Page 43 of Hawk on the Hunt

“Are you saying…” He shook his head. “He never told me! I’m not part of that. I was never told about any of that. I was just a small cog in the machine. Insignificant.” He was babbling now, clearly trying to downplay his part in the scheme.

Yankee looked at Fox, who’d already pulled out a small device from his bag of tricks. “Start scanning the place, just in case he resists torture.” Not that Bancroft looked like he could take a lot of pain, but even as a man working in CIA management, he would have had basic training.

“Torture? No, no, don’t!” He lifted his hands. “I know nothing. You must believe me.”

Fox wandered around the room, the device in his hand making a steady beeping sound.

“Must I? I don’t think so.” Yankee leaned over him and pressed his gun underneath Bancroft’s chin again, driving it up into the soft tissue. “You don’t give the orders here. Now tell me how the bomb in the coffin will be triggered.”

“I don’t know,” Bancroft whimpered. “I don’t know anything about a trigger. Or a bomb.”

“I think he’s telling the truth,” Fox suddenly interrupted at the same time as his device began to emit a high-pitched sound.

Yankee looked over his shoulder, and saw Fox crouching down in front of the fireplace. He couldn’t see what Fox was inspecting. “What is it?”

Fox turned his head. “A bomb. With what looks like a timer.”

Bancroft gasped, and Yankee turned back to him. “Looks like your boss is tying up loose ends.”

“That fucker!” Bancroft choked out. “That’s why he told me to stay home today. So he could kill me. I’m gonna nail his ass. He’s not gonna get away with this!”

Yankee couldn’t pity the man. He’d had it coming, and for all he cared, they could just tie him up here and let fate run its course. But he’d only ever killed in self-defense, or to prevent a catastrophe. After all these years of living on the run, he still had scruples. And they were rearing their head now.

“How much time do we have?” Yankee asked without looking back at Fox.

“Twenty-seven minutes.”

24

Zara ushered Dylan and Tiger toward another set of stairs. “This way.”

Moments earlier, Tiger had reported that Fox and Yankee had overpowered Bancroft at his home. The man who was working together with Senator Johnson wouldn’t be able to detonate the bombs at the Capitol and in the coffin arriving at Joint Base Andrews, if he indeed had the trigger.

Dylan finally finished his call with Michelle, and shoved his cell phone back in his pocket. “The plane with the coffin just landed. I told Michelle to call in a bomb threat. We have no other choice. Polo might detonate it just out of spite if he knows that we thwarted his plan to kill the president and the VP.”

“Good point,” Tiger commented.

“You think he would do that? Detonate the bomb out of spite?” Zara asked, shivering at the thought of how evil Senator Johnson had to be to be capable of such a deed.

“I wouldn’t put it past him. When I met him—”

“You met him? When?” Zara whipped her head to stare at Dylan, while they continued walking up the stairs, surprised at his claim.

“Yeah, when I was first recruited by the CIA. Frankly, the guy gave me the creeps.”

“He always seemed pleasant in the office,” she mused.

“Psychopaths learn to disguise their true nature. They can be very charming when they want to. They can fool a lot of people,” Dylan answered.

The events of the past few days played in her head again. “When it was reported that the VP’s son was badly injured in Afghanistan, he was the first to want to show his support for the VP, and he had us look into what kinds of presents, or flowers, or whatever we could send to convey that he cared.”

She huffed. “Clearly, it was all an act!” Another thought ricocheted in her brain. She didn’t really want to express it, but she felt she had to. “Do you think he’s capable of killing his own father?”

Dylan met her gaze and held it for a second as they hurried along another corridor. “Wasn’t his father quite old?”

“Yes, but he was healthy. He’d only just gotten his checkup from the Capitol physician, and there was nothing wrong with him. And a week later, he just dropped dead. His son was the first to claim it was his heart, and nobody contradicted him.”

“Polo would have planned all this for a very long time, ever since he was dismissed from the Stargate program,” Dylan said with a nod. “And it’s entirely possible that he killed his father, timing his death in such a way that the vote for president pro tempore couldn’t take place right away, making him automatically the third in line for the presidency. And with the data he’s already collected for his quantum computer, he would have had some help in predicting what would happen if he did x, y, or z.”