Night Is Mine (38 page)

Yup. That’s what Katherine had done. Emily had never been so forward in her life, not with any lover. Except with Mark. She had been that forward. In the hospital and in her apartment and…
Think about it later, Beale.

Thankfully Mark was keeping his wits about him, or at least his Texas. She’d feel better if she knew that he’d faked the moan as well.

“Everyone thinks that I offed Peres, who’d hired me, and skipped with the loot. Didn’t work that way. You pay me, I’m honor bound. But then Estanze upped my pay, by a whole lot. So, I took the new job. And my new honor included cutting down Peres. No real problem, just a damn drug war. Since I left, there’ve been three attempts on Estanze by Peres’s relatives, but none of them amounted to much. To the highest bidder, I stay bought.”

“And is your Miss Emily Beale a coin of trade?”

“None higher.” Mark delivered that line with his voice low and so much sincerity that even Emily believed it. Could he really be serious? It had seemed clear in the helicopter. But now she didn’t trust her memory, or that he had felt the same things she had. She and Mark were both animals of action. Warriors to the bone. That didn’t bode well for any future either.

“One last question.”

“Shoot.”

Emily had been waiting for a moment like this. She and Mark had discussed the different ways it might come up. If this wasn’t it, it wasn’t going to happen. She flipped the mic switch on the radio. Encrypted emergency radio, it would feed to the Secret Service craft behind them as well as the tower that she’d told to keep a tape running for her entire flight.

She made sure that the return chatter would only be routed to her own earphones.

“When you ‘offed’ Mr. Peres, who did you set up to look like they did the deed? Certainly not you.”

“No, ma’am. I didn’t want all those guns after me. His number two, his chief of staff, if you will, didn’t live out the next hour. Framed clean as could be.”

Damn, Mark. Did you just set up Ray Stevens for the fall of whatever Katherine was planning? She should never have turned on the radio.

“My, my, my. Handsome and smart.”

Katherine was doing just that. Setting up Ray Stevens to take the fall. Mark saw it before Emily did. But the fall for… what?

Mark picked up his line. “And which pin is supposed to be ‘offed’ by his own Chief of Staff?”

“Marine Two. What the hell is this transmission?” The tower sounded pissed.

“Maintain radio silence!” Frank Adams snapped out, then in a whisper over the airwaves, “Damn, Captain!”

She didn’t dare respond. Her role in all this was silent partner.

“Ooo, very smart, big boy. Come to Mama, and as a bonus she will pay you with her all.”

Emily didn’t respond, but she did begin a long, lazy turn back toward D.C. She didn’t want to land this snake out in the woods.

Peres’s chief of staff had been framed for killing his boss. Katherine was trying to frame Ray Stevens for the killing of… his boss?

The helicopter jolted as she almost dropped the collective.

Katherine Matthews was planning to…

“You want me to murder the President but frame Ray Stevens?”

“Smart boy.”

Get it confirmed again, Mark. C’mon. Get it on tape again.

“But Mrs. Matthews, if I kill your husband for you, you’re no longer First Lady. It takes one mercenary to know another. What’s the benefit to you?”

Katherine was so close that Emily could hear their microphones clicking together.

“Mr. Zachary Thomas will do anything this woman wants, an-y-thing. Including consoling the widow all the way to the Oval Office.”

There it was. It all made sense.

“So,” Mark’s voice had lost most of its Texas but filled with wonder. “You’re sleeping with Ray Stevens to get him to stage attacks against you to make you look threatened. You bring in my Emily to…”

“High-profile CNN girl to keep me alive through Ray’s supposed attempts to kill both Peter and me. I have a photograph of him firing the light weapon that he doesn’t know about. Yet.”

“And then when I, um, do the deed for you, you expose him. But you couldn’t have counted on me showing up.”

“You, cutie pie, were a bonus for which I will always thank your little Emily. I wasn’t looking forward to killing Peter myself. He’s such a bore, but he is my husband. So tried and true and all-American blue that he won’t listen to a single idea of mine. I have the plan all worked out. And you can make it look like Ray took care of it.”

“And then you marry Zack Thomas…”

“Who is total putty in my hands. The same way you are about to be.”

The microphone picked up the distinct sound of a zipper being undone.

“That was a nice broadcast, Ms. Matthews.” Mark’s voice rang smooth and West Coast over the headset. All hint of Texas gone.

“Broadcast?” The zipper sound stopped, much to Emily’s relief.

“You there, Captain?” Mark called to her over the headset.

She knew what he was doing. Maybe it had reached that point, but it could also be dangerous. What the hell? If you’re going to unwrap the package, make sure it can’t be wrapped back up. She keyed on her helmet mic.

“Right here, Mister Herman.” She remembered his cover name at the last second. “All loud and clear. Secret Service reports a full record, and they’re waiting for us to deliver you, Ms. Matthews, to the ground for plotting treason against the President of the United States. Apparently the Vice President is shocked and… hold on a moment…” She listened to the sudden stream of reports on the radio.

“The Chief of Staff actually stabbed an agent in the hand with a paring knife when they took him down. He was peeling an apple at the time. They may think it’s treason, but I’d class it as premeditated attempted murder.”

“Me personally,” Mark added cheerfully, “I tend to think of it as an act of domestic terrorism. And I’ve never been a big fan of terrorism. How about you, Captain Beale?”

“Nope. Never a big fan, Mister Herman.” Their roleplaying had gone deep enough that even now she didn’t reveal his true rank.

There was silence. Too much silence. Katherine wasn’t protesting or denying or…

Mark yelped.

“Mark!”

Emily turned to look, and that was probably all that saved her life. A bullet whistled past her ear, bounced off the Plexiglas windshield, and ricocheted into her main screen. Sparks flew and breakers popped.

“Mark!” No response. She hadn’t heard the shot that got him, but she needed to assume she was on her own. Strapped into a seat with her back turned to a loaded weapon.

She racked the cyclic right and stomped the pedal to the left.

Someone on the radio asked if she’d heard a gunshot.

The helicopter slewed sideways and the tail rotor spun clockwise. She was thrown forward against her restraint harness and sideways against the door with a loud whack. The blow made her head spin, and she was glad again she’d chosen to wear her helmet this time. She’d done it to keep her face hidden from those behind her; the anonymous-pilot-in-a-helmet routine had let her blend into the background. Now it had saved her from a nasty lump.

“You’re not knocking me out this time, you bitch.” Katherine spewed venom through the headset.

“What did you do to Mar—”

Another bullet zinged against the windshield and bounced off. This time it plowed a hole through the empty copilot’s seat.

Emily tried to guess when the next shot was coming and rammed the collective downward. The helicopter fell like a stone. Emergency down. This rotor permitted a slight negative tilt. She now had twin, sixteen-hundred horsepower turbines driving them toward the earth. Terra firma was coming up awfully fast. Everything in the cabin that wasn’t tied down floated.

Her water bottle floated out of the cup holder and smacked against the ceiling.

What she was hoping for also happened.

Not used to working in negative-gravity environments, Katherine had let her hand with the gun drift upward. A shot rang out. Two. Three. All upward by the impact sound. And no ricochet.

Earsplittingly painful in the small cabin, but not fatal.

Not yet.

She’d once checked out Katherine’s Kahr MK during a security review, which only had five shots. She should be out.

Emily yanked up on the collective and slammed down against her sprung seat so hard it rammed against the stops and jarred her spine. She’d be sore after this ride, if she was alive.

Another pair of shots rang out.

This time the impact sound came from below her right hand. The radios started sparking and more breakers popped. Adams, the tower, and all the other voices Emily hadn’t realized were yelling for attention died with the radios.

So much for the five-shot theory. Katherine’s weapon had to be small. A .357 would have punched through the windshield rather than bouncing back. Probably a .22 or a 9 mm.

She yanked the cyclic left and stomped on the right pedal. Only it didn’t respond the way she expected. The lurch in her stomach didn’t hurt; it only made her head swim.

What was going on with the chopper? It didn’t feel right. Maybe this bird just responded poorly after a bit of abuse.

Then she heard it. A turbine whining, not spinning down. Spinning up, out of control. From seven lousy shots. Katherine got lucky. Or unlucky.

Emily pulled the throttle on engine number two and hit the fire suppressor.

Nothing. It kept whining upward. Runaway engine. Reaching down, she shut the fuel flow to the number two turbine. That killed it.

A small pistol flew over her left shoulder, where her head had been a moment before. Seecamp LWS .32. Little bigger than a deck of playing cards. Seven shots if you carried it with the chamber loaded. One had hit something vital, and this bird had far fewer redundant systems than her Black Hawk.

The Bell could fly on one engine, but not well. If one failed, the best practice was to find a place to land. Fast.

A blast ripped at her ears and her upper arm stung like a son-of-a-bitch. The forward windshield star-cracked, a spent bullet wedged in the center of the spidery lines. Mark’s gun. The Beretta M9 they’d tucked aboard for the flight. Fifteen rounds and only one fired.

There was no way she was going to survive this unless the tables turned. And quickly.

“If you kill me, you’ll die when we crash!” Emily shouted over the headset.

“I’m not going to jail, and I’m not going to be arrested.” Katherine jammed the barrel of the gun against the bleeding wound on Emily’s arm.

Emily managed not to scream at the scythe of pain; the wound must be deeper than she thought.

“Do you have any idea how close I was? Another day, maybe two. And it would be done.”

Again the gun jammed into her arm, rocketing so much pain into her system that her vision tunneled for a moment.

“Damn you, bitch, I was so close!”

Katherine was out of her seat. Unbuckled. Probably kneeling on the front set of passenger seats to extend her gun into the cockpit area.

“Okay, Katherine. Don’t kill me. Where do you want to go?”

Two Black Hawks were coming up close behind her. Nothing they could do from there but watch. Even a sniper, if they had one aboard, would be hard pressed to take out the First Lady through Plexiglas windows on the first try. And there’d be no time for a second try, at least none that Emily would survive.

“You’re the one who knows everything. You figure it out.”

“You’ve wounded the copter.” Emily eyed the gauges. Turbine two had shut down. Number one was hot, taking the load staunchly, but not at all happy about it. They had about two hours of fuel, not that she’d last another ten minutes. And the rudder was still mush. She’d hit two vital systems. Civilian birds simply didn’t have the double and triple redundancy of systems that kept military birds aloft after being shot up.

“Let’s go to Camp David.” Way out of range, but all she could come up with quickly. “We’ll get another, long-range bird to meet us there. I can fly you to Mexico. Midair refuel.”

“I hate fucking Mexico.”

The balance on the helicopter shifted as Katherine moved across the rear cabin to the far window. Not a big change in a bird this size, but enough to alter the flying trim a few points. Definitely no longer in her seat belt.

Emily went with it. She cranked the cyclic all the way over and rolled the helicopter. Rolled it and rolled it and rolled it.

She heard a scream. Two more rounds fired off with massive roars. Thankfully, neither came forward into the cockpit that she could detect.

Altitude was disappearing alarmingly. The White House, to which they’d been returning as slowly as they left, now filled more and more of her side window each time she rolled over. Katherine must be thumping about like a marble in a gerbil wheel. Hopefully separated from her gun.

“What the hell?” Mark’s voice was groggy and slow. Then he exclaimed with a loud, “Oof!” as something hit him.