Marcus Sakey: Brilliance

It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered now except killing. Killing, and the fact that Cooper had made it to the bank of light switches he’d spotted on the lobby wall. He smacked them all in one swiping blow. The fluorescents died.

Darkness fell, pure as fury.

Cooper turned and stood up. No need to hide now. When the lights had been on, Cooper had been prey, and Dickinson had been a predator.

With the lights out, Cooper was a shadow in the dark. And Dickinson was a silhouette standing on a conference table, bathed in the glow of the monitor Peters had brought. He may as well have been in a spotlight.

The agent had a gun in each hand, his own in the right, Cooper’s in the left, and he raised them both and fired in the general direction of the light switches. But Cooper was no longer there.

And the twin muzzle flashes would only make things worse for him. Rob him of what limited night vision he’d have.

Cooper moved steadily, not running, not risking tripping or making a sound. Just watching Dickinson as he spun and flailed in the dark. By the time he reached the conference table, the other agent had realized his mistake. Dickinson jumped down, landing hard.

Cooper stepped forward and twisted the guns from the man’s hands.

Then he put them both against Roger Dickinson’s chest and pulled the triggers until the slides locked back.

What was left of the agent fell limp and wet. Cooper dropped the guns on top of him.

He walked to the table. To the monitor.

His family was dead.

Now he just had to face it. To look at the monitor and see the end of the world.

Cooper forced himself to face it.

The screen showed a conference room, the Capitol dome glowing in the distance.

It showed one of the shooters on the ground, splayed flat.

It showed the other pulling himself to his feet, woozy, his fingers scrabbling at the table for help.

What it did not show was the bodies of his family.

God bless you, Shannon. My girl who walks through walls.

“Coop?” Quinn’s voice in his ear. “I just picked up Shannon in the number three elevator. She’s got your family with her. She’s bleeding pretty bad from the right side of her head—must have taken a hit that disabled the transmitter. But she’s giving a thumbs-up to the camera, and everyone else looks fine.”

For a moment he let himself feel it. A feeling as if he could flex and blow the roof open, a feeling like his heart might burst.

Quinn said, “Bad news is, I’m getting a lot of traffic on law enforcement frequencies. A small army is headed our way. Time to go.”

“Where’s Peters?”

“He’s not with you?”

“No. And he’s got the drive.”

“ What? How?”

“No time to explain. Has he shown up on your screens?”

“No. He didn’t go through the elevator lobby.”

The smart thing to do was get out, escape with Quinn and Shannon and his family. Hide somewhere and think of their next move. Let Peters walk away with the only evidence.

Cooper turned and ran for the exit. Through the lobby, out the door, the chime ringing behind him. “Quinn, are there cameras in the stairwells?”

“Negative.”

Turned left on a hunch, kept going, found the stairwell at the end. He pushed open the door, stepped into a brightly lit concrete space. “Do they exit to the outside?”

“Yeah, of course, that’s code in case of fire,” Quinn said, and then, “Oh shit.”

Cooper started down, jumping a flight at a time, his hand trailing down the metal railing. Peters would have made it to the street by now. Vanished into—

He couldn’t be sure that Dickinson would take me. If he were, he’d have stayed to help.

Since he didn’t, he suspected I might win.

And he knows that if I did, I’d come after him.

He won’t do what you expect.

—the night. Cooper caught himself on a handrail, turned the other way, sprinted upward. His calves burning and lungs screaming. Past the tenth, the eleventh, the twelfth.

Quinn said, “Shit. Cooper, I’ve got a helicopter inbound, ETA forty-five seconds.”

Sneaky, Drew. Very sneaky. Cooper said, “Good.”

“Huh?”

“Get out of here. Get Shannon out, get my family out. I’ll meet you at the rendezvous.”

“Cooper—”

“Now. That’s an order.”

The flight above the twelfth ended in a door. Cooper hit it at a run, the thing flying open to expose the roof. Gravel and the bulk of industrial air conditioners, the sudden cool of the evening air and the buzz of the city all around, and faint but growing louder, the whap of helicopter rotors.

The director was at the southeast edge of the building, in a clear space just barely broad enough for a helicopter to land.

A flash of an image, San Antonio, the rooftop with Alex Vasquez. Chasing her to the edge of the building, her body a silhouette against the night sky.

Peters heard him when he was about ten feet away, whirled. He said, “No,” and reached around his back. Cooper caught his arm, twisted it forward, then spun to bring the force of his other forearm down against the director’s elbow, which snapped with a sick pop. Drew Peters screamed, and the gun dropped from his limp fingers.

Cooper held him up with one hand, then used the other to dig in the man’s pockets. The stamp drive was in the front right. He took it, then gripped the man by his lapels and marched him backward. Three steps took them to the edge of the building. The skyline burned behind, a wash of lights on marble and monuments. The White House was lit from below, regal and imposing. He wondered if President Walker was there right now, if he was sitting in the Oval Office, or putting on a bathrobe and crawling into bed.

The chopper grew closer. A spotlight speared down from it, swinging back and forth, playing across the buildings. Hunting.

Peters’s face was sheened with shock-sweat, his eyes wide. But his voice was strangely level as he said, “You want to kill me? Go ahead.”

“Okay.” He marched Peters a half step back.

“Wait!” The heel of the man’s dress shoe slipped and scuffled at the edge. “This is bigger than me and you. If you do this, the world will burn.”

“Still hoping I’m a true believer, huh?”

“I know you are.”

“Maybe you’re right. Maybe I still do believe. But not in you, and not in your dirty little game.”

“It’s not a game. It’s the future. You’re going to have to choose sides.”

“Yeah,” Cooper said. “I’ve heard that.” He yanked his old mentor close, then shoved outward with all his strength.

As Drew Peters flew off the edge of the roof, he crossed the beam of the helicopter searchlight. A flailing rag doll a hundred feet above the concrete. And for a fraction of a second, the dazzling beam seemed to hold him up.

But only for a fraction of a second.

It took him an hour and a half to get clean.

If done directly, the walk from the office building at 900 7th Street NW to the bench overlooking the Lincoln Memorial would only take about twenty minutes. Thirty if you strolled, enjoyed the route, which was one of the most famous in the world. Past the East Wing of the White House, the lights burning inside the windows at all hours. The Washington Monument, a spear in the heart of the night, the airplane warning light blinking slowly. The rippling reflections of the pond in Constitution Garden. The shiny black scar of the Vietnam Memorial bisecting the hillside. And finally the epic neoclassical bulk of the Lincoln Memorial itself. The broad marble steps leading up to the fluted columns, the colonnade glowing from spotlights within, somber old Honest Abe staring out in contemplation, as if weighing the country he had led.