“We will kill him, if you don’t open up right now,” said a man who sounded like he was trying to affect a Middle Eastern accent — and failing miserably.
He pounded the door with the butt of his gun. Lana saw this on the screen, but barely heard the impact through the thick steel. She studied the features beneath the ski masks, searching for any evidence of beards. No billowing at all.
“Don’t open it,” Robin said in a barely audible voice.
Lana wouldn’t have, regardless. You never negotiated someone else’s release by offering yourself, but she didn’t recall from security briefings that a terrorist or money-grubbing criminal would — without further warning — shoot an FBI agent in the foot to demonstrate his viciousness.
Excruciating pain twisted Robin’s face. Lana saw him grinding his teeth but he didn’t make a sound. The gunman who’d shot him in the foot now offered a warning: “His knee is next. Then his balls.”
In his excitement, he’d abandoned any attempt at an accent. Which made her sick with worry about Emma.
Where is she? They’d do the same to her daughter if they got their hands on her. And where’s Don?
She hoped Emma was climbing out a window, running away as fast as she could. Lana could do nothing to protect her, not from in here, although she knew without question — or hesitation — that she’d give herself up for her daughter, no matter how fruitless the move might be.
But there was absolutely nothing she could do for Robin. Open the door and the gunmen would sell her to ISIS as fast as possible, and then those killers would do whatever they found necessary to drain every last secret of U.S. intelligence to which she’d ever been privy — along with her last pint of blood.
Good to his word, the eager gunman blew Robin’s knee apart on screen. Robin now howled and writhed in agony, still held tightly by the men.
The high-caliber bullet left a gaping wound in the agent’s leg.
And the gunman now pressed his weapon to Robin’s crotch.
With $100 million on the line, Lana couldn’t believe they’d shoot off his scrotum. Blood loss would likely kill him in minutes — and their chance at a monstrous payday. But the intruders were agitated, screaming for her to open the door: “We know you’re in there, bitch!”
She stared at the screen. The gunman had his eyes on his pistol, jamming it harder into Robin’s crotch. Then Lana glimpsed Don’s shadow fall on the rubble in the living room. His arms rose into view, a two-handed stance with the semi-automatic that Deputy Director Holmes had finessed for him. Don fired two fast head shots, spilling both gunmen to the floor, their last dying move.
Robin fell against the door to the safe room, barely holding himself up. Lana pulled out her phone again and called back 911: “FBI agent’s down. Shot in the foot and knee. Major blood loss.”
Don helped Robin from the door. Lana threw it open as a Bethesda police officer ran into the living room.
“Put down your gun!” he yelled at Don.
“He just saved an FBI agent’s life,” Lana shouted, pointing to Don, who dropped his weapon anyway.
Without lowering his own gun, the officer called for help.
Robin flashed his FBI badge at the cop. “He’s a good guy.” Then he looked at Lana. “You did right.” The agent’s pain was so grievous that he spoke through a locked jaw.
She thanked him for saving her. “I’m so sorry I couldn’t do anything for you.”
“He did fine,” Robin managed, glancing at Don who was reaching with his free hand to clear debris that had been blown onto the couch. He eased the agent down onto a dusty cushion as Lana shuffled away, shouting for Emma, grateful she hadn’t tried to engage in any heroics like Don.
But after searching every corner of the house, she limped back into the bombed-out living room, accepting that Emma was gone, probably long before the shootings. The final clue was the absence of her phone.
She tried calling her. Got her voicemail.
Then she saw Cairo, draped in dust, but trying to stand. She rushed to help him; but when he growled, she kept her distance.
The old dog rose on his own and shook off the dust, as he might water from a splash in a lake. He took hesitant steps, as if taking inventory of his injuries, the way she would if she’d just regained consciousness. And then Cairo regained his stride and started sniffing, back on the job. Lana guessed it wasn’t the first time he’d found himself in the midst of an explosion. No more rattled by the experience than you’d expect from a grizzled old war vet.
Lana returned to her study and turned on her computer. The power had gone out briefly before the back-up batteries kicked in. It took her only a few minutes to discover that Emma had deactivated her “find my phone” app. Lana had installed the secure connection on her phone, so she needed only a couple minutes more to reconfigure it and switch the locator on.
With EMTs and a trauma doctor crowding the living room, Lana found Emma’s phone in downtown Baltimore. She used Google Earth to comb the area, searching for what might have attracted her daughter. The answer came in seconds: Planned Parenthood. There it stood, bold as brick.
Not sick, Lana thought as her own belly roiled in recognition of Emma’s plight: Pregnant.
Lana tried calling her again. Still no answer.
What about Sufyan?
She started to work on his phone, finding immediately that it had security protections, probably installed by Tahir.
She called Galina, rousting the Russian from bed, and put her on the task. Galina had already followed Tahir’s breach of the NSA so she was aware of the Sudanese’s techniques. Then Lana looked at her watch and saw that she had all of a minute before her videoconference with William Evanson.
She linked quickly to a secure server for the White House, to the extent that any lines of communication were actually safe anymore.
The chief of staff was not yet present. “He’s with the President,” Evanson’s personal assistant informed her. Like his boss, the young man had worked on the President’s campaign staff.
Lana started to tell him about the attack on her home, but was interrupted by Evanson’s appearance.
“We heard,” the chief of staff said, settling in. “You’re okay, and your husband is the man of the hour.”
“Yes,” Lana replied, realizing that Don had saved the life of the only man she’d cared about romantically in his absence.
“So what’s so critical that you requested the President’s time?”
Lana took a deep breath, knowing every word counted because anyone seeking the chief of staff’s time got about twenty seconds to make her case: “I wanted him to know that interim Deputy Director Marigold Winters is back-channeling a request to Senator Bob Ray Willens. He’s threatening to cancel medical care for Galina Bortnik’s cancer-stricken daughter, if her mother doesn’t go to work for the NSA.”
“And how do you know this?”
“I have her email.”
“Don’t make me ask the obvious,” Evanson said.
“You know perfectly well that’s privileged information.”
“You’re talking to me, Ms. Elkins.”
What an imperious ass. “I am because I know that you know what an egregious abuse of power this is and how poorly it could reflect on this administration, were it to be revealed.”
“Are you threatening us with its disclosure?”
“Of course not. But if I got my hands on it — and I did not hack either party — then others might get it as well.”