The officer unholstered his pistol and laid it on the concrete floor, then took his radio from its holster on the opposite hip, unclipped the shoulder mic, and laid them on the floor.
“Your security badge.”
He took it off and laid it down.
“Turn around and walk away. If you shout for help, I will shoot you, and trust me, Soldier, I’m an expert marksman.”
“No way in hell are you getting out of here.”
“You’re probably right, and you can take credit for slowing me down. Go, and don’t look back.”
The officer hesitated for just a moment, but then turned around and headed toward the opposite side of the long garage.
Alex picked up his radio and badge, and then followed him just to where her car was parked. Making sure he wasn’t turning around, she got behind the wheel, started the car, and headed for the up ramp.
At that moment a klaxon blared.
She raced the rest of the way up to the exit just as the security barriers began rising from the floor.
A security officer stepped into view in the middle of the driveway.
Without slowing down, she aimed directly for him.
At the last moment he leaped aside, and she passed over the barriers, one of them ripping out her catalytic converter and muffler, and she was outside and free.
She had worked out this scenario before, and in fact, three years ago she had taken a drive around the campus, figuring out ways to get to the rear of the campus, via Colonial Farm Road, which connected through to an automatic gate that then led to Highway 193.
The gate would be locked down for her badge, of course, but she had Soldier’s.
THIRTY-FIVE
Page was on the phone with Bob Blankenship, the CIA’s chief of security. He put a hand over the mouthpiece. “She just made it out of the garage,” he told McGarvey. “We’ll have her at the main gate.”
“Give those guys the heads-up that she’s armed,” Pete said, coming in from the outer office.
“Stand by.”
“She had a pistol of some kind attached to the bottom of one of the drawers in her desk. She must have heard what we were saying, because she was in a big hurry. She got her gun but didn’t close the drawer.”
“No,” Schermerhorn said. “She wants us to know she’s carrying. She’s thumbing her nose at us because she has a plan.”
“Excuse me,” McGarvey said, and took the phone from Page. “Bob, Kirk McGarvey. She’s armed, but she won’t try for the main gate. Did any of your officers have a one-on-one encounter with her?”
“Tom Soldier in the parking garage just a minute or so ago. She disarmed him, but she didn’t shoot him.”
“Did she take his security badge?”
“Yeah, and his radio, but she left his sidearm on the floor.”
“No one got hurt?”
“No.”
“Stay off the radio. She’s going to try for the back gate, using your security officer’s badge, which I assume hasn’t been locked out.”
“Shit,” Blankenship said. “I have two people back there.”
“Tell them not to approach her, or she will shoot.”
“Can’t use the radio, so what do you want me to do? Write them a letter?”
“Radio them. But have the Virginia state police a block off one ninety-three and one twenty-three a couple of miles either side of the gate. If she gets out, she’ll try to commandeer a car or truck.”
“I’m on it,” Blankenship said. “But she’s just the DCI’s secretary, for Christ’s sake.”
“She was an NOC and a damned good one, from what I’m told. How soon can we get a couple of choppers in the air in case she abandons her car and tries to make it through the fence on foot?”
“At least fifteen minutes.”
“Too late. Tell your people to watch themselves.”
“This is unbelievable,” Page said. “Are you sure she’s the right one?”
“No. But she did take off with a gun she’d hidden in her desk, and she disarmed a security officer.”
“She didn’t kill him, did she?”
“No.”
“Why not?” Page asked.
“I’m going to ask her when I pick her up,” McGarvey said. “Roy’s coming with me.”
“Do I get a gun again?”
“Not this time.”
“What about me?” Pete asked.
“I want you to organize someplace secure here on campus for an interrogation. And I do mean secure. At least four people for muscle, and I want it done within the next half hour or less.”
“If she’s as tough as Roy thinks she is, it may take a while to get through to her.”
“Stock the cupboard,” McGarvey said.
Out in the corridor, he and Schermerhorn raced down to the stairwell. Several people out in the hallway moved aside as they passed. None of them knew exactly what was going on, but several of them recognized McGarvey and figured that if the former DCI was in such a hurry, whatever was happening to cause the lockdown had to be big.
“Unit two, copy?”
The radio on the passenger seat next to Alex had fallen silent — until now.
“Two, copy.”
“It’s possible she’s going to try to talk her way through the main gate. I want you to get over there ASAP. Take up position down on the Parkway in case she does manage to get through.”
“We’ll have to take the long way.”
“Hustle.”
Alex pulled off the road a hundred yards from the back gate, just as two men got into a Company SUV and drove off. It didn’t smell right to her. First there’d been a lot of radio chatter, then nothing, and finally the last exchange. It was a setup, of course. By now they would have notified the Virginia state police to block off 193 and 123 on either side of the gate. And it was also possible, though she wasn’t sure of the technical requirements, that the rear gate had been locked down even for security personnel.
“If you start to get sentimental, you might just as well write your will,” Bertie Russell had told them before they’d headed to Iraq. “Let it take over, and you’ll end up dead meat.”
Alex could not remember ever hearing any remark of his that could have been the least positive. But he’d always been right. And he’d been the only man in her life she hadn’t been able to seduce.
Just before Germany she’d gone to his quarters on the Farm, carrying two glasses and a bottle of Veuve Clicquot, an inexpensive but decent champagne. It was after midnight, but he had been awake, and he answered almost as if he had been expecting her.
“Couldn’t sleep,” she said.
He was in a pair of gym shorts and a T-shirt. She was in sweats, nothing on underneath, and it was obvious.
He laughed a little. “I prefer Dom Pérignon, actually.”
“Not on my salary,” she said. And remembering the incident now, even in the middle of everything from last night and this morning, she’d been embarrassed at that moment. She’d felt shabby. Even cheap.
He’d shrugged. “Go back to your quarters, Alex. Get some sleep. We’re shipping out in the morning right after our final briefing.”
“I can sleep just as easily in your bed as in mine.”
“Go home.”
“What? Are you a eunuch?”
“No, just discriminating,” he’d said.
He was the only man who’d ever turned her down who she hadn’t wanted to kill. And she’d thought about him almost every day, wanting to try again, except he was dead. Only bits and pieces of him — nothing much identifiable as human — had ever been brought back for burial or cremation or whatever had happened in the end.
She powered the window down and searched the sky. They would have choppers up before long, looking for her on foot. Blankenship would know by now that she would try to make her way out the back gate. It was the obvious reason he’d broken radio silence.