But then the haze cleared, revealing Archer, holding a gun to Charley’s head.
“Give it to me!” Archer bellowed, looking surprisingly young and desperate. “Give it to me or she dies!”
16
Archer’s hand exploded and painted Charley’s face with gore. A high-caliber rifle round took out his pistol.
He dragged Charley back with him to the ground and dropped out of Middleton’s sight. The crowd was surging around them, thousands of people in a stampede to get out of the amphitheatre.
Middleton hunched and bent his knees to lower his center of gravity, being jostled as he went against the tide, making it over to where they’d fallen-nothing. Blood on the ground, Archer’s pistol in pieces, no trail.
Middleton had made a career out of helping others. He’d never asked for anything in return. Right now, as the spooked crowd streamed around him, he wished otherwise.
Connie Carson and Wiki Chang sat in the cargo area of an MV-22B Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft, U.S. marines around them, game faces on, M4 assault rifles ready. They took off vertically as a helicopter would, the flying style converting to that of an aircraft as the two massive engines charged forward for horizontal flight and they were hammering hard and fast to the north.
Squashed between a marine three times his size and Carson, Chang hugged his backpack so tight it seemed he wanted to crawl in there to escape the incredible noise inside the cabin, as two other Ospreys flew in close formation.
He’d held on but no more-Chang threw up into the bag he’d been given by the crew chief. Carson patted him on the back.
“You’re… smiling?”
“Been a while since I’ve done an infil with marines,” she said, cheerleader exterior masking a former door- kicker with the U.S. military. She was not so much taking to the situation like a duck to water, but rather felt a happiness like a pig rolling in filth. She scratched at the fiberglass cast on her arm. “It’s not really like a computer game, is it?”
His teeth felt like they were rattling out of their sockets. As the marine seated next to him slapped a box of rounds into his M249 SAW and cranked a round into the chamber, Chang shook his head.
Chernayev called his name over the radio.
Middleton scanned around, stood tall and tried to look over heads and was almost knocked over-there, behind the press pool, the assembly still corralled in their cordoned-off area below and out of the sightline of the president, while POTUS was being evacced and the civilians exfilled en masse. Not even all the number of security personnel present were able to control this crowd moving as one.
“Over there!”
Middleton followed Chernayev’s outstretched arm and pointed finger-
Archer dragging Charley back toward the raised VIP area, the sound of a helicopter behind him.
“Two minutes!” the marine CO yelled. “Masks!”
All the marines donned gas masks.
Carson looked to Chang, his face a mixture of apprehension and pure fear. Just twenty minutes ago, they’d been stopped at the major road checkpoint ten kilometers south of the dam, and she had managed to talk the Indian military sentries into letting her speak to the U.S. marine colonel, a man who now stood looking forward through the shoulders of the pilots.
“Wiki, are we in range yet?” Carson asked.
Chang shook his head and turned a new shade of sick, swallowed some vomit that rose up his throat. She put an arm around his shoulders. Saving not only their president, but also this region from a potential nuclear war… Yeah, that would do it to you.
The Secret Service had the president behind a tall wall of bulletproof glass that deployed whenever the commander-in-chief was giving a public speech. The protective detail, all with service firearms drawn, were scanning the crowd, some looking up at the sound of Marine One, the big Sikorsky VH-3D Sea King coming in fast toward the landing zone.
Middleton ran hard, carving a path through anyone in his way. Weren’t for the flare in his knees he could have been back 35 years, a wide receiver at West Point. A gap in the crowd, another gunshot behind him, he didn’t flinch, eyes searching, sucking in air.
There. Dead ahead.
Near where the base of the dam met the stairs up to the raised VIP platform, Archer turned to face him. Arm tight around Charley’s waist, bloody stump of a hand to the front of her, his other hand out of sight behind her back. Could be a gun, could be a knife.
Middleton looked to his daughter. All thoughts of the running crowd left his mind. The bombs too. It was like he was in the eye of the storm, even the sound of the helicopter was silenced in this moment. People ran screaming all around them as he stood still and faced her. Charley’s eyes pleaded with him. This wasn’t her fight. His work had again put her into jeopardy. No way.
A guy, one of Chernayev’s BlueWatch operators, had his pistol drawn and was coming at him-his head snapped back and he fell to the ground. Secret Service or marine sharpshooter. Middleton almost wished he’d ditched the Beretta but he’d instinctively tucked it into the back of his belt as he’d stood. Hopefully it wouldn’t be clocked and seen as a threat.
“The controller, Middleton, or she dies.”
Charley screamed as Archer pushed something into her back.
They were ten yards away. Middleton closed the gap to five. Stopped. Held the controller loose in his right hand, visible to Archer.
“You want this?”
“This ends here, you know it.”
“Maybe for me and you,” Middleton replied. “It’s not going to end for her.”
“Maybe not-for her.” Archer gave a flick of his head over his shoulder. “What about your other bitch?”
Middleton followed where Archer motioned. At the top of the stairs that led up to the VIP area, Tesla gasping for breath, a stream of bright red ran out of the corner of her mouth, her face sunken and tired. She’d been trampled by the crowd.
“Let them both go, Archer,” Middleton said, turning back. “Only deal you’re gonna get. You think you can draw down on me and not get taken out by a sniper, go for it.”
Sixty marines in full battle dress ran flat out in double-file, carving a path through the middle of the mass exodus.
Chang had a hand on the back of Carson’s belt, as instructed, and he didn’t argue or question when she peeled off from the stream of marines and ran up the stairs to the VIP area to their left.
“The only way this ends, Archer. You let my daughter and my colleague go. You give them time to leave.”
Archer almost smiled. Charley winced as he shifted his grip and his warm blood pumped across her neck.
“The detonator, on the ground, and I let them run for thirty seconds,” Archer said. “There’s a clear path behind me, into the dam’s maintenance area. They’ll be spared from the blast.”
Middleton knew he had no choice but to go along, even though Charley’s eyes said no.
