Finn hugged his crying son, who kept his arms tightly around his father.
Finally Finn eased the boy off and told David he had to go with Annabelle. “You have to help your mom,” he said. “I’ll be there as soon as I can.”
“Dad, they’re going to kill you. They’re going to.”
“I’ve been in tougher spots than this, believe me,” Finn said, managing a smile.
Annabelle looked at Stone, took his hand and squeezed it. “Don’t die, Oliver. Please don’t die.”
They helped her and David into the duct. Finn led Stone and Milton to another tunnel paralleling the one they had been in. It had been put in in case construction workers had to evacuate the place and they couldn’t get out for some reason through the visitor center’s exit.
They came to a stop at a secured door. Stone shot the lock off, and Finn opened the door, revealing a long passageway.
“That’ll take us to the Jefferson Building,” Finn said.
Stone nodded. “Caleb told me how to get out of the Jefferson without anyone seeing us. Harry, you go first, Milton in the middle and I’ll bring up the rear.”
Milton peered down the long, dark corridor. “Are you sure it’s safe?”
“As safe as-”
Stone never knew where the shot came from. He barely heard it. He never saw Finn raise his gun and fire. He never saw the sniper fall.
All he saw was the look on Milton’s face. The eyes widened slightly, as though he was only mildly surprised. Then he dropped to his knees, still looking up at Stone. The blood started dripping from his mouth. He only said one word: “Oliver?”
Then Milton Farb dropped face-first to the hard floor, his body twitched once and he lay still, the large hole dead center of his back oozing red.
Stone had seen many wounds just like that one, all of them fatal.
Milton was dead.
Finn stared down at the body. “My God.”
Stone knelt down, lifted his friend’s body up, carried it over to a corner and placed him gently down. He closed the blank eyes and put the small, slender hands over the still chest. Then he rose, clenched his weapon and walked past Finn without a word. He wasn’t heading toward safety. He was heading back to the visitor center.
Harry Finn eyed the door to the Jefferson Building and freedom. His son was safe. He could join him in a short time if he left now. This wasn’t his fight anymore. John Carr had killed his father. What did he owe the man?
Everything. He saved me, my mother and my son. I owe him everything.
He gripped his gun and raced after Oliver Stone.
CHAPTER 92
IT WASN’T MILD-MANNERED, middle-aged cemetery caretaker Oliver Stone who strode out into battle that night. It was a killing machine called John Carr, thirty years younger, with all the skills and ferocity of a lifetime spent ending other people’s lives in ways unimaginable to most people. He used every one of those skills that night. And yet there seemed a greater power at work. Bullets that should have ended his life numerous times missed by less than an inch. Disaster that should have struck never did. Maybe it was finally his time for justice. He only thought about that later. Tonight, he just killed. And the unfinished visitor center ran red with blood. Finn had killed only one more man. Stone had finished off the other six, two with shots that Finn had never seen anyone make before. He still couldn’t fathom how Stone had done it. It seemed the man had simply willed the bullets to find their marks.
To Stone, there was another explanation as to how he had survived. Undoubtedly, Gray’s men were younger, stronger, faster, superbly trained. These days they always had overpowering force before they attacked. They had killed thousands of times-in practice.
It was altogether different when one did it for real. And counting Vietnam, Stone had probably killed more people than all of Gray’s men combined. And he had never had overpowering force. He had often only had himself. That just made you better than the other guy.
When the last man had dropped, Finn and Stone left via the emergency exit, reaching the Jefferson Building and leaving from there as Caleb had told them. An anguished Stone carried Milton’s body over his shoulder. While he waited behind some bushes with the body, Finn managed to sneak out and snare a spare EMT uniform from a body recovery truck stationed near the epicenter of the mock terrorist attack. Next he spotted an ambulance that was parked near the library with the keys still in the ignition. A few minutes later Milton’s body was loaded into the ambulance by Stone and Finn on a gurney, a sheet placed over his face. With all the chaos going on everywhere around them, no one could tell a fake corpse from a real one. With Stone riding in the back, Finn drove away, the ambulance lights flashing.
Finn glanced in the rearview mirror. Stone was sitting next to his friend, his head hanging down. He had not escaped the battle unscathed. A bullet had sliced through his right arm, leaving a bloody gash. Another had left a crease on the left side of his head. The man took no notice of them. Finn had had to bandage them up using gauze and tape from the ambulance’s supplies while Stone had just stared down at his dead friend.
Stone lifted the sheet, took Milton’s still warm hand in his and squeezed it. He started mouthing words that Finn could not hear clearly, but he instinctively knew what the man was saying.
“I’m sorry, Milton. I am so sorry.”
A tear trickled down from Stone’s weathered face and dropped onto the sheet.
Finn didn’t want to break into this very private moment but he had no choice. “Where do you want to take Milton?”
“Home. We’re taking him home, Harry.”
Leaving the ambulance about three blocks from the house, they carried Milton’s body through the woods at the rear of his neighborhood. Stone placed him gently in his bed and turned to Finn.
“Give me a minute.”
Finn nodded and respectfully withdrew from the room.
Stone was a man who had suffered more heartbreak in life than any human being should have to. He had done so stoically, trying to look ahead rather than focusing on the past. Yet as he gazed down at his friend’s body, every memory of every personal tragedy in his life came charging at him from the darkness.
And for one of the very few times in his life, Oliver Stone sobbed without restraint. He cried so hard his knees buckled and he ended up on the floor, his body curled tight like a child in distress, suffering the anguish of a million nightmares that had collected inside him all these decades, nightmares that had suddenly been released, like the crush of water over a collapsed dam.
Thirty minutes later he had no more tears left to shed. Stone rose and touched his friend’s face with his hand. “Good-bye, Milton.”
CHAPTER 93
AFTER THE EXCHANGE, Gray and Simpson had left the Capitol area quickly.
Simpson said, “How soon will you know when Carr and Lesya’s son are dead?”
“Anytime now. You know, it was quite ballsy of you to confess to Carr that you were the one who ordered his execution.”
“I didn’t want him to die without knowing. It would have left me unfulfilled.”
“Still, I wouldn’t have done it,” Gray said.
Simpson took the old orders from Gray and studied them. “The world is better off because of what we did.”
“I agree. Two dead Soviet leaders. We cleared the way for peace.”
“We never got the credit we deserved, though.”
Gray said, “That’s because it wasn’t authorized. We took matters into our own hands.”
“Patriots have to do what they have to do. So what now?”
“The orders and this cell phone will be destroyed.” He took the papers back from Simpson.
“What’s on the cell phone? I couldn’t hear.”
“Be glad you couldn’t, Roger. Otherwise, I would’ve had to kill you too.”