“Whoever… you’re coming with me.” With one hand at her feet and the other on her handcuffs, he rolled the naked woman, carefully, onto the canvas sling bag he’d just laid out on the floor next to the bed. Despite her writhing and squirming, he zipped the bag around her, leaving only her head exposed. He had tossed in her cap as well. Only a neanderthal would leave something as valuable as a Ted Williams Red Sox cap behind.
“Who the f…,” she started to shriek until he pressed a strip of grey duct tape over her mouth with his thumbs. Her head twisted from side to side, spraying her red hair back and forward like musket fire. Suddenly, she stopped still. Her eyebrows furrowed, and she tried focusing her frigid blue eyes on the helicopter hovering in the dark above her. They pulled back so she could scan her captor’s uniform, but it was also without any identifying insignia.
“To answer your question, ma’am… I’m not the fuck anybody.” He grabbed at the zip and pulled it up further to encase her head. Next, he unclipped the stainless steel karabiner from his belt and snapped the straps from Niki’s pod into it, stepped back to grab the loop at the end of the cable still dangling down from the chopper, and once he’d securely locked the karabiner onto it, he reclipped himself to the higher loop, ominously slipped a gas mask over his face and gave a circle-wave above his head with his finger. For good measure, he gave a tug on the cable and he shot up into the air, followed a split second later by Niki in her cocoon. From his fast-rising vantage point, he saw a car’s headlights stopping just outside the hut and a guy, naked he thought, racing over and brandishing his fists to the sky.
Mario slid to a stop directly below the chopper, though not all of his body parts did at the same time. “Hey,” he shouted, “what are you doing?” He was in a frenzy. No valet had ever lost a client in the entire history of Butaka although, unknown to him, all his colleagues were suffering similar fates simultaneously all over the secluded island. He ran around screaming up at the bird, feeling helpless as Niki was yanked on board. Stunned, he watched the chopper bank and fly away and, straining for an explanation, he just stood there oblivious to the fine mist of droplets that were drifting down from where the helicopter had been hovering, though he did wonder why, out of the blue, he was feeling so… drowsy.
NIKI Abbott! Spencer Prentice’s blood was pounding. He pressed his thumb and forefinger into his temples as if forcing it out… SNAP! Outside Foster’s campaign office. SNAP! On his plane. In his…
“Order! Order!” shouted Mallord. “Sergeant at Arms, please be at your ready should I have to order the ejection of any Member or Senator from the Chamber.”
Foster again drew his handkerchief from his inside jacket pocket and patted his brow.
He wasn’t prepared to disgrace himself any more than was essential. His wife already knew the details. Up in Air Force One, under the cutting knife, he had to tell her—how could he avoid it, given where the device had been secreted?—but he didn’t have to completely humiliate himself, or Mitch, in front of the nation, let alone in front of the children watching. All he told Congress and the cameras was that Niki Abbott had through a complex ruse implanted tiny poison delivery devices under his skin and Mitch Taylor’s, devices that a simple radio wave at a certain frequency would trigger whenever the conspirators chose. He held back her precise modus operandi but judging by the eyebrows he could see rising, at least some people in the Chamber were figuring it out.
“When Mitchell’s device was activated—weeks after it was implanted, so as to distance his death from his, er, encounter with Niki Abbott—it caused a massive and fatal heart attack. I can tell you that Ms Abbott was captured two hours ago on a remote island in the Caribbean… Part of the deception I was forced to put you through the last two days was so we could accomplish that.
“I regret to say, however, that before we could interrogate her she took her own life using a similar device that she had already planted on herself.”
Davey grimaced when Ed’s fingers suddenly dug into his shoulders. He wriggled and looked up, but Ed’s mind was elsewhere.
“With a similar device implanted on my… my own body, the reason I am standing before you… why I survived… is due solely to the patriotism, the bravery and, as you will hear, the astonishing self-sacrifice of someone who jeopardised their own life to save mine…
“Two nights ago, when we still thought Mitchell Taylor had died of natural causes, I was pulled aside from an official engagement for an urgent phone call. In that call, I learned of the murderous plot as well as its threat to me… and its imminence. Without delay, the President’s protective division of the Secret Service rushed me on board Air Force One.”
As the President took a moment to close his eyes and take a breath, Spencer wasn’t alone in puzzling over the informant’s identity or why there was such a rush to get Foster onto a plane.