The President Is Missing(42)

We race in darkness toward Nina’s van, our phones in front of us for faint illumination.

A light goes on inside the van as the hydraulic side-panel door slides open for us. Now offset against the darkness around us, the Princeton woman’s features come into full relief, the sculpted waif-model face, her eyebrows knit tightly together in worry as she grips the steering wheel. She seems to be saying something, probably telling us to hurry—

—just as the glass of the driver’s-side window shatters and the left side of her face explodes, blood and tissue and brain matter spattering the windshield.

Her head lolls to her right, the seat belt restraining her, her lips still pursed in midspeech, her doe eyes staring blankly beside a bloody crater on the left side of her skull. A scared, innocent child, abruptly, violently, suddenly no longer scared, now at peace—

If you are obliged to receive the enemy’s fire, fall or squat down ’til it’s over.

“N—no—no!” Augie shouts—

Augie.

I snap into focus, grab him by the shoulders, and pull him downward, falling against the DC Metro squad car parked north of the van, landing on top of him on the sidewalk. Around us, the pavement erupts with tiny explosions as the air hisses with projectiles. The windows on the squad car shatter, raining glass down on us. The stadium wall spits stone and powder at us.

The chaos of screams and cries, tires squealing, horns honking, all muffled by the percussion inside my head, the pounding of my pulse. The squad car slumps under the relentless barrage of bullets.

I push Augie flat on the sidewalk and scramble to find his pants leg, the gun holstered at his ankle. Through the rush of adrenaline comes the dull pounding between my ears, ever present during combat. It never leaves a veteran.

The Glock is lighter by a good measure than the Beretta I was trained on, with a better grip, and I’ve heard it’s accurate, but weapons are like cars—you know they have standard stuff like lights and an ignition and windshield wipers, but it still takes a few seconds to figure them out when they’re unfamiliar. So I burn precious moments getting a feel for it before I’m ready to point and shoot—

To the south, the light from the van’s side door shines out onto the sidewalk. From the shadows, three men come into focus, running toward us. One of them, large and muscular, has the lead on the other two men, running toward me into the van’s light, a gun held down with both hands.

I fire the gun twice, aiming for center mass. He staggers and falls forward. The other two I don’t see receding into the darkness…where are they…how many rounds do I have…are there others from the other side…is this a ten-round mag…where are the other two guys from the south?

I turn to my left as the top of the squad car takes two bullets, thunk-thunk, and drape my body over Augie’s. I swivel my head to the left, to the right, to the left, searching through the darkness, more explosions from the sidewalk around us. The sniper is trying every angle to reach us but can’t. As long as we hold our ground crouched behind the car, the sniper, wherever he is, can’t hit us.

But as long as we hold our ground, we’re sitting ducks.

Augie pushes up. “We have to run, we have to run—”

“Don’t move!” I shout, pressing down on him, keeping him flat. “We run, we die.”

Augie holds still. So do I, in our cocoon of darkness. There is noise from the stadium, general chaos from the blackout, tires screeching, horns honking—but no bullets pelting the squad car.

Or the sidewalk around us.

Or the stadium wall opposite us.

The sniper stopped firing. He stopped firing because—

I spin back to my four o’clock and see a man coming around the driver’s side of the van, illuminated by the interior dome light, a weapon up at shoulder level. I pull the trigger once, twice, three times as light explodes from his weapon, too, bullets ricocheting off the hood of the squad car in an exchange of gunfire, but I have the advantage, crouched low in the dark while he’s standing by light.

I risk another glance over the hood, my pulse like a shock wave through my body. No sign of the shooter or of the third member of the south team.

The sharp squealing of brakes, men shouting, voices I recognize, words I recognize—

“Secret Service! Secret Service!”

I lower my gun and they are on me, surrounding me with automatic weapons trained in all directions while someone grabs me under the arms and lifts me, and I’m trying to say “sniper” to them but I’m not sure if it comes out, I’m thinking it but I can’t speak, and shouts of “Go! Go! Go!” as I’m carried into a waiting vehicle, blanketed on all sides by people trained to sacrifice their lives for mine—

And then blinding light, a loud hum, everything lit up again, as bright as a spotlight in my face, electricity restored all around us.

I hear myself say “Augie” and “bring him” and then the door is shut and I’m lying in the car and “Go! Go! Go!” and we are speeding away, driving on uneven ground, the grassy median in the middle of Capitol Street.

“Are you hit? Are you hit?” Alex Trimble frantically runs his hands over me, looking for any signs of wounds.

“No,” I answer, but he’s not taking my word for it, touching my chest and torso, forcibly turning me on my side to check my back, my neck, my head, then my legs.