“I thought you said he wasn’t a slime bucket.”
“He’s not,” she said. “He’s a perfect gentleman.”
“You’re still young, so maybe you’re just naive, but that wasn’t being a gentleman,” Alex said. “He was asking me to return to his room tonight. And it wasn’t for another picture.”
The woman sighed and then walked off.
Alex didn’t move. She waited until the woman was out of earshot before hailing Hawk on the coms.
“We’ve got a problem,” she said.
“What is it?” Hawk asked.
“Sinclair is on the move. He’s about to get away unless we hurry. He’s got two bodyguards, and I’m guessing they’re headed toward the helipad.”
“Meet you there,” Hawk said.
Alex whipped off her blonde wig as well as her catering uniform and sprinted down the corridor toward the main entrance. When she reached it, she raced into a tunnel that went beneath the road and into the main infield of the track. On the northeast side was a helipad with a chopper. Its blades whirred around, whistling through the air.
She caught Hawk running toward the pad out of the corner of her eye. She pumped her arms in an effort to arrive before him. But when she edged within a hundred meters, she knew they would be too late. Seconds later, the helicopter lifted off the ground and zoomed right overhead.
Alex didn’t stop until she converged with Hawk.
“Dammit,” Hawk said. “Sinclair got away again.”
“I’ll say,” said a man nearby in a British accent.
Hawk and Alex turned to see a tall man in a trench coat, staring up at the sky.
“I’m sorry, but do we know you?” Alex asked.
“Nope, but I wish you did,” the man said. “That way you wouldn’t have interfered with my operation this afternoon.”
“Your operation?” Hawk asked.
“Yes,” the man said. “I was trying to do the same thing you were.”
“I doubt that,” Alex said.
“You were trying to capture Falcon Sinclair, were you not?”
Hawk cocked his head to the side and squinted. “And who exactly are you?”
“Well, Mr. Hawk, my name is Pierce Sterling, and I work for MI-6.”
CHAPTER 11
Washington, D.C.
BLUNT STARED AT THE banner that appeared on the top of his cell phone screen, alerting him to a text from Morgan. There were a handful of emojis, most of which he didn’t understand the significance of. That was followed by a short note about how she was enjoying the cooler weather in Moscow and hoped that he was doing well.
He glanced at the time and resisted the urge to immediately write her back. If he spent any extra time firing off a quick response, he knew he would end up late for his impromptu meeting with President Young.
A few minutes into the drive to the White House, Blunt turned on the radio to catch up on the news of the day.
“The big story of the day continues to be the attack on two Iranian oil tankers in the Gulf and how Tehran plans to respond to the apparent act of aggression by two U.S. military drones,” the news anchor said. “In what appears to be an unprovoked attack, two tankers were crippled in the Gulf earlier today. Iran swiftly denounced the assault and pledged to retaliate with force. Our chief White House correspondent, Allison Van Gorder, has more.”
The anchor’s baritone voice was replaced by the woman’s smoother one.
“That’s right, Brian. White House officials are huddling this afternoon to figure out how they will handle the growing tension in the Middle East. They still contend that the U.S. military had nothing to do with the assault that leaves a pair of supertankers stranded in the gulf along with more than eighty million barrels of crude oil each. Rescue efforts are under way to salvage the remaining oil that wasn’t lit ablaze during the attack. However, some experts are worried that if the oil isn’t transferred to safer vessels, the Gulf may soon be awash with more than a hundred million gallons of oil, threatening the already endangered wildlife in the region.”
An engineering expert gave a brief explanation into the structural integrity of ships and how quickly they can weaken under certain conditions.
Blunt turned off the radio and sighed. Under the current circumstances, Young was likely to be cagey and might be looking for answers, answers Blunt didn’t have. Since his last conversation with the president, the pressure from the media and the general public had reached a fever pitch over the bungling of the situation in Afghanistan with Ebadi. To Young’s credit, he stood his ground and said it was a colossal intelligence error. However, that didn’t satiate the pundits calling for heads to roll, including the president’s.
After Blunt was stopped at a traffic light, he whipped out his phone and shot back a quick note to Morgan:
Glad you’re enjoying yourself and the weather there.
Will call you after my meeting.
Blunt arrived at the White House twenty minutes later and entered the security protocol. Ten minutes after that, he was sitting in a room awaiting Young.
When Young finally arrived, his face was red, his hair tousled. He slumped into a chair across from Blunt and sighed.
“Rough day at the office?” Blunt asked, unsure of exactly what to say to the bedraggled president.
“If only this was just about a bad day at the office,” Young said as he finger-combed his hair into place. “This is a living nightmare, and I don’t think I could’ve ever been prepared for what’s happened over the last couple of weeks.”
“Still have the will to win the election?”
Young nodded. “This is about the American people, not me. You know Collin Radcliffe would be a disaster.”
“Of course, but it seems like there are a lot of things out of our control at the moment.”
“You can say that again,” Young said before sitting upright and then leaning forward in his seat.
“So, what was so urgent that you needed to speak with me today?” Blunt asked. “Our agents are still hard at work in the field, trying
