The paths intersected in the middle at a low fountain shaped like a smooth, gray boulder. Water flowed over artfully placed rocks, murmuring like a mountain stream. The sound made Elizabeth think of other places, other times. If she closed her eyes she could imagine the sound of the creek that ran behind her childhood home in Colorado.
Nick and Ronnie came out with trays and headed toward them. Nick had abandoned the sling but he had to be careful about the stitches. He looked at Selena and felt something close down.
Lamont was at a hospital in the city. His mom was ill again.
Ronnie and Nick were almost across the garden when something screamed out of the sky and exploded in the front of the building. The blast picked them up and tossed them aside. The air filled with flying debris. Blocks of concrete slammed into the earth and smashed against the garden walls. Pieces of the building rained from the sky.
In the aftermath, it seemed as if time had frozen and sound had ceased to exist.
Nick couldn't understand what had happened. He was lying on gravel. The stones dug into his face. The stitches in his back were torn open and bleeding. He couldn't hear anything. He tried to comprehend what he was doing there. Ronnie lay twenty feet away, not moving. A thick cloud of white dust drifted down on everything.
Hearing began to return. It brought the crackling of flames and the sound of things falling inside the building. Nick started to get to his knees and hit something with his head. A jagged spear of steel had embedded itself in a tree next to him. He saw Selena on her knees, bent over someone on the ground. The side of her face was covered in blood. Director Harker lay on her side, her back against the garden wall. Her black skirt was pushed up above her knees.
Nick struggled to his feet and looked back at Project headquarters. Black smoke and orange flame rose over the building, climbing into the blue Virginia sky. The rear wall was rubble. The roof was gone. He remembered that people had been talking and eating near the building entrance. They were buried under the remains of the wall. He could see a woman's leg sticking out from under concrete and twisted rebar.
He stumbled over to where Ronnie lay unconscious. The back of his head was covered with blood. Nick turned him over and lifted an eyelid, then the other. One pupil was large, the other small. A bad concussion, or worse. He pulled off his jacket and wadded it up into a pillow.
He looked again at the devastation. He wiped his forehead and his hand came away bloody. He had a headache. Ronnie's eyes fluttered and opened.
"What…"
"Easy, amigo. You're all right. Don't move." Gently, he put the makeshift pillow under Ronnie's head.
"Got a headache."
"Yeah."
"What happened?" His voice slurred.
"A bomb. Lie still. I'm going to look at the others."
Ronnie closed his eyes.
Nick went to where Selena knelt over Stephanie. Selena's clothes were ripped and covered in dirt and dust. She had a gash on her scalp that had bled down over her face.
"You all right?"
"Yes. Steph isn't."
"Shit." White bone stuck out of Steph's lower arm. There was a lot of blood.
"She's unconscious. Nick, what do we do?"
"Be ready to hold her still in case she wakes up. Give me your jacket."
Selena had a light weight suit jacket of silk. She pulled it off. He saw her wince.
"You sure you're all right?"
"I'm fine, just bruised. Here." She handed him the jacket.
He tore off a long strip of silk.
"Hold her head."
Nick lifted Steph up while Selena held her head off the ground. He wrapped the strip of silk around her body and pulled the upper arm tight against her chest. She moaned.
"She's waking up. Hold her."
Elizabeth knelt down next to them. "I'll help." She coughed, hard, rasping coughs.
He wrapped another piece below Steph's elbow and pulled it tight. The bleeding slowed to a trickle. The flames made a steady roaring sound, sucking in air around them. Heat from the fire was intense.
"Let's carry her out of here. Each of you take a leg."
The three of them carried Stephanie out through the door in the back wall and set her down.
"Stay with her. I'll get Ronnie. There's no one else we can help."
What was left of the Project building was an inferno. Nick got Ronnie to his feet. He half walked, half dragged him to where Harker held open the emergency door. Sirens sounded in the distance. He lay Ronnie down next to Stephanie and started toward the parking lot where the rescue trucks would be.
Then the rage began.
CHAPTER SIXTY-EIGHT
They met at Selena's that evening. Stephanie and Ronnie were in Bethesda. Selena had been treated for the deep cut on her scalp. It had taken four stitches to close the cut on Nick's forehead and more to sew up his shoulder again. His arm was back in the sling. Elizabeth had multiple cuts and cracked ribs.
They sat at the granite counter dividing the living area from the kitchen, drinking coffee. Selena had set out a tray with pieces of dark chocolate.
"Chocolate?" Nick said.
"It helps," she said. "Go ahead. Try it." She took a piece.
"Everyone was killed," Elizabeth said. "Everyone."
They were silent. Then she said, "It was a cruise missile. The Pentagon thinks it came from a freighter off the coast."
"A freighter? How do you fire a missile from a freighter?" Nick held a cup of coffee in his left hand. Hot. Black. It helped him think.
"It was probably concealed in a cargo container. The satellites wouldn't have spotted it. If they used cold launch technology, they wouldn't need a vented platform. The missile was supersonic. By the time our people saw it, it was too close. They couldn't get something up in time to stop it. There's been no further indication of a threat. Rice has gone to DEFCON III, just in case."
"Cold launch and supersonic. That's government ordnance. Any claims of responsibility?"
"Several. Everyone is going crazy over at Langley and the Pentagon trying to figure out who did it."
"How is the White House going to spin it? You can't hide something like this. It's bound to leak that a missile got through our defenses."
"As far as the outside world knows, our building was a high-tech engineering research firm. The story will be that it's a terrorist attack gone wrong, with a missile targeted at the White House going astray and landing in Virginia by accident. A case of targeting error. The only upside is that it will probably clinch Rice's re-election."
"Why us? Why didn't someone put a missile on the White House?"
"The White House has AEGIS protection, but you're right, they might have gotten one through. So that's the right question. With targets like the White House or Capitol Hill or the Pentagon, why us?"
"Let's start making assumptions," Selena said. "It usually works, though I'm not sure why."
"Okay," Nick said. "Let's start with a fact. Someone sent a cruise missile and targeted it on our building. It can't be an accident it hit us. Something that advanced would have internal programming to put it right on the money."
Everyone nodded in agreement.
"Then assumption number one is that someone is out to get us. What's assumption number two? Aside from the fact that we've pissed someone off?"