C
HAPTER
T
WENTY-EIGHT
B
oxers piloted the Chevy around the curve on Ottawa River Parkway, and as he slowed to take the truck and the boat over the curve to head toward the water, he corrected abruptly to the left and continued around the circle to take another pass.
“I had someone on my tail,” he explained.
As he made the six-minute detour, Jonathan was struck with a thought that hadn’t occurred to him before: When they pulled off to drop the boat, they were going to leave tracks in the snow through the grass. How could they prevent that?
They couldn’t.
Shit.
See? This was where planning and reality started to separate themselves.
On the second tour around the circle, conditions seemed perfect. Boxers slowed the truck to about fifteen miles per hour as he swung the turn, and then straightened it out to head for the water.
Thirty seconds later, they were at the water’s edge. Boxers made a wide U-turn to get the boat’s ass facing the shore, and then he carefully backed up to the edge.
“Be careful,” Jonathan warned, watching out his side view mirror. “With the ice and snow cover, I don’t know where land ends and thin ice begins.”
Boxers brought the truck to a halt and threw the transmission into park. He turned in his seat to face the back. “Which one of you two is the next driver?”
Yelena looked at David. “I haven’t driven anything in years,” she said.
David raised his hand. “I’m the next driver.”
“Okay,” Boxers said, “but first you’re a Sherpa for just one more time.”
David looked confused.
Jonathan translated. “We need to move the equipment to the boat.”
That took all of three minutes. Maybe less.
Jonathan and Boxers climbed aboard the boat. “Have you ever launched one of these things before?” Jonathan asked David.
“Only about a thousand times.”
“Okay, good. Is your radio earpiece in place?”
David and Yelena both touched the buds in their ears.
Jonathan switched his radio to channel three and pressed the transmit button. “Radio check,” he said.
David gave a thumbs-up.
“I need you to say it out loud,” Jonathan said. “There’s a button in the center of your vest. Press it and talk.”
Good God, what else don’t they know?
David went first. He pressed the button and announced, “I’m here.”
Jonathan replied, “No shouting. Conversational tones are fine. You can even whisper and we’ll hear you. Yelena?”
She touched her chest. “I hear you.”
“And Mother Hen?”
“Right here,” she said.
Jonathan cast a glance to Boxers, who gave a thumbs-up. “Big Guy is good too. Remember radio discipline, folks. Don’t talk on the air unless you have to. Channel one will be the tactical channel, and under no circumstances do I want to hear either of you on it. Channel three is yours. Mother Hen will be monitoring everything. If you need something from me, tell her, and she’ll tell us. I’ll be in your ear within a minute. Got that?”
They answered in unison, canceling out each other’s signals.
Jonathan pressed the transmit button. “David, get into the car and back us up to the water. I’ll tell you when we’re afloat. You, too, Yelena.”
As they walked back to the car and Jonathan cinched up his collar against the cold, Boxers mumbled, “I remember when we dealt with professionals.”
“Boring, wasn’t it?” Jonathan replied.
“Yeah,” Boxers said. “That was exactly the word I was hunting for.”
The boat was a twenty-two-foot Mako with twin Mercury outboards. Jonathan wasn’t a water guy, but this looked like a boat that could get out of its own way in a hurry. The motors were tilted up and out of the way as David backed them into place. They wouldn’t jam into the ground (or the ice) and ground the mission before it even started.
“I feel like we should be at the water,” David said into his ear.
“I’ll let you know.”
As the words left Jonathan’s mouth, the ice gave way with a crack that might have been a pistol shot, and just like that, they were afloat.
“Stop,” Jonathan commanded, and the truck jerked to a halt.
Only the driver’s door opened, and David walked out, nearly falling when he lost his footing on the first step.
“Be careful,” Jonathan said. “I don’t know where the land ends and the ice starts.”
He watched with night vision as David skillfully released the ratchet on the winch and let the boat unravel its own tether. When there was enough slack, David pulled the boat back in a few feet, and released the tether’s hook from the eye in the bow of the boat.
In the last few seconds before he floated away, Jonathan said, “Are we clear on the plan?”
“I am,” David said. “I’ll see you in Quebec.”
“Just leave the trailer,” Jonathan said. “It’ll be our gift to the people of Canada.” He tossed off a nonregulation salute, and then turned to Boxers. “You gonna let me drive, Big Guy?”
Boxers stopped messing with the equipment and moved forward toward the controls at the center console. “Did pigs start to fly?” This boat was designed purely for recreation. The cockpit stood amidships, covered by a flyaway canopy that no doubt provided comfort on a hot summer day, but was less than useless on a cold winter night. The canopy actually posed a hazard to Boxers as he instinctively stooped a little to fit underneath. Other than that canopy, the deck was wide open.
Jonathan moved to the aft end of the boat and rocked the enormous outboards into the icy water of the Ottawa River. According to Venice, he’d spent about forty thousand dollars for this boat—all of it billable to the government—and for that kind of coin, he expected performance.
“I’m ready back here,” he told Big Guy, and ten seconds later, the motors belched clouds of white smoke, and they growled to life.
They were maybe three yards away from shore when sudden movement from the darkness behind David made him duck, as both Jonathan and Boxers went for their sidearms.
Yelena Poltanov ran full-out toward shore and launched herself at the boat. In an astonishingly acrobatic move, she timed the leap perfectly, somehow pulling Michael Jordan airtime before landing awkwardly on the open bow of the boat. Her feet slipped out from under her on impact and she landed hard on her back.
“God
damn
it,” Boxers cursed, way too loudly as he broke his aim. “Are you out of your mind? I damn near shot you!”
He stole the words from Jonathan’s throat. “Stop the boat,” he commanded as he holstered his .45.
Boxers throttled down.
Jaw locked, and struggling to control his anger, Jonathan stepped from behind the cockpit, and strode to the bow, where the First Lady was struggling to stand. He grabbed her by her collar and lifted her to her feet. He spun her to face him, then changed his grip to the front of her vest, just beneath her chin.
“Get the hell off my boat,” he said.
Even in the darkness, he could see the heat in her eyes. “Only if you throw me overboard.”
“Don’t tempt me.”
Boxers appeared behind him. “Be happy to,” he said.
“Stand down, Big Guy,” Jonathan said. This was about three seconds from spinning completely out of control. “Keep us close to shore. We’re drifting out.”
Boxers hovered.
Without looking at him, Jonathan said, “I’ve got this, Big Guy. Please.”
“I don’t give a shit who she is,” Boxers said. “She gets off this boat, or I will drown her myself.”
Jonathan kept his eyes on Yelena. “You heard him.”
“I heard big words from a big man,” she said, utterly unfazed. “But I remain the First Lady of the United States, and there are some laws that even you fear.”
Truer words had never been spoken. Jonathan changed tacks. “Mrs. Darmond, you can’t be here. I cannot allow you to be here. Christ, you’re the one I was supposed to save in the first place.”
“But I didn’t need saving,” she said. “My son and grandson do. I’m going to be there.”
“Ma’am, I swear to God we’ll bring them to you.”
“Suppose you don’t?”
“We will.”
“But if you
don’t
.”
Another swell of anger. How could he make her understand this?
“Scorpion, we really don’t have time for this,” Boxers said as he nudged the throttles forward to hold them as close to the icy shore as possible.
“Ma’am,” Jonathan said, “with all respect, this is what we do for a living. This is what we’ve
always
done for a living. With you along, it’s like having a third hostage. Your presence
endangers
your family, and it endangers Big Guy and me. I can’t allow it.”
“Please let go of me,” Yelena said. Her tone was that of a gentle, reasonable request.
Jonathan released his grip. Then he took a step back to be less threatening.
“Thanks to Director Rivers—your Wolverine—and others, you think you know who I am,” Yelena said. “In reality, you don’t have a clue.”
She stopped there, apparently thinking that there were some dots for Jonathan to connect. In reality, there were none. He waited.
Yelena sighed. “Dmitri and his friends have good reason to be angry with me. People sit in prison today for bombs I planted and people I shot. I know my way around a firefight.”
Jonathan felt his heart skip, but he made sure his face didn’t show it. So she was a murderer.
“I don’t know what to say to that,” Jonathan said.
“Say whatever you want. Say nothing. I don’t care. Just know that I won’t step away from a conflict.”
“No,” Boxers said. “You’ll just betray your comrades.” He pronounced “comrades” with his best Russian accent.
Yelena kept her eyes on Jonathan. “People change, Mr. Grave. Priorities change. Motivations change. But skills remain. They may dull some with time, but they never go away entirely. I can be an asset to you.”
In his ear, Jonathan heard, “Scorpion, Mother Hen. You’re not moving. Is there a problem?” Back in Fisherman’s Cove, in addition to the SkysEye satellite imagery, she could also track them by their GPS signals.
Jonathan pressed his transmit button. “We’re fine. Stand by.”
“I go with you, Mr. Grave, or I go in the front door. I will not be relegated to sitting on the opposite shore waiting.”
Jonathan tried to think of an alternative that would not involve drowning her or zip-tying her and shoving her in the backseat of the Chevy. If all of this fell apart, he could actually explain that the First Lady was killed in a firefight to rescue her family. Wolverine would even give him cover. But there’d be no explaining away an assault on the First Lady.
He keyed his mike. “Mother Hen, Scorpion. There’s been a change in plans.”
Behind him, Boxers said, “Ah, shit.”
As Jonathan laid out the new plan, Venice wished that she had not allowed Wolverine to listen in on the speaker. She’d piped all the audio and video into the War Room so that they could watch together.
“No,” Irene said. Her lips looked pale even as her cheeks flushed. “No, tell him he can’t do that.”
“But you heard—”
“You tell him,” Irene insisted. “Tell him to abort the whole mission if that’s what it comes to.”
Venice considered arguing, but then realized she didn’t need to. “Okay,” she said. “But you’re really not going to like his answer.” She keyed her mike. “Scorpion, Mother Hen.”
“Go ahead.” She could hear wind and engine noise in the background.
“Wolverine says that you may not include Sidesaddle in the operation. If she will not cooperate, you must abort.” Jonathan was the assigner of radio handles, and Sidesaddle was his play on the Secret Service’s Cowgirl handle. David and Becky were Rooster and Chickadee, respectively.
A pause. “You know that’s not gonna happen, right?”
Irene pointed to a skinny black microphone that extended up out of the workstation in front of her seat at the table. “Is this thing hot?”
Venice pushed a button. “It is now.”
This should be really interesting.
“Just push the button at the base to talk, release it to listen.”
Irene pushed the button. “Scorpion, this is Wolverine.”
“Hey, Wolfie. I appreciate your concern, but it’s not happening. She says that if I don’t take her with me, she’s going in by herself. And I don’t think she’s bluffing. Maternal instinct and all that.”
“Then you have to abort.”
“There’s an innocent guy and a thirteen-year-old in there. I can see the building. I am not aborting. I don’t really even think you want me to. Mother Hen, kill her mike for me, will you? And keep the channel clear unless you’ve got critical intel. Oh, and give Rooster a call on channel three. He probably needs a pep talk.”
Irene’s face showed an emotion that hovered somewhere between ire and acrimony. She’d set her jaw and pursed her lips until her mouth had formed a pencil line below her nose. “He hung up on me,” she said. Clearly, it had been a long time since anyone had dared to do that. “Who the hell does he think he is?”
“Welcome to my world,” Venice said.
“Get him back.”
Venice cocked her head and folded her arms. “Come on, Irene,” she said. “You heard him.” She tapped keys on her computer and pointed to the big screen. “You can see where they are. This mission has already gone hot in Digger’s mind, and he’s got more urgent things on his burner than an argument with you.”
Irene’s jaw gaped as she pressed a hand to her forehead. “But what happens if—”
Venice shot up her hand. “Don’t say it.”
Irene recoiled. “Say what?”
“Anything negative. We don’t do that here. Once we’re hot, we only anticipate one outcome. Every move we make, every word we say is geared toward making success happen.”