not the best operative for the job, but she was the only one with eyes on. She needed a way to separate Hatoum and her hostage to make sure she didn’t shoot the wrong woman.
A loud piercing sound ripped through Ingrid’s eardrums. She flinched so hard she almost lost her balance. The pulsating wail drove deep into her skull. She turned her head. An alarm sounder was attached to the neighboring dormer. Down below, the French doors opened and a stream of party goers joined the smokers. The evacuation was finally underway.
Hatoum was shouting. Ingrid couldn’t hear what she was saying, but she did not seem panicked by the alarm. Ingrid peered down and saw security guards directing partygoers to the front of the building. She smelled smoke.
Oh, God. No.
This was all part of the plan, wasn’t it? What had Jen said? Something about sequenced attacks. McWhorter hadn’t set off the alarm. A fire had. The only people who would light a fire with three hundred guests in the building would be Hatoum’s accomplices.
Shit.
Kidnapping the First Lady was just a small part of what they wanted to achieve, wasn’t it? They had deliberately set a fire and when everyone was at the evacuation point, they were going to do something horrific, weren’t they? A bomb? A mass shooting?
Still flinching from the alarm, Ingrid looked across the wet roof. Did she save the First Lady? Or did she warn everyone else?
41
The alarm drilled into her ear. She couldn't think straight. Ingrid picked up the Beretta. Her hands trembled. Her heart beat in double time. It was three stories down, and there was no pulley to grab hold of. She breathed deeply, releasing a funnel of steam into the night.
Ingrid rested the Beretta’s muzzle on the lip of the roof to steady her aim and lined up the sights. Hatoum was too close to the First Lady to risk a shot. She had to separate them. There had to be something she could use.
She took her left hand off the pistol and dipped it into her jacket pocket. Her cold hands found the solid rectangle of Marshall’s iPhone. It would have to do. Her fingers were so numb it was difficult to curl them around its hard edge. She couldn’t drop it. She lifted it out and placed it jerkily on the flat roof. The muscles in her thighs, squeezing hard against the dormer, started to twitch. She had to control the shakes. She couldn’t hit the wrong target.
Ingrid kept her right hand on top of the M9 and picked up the phone with her left. She pulled her arm back and hurled it across the roof. It skimmed over the asphalt and landed to the left of Hatoum who turned to see what it was. As she peeled apart from the First Lady, Ingrid aimed low and pulled the trigger. The recoil made her lose her balance.
Hatoum twisted around, her leg collapsing beneath her, as the roof access door burst open. A flash of light ripped through the dark. Hatoum fell and Estevez rushed toward the First Lady.
Ingrid dropped the pistol and felt for the radio, then remembered it was in the gutter. Marshall’s phone was out of reach. She shouted to Estevez as he hurried Mrs Brady inside, but he couldn’t hear her over the alarm. Ingrid had to warn everyone about a sequenced attack. She had to get to ground level.
Ingrid’s legs were so stiff from the cold, she had to lift her injured leg with her hands. She levered herself off the dormer and rested for a few moments on the sloping roof. She fought to ignore the pain as she crawled back through the open window and into the store room. It was only then she realized she’d left the Beretta on the roof. She pulled the Secret Service agent’s Glock out of her waistband and hobbled out into the corridor and straight into a spray of water. The sprinkler system had been activated. The alarm pulsed through her brain and her skin burned with the cold and the wet. Her lungs struggled to draw down air as she hurried toward the staircase. She planted a hand on the banister and vaulted down into the stairwell. She took the stairs four, five, six at a time ignoring the pain in her knee. When she reached the next level, she stumbled and fell out into the corridor where Preston and the Emirati agent still lay on the floor.
A dark figure ran toward her. He reached inside his jacket.
Fuck.
Ingrid tumbled and rolled across the carpet beneath the bullet as it ripped down the hallway. Ingrid straightened her arms and pulled off a shot. She righted herself in time to see Ringo fall against the wall. She fired again, catching his neck. Blood slashed across the wall. She didn’t hang around to watch him thud down onto the carpet.
She practically fell over as she reached the bottom of the stairs and raced along the marble corridor on the ground floor. She skidded on the wet floor as she powered toward the front entrance. The alarm bounced off the white stone, penetrating her skull from every angle. Guests covered their ears as they jostled to get outside.
“Stop!” She pushed the wet hair off her face as she ran toward them. “Stop!”
She couldn’t make herself heard over the alarm. She forced her way through and entered the lobby. Several men had given women their jackets to put over their hea
ds, and their drenched shirts clung to belly rolls and previously hidden tattoos.
“Stop! It’s a trap.”
One woman turned to her but didn’t understand.
“Stop,” Ingrid shouted. “You have to go back inside.”
She was met with a look of bemusement. She grabbed the woman’s arm. “You’ve got to turn back.”
“There’s a fire,” the woman said. “They want us out.”
Ingrid turned to the man behind her. “Sir, please listen. You all need to go back.”
Everyone wanted to escape the sprinklers. They wanted to get away from the wailing alarms. They were desperate to get out and Ingrid was unable to stop them. She didn’t have a badge. She didn’t have ID. But she couldn’t give up. She barged through the throng to reach the front door.
“Hey, we all want to get out!” A woman tugged at her, but Ingrid struggled free. She needed to get to the door, she had to prevent them reaching the assembly point.
“Let me through! Please, just let me through.”
Either they couldn’t hear her or they didn’t believe her. An elbow to her stomach told her to know her place. Ingrid waved to a security guard to get his attention. “Stop them. Please, stop them!”
She forged a path through the horde to reach him. He was also soaking wet. He scanned everyone’s face, looking for hostiles.
“You’ve got to help me,” Ingrid said to him. He was tall and angular, like a long-distance runner. “You have to stop them.”
He didn’t look at her. He had his orders to apprehend Hatoum. “This is an emergency. We need everyone at the evacuation point,” he shouted.
“Where is that?”
He nodded at the doorway. “By the fountain.”
The forecourt was the worst possible assembly point. There were cars parked all along the front of the house. They were perfect cover positions for gunmen. What if the cars weren’t hiding assassins, but bombs?
Ingrid pushed her way outside and shouted at the guests to get away. They stared at her but didn’t move. They were taking their instructions from the men with uniforms and ID badges. She was going to have to try something else. The gun in her pocket bumped against her thigh as she ran. She pulled up.
The Glock might do it. It would certainly get people to run if she started firing. She reached in and fingered the hard metal. There were armed Marines. There were Secret Service agents. Pulling the gun here was suicide. She needed another plan.
Ingrid ran back to the door and drove through the swarm of drenched people surging out into the cold night.
“No one’s allowed in,” the guard said.
Ingrid shrugged off his grip and barged her way against the tide.
“Whatever it is, it’s not worth dying for,” a woman said.
A foot landed deliberately on top of Ingrid’s, but she kept pushing. “Let me through.”
She tugged at people’s shoulders and forced her arms between them to make space for herself. She weaved to the edge of the throng, then broke free and ran down the marble corridor and powered up the stairs. With the Glock in both hands, she kicked open the door of the bedroom Marcus Williams had taken her to earlier. She knew there was no point in opening the window.
Are you really going to do this?
Think.
It was potentially a suicidal move.
Ingrid turned back and locked the door. She dragged over a nightstand and wedged it under the handle. It would buy her a few seconds when they came for her.
A shiver ran over her skin, starting at her left shoulder, spreading across her back, up her neck, then down into her waist. She faced the window and examined her reflection.
This is the right thing to do.
Ingrid took aim and shot into the glass, shattering her reflection. Between the pulses of the alarm, she heard screaming from outside. None of the snipers immediately returned fire.
She hurried over to stand beside the window, out of the line of fire. She aimed the Glock down at the huddled guests. From her vantage point she could see them spreading out from the front door, then drifting across the forecourt, not sure where to go. Directly below her was the cluster of motorcycles, followed by a row of polished, dark vehicles reaching toward the entrance. She needed to get them away from the cars.
A bullet whipped into the top sash, sending a dagger-like shard of glass onto the carpet. Marksmen would be at the bedroom door within seconds. This was her only chance.
Making sure she was well hidden, Ingrid aimed at a patch of gravel close enough to the guests to scare them, but not so close to risk injury. She squeezed the trigger. She fired again, and again, and again. With each bullet, more people started running. Some tripped over as they ran, pushing past each other to reach the bushes, some hid behind cars but most ran across the lawn. She kept firing. She had no idea how many rounds were in the mag, but she kept pulling the trigger as the snipers’ bullets flew through the window and tore into the wall opposite.
Ingrid felt the blast before she saw it.
The force threw her from the window, across the room and slammed her into the bed. The room filled with white light. Glass shards filled the air like a shoal of whitebait. The explosion deafened her. She couldn’t hear anything. She could barely see. Liquid ran down her face. Was she even breathing?
Ingrid staggered to her feet, then fell against the wall. She looked out of the window. Two people lay on the gravel; everyone else had gotten far enough away. She slumped down onto the floor. Vomit squeezed up from her stomach as she hit the carpet. She thought she might pass out. The only thing she could be sure of was the bomb had gone off directly below her. It had been packed into one of the motorcycles.
She didn’t need to be told whose bike it was.
42
The paramedic picked the shards of glass out of Ingrid’s cheek as a young constable from the Metropolitan Police looked on through the open doors of the ambulance.
“Really, it’s okay,” Ingrid said. “I’ll be fine.”
The EMT wore a headlamp and scrutinized Ingrid’s cheeks for tiny reflective pieces. “There’s another one,” she said before her tweezers moved to the delicate skin under Ingrid’s eye. “You’re lucky. A centimeter the other way and you’d be in hospital.”
“At least that’d delay my interview with the police.”
The uniformed police officer rubbed his hands together to warm them. His nose was a seasonal shade of Rudolf red. “It’s procedure,” he said. “I think you can be sure of an easy ride.”
After the explosion, Ingrid had waited in the bedroom for the Secret Service to arrive, figuring it was the best way to stay alive. She’d shouted through the bullet-riddled door that she was an FBI agent, that she had tried everything to get everyone to safety.
“There’s a nightstand in front of the door. I’m going to move it, okay?”
She scraped it to one side.
“I’m now going to unlock the door. You hear me?”
“Step away from the door, Agent.”
“I am unarmed. Repeat. I am unarmed.”
Ingrid raised her hands, and the door opened. A Secret Service agent stepped in, his gun leveled and aimed at her head. A second agent scanned the room, his weapon moving through an arc in search of an accomplice.
“ID?” the second agent said. He was compact and lean, like a martial arts specialist.
“I don’t have any. But I’ve worked with most of the people out there on the lawn for four years. Did everyone get to safety?”
He looked at the discarded Glock on the bed. “That yours?”
“No, sir.”
“Whose is it?”
“It belongs to one of your colleagues.” She paused. “I found her body on the top floor.”
The two men prowled the room and checked the closet and the bathroom. The first agent turned to her. “You’re bleeding.”
Ingrid raised a hand to her face.
“You will likely need treatment,” he said. �
��Unfortunately, I still need to detain you. And the Metropolitan Police will almost certainly need to arrest you.”
“It’s a formality,” added his colleague. “We are aware you did not aim at targets. It’s probable you saved a lot of lives tonight.”
Outside the ambulance, the lawn of Winfield House strobed with blue flashing lights. Six fire engines, eighteen ambulances, and enough police cars to fill a multistory parking lot had responded. At least two helicopters hovered overhead. Three Jihari operatives had been detained, three more had been killed. In total, the authorities had counted ten bodies: three Marines, three Secret Service agents, the Jiharis and Ringo. Two guests had been airlifted to the hospital with life-threatening injuries.
Ingrid had requested legal counsel from the Bureau’s pool of UK lawyers before talking to the police. The forensics would clearly show Ringo had been killed by the gun she had used and there would have to be an investigation. Then there was also the minor matter of the pre-existing warrant for her arrest issued by Thames Valley Police. She knew the risk of prosecution was low, but there would be a lot of explaining before she was released.
The constable stood a little straighter. “Oh,” he said. “Oh.” He straightened his uniform.
A Secret Service agent appeared at the open doors and without talking to the police officer looked inside the ambulance. His jacket was not wet, but his white collar was sprayed with blood. “Are you Skyberg?” he asked.
“Yes I am.”
“Excuse me,” he said to the EMT, “I’m going to have to ask you to step outside.”
She tilted her head to one side. “This is my ambulance, mate.”
“Ma’am, it will just be a for a few minutes.”
Ingrid and the EMT shuffled forward.
“Not you, Skyberg.”
“Oh.”
Behind him, the police officer was smiling. When the paramedic jumped out, her mouth widened into a capital O.
“One moment,” the agent said before stepping back. “Ma’am.”