Sean Black - Deadlock

Further down the corridor was where she guessed the President was holding vigil with his family. There were too many people there, so she’d waited. There was chatter about a press conference out front — she had heard a couple of yuppie types talking about it just before she elected to duck in here. All she had to do now was bide her time.

The President held his youngest daughter’s hand, watched her heart monitor and prayed. Right here, right now, the weight of parenthood was making him feel like the most impotent man in the world rather than the most powerful.

The door opened. A staffer tiptoed in and bent down next to him. ‘Sir, they’re ready for you out front.’

He nodded and got to his feet. ‘Give me a second here, Rob. Then I’ll be right out.’

‘Yes, Mr President.’

He bent down and softly kissed his daughter’s forehead. ‘I’ll be right back, sweetheart. OK? And I still haven’t forgotten about that sundae I owe you and your sister.’

He straightened up, sliding on his game-face at the same time as the door opened again and the head of his personal escort section walked in.

‘Sir, we’ve had a change of plan. The woman involved in the attack — we have credible evidence that she’s inside the hospital.’

The President blanched. ‘Ashley can’t be moved.’

‘I understand that. We want you and the family to stay exactly where you are.’

‘And where is the woman who tried to kill us?’

‘We’re trying to locate her right now.’

Lock nudged Ty’s elbow. ‘Come on, you have to get dressed.’

Ty broke off from his argument with the hospital security guards. ‘What you talking about?’

Lock was joined by one of the Secret Service agents. ‘Come with us.’

The agent led Lock and Ty back out of the front entrance and around the side of the building. A fire exit door opened and a suited Secret Service agent ushered them inside. They were led down another short stretch of corridor and into a side room.

A woman handed Ty a suit carrier, brushing off some dust from the vinyl covering. ‘Here, put this on. The quicker we get this done, the quicker the President can address the nation.’

Someone else flung Ty a lightweight vest. ‘You’ll want this on under the shirt.’

‘Someone mind telling me what the hell’s going on?’ Ty protested.

‘Remember how everyone thought we were nuts trying to stop someone killing Reaper?’ Lock asked him, stripping off himself.

‘Uh-huh.’

‘We’re about to prove to them that they were right. We really are nuts.’

The door at the far end of the corridor opened and the President strode out, four Secret Service agents immediately falling into a diamond formation around him. His head was bowed in thought as he studied his speech. Six steps further along, where the corridor widened another foot, four more suited agents fell into step, filling the gaps in the diamond so that the President was almost completely obscured.

Lock, who was now sporting a suit similar to the other members of the personal escort section, took the rear point of the diamond, which gave him the best eyes-on in the narrow corridor.

He’d never had much time for the Secret Service before, disliking their whole frat-boy, shade-wearing, talking-into-their-sleeve shtick. But he had to hand it to them, when it came to walking drills they had their shit down cold.

Up ahead, a man on a gurney was being propelled towards them by a three-person medical team. The man had an oxygen mask over his mouth and his chest was shredded with shrapnel wounds. They shifted as far as they could to try and let him pass before the President raised his hand, signaling for them to stop.

‘Wait. I want to see how this guy’s doing.’

‘I think you can see how he’s doing, sir,’ Lock snapped from the back. ‘What we really need to do is keep moving.’

Yeah, he definitely wasn’t cut out for the Secret Service, Lock thought.

The President did as he was told and the medical team squeezed the wounded man past them on their right as a door on the left-hand side of the corridor opened and a woman in bloodstained medical scrubs stepped out parallel to the front member of the President’s personal escort. She had a mask pulled over her face but seemed startled because she flattened herself against the closed door to allow them past with a deferential ‘Excuse me.’

As she straightened out against the door, Lock saw the hard swell of her belly. This time there was no hesitation.

‘Threat left!’ he screamed.

As the personal escort pivoted round and the President was propelled out of the way, Chance made her move. The knife, which had been down by her side, came up in a slashing arc, cutting the throat of the agent closest to her.

From the corner of his eye, Lock saw a flash of hand as the next closest agent reached for his weapon. A gun might be handy in a knife fight, but only if you had some distance, and not when you were dealing in fractions of a second.

Lock threw himself forward at Chance as she lunged past the stricken agent and sprang towards the President, her knife held in a hammer grip. Rather than move, though, the President shrugged off his designated bodyguard and, stepping back, bent low, so that the arc of the knife caught air rather than flesh.

As Chance fell, the President punched back his elbow, catching her in the throat — hard. The knife tumbled from her hand and there was a scramble to retrieve it. Lock caught her feet, his arms wrapping her ankles as she kicked back, catching him in the face.

The President followed Chance and Lock to the floor. She landed on her face, the President on her back. The President grabbed for her wrist, levering it up, bringing her arm with it, twisting the joint and breaking it with an audible snap.

Chance gasped with pain. Her eyes closed. When she opened them, she found herself staring up at Tyrone.

‘What’s the matter?’ Ty asked her, his teeth bared, his eyes narrow with fury. ‘We all look alike to you people?’

‘Wait, I want to see how this guy’s doing,’ Lock said, parodying Ty’s only line as President.

‘Hey, I got into the role a little too much. Sue me.’

Treble-cuffed, Chance was being loaded into the back of a patrol car at the rear of the hospital, having been checked over by the medical staff to make sure that both she and her unborn baby were fine. The knife was already gone for forensic examination, but it looked eerily like the one that had been used on Ken Prager.

Lock hadn’t stopped to count the total dead, but with the family over in Oakland and bombings added in, it was well into double figures. Even if Reaper hadn’t achieved what he’d set out to, a lot of people had been sacrificed to his unholy war.

A voice from behind them: ‘Mr Johnson, Mr Lock.’

They turned to see the President. He had a cigarette in one hand. He took a puff, waved it in the air at them. ‘I think I’m allowed, just this once,’ he said. He switched the cigarette to his left hand and extended his right hand to each of them in turn. ‘Thank you. Both.’

Lock shook his hand first. In his line of work he was used to encountering celebrities, but this was a little different. This President had a movie-star halo with none of the accompanying ego.

‘How’s your family?’

The President closed his eyes for the briefest of moments, and Lock got a rare glimpse of a man who already had the weight of the world’s problems on his shoulders. ‘My wife and our eldest are both fine, and the doctor’s just told me that Ashley’s off the critical list and she’s going to be fine.’

‘That’s great news, sir,’ Lock said.