Ted Bell - Tsar

“What do I do? I don’t know what to do, Stokely!”

“You got the door locked?”

“Uh-huh.”

“And nobody knows you’re in there?”

“I don’t think so…”

“Listen, baby. In the closet. On the top shelf. My canvas carry-on bag is up there. I forgot it.”

“Yeah.”

“My gun is in the bag, baby. The one we took out to the range together. The Heckler and Koch nine-millimeter. The one I showed you how to shoot at the range, remember?”

“I do.”

“I want you to get it down. It’s loaded. All you have to do is chamber a round, just like I showed you. There are two extra clips in the bag with fourteen rounds each. You get a chair facing the door, and you don’t let anyone inside, okay? Somebody comes through that door, you shoot, okay?”

“Okay.”

“Tell me what happened, best you can.”

She gave him the short answer. Her heart was pounding again.

“They already killed one hostage?”

“One that I saw. With a knife. But I heard shots just as I was leaving the stage. Maybe more are dead now…”

“Tell me about the leader again.”

“Blond. Big muscles. He looks familiar.”

“Yurin? The security guy at the party?”

“I don’t know for sure, but yeah, I think so. Chechen Liberation Front, that’s what he said.”

“Chechen? Or Russian?”

“He said Chechen, but he’s Russian, right?”

“Right.”

“Baby, I’m so scared.”

“You’re going to be okay. Now, what about the baker? Happy? The fat man who brought the cake to the party. You see him?”

“Yeah, he’s with them. He had two-two, uh, tanks strapped on his back. He had his mask down over his face. For the gas, I guess.”

“Gas? What about gas?”

“They’re all wearing gas masks, Stoke. They’re going to gas us? Is that it?”

“Baby, they ain’t going to do a damn thing. We are working on this right now. I just found out the baker might be aboard. I already told the CIA, the FBI, and the Pentagon. So right now, everybody in Washington is figuring out the best way to save you. The vice president himself is forming a rescue task force. Is his wife okay? I need to tell him.”

“I think so. She was when I left.”

“So, all you have to do is stay out of sight until the rescue, baby. And shoot anybody tries to come through that door. Can you do that?”

“Rescue how? They said if a plane or boat came within a radius of fifty miles, they’d start throwing people out the door, one at a time.”

“When we come, they won’t know what hit them, honey. Trust me. I am going to get you out of this.”

“Are you coming?”

“You damn right I’m coming. You hold on, okay? I’ll be there before you know it.”

“I told you I didn’t want to come on this damn trip without you.”

“I know you did. You were right. I’m sorry.”

“I need you, Stokely. We all do. You never saw such a scared bunch of people in your life.”

“I’m coming.”

“I’m going to hang up now, Stoke. Get the gun. But you answer the second you see this phone ring. You’re all I’ve got to hold on to.”

“I love you.”

“I love you more.”

“No way.”

“’Bye, baby. Be strong.”

“’Bye.”

President Jack McAtee said good-bye to the British ambassador, hung up the phone, shook his head wearily, and looked at the crisis team he’d assembled in the Oval Office. Those present included the vice president, Tom McCloskey; the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Charlie Moore; the secretary of state, Consuelo de los Reyes; the new director of the National Security Council, Lewis Crampton; FBI Director Mike Reiter; and the director of the CIA, Patrick Brickhouse Kelly, better known as Brick.

His team.

The mood was tense. They had an American city in ruins, and the evidence pointed to a Russian terrorist as culpable. If that were true, and McAtee found out the Kremlin was even remotely involved, military confrontation with Russia was back on the table for the first time since Kennedy had stared down Khrushchev over Cuba fifty years earlier, sitting at this same desk.

And now there was news coming out of the Salina investigation that an airship carrying hundreds of VIPs and Nobel laureates, not to mention the vice president’s wife, might be a target for the same terrorists who had murdered Salina’s mayor and her family and destroyed the town. A key suspect had been seen in Miami just before the airship departed.

“You guys ready for this one?” the president asked, trying to smile.

McAtee was tired and looked it. He saw events spiraling out of control and knew he was powerless to stop them. All he could do now was try to learn as much as he possibly could about exactly what the hell was going on and make the very best possible decisions he could under the circumstances.

The only good news was that his White House team had been in crisis situations before, maybe not as bad as this one, but they’d weathered the storms, come through well enough. It they were all smart, kept their heads and wits about them, they might get through this one, too. But it was a bitch, no doubt about that. The Russians seemed out of control-and they still had thousands of nuclear warheads aimed at America.

“What is it, Mr. President?” Brick Kelly said.

McAtee said, “That was the British ambassador. He says he just got a WTFIGO cable from London. Anybody know what that stands for?”

“What the fuck is going on?” Lew Crampton said.

“Bingo, Lew. He says the MI-6 intel currently coming out of Moscow is going from weird to completely insane. One, the president, Rostov, just died in a helicopter crash. Clear weather, military chopper, very suspicious. Two, the Duma is in emergency session, locked down, no media, rumors flying. Three, one of the British service’s top operatives, an old friend of Brick’s and this office, was just arrested coming out of the Bolshoi ballet.”

“Not Alex Hawke?” Brick Kelly said.

“I’m afraid so, Brick.”

“Jesus. The KGB’s got him? Not good.”

Brick Kelly said, “As you well know, he’s gone undercover, sir. A new division of MI-6 called Red Banner. Designed to counter the resurgence of Russian intelligence. Hawke is in Moscow because-”

“He’s in Moscow because I sent him there, Brick.” The testiness in his voice bore witness to the tension in the room. “I was fully briefed on Red Banner by Sir David Trulove when he last visited the White House.”

“Sorry, Mr. President, I should have assumed that. At any rate, one of my agents is liaising with Hawke and Red Banner. He’s in Moscow now. Harry Brock. I’m sure he can help.”

“Ah, yes, Harry Brock. Well, that’s reassuring, Brick, knowing you have a man of that caliber inside the enemy camp.” The president’s sarcasm was not lost on anyone.

“He’s different, I’ll admit, sir. But he’s damn good in the field. I’ll contact him and the American ambassador when this meeting’s over. See if we can’t get Hawke released as quickly as possible.”

“Good. Thank you, Brick,” McAtee said.

The president rose from his desk, walked to his favorite armchair to the right of the fireplace, and sank down into it.

“Anybody got any ideas?” he said.

As usual, no one in his government agreed with anyone else about what the hell they should be doing at the moment. That’s why he’d assembled his team this morning, to try to make some wise collaborative decisions about how best to proceed through the current minefield.

“The primary card the Russians hold right now is energy,” the secretary of state said, shifting her weight around on the sofa. “One, the petro-rubles make them immune from certain threats. And two, if pushed, they can throw the switches at Gazprom and Rozneft and turn out the lights in all of Europe.”