Blood Vengeance

CHAPTER TWELVE

President Coburn waited restlessly as his four Secret Service agents came to a decision. In real-time, it didn’t actually take long but Coburn was already feeling an old instinct kicking in — that of self-preservation.

At last, Marnich nodded at Franks. “Gridlock’s impassable both ways. Back to the hotel?”

Franks hesitated, glancing through the rear window at the other two Escalades and the snarled traffic behind them. “No way back by road. We’re going to have to hump it.”

Marnich made a show of struggling between dilemmas. “Hotel’s the most secure place around. We just left it.”

“More secure than the White House?”

“Too many people and variables between us and it. Not as many behind us. An adversary would expect us to go forward. Who knows what might lie ahead? The hotel is secure, it was checked an hour ago, and the area is now crawling with every authority from the cops to the FBI and the army. My call is the Dillion.”

“Agreed.” Franks spoke into his wrist mic. “We’re sitting ducks out here. Prepare to fall out to the Dillion. Eagle One will be with us.”

Coburn leaned forward. “Won’t we be more vulnerable out there?” he asked. “The Escalade’s armored.”

Franks met his eyes. Marnich spoke up. “Trouble is, we don’t know if anyone’s out there, sir, and we don’t know what they’ve got. There are plenty of weapons these days that can pierce our armor.”

“In Washington?”

“Maybe not,” Marnich conceded, but left the sentence hanging.

Franks took the bait. “The Dillion is one block back, and crawling with authorities investigating the Secretary’s death. It’s three minutes away.” He glanced at the President. “You ready for a brisk run, sir?”

Coburn nodded, conceding to their decision. A President rarely questioned the Secret Service, ex-military or not. They paused for six more seconds as Franks again spoke into his comms system.

“Alpha Bird One. Alpha Bird One. We need first-class extraction outside the Dillion. ETA — four minutes.”

The answer made Franks smile. “All good.” Coburn assumed he had called in one of the military choppers housed close by, making it their exit strategy or, he stared cannily at Franks, a diversion. He really should learn all these multiple code words by heart.

Marnich cracked the door open first, beckoning the President over. Instantly, the crazed din of an unthinkable amount of traffic chaos blasted into the car. Horns blared and metal still crunched. Men and women yelled in anger, and from overhead came the heavy thunk of rotor blades. The news services hadn’t wasted any time in getting airborne.

“Shit,” Franks said, eyeing the air. “They’re even quicker than we are.”

It was meant as a joke, to lighten the tension, but Coburn couldn’t help but shrug it away, staying frosty. There were too many bright glaring lights around, especially on the higher floors of surrounding buildings, and more than enough hotel rooms, empty offices and apartment blocks to house an army of assassins.

Take it easy, he thought. The Secret Service have this.

Coburn stepped into the road. Instantly, agents from the other two cars surrounded him. Franks shouldered in and pushed his head down. Coburn had no choice but to suffer the indignity of staring at his feet whilst his protective detail made their way a few hundred yards back to the Dillion. His only link to the real world was the noise — a woman trying to calm her crying baby protesting as she was moved aside by the agents, a voluble older man demanding that the agents stop and immediately sort the stoplight situation out, a man arguing forcefully with someone about whose fault it was that his brand new Jaguar had suffered damage — one of the agents having to step in and diffuse the situation before it came to blows. Coburn became acutely aware that his protective detail was undermanned — he had sent two of his best to oversee the Gates investigation, but as the seconds and minutes passed and nothing happened, he began to breathe more easily. Maybe the stoplight disruption had been a glitch; a snag thrown up because, quite frankly, it was barely ever used.

Franks put pressure on his shoulders, slowing him down. “Dillion is ahead,” he whispered, then louder. “You four go in first.”

Coburn looked up. A wash of golden light flooded across the sidewalk where the Dillion proudly stood. The ring of agents steered him toward the gold-paneled, wide-open front doors, passing underneath the blue-and-white-striped ornate canopy. Tourists and civilians stood about in comical poses, gawping. Cameras flashed and cell phones took video, annoying the agents no end. Every flash made a trigger finger twitch and gave the periphery agents a vital moment of focus turned away from the President.

“Alpha Bird One ETA two minutes,” Marnich said.

“Inside.” Franks pushed them toward the well-lit lobby. As soon as they pushed through the doors his men began to yell.

“Clear the lobby! Clear the lobby now!”

The President would be fully secured and guarded inside here. Coburn slowed and began to think about the cell phone in his pocket, wondering if a call to his wife was in order. He was reaching for the device when Franks’ soft growl stopped him cold, freezing the marrow in his bones.

“It’s a fuckin’ trap.”