Choppers thundered overhead. Army vehicles screeched to a halt at hastily erected police barriers all around the Circle. Like gasoline on fire, this was a situation fast raging out of control. Drake pursued the fleeing group, Dahl and Alicia at his side. When he turned to them he noticed, for the first time since she’d returned, the fresh scars on Alicia’s face.
“Looks like you put up a major battle.”
Alicia’s eyes were windows looking onto a black death. “These,” she said, rubbing a hand across her cheeks. “I’m proud of.”
Drake jumped off a curb, now crossing the road. The fires of dread burned bright in his heart. They couldn’t care for all of their people right now. He couldn’t care for them. Not even Mai. Sometimes silence was seen as inaction, but today it was an imperative.
The five-man terrorist group ran carefully but quickly alongside buildings. If the President was one of them, then he was under a constant threat of some kind. Drake rounded a corner, ducking back as gray stone exploded where bullets struck. Another team member went down, wounded.
“Orders?” the team leader repeated into his comms. “What are my orders?”
Kovalenko’s men slowed alongside the big hospital building and threw a grenade at a shop front, blowing out the doors and proving they had more than just guns in their arsenal. The team charged inside. Drake pulled up close by, noticing the green Starbucks sign.
“This part of their plan?”
“Good friggin’ idea,” Alicia said. “An extra-hot latte might just save my bollocks from freezing off out here.”
One of the other team members studied her strangely, as if wondering whether to call her on that one. Wisely, he held his peace and looked away. Drake listened as the team leader consulted a digital blueprint on his handheld scanner.
“Shop exits onto a parallel street,” he said. “Yeah, they planned this one.”
The soldiers dashed inside, knocking over chairs and metal tables. Almost without thought, Dahl grabbed a handful of caramel waffles as he passed a big brown wicker basket, throwing one each to his colleagues. The mirror-clean pastry case was empty. Once through the café they exited onto a narrow street just in time to see Kovalenko’s men blowing their way into another shop.
“We have them,” the team leader reported. “They’re not exactly trying to hide their movements.”
Drake glanced at Dahl. This wasn’t right. Kovalenko’s men couldn’t do this all day. It felt more as if they were waiting for something to happen.
Something big.
Drake entered the next shop on the escapees’ boot-heels, surprised to find it was a large bookstore. They quickly crossed the open-plan area where big publishers paid small fortunes for their books to be stacked on tables designed to attract the eye and the wallet of incoming, unwitting consumers — the nearer the door the more expensive the table — and started to thread through the high stacked shelves beyond. With a high-pitched whistle, bullets began to thud and fly into the bookshelves, shredding wooden surrounds and paper pages alike. Drake hit the deck as books fell and spun all around him. One of the larger cases, shredded, collapsed into a tumbling pile, shedding heaps of mashed up books like trickling sand. The team leader muttered into his headset.
“Keep ‘em in sight,” came through the comms system.
“Taking heavy fire!”
“All these freakin’ books,” Alicia put in. “Don’t they sell Kindles in Washington?”
“Apparently,” Dahl said, inching forward on his elbows. “Some people still prefer paper.”
“Dinosaurs in a digital age,” Alicia said.
Dahl laughed. Drake peered around the edge of a sturdy looking bookcase. Paper still fluttered all around, fighting clouds of dust for airspace. The rear of the store was empty.
“Go.”
Running again, Team Bravo was now down to a total of five. None of the men they had left behind were seriously injured, but all had sustained some kind of wound. The damaged bookshop exited through a constricted back door which led to an alleyway, still within the shadow of the George Washington University Hospital building. The Blood King’s men were already racing along the alley’s length, heading for the sliver of daylight that beckoned from its far end like the exit of a tunnel. Drake could see men running parallel along the rooftops above, tracking the runaways.
The team took off in pursuit, using dirty doorways and grimy dumpsters to duck behind when they came under fire. Bullets clanged and fizzed from every surface. At one point they were forced to take cover behind a big Dodge truck. Drake shook his head sadly as gunfire riddled its front end.
Alicia noticed the gesture. “For fucksake, Drake. Don’t worry. It’s not one of those Cobra things.”
“You mean an AC Cobra.” Drake glared. “Like the one you shot up in Hawaii.”
“Whatever.”
The alley gave onto another wide thoroughfare. By the time Team Bravo reached daylight, Kovalenko’s men were over a hundred yards ahead, but it was immediately apparent where they were heading.
“Metro,” someone said. “Shit.”
“Metro’s closed,” the team leader said. “Don’t worry.”
Drake raced on. Something was coming and rushing headlong toward them at a terrible pace, but what?
CHAPTER THIRTY THREE
Kinimaka knew instantly that Hayden was dying, bleeding to death, and that he only had one chance to save her life. Everything came down to this. All his training, every scrap of his experience. Act fast. Push everything else aside and work like he’d never worked before.
He would still have to go through the motions, but following those procedures saved lives more often than not. The new gunshot wound underneath Hayden’s heart was a through and through; it appeared not to have rattled around inside her body since the entrance and exit wounds were in perfect alignment, but sometimes even that assumption had been proved to be a mistake. Kinimaka had known bullets chew people up inside, bouncing from bone to bone, and still line up when they came out.
Her airway was fine; she was breathing raggedly and even muttering. Her eyes were bright, so bright they made his heart lurch and his nerves rattle. Kinimaka felt such a rush of anxiety and love he began to doubt his ability and almost stopped what he was doing to call Smyth to take over. But no, this was Hayden. His boss and his friend for so long, now his lover.
But battlefield medicine was about as precise as the name suggested. He recognized she was strong enough to place her hands over the wound to control the bleeding, and laid her out in the back seat.
“Drive steady,” he told Smyth.
Then he turned back to Hayden. “Hold your hands tightly here. I know it hurts. Press, Hay, just press.”
As she groaned, Kinimaka looked around for something to make a seal. The first thing he saw in the rear footwell of their stolen car was a CVC plastic bag — not good enough, but inside it were several items. Quickly he tore open a package and grabbed the plastic, placing it over the wound. There was no tape around so Kinimaka forced Hayden to hold it in place. Using a plastic seal this way slowed the bleeding and helped prevent the development of a collapsed lung. It would ensure that, if she came out of this okay, she would have every chance to get better without some kind of disability. He wrapped her up warm, minimizing any exposure, and let her lie in the most comfortable position.
Karin stared over the back of her seat. “Don’t elevate her legs, Mano. She’ll bleed easier.”
Kinimaka bit his tongue. He knew that, but Karin was only trying to help. “Thanks.”