“A satchel charge?” he’d asked incredulously. “As in a bomb?”
“Yup. One of the agents on scene is estimating it was a standard military load.”
“What does that mean?” Gabe had asked tersely, already not liking the sound of it.
“Twenty pounds of C-4,” the agent answered.
Mother of God. Someone had just lobbed twenty pounds of high explosives at him? “How many people are hurt?” he’d bitten out.
“No damage assessments yet. One of the guys says he counts about fifty people down on the ground. So far, most of them seem to be alive.”
Fifty? Fifty? Fifty Americans injured or killed because some crazy had it in for him? Deep in his gut, anger had begun to simmer. “I assume you guys know what to do next with me?”
The agent answered dryly, “Yes, sir. We practice scenarios like this all the time. We’ve got it under control.”
“Fifty people down damn well doesn’t sound under control to me,” he’d snapped. He’d paused. Taken as deep a breath as the two-hundred-pound man on his back allowed. “I’m sorry. Stopping nutcases isn’t your responsibility.”
The agent replied shortly, “It is when they’re coming after you. At least we did the most important part of our job. You’re alive.”
“Thanks,” Gabe replied seriously.
“Thank Owen Haas. He’s the guy who dived for that charge and lobbed it away from your car.”
“I will. The moment I see him.” And then a horrible thought had struck him. “He is okay, isn’t he?”
“If you look up over your right shoulder, sir, you’ll see him through the back windshield.”
Gabe had looked up, startled. Haas was plastered across the back of the car. “Is he hurt?” he’d asked his bodyguard in alarm.
“I dunno,” the agent answered.
“Well, hell’s bells. Stop the car, man, and find out! If he’s hurt, we’ve got to get him to a hospital!”
“Sorry, sir. The prime directive is to get you under cover and safely secured. Haas would have my head on a platter if I stopped this car for him right now.”
Gabe had subsided underneath the agent. The guy was right. Haas was absolutely single-minded in his pursuit of keeping Gabe safe.
The car drove for what seemed like forever while those first few minutes after the blast ran through his head over and over.
He closed his eyes yet again. Jesus. Fifty people. Diana had been right. She said the Q-group would try to nail him today. Good Lord! Was she hurt? When he’d called her, she said she was on the parade route near the National Art Gallery, searching for the terrorists. That was right near where the bomb had gone off. Had she found the terrorists? Was she one of those fifty people lying hurt or dead on the ground?
“I’ve got to make a phone call,” he grunted. “Any chance you could get off of me so I can do it?”
“Sorry, sir. You can’t make any calls right now. But, FYI, the protocol in a situation like this is to notify and lock down the current president. The members of both the old Cabinet and your Cabinet will be scattered and taken to secure locations, and NORAD will be notified to raise the DEFCON status. Like I said, everything’s taken care of.”
“It’s a personal call,” Gabe replied wryly. “But thanks for the information.”
“Sorry. No calls. Not until you’re off the streets.”
“And how long is that going to take?” he asked sharply, none too pleased at being told he couldn’t call Diana to check on her.
“A couple more minutes, sir. We’re almost there.”
Where in the hell “there” was, was anybody’s guess. These guys knew what they were doing and had all sorts of contingency plans for situations just like this. It was their show until they deemed him safe. And until then, he was only along for the ride. Little more than precious cargo. Hell, he wasn’t even President yet.
The bastards had tried to kill him before he took the oath of office. Why were they so damned worried about him becoming President, anyway? It wasn’t as if he had any big agenda where Berzhaan was concerned, other than doing what the Berzhaani people had been screaming for the U.S. to do already. What was it about him that had these guys so pissed off?
The limousine made another sharp turn but this time it decelerated after it straightened out. The engine noise echoed as though they’d just driven inside a building of some kind. Then it stopped altogether.
“If you’ll just stay put and stay down for a moment, sir, we have to secure the area before we move you.”
Thankfully, the big agent got off him. Gabe drew his first deep breath since this whole thing started. The passenger door opened briefly as the agent slipped outside. Gabe caught a glimpse of what looked like an oversize garage, dim and concrete.
He lay there for perhaps a minute. A guy could get damned paranoid after someone tried to kill him a second time. First Chicago, and now this. It didn’t help to have these fanatical Secret Service agents hustling him around as though the sky was about to fall on his head, either.
The car door opened abruptly, and despite himself, he jumped.
Owen Haas stuck his head in the door. “It’s all clear, sir. If you’d please come with me.”
He sat up, grateful to be vertical. As he slid toward Haas, he asked, “How’re you doing, Owen? Are you hurt?”
“I’m fine, sir,” came the implacable reply.
Right. As if the guy would admit it if one of his limbs was falling off and he had a sucking chest wound. What had he been thinking to even ask? Gabe followed the agent across the expanse of gray concrete toward a lighter gray door. A half-dozen agents ranged around the space, which was probably a small warehouse of some kind, their guns drawn. The sight of their weapons in hand reminded him sharply of the gravity of the situation.
An agent opened the door as he and Owen reached it. He reached out to touch its surface as they hustled past it. It felt like stainless steel. In a warehouse? Clearly this wasn’t any ordinary warehouse they’d brought him to.
Haas, already starting down the staircase that descended away from the door, looked back over his shoulder. “Hurry, sir,” the agent said quietly.
He picked up the pace, practically running down the steps to keep up with the Secret Service agent. Lightbulbs mounted high on the wall in mesh cages lit the way at regular intervals. The stairway went on forever, down and down and down. Where in the world were they taking him?
Finally, they reached the bottom, and another stainless steel door. Haas reached for the doorknob. “Stay here, sir. I’ve got to go check on our train, and then I’ll be back to collect you.”
Gabe frowned. Train? And then it hit him. The Metro! They’d just gone down into the D.C. subway system.
Four agents closed ranks around him in a tight formation on the tiny landing. It was a good thing he wasn’t claustrophobic or he’d be flipping out right about now. The door burst open, and he jumped, along with the Secret Service men. He’d never seen this bunch so edgy. And that was saying a lot. They made tense a way of life.
“This way,” Haas directed the phalanx of men.
Carried along in the agents’ midst, he was swept out into the dim light of a subway station, miraculously cleared of anyone except a line of police officers. They must’ve been sent down here ahead of time to clear out the civilians.
A sleek, white subway train sat at the platform, completely empty. Haas and company hustled him onto the train and made him lie down on the floor. They all stood around him, facing outward, their weapons still drawn, while he got a cockroach’s-eye view of their shoes.
The train ride was short. It proceeded down a straightaway for just a few minutes, and then it angled off sharply.
“You can sit up now, sir,” Owen told him. The agent held a hand down to help him up.
He stood up and looked outside the window. He’d never seen any subway tunnel that looked like this before. It was narrow and dark, its walls barely wider than the train. “What is this? Some sort of maintenance tunnel or something?”
Haas nodded grimly. “Something like that.”
