David Baldacci - Split Second

As he looked around, the memories came flooding back. He saw painted cardboard faces of his Secret Service colleagues positioned exactly where they stood all those years ago, badly positioned as it turned out. There were other faces he recognized. Some of the painted crowd held infants to be kissed, others pads and pens forautographs, still others nothing except broad smiles. On the back of the wall the large clock had been rehung. According to that timepiece, it was about 10:15. If this was what he thought it was, he had about seventeen minutes to go.

He glanced over at the elevator banks, and his gaze became a deep frown. How exactly was that going to play out? They couldn't do it the same because the surprise was no longer there. Yet they'd taken Joan for some reason. He felt his pulse quicken, and his hands started to shake a little. It was a long time since he'd been with the Service. In the intervening years he'd done nothing more strenuous than lift some heavy verbiage in thousands of boring, if creative, legal documents. And yet in sixteen more minutes he sensed he was going to have to perform just like the experienced agent he'd once been. Observing the lifeless figures arrayed behind the purple line, he wondered where among them would emerge the real, red-blooded assassin.

The lights dimmed and the sounds of the crowd ceased, and then footsteps approached. The man looked so different that if King hadn't been expecting to see him, he probably wouldn't have recognized him.

"Good morning, Agent King," said Buick Man. "I hope you're ready for your big day."

When they had arrived, Parks and Michelle spoke with the officer who was heading up the local contingent of police that Parks had summoned. He had called in marshals and other law enforcement from the North Carolina area. "They'll get there before we do," Parks had told Michelle on the way down. She had said, "Tell them to form a perimeter around the hotel: They can be right on the tree line and still remain hidden."

Michelle and Parks knelt along the tree line behind the Fairmount Hotel. A police cruiser was blocking off the road leading to the hotel, but still out of sight of the place. Michelle spotted a sniper up a tree, his rifle with long-range scope aimed at the front door of the hotel.

"You sure you have enough people here?" she asked Parks.

He pointed toward other places in the darkness, indicating where other lawmen were positioned. Michelle couldn't see them but sensed their comforting presence.

"We have more than enough to do the job," he said. "The question is, can we find Sean and the others alive?" Parks laid down his shotgun and picked up his walkie-talkie. "Okay, you've been in that hotel and know the layout. What's the best way for us to hit it?"

"The last time we were here, when we nabbed the convicts, Sean and I managed to make a gap in the security fence as we were leaving. It was easier than climbing over. We can go in that way. Thefront doors are chained shut, but a large window about thirty feet from the front has been busted. We can go in there and be in the lobby within seconds."

"It's a big place. Any idea where they might be?"

"I have a guess, but it's a pretty educated one. The Stonewall Jackson Room. It's an interior room right off the lobby. There's one door going in and a set of elevators inside."

"Why are you so sure they're in this Stonewall Jackson Room?"

"This is an old hotel, and there are lots of creaks and groans and rats and creepy things. But when I was in that room and the door was closed, I didn't hear anything. It was quiet, too quiet. But when the door was open, you could hear all the normal sounds."

"I'm not getting your point."

"I think the room's been soundproofed, Jefferson."

He stared at her. "I'm starting to see where you're going with this."

"Are your men in position?" He nodded. Michelle checked her watch. "It's almost midnight but there's a full moon. There's an open stretch of ground we have to cover before we reach the fence. If we can direct the main attack from inside, we might have a better chance of not losing anybody."

"Sounds like a plan. But you lead the way. I don't know the lay of this land." Parks spoke into his walkie-talkie and ordered his men to move their perimeter closer in.

Michelle started to sprint off but he grabbed her arm.

"Michelle, I was a pretty good athlete when I was younger, but I was no Olympian. And now my knees are shot, so could you just slow down enough so I can keep you in sight?"

She smiled. "Not to worry, you're in good hands."

They darted through the trees until they came to the open ground they had to cross to get to the fence. They paused there, and Michelle looked at the hard-breathing Parks.

"You ready?" He nodded and gave a thumbs-up.

She jumped out and ran for the fence. Behind her Parks did thesame. As she hustled along, Michelle focused at first on what was in front of her. And then her attention moved to what was behind. And what was there was suddenly chilling.

Those weren't the sounds of normal strides; they were the same disjointed lunges she'd heard outside her bedroom window at the inn-the ones made by the person who'd tried to kill her. She'd been wrong. It wasn't the painful jogging of a wounded man. It was the arthritic loping of a man with ruined knees. And he was now wheezing too.

She jumped behind a fallen tree a split second after the shotgun was racked, and the blast hit right where she'd been. She rolled, pulled her weapon and fired back, scattering shots in a wide, lethal arc.

Parks cursed at his miss and threw himself down, barely avoiding her fire. He fired again.

"Damn you, girl," he yelled. "You're too quick for your own good."

"You bastard!" Michelle screamed back as she scanned the area both for an exit and any accomplices Parks might have. She aimed two shots at Parks that blew chips off the large rock he was hunched behind.

He returned the favor with two blasts from his shotgun. "Sorry, but I had no choice."

She eyed the line of thick woods directly behind her and wondered how she could make it there without dying. "Oh, thanks. That makes me feel a lot better. What, doesn't the Marshals Service pay good enough for you?"

"As a matter of fact, they don't. But I made a big mistake a long time ago when I was a cop in D.C., and it's come back to haunt me."

"Care to enlighten me before you kill me?" Keep him talking, Michelle told herself. Maybe she could figure a way out of this.

Parks hesitated and then said, "Nineteen seventy-four ring a bell?"

"The Nixon protest?" Michelle racked her brains, then she seized upon it. "When you were a D.C. cop, you arrested Arnold Ramsey."Parks said nothing. "But he was innocent. He didn't kill that national guards-" The truth hit her in a blinding flash. " You killed the guardsman and pinned it on Ramsey. And you were paid to do it."

"Crazy times back then. I was a different person, I guess. And it wasn't supposed to be that way. I guess I hit the kid too hard. Yeah, I was paid off all right, and as it turns out, I wasn't paid nearly enough."

"And whoever you were working for back then is blackmailing you to do all this?"

"Like I said, it's cost me big. No statute of limitations on murder, Michelle."

She wasn't listening now. It had occurred to her that he was employing the same strategy she was. Keep her talking while they outflanked her. Now she was trying to recall the exact model of shotgun Parks was carrying. Okay, she had it. Five-shot Remington. Or at least she hoped. He'd fired four times, and it was so quiet out here she was sure she would have heard him reload.

"Hey, Michelle, you still there?"

In answer she fired three rounds at the rock and received a shotgun blast in return. As soon as the buckshot sped by, she leaped to her feet and raced to the woods.