Out of the Dark

by Gregg Hurwitz

  The third floor was coming up. None of the officers or agents had taken note of him descending here in near-plain view.

  Then, without any warning, the neighboring car swooped up, its passengers suddenly right beside him through two glass walls and a few feet of open air.

  Its passengers happened to be four Secret Service agents, their SIGs at the ready.

  As they rose and he dropped, two sides of a pulley, the agents clocked the rifle at his side.

  He threw himself flat in a sprawl a split second before their rounds shattered the transparent walls of his elevator, spraying him with pebbled safety glass.

  An instant of onslaught and then they’d swept up out of range.

  When he rose, the scene before him in the atrium had frozen, as though the plug had been pulled on an elaborate windup toy. From various levels and staircases, at least a dozen cops and agents stared at him, scrolling slowly by as he continued to descend.

  The volley of nine-millimeter rounds had converted the car into a platform elevator. This was good because there would be no refraction on his outgoing shots.

  It was bad for everything else.

  He picked out a cop on the balcony just below, raised the gas gun, and fired a rubber bullet across the open divide. It struck the cop in the thigh, spinning him in a 180 and knocking him to the floor. It would leave a nasty bruise, but nothing more.

  Evan stepped back from the brink and waited for incoming.

  Bullets and sparks blew out the rest of the glass clinging to the maw of the frames. Evan waited for a break in the action and then eased forward and popped off another sabot round at an agent standing on the concourse level two floors below. Reloading, Evan knocked down another agent on the ground floor just before the guy could squeeze off a shot.

  Clearing a path.

  A hefty cop made heftier by a Kevlar vest bulled through the front door into the lobby, well out of rubber-bullet range.

  Pulling back from the edge once more, Evan slung the gas gun down, thumbing the barrel release with his left hand so he could maintain a firing grip while his other hand dug in the ballistic pouch. The weapon broke open as his fingers closed on the cool metal he was looking for—a D-cell battery in the bottom of the pouch.

  The battery’s weight gave him greater range.

  Sweeping the spent cartridge out, he slotted the battery into place and snapped the barrel up with a jerk. He was drawing fire now from above and below, though the moving car made pinning him down tricky, the sight lines constantly shifting. If he stayed back from the lip, most of the shots hit the car’s ceiling and floor in front of him.

  He hoped not to catch a ricochet.

  Laboring downward, the elevator was just above the concourse level now. The displays dangling in the atrium provided sporadic cover as Evan stepped forward and sighted on the hefty cop’s sternum.

  “Sorry,” he said, and fired.

  As he jerked back, he heard the ping of the D cell against the armor plate of the vest, the cop giving a bark that echoed up the six-story rise of the atrium.

  Gunfire answered furiously, cops and agents raining lead down from the open staircases and balconies. Sprawled on his stomach, squinting against the sparks, Evan fumbled in another round. Then he jerked the skateboard free of the straps on the rear of the backpack.

  He gauged the elevator’s descent, the ground floor coming up fast. From outside the building, muffled voices reached him, agents shouting to fall back and set a perimeter.

  Hugging the gas gun, Evan rolled through the open mouth of the elevator, falling five feet onto the concourse, the skateboard bouncing after him. He hit the slick floor beneath a rippling banner that shielded him from the sight lines above.

  He looked at the skateboard, his brain taking a microsecond to dismiss the idea of riding it as idiotic. Then he was sprinting unevenly toward the door past the cops he’d felled. Rounds bit the floor behind him.

  Using the hanging displays as cover, he ran for the entrance. As he neared, the door boomed inward, the frame filled with a big man in an ERT jacket, squaring to raise an FN P90.

  The world went to slow motion except for Evan’s brain, which made the tactical assessment in real time.

  Even if he struck the man with a rubber round, the guy would be able to get off a blast from the submachine gun. Evan’s only chance would be to kill the man, and he was unwilling to kill a Secret Service agent.

  His momentum carried him forward, bringing him closer to the muzzle.

  He thought of the promise he’d made Trevon to protect him and his sister.

  The promise he’d have to break.

  52

  Decades-Long Fuse

  As Evan bore down on the ERT agent, the man’s submachine gun reached horizontal.

  Evan focused on the eyes of the man he was about to let kill him.

  Recognized them.

  The set of the features, the stubble, the pronounced ridges of the nose.

  Evan had seen this face before when he’d pulled files after Doug Wetzel had alerted him to Ricky and Wade Collins.

  A cousin.

  The pounding of Evan’s footsteps and the whine of ricochets at his heels revved back from slow motion into normal time. He snapped the gas gun up and shot a rubber bullet through the impostor’s eye.

  The big man spun violently, one hand tailing up. He fell, his boot pinning the door open. Evan hurdled him, stumbling onto the sidewalk.

  Outside, MPD was scrambling to set a perimeter. Evan flew into the mix. If they shot at him, they’d kill one another with crossfire. The primary risk to Evan would come from the countersnipers on the opposing rooftops.

  Dodging a crisscross of stunned officers, Evan flung the gas gun aside and grabbed his RoamZone from his pocket. He heard the first whine of a sniper bullet pass his ear. Another round chipped the sidewalk in front of him, spraying grit across his shins.

  A deep engine rumble added its voice to the commotion, matched with a vibration of dread inside his own chest. Across the huge street, an SUV screeched to a halt, doors blowing open, CAT members flying out wielding SR-16s. Between them and the countersnipers, Evan had to keep his time on the street to a dead minimum.

  He thumbed the first saved number, and a manhole cover blew in the center of Pennsylvania Avenue.

  The diversion would buy him two seconds, maybe three, before the countersnipers would reset and pepper his torso.

  Across eight cleared traffic lanes, the CAT members reeled back from the manhole explosion, weapons flung skyward. Before they could regroup, Evan sprinted into the middle of the street, directly toward them.

  A quarter block away, he saw Orphan A burst out of the Federal Trade Commission Building and wheel to a stop, gaping up the street.

  They locked eyes—a split-second connection—as Evan slid across the final three feet of asphalt and dropped through the hole into the sewer.

  As he fell, he managed to claw onto the top rung, his body racked punishingly against the steel bars beneath. In the circle of daylight above, bullets rent the air. He fell down onto the ledge below, where another load-out bag awaited him.

  The hot reek and dank concrete reminded him of another sewer in another country, the mission that had set this decades-long fuse burning.

  He stripped in seconds, kicking his clothes off into the stream of muck to kill any trace DNA.

  Naked save for his boxer briefs, he ripped open the bag.

  Inside, a hazmat diving suit.

  He squirmed into the specialized dry suit, the double-layer vulcanized rubber bunching infuriatingly at his ankles and waist. Yelled commands came from above; the agents would have to approach the open manhole tactically, which would buy him a few more precious seconds.

  He raked the zipper up over his chest and then across his back, the second skin clinging to his flesh, sealing at every joint, a perfect insulation. He tugged on the positive-pressure helmet, the special intake valve wheezing into effect, preventing hosti
le contaminants from entering his lungs.

  He noted a shadow above and looked up through the hole in the street to Orphan A. The glare on his face was homicidal.

  Another memory flash jolted Evan back beneath the street of that gray foreign city. How young he’d been, patriotic blood flowing through his veins. He’d still thought he could remain above it, pristine and righteous.

  He’d thought he could stay clean.

  Orphan A reared back, whipping the submachine gun around to aim down into the sewer.

  Still looking up at him, Evan stepped off the ledge and vanished into the black murk.

  53

  Antianxiety

  Cadillac One screeched back through the White House gates, a shell of its former self. Windows shattered, rear tires shredded, the Presidential Standard flag snapped off the hood.

  Conveyed between the half dozen battered SUVs representing the remaining convoy, it sped to a secure area, slamming down a ramp to a blastproofed emergency bunker, its undercarriage throwing up sparks.

  It skidded to a halt.

  Hosts of agents, emergency medical personnel, and the White House physician waited with held breath.

  The limo was still.

  Steam rose from the hood. Foam bulged from a punctured tire. Radio chatter filled the bunker, overlapping waves of commands from the crisis center at Secret Service HQ.

  And then the rear door creaked open, releasing a spill of bullet-resistant glass, revealing Naomi lying across Bennett’s inert form. She’d piled on top of him as the charge initiated.

  She peeled herself off him now.

  Bennett coughed, the sound driving everyone into motion.

  “Mr. President, we need to get you—”

  “—cut off his shirt and let’s find a—”

  “Goddamn it, everyone off me.” Bennett’s face poked up, his glasses shattered, crooked on his face. They fell free, trampled underfoot as he shoved himself clear of the limo and the throng of personnel. “I’m fine.”

  Behind him Eva Wong and the body man exited, hands pressed to their heads. They were steered immediately to rolling gurneys.

  Bennett’s chest heaved. His watch face was cracked. The skin beneath his right eye twitched. He rubbed his face, coughed some more, holding out a hand to keep the others at bay.

  Naomi raked her fingers through her hair, freeing bits of glass. “You need to let the physician check you, Mr. President.”

  “I need to find out what the hell just happened.”

  “It looks like a mortar round of some sort—”

  “You allowed a mortar round to drop on my goddamned limousine?” His voice, ordinarily so calm, shook with rage. “You’re lucky I’m still alive.”

  A flush crept up Naomi’s throat, invading her cheeks. “Yes, I am, Mr. President. But right now you need medical attention. You need to let the physician—”

  Again paramedics attempted to move in but Bennett swung an arm to hold them off, a drunk wielding a broken bottle. “What kind of charge did he use?” he said, dangerously close to shouting. “What did Orphan X use?”

  Naomi stepped forward, allowing cover for the paramedics to position the gurney closer. “Forensic Services will be here any—”

  “A bigger charge would’ve gotten it done,” Bennett said. An uncharacteristic wildness touched his eyes—desperation or maybe even fear. “It would’ve killed me for sure. Why didn’t he use a bigger charge?”

  “Maybe he wasn’t trying to kill you,” she said. “Maybe he was trying to ring your bell.”

  Bennett straightened up, clutching his lower back. “It’ll take a lot more than that.”

  Everyone stiffened at once, staring at him.

  “What?” he said. “What?”

  He felt warmth trickle from his ear, reached up. His finger pad came away glossy with his own blood.

  Naomi said, “The physician, Mr. President.”

  Bennett rubbed the blood between his thumb and forefinger, watched it spread across the pads. He felt his mouth settle into a scowl, though he hadn’t told it to.

  He sat on the gurney.

  * * *

  Naomi perched at the edge of an overstuffed chair in the West Sitting Hall, the red leather cool through her pants. Bennett reclined on the chesterfield sofa across from her, tie missing, collar still spotted with blood.

  The room was soothing with its peach walls and antique wooden tables, its ferns and bowls of carnations. The framed double doors that opened onto the hall and staircase were closed, squaring the room. A number of staffers and medical personnel orbited the space or conferred in hushed tones in the far-flung seating areas. Eva Wong sat alone over by the fireplace, at the ready for a snap of the president’s fingers. After being diagnosed with minor tinnitus and released from care, she’d scurried right back to the president’s side.

  This was an all-hands-on-deck moment.

  Though there remained more questions than answers, Naomi had downloaded Bennett on the preliminary report from the Forensic Division, and given his reaction, she couldn’t blame the others in the room for maintaining a healthy standoff distance.

  “A squash head?” Bennett said. “Why’s he using outdated weapons tech?”

  “The hypothesis we’re working with is that he wanted to shatter the ballistic windows to clear the way.”

  “For what?”

  “A shot at you. But the protective convoy did its job, got you away safely.”

  An aide entered with a silver tray holding a fresh shirt and a replacement pair of eyeglasses. Bennett tore off his tie and changed his shirt in full view of everyone. Propriety had been washed aside by the exigencies of the situation.

  “A job well done, is that what you’re telling me?” He polished the lenses carefully before donning the new glasses. “Convenient how that hypothesis lets the Service off the hook.”

  “If you’ll forgive me for saying so, Mr. President, I’m not feeling particularly off the hook at the moment.”

  “Okay,” Bennett said. “So he wanted to break the glass to get at me. The rear compartment of Cadillac One is a closed container, which means he had to pull off a balancing act between concussing it enough to shatter the windows—which he’d know is impossible, by the way—and producing too much overpressure, which would kill everyone inside. Hence the question: Why not just do the latter and kill everyone inside?”

  “I have a feeling…”

  “What?”

  “I have a feeling that he didn’t want to kill the rest of us.”

  Bennett’s eyes crinkled at the edges with amusement. “You think Orphan X cares about collateral damage?”

  “He was cornered by cops in that café two weeks ago—”

  “I recall.”

  “Well,” she said, “a man who throws matcha tea and salt when confronted with armed police officers doesn’t sound like someone who doesn’t care about collateral damage. A man who uses rubber bullets to effect his escape doesn’t sound like someone who doesn’t care about killing innocents.”

  “According to Director Gonzalez, Orphan X killed two Secret Service agents today.”

  “About that…” Naomi shot a glance at the iconic lunette window, realized her breath was held. She took the plunge. “We’ve discovered that the two emergency-response-team members who were killed were actually impostor agents.”

  Bennett stared at her with incredulity. “You allowed outsiders to penetrate the Secret Service? Along my motorcade route?”

  Though chagrined to the bone, she found herself wondering whether Bennett was feigning his reaction. “Agent Demme remembers clearing them during the advance sweep.” She nodded to Demme, who was waiting nervously across the room, doing his best to pretend he hadn’t heard his name spoken. “He double-checked their creds, said they checked out in the databases. But now any record of them is gone.”

  “You’re telling me you’ve got moles in your agency, Templeton?”

  “I’m worried we have moles o
utside the Service, people with clearance high enough to alter top-secret databases. Someone authorized inside State, NSA, DoD.”

  Bennett’s gaze was steady, but in her peripheral vision Naomi saw Wong’s face swivel to him. Naomi had no idea what that was about, but she felt paranoia squirm to life in her belly, the sense that there were vast mechanisms at work beneath the surface so well cloaked that she’d never comprehend them.

  She focused on the job at hand, which was itself big enough to drown in. “It seems these impostors were targeting Orphan X, and he targeted them—and only them—right back.”

  “No,” Bennett said. “No, no, no. Nothing with X is a direct line. Not the men he killed, not his reason for shattering the limousine. It’s all part of a more complex strategy. We’re missing something. What are we missing?” He ran his thumb back and forth across his fingertips repetitively.

  Bennett’s shift in affect was upsetting. Naomi was accustomed to seeing him completely in control, never a tremor in his voice or a sheen of sweat across his brow. Now he looked disheveled in his rumpled clothes.

  “Perhaps you’re right,” she said, hoping a conciliatory tone might take his agitation down a notch. “Perhaps he miscalculated the charge.”

  “The man penetrated an impenetrable security zone, sent a mortar round a half block in moderate wind conditions toward a target moving fifty-five miles per hour and hit the nail on the head.” Bennett clenched his hands together. “That doesn’t sound like someone who miscalculates.”

  “No,” she said.

  “So we need to figure out what the hell he’s up to. You’re not thinking hard enough.”

  Before Naomi could respond, the physician approached, orange bottle in hand. “Mr. President, after the strain of the day, I think it’s imperative that you take a low dose of Buspar—”

  Bennett said, “I don’t need an antianxiety. I never take that crap, Frank. You know this. Don’t want to get in the habit.”

  The physician kept his voice calm and steady. “It’s not every day that you’re nearly assassinated.”

  Bennett tensed, his stare locked on the bottle. “Where was this prescription filled?”