John Gilstrap - Hostage Zero

At this range, their words were clear. The hippie was talking a mile a minute-something about these guys being three hours late.

Jonathan felt Boxers’ gaze on him and returned it with a nod. The time had come to intervene.

“Drop your weapons!” he yelled.

The hippie, who seemed to have been expecting the confrontation, reacted instantly, dropping to the ground to leave an unobstructed sight picture.

The men in the T-shirts whirled, with guns at the ready and murder in their eyes. There was no time for negotiation.

Jonathan and Boxers fired simultaneously, and the men died on their feet-triple-tapped with two shots to the heart and one to the forehead in the time that it took for the first spent shell casing to hit the ground.

Even with the targets neutralized, neither man broke his aim. Jonathan yelled, “If I didn’t just shoot you, you’d better by God stand up and show me your hands.”

Nobody moved. Boxers shrugged.

“Last chance!” Jonathan yelled. “If I have to come and find you, you will not be happy.”

As he spoke, he kept his aim trained on the spot where the hippie had disappeared. It surprised him when the man slowly rose above the grass thirty feet to the right. He and Boxers pivoted their aim in unison.

The guy looked older than he had before. Scrawnier and dirtier, too. He rose straight up, as if on an elevator, his large hands extended more out than up, his fingers splayed wide. He looked scared to death.

“Very well done,” Jonathan coached. “Very smart.”

He sensed movement near the campsite at the exact instant when Boxers said, “Left.”

Since Jonathan held the left flank, the target belonged to him. He pivoted as Boxers held fast.

Jesus, it was a child. The look of terror in the boy’s face didn’t touch the feeling of horror in Jonathan’s stomach as he broke his aim and redirected the muzzle of the. 45 to the ground. The weapon was still at the ready if he needed it, but even an unheard-of accidental trigger pull couldn’t do any harm.

“Don’t let that one move an inch closer,” Jonathan said, pointing to the hippie. He moved in closer to the boy, and within two steps, he recognized him. “Jeremy?” It seemed too good to be true.

The boy’s mask of fear morphed into a mask of confusion. Then, finally, recognition. “Mr. Jonathan,” he said.

Jonathan holstered his weapon, still cocked as always, and rushed to the boy. He stopped, though, when Jeremy recoiled. “Are you all right?” Jonathan asked. He shot a contemptuous glare at the hippie, whose hands remained high. Jonathan dared another couple of steps, stopping just a foot or two outside the kid’s personal space. “We’ve been worried sick about you,” he said. He resisted the urge to ask about the other missing child, Evan Guinn. Maybe he didn’t want to know. Maybe he just wanted to savor this victory before finding out awful news.

Still, Jeremy didn’t move. He just cocked his head a little, as if trying to fit together the pieces of too complex a puzzle.

Jonathan had memorized the dossiers on the missing children, so he knew Jeremy Schuler to be thirteen years old-a seventh grader just three years away from having a driver’s license-but at this moment he could have been ten, or even eight. Six. Pick a number. As his features melted, he transformed from young man to little boy.

He launched himself at Jonathan, wrapping his arms around his chest in a crushing bear hug, and he dissolved into deep racking sobs. Jonathan wasn’t ready for it. The rawness of the emotion made him self-conscious. He patted Jeremy’s back, and then he cupped the crown of his head and pulled him in closer.

In Jonathan’s job, nothing good ever came from crossing the line that separated the heart from the head. His world was about life-and-death decisions made quickly, in the vacuum of professional detachment. That meant shunning hugs from relieved victims and constructing emotional walls to separate him from the people he helped.

As Jeremy Schuler trembled and sobbed, his hot tears soaking into the fabric of his shirt, Jonathan felt his defenses crumbling. A few yards away, Boxers searched the hippie for weapons.

This was a victory, Jonathan told himself. With one still missing, it was only one half of total victory, but it was a moment to be celebrated nonetheless. In the midst of a thousand unanswered questions, Jonathan Grave knew one fact beyond even the slimmest sliver of doubt: Whoever had hurt this child-whoever might still be hurting Evan Guinn-was going to pay an extraordinary price.

Brandy Giddings sat comfortably in the upholstered antique chair in the hallway, pretending not to notice the stares from the stern-faced Secret Service agents who stood in their assigned corners of the anteroom. She marveled at the way they could simultaneously project lethality and professional indifference. She wondered if The Look-easily recognizable by anyone with eyes-was specifically taught in the academy.

Did they even have an academy? she wondered. Surely they learned their craft somewhere, but she’d never heard mention of such a place. FBI Academy, yes-everybody knew that was in Quantico, Virginia, the place where Clarice Starling (Jodie Foster’s character in The Silence of the Lambs) received her orders-but a Secret Service Academy? Never heard of one.

Even a year and a half after her dream job had grown to become her oh-my-God-I-can’t-believe-it job-a year and a half after American voters had voted an exciting newcomer into the White House-she still had to pinch herself from time to time.

She’d been all over the world, meeting the prime minister of England and the Pope in Rome, the premier of China, and the president of Russia, but through it all, nothing brought the same sense of awe and raw power as sitting right here in the West Wing of the White House. The very lack of pretense-the low ceilings and time-worn moldings-only added to the majesty of the place.

Brandy’s title was special assistant to the secretary of defense, but she knew what people thought. She listened to talk radio and knew that Denise Carpenter-“The Bitch of Washington, DC”-had christened her Defcon Bimbo. Those were just ugly words from the conservative queen of an ugly town. Harry Truman had said it best: If you want a friend in Washington, get a dog.

Brandy Giddings didn’t care what people thought. Her boss, Secretary Jacques Leger, would be the first secretary of defense to stress peace over war, embrace inclusion over exclusion. And Brandy was part of it all. It was just too much to believe.

At twenty-eight, Brandy was blessed with the looks of someone ten years younger, and the body to go with them; but what would have been a blessing in Hollywood was a curse here in its East Coast sister city. Washington was the city of Birkenstocks and minimal makeup. “Look like a dyke or die,” as one of her fellow Georgetown grads had told her.

To hell with them. Looking hot had worked very well for Brandy, first landing her a spot on then-Senator Leger’s staff, and then propelling her into the E-Ring of the Pentagon, where the office accommodations put those of the White House to shame. While nothing trumped the greatness of the Oval, her boss’s digs were known throughout the world as the most opulent in the federal government.

Brandy’s was a job that led to Great Things. She commanded the attention of four-star generals and forty-year career bureaucrats, and it drove them all mad. As Secretary Leger’s right-hand lady for matters not directly related to national defense, she rarely waited more than ten minutes for her calls to be returned. With official cover from her boss, she traveled the world in tricked-out executive military jets that would make corporate titans blush.