Hawk rushed up to the door and kicked it before jumping back. He peered around the corner and noticed it was empty. However, there was a door at the back that was still moving, obviously having just swung open.
Hawk crept back toward the hangar’s open space, staying low and using several pallets stacked with supplies and airplane parts as shields.
“Madam First Lady, it doesn’t have to end like this,” Hawk said. “I’m sure we can work something out for you.”
“End like what?” she said from the far corner. “You think you’ve got me cornered? What are you gonna do? Shoot me?”
Hawk shrugged. “Well, since you’re technically already dead, I’m not sure it’d make much of a difference what I did to you now.”
“Why don’t you disappear now before you’re tortured to death?”
“Tortured? Who’s going to be torturing me?”
“You don’t know these people and what they can do.”
“Tell me about them,” Hawk said.
He poked his head around the corner of the pallet to see if he could get a better look at where she was. There were workstations and pallets and other aircraft strewn across the open space. He wanted to grab her but couldn’t determine a clear path.
When he looked over the top, she fired a bullet at him. Instinctively, he fired back. But instead of burying a shot in her or the building’s aluminum siding, he hit a barrel of jet fuel, setting off a big explosion. The heat was so intense that he had to shield his eyes just to see where she was. But it was like she’d vanished.
Hawk was still scanning the hangar for her when Black shouted.
“Over here, Hawk!”
Hawk spun around to see Black on the passenger side of his car, exchanging gunfire with Fortner and Madeline.
What the hell?
Hawk raced over to Black and slid down next to him.
“She came out around the back while you were still talking to her,” Black said. “I didn’t see her until it was too late. Fortner was laying down cover for her and she came racing around the back side of the building and only had to make it about twenty yards from this angle we have here.”
Hawk eased onto his knees to take aim but stopped when he saw Fortner and Madeline working frantically to shut the door.
“They’re leaving,” Hawk said. “You still got that rifle in the trunk?”
“It’s not put together.”
“Just give it to me,” Hawk said. “We don’t have much time.”
Black popped the trunk and snatched the rifle case out of it. He slid it back over to Hawk, who went to work assembling the weapon. Meanwhile, the sound emanating from the engines of the Gulfstream G600 intensified as the jet started to move away from them and toward the runway.
“Come on, come on,” Black said. “They’re speeding away.”
“We’ve got time,” Hawk said. “They have to come back by this way.”
“You’ve got a lot of confidence, the kind I’d only have if I was holding an RPG on my shoulder.”
Hawk chuckled. “Been there, done that. I guess I needed a new challenge this time.”
“So, how exactly is this going to work? Are you going to shoot Fortner through the cockpit glass?”
“Hardly. I’ll get maybe two shots to take at the wheels before it won’t matter and they’ll be going fast enough to get airborne.”
“You’re going to give the plane a flat tire to keep it grounded?”
“That’s the best I could come up with on such short notice,” Hawk said.
Hawk got into a prone positioned and eyed the plane. “I hope you got this scoped in recently?”
“I was at the range last week,” Black said. “But no guarantees.”
“I guess I’ll have to make do.”
The Gulfstream G600 reached the end of the runway and turned around to begin takeoff. In the distance, the engines roared before the jet lurched forward and sped along the ground. The wheels turned faster as the plane moved closer to Hawk’s range.
“Here’s goes nothing,” he said as he squeezed the trigger. The plane kept charging forward.
“You missed,” Black said.
“I’ve got time for one more shot,” Hawk said. He adjusted his scope and took aim.
He exhaled and fired.
This time the bullet struck the front wheel, ripping through the rubber, and shredded the tire. The plane wavered for a moment as Fortner pulled back on the stick to get airborne. However, the airspeed wasn’t high enough and the jet dipped to the ground.
Fortner forged ahead even as the front wheel disintegrated and consisted only of a rim slinging sparks in every direction. When Fortner pulled back on the stick again, gravity wasn’t as kind, slamming the plane to the runway. Instead of continuing to roll along, the nose lurched forward as the Gulfstream skidded off the asphalt. Seconds later, the plane burst into flames. Plumes of black smoke were sent skyward, setting off a series of alarms.
“So much for handling this quietly,” Black said.
“Let’s get out of here,” Hawk said. “We don’t need our cover blown when the media circus arrives.”
CHAPTER 33
BLUNT CRACKED HIS KNUCKLES as he scanned the front page of The Washington Post. The headlines blared the news about the shocking attack on the White House and the death of the first lady. Editorials opined about the loss of innocence yet again in America and how the nation as a whole had grown comfortable and let down its guard. Blunt was mildly amused at the tight line some of the president’s harshest critics walked, writing how the leader of the free world must be more vigilant for the country’s sake yet softening their bitter rhetoric out of respect for the wildly popular first lady.
“How is the president’s press secretary spinning that fiasco?” Hawk asked as he walked into the room with Alex and Black.
“He’s not,” Blunt said as he folded up the paper and tucked it beneath a pile of documents. “Though he’d probably blame us if Young was allowed to acknowledge that we existed.”
“You warned him, didn’t you?” Alex asked.
Blunt nodded. “He didn’t
