Daredevil Riders

77

They went out the back door and walked around to the front. Herbert looked up and down the street.

Anthony said, “It seems this might be a neighborhood where some nice old lady might be peering out her window to see what’s going on.”

“Good idea. You take this side of the street and I’ll take the other.”

At the fourth house Anthony tried, a tiny black woman in her seventies with white hair answered the door.

“Saw you poking around. About to call the police but then it struck me you might be the police,” she said matter-of-factly. “Not too many folks look like you wandering around here.”

Anthony showed her badge and called Herbert over.

“This is my partner,” she told the older woman. “We’re trying to find out where Carmen Escalante is. She’s the woman with the braces whose uncle—”

The woman cut her off. “I watch the news. I’ve seen Carmen around. But she’s not home now.”

“Any idea where she might be?” asked Herbert.

“Left around nine this morning,” said the woman. “They come for her in the big black truck.”

Herbert and Anthony exchanged glances. “Who came for her?” asked Anthony.

“Government folks. You know, in suits and such. With sunglasses. She’s got some memorial service to go to today.” She paused and eyed them suspiciously. “Don’t you two watch the news?”

Herbert said, “Do you know where the memorial service is being held?”

“You don’t know that, maybe you ain’t the police.”

“We are the police,” insisted Herbert. “Do you know where the memorial service is being held?” he asked again, in a more urgent tone.

“Why don’t you just call into headquarters or some such and find out?”

She closed the door in their faces.

Herbert pulled out his phone as they hustled back to the car.

“Oliver, what is going on?”

“We talked about how the bomb going off would cause events to be moved elsewhere, away from the park.”

“Right, but that got us nowhere.”

“That’s because it’s not an event that was scheduled that they’re going to hit.”

Anthony sucked in a breath and said, “They created the event that they’re going to hit. The bombing led to the memorial service.”

“With the U.S. president and the president of Mexico in attendance.”

As Anthony drove Herbert called everyone he could think of.

“No one’s answering.”

“Caller ID. They know it’s you and aren’t picking up. Should we just call the police?”

“And tell them what? ‘I’m Oliver Herbert. I used to work for the government before I got sacked for screwing up’? ‘There’s a bomb at the memorial service. Go get it’? They’ll hang up on me before I even finish.”

They stopped at a traffic light and Anthony glanced to her left. “Look,” she exclaimed.

They were next to a bar. Through the window there was visible a TV hanging from the ceiling. It was turned to a news channel. And on the screen was the memorial service being broadcast live. Herbert read the scroll line at the bottom.

“It’s at Arlington National Cemetery.”

“Point the way.”

“Wait a minute!” Herbert snapped. He was staring at the TV screen as the camera panned the area.

“That’s Alex,” he exclaimed.

Anthony turned to look. Sure enough, there was Alex Ford at the ceremony, obviously on protection duty for the president.

“Hold on,” said Anthony. “Even if you get through to him, you don’t know where the bomb is located.”

“I think I do know.”

Anthony punched the gas while Herbert fingered in the number, praying that his friend would answer.

ALEX FORD STOICALLY SURVEYED the surroundings even as he felt the buzzing in his pocket. He ignored it. No calls or emails on protection duty. They set the ringer to vibrate when around the president. And the texting function had been taken away from their phones altogether. He should have just turned his phone off. He eyed the guests coming through the magnetometer. But before they got there they had to pass through a series of checkpoints and bomb-scanning machines. His gaze swiveled to the bomb detection canines that were examining every person coming to the event. After the explosion in Lafayette Park, the dogs were everywhere and constituted their best line of defense because they were mobile.

His phone buzzed again. He ignored it again. If his boss saw him on the phone when he was supposed to have eyes on possible threats it would not be a pleasant day for him. In fact it would probably be his last day on protection detail.

He eyed the president as he took his seat in the front row. The Mexican president sat down on his left. There were two chairs in between the

leaders. Alex watched as Carmen Escalante was escorted down the aisle, her new braces making virtually no noise when they plunked against the soft earth. Alice Birdman, dressed all in black with a veil covering her face, walked behind Escalante. Birdman’s four children were sitting in the row immediately behind the U.S. president.

The two presidents rose as Escalante and Birdman came down the row. Each man spoke a few words of condolence to the women and then everyone took their seats.

Alex said a small curse as his phone buzzed yet again. He could tell by the tone that this time an email had been posted to his account. He looked around, spotting each member of the protection detail. They were just like him. Impassive features, shades, ear buds, rigid, hands in front, staring, sweeping, trying to ferret out even the possibility of a threat before it could turn into something else, like a bullet or a bomb.

His phone buzzed again. He cursed again, a bit more audibly. He looked around. He could manage it, if he took his time. He edged his hand in his pants pocket, slid the phone slowly upward until just the screen appeared. He thumbed his email icon.

“Great,” he muttered when he saw two new ones, delivered less than a minute apart. Then he saw whom the messages were from.

Oliver Herbert.

He glanced up, to make sure no one was watching him. He looked down again, pushed a couple of buttons. He edged the phone out a little more. He was able to see the screen. The messages popped up. They were each the same. By the time he finished reading one of them the blood had drained from his face and he felt queasy. His fingers hit two keys, o and k. He hit the send key and let the phone fall back in his pocket.

He took a long breath as his gaze slid back to the president, the man he was sworn to protect. He had taken an oath, just like all Secret Service agents, that he would sacrifice his life for this man. A bead of sweat appeared on his forehead and slid down his face.

If his friend was wrong? If he acted and it turned out to be a mistake? His career was probably over. Not because Alex had tried to protect the president. But because he had acted on the intelligence provided by a now disgraced field agent.

Yet sometimes, Alex concluded, you just had to trust your friends. And he did trust Oliver Herbert, like he did no one else.

He spoke into his radio, relaying word for word what he had just learned, leaving out only the source. Then he added the warning that Herbert had provided in his text. “It’s probable that it will be a remote detonation. Any sudden moves on our part and the bomb goes off. We need a distraction or some cover to do this. Otherwise we have no chance to pull this off.”

His supervisor’s voice came through his ear bud. “Ford, are you damn sure about this?”

Alex’s gut clenched as he replied, “Even if I were half sure, we can’t take a risk, sir, can we?”

He heard the man let out a long, tortured breath. He was no doubt doing what Alex had just done, namely contemplate what this might do to his career if it turned out to be wrong.

“God help us all, Ford.”

“Yes sir.”

One minute later the plan was sent across the secure line to every agent. Alex checked his watch. Sixty seconds. He did his best to look calm and professional. Whoever was behind this could easily see where all the agents were. Any hint of something wrong and the bomb could go off.

Since this had all been at Alex’s initiation he had been given the honor of performing the ultimate task. He steeled himself. A routine protection detail had just turned into something else—something all agents had to prepare for and hoped with all their hearts they would never have to face.

Alex counted down the seconds, his gaze moving across the rows of guests, but always flitting back to the president. At the thirty-second mark in the one-minute countdown he started to move. He made his way down the side of the seating areas, as though he were simply doing a perimeter patrol. To his left a pair of agents walked down the other aisle. The plan had been put together on the fly, of course, and they all had to hope it was good enough. Alex eyed the large crypt immediately behind the temporary stage set up for the ceremony. He took another quick breath, trying to keep the adrenaline from ruining his motor skills.

Twenty-second mark.

Alex picked up his pace. He was nearing the row where the president was sitting, but his eyes weren’t on the man. They were on someone else.

At the ten-second mark it happened.

With a yell, a woman who had been walking down the aisle to her seat clutched her chest and fell to the ground. A crush of people immediately surrounded her. The spot of her collapse had been carefully planned. She was in fact a Secret Service agent held in reserve who had been hustled into duty just so she could collapse on cue right next to the president’s row.

The crowd of people gathered around her allowed the inner core protection detail to build a wall around the president, which was normal procedure and would arouse no suspicion. They could do nothing if the bomber decided to detonate at this point, but they didn’t have much choice. There was one gap in this wall and Alex ducked through it by prearrangement. Several agents glanced at him, their jaws locked in both concentration and concern, but Alex’s focus was only on his target.

Carmen Escalante looked frightened. That was a bit reassuring to Alex. If she wasn’t the bomber they might all survive. If she was the bomber she would surely detonate in the next two seconds.

Carmen screamed as he ripped the braces from her arms, but her screams were drowned by the agents yelling out instructions to each other while securing the president and the crowd reacting to this latest development.

Like a rugby player exiting a scrum, Alex emerged from the wall of agents, the braces partly hidden under his jacket. He walked at first, and then when fairly clear of the president’s immediate area he broke into a run. He bulled his way past people in his path, cleared the stage area, pulled the braces from underneath his jacket, wound up and threw them as hard as he could. His target was the area behind the large crypt, which was the best shield they had.

Without looking behind him he knew his colleagues were carrying the president as fast as possible in the opposite direction, running over people if necessary.