Jeff Abbott: Adrenaline

“If he’s delivering the guns here too, he needs seclusion.” I held her between us, a firm grip on her arm, steering her through the crowd, August on the other side of her.

Fifty guns. Fifty bullets. Fifty states. Fifty governors? But none of the people in the files were governors. “This is the product demo, isn’t it? And then the buyer will move onto the next targets.”

“You’ve missed the other timing advantage of this gun,” she said. “God, I thought you were smarter, Sam.”

Any fool could assassinate. Fools had been doing it for centuries. But now…“With fifty guns all at once, you can hit many targets,” I said. “Mass assassination. You kill a governor, security goes up on all the others. You kill them all at the same time and-”

“What would it do to this country?” Lucy said. “Oh, it would be a shock wave. How do you fight a weapon like this? And, psychologically, what does it do? Every governor, dead within minutes of each other. Their replacements, dead in another month. No one is really going to be rushing for those jobs then, are they? You have a profound shock to the political system if you cannot guarantee that leaders stay alive. What does it do to America if the leadership pool gets rapidly thinned, if no one will lead because they’re going to be killed? It makes the world weaker. It makes it easier for the criminal networks to do their job, to commit more crimes. Maybe even to take over.” She smiled. “You know, the crooks run parts of Colombia, of Moldova, of Pakistan. Why not here? Why not in the West?”

“Who’s this buyer?”

I watched August hurrying down toward the field. He hadn’t waited to hear more. He was heading straight for the field, and the security detail for Governor Hapscomb.

I scanned the stadium.

“Let me go and I’ll tell you where he is,” Lucy said.

“The baby?”

“No, I mean Edward. You can’t have it both ways, Sam. I’m keeping where the baby is a secret.”

She knew. She knew and she knew where the meeting site was. God damn it.

“Tell me!” I grabbed her shoulders. “Lucy, for God’s sakes, don’t do this. Tell me!”

“Hey, buddy,” a deep voice rumbled behind me. I glanced over my shoulder. Three guys, thick-necked, short haircuts. Five hundred pounds of muscle, glaring at me.

“You don’t need to talk to the lady that way. Let go of her arm,” the good citizen said.

“I’m arresting her,” I lied. The last thing I wanted was attention. I made my voice easy, calming, authoritative.

“You didn’t talk to her like a cop. You let her go,” he said, not backing down.

Lucy began to moan as if in pain.

The slugger slugged me. Hard. I saw it coming and ducked back but he still connected with my face. Lucy launched a hard kick that caught me on the collarbone.

I let go. She ran. I saw her heading toward the large section of private suites.

It might be perfect. Elevated. Private. Lower a window, fire, leave in the resultant chaos.

The good citizen grabbed me. “Asshole, you’re done.”

I saw two police officers racing toward us. So I played the victim. I screamed, “Please help me, help me, he’s gone crazy!”

Every bit of subtlety helps. It shifted the cops’ reaction ever so slightly; the guy tackling me looked the bigger threat. You never want to look the bigger threat. But of course the cops were going to take us both down. They couldn’t risk doing otherwise.

The cops-one heavy, one skinny-took us down. I gave the skinny one a hard, sharp blow, and he was on his knees. I seized the gun from his holster, slamming my fist into the back of his throat and ran into the crowd, the gun high. The other cop couldn’t risk the shot, not with the crowd between us.

I saw Lucy. Then I heard the roar rising from the crowd.

I risked a glance toward the field. And saw August, bolting out onto the field, as the governor stood on the mound with a teenage boy, presumably his son, ready to throw out the first pitch.

And the realization hit me like a bolt.

His son. His son. It wasn’t the governor at all. And it wouldn’t be all the governors to come.

It would be their kids. Their husbands. Their wives.

Next to the stadium’s main outdoor private suite area, an interior bar with a view of first base was closed for repairs. No place is more deserted in a stadium than a closed bar. Inside, the buyer looked down over the field and said, “Let’s get started.”

Time to begin an extraordinary audition, Edward thought, in a flash, of the first time under the lights, his brain burning with the right lines, eager to pretend to be a whole new person.

Edward lowered the window of the closed bar slightly and placed the rifle into the gap. There was no rifle sight; he didn’t need one. But he didn’t want to risk the demo going poorly, so he aimed toward the mound. And saw the big blond man barreling out onto the field, deftly stiff-arming a policeman who tried to stop him.

Interference. No. Edward pulled the trigger without hesitation.

Governor Hapscomb saw the runner- screaming that he was a CIA agent-plowing past an errant security line, heard the rising gasp of the crowd, and had he been alone he would have simply stared his attacker down. But he had his thirteen-year-old son, Bryant, with him, and he could not bear the thought of Bryant being harmed. So he threw himself on his surprised son, in case the crazy in the nice suit was armed, just as the bullet shot out over thousands of spectators, its nanosensors seeking the one true match among thousands.

I saw the flash at the edge of the main-level outdoor private suites. Through a slightly opened window near the seating area. Right where Lucy was headed, a few rows above us.

I caught her and pressed the cop’s gun against her ribs.

I wrenched her around so I could see the mound. Screams erupted from the massed crowd. The governor and his son were down on the mound, not moving, August buried under a pile of police.

“Let me go!” she screamed. “Let me go and I’ll tell you where the baby is!”

“Just tell me!” I hadn’t stopped Edward’s bullet.

I’d failed.

She threw a fist against my jaw. I wouldn’t let her go, and we slammed into the railing.

“Sam Capra,” the buyer said. “There.”

Edward tore his stare away from the mound. He couldn’t tell if the Hapscomb boy was down or not. Sweat exploded down his ribs. He ejected the chip and slipped the new one in. The gun whirred, the match being made, the bullet given its own soul. The coding process would be done when the green light appeared.

He couldn’t wait. Edward raised the rifle and fired.

“Tell me!” I said, clutching her close. We spun, her fighting me.

“Daniel’s in-” and then she stiffened. I heard the impact of metal hitting flesh, and she fell in my arms.

“No!” I screamed. “No!”

“This hasn’t gone well.” Edward had to pick his words carefully or the deal would fold. “I think the governor took the bullet meant for the child. He covered him just as I fired. This isn’t a normal situation, since we’d usually strike without warning-”

He turned to his buyer and the knife flashed across his neck. Edward staggered, tried to close up the wound with his hand as the blood gushed. Pointless. He fell against the wall and thought, No no it hurts and I’m afraid I’m afraid-

The buyer stepped away from the spray of blood. He could see panic arising, not only from those close to the field but in a nearby section, where Edward’s second bullet had scored. No sign of Lucy. No sign of Sam Capra.

He collected the briefcase of DNA chips. Technology could always be refined. This demo might have been too extreme. Fine. Time was on his side. Resources were on his side. There were networks of rogue programmers, hackers, scientists, assassins, all eager to help him refine Bahjat Zaid’s prototype.