SIXTY-EIGHT
Jack heard men on the floors below yelling “Clear!” as they went through everything along the way. He didn’t hear any gunshots. Angela had already cleared the floors below, as well as the lookouts, on their way up.
He leaned toward her. “Let me do the talking. Okay? Even though I’m the one who called this in, these men aren’t going to assume anything. With something of this nature they have to consider everything as a potential threat. They’re not going to take chances. It’s nothing personal.”
Jack could tell by the way her eyes flicked over everything, looking for any sign of trouble, any target, that she was still wired and in kill mode. Her carotid artery was pulsing a mile a minute. Things were about to get a different kind of dangerous. He didn’t want any accidents.
“Angela, listen to me. It’s over. Take a deep breath. Keep your mouth closed, and let me take it from here. Don’t freak out about anything I tell them. It will be what I need to say to keep you safe.”
Angela let out a deep breath. “Okay. I understand.”
Jack was relieved she was listening to him, but then, she was smart and he would have expected nothing less.
Dozens of men in black tactical gear poured up the stairwell and fanned out into the room like a black flood oozing up from below. It was a fearsome sight, and meant to be. Under their helmets, everything but their eyes was covered. They all moved quickly, weapons up and ready for anything. Many of those weapons were quickly pointed toward Angela and Jack.
“Hands! Hands!” several of them yelled at the same time, as if they’d just cornered the Devil himself.
Jack was relieved to see Angela lift her hands with him.
They were both quickly surrounded by guns pointed at them from every direction.
“Hands behind your heads! Now! Do it now! Lace your fingers together!” one of them yelled as others pulled out handcuffs.
Angela and Jack both did as instructed.
“Where’s Angus?” Jack asked as a man pulled one of his arms down around behind his back.
“Here,” a familiar voice called out from beyond the wall of men in tactical gear. He was huffing as he hurried up the steps.
As he got closer, he urged the men to let him through. They had already handcuffed Angela and Jack.
“Take it easy,” Angus told them. “These two are friendlies. They’re the ones who called us in. Take off the cuffs, please.”
One of the men took the cuffs back off. He gave Jack a nod and moved back. Some of the big men kept an eye on them while others moved away to help check all the bodies as they went about clearing the room.
Angus was a big man himself, standing six-six. He weighed at least 250 and very little of it was muscle. His tailored suit did a fair job of disguising his prominent pear shape. He had several fat chins but a nice head of brownish-blond hair combed straight back. Surprisingly, it wasn’t going gray. Angus gave others gray hair.
“My god, Jack, I could hardly believe your call.”
“I’m glad you made it here before we were handcuffed, hog-tied, and carted off.”
“Me too,” the big man said as he took in Angela.
“Angus, I’d like you to meet Angela Constantine. Angela, this is Angus, the man who got you released before from those overly enthusiastic intel agents.”
Angela reached out and shook the man’s hand. “Thank you for helping me, sir.”
Jack almost did a double take at how polite she was. He realized, then, that she was doing her part to help him with a tense situation. He knew that what she really wanted to do was give him an earful about the injustice of those men taking her prisoner when she had been the one who had discovered the bomb for them—done their job for them.
Jack silently let out a sigh of relief that she didn’t.
The sight of this woman in cutoff shorts, boots, platinum-blond hair tipped in red, piercings down her ears, a big DARK ANGEL tattoo across her throat, there in the room with Angus and all his men in tactical black, was quite the contrast.
Angus quickly returned to business. “I can’t believe this place is only minutes from my office.” He looked a little sick as he gazed at the bomb. “I simply can’t believe it. Had that thing gone off …”
“You would have been vaporized, along with most of the government and a large part of DC,” Jack said.
Angus nodded, still looking queasy as he stared at the bomb. “I still can’t catch my breath over how close this was to being a catastrophe for our country.”
“Is the NEST team on its way?” Jack asked. “That bomb is still live.”
“Yes,” Angus said, returning his attention to Jack. “They should be here any minute. The sooner that thing is made safe, the sooner I’ll be able to breathe.” He looked at Angela again, then back to Jack as he cleared his throat. “What’s she doing here? Was it really necessary to bring her along?”
“I didn’t bring her,” Jack said. “She brought me.”
Angus frowned. “What are you talking about?”
“You owe her for stopping that other nuke from going to New York City.”
Angus smiled politely. “Yes, we do. That’s why we released her after things were cleared up. And we gave her that special weapons permit as a token of our deep appreciation.”
“You should be thanking your lucky stars that you did.”
Angus clasped his hands behind his back. “Why’s that?”
“Because after you had her released, she found out about this second bomb.” Jack pointed a thumb back at the device. “Had you not released her—had those rogue agents had their way with her—Washington would be under a mushroom cloud at four p.m. today.”
“Well I don’t know that I can entirely believe—”
“Angus, you need to listen carefully to me so that you can comprehend the seriousness of this situation. None of your people knew there was a second bomb, did they? Any evidence about the second bomb was destroyed in the explosion when you went in after the first one. Even if they would have gotten any intel, you would still never have found this one, but even if you had, it would have been disastrous.”
“Why do you say that?”
Jack gestured off behind the electrical equipment to the dead man in the chair, his legs straight out in front of him, his arms hanging, his face a bloody mess. “That guy there is sitting on a dead man’s switch. If by some miracle you would have found out about this bomb in time, your men would have blown him off that chair and that would have detonated the device.”
Angus wiped his forehead. He was looking a little green.
“Goddamn, Jack. You’re scaring the crap out of me.”
“Angela found out about this device, not unlike she found the other one. She was able to track it to this place. Angela, no one else, was able to find it in time and deal with it without letting that guy on the dead man’s switch move a muscle.”
Angus looked at the man in the chair, then around at all the bodies. “So then you shot all of them when you got here?”
“No, she did. I was just her backup.”
The men in the tactical gear, their eyes the only thing visible in their black masks, exchanged looks. They were probably all just as good shots, but they found it hard to believe.
Angus frowned. “Are you serious?”
“I am,” Jack said. “She a better shot with that twenty-two than anyone I’ve ever seen. No shots to center mass. Every one a head shot. Every bullet she fired today killed a terrorist. One bullet, one man.”
“Well, it took two for that guy down on the second-floor stairs,” Angela corrected. “I screwed up and waited a fraction of a second too long, so it took two bullets.”
“Yeah,” Jack argued to her in defense, “but you put that second round through his ear—from across the room—after you put the first one through his throat so he couldn’t call out an alarm.”
The men in black exchanged looks again. They had probably found the guy below with the bullet hole in through his ear.
Angus gaped at her a moment and then shook his head. “Hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of national security, and stopping this threat came down to you two—down to her with a twenty-two.” He turned back to Jack. “We’re going to need to debrief her about all of this, of course.”
“I’m afraid I can’t allow you to do that, Angus. Angela is my asset. Not yours.”
He looked shocked. “But this concerns national security.”
“That’s not my job, and it’s not hers.”
Angus’s eyes narrowed. “Is this about the program that was canceled?”
“My contract that was canceled, yes. I’m happy that we were able to stop these two bombs from destroying New York City and Washington, DC, but I don’t work for you anymore. I don’t provide intel for you any longer—by your choice.”
“Well, I’m sorry about the way all of that went down, Jack, but the political people in charge don’t approve of profiling.”
“I understand,” Jack said. “I’m not complaining. I was able to find work.”
“With the Mossad.”
Jack knew it was an educated guess. He simply shrugged.
“The Israelis aren’t perfect, either,” Angus said.
“No they aren’t, but they don’t put political correctness ahead of stopping terrorists. They can’t afford to.
“So, since I don’t have a contract with you any longer, I’m afraid that the assets I’ve developed are my assets alone. I need them in my work for those who employ me. Since your agency isn’t interested in the work I do, or employing me, I’m afraid that Angela can’t discuss anything about what she was able to do in stopping this terrorist event.”
Angus chewed his lower lip for a moment. “Jack, it’s critical that we find out what went wrong that allowed it to get this close to disaster.”
“As a professional courtesy,” Jack said, “after I get Angela safely home, I’ll fill you in on what I found out. I won’t discuss what Angela was able to do, but I will let you know what we learned so that you can understand how everything went so wrong.”
“Well,” Angus said with a sigh, “that would be helpful.”
Angela pointed at the two prisoners. Medics were tending to Rafael. “We saved you two prisoners. I didn’t shoot them so that you can interrogate them all you want. Jack’s idea.”
“What happened to that one?” Angus asked.
“He asked me to shoot him,” Angela said. “So I did. Just not where he wanted me to shoot him. His name is Rafael. He is the leader of this entire mission. The other one is Lobo. He’s a coward. I expect he will talk.”
Jack smiled. Angus stared at her in astonishment for a moment.
“Anyway,” Jack said, “Rafael, there, brought the material for the two bombs in through the Oeste Mesa border crossing during the big attack. All the rest of it, all the other attacks, all of it, was merely meant to obscure the fact that the border crossing was the one that mattered. That’s how they got the critical bomb material in.”
Angus could only stare in disbelief.
“Like I say, if you want to continue to enjoy my cooperation as your unpaid personal advisor, she is to be left out of it. If you should get any unpleasant ideas, please keep in mind my previous warning about the consequences of what I know getting out.”
Angus cast a suspicious look at Jack, then at Angela. “And what does she want out of this?”
“Nothing,” Jack said. “She doesn’t want recognition or any reward. She did this to save innocent lives. She just wants to be left alone to live her life. I think you owe her that much.
“But a great many people owe her a great deal. They owe her their lives, even if they don’t know it and never will. This government owes it to her to let her live hers.”
Angus lifted an eyebrow, then stuck a finger in his thick hair and scratched his scalp as he thought it over for a moment. Finally, he looked Angela in the eye.
“In light of the fact that you saved untold lives today, young lady, to say nothing of the damage it would have done to the government, the infrastructure, the electromagnetic pulse that would have taken out a large part of the East Coast, and the possibility this could have cascaded into global nuclear war, I want you to know that you have your government’s deepest gratitude, even if that gratitude can’t be expressed publicly—for obvious reasons. I’m afraid that in the national interest, this entire matter must be kept several levels above even top secret. Top-secret things are routinely leaked. This must never be. Ever.”
“I understand, sir, and I’ll keep it that way,” Angela said. “You have my word.”
Angus nodded his relief. He even added a grateful smile.
Jack doubted that Angus could ever comprehend her reasons for doing what she had done. It was not for recognition.
It was because she was a stone-cold killer of killers.
The United States had just been saved by a serial killer.
Angus smiled with an idea. “Well, there is one thing I am able to do for you. You have that weapons permit we gave you?”
Angela nodded. “Yes, sir, thank you.”
Angus’s smile widened. “I’ll tell you what. We’re going to upgrade it for you.”
Angela frowned. “How can you upgrade it? I was told it already allows me to carry whatever I want wherever I want.”
“Yes, that’s true enough. But now it’s going to give you access to our special armory and gunsmiths. Anything you want will be yours.”
“You mean you have a catalog of guns for spies?”
Angus laughed. “Not quite, but almost. You’ll have a personal contact who will be able to advise you and make suggestions. I realize that you know what you’re doing, but these people know a great deal about weapons. They will see to it that you get whatever you want—things you likely don’t even know exist—the best of the best.”
Angela gestured around at all the dead. “Do you think I’m lacking? I think my twenty-two worked just fine.”
“Yes, it did.” Angus arched an eyebrow. “But I think our armory can get you a twenty-two, or anything you might want, that you will find special, and just for you. It’s a small token of appreciation from a grateful government, a government with a lot of good people, despite the fools you encountered before.
“Really, Angela, considering what you went on to do here today for everyone, despite how you were treated before, that shows what a special person you really are. We have hundreds of billions of dollars invested in making sure this never happens. Yet it almost did. Only your initiative stopped it. You deserve a small token of our appreciation. I hope you will accept it.”
Angela bowed her head. “Thank you, sir, I would be glad to.”
“Now,” Angus said. “Our NEST team is right behind me. They need to get in here and dismantle this thing and make sure the plutonium is safe.”