“We never should have let this go on,” Middleton snapped to Chernayev as they were jostled suddenly when the crowd reacted to another powerful line spoken by the president.
“What choice did we have?” Chernayev challenged him. “Who would have listened to us? We will find this Umer. We will stop this.”
“We’d better,” said Middleton.
Umer made his way to the front of the crowd, sliding along slowly, not about to do anything that would bring notice to him. He need not get this close to trigger the blast but he had promised his men he would join them in their glorious mission and be the first to greet them when they reached heaven. It hadn’t been a difficult sacrifice to make; after today, nothing he ever did could equal the service he was performing. He needed to share in that glory, be celebrated as a hero, even if that be limited to the tiny circles that knew his role.
His men shared his ambition and courage, each and every one of them knowing they had been born for this day. Each had gone into this with eyes wide open prepared to give themselves to the service of the Almighty. Umer felt strangely calm, aware in a God-like moment that he was the master of a fate controlled by the tiny detonator in his pocket. Flip the switch, press the button and the world would change forever in a nanosecond.
Umer prayed he’d be able to view the aftermath from his spot in heaven.
“
“You’ll never get away with this,” Tesla told Archer weakly.
From the private booth in the VIP area, Archer seemed to feel quite confident that he could get away with whatever he wanted to.
“My father would have wanted Middleton to die here,” he said. “But I prefer having him watch me kill his daughter. Better to have him live in misery.”
“He’ll hunt you to the end of the earth.”
Archer’s lips flirted with a smile, clearly unfamiliar with the gesture. “If he survives, which is unlikely. And if he does, let him come after me. Let his personal hatred consume his failed mission. And not long after today that earth will be a considerably different place.”
Tesla thought briefly. “Is it true you killed your father?”
Archer stiffened, didn’t respond.
“I’ll take that as a yes. Some would call that the ultimate betrayal.”
“Age betrayed him,” Archer shot at her. “Weakness betrayed him. He had played the game too long.”
“Is that what this is to you?”
“As it was to my father. But he no longer cared enough about winning.”
“You just answered my question,” Tesla said. “This was your plan all along. It was your plan and he refused to go along with it. He changed his mind, so you killed him.”
Archer didn’t bother denying it. “We had come to see the world a different way.”
Security badge dangling from his throat, Middleton was nearing the front of the vast mass of humanity when he glimpsed a man standing off to the side. On first glance, he wouldn’t have paid him any heed at all, except for the fact that his eyes were held closed, as if he were asleep. Or praying. Second glance brought a flash of recognition from the picture Chernayev had shown him:
Umer!
Middleton had barely formed that thought when one of the reporters squeezed into the press rows plowed his way into the aisle, his face a sheen of dripping sweat. Middleton watched him tear the camera strap from his neck and toss it aside, as security personnel moved toward him.
Middleton swung back toward Umer. His eyes had snapped open and his hand was digging into his pocket.
In that moment it all became clear. The fifty soldiers, thermobaric explosives, the discarded camera…
Archer’s men were disguised as
The equipment would have been remodeled to include a lead shielding rendering the explosives mostly invisible to detection devices. Add to that the fact that thermobarics were so new that their signature may not have been identified and coded yet.
Middleton made his way toward Umer, wishing now he and Chernayev hadn’t separated.
“I’ve got him,” he said softly into a tiny handheld microphone the Russian had provided him. “Front crowd, southeast facing.”
Middleton saw Umer cupping his hands around a tiny oblong detonator and raising them into a position of prayer. He closed his eyes again. He started to go for the Beretta Chernayev had supplied but didn’t dare risk firing. Even a kill shot to the brain could result in a spasm more than sufficient to activate the detonator. Middleton would have to win this battle in close.
A commotion in the press corps drew Archer’s gaze away from his two captives. Harold Middleton was fighting his way down the aisle.
“No,” Archer rasped. And then his voice dissolved into the throaty scream of a spoiled child.
With that he lashed a blinding whipsaw of a blow to Tesla’s throat that would have crushed her windpipe had she not turned at the last instant. The blow impacted instead against the side, still mashing cartilage and dropping her momentarily breathless to her knees.
Gasping, Tesla saw Archer jerk Charley forward and drag her downward toward the crowd.
Taking advantage of Umer’s resolute focus, Middleton slammed into him from the side, hand thrust forward to jerk back all the fingers he could find. Umer whelped in pain, enraged eyes finding Middleton as if aroused suddenly from a beautiful dream. The commotion spilled those crowded closest to the front into a domino-like fall, leading Secret Service personnel to storm the stage and enclose the president in a protective, moving bubble.
Chaos.
The word locked in Middleton’s mind as it raged around him. He slammed an elbow into Umer’s face, crushing his nose and mashing his front teeth. He heard something clack to the concrete and knew it could only be the detonator, as Umer dropped to feel for it. Middleton joined him amid the thrashing feet moving in all directions at once. If one of them pressed down on the detonator’s button…
On stage he glimpsed the Secret Service just now starting to rush the president to safety, still any number of long, long seconds before he was out of range of the kind of blast 50 separate thermobaric explosions would wreak. Middleton felt a knee smack his skull, a foot jab his ribs, courtesy of the fleeing throngs. He continued to grope about the ground for the lost detonator, afraid to spare the hand it would take to draw his gun on Umer. He grabbed sight of him pawing about the ground through the sea of churning legs and desperate fleeing frames.
Middleton glimpsed the detonator, its black casing now cracked, stretched a hand toward it only to have his fingers stepped on as another foot kicked the device from him. It bounced once and skittered straight toward Umer who lashed a hand toward it.
The fingers on his right hand throbbing and useless, Middleton drew his pistol with his left and fired in a single motion. The bullet took Umer in the cheek, blowing off a hefty portion of his face. He collapsed atop the detonator, shielding it from the onrushing feet long enough for Middleton to close desperately on all fours and jerk it from beneath his body.
Rising to his feet proved an arduous, almost impossible task as he clung to the detonator with both hands to protect it. His eyes fell on an impossible sight, conjured certainly by the sharp blows to his head: a vision of his daughter Charley.
