Raising the USP Tactical that Special Agent Auburn had given him, Adam walked resolutely toward the flashlights, the weapon leveled at the man on point.
“Who are you?” Adam loudly demanded.
“Special Agent Jack Bauer, Counter Terrorist Unit,” Jack replied.
With an audible exhale, Adam lowered the weapon. A moment later the sub-basement was filling with armed men. One of them approached the two ladies.
“I’m Special Agent Evans, Secret Service,” he told them.
“Thank god,” said the VP’s wife.
More men emerged from the gloom, flanking the two ladies and helping Marina Novartov stand on her injured leg. Adam told Evans about Auburn’s serious condition. A medic and another man were summoned to help.
“We’re walking out of here, right now,” he told the ladies and the interns. “Follow these two agents and stick close. We’re not out of danger yet.”
The group walked the length of the dark basement, until they came to an open steel hatch set in the concrete wall. Adam had found the hatch earlier and tried to open it, but it had been locked from the other side.
Just then, five women in fashionable evening gowns and high-heeled shoes emerged from the hatch. Megan shot Adam a curious look. He shrugged, shook his head. Don’t ask me.
Evans stepped up to them. “Let’s go. Through that hatch, to the sewers.”
Megan shuddered. “The sewers?”
Adam smiled and put his arm around her shoulders. “Didn’t I tell you when I first welcomed you to Washington—”
“I know, I know,” she said, “this job has its perks.”
Jack checked the digital map display strapped to his forearm. It glowed green in the dimly lit subbasement. He assembled everyone in front of a large metal grill set into the wall. Using a universal key, Jack picked the lock. The grill swung wide like a door.
Behind the steel mesh grill an aluminum shaft climbed straight up to the Chamberlain’s roof. Steel rungs were embedded in the walls of the shaft, leading upward and out of sight. Jack could see light shining into the shaft from grills on the upper levels — the occupied floors.
“Okay, women first,” Jack whispered. Nina stepped forward, wearing a black spangled dress. The other four women were similarly attired. Jack addressed them all.
“Climb until you pass four more grills, then exit through the fifth. You’ll come out in a corridor right next to the women’s rest rooms on the main floor. Presumably the terrorists are allowing people to take bathroom breaks. I want you to mingle with the women returning to the auditorium, then get as close as you can to your respective targets. Understand?”
The women nodded, their faces tense.
“Take them down as soon as you hear the first shot. We’ll fire at exactly 2:45 a.m. — not a second sooner.”
Jack paused. “Remember, the success of the entire mission rests on your actions. Do not hesitate to do what is necessary to save lives. If you fail, hundreds may die.”
Jack and the snipers watched the women enter the shaft. When they climbed out of sight, Jack closed the grill behind them.
“Let’s go,” he said, leading his snipers to the next air shaft, where they would make their own climb.
Jack peered through the ornate brass grill of the auditorium’s deserted mezzanine. He’d climbed the air shaft with his team of snipers following behind. Now Jack carefully scanned the darkened area, using night vision goggles to determine that every seat was empty. Listening intently, Jack heard the murmur of the crowd on the main floor below.
Silently he slipped his universal key into the slot on the grill and jiggled it. The rattle of metal sounded like an explosion, but the simple lock mechanism was easily tripped. With the squeak of metal on metal, Jack opened the ornamental grill and squirmed through the opening.
He crawled forward on his belly, moving down the aisle between rows of seats. The glass control booth was behind and above him, but it overhung the mezzanine, and even if the booth was occupied, no one would be able to see him.
As he crawled down a carpeted aisle to the mezzanine’s edge, snipers silently emerged from the shaft behind him. Jack used hand signals to position the shooters at various points until they had a complete field of fire.
Finally, Jack peered over the edge of the balcony. Below him he saw hundreds of people, in seats or sprawled on the floor. Debris was scattered on the carpet, clothing draped over seat backs. Circling the hostages along the perimeter of the auditorium, Jack counted sixteen masked men, another two on the stage. There were still two shooters unaccounted for and Jack hoped they were escorting hostages to the rest rooms. As he watched, the missing pair appeared. They began chatting with the man seated on an ornate, throne-like chair in the middle of the expansive stage.
With hand signals, Jack issued the command for the shooters to assemble their weapons. Then he assembled his own.
Jack opened the soft cloth bags he’d slung over his back during the long climb up the shaft. Carefully he unwrapped the barrel, the magazines, the sniper scope and the two receivers and stuffed the cotton packing cloths back into the bag. Quickly and efficiently, Jack assembled the 7.62mm Mark 11 Mod 0 Type Sniper Rifle System.
The Mark 11 was a highly accurate precision semiautomatic rifle. Men who used it in the field dubbed it “an M16 on steroids.” Light, versatile and portable, the rifle could be broken down into two main sections, which made it perfect for an operation like this one.
When Jack completed assembly, he shoved a magazine in place and flipped the control switch to semiautomatic. He had to hit at least two targets in rapid succession and wanted the fastest rate of fire possible.
Near one of the auditorium’s rest rooms, Nina had just closed the brass grill behind her and smoothed her dress when a masked man appeared at the end of the marble-lined corridor. He spied the knot of women and hurried forward.
“Hey, what for you do?” he bellowed in fractured English. The man slipped the black submachine gun off his shoulder, waved it menacingly.
“Bathroom,” Nina cried, throwing up her hands. “We just went to the bathroom, that’s all.”
The other women followed Nina’s lead, threw up their hands, started to babble.
“Shuddup! Shuddup!” the gunman commanded. “Go back now. Back!”
The masked man gestured them forward, down the long marble lined corridor toward the auditorium.
As they approached the audience, Nina could hear the quiet murmur of the crowd. Another gunman who’d been guarding the doors stepped aside to allow Nina and the other women to enter the vast space. “In, in!” the armed man barked.
“Okay, we’re going,” Nina replied.
Immediately, Nina’s senses were assaulted. The interior of the auditorium reeked — an unsavory combination of stale air, fear sweat, and spilled blood. To move down the aisle, Nina had to walk past a pile of elegantly attired corpses, stacked like cordwood against a wall, rivulets of blood staining the lush carpeting. The muted roar of a thousand people talking, crying, sighing, whispering filled her ears.
Once inside the auditorium, the women quickly dispersed, each subtly maneuvering to move as close to their respective targets as they could get. Nina had the farthest to go — from the back of the auditorium to the front row seats where international film star Abigail Heyer waited to blow herself and a thousand of her closest Hollywood friends to Kingdom Come.
Not only did she have a long way to go, Nina had the toughest job. The other women only had to kill their targets, knocking the detonators from their hands and slitting their throats with hidden knives before the suicide bombers had a chance to set off the explosives. Nina had to stop Abigail Heyer from setting off her bomb without killing her. Nina was tasked with taking the movie star alive.