The Fallen: A Derek Stillwater Thriller (17 page)

He wiped the blood on her leg, studying the wound. It was about two inches long and looked deep, but it was starting to coagulate. “That must hurt,” he said.

“You think?”

He looked up at her. “I don’t suppose you’ve got any of those bottles of sherry still around?”

“Sorry. No. I’d be drinking them if I did.”

“How’d you get this cut?” He noticed that her legs and arms were bruised and scraped, but there were only the two cuts.

“The catwalk sort of collapsed after the explosion. I fell through the ceiling, and I think I got this from either the catwalk or those wire supports for the ceiling tiles.”

“Okay,” he said. “We’ll just have to make do.” He wadded up some cloth and wrapped a bandage around it, tying it tight. “It’s going to get stiff.”

“Better it than me.” She sighed. “Michael— I mean, Derek.” She smiled. “Why did you call yourself Michael Gabriel? Did you pick that name yourself?”

“The guy who’s behind all this?” Derek dabbed at the cut on her forehead, decided it wasn’t that bad and would be fine if he left it alone. “His name’s Richard Coffee. He calls himself The Fallen Angel. You know, Lucifer. The Devil. Well, I was here to stop him in case he tried something. The only two angels with names mentioned in the Bible are Michael and Gabriel. They’re both archangels. I thought it fitting.”

Maria brightened. “So you are an archangel? A warrior angel of God?”

Derek shrugged. “Right about now I think I’m the luckiest guy on the planet. I thought this guy was going to take me out when the whole damn place exploded. Do you have any idea what happened?”

Maria colored slightly beneath the dirt on her face. “I did it.”

He studied her. “Did what?”

“I saw what was going to happen. So I was, I don’t know, twenty yards from all those explosives? So I grabbed one of those sherry bottles and threw it at the wall.”

He raised his eyebrows. “And must have hit the tripwires.”

“Must have, because the next thing I know— boom!”

“Must have been a hell of a throw.”

She curled her bicep and said, “I used to play softball in high school. Pitcher.”

“Excellent. And thanks. You saved my life.” He studied the hallway. It was thoroughly blocked from both ends. There were two doors leading
into the ballroom, but there was no way they should go in there. “We’re going to have to go back up there.”

Maria shivered. “And go after those two guys in the lobby? Tigre and Oso?”

Derek frowned. “What do you think?”

“Perhaps,” she said, “we have been lucky enough for one day.” She reached out and snagged his St. Sebastian’s medal, four-leaf clover, and juju beads. “Even with these, you may be running out of luck.”

He didn’t say anything. He stared at his foot.

“Do you think we can do it, Derek?”

“I think I should. You’re right. You may have already put yourself into enough harm’s way. Maybe just getting you someplace safe would be a better idea.”

She was silent a moment. “He killed somebody. One of the leaders.”

“What?”

She tapped her earpiece. “Lucifer. The Fallen Angel. Whoever he is. Richard Coffee.” She shivered. “It must be very black coffee, Derek. He killed one of the leaders. I think it was the Russian leader, what’s-his-name, Vakhach? I heard it over the radio. He says he’ll kill another one in less than an hour if his demands aren’t met.”

Derek glanced at his watch. 12:17. Much less than an hour.

“I … I have to stop him. I have to try.”

She nodded. “You know him? He is— something to you?”

“A friend. An old friend.”

“Okay, my archangel. I will help you. Let’s go.”

Secretary Johnston and everybody else in the PEOC studied the text message on the screen. It read:

2 EXPL XSIDE—DS? GUESS 4 BGs DEAD. 10 INSIDE. XMan & RC FIGHT. RC—PDA 2 CTRL C4. JAM?

Johnston scratched his jaw, reached over and swallowed half a cup of coffee that had grown stale and bitter. He felt rather stale and bitter himself. His stomach was tight and acid reflux bit at his throat. He needed to focus on the problems at hand and not the emergency phone call he had gotten from his daughter, telling him about her mother’s latest Alzheimer’s episode—microwaving a bowl of oatmeal and an oven mitt for twenty minutes until it caught fire. Johnston shoved that dilemma to the side. “ ‘EXPL’?” he said.

Lt. General Akron sighed. “I think that means explosion. Two explosions outside.”

FBI Director O’Malley said, “We know there’s been two explosions. And they’ve been inside the building, but not in the main room. ‘DS’? That means he thinks Derek Stillwater caused them?”

“Or he wonders if he did,” Johnston said. He stretched back in his chair, listening to his spine pop, thinking, Getting old and falling apart.

“Let’s hope it’s him,” O’Malley said. “Okay, Bill. ‘GUESS 4 BGs DEAD.’ Does that mean what I think it means?”

“I’m guessing, but I think Bob’s saying he thinks four of the bad guys—BGs—are dead.”

Akron looked pale and drained. Johnston thought they all did. The
footage of Vakhach being executed had riveted the world, but now everybody knew what was at stake. Already governments were starting to point fingers, and almost all of them were working to take their kidnapped leaders out of the loop. It wasn’t all that easy, though.

Vice President Newman had called a meeting in fifteen minutes to implement invoking the Twenty-fifth, which would require the vote of the cabinet. But two of the cabinet members—Robert Mandalevo and Joshua Babcock, the secretary of commerce—were kidnapped, and two others were out of the country. The secretary of transportation was on a trip to Canada and the secretary of state was in Indonesia.

Akron said, “And ‘10 Inside’ suggests to me that at least two of the dead were from the twelve that were inside the ballroom. Something’s going on. Somehow somebody is picking off these terrorists.”

“Stillwater,” Johnston said. “I’m convinced.” His gut said it was true. He had a lot of faith in Derek. Maybe too much.

O’Malley grunted. “Good for you. I’m not.”

Johnston let it go. O’Malley was pissed about Derek’s faked death. “ ‘Xman and RC fight.’ Trouble in paradise? We saw the exchange between Coffee and the Hispanic guy, El Tiburón.”

CIA Director Ballard said, “We’re working on identifying him. There’s a Russian FSB agent working with Agent Swenson and her people to figure him out.”

“Khournikova?” asked Johnston. He had been briefed by Swenson and wasn’t sure he thought that was a good idea. He wasn’t a huge believer that Khournikova was on their side. She definitely fell in the “undecided” column.

“Yes. And I know what you’re thinking.”

“Swenson wants her under his eye,” Johnston said. “He’s not sure he trusts her. Why should I?”

“I don’t either, but she came up with a few good ideas. And if there’s bad blood between this guy, the Shark, and Coffee, I’m all for it.”

“Sure,” Johnston agreed. He turned back to the screen. “Now, I’m confused. What’s all this? ‘RC—PDA 2 CTRL C4. JAM?’ ”

Akron licked his lips. “I think it means Richard Coffee’s using a PDA to control the plastic explosives.”

Director Ballard blurted, “He’s suggesting we jam the signal? I’ve got to get the NSA on this—ASAP.” Ballard was on his phone already.

Johnston glanced at O’Malley. “Puskorius needs to know about this.” He glanced at his watch. “The op’s about to begin.”

O’Malley nodded. “Better call him yourself. Try to coordinate with the NSA. I hope this works.”

Johnston nodded, thoughts on Derek Stillwater running around picking off Angels. If he was alive. If that’s what he was doing. That thought did a little two-step with his thoughts about his wife’s increasingly loopy behavior. He split up that pair and concentrated on the national crisis.

There had been no contact from Derek, and a call to his sat phone indicated he was off the grid. Johnston shot off a little prayer to whatever gods might be listening and stood up.

“I’m off to discuss invoking the Twenty-fifth. Keep me informed. I’ll call Puskorius on the way.”

Richard Coffee stepped around the corpse of the Russian leader, jumped off the stage, and strode over to Franz Dorfmann. El Tiburón jogged over to where the two men stood near the front of the room. What now?

Coffee stopped talking for a moment to watch him approach, then nodded. “I need Perro Loco for a special op.”

“Are you sending him to his death, too?” asked El Tiburón.

Coffee spun, gun up, but this time El Tiburón was ready. The two men stood in identical crouches, handguns aimed in each other’s faces.

Franz Dorfmann, the Mad Dog, who had spent much of his career as an assassin for the German Abwehr, calmly reached out with both hands, gripped the men’s wrists and forced them to lower their weapons. “Nein. Not now. Now is for discipline.” He turned to El Tiburón, a merry expression on his sharp, angular features. “Is this not a suicide mission, comrade? A foolhardy mission by a small band of brilliant and audacious rebels? We all have to die someday. Why not today? It is a beautiful day, is it not? Today is a good day to die.”

“Perhaps if The Fallen will tell us who is picking us off one by one. What angel of death is stalking us and cutting our numbers? He knows. It’s time for him to share his secrets.”

Coffee’s expression was taut, rage and violence just below the surface of his skin like frigid water beneath black ice. “You will never know all my secrets. But, Si, El Tiburón. Who is the real Angel of Death here? Me? You? Perro Loco? Or is it this man who hunts us?” He turned away, but not before the icy expression turned to one of contempt. “Perro Loco, El Tiburón is correct. Someone stalks us. His name is Derek Stillwater. Unless things have changed, he is a troubleshooter for the American Department of Homeland Security.”

“How do you know this?” El Tiburón demanded. He felt his heart rate accelerate. Finally, some truth from The Fallen.

“I ran into him in the kitchen just before the op started. I killed three Secret Service agents who were arresting him, and I locked him in a walk-in freezer in the kitchen.”

“Why didn’t you kill him?! You fool—”

This time Coffee was faster, his gun barrel inches from El Tiburón’s eyes. “Do not think I won’t kill you.”

“Without me,” El Tiburón hissed, “my men will not follow you to their graves.”

The German interrupted, voice calm. “I need to know more about Derek Stillwater. Clearly he is a capable enemy.”

Coffee lowered his weapon. “We were once partners. U.S. Army Special Forces. He’s a specialist in biological and chemical warfare. He has a Ph.D. He’s very, very smart. But don’t let that specialty fool you. He was trained like I was— he’s a killer, and his years out of the service haven’t dulled his edge. It won’t be easy taking him down.”

“No problem.” Dorfmann pulled out his handgun, double-checked it was loaded, a round in the chamber, the safety off. With a lightning fast flick of his hand he had his combat knife out of its sheath. Without any warning whatsoever the glittering black blade slashed across El Tiburón’s shirt. It left a six-inch-long flap in the cloth, but didn’t touch his skin. “I have a rather sharp edge myself.”

“Games! Now is not the time for games!” spat El Tiburón.

Dorfmann— Perro Loco— laughed. “It’s all a game, El Tiburón. You take yourself so seriously.” He nodded to The Fallen and headed toward the doors.

Coffee called him back. “Perro Loco!”

Dorfmann turned back, eyebrows raised, expression mocking. “Si, jefe?”

“Don’t underestimate Derek Stillwater. He’s very creative. Very resourceful.” Coffee hesitated. “He saved my life more than once. Brought me back from the dead. He’s come back from the dead himself. He’s very hard to kill. I’ve tried. You’re going to have to stop him for good.”

“My pleasure!” To El Tiburón: “Auf wiedersehen, meiner Kleiner Fisch. Bis später.”

Dorfmann paused at the door long enough for The Fallen to shut down the detonators, then slipped out like smoke and was gone.

El Tiburón locked eyes with The Fallen. “You talk about Stillwater as if he’s still your friend. You should have killed him when you had the chance. It’s not like you to show mercy. You left a trained killer alone in a walk-in freezer just before our op began. And now he’s stalking us. You may have given Perro Loco his death sentence. And we need the numbers here.”

Coffee did not flinch. “Be careful, meiner Kleiner Fisch, that I don’t give you your death sentence.” And he walked away.

Maria helped Derek limp toward the end of the hallway. They paused for a moment at the body of the Russian. Derek performed a rough search, coming up with a fresh magazine for the MP-5. Otherwise, the man had nothing left to take. I already took his life, thought Derek. What else was there? He stood up and studied the field of rubble.

“I want to get to what’s left of the elevator shaft,” he said. “When they put these charges in place they were pretty clever. They could have put enough to take the whole building down. There’s been plenty of damage, and both explosions have managed to shut down the hallways. I wonder if they planned it this way or if they had a lot of dumb luck.”

Maria said nothing. Her arms were crossed over her chest. She stood, self-contained, shivering. Derek sighed, reached over, and held her. “You’ve been amazing,” he said. “Absolutely amazing. You’re one tough babe.”

Voice muffled against his shirt, she said, “Mama didn’t raise no wimps.”

He didn’t know whether to laugh or to cry. “No, she didn’t. Smart, tough, and beautiful. But we can’t stand here. Let’s get going.”

He nudged her forward, and together they picked their way over and around the debris field, finally clambering on top of a huge pile of brick, concrete, and steel.

Derek reached out and grasped the twisted remains of the catwalk. It seemed relatively secure, angling upward into a hole in the ceiling. “Follow me,” he said, and began a laborious scramble upward into the darkness.

Struggling, his ankle throbbing, Derek thought he heard the whisper of a door opening and closing beneath and below them, farther down the hallway. He paused, ears straining to hear. Nothing. Doubt gnawing at his guts, he continued forward.