The Tin Man (41 page)

Sterling
reared up, knocking him off. Buchanan, rolling, got up on all fours just as Sterling’s foot slammed him in the gut. The blow lifted him off the ground and rolled him onto his side. Sterling started kicking him, his foot hammering again and again until Buchanan couldn’t breathe. Kicking him onto his back, Sterling dropped on him, grabbed him by the head, and started bashing his skull against the pavement. Buchanan heard a crack, saw a flash of white light, felt knives of pain in both eyes. And then, a swirling dark current pulled him into its inky depths.

* * * *

Jack Hamilton, pinned down by the gunfire, could only watch as Robert Sterling sprinted toward the Signature terminal, leaving Buchanan on the tarmac, pale, motionless, and bleeding from the head. Was the journalist dead? If he were, he’d never forgive himself. Nor, he was guessing, would Thea.

The thought of her gave him pain.
At the very least, he hoped she’d give him a chance to explain—really explain—why he’d made the choices he had, how difficult it had been for him after the divorce, how he’d thrown himself into his work to avoid dealing with his feelings. She might not understand, might not be able to forgive him, now or ever, but at least he’d feel a little better for having said his piece.

Buchanan still hadn’t moved. Please,
let him not be dead. For Thea’s sake, if nothing else. She’d lost everyone now—her brother, her mother, her grandfather. She deserved to have someone in her life, someone who could make her happy, someone who could make her feel loved and wanted.

Sterling
had reached the terminal. The spectators lining the windows, eyes glued to the unfolding drama, parted like the Red Sea to let him pass. Hamilton, shaking his head, felt a darkening despair. This wasn’t how it was supposed to go down. They were the good guys. (Or used to be, anyway.) And the good guys were supposed to win.

* * * *

Georgi Aminov, crouching behind the open rear door of the limousine, stopped a moment to reload before firing off another round. The FBI was barraging them with a relentless spray of machine-gun fire. Bullets were flying every which way, banging, zinging, and sparking as they struck the car. Sterling, like the pussy he was, had run off, leaving him and Ivan to fend for themselves.

Tossing an anxious glance toward his brother,
Georgi was pleased to see Ivan holding his own. Even so, their odds didn’t look good. Would he ever see his beloved Tatyana again? Probably not. He strained to picture her beautiful face, twisted by the tragic news of the loss of her devoted husband. As grief tightened his chest, a torrent of bullets ricocheted off the tinted window, jerking him back to the shoot-out.

* * * *

Buchanan’s first awareness as he came around was that the shooting had stopped. He was lying on a gurney while two uniformed paramedics attended to his injuries. One of them was shining a beam of light in his eyes while the other wrapped a strip of gauze around his head, which was throbbing with a dull, unrelenting ache. It was as if the pain were attached to his vision, since the beam of light only made the throbbing worse.

“What
’s your name?” asked the paramedic with the light.

“Buchanan. Alex
ander.” His mouth felt like cotton.

“And what day is it today, Mr. Buchanan?”

“Erm…Friday?” With all that had transpired since Monday, he’d lost track.

“Do you know where you are?”

“The airport,” he replied. “And my head hurts like a son of a bitch.”

Closing his eyes,
the journalist listened to the sounds around him. Except for the murmur of voices and the roar of a distant jet engine, it was quiet.

“What happened?”

“You cracked your head,” the paramedic told him. “In a fight, apparently.”

“No, I meant: wh
ere’s Sterling? Who won?”

“That, I couldn’t tell you,” the paramedic answered.

Opening his eyes, Buchanan struggled to sit up. The effort was making his head feel worse, so he stopped. The paramedic who was bandaging him put a hand on his chest and eased him back down.

“You should take it easy,” he said. “You’ve probably got a concussion.”

Except for the pain, Buchanan didn’t care. He only cared about learning the outcome. Was Sterling still alive? Had he been arrested? And what about Georgi and Ivan? Glancing around for Jack Hamilton, he found him talking to a couple of agents in windbreakers.

“What happened?” he called out to
the federal attorney.

Excusing himself from the agents, Hamilton came over
. “Sterling’s inside,” he said, nodding toward the terminal, “still at large.”

“And the twins?”

“Turns out they were Bulgarian mercenaries tied to a notorious terrorism network,” Hamilton explained. “We’re pretty sure Sterling found them through an ad in
Soldier of Fortune
magazine. They’re wanted in connection with a car bombing a few months back in Prague that killed a minor diplomat.”

“
Where are they now?”

“One of them is dead,”
Hamilton said. “Shot through the head. The other, unconscious, is on his way to the hospital, where we’ll put him under guard. If and when he comes around, we’ll question him, of course. Not that I expect to learn very much. Hired guns are rarely much help.”

“Which one is dead? Do you know?”

“The one called Georgi,” Hamilton said, giving Buchanan a glimmer of relief, “according to the passport we found on the body.”

* * * *

Robert Sterling, out of breath and dripping sweat, ducked inside the first “family” restroom he came to and threw the bolt on the door. He was almost certain no one had seen him come in. They were all too caught up in the scene on the tarmac.

He took a deep breath
to steady himself. He hated complications, but was prepared for just about any contingency. He looked around him. The restroom, thankfully, was big enough for three or four people. There was a single toilet, a sink and counter, and a drop-down changing table. Everything he needed.

After hanging
his shoulder bag on a hook on the back of the door, he unzipped the front compartment, and took out his ThunderBolt and a Ziploc bag full of untraceable SIM cards.

Opening another compartment,
he pulled out a blond wig and pair of eyeglasses and put them on. He then took off his trench and changed his tie. When he was finished, he dumped the contents of the trash bin onto the floor and dropped his coat and tie into the bottom. He checked his appearance in the mirror, pleased to see he now looked like a completely different person.

“You’re a chameleon,” he
told his reflection with a wink. “A true master of disguise.”

Returning to the bag, he
pulled out a bogus passport—one of many he kept on hand to provide convenient cover identities. Flipping it open, he compared the photo to his reflection. Satisfied, he tucked it into the inside breast pocket of his jacket. Finally, he put the bag in the bin and replaced all the trash.

Now
ready, he opened the door and poked his head out into the terminal. There were FBI agents everywhere, but so what? He was Robert Harrison now, just an ordinary frequent flyer on a business trip. As he headed down a corridor of soaring gothic arches, nobody gave him a second look. Entering the ticketing area, he scanned the signs until he found the American Airlines counter, relieved to see no queue.

He stepped up to the counter
, where a smiling young woman waited to assist him. He pulled out the passport, then took out his wallet, removing a driver’s license and credit card bearing the same alias. Laying all three on the counter, he asked, “When’s your next flight to the Cayman Islands?”

The woman, looking down at her computer, started punching keys.
He glanced tensely around, but saw nothing to concern him.

“The
re’s a flight departing for George Town in a little over thirty minutes,” she said, still punching keys. “You might be able to make it—if you don’t get hung up on your way through security.”

As s
he met his eyes, he smiled appreciatively. “Is there anything available in first class?”

She
consulted the computer again. “There is,” she said with a quick, upward glance. “Would you prefer a window or the aisle?”

“A window,
” he said, although he had no real preference either way.

This time, when the woman raised her eyes, they sprang open in surprise. Spinning, he saw at once the cause of her reaction: two FBI agents
stood right behind him with their weapons drawn.

“Hands in the air,
Sterling,” one of them demanded. “It’s over.”

Saturday

Washington, D.C.

Jack Hamilton
, sighing with exasperation, exited the observation room and strode down the echoing hallway, this morning’s edition of
The New York News
tucked under one arm. When he reached the door, he butted it open with his shoulder and stepped outside. The late-morning sky was murky and sodden, but at least it had stopped storming—more than he could say about himself.

He
sucked in a breath of fresh air. He needed to clear his head, to get his emotions under control. For the past several hours, he’d been watching Judy and her partner questioning Robert Sterling. Not that it was much of an interrogation. Mainly, Sterling sat mute as his attorney—some hotshot celebrity lawyer from Los Angeles—loudly declared his client’s innocence. Not that he’d expected anything less. It was all just so goddamned frustrating, he felt ready to punch someone.

He took another breath as he struggled to put things into perspective.
As maddening as it all was, at least the truth had come out about Osbourne and the Prince. Pulling out the paper, he snapped it open. His mood instantly improved when he re-read the banner headline under the masthead.

Global Brainwashing Scheme Thwarted by FBI

Already, the story was spreading across the media like dysentery. Every cable network, every news channel, every blogger, was having a field day—even many of the outlets owned by Golden Age and Babylon. Consequently, the public was in an uproar, screaming for an immediate re-evaluation of the regulations governing media ownership and monopolies. Some people, including a handful of senators, were even making noise about impeaching the new president.

Meanwhile
, the attorney general was tap dancing as fast as he could in an effort to shield himself from any culpability. For his opening number, he’d decided to crucify Robert Sterling, who now faced charges of treason, conspiracy, murder, attempted murder, kidnapping, and battery. His fast-talking lawyer might still get him off, but the preponderance of evidence against him looked daunting: the interview with Connolly, the testimonies of the reporters, even the surviving Bulgarian had agreed to be a witness for the prosecution in exchange for immunity and, oddly enough, a permanent visa for his brother’s widow.   

Now f
eeling somewhat heartened, he tucked the paper back under his arm and headed inside. The sooner he was done here, the quicker he could get over to the hospital to see his daughter. Last he’d checked with the ICU, she was still in a coma and he wanted to be there the second she opened her eyes. 

* * * *

Buchanan closed his eyes and listened to the symphony of instruments playing around him: the whoosh of the ventilator, the chirp of the heart monitor, the whir of the IV pump. On the bed in front of him lay Thea, still unconscious. Across his lap lay a dozen long-stemmed red roses wrapped in cellophane and a heart-shaped tin of chocolates, which he intended to give to her as soon as she woke up. He also intended to ask her something he’d never asked any woman before. But then, no woman had ever awakened his heart the way Thea had.

He didn’t know what he was going to do about
The Voice
. He only knew he was tired. Burnt-out from working eighty-hour weeks. Bored with his all-work-and-no-play life. In the years since he left Scotland, work had taken over, completely overshadowing everything else. Even if he could muster the energy to start again, he wasn’t sure he wanted to. Maybe, subconsciously, he’d become a workaholic on purpose, so he wouldn’t have to face his issues—the guilt about abandoning his mum, the resentment toward his drunken father, the grief over losing Kenny, the experience in Baghdad, the terrible loneliness he tried hard to deny. Maybe it was time he got around to unpacking some of his baggage.

He could still devote a part of himself to work,
but a smaller part. America needed alterative voices to counter the manipulations of the corporate media, but maybe he didn’t have to try to be the Lone Ranger anymore. Maybe he could take on a partner who shared his passion and his courage—somebody who could also share the load.