“Covered,” he yelled when he hung up.
“Good. Let’s go.” Shield placed her Glock in its holster at her belt.
They were soon in the underbelly of the White House, heading down a long hallway. The president and Moore, engrossed in a whispered conversation, waited at the tunnel door at the end. Thomas was casually dressed for a change. She’d probably grabbed a comfortable outfit in case she needed to stay in the hospital with her father.
Suddenly, as they neared, Thomas rubbed her face and then kicked the wall. Shield had never seen her this upset. “We’re good to go, Madam President,” she said when she reached them. “We’ll get you to the hospital as fast as possible.”
Thomas nodded once and looked away. Moore put his arm around her shoulders. “He’ll pull through. I know he will,” he said comfortingly.
Shield unlocked the door to the tunnel. “Security is waiting at the exit.”
“Good,” Moore replied. “Let me know his condition,” he told Thomas as he released her, “and if there’s anything I can do for your family.”
So Moore wasn’t joining them for a change. She couldn’t be happier that it was strictly family; Thomas could do with some time away from the idiot. Shield entered the tunnel first, with Thomas right behind her. Jason covered them from the back.
The concrete-and-steel tunnel was well lit, but tomb quiet and barren except for a trio of golf carts parked off to one side. Massive steel doors, all closed, lined both sides for the first few hundred feet. From her briefing and tour when she’d become primary, Shield knew this section of tunnel under the East Wing was the rarely used side—full of storage rooms and bunkers, primarily—all survival-scenario stuff. The stretch under the West Wing was busy virtually twenty-four hours a day now as they worked to finish the adjacent new Deep Underground Command Center.
Shield headed toward one of the golf carts and got behind the wheel. Jason sat beside the president in the rear seat, and they sped toward the exit. Shield remembered from her briefing that this tunnel came out in a wooded field five miles northwest of the capital.
“Few more minutes and you’ll be on your way,” Shield said over her shoulder when the exit door came into view a short time later.
“I guess.”
What a strange answer. Shield parked the cart some yards from the exit and they got out. She led the way, with Thomas behind her and Jason covering the rear. “I’ll be with you for the duration of your stay at the hospital.”
“I…I figured,” Thomas replied shakily. “You don’t have to, though. I’m sure Jason is enough for now. Why don’t you go back to bed and join me in the morning? I’m sure I’ll be staying there way into tomorrow.”
Another strange thing to say. What was going on? Thomas knew she couldn’t go back, even if she wanted to. She was the primary.
“Looks like we’ll have to skip our planned tennis match for tomorrow,” the president said.
Shield stopped cold. No game was scheduled for tomorrow. She pulled her Glock and pivoted to face Thomas. They were two feet from the exit. “Jason, we’re turning around.”
Jason, still behind the president, yanked out his Sauer P229 pistol as he smoothly pulled Thomas into a headlock. He kept his face low, shielded by the president’s. “One move and she’s dead.” He pointed the gun under Thomas’s chin. “Now!” he yelled.
“What the—”
Before she could finish, the exit opened from the other side and three men in black ski masks rushed in, all with guns aimed at her and Thomas.
“Put your weapon down,” one of them said, and pressed the end of his automatic against Shield’s temple.
That son of a bitch Moore was behind this, or the tunnel would be swarming with security. He had to have made sure all the cameras were deactivated. How many in the White House were involved?
Shield hesitated. She was taught to never surrender her weapon. She turned slowly to Thomas, who stood stone still, fear evident in her eyes.
“Harper, put it down,” the president said.
“Look, bitch, I can take you out now. Same to me,” the guy beside her said in a thick accent. Probably Russian, she thought.
“Please. These people are crazy,” Thomas pleaded. “Trust me.”
“Trust you?” Shield said. “You know them?”
Thomas nodded.
“Bitch, somebody’s about to get their blood mopped,” another of the masked intruders said, and cocked his gun against Thomas’s head. He had the same accent as the other. “Our cleaners can take care of it when they’re done.”
“Cleaners…done with what?” Shield asked calmly, puzzled with this surreal conversation.
“Do it,” Thomas screamed.
Shield discharged the magazine. The clatter of it on the floor made Thomas jump.
“Let’s go, suka.” The guy beside Shield kicked the magazine to his associate and grabbed her by the arm. “Clear,” he shouted.
Seconds later, two more men in masks appeared at the dark entrance, with what appeared to be a woman between them. When they stepped into the light of the tunnel, Shield gasped.
She looked from the woman, to Thomas, and back again. “What the hell—”
The new arrival was a bit heavier, but that was the only visible physical difference. She was dressed in a pantsuit identical to the one shown all over the media the day of the assassination attempt. The double looked at Thomas with disgust. “Tell your people they did an admirable job recreating me.” She stepped closer, and the two men holding her moved with her, until the two women stood almost nose to nose. “But as is the case with all imitations, the interior is always inferior.”
The woman Shield had been guarding started to respond, but the newcomer wasn’t finished. “I want my wedding ring back.”
“I left it by your bed,” the look-alike in the jeans and T-shirt replied. “I’m so sorry. They didn’t give me a choice.”
“There’s always a choice, even if it’s death.”
The double stared at her feet, her expression one of shame and embarrassment.
“I can’t stand to look at her,” the newcomer said. “Take her the hell away.”
Jason escorted the new arrival—obviously the real Elizabeth Thomas—back toward the golf cart, while the masked men shoved Shield and the look-alike roughly out the exit and into the night.
Chapter Twenty-nine
Washington, D.C.
Jack was blindfolded during her transfer to the private plane that transported them to their final destination, so it wasn’t until the aircraft descended some hours later that she was finally able to orient herself to where the hell she was. Looking out the Gulfstream’s window, she spotted the Washington Monument in the distance, the pale obelisk starkly illuminated against the night sky by spotlights.
Bill, the tall, thickly built goon that TQ had appointed as her escort, led her to a white panel van when they landed and got behind the wheel. They headed out of the city, traveling northeast toward Baltimore. Freeway traffic was so sparse at that early hour Jack realized immediately they were being followed. Because Bill had to know it too, and was unconcerned, that could only mean that the dark sedan tailing them held associates—two of them, from their silhouettes. TQ was obviously being careful to make sure everything went off without a hitch.
Jack had been warned she’d have someone with her for the job itself, but the fact that more of TQ’s people were along in another car threw a wrench in her plan. TQ wanted her to off some civilian and an EOO op, or else Cass would be killed on the spot. Jack’s priority was Cass, but to kill another op even though she no longer worked for the organization was beyond even her morals. She’d come close once before, when she’d been working for a dirty politician.