Karr led them back from the glass doors, putting a number of confusedly milling delegates between them and the oncoming mob. Moments later, the doors swung open and a large number of activists spilled out onto the sightseeing platform.
Most, Karr saw, were young people-teenagers or twenty-somethings. They had the somewhat trendy-shabby look of protestors everywhere, wearing jeans, sandals, T-shirts, and, among the males, at any rate, lots of facial hair. Many were chanting: “USA! CO2 USA! CO2!” Karr saw signs and waving banners, clenched fists and raw emotion.
Security guards and London bobbies burst through the door after them, but there were too many protestors scattering across and around the encircling promenade. Five protestors emerged from the tenth-floor lobby of the GLA carrying a cumbersome sixty-foot-long bundle, bright green and tightly rolled up. They hauled it to the safety railing at the edge of the promenade, which canted sharply inward over the walkway, and began muscling their burden over the side. Others formed a barrier between the five and the police, who in short order were surrounded by a mob of chanting, shouting protestors.
Delegates to the symposium were scattering everywhere, running protestors among them. The situation was completely chaotic, completely out of control. Tightly wedged in around Dr. Spencer, Karr and the two FBI agents backed their charge away from the confrontation.
The five protestors had everyone’s attention now. They’d anchored their heavy bundle to the top railing of the safety fence around the promenade, locking it in place with chains and padlocks sewn into the heavy material. When they released the bundle, it tumbled out over the slanted railing, then down the side of the building with a sharp crack, an enormous green banner hanging from the building’s top floor.
From this angle, Karr couldn’t see what was on the banner, but he could guess… something about a green world and no global warming, perhaps. The protestors now were ganging up on the police and security guards. People were screaming and running.
“Hold it!” Delgado yelled. He had his sidearm out and had pivoted to aim it back in the other direction, behind Karr. “Drop it!
Karr spun. Several protestors had come all the way around the promenade, circling it clockwise as Spencer and his guards backed around counterclockwise. One of the protestors, oddly on this brilliant late-spring morning, was wearing a heavy overcoat. That was damned strange…
With a sense of dawning horror, Karr saw the man pulling something out from under the coat… a weapon… an Uzi submachine gun… raising it to his shoulder…
Spencer was between Karr and the gunman… no, the gun
Karr lunged, plowing into Spencer from behind and the side with his shoulder, a football block that sent the American scientist sprawling. Karr hit the deck of the promenade, his Beretta out of its shoulder holster and gripped two-handed as he slid over smooth concrete.
The man with the Uzi was the greater danger in terms of sheer firepower; the man with the pistol was already drawing a bead on Spencer. In an instant’s instinctive decision, Karr swung his Beretta to aim at the one with the pistol, squeezing the trigger in a fast double tap.
The gunman fired in the same instant. Karr felt the sting of concrete chips slashing his cheek. The activist with the coat and the Uzi opened up on full-auto, sending a stream of slugs slamming into Delgado, then sweeping the chattering weapon around, trying to hit Spencer.
Spent brass cartridges tumbled and flashed in the sunlight. Delgado was falling; Payne was aiming his weapon in a stiff Weaver stance, firing into a third gunman, no, a gun
Karr shifted aim as he got his feet underneath him, throwing himself between Spencer and the attackers, firing into the guy with the submachine gun as he moved. As he came to his feet, however, he felt something like a hammer slam into his side… then again, hard against his chest.
Part of him knew he was hit, though there was no pain… not yet. He kept squeezing the trigger as he fell and turned, sending round after round into the gunman, slamming against the railing, dropping to one knee.
Two more hammer blows… and a terribly wet
He tasted blood, salty and hot.
Tommy Karr collapsed as the darkness descended, engulfing him…
The Art Room NSA Headquarters Fort Meade, Maryland 1035 hours EDT
But Rockman and the other runners in the Art Room were staring at one of the other monitors, this one tapping into a security camera mounted in the ceiling of the overhang above the outside sightseeing promenade around London’s Living Room. The scene was one of incredible confusion, of an enormous, surging crowd struggling hand to hand with the police. Gunfire had panicked the mob, sending it scattering across the observation deck.
But in the background…
“My God!” Sarah Cassidy shouted. “They
Jeff Rockman couldn’t believe what he thought he’d just seen… Tommy Karr catching a full-auto blast from the gunman’s Uzi, exchanging fire, then falling backward against the guardrail before crumpling to the concrete deck.
Spencer was on his hands and knees, looking dazed but apparently unhurt. Karr had thrown himself between the gunmen and the scientist, had probably saved Spencer’s life. One of the FBI men was down; another was on one knee, his pistol locked in a two-handed grip and swinging wildly back and forth as he looked for another target, another threat. He was screaming into the needle mike at his mouth, calling for backup.
The third FBI agent entered the picture from behind the foreground a moment later, weapon drawn. And Evans, the GCHQ agent, was there as well, also armed.
But too little, too late. All three tangos-in his mind, Rockman had immediately reverted to the code term meaning “terrorists”-all three, two men and a woman, were down. The woman appeared to be wounded, was trying to get up. Evans pushed her down again as Rogers kicked her handgun away. More backup arrived, London bobbies and several in plainclothes… MI5.
Payne was checking the motionless form of Delgado.
“Call Rubens,” Rockman said.
“He’s… he’s in a briefing,” Ron Jordan said, his voice shaking. “He can’t be-”
Desk Three had lost agents before. The NSA had lost agents and operators many times since its creation in the late 1940s. But the loss of another agent was never easy.
The loss of a
More London Center Near the GLA Building 1435 hours GMT
Directly adjacent to the black, leaning egg shape of the GLA, some fifty meters to the southwest across the tree-lined pavement of a park known locally as Potter’s Field, loomed a brand-new office building, the More London Center, housing a bank, an insurance firm, and a number of government offices that had not fitted in with London City Hall or the Greater London Authority. Hours ago, Sergei Braslov had used a back stairwell and a stolen passkey to gain entrance to a maintenance door leading out onto the roof. Twelve stories up, the roof let him look down onto the outside promenade at the tenth floor of the GLA building. By climbing a ladder up onto the top of the small rooftop structure housing the building’s air-conditioning system, he gained a bit more elevation… and a perfect shot.
Braslov carried with him a black, leather camera bag, as well as various ID proving him to be a cameraman with the BBC. If anyone happened to be on the More London Center’s roof, Braslov could flash the ID and claim he
