would undoubtedly be full of Secret Service agents. Then there’d be carloads of hangers-on-incoming cabinet members, high roller contributors to Gabe’s campaign and Gabe’s mother, of course.
She had maybe another thirty seconds or so before Gabe’s car went by.
She pressed forward through the screaming crowd, dodging miniature flags being waved wildly. The crowd cheered deafeningly around her. She tried to scan individual male faces, but they blurred together in her panic. It was no use.
She looked ahead, trying to spot Kim in the crowd. She couldn’t see her friend through the throngs of people pushing toward the street to see the incoming President. Diana swerved away from the parade route, farther out onto the Mall itself, to get clear enough of the heavy crowd to move.
A movement caught her attention just ahead. A moped. But that wasn’t what had captured her notice. It was the second moped coming in from her left as if it planned to join the first moped. She scanned the grassy field in front of her. There! A third moped.
She broke into a full run, heading straight for the oddly moving conveyances. She had to get a look at the guys on those bikes!
The crowd ahead of her moved, swelling back toward the Mall. The first moped was forced to put its brakes on and wove through the mass of bodies, seeking a route forward. It was just the break she needed. She put on an extra burst of speed and drew near enough the moped to catch a glimpse of the driver’s face.
Bingo!
She’d seen that face in her sheaf of pictures.
She veered toward him, running flat out, as fast as her body could possibly go. Her legs went numb and her lungs burned like fire as she sucked in the cold air. But she ignored the pain and ran as if her life depended on it. Or rather, as if Gabe Monihan’s life depended on it.
1:00 P.M.
S he was close enough now to see that she recognized both of the drivers of the other mopeds as well. She’d done it. She’d found the Q-group cell and correctly guessed their point of attack. Now she just had to stop the bastards. And she only had a few seconds to do it. No time to pull out her cell phone and call Kim for backup.
Which guy to jump? Probably only one of them would launch the actual attack on Gabe. If she picked the wrong guy to take out, Gabe could be killed anyway.
A wave of noise reached her ears, a traveling cheer growing louder in volume by the second. Oh, God. That would be the crowd yelling as Gabe’s limousine drove past. She estimated the sound was only a few hundred feet behind her. Two of the men in front of her abandoned their mopeds, leaving them where they landed on the ground, and shoved forcefully into the crowd. Another hundred feet and she’d be upon the third moped.
The third guy, wearing a brown coat, looked to his right. A name popped into her head to match his picture. Tito Albadian. Glory Seeker. The probable leader of the Q-group cell.
She glanced to the right, as well, and saw one of the now-on-foot terrorists nod at him. Albadian stopped his scooter and got off, dumping it on the ground. Eighty feet to go until she was on him. As he turned to push into the crowd and she got a look at him in profile, she saw the brown backpack slung over his shoulders.
Weapon! her intuition screamed.
Albadian was the one. He had to be stopped!
Zeroed in on her target now, she dodged pedestrians as she barged forward. A clear space opened up in front of her and she burst into a run. Fifty feet to reach him. He made it into the front row of parade watchers and started to slide the backpack off his shoulders.
She wasn’t going to make it. Time slowed to a stop around her as her brain shifted into a weird, out-of-time existence and her life flashed before her. A childhood dominated by fear and embarrassment. The backlash of that embarrassment taking the form of rebellion and anger. A flash of clarity as she abruptly saw her increasingly troubled military career for what it was. A strike back at the establishment that destroyed her family.
Thoughts drifted through her brain randomly as her body continued to move forward of its own volition toward Albadian. Why did she measure her life by its failures and not its successes? Why did she still blame her mother for being sabotaged by criminals out to stop her research? And why in the world was she sticking her neck out like this today, blatantly risking her life for a man who was the very symbol of everything she’d despised for most of her life?
Pow! A body slammed into her from the left, tackling her and driving her to the ground like a professional linebacker. Ooompf. The air rushed out of her flattened lungs as pain plowed into her like a bulldozer. She stared at the grass from a range of approximately one inch. So much for out-of-body experiences.
What the hell had just blasted into her like that? Or rather, who? Was there a fourth terrorist out here that she hadn’t spotted? Someone with the Q-group cell must have spotted her closing in on their man. A surge of fight-or- flight adrenaline roared through her and she heaved upward, throwing the attacker off her back. He was tenacious, though, and hung on as she struggled in his grasp.
She managed to half roll over in his grip and froze, stunned, as she caught sight of dark blue and a flash of brass. A uniform. This guy was a police officer!
She stopped struggling and shouted over the din of the crowd as it started to yell around them, heralding the imminent arrival of Gabe’s limousine, “You’ve got to let me go! Monihan’s almost here!”
“No crazy’s getting near him on my watch, lady,” the cop snarled back.
“You don’t understand,” she cried frantically. “I’m trying to save him!”
“I was told to be on the lookout for a bunch of nutcases trying to pull something today. You just cool your jets and hold still.”
He leaned on her arms, expecting to subdue her by virtue of superior weight. Not a chance. This was exactly the sort of situation her Krav Maga training was designed to handle. She countered the guy’s attempt to pin her and reversed the move, landing the cop on his back hard, with her knee planted solidly on his solar plexus. Normally she’d finish him off with a chop to the side of the head, but she didn’t have time and the poor guy was a police officer. She left him gasping on the ground, jumped up and turned around facing the parade.
Where had Albadian gone? She searched over heads frantically, trying to spot his brown coat and dark hair.
There. Near the front of the crowd. She shoved toward him, ignoring the squawks of protest as she elbowed people aside. The yells around her grew into a roar. Crud. The first in another line of black stretch limousines came into view in front of her. Five more people to get past.
She all but picked up the woman in front of her and moved her aside in her panic to get to that backpack. She banged a tall, lean teenager aside. Three more people between her and her target. She could almost dive for that backpack.
A second limousine cruised past.
“Hey lady. Quit pushing back there,” someone growled at her.
She’d apologize after Gabe was safe. She popped the complainer in the back of the knee, knocking the joint out from under him and jumping past him as he partially collapsed.
A third limousine pulled into sight. This one had Secret Service agents at each corner of it, walking beside it briskly. She recognized Owen Haas at the back left corner of the car. Gabe.
She gathered herself to jump at Albadian and watched in horror as he cocked his arm back. And threw the backpack. It sailed up in a brown nylon arc, flying straight for the side of Gabe’s limousine.
“Bomb!” she screamed at the top of her lungs.
In slow motion, she saw Owen’s head turn toward the sound of her scream. He registered the pack flying at him. He dived and made a catch any NFL receiver would be proud of, and in one move, rolled, popped to his feet and flung the pack under the front end of the limousine behind him.
“Satchel charge!” he roared as the next limo in line came to an abrupt halt.
A single thought pierced her panic. What a brilliant move. The backup limo’s engine block and heavy, armor plating would absorb a tremendous amount of the explosion and protect not only Gabe, but the crowd, from the worst of the blast.
