Masked gunmen now emerged from behind the concrete barriers and advanced on their hiding place. One of them fired high into the treeline.
‘STAY WHERE YOU ARE!’ he ordered.
‘What do we do now?’ asked Alicia.
Connor realized the gunmen intended to kidnap her, otherwise they wouldn’t have bothered with warning shots. But they’d equally shown their willingness to use deadly force to achieve their aims, even if it meant wounding Alicia and killing him. Their situation was desperate whatever decision he made.
‘We keep running,’ he replied, scrambling to his feet.
With the body armour now slung over his shoulder to protect their backs, Connor shepherded Alicia deeper into the cluster of trees. The gunmen gave chase. Connor weaved in between the trunks, hoping to prevent a clear shot. There was a burst of gunfire. Bullets whizzed past, taking out chunks of bark. Splinters rained down on their heads as the two of them powered on. Then, as they approached the main road of Ohio Drive, the trees thinned out and they lost their cover.
‘Over the bridge!’ shouted Connor.
They raced across. The gunmen were still among the trees. But it wouldn’t be long before they had them in their sights again. Connor realized their only hope was to get to the safe house. From what he recalled, he knew it lay somewhere east of the memorial. Searching for the quickest route, Connor spotted an underpass on the other side of the junction of 14th and 15th Streets.
‘Through that tunnel!’ he directed Alicia.
The traffic was heavy, but with no time to spare they dashed across the highway. Cars swerved round them. A truck blasted its horn as they were almost mown down beneath its wheels. Connor heard gunfire and felt a bullet catch the corner of his backpack, spinning him into the side of a passing car. From behind there was a mighty bang and the ear-splitting crunch of metal as several vehicles collided. Horns blared and tyres squealed as the traffic ground to a sudden halt.
Connor kept his grip on Alicia and they darted into the underpass.
‘Where are we going?’ she asked, breathing hard.
‘To the safe house,’ said Connor, trying to reboot his phone on the run. But the screen remained blank. ‘Is your phone working?’
Alicia pulled it from her pocket. ‘No!’
Damn, thought Connor, but at least she can’t be tracked any longer.
He tried to recall exactly where the safe house was: 6 … 8 … 6 … E Street SW.
‘How far’s E Street South-West from here?’
‘Only about four blocks away,’ replied Alicia.
‘Then let’s go.’
Behind they heard the shouts of the gunmen echoing through the tunnel.
Alicia now led the way. They crossed the road, jumping the central reservation, and headed along Maine Avenue. They were about to duck into a side street, when a blacked-out 4×4 screeched to a halt in front of them. A blonde-haired woman wearing a green Secret Service lapel badge jumped out.
‘Quick, get in,’ urged Agent Brooke from Alicia’s PES team.
They dived into the rear passenger compartment. She closed the doors behind them and leapt into the front seat. Flooring the accelerator, she drove off at high speed.
Connor looked through the back windscreen. The gunmen had disappeared from view.
‘Are we … glad to run … into you!’ Alicia panted.
‘You’re a hard one to keep track of,’ replied Agent Brooke, arching an eyebrow.
Connor turned to her. ‘I thought you were off-duty today, like Kyle.’
Agent Brooke gave him a sharp look. ‘Everyone’s called in during an emergency.’
‘Not that I’m ungrateful,’ Connor quickly added.
She turned left on to C Street.
‘Aren’t we going to the safe house?’ Connor asked.
‘Yes,’ replied Agent Brooke.
‘But isn’t E Street the other way?’
‘There’s a roadblock due to the bombings. We have to go round.’
At the traffic lights, she turned left again on to 14th Street. They headed past the junction to D Street and continued on, joining the main highway that led out of Washington. As the Jefferson Memorial came back into view, Connor began to sense something was wrong. The detour wasn’t logical.
‘How long until we get to Blue Two then?’ asked Connor.
‘About five minutes,’ replied Agent Brooke.
Connor had called her bluff. The call sign for the safe house was ‘Blue One’. It was now that he noticed the colour of Agent Brooke’s Secret Service badge. The other agents today had been wearing red lapel badges. On his first outing with Secret Service, Kyle had told him the colour-coded badges were an important security measure. Any legitimate agents on a protection detail would be wearing matching badges.
Connor reached for Alicia’s hand and squeezed it. We have to get out of here, he mouthed to her.
Her brow knitted in confusion. What? she mouthed back.
‘She’s NOT Secret Service!’ he whispered.
As the traffic slowed, Connor made a grab for the door handle – but discovered it was locked. He threw his shoulder against the door. ‘Let us out!’
Agent Brooke spun round in her seat. ‘You’re brighter than I thought,’ she snarled.
Drawing her gun, she shot Connor point-blank in the chest.
‘I’ve lost contact!’ cried Amir, searching his computer screen for the green dot that represented Connor. But the bird’s-eye view of Washington DC was devoid of any tracer signal.
Charley sped over from her central workstation in the Buddyguard operations room. ‘It may be just a satellite delay.’
‘No, I’ve run diagnostic checks. The uplink is fine.’
‘What about resetting the connection?’
‘Already done that. Nothing.’
Charley frowned, a bad feeling starting to creep in. ‘So where was Connor when you lost the signal?’
‘Near the Jefferson Memorial,’ Amir replied, pointing to the location on the screen. ‘Judging by his movements, he’d made contact with Alicia and was heading to the car park. Shortly after –’ he clicked his fingers in the air – ‘gone!’
‘What about the Cell-Finity bug on her phone?’ she asked. ‘We’re mirroring the trace, aren’t we?’
Amir offered a pained expression. ‘That disappeared at the same time as Connor’s.’
Charley snatched up the desk phone and dialled Connor’s number. The line sounded a continuous dead tone. She put the phone down.
‘You don’t think … they’ve been caught in a bomb blast, do you?’ Amir asked fearfully.
Charley’s face went pale at the thought. She rapidly typed at the keyboard, requesting an update on the Washington attacks. A few seconds later, a confidential security news feed popped up on the screen. She scanned the page, but there was no report of a fourth explosion … not yet anyway.
‘During a state of emergency, the government can block all mobile communications,’ said Bugsy, coming over from his workstation in the corner of the operations room.
‘That’s not exactly helpful!’ remarked Amir.
‘There’re two very good reasons. One, to stop the spread of panic among civilians. Two, to prevent a mobile phone signal triggering an explosive device. Nowadays, the remote-control IED is the terrorists’ first choice of bomb. The group behind this attack wouldn’t even need to be in the city, let alone the country, at the time of the attack.’
‘So how can we locate Connor and Alicia and find out if they’re safe or not?’ asked Charley.
‘Have you tried the GPS-tracker that Secret Service implanted in his watch?’
Amir shook his head. ‘We weren’t given access to that.’
Bugsy plumped himself down at his computer terminal. ‘Shouldn’t be a problem to fix,’ he replied, popping a stick of gum into his mouth and chewing hard. ‘The tracker will be transmitting on a separate protected frequency.’
His fingers rattled across the keyboard as he quickly gained access to the Secret Service Locator program. Leaning back in his chair to study the data, Bugsy scratched his bald head with bemusement.
‘Strange … even that’s disappeared,’ he mumbled, half to himself.