Though his eyes burned from the fumes, Bennett saw three men drop to the floor in rapid succession. His heart raced wildly as adrenaline surged through his system.
For an instant he forgot the searing pain in his chest, but he was not proud of what he’d just done. He was operating on pure instinct, the will to survive, but he had still taken human life, and suddenly he began to vomit.
“Forgive me, Lord Jesus. Help me….”
And then it came.
A brilliant flash of white light.
Fire poured forth from a barrel across the room. Bennett tried to bury himself behind the corpse on his lap, but it was not enough. He cried out for McCoy.
And then all was quiet.
She knew instantly that Bennett was hit.
The second she heard her name.
She heard his pistol drop to the floor, then his cry of agony. She wanted to help him, to throw her body over his and take the bullets for him. But the best she could do for the moment was to turn to her left and aim at the man shooting at Bennett. She pulled the trigger and didn’t let go, emptying the entire magazine at the man’s chest.
Two bullets suddenly ripped through her own stomach.
McCoy tried to scream but couldn’t. The machine gun dropped from her hands. She instinctively pulled into a fetal position. She couldn’t think, couldn’t breathe, couldn’t move, and it suddenly dawned on her that if she didn’t bleed to death, it would only be because she would suffocate first.
Ruth Bennett saw the horror unfolding on TV.
She called her son’s cell phone. Like always, however, she got voice mail.
“Johnny, it’s Mom — please call me — even for a moment. I just need to know you’re OK. I love you.”
She hung up and dialed a number she knew by heart: 202-456-1414.
“White House operator; may I help you?”
“This is Ruth Bennett. I need to know if Jon’s OK,” she said, her voice shaking.
“Mrs. Bennett, I’m afraid I don’t have—”
“Then put me through to Bob Corsetti,” she demanded.
“I’m afraid he’s unavailable at the moment; can I—”
Ruth Bennett slammed down the phone and began to cry. All she wanted was to talk to her son. To know that he was safe. To tell him she loved him. Was that really so hard? Wasn’t a mother entitled to that much, at least?
The smoke began to clear.
McCoy was breathing, but she didn’t know how. Her eyes stung and filled with tears. Nevertheless, she counted eight — no, nine — heavily armed paratroopers standing about. But for the moment, at least, they didn’t seem to be worried about her.
But what about Bennett? Was he still there? Was he still alive?
She couldn’t turn her head. She couldn’t move at all. Someone had gathered the weapons. She could see them laid out on the floor on the other side of the room. There was no way to reach them, of course, and they’d certainly been stripped of any remaining ammo.
A fire raged inside McCoy’s stomach. She was soaked with sweat and blood and was shaking. She closed her eyes and tried to quiet her breathing.
“The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want,” she prayed quietly. “He makes me lie down in green pastures; He leads me beside quiet waters. He restores…”
She heard footsteps coming down the hall — two sets, maybe three. They were hard and purposeful and coming her way.
Using every ounce of energy she had left, she reopened her eyes and tried to focus. A shock of fear rippled through her body.
She was staring at the faces of Sergei Ilyushkin and Mohammed Jibril. She recognized Ilyushkin instantly, and she knew Jibril from CIA briefings and the FBI’s Most Wanted List. She would have gasped out loud, but no sound came out.
Jibril’s eyes were cold and lifeless. Ilyushkin’s were wild with demonic delight. Neither spoke to her. Instead, both turned and crossed the room.
“Open that door,” Ilyushkin ordered his men.
Within moments, President Vadim would be in these men’s hands. So would control of ten thousand nuclear warheads.
Guilt consumed McCoy. Why hadn’t she held her fire for these two?
It was foolishness, she knew. She and Bennett could never have retained the element of surprise that long, but still…
“He restores my soul; He guides me in the paths of…”
McCoy watched Jibril kick in the doors to Zyuganov’s office. She knew what was coming next. Ilyushkin towered over his victims and taunted them.
McCoy kept praying softly.
“He guides me in the paths of righteousness for His name’s sake. Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil….”
No one else said a word. Even the gunfire outside had stopped.
“Any last words?” Ilyushkin asked, his voice raw with vengeance.
“… for You are with me; Your rod and Your staff, they comfort me….”
The room was still.
All McCoy could hear was her own heart pounding wildly. She knew she and Bennett were next, if he was even still alive. That’s just how revolutions were done — in Russia, anyway.
“Very well,” said Ilyushkin with disgust. “I believe you all know Mohammed Jibril, at least by reputation. Mohammed, would you do the honors?”
“Of course,” Jibril said in Russian. “It would be a pleasure.”
Someone cried out, “Oh no — please, no.”
McCoy couldn’t see who it was. It sounded like Golitsyn.
“You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies; You have anointed my head with oil; my cup overflows….”
“Turn around,” Jibril grunted. “On your knees.”
“Surely goodness and lovingkindness will follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.”
Bennett heard Jibril chamber a round.
His mind was racing. Was there nothing he could do? Someone was talking — whispering, actually — though he couldn’t make out the words.
It sounded like McCoy.
Bennett slowly turned back to the right despite the excruciating pain. McCoy’s face was gray, her eyes at half-mast. She seemed barely conscious, but she was saying something. What was it?
The room shook with the explosion of the first round.
Bennett turned quickly to see who’d been shot, but two of Jibril’s men stepped in behind Ilyushkin, blocking Bennett’s view.
Then came the second round.
And then a third.
“Mr. President, you need to see this.”
MacPherson was in the Oval Office, on the phone with Jack Mitchell at CIA, but there was something in the voice of his chief of staff that made him turn his head instantly.
He hung up and followed Corsetti into the chief of staff’s adjoining office. Corsetti gestured toward the television on the far wall. And there, broadcast live to the whole world, was a Russian tank moving down Moscow’s main thoroughfare, amid all the flames and carnage of the last two days.
It was Sunday evening in the Russian capital. The rebels claimed to have the upper hand, and few were disputing them.
But what had the world glued to their sets now was an elderly Russian woman, at least seventy or seventy-five years old. She was standing in the center of Tverskaya Boulevard, throwing rocks at a tank as it rumbled toward her, unyielding.
When the old woman ran out of rocks, she shook her fist at the tank, screaming at the top of her lungs, and suddenly, the tank stopped.