The Fallen: A Derek Stillwater Thriller (28 page)

“You look like shit,” he said.

The image in the mirror nodded and grinned. He thought the grin made him little a little bit demented.

“What do you think?” he asked himself. “Can you disarm it?”

On the sink in front of him he laid out his tools. The Emerson knife. A small flashlight. A screwdriver he’d been dragging around with him all day. A set of keys and his utility tool. The utility tool was like a Swiss Army knife with a number of gadgets including scissors, knife blades, a corkscrew, and a pair of pliers.

Around his neck was a St. Sebastian’s medal, a steel four-leaf clover, and ju-ju beads, the latter given to him by a friend who survived Somalia. “They saved my ass, dude. And you need luck more than I do.”

St. Sebastian had been an officer in the Imperial Roman army, a captain of the guard in the third or fourth century. He was reported to have healed the wife of a fellow soldier, and then began to convert soldiers to Christianity. He was arrested and tried as a Christian, tied to a tree, and shot with arrows. Sebastian miraculously survived and continued to preach, though his ministry was short lived. The emperor had him rearrested and beaten to death.

Derek thought there was probably a lesson there. You could view Sebastian surviving the arrows as a miracle and a sign of God’s favor, but what were you to make of the second and final execution? That God decided to bring him home, he had proven his faith the first time? Or that God was sending you a message the first time and you were too stupid to pay attention to it?

During the fourteenth century plague victims prayed to Sebastian, which is how he became associated with plague. Which is why Derek wore his medal around his neck, figuring he could use all the benevolent oversight he could get.

Derek wasn’t quite up to praying to saints, but he rubbed his thumb over the medal, thinking very dark thoughts. Taking a deep breath, he put all his tools away, turned, and walked back toward the crawl space. He was as ready as he was ever going to be.

A Bell UH-S Huey military helicopter roared in over the main building of the Cheyenne Resort and landed in the circular drive in front of the central entrance. It had barely touched down when the hatch door slammed open and a dozen armed soldiers jumped out and sprinted for the front doors, where Secret Service agents waited.

The Special Forces team quickly assembled in a conference room that had been turned into an operations center. Special Agent LeVoi stood at the front of the room with Irina Khournikova. As the twelve men gathered around, LeVoi felt a sharp twinge of doubt.

She was not military. Brenda had a law degree from the University of Michigan. She had always wanted to be part of the FBI. It was, she often thought, her first love— which probably explained her three failed marriages. She was finally accepting that it was okay; she was doing good things in the world.

And she had ambitions in the bureau. She’d like to be the first female director of the FBI. Now it was time to live up to her ambitions. She felt in over her head, but she had asked for this and it was the time to rise to the occasion. LeVoi did the talking, not wanting to cause problems with the soldiers’ chain of command by having them take orders from a Russian.

LeVoi pointed to the 3-D CAD/CAM images of the Cheyenne Center and the troika of the Cheyenne Center, International Center, and Colorado Springs Center projected on the walls. She drew their attention to the sketches of the Cheyenne Center. “Group Alpha?”

A soldier raised his hand. He was tall, broad-shouldered, with short blond hair and a square jaw. “Captain Ray Stanchfield. I’ll lead Group Alpha. Lieutenant Jorge Ruiz—”

A wiry soldier with dark penetrating eyes raised a hand.

“— will handle Group Bravo.”

LeVoi nodded. “We’ve got our people as well. We have very little time to coordinate. You will be running the entry op; I’m coordinating from here.” She introduced Irina Khournikova. “She’ll be going in with Group Bravo. She is very familiar with the tunnel.”

Ruiz eyed her. “You got combat training?”

“Yes,” Irina said. “Russian Army and FSB. You are familiar with Spetsnaz?”

“Yeah,” Ruiz said. “Bunch a pussies.”

The team laughed. Stanchfield started to say something, but Irina smiled and said, “Then I’ll make sure you go in first, Lieutenant. I’ll cover your ass. You wouldn’t want a pussy to show up your Special Forces, would you?”

LeVoi said, “Enough. Group Alpha takes the roof. There are three Service snipers up there already. We will download all these maps to your PDAs and we have printouts as well. Who are your demolition experts?”

Two of the soldiers raised their hands. “Good,” LeVoi said. “The tunnel doors are apparently wired from the inside with Semtex. Our evaluation is it’s booby-trapped. It can also be set off by a signal from a PDA that the lead terrorist, known as Pablo Juarez, has with him. The world leaders are also wired with explosives.”

One of the demolition experts, a slight man with sensitive features and a whispy red mustache, stepped forward to study the CAD/CAM configurations. He said, “We can get those jammed, right?”

“Yes, but it causes problems with our own equipment.”

He scratched his jaw and looked at Stanchfield. “If the timing’s right, though—”

Stanchfield nodded. “I’ll see to it.”

LeVoi ran them through the logistics of the two-pronged entry plan. She didn’t like the short preparation time. It was that lack of intel and planning that had killed the previous assault team. She hoped there were no more surprises, but didn’t think that was likely. Operations of this complexity always went to hell minutes after they started. She didn’t express her doubts, but said, “People, time is very tight here. We have to move in the next five minutes.”

She hesitated, then brought up a photograph of Derek Stillwater on one of the walls. “This is a friendly. He’s been picking these guys off all
day, one at a time. We have evidence to suggest that he’s still alive. If you see him, do not shoot him. He may be a very valuable asset. He’s a troubleshooter with DHS and a former Green Beret.”

Ruiz said, “A brotha.”

“Keep an eye out for him.”

“Will do,” Ruiz said. “We’re ready to kick some terrorist butt.”

Stanchfield gave LeVoi a thumbs-up. “We’re ready.”

LeVoi turned to Irina Khournikova. “You?”

Khournikova nodded. She reached down and picked up an assault rifle that had been propped in one corner. She looked at Lieutenant Ruiz. “Ready to rock and roll, Lieutenant?”

Ruiz grinned. “Ladies first.”

Khournikova led Group Bravo out of the resort at a brisk trot.

Stanchfield was on his radio to the U.S. Space Command stationed at Peterson Air Force Base. “When I give the signal, shut all satellite and radio communications down around here for five minutes. Five off, then on until my next signal. And, Captain, that next signal will mean we want the leaders safe and they have to be shut down. Understand?” He waited. “Affirmative. Out.”

He turned back to LeVoi. “Let’s go.” His group ran after him and loaded into the Huey, which promptly lifted off and flew toward the Cheyenne Center.

LeVoi was on the phone with Secretary Johnston and everybody at PEOC. She checked her watch. They had twelve minutes before Pablo Juarez planned to kill President Langston. The clock was ticking. “Sir, Project Judgment Day is underway.”

Derek crouched in the crawl space and studied the bomb. He thought, I am way in over my head with this thing. He was trained to defuse bombs, though it wasn’t his primary expertise. It wasn’t the bomb itself that worried him— well, okay, it worried him. What worried him the most were the tripwires.

He settled back to think. The bomb appeared to have two kinds of triggers. One was physical— Coffee had set up a crisscross of what looked like fishing line around the device. The second was the lasers, not unlike those used in garage door openers. The actual beams weren’t visible, but Derek had no problem seeing the lasers themselves with their glowing red eyes.

He wasn’t convinced they were the only two triggers, either. He thought it might be possible there was a radio link, so Coffee could have set it off using the PDA. That wasn’t his biggest concern.

His biggest concern was whether or not Coffee had put some sort of vibration sensor or mercury switch in the device.

Derek focused his flashlight, peering closer. It appeared to be made of molded plastic, perhaps some sort of PVC piping, a sort of modified pipe bomb. Pipe bombs were typically jammed with ball bearings or scrap metal to give the weapon destructive power. In the case of a bioweapon, that was not typically the case. Usually there was some sort of explosive whose main purpose was to disperse the biological agent without incinerating it.

The weapon was situated next to an air duct, very close to the foundation wall of the Cheyenne Center, right opposite the tunnel leading to the International Center. As a result, the crawl space stopped at the wall, except above the tunnel itself. And that had been wired with Semtex, as had the steel doors.

Derek froze. He thought he heard something. He strained his ears to hear, wondering if Juarez had sent somebody else in his direction. Then he heard it again. It seemed to be coming from the tunnel. A faint sound, perhaps subliminal. A change in the atmosphere, a sense of movement.

He shifted his focus back to the bomb. What if there was a vibration sensor?

He heard— or sensed— movement. The presence of at least one other person nearby. Holding his breath, he tried to extend his hearing, his eyesight, to throw his brainwaves out and try to sense what and where and who was approaching.

C’mon, baby. It’s time for the arrival of the cavalry. A little fuckin’ backup from the rest of the world.

It was soft. And light. And it came from the tunnel.

“Hello!” he called out, his voice hoarse. “Hello? Is somebody over there?”

The sounds stilled. He waited. Listening.

“Hello? Hello? This is … this is Derek Stillwater,” he called out. “Who’s there?”

A faint voice said, “Derek? You’re alive?”

“Irina?”

“Yes.”

“The door’s wired.”

“We know. Are you alone?”

“Yes.”

“We have a demolition expert with us. We plan to blow the doors.”

“No! You don’t want to do that!”

“Hold on.”

Faint whispers drifted to him like dandelion puffs dancing on the air. A dozen feet away a glow of light appeared and temblor-like vibrations ran through the catwalk. “Easy,” he called out. “Don’t make too much movement.”

Sweat broke out on his forehead and dripped onto his hands. He gulped in air. A voice said, “I’m Sergeant Terry McCormack. You’re Still-water?”

“Yeah.” Dimly through the catwalk area above the doors Derek saw a long, angular head. He could barely see him because the crawl space was not only wired with explosives, but crammed with electrical wires,
conduits, and heating ducts. A wave of relief washed over him. Finally, somebody who didn’t want to kill him.

“We want to put a controlled explosive on the door that will set off the Semtex so we can enter. You’ll need to move down the hallway as far as you can.”

Derek hung his head. Well, maybe they didn’t want to kill him, but they sure were going to kill him if they weren’t careful. “There’s a problem,” Derek called out, and described the bioweapon.

A moment of tense silence followed. Finally McCormack said, “Hang on. Don’t go anywhere.” The head disappeared.

Derek tried to make himself comfortable. It wasn’t easy. His hands, slick with sweat, wouldn’t stop shaking. His vision doubled, tripled, then returned to normal as his head pounded in sync with his heart. A moment later Irina’s head popped up. “We’ve put a hold on our entry. How did you find out about this?”

He quickly sketched out what he had heard Pablo Juarez say.

“Do you think there is more than one?”

“I don’t know. Probably not.”

“Can you defuse this?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know much about it.”

“Hang on.”

Irina disappeared and McCormack reappeared. “Describe it.”

Derek did. McCormack was quiet a moment. “What’s it on?”

“On?”

“Yes. It’s next to the air duct.”

“Is it strapped to the duct, to an I-beam, or what?”

Derek flashed his light on the bomb. “It’s resting on one of the ceiling tiles.”

“Good. That’s really good. Is it screwed down or anything?”

“No.”

“Bastards might have screwed up after all,” McCormack said. “What kind of tools do you have with you?”

Derek told him.

“Sharp knife?”

“Yes. I’ve got the Emerson knife. It’s very sharp. Sharper than the knife on my utility tool.”

“Okay. You have steady hands?”

Fuck no, Derek thought. He said, “So-so.”

“Ought to work. Okay, Stillwater—”

“Call me Derek.”

“Sure. Call me Terry. Okay, Derek. I’m going to walk you through dismantling the sensors. The lasers first, then the wires. That ought to be pretty straightforward. Then comes the tricky part.”

“If we get that far.”

“We’ll get that far. But we have to start now. Time’s running out.”

Derek took a deep breath. “Hang on.” He leaned over and wretched violently, dry heaving until his ribs screamed at him to stop. Panting, he fought the panic, trying to calm down. Plan B, he thought. What’s Plan B?

McCormack called out, “You going to be okay, Derek?”

“Peachy. Give me a few seconds, okay? I’ve had a bad day.”

“When you’re ready.”

Derek rubbed his forehead. When you’re ready? He sucked in a bitter, dusty chest full of air. He thought, the weather forecast for hell is cold with a chance of snow and likelihood of ice.

“Okay,” he said. “What do I do first?”

On the roof of the Cheyenne Center, Group Alpha, led by Captain Stanchfield, approached the northwest elevator housing. He was accompanied by one of the Secret Service snipers, who was briefing them on his evaluation of the tripwires.

“We breached the maintenance door without any problems, but we think they’ve got the door wired so if we try to go through it’ll blow. When we went into lockdown we were told to hold station, so we did. But I checked things out, and we discussed our options should an op come into play.”