Tanner took a step closer to the POTUS. “Stay calm, please. Our team was dispatched hours ago with the antidote. I’ve just been in contact with my base of operations and they are en route now from Portland International.”
“How soon until they get here?” Carmichael demanded. He pulled at his shirt collar.
“Should be about five minutes, Mr. President.”
“Five…minutes…” Carmichael muttered, lost in thought. Then suddenly he came back with, “How will they get out here? Do they know where to go?”
Tanner smiled. “They know where to go, and let’s just say that they’re trained to find a way.”
Around them they could hear labored breathing as the STX began to manifest itself. Tanner spun away from the president and contacted Danielle again on their comm system.
“Can I get an updated sitrep? Dozens infected here including Liam, myself, and the Chief.” The Chief was the codename they used for the president.
Danielle’s voice came back sounding grim. “Tanner, bad news. Naomi, Stephen and Dante are in Boothbay, but they’ve been detained by law enforcement. “
FIFTY-TWO
“Let us through. We’re trying to save the life of President Carmichael!” Stephen Shah pleaded with the line of cops who guarded the most direct route down to the waterfront. There were other ways to get to the harbor that the OUTCAST operators could have taken to skirt the law enforcement presence, but none of them would allow them to reach the yacht in time. Instead they had tried to sneak through the line of policemen, each of the three of them carrying one third of the antidote in case only one of them could make it through. But none of them had.
Then they had all been subject to a physical search, and because all of them were found with the same fluid-filled syringes, they were suspected as terrorists. As one cop started to cuff Dante’s hands behind his back, the ex-Secret Service agent eyed Shah. They had to do something or the president would die within minutes. Tanner would die. Liam…
As the cop bent down to cinch the cuffs on Dante’s wrists, the field operative smashed his elbow into the officer’s nose, shattering it into a fountain of blood. Dante took off running down the hill toward the waterfront. Another cop standing next to the fallen one raised his service pistol to shoot, and Shah gave a karate chop to his arm, sending the weapon careening to the ground. “Run, Dante!”
And run he did, maintaining an erratic zig-zag pattern down the hill, a couple of shots from other officers missing wildly. On the way down he paused to roll in front of a tree for cover here, a metal trash can, there. Still, a phalanx of cops took off after him while two more wrestled Shah to the ground. Nay stood cuffed in the hands of a female officer, saying nothing, but observing everything. She remained very calm.
“We’re for real,” she said to the cop who had her in custody. “The syringes we carry are full of the antidote that can save the lives of all the people infected by the nerve agent the terrorists used.”
The woman’s reply was icily detached. “Until that can be verified, we have no choice but to detain you.”
Just then a squad car drove up and the uniformed driver jumped out. He walked over to the line of officers. “You have three detainees with chemicals?”
A cop approached him and pointed down the hill, then to Stephen and Naomi.
“I just received verified orders from the Secret Service to not only let them go, but to escort them personally to the president’s yacht. Let’s move!’
Stephen and Naomi were put into the back of the police car with their backpacks. Stephen wondered for a moment if this was a ploy to get them into the car without a fight, but he figured they wouldn’t let them have their bags if that was the case. With sirens and lights on, they barreled down the hill until they saw Dante, sprinting across a walkway to the water’s edge. He looked around frantically, as if deciding his next move. He looked back, saw the cop car, then began scanning the water in front of him as though he was planning on diving in.
“Let me talk to him,” Stephen urged the two cops up front, one of whom had picked up the microphone to the squad car’s PA system. He stretched the microphone on its cord to the back seat where Shah clutched it.
“Dante! Dante it’s us, Stephen and Nay. It’s okay! They got the message. They’re giving us an escort! Jump in.” Dante began running to the police car.
“How do we get out to the yacht?” Naomi squinted into the sun to look at the majestic vessel still at anchor in the harbor.
“Police boat at a dock up ahead,” the officer driving answered.
“I see the dock but I don’t see a boat.” Dante pointed ahead.
The other officer turned around, holding up the radio transmitter. “It’s on the way. In fact…” He faced front again and looked out to the right. “…here it comes now.”
A rigid hull inflatable boat with a metal wheelhouse sped toward the dock.
The squad car driver pulled up to the dock and addressed the trio of operators in his backseat. “Go, go, go! They’re waiting.”
Stephen had the door open and was outside the car before the officer finished his sentence, with Naomi and Dante close on his heels. Each wore a small backpack. They ran to the dock, arriving just as the boat pulled alongside. It was manned by two officers, one driving and one on deck. The one driving spun it around expertly so that it was next to the dock but facing out ready to take off again.
The deck officer waved them aboard while the boat’s engines idled, the water churned to foamy froth by the pilot’s skilled maneuvering while he waited for his unexpected passengers to board.
The three OUTCAST operators jumped aboard and the deck officer urged them to grab a handhold as the pilot accelerated. Seconds later they were hydroplaning, the twin two hundred horsepower outboard motors pushing them along at almost sixty miles per hour toward the stricken yacht full of VIPs.
Stephen saw the boat pilot pick up his radio transmitter and say something into it. The engine noise was too loud to let him hear the words, but he guessed he was alerting the yacht’s bridge that they were dropping off passengers who would deliver the antidote.
The pilot brought the police craft to the yacht’s rear boarding ladder, at the top of which waited a couple of Secret Service agents. Dante, Naomi and Stephen climbed up onto the yacht.
“Stephen!” Shah heard Tanner’s voice and whipped his head to the right.
“Tanner!”
The OUTCAST leader waved a hand. “This way. Hurry!”
He began to run, Dante and Naomi behind him, the Secret Service guys escorting them along the way.
Tanner was waiting in a knot of people, at the center of which was President Carmichael. The leader of the free world knelt on the deck, hunched over like a sick person. And sick he was. Tanner pointed to him. “Him first.”
“Do we have a medic?” Stephen ripped off his backpack and unzipped it. He removed one of the syringes — each containing a single human dose according to Jasmijn’s final instructions, and held it up.
“We have a ship’s doctor,” one of the Secret Service men said, indicating a tall, very harried-looking man with close-cropped black hair, wearing a white doctor’s coat. He came forward.
“I can administer the shots,” he said, looking Stephen squarely in the eye. He spoke rapidly but clearly. “I understand time elapsed is critical at this point. We’ve already lost some people. Any special instructions?” he asked, eyeballing the syringe and tapping it with a finger to eliminate air bubbles.