Дэвид Балдаччи - King and Maxwell

Tyler had written him back.

SEAN PUSHED THE MATTRESS OFF and gave a shuddering cough as the smoke engulfed them. “Are you okay?” he asked Michelle.

“Thanks to you,” she said. “But we need to get out of here before we’re not okay.” She coughed, too.

They climbed out of the tub and staggered over to where the door was, or used to be. There were gaping holes in the wall between the bathroom and the front room. As Sean stepped to the doorway he immediately drew back. Michelle crowded behind him and then drew back, too.

The front bedroom was essentially gone. The edge of the bathroom was now the front of the room. An inch in front of them was a long drop to what remained of the unit on the first floor. They were cut off from the rest of the balcony so they couldn’t escape that way. And flames were creeping up the walls of the bathroom, and the smoke was growing thicker.

Michelle peered over the edge.

“We have to get down there,” she said.

“I know. But how?”

They could hear fire engine sirens. And a police car, its rack lights blazing, was powering down the road.

“If we stay here we’re going to be burned alive.”

The fire was starting to surround them.

Michelle saw a fire truck in the distance, but she figured they would be dead long before it got to them.

She grabbed up all the towels she could find in the bathroom. “Help me,” she said.

They tied the towels together as tightly as they could, and then Michelle fastened one end around an exposed support beam in the wall.

“I’ll go first,” said Sean. “If it’ll support my weight, it’ll be no problem for you.”

“And if it breaks, you’re going to crack open your skull. Let me go.”

But Sean had already clambered over the edge and grabbed ahold of the towel rope. “I hope they’ve maintained their towels better than the rest of this place,” he said as he dropped over the edge.

He quickly climbed down and then Michelle even more quickly followed, letting go and dropping the last few feet.

The motor court must have been quite empty because there were only a few people in the parking lot, one of them barefoot in just his pants.

“Do you smell that?” asked Sean.

“Gas,” said Michelle.

He yelled at the people, “Get back. Gas leak. Run.”

They all sprinted away from the building. Sean and Michelle found refuge outside the blast radius. Ten seconds later the gas ignited in the middle of the structure, blowing a yawning hole from the first to the second floor. Debris was thrown out thirty feet and rained down on the cars parked nearby.

The police car wheeled into the parking lot and two officers jumped out. The fire trucks came along a few minutes later, and the battle with the blaze began.

Sean and Michelle looked at each other.

He said, “I think it would be a lot better if we left now.”

She nodded and they crossed over to their vehicles, which were fortunately undamaged. While the police and firefighters were engaged with the blaze they slowly pulled out of the parking lot.

They hit the road and accelerated, passing three more fire trucks and two police cars heading to the motor court. They stopped about five miles later at a 7-Eleven. Sean got out of his car and climbed into Michelle’s Land Cruiser. He dusted off his clothes as best he could while she coughed violently.

“We both need showers and some oxygen,” she said miserably. “What did you see out the window?”

“A pack of plastic explosives stuck to the door with a detonator attached.”

“Who would put it there?”

“Friends of the three mall guys, I would suspect.”

“But that means we were followed here. I didn’t see anybody.”

“Neither did I. Which means they’re really, really good, Michelle.”

He slumped back in his seat and rubbed his blackened face.

She said gamely, “Then we just have to be better.”

“Easier said than done apparently. We almost bought it back there.”

“What if they already knew about this place and were waiting for us to arrive?”

Sean said, “You mean they knew about Jean Wingo’s involvement?”

“Maybe she was working with them, like we were saying before.”

“And they wanted to get rid of any trace of that place, along with us. Two birds with one pack of Semtex.”

She nodded. “Sounds pretty logical. And the motivation?”

“They have one billion reasons, Michelle.”

“But if they already have the money, what do they care about any of this? They’re long gone. Why come after us – or Dana, for that matter? Why not just disappear with the cash and go buy an island somewhere?”

“If they want to eliminate us, then they’re afraid we’re going to find out something with our investigation. Remember that Jean disappeared after Tyler told her we were back on the case.”

“Maybe they found out we know about the money?” suggested Michelle.

“The money disappeared in Afghanistan, Michelle. They can’t believe we’re going there to check things out. So they can’t be afraid we’d get a line on the cash.”

“Then it must be about more than the money.”

He rubbed his temples and gave another racking cough. “Why steal the money?”

“Obvious reason. To get rich.”

“There’s another reason.”

Michelle thought about this for a few seconds. “You need to buy something with it.”

“That’s right. And not an island or a fleet of Bentleys.”

“The cash went missing in the middle of Taliban land.” She glanced at him. “You think we’re talking terrorists?”

“Lots of cash has gone missing over there during the last ten years or so. They’d drive out with truckloads of it and who the hell knows where it ended up. Maybe our taxpayer money has been funding the bad guys for years.”

“Okay, but what about this money?”

He said, “The mission was to get it from point A to point B. Wingo knew what those points were. He knew what the money presumably was for.”

“Which makes him both valuable and a target.”

“If he’s innocent, he might want to clear his name. He wouldn’t have been attached to this thing unless he came highly recommended. Tyler said his dad could run circles around guys half his age. The special language training? The fake marriage with Jean a year ago? Him leaving the Army a year short of his full twenty? A lot of planning and time went into this.”

“Sean, if the mission went awry the government will obviously want to cover this up. Maybe years ago it wouldn’t have mattered so much, but the last thing they need with all the budget cuts is to lose over a billion dollars of taxpayer money. They’d get murdered on Capitol Hill. And if they were going to use the money for a reason that the public would find whacko, that’s even worse.”

“The military may see us as a problem, Michelle. The three guys at the mall were all formerly in uniform. Maybe they were called back into ‘duty’ to take care of a problem, meaning us. Black, black ops.”

“So our own guys are trying to put us in body bags?” she said incredulously.

“To them we’re not on the same team. We are a threat to them. Threats have to be eliminated.”

Michelle sat back with a look of despair. “So us against the Pentagon?

“It may not be the entire Pentagon. In fact, I’m sure it’s not. But it could be a small part of it looking to clean up this mess before it spreads.”

“You said General Brown was going to try to help us.”

Sean nodded slowly. “I wish I hadn’t done that.”

“Why?”

“Because if he helps us, he might just become a target too. And we can’t count on these guys to keep missing.”