The Warren Omissions (25 page)

With two guards watching Flynn’s every twitch, he needed a distraction. Flynn bent over and started coughing, catching the guards by surprise as they knelt down next to him to see what was wrong. Flynn then wrapped his leg around the neck of the guard on his left, forcing him to drop his assault weapon. At the same time, he kicked the knee of the guard on his right, sending him to the floor. Flynn snatched the weapon off the floor and jammed it up against Buscape’s neck, careful not to cut him.

Ivan, who had holstered his weapon, redrew but not soon enough. A standoff began.

“Everybody drop your weapons … now!” Flynn directed as he maneuvered behind Buscape to utilize him as a shield. “The rest of you, up against the wall!”

The three men remaining at the control panel joined Ivan and the two guards, standing with their backs to the wall.

Ivan refused to budge.

“I said drop your weapons!” Flynn yelled again.

Ivan held fast.

Then Buscape spoke. “It’s OK, son. You can put down your weapon. He’s not going to harm you—or me either.”

Flynn waited until Ivan dropped his gun before responding.

“Listen, Buscape. I already made that mistake once. I’m not leaving Ivan alive this time.”

Buscape then began chuckling to himself, nearly uncontrollably.

“You Americans never cease to amaze me with you brash arrogance.”

Flynn pressed the tip of the rifle deeper into Buscape’s neck.

“
 
Принеси мне
 
девушки
 
!” Buscape yelled.

A side door swung open and Lexie marched out, gagged with her hands tied behind her back. Even more surprising was the person holding a gun to Lexie’s head.

It was Sydney Sandford.

CHAPTER 59

GERALD SANDFORD READ the text message on his phone. He brushed back a tear that streaked down his face. Seeing Sydney bound enraged him. Her face appeared bruised, her body beaten. If Sandford could stand in front of her kidnappers at the moment, he was certain he would beat them to death.

But he couldn’t. All he could do was meet the demands of her captors. So what if it started a war? What kind of father wouldn’t move heaven and earth for his daughter?

Thirty minutes was all he had left to comply with their demands. Still no word from Osborne.

Seconds dripped by like hours, each one stirring up an ocean of emotions within him. He remembered saying good-bye to Sydney as she embarked on her Peace Corps mission to Russia. No matter how much he tried to protect her, Sandford never could sway her to follow in his footsteps. She wanted to change the world and make a difference in the lives of others. He pleaded with her to pursue that noble mission through politics and embrace the path he blazed for her. And Sydney almost went for it.

When she was nineteen, Sydney took off a year from school to help with her father’s U.S. Senate re-election campaign. The brutal spring primary set Sandford up for a bare-knuckle brawl in the November general election. Heading into the final two weeks before the election, Sandford trailed by eight points in the polls. The poor polling numbers prompted some major donors to decline to contribute further when Sandford needed it most. He even watched several key campaign staff members exit early, fearing the worst.

But if voters hadn’t voted, Sandford assumed there was always ample time to change their minds.

Three days before the election, a scandal broke: Pictures emerged of Jim Dyer in suggestive situations with a prostitute. Making the scandal worse was Dyer’s platform plank of family values. His wife and three children stood by him as he railed against “dirty politics,” denying the incident ever occurred.

The last polling numbers the day before the election showed a swing of fifteen points, giving Sandford an advantage of seven percentage points. Sandford won by twenty percent.

At the celebration party, Sydney began talking with one of her father’s staff members, whose loose lips let out the campaign’s secret: the Dyer incident was set up. Sandford’s staff hired a prostitute to seduce Dyer months earlier but failed. So, this time they left nothing to chance, drugging Dyer and staging the photos. Nothing even happened. But the photos suggested otherwise.

Sydney took the information to her father, who denied any knowledge of it. She begged him to apologize and tell the truth, but he refused. “It’s just politics,” he told her. “It was for the good of the people anyway. He only cares about power, not about helping the people.”

That was when Sandford started to lose his daughter—and when she lost faith in using politics as a way to transform the world. A few years later, she was heading off to Russia to help people there. Sandford never dreamed that would be the last time he saw her again. Yet after thinking she was dead for years, he would do anything to touch her again, to hold his little girl and say he was sorry for all that he’d done. He’d be a different man, a better father.

But none of it would happen until he launched a full-scale missile attack on Russia.

CHAPTER 60

FLYNN STARED AT LEXIE as she struggled under Sydney’s tight grip. Reading the situation wasn’t easy. Lexie faced the men Flynn had ordered to line up against the wall. If she tried to signal anything, they just might tip off Sydney. It was up to Flynn to send her a message that would help him squash the sudden quagmire.

“Sydney—so nice of you to join us,” Buscape said, turning to face her as Flynn continued to press the tip of his barrel into the old man’s neck. “I think this is what we call a stand off.”

Flynn tried to hide his emotions. He considered the possibility of acting like he didn’t care about Lexie. And on some level, he didn’t. It was her arrogance that led to this predicament. Yet he needed her. This mission would fail if he didn’t have some help. Despite his urge to blow her off, he couldn’t let Sydney—or anyone else from the Kuklovod—kill Lexie. At this point, he didn’t even care if she made off with the missiles; he just wanted to stop a war from igniting.

Glancing behind him, Flynn noticed Ivan and the operators hadn’t moved. Buscape hardly struggled as he was too weak to overpower Flynn and seemed keenly aware of that fact. But in front of Flynn stood his biggest challenge: Sydney holding Lexie hostage.

Running out of time, Flynn needed to devise a plan quickly.
 
Maybe I can reason with her?

“Sydney, I know your father is worried sick about you,” Flynn began. “Why don’t you put the gun down so you can go home and prevent the loss of innocent life?”

Sydney laughed. “You think that CIA voodoo is going to work on me? I already know what’s in your playbook and I’ve got a plan for everything. So, if you want to try some of your pop psychology on me, be my guest. But if you knew me well enough, you’d know that trying to use my father to connect with me is a big mistake.”

Flynn knew it was a mistake the second he started speaking aloud. But it bought him more time to consider a way out.

“Sydney, what happened to you?” Flynn asked. “You were so idealistic and driven—now you seem jaded, angry … distant.”

“Do you want me to lay on a couch or something? Let me tell you all my deepest desires? Is this how you think this is going to go?” Sydney asked. Her biting sarcasm contradicted the pleasant demeanor that Osborne said she had. Apparently, charm had since escaped her command.

With the Kuklovod tattoo emblazoned on the corner of her neck, Sydney exhibited the opposite of every trait Osborne had attributed to her.

Though Sydney was beautiful, Flynn had to look hard to see it. The high cheekbones and curvaceous figure remained mostly hidden by a tough exterior Sydney worked tirelessly to promote. The idealistic girl that once inhabited her body wasn’t gone and buried yet. Sydney exuded plenty of idealism, but it was muddied by her newfound communist philosophy.

Flynn thought hard. He needed a signal for Lexie.

“No, Sydney, that’s not how this is going to go,” Flynn said. “I thought it might go something like it went in Cameroon.”

Before Sydney could respond to Flynn’s cryptic answer, Lexie swung into action. She spun hard to her left, exposing Sydney’s back to Flynn. He released Buscape for a moment, only to fire off a short burst toward Sydney, striking her in the left shoulder. It was enough to incapacitate her for a few minutes and give Lexie the chance to help him gain the upper hand.

Lexie snatched a knife off Sydney, and she was able to cut herself free. After that, she grabbed Sydney’s gun. Meanwhile, Sydney screamed out in agony as she writhed around on the floor now coated in her blood.

“Let’s tie them up,” Flynn said.

“Go for it,” Lexie answered, tossing him a handful of rope and duct tape she found laying on a desk at the far end of the room. “I’ll give you some cover.”

Flynn tied up each man as quickly as possible. The time sped by but he secured Buscape, Ivan, and the remaining men within five minutes. He then turned his attention to Sydney.

Sydney lay still on the floor. He wasn’t even sure she was still alive until he checked for her pulse and found it. Maybe it was shock or trauma from the loss of blood—but she was out. Nevertheless, Flynn wasn’t taking any chances. He wound the duct tape tight around her wrists, securing her arms behind her back then her feet as well.

Flynn checked the clock. Twenty minutes.

“Let’s move, Lexie. We don’t have much time.”

As Flynn stood up, he looked at his former partner. No longer was the gun trained on their fellow hostages. Lexie was pointing her gun at Flynn.

CHAPTER 61

DIANE DIXON SAT in the private waiting room with Bethany Briggs. The First Lady did her best to hold it together in public, but now she was away from the watchful eyes of reporters and television cameras. Alone with her thoughts and a trusted friend, Bethany’s tears flowed freely.

Diane watched as Bethany buried her head in her hands and heaved sobs of deep grief. It pained her to watch a woman so sophisticated become unraveled, no matter how justifiable it was. She reached out to hold Bethany’s hand. It was clammy and cold, nothing like the warm touch Bethany usually exuded when she welcomed someone politely with her stately handshake.

Standing by her husband through years of diplomacy, Bethany understood how a politician’s wife should act—and she played her part well. Always looking flawless for the cameras, smiling and waving, performing an inordinate amount of charity work. Diane admired that about her, though at the same time pitied her for the role. With Bethany’s diplomatic skills and compassionate wisdom, Diane believed Bethany was better suited for the Oval Office than her husband. And whenever some wonderfully crafted idea emerged from the President’s desk, Diane suspected it originated elsewhere.

But now, Diane watched Bethany turned into a heap of bitter tears. While her husband may have lacked the guts the hawks in America demanded, Arthur Briggs was beloved by most. President Briggs believed the nation needed healing from a string of presidencies bent on dividing a torn country. His selection of Gerald Sandford as his running mate proved how it was possible to work politically with someone who shared far different values and ideas. Compromise was a touchstone of Briggs’ presidency—and the American people prospered because of it.

When the war drums began to thump, Briggs’ strength became his weakness. The unified front splintered, forming various factions that stood both for and against the war on many varying levels. Some groups wanted to send nuclear bombs into Russia. Others wanted to simply send a message. While still others insisted that there was no cause for concern and America should ignore the missile silos being erected in Siberia. The peace crowd saw it as typical Russian grandstanding rather than a saber-rattling move. In the end, Briggs was left with a mess, one that looked like someone fired a missile into his staff. While he lay unconscious in the hospital, Briggs never would have guessed his cabinet would take divisiveness in American politics to another level. Nor would he have ever guessed that Sandford would ignore his wishes and angle to strike first against Russia.

Diane watched Bethany’s anguish as her sobs turned to wails.

“Why Arthur?” Bethany cried. “He’s such a good man!”

Diane withdrew for a moment, uncomfortable at the outburst of raw emotion. She let Bethany simmer for a few moments before speaking.

“I don’t know what to say, Bethany,” Diane said, clutching her friend’s hand again.

Bethany closed her eyes and shook her head. She didn’t say a word, but the message was conveyed: Diane didn’t need to say anything.

The blurry-eyed women sat motionless for several minutes, save the streaks of mascara oozing down their faces. Briggs wasn’t dead yet, but to Diane it felt like the death of his dream for his beloved country.

Suddenly, Dr. Grant burst into the room.

“Mrs. Briggs, Mrs. Briggs, come quick!” he said, motioning to Bethany to join him. “Your husband is awake!”

CHAPTER 62

FLYNN GAZED AT THE MESS next to him on the cold floor. Sydney Sandford’s wound continued to ooze large amounts of blood and showed no signs of stopping. He estimated that she would bleed out within the next two minutes if she didn’t get some type of medical attention. Though he wasn’t on an officially sanctioned CIA mission, he realized it was a near epic fail. Losing the Kuklovod’s missiles and gunning down the Vice President’s daughter made him look like the agency’s most inept operative of all time. Yet there was still time to change all that and avoid CIA infamy. It just wouldn’t be easy.