Keith Thomson - Once a spy

Charlie expected Drummond to whirl back and point out that such an order would never have been issued had the interim national security advisor known that Fielding had murdered the prior national security advisor in cold blood.

All Drummond said was, “Nicholas, I’ll ask you to either respect my most basic right or suffer the consequences.” He was now a short dash from Charlie-fifty feet at most, a difficult shot now for the men at the other end of the tunnel.

“What about you, Charlie?” Fielding called over Drummond. “There must be something you want? How about I erase Mickey Ramirez’s wife from the loose ends list?”

Charlie’s heart strings were wrenched. “She just had a baby.”

Fielding shrugged. “That happens.”

Charlie suspected Fielding would erase Sylvia one way or the other. “There is one thing I want,” he said.

“Yes?”

“To be a witness at your trial.”

“Okay, then we’ve run into a wall.” Fielding struck a match and lit a cigar. “As it were.” He exhaled smoke toward a gunmetal gray plate on the ceiling.

The peal of an alarm bell filled the complex.

“Shit!” Drummond said.

Charlie had never heard him curse.

Drummond held the clicker tight against his belly, took three running strides, then dove for the subbasement. Charlie crouched like a shortstop in order to best haul him in.

Steel slats cascaded from the ceiling, hammering the tunnel floor between Charlie and Drummond with a ringing echo, then forming a solid firewall. There were no discernible gaps between the slats themselves, or between the slats and the tunnel walls and floor. Charlie threw a shoulder. The firewall gave a millimeter, if that, with a condescending clink. “There’s got to be a hand crank or some hinge we can shoot?” he said through the wall, even though he was fairly certain the solution was nowhere near that simple; Drummond had cursed after all.

“The motor is inside the blast-proof frame, almost certainly remotely operated. This must be new.” Drummond’s face appeared at the small view hole, a six-by-six-inch tempered glass and metal-mesh square at head level. His eyes showed defeat. Another first. “Listen, Charles. Fielding knows I won’t detonate the device while we’re both down here. He’s sent his men out the east way, to campus.”

Through the view hole, Charlie saw that Fielding now stood alone at the far end of the tunnel, a departed guard’s rifle in his hands. Once the guards crossed Broadway to the Perriman offices, they would flank Charlie, robbing Drummond of his leverage.

“So now what?” Charlie asked.

“You need to run.”

Although he knew he’d heard correctly, Charlie felt he’d missed something. “What about you?”

“I’ll stay here and detonate the device,” Drummond said. “Fielding won’t expect that.”

Charlie’s body temperature plummeted. “Of course he won’t. It’s crazy!”

Drummond’s calm dissolved into discomfiting urgency. “There’s no way we can both make it out now.”

“Come on. After all we’ve been through, there’s no way the dead end is a bunch of slats. You’ll figure something out. You always do.”

“This may be for the best. Even if we made it out, with the NSC under Fielding’s sway, we would have to contend with an army’s worth of the kind of men who’ve been after us. If I stay here, they’ll conclude that you and I both died here.”

Charlie could only stare, dumbstruck, at the grim visage in the porthole. Although nothing about Drummond’s features changed, suddenly, somehow, Charlie saw love in his eyes. And just as suddenly, Charlie’s own jumble of feelings disentangled. He felt love for his father too, and he knew that he always would. “Forget it,” he said.

“I’ve had my fair share of time,” Drummond said. “At best, with an unprecedented leap by medicine, I’d get two extra years before I start needing to be diapered. And I’d still be a national security risk.”

“What about parlaying their fear of a timed drop into some sort of a deal?”

“The only deal I’m going to take is that you can get out of here, go anywhere you want, and have everything you want. There’s only one way I’m going to get that deal.”

The only thing Charlie wanted was to get Drummond out.

“You’re resourceful,” Drummond went on, speaking more quickly. “You’ll make it out of the country-you’ll figure things from there.” A tinny clank shimmied the length of the tunnel. “And that’s your cue. That’s them raising the firewall at the tunnel to campus.” More clanks resounded through the complex.

Charlie saw clearly that staying was no longer an option.

He stayed.

“Know always that I love you, Charles,” Drummond said with finality.

Charlie was preoccupied with plotting to save him.

Drummond must have seen it. “This is the best way,” he said. He turned and strode toward Fielding. The tunnel floor ahead of him flashed pink in the beam cast by the clicker.

Charlie had ninety seconds to get out.

Charlie fielded Grudzev’s AK-74 on the run. The bullets in its big banana clip could barely dent the firewall. The armor-piercing grenade in its underbarrel, however, might blow the thing down.

He slid to a stop in the stairwell across the subbasement, slamming his hip against the stout handrail. He couldn’t afford to think about it. The stairwell was far enough from the firewall that the grenade, while in flight, could have the time it needed to arm. The stairwell also looked solid enough to serve as a shield against the lethal shrapnel that would fly at him if the grenade did its job.

He raised the rifle to his shoulder, found the firewall in the rungs of his front sight post, said a silent prayer to all comers, then absolutely pulverized the trigger.

Nothing happened. The grenade didn’t budge.

Was it a dud?

Had Karpenko supplied Grudzev with a neutered AK-74?

Ninety-seven point eight pounds of penthrite and trinitrotoluene would turn Drummond to mist in less than a minute.

Take an extra second, Charlie urged himself.

Check out that little lever just in front of the trigger.

The safety, maybe?

He flicked it downward, raised the rifle, and tried the trigger again. The underbarrel responded with a disheartening sproing, like that of a spud gun.

The grenade flew out. It hurtled through the hundred feet or so of subbasement and punched the firewall, creating a colossal, magnificent explosion.

Charlie closed his eyes and still could see the fiery flash. His ears shut down. Pressed flat against the inside wall of the stairwell, he felt a hard gust from the hail of passing shrapnel. He had no idea whether the shrapnel included bits of firewall.

Once the gust subsided, he crept into the subbasement. He couldn’t see what damage, if any, the grenade had done. The firewall area was blocked by a mass of dust and smoke.

He took a deep breath, shut his eyes, and plunged into it. The air smelled and tasted like a spent match. He felt his way toward the firewall. Then he felt the firewall itself-where he’d hoped to feel nothing.

He opened his eyes. Through a burning haze, he saw that the firewall remained anchored to the surrounding concrete walls and ceiling-unfortunately, the blast-proof frame had lived up to its billing. The metal slats themselves had puckered outward, however, leading to a cavity at its base big enough for a midsized dog to squeeze through.

Charlie tried, an act of contortion. A steel shard cut into his neck. Another ripped into his sleeve and dug into his arm. At the cost of two strips of skin, he made it through.

In the tunnel, the dust kicked up by the grenade had grayed the air. Using a hand as a visor against it, Charlie made out the forms of two men standing together halfway down: almost certainly Drummond and Fielding-had Drummond revealed he’d triggered the bomb, Fielding would have fled, at the least. Charlie couldn’t see enough of their shapes or features to tell who was who. Except for a small circle glowing faintly.