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Tumbling backward over a two-top, Evan crawled toward the stairwell as a fresh round of projectiles rocked into the tabletop. Teak slats splintered, the overturned table scuttling in Evan’s wake as if animated.
He hit the stairwell door off an impromptu roll, finding his feet to stagger through the threshold and shoulder into the midst of four ascending gunmen ensconced in full tac gear.
He’d inadvertently inserted himself in the middle of them on the landing, like a protectee in a diamond formation of bodyguards.Patches stitched onto their black BDUs identified them as members of the Secret Service Counter-Assault Team. From all directions they blinked at him through tactical goggles.
“You’re gonna want to let me out of here,” Evan said.
Instead two of the CAT members jerked their launchers up, proving that they were in fact just dumb enough to shoot themselves point-blank in the face. Ducking, Evan knocked the barrels askew. The weapons fired, skimming cheeks, the projectiles bouncing off the concrete walls and ricocheting into the backs of their helmets. Their heads snapped forward, and they crumbled.
The remaining men stared at Evan, holding their weapons helplessly in a low-ready position. He grabbed the barrel of the nearest launcher, spun its owner into his partner, and shoved them up against the crash bar on the door. The metal rectangle depressed, the door unlocked, and they spilled out in the fray.
Turning, Evan lunged down the stairs, skipping five, six steps per leap. One side of the stairwell was open at intervals, bringing fresh air from outside and reminding him of how far he was above the ground. Grabbing the railing, he spun himself downward, descending as quickly as he could keep his feet beneath him. The fourth-floor landing flew by, now the third.
Already he heard commotion at ground level, a door creaking open, more boots hammering into the base of the stairwell, rising to meet him.
He risked a peek over the railing, caught sight of gloved hands on the one below. Shouts from above, CAT members piling into the stairwell, squeezing him from top and bottom.
Hammering footsteps converged on him. As he hit the second-floor landing, a wall of operators surged up at him. Skimming past their outstretched gloves, he vaulted through the gap in the wall above the side rail, hip-bumping the concrete ledge to slow his momentum.
He whistled out into thin air.
He was still a story above the street, but it was his only hope. He prayed for an awning, a laundry cart, a magic carpet.
No such luck.
Just a van waiting below.
The Red Cross van.
He smashed belly-down onto the hood, the metal dimpling with a thunderclap.
And stared through the front windshield directly at Special Agent in Charge Naomi Templeton.
5
Something Older Than Fear
Templeton was in the passenger seat, headphones clamped over her bluntly cut blond hair. The driver, a scrawny young man who looked two steps out of RTC, had recoiled in the driver’s seat, arms crisscrossed in front of his face like a B-movie actress fending off an encroaching monster. Through a gap in the bulkhead partition, Evan could see into the high-end surveillance setup in the back, four men in a nest of equipment, sweating through button-up shirts.
Evan’s ears rang from the impact, and his chin throbbed where it had slammed into the hood of the van.
He and Naomi blinked at each other.
Panicking, the driver grabbed for his sidearm and raised it to the windshield. Evan told his muscles to roll him off the hood, but they lagged, stunned into inertness from the landing. Naomi yelled at the driver, lunging for his arms, but she couldn’t reach him before he fired into Evan’s face.
The Secret Service service pistol, a P229 in .357 SIG, fired roundswith 506 foot-pounds of force and a muzzle velocity of 1,350 feet per second.
Evan’s forehead was barely a yard from the bore, separated only by the pane of the windshield.
He watched in awe as the glass spiderwebbed before his face, cracks spreading from the point of impact.
But there was no collision, no last-instant blaze of light, no gray matter exploding out the back of his skull. The pane had turned opaque, clouded with cracks, and that’s when he noticed the small cluster of lead resting in the bull’s-eye eighteen inches from his nose.
Bullet-resistant glass.
On a tactical van.
Inside, Naomi was shouting at the driver as she leaned across the console, disarming him.
