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And then I try one more time.
“Elizabeth?”
Chapter
133
Maria Tucker, formerMarine gunnery sergeant, stays in the suite in the Hay-Adams hotel after the operators have gone to their preassigned positions, which they did sometime after Maynard disappeared with his three armed men.
She’s here with two communications techs—Styles, a woman, and Flynn, a young guy in a wheelchair. They’re keeping in touch with the units, and they’ll inform her of any developments.
Tucker sips at a cup of coffee, barely sees the White House down there, just a hundred or so yards away it seems. She could step out on the balcony, but Maynard’s done that a couple of times, and she doesn’t want to add to the viewing log kept by the Secret Service observers out there in the last hours of their lives. Plus, ever since her unhappy departure from the Marine Corps, she’s kept a pistol strapped to her side, and she doesn’t want any watcher out there seeing an armed woman on this balcony.
The suite is quiet, just the tapping of the keyboards and the low murmurs of three flat-screen televisions tuned to CNN, MSNBC, and Fox, respectively. She checks her watch. Everything kicks off in two hours.
She’s about to refresh her coffee when Styles says, “We’ve got a problem here, ma’am.”
Tucker goes to the woman’s workstation and looks at her screen, which is displaying wiggly lines like you’d see on a medical device.
Styles says, “It looks like Maynard and his crew are in trouble. Their med monitors—they show McCoole and Lopez are injured. Blood pressure’s down, respiration and heart rate are elevated. I’ve tried calling them but there’s no answer.”
“What about Maynard and Smith?”
“They’re not answering either.”
Tucker says, “I don’t give a shit about their phones, I mean their med monitors.”
“Either their monitors have been disabled or they’re dead, ma’am.”
Tucker nods, goes to the coffee machine, tops off her cup, then turns to look at her communications techs. Styles’s family farm was seized by the State of Montana years back, and Flynn was injured by a Massachusetts State Police trooper five years ago and he’s still waiting for a settlement. Tucker notes the looks on their faces and gives them both a smile. The three of them are all in the same boat. In her case, she filed a sexual harassment complaint about a captain in her unit, but the complaint got broomed and her career was ruined.
They are part of an assembly of the betrayed and overlooked.
“We stick to the plan,” she says. “It’s bigger than all of us.”
Chapter
134
Agent Ned Mahoney isexhausted; his mind is racing, and he feels like he’s on a roller coaster that’s shuddering on its rails and is about to fly into space. But he’s here, just outside his two-story brick home in Georgetown, away from his busy office, his Impala parked on the street in front of his house.
He glances at his iPhone, sees the text message from Sampson, the only message that could have gotten him here today:
NED—AT YOUR HOUSE. HAVE EVIDENCE AND MORE. GET HERE ASAP. COME ALONE. I’LL KILL WHOEVER ELSE SHOWS UP.
Mahoney walks up the flagstone path, past the carefully maintained shrubbery, notices something on the dark gray stones.
Blood.
He squats down, touches one spot. Still sticky. Fresh.
He goes to the side door, which leads into the kitchen. More blood on the steps.
He takes out his Glock 19 pistol and gently pushes on the door.
It swings open.
The kitchen is empty, but there’s more blood on the white tile floor.
