CHAPTER 42
Senator Harrison HQ
Baxter Road, Nantucket
She looked at the two agents posted in the front yard, standing about three feet apart in the darkness beyond the glow of the porch light.
The men were obviously deep in conversation, likely catching up on the latest behind-the-scenes gossip.
Doubtless they were talking about the news that had swept the Harrison detail: The senator’s young aide, Aimee Sullivan, would be joining the National Security Council.
“It’s all part of the job,” Agent Anderson muttered to herself, checking her watch again.
The periodic gusts of wind blowing from the North Atlantic masked the whisper of the sniper’s 7.
62mm bullet. It hit the first special agent squarely between his right ear and eye, killing him instantly.
He did not blink, he did not cry for help, he just crumpled to the ground.
As the agent next to him spun on instinct to search the blackness for the threat, the sniper’s second shot tore through the second agent’s larynx and nearly severed his head.
Anderson saw it all unfold right before her eyes.
She could sense the unknown, silent killer—or killers—racing toward her from the darkness.
Whoever they were, she knew they were coming.
She drew her weapon and began to run, adrenaline pumping through her body, her senses on overdrive.
Had she not been running so fast she would have seen a third agent fall as swiftly as the others.
The surge of adrenaline impaired her motor skills. The doorknob wouldn’t turn in her sweaty hands. She had to get to Harrison. It was her job.
Anderson finally gained access and raced inside. She thought she heard footsteps on the porch but kept running up the stairs, her legs pumping as fast as she could force them to. She knew where he was. She had to get there first. It’s what she was paid to do.
The door to the bedroom was closed. Without missing a beat, she forcefully kicked it open. Her tactical training took over immediately, her actions all muscle memory. In one sweep of the room she saw two naked people on the bed. A woman on top, straddling the senator.
The agent, two steps inside the room, paused for a second in her attack posture, her pistol leveled at them, just as she had been taught at the training center in Greenbelt, Maryland.
The senator—quite possibly the next President of the United States of America—was lying spread-eagle on the bed of a wealthy donor, one hand cuffed to the headboard while his dominatrix and future National Security Adviser administered as much sexual pain as he could withstand.
It was insane—the whole episode was insane. It was almost more than Anderson could process. Seconds counted.
“Get the fuck out!” Aimee Sullivan demanded.
The two women’s eyes met. Instantly Anderson realized that Sullivan was less angry at the interruption than mortified by her vulnerable position, naked save for a tight leather corset.
The shame of it was beginning to register when the first round from Anderson’s 9mm hit Aimee Sullivan in the left shoulder and spun her counterclockwise.
As she fell off the senator, the second round hit Sullivan just above her exposed right breast. Anderson never took her eyes off the target as she walked carefully toward the body crumpled on the floor.
Harrison started to hyperventilate with shock at the act he had just witnessed.
Anderson shushed him, putting her non-firing finger to her lips. Aimee Sullivan’s mangled left arm was hanging by only her bloody bicep. She was trying to breathe, but so much fluid had filled her lungs that she was drowning in her own blood.
“Is … she … dead?” the senator stammered.
The sound of the bullet discharging at such close range inside the bedroom was deafening.
“Now she is.”
Anderson looked sympathetically at the senator, whose eyes showed fear beyond belief. He had never heard or seen anything like this—including the indeterminate noises from downstairs.
Movement at the bedroom door caused both Anderson and the senator to turn. Silhouetted in the doorway stood a person in green overalls and a black ski mask, holding a strange black gun with a long pipe on the barrel.
Anderson holstered her weapon and stepped away from the bed. “He’s all yours.”
The masked figure nodded. Without a word, he pulled another pistol from his hip and pointed it at Coleman Harrison, sending a thin dart into the senator’s pectoral muscle.
Harrison started to wheeze as the powerful tranquilizer coursed through his bloodstream, causing him to lose control of his muscles and his consciousness, even as his hand remained cuffed to the bed.
The masked man pulled a large hunting knife from his belt.
“What the fuck are you doing? You can’t just cut off his hand!”
The man paused and glared at Anderson. “Quit fucking around—we’re short on time!”
A second masked man appeared in the doorway, his gun raised toward Anderson. The dart hit her in the meaty part of her thigh. She tried to lunge at the former ally, but she was overcome by nausea and felt the muscles in her body spasm.
Anderson’s mind raced. This wasn’t the way they’d planned the job. The man in Paris … or was it China, she couldn’t remember … wherever he was, she needed to talk to him …
The second man grabbed Anderson’s arm as she collapsed. She tried to punch and claw him, but her arms would not move. Her body went limp, and he swept her onto his shoulders in a fireman’s carry.
The last sound Rowan Anderson heard was Coleman Harrison’s delirious cry as the first intruder began the gruesome task of freeing the senator’s hand from the cuff.