The other invader's strange weapon spoke twice, a sound like the double slam of a door. At almost the same instant, her captor's gun fired, and the rattling crack it made was far louder in that narrow hotel room than the gunfire from the other weapon.
And the Russian-sounding man was already lunging toward her; she saw the bullets striking his vest, opening holes in the nylon fabric, and the little gun was still firing, the muzzle flash dragging up across the black-clad body…
And then she was on the ground, and her captor was limp beneath her and her deliverer was a dead weight lying on top of her and Celia was screaming and screaming and Ellen thought if this went on much longer she would surely shoot Celia herself.
The weight was lifted off her and she sat up, gasping for breath. Bunny knelt beside her, holding her upright, helping her over to the bed.
"It's okay!" the man was saying, shouting to be heard above Celia. "Everybody stay down! I'm Lieutenant j.g. DeWitt, and we're here to get you out. Stay calm, stay quiet, and stay on the floor. Okay?"
"You're… American?" Monica Patterson asked.
"They're American!" Celia cried.
… and then the women were leaping to their feet, screening now for sheer, adrenaline-shaking joy.
"Stay down!" DeWitt bellowed, and the screaming stopped as though cut short by the throwing of a switch. As the women parted before him, he moved across the room to kneel above the body of the man who'd somehow called her captor's shots to himself. The man in the hallway with the strange gun came in and checked each of the uniformed soldiers briefly, then knelt beside the other two. The women watched quietly, sensing the life-and-death drama, afraid to speak, afraid almost to breathe.
"This one's still alive," the man with the strange gun told DeWitt.
"I don't give a fuck about him. Tie him and then mount guard at the door."
"Aye, aye, sir."
DeWitt kept working with the wounded man, pulling a first-aid kit from one of his pouches, opening the man's vest. There was a lot of blood. "Aw, shit, Steponit! Shit! Talk to me! Shit!"
"He gonna make it, sir?"
"Watch that door!"
"Yessir."
"Shit, Steponit. What the fuck did you tell the bastard to piss him off so bad?"
"Told him… he was coward," the wounded man said. God, he was smiling. "Called him… filthy coward, hide behind women, small… small penis. Called him everything I could think of. Then… said his wife was probably making it with his neighbor while he terrorized innocent women…"
"Shit, Steponit. Didn't anybody ever tell you it isn't a good idea to piss off a guy who had a gun?"
"Can… can we help get him on the bed?" Kingston asked, sitting up. Her hearing was fully recovered now, though there was still a faint ringing in her ears. She tasted salt on her lips, and she realized her nose was bleeding.
"Thanks, ma'am, but we'd better leave him where he is for now."
"What about this one?" Unsteadily, she moved over to the body of the man who'd been holding her. The braid on his uniform suggested that he was of very high rank. A general? She thought so. He was lying on his stomach, his wrists strapped behind his back with a length of white plastic. Gently, she rolled him onto his side. For a moment, his eyes locked with hers, and she thought she saw recognition there.
"Katrina," he said.
And then the eyes were no longer focused. He was dead.
"Shit! No!" DeWitt shouted. "No, Goddamn it!"
"He's gone, XO."
Kingston moved over to DeWitt's side. "He… he saved my life, Lieutenant. He may have saved all of us."
"Yeah." DeWitt looked up at her as though seeing her for the first time. "Yeah, but that's why we're here, isn't it? You're Congresswoman Kingston?"
"That's me."
"Okay." He drew himself up straighter. "I want you to be in charge of your people here. Is anybody missing from your party now? Anybody taken someplace else? To the bathroom? Whatever?"
"The women are all here, Lieutenant," she said. "I don't know about the men."
"Some of our boys are taking care of the men right now," DeWitt told her. "Is anyone in here hurt? Does anyone need medical attention?"
"We're all fine, Lieutenant," Kingston told him.
"You've got some blood on your face."
"From that, that explosion."
"Flash-bang. Got your attention, didn't it?"
"I'm okay." She smeared at the blood on her lip and decided that she didn't want to see what she looked like right now. Gunfire crackled in the distance. "Is… I mean, are you still fighting?"
The lieutenant's mouth, almost invisible under layers of black and green paint, quirked upward. "Yes, ma'am. But it'll be okay. You ladies just do what you're told and everything'll work out fine." He turned away then and crouched inside the shattered door.
With a jolt of insight, she realized that these young men had fought their way to her, one had died for her, and now the others had placed themselves between her and her former captors. From the look of those two, she wouldn't care to be in the army boots of anyone trying to recapture the hostages.
As she lowered herself to the floor, however, she caught sight of one of the soldiers lying in the corner, the first one to be shot when the Americans had burst in. His head was turned to face her; the lower jaw was missing, and one of the eyes had popped out of its socket. There was blood everywhere, all over the shattered face, draining down the front of his tunic, pooling on the floor, splattered across the wall behind him.
Grimly, Kingston turned her eyes away and told herself that she would not be sick.
For a moment, she'd been caught up with the traditional, romantic image of heroes to the rescue. That body, in a way words never could, snapped her back to reality. There was nothing romantic about war.
Sitting on the House Military Affairs Committee, Kingston knew a fair amount about things military. DeWitt had said he was Special Forces when he came through the door… but he'd given his rank as lieutenant j.g. There were no junior-grade lieutenants in the Army. That was a Navy rank, equivalent to an Army first lieutenant. If he was Navy, he had to be a SEAL.
An elite murder squad she'd once called the SEALS. Shit! Ellen Kingston lay on the floor and thought about her distinguished colleague from Virginia, the one that had a son who was a Navy SEAL.
God help me, she thought. The next time I see Charles Fitzhugh Murdock, I'm going to grab the guy, kiss him on the mouth, and swear never, never, never to vote against Navy Special Warfare appropriations again.
"One-One, this is Two-One." DeWitt was speaking so quietly Kingston almost couldn't catch the words. He seemed to be talking into a pencil mike extending from his helmet around to just in front of his paint-smeared lips. "I have six women, fifth floor back. All safe, no injuries." He took a breath. "Three tangos down. One of ours down."
She couldn't hear the reply.
"Steponit, L-T. He's dead." Another long pause. "Roger that," he said after a moment. And then "I copy."
He turned slightly, facing the women. "Okay, ladies," he said. "We're gonna have a short wait. The other guys outside have pretty much mopped up on the tangos — the terrorists, I mean. The other hostages, the men, are all safe. Twelve men, including the five guys on your staff, ma'am. They were being held in another room on the other side of the building."
"Thank God," she said. "What about the airplane's crew?"
"I don't know about them, ma'am. They may still be with the plane, and someone else'll be taking care of them. Now, we have helos inbound for you. What we're gonna do is wait until the helos are here. Then we're gonna walk down the stairs, go out into the courtyard, and climb aboard. Ms. Kingston, I want you to be in charge of the people in this room, okay? You feel up to that?"