Peter Kirsanow - Second Strike

Both seemed to have a death wish.

So Garin waited for the man to show. Whatever Stepulev and his windbreakered crew were up to, whatever damage they were primed to cause, it was a sideshow. Bor was the main event. Bor was the danger. Bor was Yuri Mikhailov’s Rider on a Pale Horse.

Bor had escaped last time. Barely. He’d been one step ahead of Garin throughout. This time, Garin had drawn almost even.

The traffic around Union Station was dense. A swarm of cabs flitted about its perimeter and a long queue had formed outside its entrance. Masses of commuters seeking various forms of conveyance were moving about the station’s interior and exterior. Lobbyists taking the Acela along the eastern corridor, staffers taking the Metro, visitors and tourists taking Amtrak to Chicago and Atlanta. Hundreds of shoppers and diners milled about the densely packed main hall or sat in the various restaurants and cafés, passing time or waiting for a bus or a train.

Christine Brogan was one such commuter. Normally, she’d take the Metro from her office on Massachusetts back to her apartment in Woodbridge immediately after work. But her schedule was off, as was her concentration, having been earlier disrupted by a text from her boyfriend, Gabriel. A text telling her that he needed space. A text telling her he had been seeing someone else for several weeks. A text.

Christine hadn’t seen it coming. Only a few days ago she and Gabriel had been sitting on a concrete bench near the Capitol Building planning to take a long weekend at a cabin in the Blue Ridge Mountains overlooking the Shenandoah. They’d been there before just a couple of months ago and had a marvelous time. When she’d told Barb Rankin, her college roommate, about the trip, Barb had shrieked that Gabriel was going to propose. Men didn’t take two trips with a woman to a cabin in the Blue Ridge Mountains just for the ambience. The first trip had been for a purpose. It had been a scouting trip to determine whether the location was a suitable place to propose.

The two eagerly began planning Christine’s future as a married woman. First an apartment, followed by a starter home somewhere in Prince George County, followed by two kids and an upgrade to a more substantial dwelling. Christine would take some time off from work when the kids were young but reenter the workforce when the kids were old enough for school. They had it all mapped out.

But then came the text. The coward’s way of conveying bad news. He couldn’t even tell her by way of a phone call, let alone in person. She’d read somewhere that today’s young men had less testosterone than their fathers. Her own father was sure of it.

And just like that, all the best-laid plans of Barb and Christine went out the window.

Christine floated through the main hall of Union Station, her mind on the cruelty of Gabriel’s cowardly text. Nearly three years of her life consumed by nothing more meaningful than a few dinners after work, the occasional weekend party or show, and every once in a while a trip to a nearby vacation spot. Nothing lasting, nothing to build on. Just treading water.

She wasn’t angry or even sad. Mostly, she felt numb, blindsided. Scores of people passed her, jostling and purposeful. To Christine, they were just a blur of suits and ties and skirts and pantsuits, one no more noteworthy than the next.

Except for the short, thin man in the white windbreaker skirting about the main entrance near the taxi stand forty feet away. As she approached, Christine noticed the steady, intense look in his eyes, which was incompatible with his jittery body movements. He radiated… weirdness. Yet it appeared no one but Christine noticed.

If anyone had noticed, it wouldn’t have mattered. It all happened before Christine took another step. The jittery man reached inside his windbreaker. A fraction of a second later a concussive blast lifted Christine off her feet and propelled her backward at the same time a fusillade of metal pellets and ball bearings tore through her limbs and torso, ripping off her left arm and leg and shredding her abdominal cavity. Strips of her flesh and shards of her bones mixed with those of scores of others and sprayed across the floor and walls of the edifice. Outside the main entrance the blast scythed the queue at the taxi stand, body parts covering the flagpoles and balustrade around Columbus Fountain at the center of Columbus Circle. Several limbs and heads were strewn along Massachusetts and Delaware Avenues, portions of which were smeared with blood and guts.

The blast knocked out windows more than a block away and could be heard throughout Capitol Hill. Within minutes NBC and Fox News had scrambled news crews from their nearby headquarters at North Capitol. The wail of multiple sirens drowned out all of the noise as multiple emergency vehicles were dispatched to the scene.

None of them would find any identifiable evidence of Christine Brogan, other than a fully intact cell phone on which Gabriel’s text still remained.

WASHINGTON, D.C.,

AUGUST 18, 1:27 P.M. EDT

Congo Knox’s ears were still ringing as he maneuvered the vehicle frantically down Massachusetts Avenue. Out of the corner of his eye he could see Isaac Coe shouting something unintelligible. The street ahead was filled with debris, smoke, and people running in different directions. He swerved, slowed, and swerved again to avoid them and proceed along New Jersey Avenue.

Just a few minutes earlier Knox, Coe, and Ty Wilson had been following the vehicle driven by Stepulev, who, after what appeared to be a number of surveillance detection maneuvers, eventually drove down Massachusetts Avenue toward Union Station. They had remained several cars behind, close enough to keep the vehicle in their sights. About a block before Union Station, their sight line had been blocked momentarily by a Metro bus. When they reacquired the car again they saw a jittery-looking man in a white windbreaker exiting the car and walking toward the main entrance. Ty Wilson immediately got out and followed, no more than a hundred feet behind.

Knox and Coe continued to trail Stepulev’s vehicle down New Jersey, even after the blast. There had been no point in searching for Wilson. Both men knew from experience and simple calculation that he had been too close to the jittery man to have survived the explosion. All of their efforts now were directed at keeping Stepulev’s vehicle in sight.

Five miles to the southeast, Mike Garin had heard the low roll of distant thunder followed by the sound of multiple sirens and instinctively knew the Russians had struck. He pulled his cell phone from his pocket and called Knox, who answered instantly.

“We’re behind the vehicle, Mike, headed in a northwest direction,” Knox informed. “One of the windbreakers got out and set off a suicide vest at the entrance to Union Station. Wilson’s dead, along with lots of other folks.”

“Don’t interdict them unless you’re certain they’ve arrived at their destination,” Garin commanded. “They may be joining another crew, so we can’t afford to intercept them until we’re certain we have everyone. But once you’re sure they’ve arrived at their next target location, look for any backup they may have and then take them all out immediately.”

“Got it.”

“Best guess, Congo. Where are they headed?”

“Northwest. We’re heading in the general direction of Treasury, OEOB, and the White House.”

“I’ll tell Dan to alert Secret Service, FBI, and D.C. Metro. You’ll have lots of company, so be careful. Under these circumstances Secret Service snipers will take out anything approaching the White House that looks even remotely suspicious. That includes you.”