The President Is Missing(84)

“Yeah, we’re fine. The Russians and Germans smoke up a storm.”

“It’s totally polluted down there.” Devin makes a face. “At least we got them to agree to smoke in the laundry room. There they can open a window.”

“They—there’s a window?”

“Yeah, in the laundry—”

“Secret Service locked all the windows,” I say, realizing, of course, that it doesn’t stop someone from unlocking them from the inside.

I head down the stairs to the basement, Devin and Casey following me.

“Mr. President?” Alex calls out, following me down the stairs as well.

I hit the bottom of the stairs and turn to their war room, moving quickly, feeling a ringing in my ears along with my doctor’s words of warning.

The war room is filled with desks and laptops, dozens more off to the side, and a large whiteboard. Other than the security camera in the corner of the room, it looks like an ordinary classroom. Six people are here—two each from Russia, Germany, and Israel, chatting while they open laptops and bang away on keyboards.

No Augie.

“Check the laundry room, Alex,” I say. I hear him move behind me. I hear his words, too, from two rooms away.

“Why is this window open?”

It only takes Alex a minute to sweep the entire basement, including the room I’ve taken over as the communications room. I already know the answer before he tells me.

“He’s gone, Mr. President. Augie is gone.”





Chapter

71



The two members of the security patrol are dark and burly, crew-cut and square-jawed and wide-bodied. Whatever they’re saying to each other in German, as they march toward her, must be humorous. They’ll stop laughing if either of them, moving southeast, turns his head to the left.

Her head only inches from the branch above her, suspended in air by one hand on a rope, Bach feels her strength failing. She blinks away the sweat in her eyes as her arm begins to tremble furiously. And she can hear the branch, with all her weight on one isolated part, start to give way, a steady creaking.

Her bag and clothes may be camouflaged, her face and neck may be painted pine green to match the tree foliage, but if that branch even begins to crack, the game is over.

If she shoots, she must end it right there, two quick shots. And then what? She could steal their radios, but it wouldn’t take the rest of the team very long to realize that two of their sentries have gone missing. She’ll have no choice but to abort.

Abort. She’s never dropped a job or failed one. She could do it now, yes, and probably expect retaliation from the people who hired her. But that’s not the problem: she doesn’t fear retaliation. Twice in the past, on jobs she carried out successfully, the people who hired her tried to kill her afterward to tie up loose ends, and she’s still here; the people they sent are not.

The problem now is Delilah, the name she will give her child—her mother’s name. Delilah will not grow up with that burden. She will not know what her mother has done. She will not live in fear. She will not experience terror so great and long-lasting that it seeps into your pores, never leaves you, colors everything that comes afterward.

The men move past her sight line for a moment, disappearing behind the tree from which she is hanging. When they pass by on the other side of the tree, she will be completely exposed, no more than ten meters from them. If either of them looks to his left, due east, they won’t miss her.

They come into sight again, on the other side of the tree.

And they stop. The closer one has a mole on his cheek and a deformed ear that looks like it’s taken some hits over the years. He drinks from a water bottle, his Adam’s apple bobbing on his unshaved throat. The other man, smaller, is standing in the shadows of the woods, a beam of light shooting upward, scanning the trees, scanning the ground.

Don’t look to your left.

But they will, of course. And there’s no time. She can’t hold on much longer.

The branch groans out a larger creak.

The first man lowers the water bottle, looks up, then turns to his left, toward her—

Bach already has her SIG aimed at the first man, a bead on the space between his eyes—

A loud squawk comes from both radios at the same time, something in German, but by any measure indicating that something has gone wrong.

Each man reaches for the radio on his waist. A few words are exchanged, and they turn and run north in headlong flight back toward the cabin.

What just happened? She doesn’t know, doesn’t care.

With no time and no strength left, Bach puts the sidearm in her mouth, her teeth clamping down on the long suppressor. Her right hand free now, she swings it up and grabs the thickest part of the branch, nearest the tree’s body. Then her left hand comes off the rope and grabs the branch, too, just quickly enough to avoid a free fall to the ground. With a groan that is far too loud, but not caring about the consequences now, she summons whatever energy she has left and does a pull-up, her face scraping against the branch. She pushes her feet against the base of the tree and runs them upward until she manages to get her left leg over the branch.

Not the most graceful maneuver she’s ever performed, but she is finally in an upright position, straddling the tree branch, almost losing her backpack and rifle in the process. She breathes out, wipes her forehead, slick with sweat, camouflage paint be damned. She gives herself one minute. She counts aloud to sixty, managing to reholster her sidearm, ignoring the burn in her arm, slowing her breathing.