Abrahem appeared to remain on his feet for a timeless moment, the muscles in his body randomly clenching and holding him upright as the last flickering neurons in his brain faded into silence. The assassin’s body crumpled at the legs, slammed down onto its knees and folded over as though Abrahem were prostrating himself toward Mecca, his gun still clasped at an awkward angles in his hand as his forehead hit the carpeted floor with a bloodied thump.
Ethan turned to see Hannah Ford standing four — square in the bedroom doorway, both hands gripping the pistol that she had fired. Ethan’s ears rang incessantly from the gunshots as he turned and vaguely heard Abrahem’s final breath spill from his lungs in a low rasp.
The First Lady leaped up from her hiding place and rushed around the bed, tears streaming from her eyes as she cried out.
‘Help him!’
Ethan staggered forward as his injured leg gave way beneath him and he slumped to the floor. Ethan stared blankly at the President’s body, knowing that the bullet must have passed directly through his heart, Abrahem far too good a shot to have missed the vital organ in his last victorious moment. The First Lady plunged down alongside her husband and ripped his shirt open to reveal the dense black padding of a bullet proof vest.
Ethan’s eyes widened as the President rasped a weak sentence.
‘He didn’t take the head shot.’
Ethan stared down in disbelief at the President as his wife helped him up into a sitting position.
‘You had a vest,’ Ethan gasped.
The President nodded. ‘Always have a backup plan,’ he rasped, clearly in pain from the bullet’s impact. The President must have donned the vest before purposefully confronting Abrahem in the bedroom, directing the assassin’s revenge away from the family and giving Ethan enough time to catch up. ‘I only hoped he wouldn’t shoot for my head. But I guess the malicious bastard wanted me to suffer.’
Ethan rested his hand on the President’s shoulder, relief pouring through him as he replied.
‘He would have been trained to make sure of a kill, even at close range,’ Ethan said. ‘He’d aim for the torso and if the first shot didn’t kill…’
‘It would surely maim, letting him fire a second into the head,’ the President nodded as he replied. ‘I’m lucky he didn’t use a double — tap.’
The double — tap was a Special Forces technique, where the shooter would pull the trigger twice in quick succession — once to hit the torso, and the second shot on the recoil of the first, which would push the barrel upward slightly and cause the second round to go through the face or skull.
Ethan looked round to see Hannah Ford watching over them as Secret Service agents swarmed into the room.
‘Stay still, hands on your head!’
Ethan complied as he saw the agents surround him, despite the President’s assurances that he was an ally. Ethan looked at Hannah, and she pointed to his nose.
‘You’ve got a nosebleed,’ she said.
‘Abrahem,’ Ethan replied as he was cuffed by the agents. ‘I’m not implanted. Mitchell?’
Hannah beamed in delight at him as she holstered her pistol. ‘Apprehended, he’s downstairs.’
Hannah’s delight melted away and Ethan saw the concern etched into her features. He was about to ask her what was wrong, when he had a sudden premonition of doom as he stood up on legs unwilling to bear his weight.
‘Nicola?’
Hannah did not respond for a moment, but then she spoke softly.
‘She’s on her way to George Washington University Hospital,’ she said. ‘She was hit. I don’t know how bad it is.’
Ethan felt his world sway around him and he slumped back down onto one knee, fatigue finally overwhelming him as Hannah moved to his side.
‘You need a hospital too,’ she pointed out. ‘How about we get you there right now?’
The intensive care unit was quieter that Ethan would have imagined. It had taken some time for the Secret Service and local law enforcement to assure themselves that he was not in fact some deranged biker intent on murdering anybody who crossed his path, and that he had not been implanted with one of the nefarious devices.
Lopez lay entombed amid a tangle of tubes, intravenous lines and other medical paraphernalia. Her eyes were bruised and closed, her breathing controlled by a ventilator and her chest swathed in white bandages that looked clinically clean but to Ethan were merely a veil across the terrible damage wrought by the bullet that had passed through her.
A doctor stood alongside him at the foot of the bed and spoke as though from another world.
‘The bullet severed her right subclavian artery, passed through her right lung and exited her left chest in the middle of the ribcage. She lost a lot of blood before the paramedics got to her, and was barely breathing by the time she reached the ER.’
Ethan swallowed, didn’t take his eyes from Lopez as he spoke.
‘What’s her condition and prognosis?’
The doctor sighed softly before he replied.
‘There is a reasonable chance that she’ll pull through this and survive the shooting,’ he said finally. ‘But we can’t predict what condition she’ll be in when she does. Her brain was starved of oxygen for a considerable period of time.’
Ethan was unable to look at anything else but Lopez’s face, her body seeming so small and vulnerable now as it lay on the hospital bed, her life hanging by the thread of modern technology. He knew there and then that without the intervention of paramedics, who had forced their way through the dense traffic to reach her, Lopez would have died at the scene along with the shooter.
‘Who pulled the trigger?’ he asked finally.
‘I don’t have that information sir,’ the doctor replied.
Ethan turned and stalked out of the room. Outside in the corridor waited Hannah Ford, her green eyes swimming with concern. Ethan registered a moment of brief surprise that she was even still here.
‘How’s she doing?’ Hannah asked.
Ethan struggled for a moment to speak. It felt as though somebody had shoved a sock down his throat.
‘Touch and go,’ he uttered finally. ‘They can’t predict her condition if she does survive.’
‘Christ, I’m so sorry,’ Hannah said.
Ethan could not bring himself to look at her as he spoke. ‘Who shot her?’
Hannah looked up at the ceiling briefly before she replied.
‘Ethan, going on a rampage isn’t going to help you any and it sure as hell won’t help Lopez.’
‘You don’t know that.’
‘It didn’t do Abrahem any good, did it?’ Hannah challenged.
Ethan stalked past her and continued down the corridor, Hannah following.
‘Where are you going?’ she demanded.
‘Am I under arrest?’
‘No, you’re under stress. I don’t want you wandering off and doing something you’ll regret.’
‘Since when do you care?’
Hannah gripped Ethan’s arm with enough force to pull him up short.
‘We’re on the same side,’ she said. ‘Doesn’t matter about what’s happened up before. Director LeMay’s working for Majestic Twelve, I know that now.’
Ethan sighed and glanced out of a window, the iconic skyline of Washington DC’s Capitol visible in the distance.
‘He’s untouchable, you know that too. They all are.’
‘Maybe,’ Hannah replied, ‘but everybody has weaknesses and nobody is untouchable forever. We have Mitchell, remember?’
Ethan clenched his fists. ‘Mitchell might have saved the President’s life as much as put it at risk.’
‘He’s the enemy,’ Hannah insisted. ‘He murdered Stanley Meyer and Jin Chen in Hong Kong, stole the hard drives from the Chinese that contained the data we were searching for to hand over to Majestic Twelve and he still represents the very people who have been trying to bring us down!’