The Fallen: A Derek Stillwater Thriller (13 page)

“Because you didn’t need to know,” Johnston said, voice cold. “It was only known to me, President Langston, and two or three key people—”

“How did Mandalevo find out?” Penderton snapped. “How long has he known?”

“He found out this morning during the intelligence briefing with the president. President Langston let slip that I had an undercover asset in place. Bob confronted me about it, but—”

“He asked for a follow-up records check after that meeting to determine if Stillwater was actually dead,” Akron said. “It didn’t take long to find out he was still alive. You just had to know where to look.”

Penderton said, “I cannot fucking believe this! It’s bad enough we’ve got enemies on the outside, but, Jim, you can’t go running ops like this. It’ll look like a fucking cover-up. DHS faking an agent’s death to avoid investigation by another branch of the government. The media get this you’ll be—”

Johnston glared at the AG. “Oh put a sock in it, Norris. You were feeding the media all sorts of bullshit about Derek to keep your face on the news. You’ve read all the files, classified and not. There’s no hint besides that fake e-mail that Stillwater was involved with Coffee. And now is not the time for politics.”

“Exactly,” said Vice President Newman. “We need to create a plan. We need to start with—”

Akron said, “Excuse me, Mr. Vice President. Should I e-mail Bob back telling him DS is in?”

“Yes,” said Johnston. “But we don’t know where Derek is or if he’s even alive. He has a sat phone, but I haven’t been able to reach him.”

General Puskorius climbed to his feet. “That’s it, then. Let Swenson know what we’ve got. I’m pulling in my D-boys to see if they can plan an op.”

“I’m in charge here,” said Vice President Newman. “I haven’t approved any rescue operation. D-boys? I suppose you mean Delta Force.”

Puskorius stared at him. “Yes, Delta Force. We’ve got to at least get them to within striking distance. As for who’s in charge, Mr. Vice President, that’s a political decision that has to be made by your cabinet. I’ll be back once I get this op going.” He turned to FBI Director O’Malley and CIA Director Lynn Ballard. “I’ll need Lynn and Sean on this. And Jim, it would be helpful if I had some idea of what your boy Stillwater might be capable of.”

“I’ll get you his file ASAP.”

Puskorius nodded. “If I remember correctly, he was Army Special Forces.”

“Yes.”

“And if he’s still alive, he might be somewhere in that building.”

“I hope so.”

“So do I, Jim. I really do. Let’s see if we can give this poor bastard some backup.” And with that, he stepped out of the PEOC.

El Tiburón paced around the ballroom. He spied somebody trying to make a call on a cell phone. He stepped over and jabbed the barrel of his assault rifle into the man’s ear. Trembling, the man turned to him. His large brown eyes filled with tears, his pointed chin trembling beneath a Van Dyke beard. One of the Spaniards, thought El Tiburón. It would be tempting to kill the man. They had discussed cell phones and PDAs while planning this mission, but had decided that dealing with five hundred or more phones and PDAs would be a waste of time. Threats would be just as effective. He held out his hand.

Timidly, the Spaniard dropped the phone into his palm. “Gracias,” El Tiberón said with a grin.

He turned and held up the phone. In heavily accented English he shouted, “No cell phones. No PDAs. No communication with the outside world. Comprende? I will shoot the next person I see trying to use his phone.” He raised his weapon and aimed it at the Spaniard.

The Spaniard cowered in fear, hiding his head behind his hands.

“Comprende, amigo?” He nudged the Spaniard with the gun.

“Si! Si, comprende!”

“Or—bang! ”

The Spaniard gave out a high-pitched shriek when El Tiburón made the shooting noise. El Tiburón laughed and moved on, in better spirits than he had been while listening to The Fallen’s initial ransom demands. Thinking about that now he strode toward the front of the stage.

President Jack Langston, as well as the other leaders, watched him closely. President Langston called out, “Who are you? Hello, you there. Who are you?”

Coffee raised his rifle and pointed it at Langston. “You will speak when spoken to.”

Langston scowled. “Or what? You’ll kill me? Isn’t that what you plan to do, Coffee? Let me ask you something, Mr. Coffee. Didn’t you sign an oath to—”

Coffee fired off a burst of gunfire just over the president’s head. President Langston barely flinched, although other leaders cried out or tried to cower in their seats. Coffee turned away from the leaders to meet El Tiburón’s gaze. El Tiburón saw that the confident The Fallen was back, that the hesitant man of only moments ago was gone. Still, things were not right.

The Fallen raised his hand in a stop gesture, and lifted his phone to his ear. “CIA Director Ballard?” He read off his cell phone number and clicked off. “Si?”

El Tiburón stood close. Voice low, he said, “You varied the plan. Who is this Nadia Kosov?”

Coffee’s jaw grew taut. “It is not your concern. Things are going as planned.”

“No,”El Tiburón insisted. “No. Already you made a change. First request, release your compadres. Si, I understand. But you put an extra stipulation on it. Who is Nadia Kosov?”

“As I said.” Coffee’s voice was soft, but it carried real menace. “It is none of your—”

Muffled gunfire broke out from somewhere outside the ballroom. Coffee turned toward the sound, an expression of interest on his face. Into his throat mic he said, “Perimeter three report in by the numbers. I repeat, perimeter three, report in by the numbers.”

There was long silence. Finally, “Numero dos, numero uno is not responding. I will check.

“Tres, status clear.”

“Quattro, status clear. Request—”

More gunfire vibrated in the air. Coffee met El Tiburón’s gaze.

Many of the people in the ballroom were rising to their feet. The noise level increased as they began to babble among themselves.

“Report in,” Coffee said. “Dos, report.”

Radio silence. El Tiburón murmured, “Pastinaca and Serpiente.”

Coffee nodded. “Tres and Quattr o. Check on Pastinaca and Serpiente. Check them.”

El Tiburón said, “This would be early for a counteroffensive.”

“And not large enough. We’ll know a counteroffensive when it happens. I wonder—”

An explosion shook the building. Screams filled the air as the ballroom trembled. Coffee unhooked a PDA from his belt, clicked it on, and studied the readout. “The loading dock. Somebody set off the explosives.”

Into his microphone, he rattled off numbers in Spanish. “Status?”

After a moment of static-filled radio silence, their voices came on. “On our way. Repeat, we are okay and on our way. There appears to be a large explosion at the loading dock entrance.”

“Check for survivors,” said Coffee. “And look in the kitchen area to see what you see. Report in. Over.”

He turned to El Tiburón. His face was untroubled. “El Tigre and El Oso are on top of things.”

El Tiburón’s eyes glittered. “That won’t help Pastinaca and Serpiente, will it?”

The Fallen met his gaze, unflinching. “We all have our roles to play, El Tiburón. We all have our duty to perform. Both you and I. Go back to your post.”

El Tiburón stopped himself from a harsh retort, but instead spun on his heels and stalked back toward the television cameras. A man in a gray suit, one of the German delegates, said, “What is going on? What was the explosion?”

Without hesitation El Tiburón backhanded the man, who staggered away, hands to his face, blood spurting from his broken nose. El Tiburón followed after the German. He stepped in and slammed the butt of his MP-5 into the man’s face once, twice, knocking him to the ground. He brought the MP-5 around so the barrel was aimed at the man cowering on the floor. “No questions!” he screamed. “No questions! Comprende? Do not talk to me! You are expendable. You are like ants on the ground beneath my boot. No questions!”

He kicked the German twice in the ribs before returning to the television cameras, people shifting nervously away from him as he walked by, eyes down, not meeting his gaze, not daring to draw his attention or rage. “My duty,” he raged. “My duty is to my people! I know my duty!”

Derek and Maria rushed through the darkness along the narrow catwalk in a crouch, bullets buzzing around them like a swarm of bees. Maria moaned in a high-pitched hum as she ran. Derek shoved her forward— smack into the dividing wall. She cried out, but not for long. Derek picked her up and flung her over. She fell with a harsh cry onto the catwalk on the other side. Derek dived after her.

Below him the two terrorists spoke to each other in Spanish. He grabbed Maria and whispered in her ear, “What are they saying?”

She listened and whispered back, “They’re not sure what to do. They came up against a wall. They’re going to come up here and check on us.”

Derek squinted through the gloom, thinking. He studied the bit of wall they had climbed over. Reaching into his belt, he pulled out the stiletto. This, he thought, is suicidal.

Approaching the wall with the electrical lines snaking over it he waited a moment for his eyes to adjust to the gloom, then used the knife to carefully peel the insulating rubber from the cables, exposing the electrical wiring. Not far away he could hear the men clambering up into the crawl space. He didn’t have much time. Taking a deep breath, he stripped off one more piece of rubber, snapped on the mini-flashlight he had taken off Agent Creff, and tossed it so its light aimed away from the wall.

Another searing pain tore through his head and he staggered for a moment, fireworks bursting before his eyes. Sucking in air, he crept toward Maria who was huddled on the catwalk. He gently reached down, took hold of her high-heeled shoes and slipped them off her feet. “It’ll be easier for now. Follow me,” he said, took her hand, and began to sneak deeper into the bowels of the crawl space, shuffling along beams, over heating and cooling ducts, edging along the framework for the drop ceiling.
Finally, they stopped at a juncture, solid wall at their backs, perched on a support beam.

Behind them the two terrorists approached the dividing wall. Derek paused, crouching on a rusty beam, his fingers against Maria’s lips. They were only twenty or thirty feet away, barely concealed in the shadows.

A moment. Two—

A deathly scream echoed through the crawl space, followed by a thud and a crash as one of their pursuers grabbed hold of the bare electrical wires, then fell through the ceiling tiles to the floor below. Derek hoped he’d gotten a lethal shock. He waited, uncertain what the second terrorist would do.

Derek heard murmurs, again in Spanish. Maria gripped his hand, whispered in his ear, “He’s on a radio, I think.”

Derek still held the radio pack he had taken off the terrorist. He searched for the earphone jack, put it in his ear and fumbled with the switches.

“— alguien se defiende— él saboteó el crawl space—”

Derek yanked out the earpiece and handed it to Maria. “Translate.”

She stuffed it into her ear and listened for a moment. In a whisper she said, “Someone— someone, The Fallen Angel? The Fallen Angel is telling him to go to the walk-in freezer in the kitchen. To open it and get back with him. They—”

The remaining terrorist shuffled away and they distinctly heard him drop back to the floor below.

Derek hissed, “Keep listening. Come on.” He spidered his way back across the cables and conduits to the catwalk, and raced toward the walk-in freezer where he had begun.

Maria kept up, sticking close to him, fear radiating off her like heat waves. She kept one hand on his shirt, not letting go.

Finally, Derek stopped, listening. Below him came the rattle and clank of keys on a padlock. The door to the freezer opened with a shushing sound. Instantly Derek dropped off the catwalk onto the tiles, crashing to the ground below. He slammed his shoulder against the freezer door, clicked the padlock shut, and flung himself to the floor out of the way. A moment went by. The muffled sound of gunfire escaped from the freezer as the terrorist tried to shoot his way out. The glass window shattered. Then silence.

From his position on the floor, Derek studied the freezer door. A couple bullets had punctured through, but clearly not all. Firing a gun inside a stainless steel box was not the brightest thing to do. At least one of the bullets— maybe more— would have bounced around off steel shelves, walls, and flooring. Derek had no desire to place his head against the small window and see if a ricochet had killed the guy. It could be a ruse, but he doubted it. At least one of the terrorists was a moron. Hopefully a dead moron. He doubted if many of the others would be as stupid.

Without thinking about it, he clutched at a St. Sebastian’s medal he wore around his neck with a steel four-leaf clover and ju-ju beads. He wasn’t superstitious— not exactly; but he believed in luck, good and bad. You never knew when the good luck was going to come. It was horribly unpredictable that way. But one thing was for sure— you could always count on bad luck. It was always just around the corner. So was good luck, for that matter, but you couldn’t depend on it.

Pulling over another chair, he poked his head up into the crawl space. “Come on down for a bit.” Maria was pressed against a steel I-beam that ran straight up and down through the building, trying to be as small as possible. She crawled toward him and he helped her down.

“I’m really glad you’re alive.” He studied her for a moment then held out his hand. “Hi, I’m Derek Stillwater.”

She clenched his hand for a moment before pointing. “You’re bleeding. I … I shot you.”

He touched his ribs and pulled away blood. “Okay. Right. Stay right here.” He found a basket of the catering staff’s clean linens. He plucked several clean napkins out of the pile and headed back toward Maria, stopping to grab a bottle of unopened sherry.

Pain radiated from his ribs and his knee and his head, and for a moment exhaustion— the adrenaline rush fading— swept over him. Gathering his reserve, he handed her the bottle of sherry and peeled his shirt off.