Land of the Gods

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

Alex Reeve fought hard to slow her breathing and Brandon McGee pushed her along the corridors on the first floor of the Residence. He wasn’t exactly running, but she knew she’d never been this fast in her wheelchair before and part of her was more scared of falling out than what would happen if Faulkner’s soldiers caught up with them.

Almost.

“We’re nearly there, Brandon. Take it easy.”

“Sorry, Alex, but we can’t let them catch up with us. They already have the President and Jack Brooke and we have no idea if Kim and Kamala got away or not. It’s a total shit show.”

He was right — it was a total shit show and they were the last act. She thought of the expression on her father’s face as the marines marched him out to the SUV round the back of the West Wing and felt a rage she had never experienced before.

It felt like blood was boiling in her veins and that her head might explode at any minute. How could they treat him like that? That son of a bitch Davis Faulkner was going to pay for this, that was for damned sure — but how? She was talking about a man who had manipulated the entire US political system and the news networks in order to effect a coup of the world’s most powerful country. How was she going to help her father and get back at Faulkner?

She was powerless, like a fly in the Vaseline traps her grandmother used to make when she was a child. There was only one way she had even the slightest chance of saving herself and rescuing her father and that was the ECHO team, but she didn’t even know where they were. The last she had heard they were lost in the Iraqi desert somewhere, up to their necks in sand and flies and being hunted by the Oracle’s army of acolytes. It all felt hopeless.

“Take a left, Brandon.”

“No, it’s a right.”

“I’ve lived here for quite a while now,” she said. “We reach the car park if we go left.”

“That’s the car park everyone knows about, but there’s another way out of here.”

“I don’t understand?”

“There are tunnels under the White House, accessible from several locations under the compound in case we have to evacuate the President in a hurry.”

“In a situation like this, you mean?”

“Sure, just like this, only this time the tunnel in the Oval Office was out of the question because Faulkner knew about it and made sure the President got nowhere near it when he stormed the office.”

“That bastard!” she said, holding back the tears. She could feel one of her anxiety attacks coming on and once again pursed her lips to push out long, slow breaths. “How far to our escape tunnel?”

“Not far.”

“What if he knows about this one too?”

“I won’t lie to you,” Brandon said, glancing over his shoulder. “He’s not going to take over the White House without knowing all about all the escape routes, but we’re ahead of him, and the shootout in the West Wing looked like it rattled him. He waited to attack us when he knew we all together there, so he wasn’t expecting anyone to get away, least of all, all the way to the Residency. We’re head of them, for now but we don’t have long.”

“Please God, don’t let them get us!”

She realized how pathetic she sounded, but Brandon didn’t care. In the short time they’d known each other he’d become more than a secret service agent and they had struck up a good friendship. She knew that right now he wasn’t just doing his job and saving the life of the First Daughter, but trying to protect a friend.

“We’re here,” he said, turning the wheelchair into a narrow corridor.

“This just goes to the kitchens.”

“Wrong again, Reeve!”

Without warning and still at speed, he spun around in the corridor as they approached a storeroom cupboard door. He brought the chair to a stop and run his key card through a slit on the side of the door. The light went red and a buzzer sounded.

Kim Taylor kept her head down as she walked through the kitchens. As she walked past a pot of tomato sauce cooling on the side, she smeared a handful of it across the chef’s whites they had stolen and pretended to be coming off shift. Joining a group of other cooks and waiters, she walked slowly through security.

Camacho and Agent Banks were right behind her, also disguised in the chef’s whites and with their earpieces and palm mics discarded in case they were searched. Kamala’s plan was to head out to the Ellipse where many of the White House staff parked their cars before coming into work in the morning, but whether they got there or not was another matter.

Extra security swarmed all over the grounds, including snipers position up on the roof the main Residence building and at all the exits. “My car is parked at the west end of the Ellipse,” she said. “Just keep your heads down and we’ll be okay. They have a lot of shit going on around here, so we should be able to slip away.”

They turned a corner and left the Residence, walking down a long parquet-tiled corridor leading out to the East Wing. Out of sight now, they stripped off the chef’s whites and drew their guns again.

Camacho glanced over his shoulder. The coast was clear. “We’re heading to the East Appointment Gate, right?”

Kamala nodded. “Right, and from there we go south on East Executive, past the Visitors’ Entrance and then we’re almost at my car. From there it’s a short drive to my apartment.”

“And what then?” Kim asked.

“We have to presume they got Alex and Agent McGee,” the senior Secret Service agent said. “So we have to get the hell out of DC or we’re next.”

“And how do we do that?” Camacho asked. “Our passports will already have been circulated to port authorities and airports.”

“I have an idea,” Kamala said. “Just leave it to me.”

Making sure they were alone, they stepped out of a fire exit and left the East Wing, walking across the neatly manicured grass on their way to the exit. The atmosphere was electric and word spread across the city about what had just happened. Security was being amped up, and as they made their way to the exit, two guards sung the heavy iron gates closed and locked them up.

“Hold it right there,” Kamala said, flashing her ID. “We need to get to the Treasury in a hurry.”

The guard looked at her ID. “Sure thing, Agent Banks, but I’ll need to radio through to the main building first. Just got an order than no one leaves the site without clearance from the Chief of Staff himself.”

In a flash, Banks drew her weapon and pushed the muzzle up against the guard’s throat. “Open the gate, now.”

“Woah! Take it easy!”

“Do it.”

Camacho and Kim drew their weapons and covered the other man. “Do as she says!”

They unlocked the gates and swung them open again. Kim and Camacho slipped through onto the sidewalk as Kamala disarmed the men and took their radios. “Make a move toward us and you’re dead. Got it?”

Their facial expressions said they got it, and the three fugitives sprinted down the sidewalk on their way to the Ellipse. Behind them, guards streamed out of the White House, into the Kennedy Garden and across the South Lawn in pursuit of them.

“We need to get to that car in a hurry, Agent Banks!” Camacho yelled.

Alex Reeve swept her hair out of her face and tucked it behind her ears. Looking at Special Agent McGee with fear etched onto her anxious face, she could barely believe what was happening to her. “What’s wrong?”

“They cancelled my security clearance already.”

“So what do we do now?”

Brandon’s reply was to draw his weapon and aim it at the door lock. “Shield your eyes!”

She did as he told her and then she heard a tremendous explosion as the gun fired in the enclosed space. A cloud of wood and smoke burst out from the door, and then he kicked it open with his boot and rolled her into the storeroom.

She looked around the tiny space. Buckets, mops, cleaning fluid. “I think you made a wrong turn, Brandon.”

“You really don’t have much faith in me, do you?”

He reached behind one of the shelves and pulled on a hidden lever and she felt her stomach go funny as the entire room started moving downward. “What the hell?”

“We’re in an elevator.” He stuffed his gun back in the holster.

They descended one floor and the doors pinged open to reveal a dark basement area with a polished concrete floor. Alex blinked twice and then saw the long line of black presidential limousines lined up in a neat row. There were twelve in all, but she could count only ten.

“We could take one of these,” she said half-jokingly.

“Yeah right,” Brandon said. “Something tells me we wouldn’t get very far on the most conspicuous vehicle in the world.”

“The tunnel’s just over here.”

He ran ahead of her and opened the door. Turning to her, he flashed a nervous smile but them it fell from his face and he drew his weapon.

“Brandon? What is it?”

She heard the savage crack of a gunshot and a bullet trace past her right ear. It slammed into Brandon’s shoulder and spun him around in a half-circle. He slumped to the floor, grunting in pain as Alex turned to see a number of soldiers running toward them.

She spun the chair around and started pushing as hard as she could in the opposite direction. She knew it was pointless, but driven by instinct she pushed the wheels around as hard and fast as she could, blisters already forming on her hands.

But it was too late.

The men quickly surrounded Brandon in a hail of screams. “Down! Put your weapon down!”

He obeyed the directive and dropped his weapon. The men were on him instantly, flipping him over and cuffing his hands behind his back.

She knew it was over. She stopped pushing and closed her eyes, feeling the wheelchair slowly coming to a stop. One of the men walked over to her, gun raised into the aim.

“It’s over, Miss Reeve. You’re both under arrest and coming with us.”