“I don't know,” Julie said, making her way to the kitchen table and sitting down heavily. “I had a hard time paying attention to him for some reason.”
Dom's eyebrows knitted together with concern. “So you saw it?”
Julie looked first at her hands in her lap, then at her husband. “Yeah. I saw it.”
“Is any of it...true?” Dom asked, a hint of quiet betrayal in his voice.
“What? No!” Julie was on her feet. “No, none of it is true! I did not – with anyone! Hell, not even with you, lately.”
“I thought maybe because of that...” He looked away again.
“No!” Julie's cheeks felt their own hot flush of betrayal. “I would never – and especially not at work! I've built my reputation as someone who just does the job, you know? That's...” She shook her head. “No. No.”
“Everyone in town has seen this by now,” Dom said quietly.
“Tell me something else I don't know,” Julie said bitterly. It was true, of course; tales of drinking on the job and sexual impropriety in the White House Comms office were way too tantalizing to not get passed around official Washington like a joint at a sorority party. She went to brush her hair back but found her ponytail still perfectly composed. For once, and surprisingly in spite of the rampant despair infusing her. How had she not torn her hair out by now?
“What are we going to do?” Dom asked. “That fits under the category of things you 'don't know,' right?”
“Definitely,” Julie said, letting out a ragged breath. “I definitely don't know about any of this. Why it's happening, who's doing it...” She put her head down, listening to her children play in the next room, happy in spite of her life being in utter ruin. She could feel Dom's eyes on her, though, judging, suspicious in spite of her denials. “I just don't know anything.”
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
Sienna
“Fasten in, because this is going to be a top-speed flight,” the pilot announced to me – and everyone else in Marine One – via the headsets we all wore. “Door to door in minutes. No stops for bathroom breaks or anything else.” The rotors were spinning before we even got aboard, and the Secret Service was dragging the canopied tent – more like a tunnel of canvas – back so we could take off.
I was seated across from the president, who was flanked on either side by Secret Service agents. They were all armed, the president was wearing a Kevlar vest, and I suspected if I cracked a knuckle I'd get tossed unceremoniously out. If they were willing to open the door in flight for long enough to do it. The atmosphere was just that thick.
Gondry's eyes were on me, strangely calm in spite of the fact the man had just been shot at by a crack sniper. Taking out five Secret Service agents in seconds? Beating the people who invented the counter-sniper game on their home court?
I smelled a meta on this one. Someone swift and accurate. They'd adjusted fire on me and Gondry while taking out the Secret Service shooters. This was someone with pinpoint precision, who was probably doing this as a job for hire, because those kind of skills didn't come easy or cheap.
I knew a guy who fit that mold perfectly, and I had to wonder if he was the one out there right now, making his escape.
Well, hopefully he was making his escape. The idea that he was doing anything but running would be mightily concerning.
I looked to my right, past the Secret Service agent between me and the window. The ground was already zooming by out there, and I was being pressed out of my seat by the g-forces. The helo was tilted forward, it was churning through the air so fast. Woods and the occasional building were breezing past below, and in the distance I could see a river – the Anacostia, I suspected – wending its way out of view toward the front of the chopper.
“How high up are we?” I asked into my boom mic.
“5,000 feet, ma'am,” the co-pilot answered. “There's no time in this flight for a high ascent, and cloud cover gets pretty thick just above us.”
A nervous flutter ran through my belly. “I think you should chance the clouds today.”
“Negative,” Agent Ross said, and I caught his stormy eyes looking back at me. “This is a quick transit. It's not worth the risk of getting caught in a cloud bank. We're safe up here.”
“I'm not sure that's tr–” I started to say.
The hard cracking of glass and the whipping of a bullet into flesh cut me off.
“Pilot hit! Pilot hit!” the co-pilot shouted, and Marine One lurched, along with my stomach, both dropping as surely as if some unseen god had grabbed the underbelly of the helicopter and started to push.
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
Phinneus
“Performance issues, huh?” Phinneus chuckled as he watched Marine One lurch after his shot. Shooting into the air at a chopper a mile up was a pretty impressive feat, he thought. But then, he was about to follow it up with one better...
“Even an old man can still make it happen with the right help,” Veronika said, staring past him at the struggling chopper. “Once, at least. But the real challenge, old guy, is staying power. Can you–”
Phinneus shot again, and Marine One lurched out of the dive it had been in. It was still about three thousand feet up, but he was pretty sure he could see a second spiderweb of cracks in the wind screen, this time in front of the co-pilot. The engine hit a higher pitch in its whine as it lurched forward, twisting out of the sky.
“Any other questions, young lady?” Phinneus asked, trying to keep the lid on his smirk.
Veronika just watched the helicopter dive. “Looks like you've still got it, old timer,” she opined as it dropped like a stone, threatening to completely end-over as it fell toward the Anacostia River just beyond them.
“And don't you forget it,” Phinneus said with a grin, the rush of blood in his ears a welcome feeling, and one he'd relish – once this was all over.
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
Sienna
The second shot killed the co-pilot in the middle of his evasive dive, making it obvious that his attempt to regain control of the craft as well as avoid fire was a dismal failure. Worse, the bullet slapped its way through the co-pilot and, presumably thanks to us being closer to the ground – and the shooter – slapped wetly through the Secret Service agent next to me and then across the aisle into the one sitting next to President Gondry.
Blood and gore sprayed through the air, semi-weightless as we fell through the air, the top of the helicopter beginning a somersault from which Marine One was destined not to recover. Screaming and shouting filled the air, as well it probably should have, given the circumstances, and I realized I had seconds to assess the endgame of this scenario.
Marine One was flipping end over end, the helicopter spinning wildly in ways that it was not meant to fly. The centrifugal force alone was enough to guarantee that no one was going to regain control of the bird, even assuming one of us was a pilot and could somehow maneuver our way up front to the cockpit.
We were going to crash.
It was going to be fatal for everyone still in the helicopter when that happened.
I had seconds to make some hard choices.
As far as situations went, there were few I'd been in that looked, on the face of it, worse than this. This was certain death, unless some miracle of physics allowed a sole survivor of the impending crash.
But certain death was kind of my bag, my beat, the thing I was goddess of, nominally. If you went in for the old school religious mythos, family-line kind of stuff.
The screaming battering my ears in Marine One was unnerving, but my nerves were well trained for chaos and coming death. The adrenaline slowed my thoughts, they didn't speed them up. Ideas came, were vetoed, and I decided on a course of action in seconds that seemed less bad for the way that this turn of events had lined up.
I slapped a hand against the release of my restraints, holding tight to them with the other. Instantly, I came out of my seat, legs flying up along with my body like I'd initiated a spacewalk
in zero g. It was very definitely not zero g, though, as I felt on the next roll of the aircraft frame, which brought my feet down, hard, on the legs of the dead Secret Service agent next to me.
“What are you doing?” President Gondry shouted. He was being buffeted left and right by the roll of the aircraft.
I turtled up, pulling my legs to my chest, and let momentum carry me up, then down, hanging onto the restraints like they were my lifeline, because they kinda were. As my body passed the closed door, I kicked as hard as I could with both legs, unfurling my body.
Both feet slammed into the door, and it burst off the side of Marine One. It flew “up” against the pull of gravity and centrifugal force, and I heard the terrible, grinding squeal as it slammed into the still-spinning rotors. Fragments of the main blades flew past the open door as air rushed through the cockpit like a hurricane.
“Time to leave, Mr. President!” I shouted over the rush of wind and the howl of machinery. The chopper flipped again and I saw a clear view of the Anacostia River some hundred yards below and closing fast with each flip of the airframe. I grasped his restraints and ripped them cleanly off with him still in them, then landed feet-first – and unkindly – on two of the surviving agents.
There was no time for kindness, mercy, or grace. I was doing their job for them, and they were going to die in seconds anyway.
Clutching Gondry tightly to me, I pushed off the agents with everything I had and flung us both clear of the flipping helicopter. We flew up, missing the shredded, stubby remnant of the main rotor that I'd just chopped off with the flung door, and then–
We were falling.
Free falling.
Toward the river below.
Two hundred feet.
One hundred feet.
I jerked my body around, pulling the president with me, his screams filling my ears as I turned us legs-down for a landing in the Anacostia River, hoping against hope that maybe, just maybe we might survive the impact–
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
Phinneus
Veronika let out a light chuckle, looking through the spotting binocs. “I think she just pulled a soft landing in the Anacostia River.”
Phinneus grunted with scorn. “Ain't nothing soft about that landing.” They were speeding along in their car, toward the Anacostia. They'd left the vantage point behind, the one he'd made the shot from, and now they were rolling under gray skies over the river, trying to get close enough to Nealon so that he could put a bullet in the president and her and end this damned thing.
“You don't think she made it?” Why the hell did Veronika sound so damned amused by all this? This was the job, and it wasn't going seamlessly. In spite of his backup plans, Phinneus didn't care for that at all.
“She probably made it, yeah,” Phinneus said, keeping his grip on the wheel. He had to concede that much. It wasn't like Nealon had some shortage of times when she'd failed to survive in spite of stupid high odds against her.
Still, managing to escape a crashing chopper and landing in the damned river instead of the woods on the opposite bank? Where she could have been impaled to death by a tree instead of slapping against the water?
“Of all the sucking luck,” Phinneus griped.
“You say 'luck,'” Veronika said, clearly concealing a smile, “I say 'Nealon.'”
Phinneus didn't say anything more. Just kept the car on course for the Southeast Freeway Bridge. They'd see what was what from there.
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
Julie
“Breaking News: NNC has unconfirmed reports that the president's chopper, Marine One, has gone down in southeast Washington, just north of the Anacostia River.” The female anchor looked almost gray against her red blazer. “We have amateur video footage of the event in question, but be warned – the footage may be considered...disturbing.”
They cut to a cell phone video, someone swearing in the background, though it was bleeped by someone in the network booth. Julie just watched, blinking, disbelieving. She'd turned on the NNC partly for background noise, partly to keep an eye on them in case any more rumors about her blew out into the world of cable news.
Then this came on.
That was the president's chopper all right, rolling end over end in a way she'd never seen a helicopter do.
“That's...that's not real, is it?” Dom asked. He was looking almost as gray as the anchor, but without the contrast of red to lighten him up. His complexion had gone several shades of pale since the video had started.
“I don't know,” Julie said as the helicopter dipped out of sight at the bottom of the screen. It was impossible to tell if it had landed, but–
An explosion – muffled through the car's windows – was unmistakable, and an orange glow lit the cloudy skies below, heralding the sure death of everyone that had been on Marine One when it went down.
“My God,” Julie whispered.
President Gondry was dead.
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
Chapman
CHALKE: Did we get him?
That was the question he was greeted with when he logged in after yet another pointless congressional meeting. This was the stuff Jaime paid lobbyists to handle, dammit. There was a reason he didn't care to do it himself, and this was clearly it. Boring, boring, boring. No value add, just time wasted while important things were going on.
Still, it helped to have an alibi, especially given that his meeting had been cut short by the news of the assassination attempt and Capitol Police rushing the Congresswoman from Nevada out to shelter...well, wherever people of her status sheltered. Unworried by any of that, Jaime had made his way back to the limo and was now riding through the streets of DC back to his hotel room.
CHAPMAN: I don't know, haven't heard. Does anyone know for sure?
BYRD: u guys im watching the raw feed and he has 2 be ded bc his chopper just went down hard
KORY: Anyone else see that cell phone footage? If he was in that chopper, no way he survived.
Chapman allowed a smile. Some good news for all his efforts, then. Killing Gondry was no mean feat, but it'd be good to have it behind them.
Maybe, after all the angst, all the stupid middle-of-the-night wakeups, the Network had finally exerted real power. Maybe they'd finally gotten something done after all.
CHAPTER FIFTY
Sienna
Thoughts of Scott Byerly filled my head like cold water leaking into my clothes and chilling me from the skin down to the bone. For a moment it was like I could feel him, his touch from when we were lovers, cold perspiration dripping against my flesh post-coitus.
Then my eyes sprang open in the depths of chill water, a hand shaking me, waking me.
President Richard Gondry looked me in the eyes, his own wide and panicked in the semi-darkness of the Anacostia River, which surrounded us.
I scissored my legs once, hard, and we broke the surface, both gasping.
The president was breathless, and I recovered mine first. “Are you all right, sir?”
“Thanks to you,” he sputtered, coughing, water spitting from his lips and flecking me. It hardly mattered; we were both drenched to the skin. He surveyed the position we were in; squarely in the middle of the river, equidistant to both banks. “What do we do?”
I was a second slower in assessing the situation; my improvised landing flip had resulted in me whacking my head against something on the way down, a stray leg or arm – something. Surface of the water, maybe. “We need to...get out of here,” I said, locking my eyes on the bank of the river. Down the way, there was a marina of some sort. Behind me, the Southeast Freeway bridge. I oriented myself quickly, getting back on mission.
“We need to get you to the White House and locked down safely, sir,” I said, staring at the marina. I was pretty positive it was on the DC side. “I'm going to take us under. Draw a deep breath. Squeeze my arm, hard, if you need me to surface, but we need to use the cover of the water as much as possible in case that sniper's still out
there.”
The president nodded, taking a deep breath without questioning me about my plan.
I dragged us both under the surface and swam furiously, both legs scissoring, one arm working to aid them while the other secured the president's body to me. We reached the shallows in seconds and I planted my feet, dragging the president up onto the bank, through the muddy beach and into a thick copse of trees and bushes beyond, pulling us both into cover.
The president was still out of breath, dripping, his gray hair pushed against his scalp in a flat helm, almost like a skull cap. “And now...we wait for the Secret Service? And they'll transport us back to the White House?”
I looked north, to the horizon. Smoke plumed into the sky, giving me the rough position of the helicopter crash. “I don't think that's wise, sir. Whoever downed Marine One did it with a rifle. As much a fan as I am of laying low, because motion attracts the hunter, I think it's safe to say whoever did this is going to want to confirm the kill. And they'll beat the cops to the scene by several minutes, I suspect.” I looked around in a frenzy; who knew if someone had already seen us taking cover? “We need to move.”
“But won't that...give us away?” Gondry asked. He was pretty calm given that we'd just jumped out of a crashing helicopter into a river.
“No matter what we do now, there's an element of risk,” I said, looking right into his eyes. “The people after us are very good and very dedicated. The best the world has to offer, in my estimation. We are not going to be able to out-hide them. Not here.” There wasn't much to this little forest thicket, after all; maybe a quarter acre of trees and uncontrolled underbrush that hadn't been developed – yet. As far as places to hide in an urban environment went, it was shit. We'd almost certainly left tracks dragging through the mud up onto the shore.
Control: Out of the Box (The Girl in the Box Book 38) Page 15