CHAPTER 54
Atlantic Ocean
Senator Harrison lay on a gurney, wearing a vest outfitted with wires and explosives. His prospects looked bleak.
“Hang in there—it’ll be okay,” Meg reassured him, though no response was audible.
Wolf knelt beside her, surveying the mess of explosives and wires. “I’m cutting this shit off,” he said. “No visible triggering device. No igniter. No blasting cap to power the explosives. I think this vest is a dud.”
“Buddy, it’s all you,” Meg replied as she scanned the room, looking for a possible alternate triggering device.
It took Wolf an hour-long minute to carefully cut wires from the faux detonator and explosives attached to the senator’s body.
He gingerly removed each and placed the pieces on the floor, careful to separate the things that go bang from the things that make things go bang.
His last chore was to delicately feel all over the senator’s body one last time before he called the all clear.
“All clear!” Meg repeated.
* * *
JP was already at Oliver’s side when the all clear came, helping him to a couch in the galley aft to begin first aid.
“It’s just a flesh wound!” Oliver said, in his best Monty Python accent.
JP gave a quick assessment of Oliver’s condition: “He’s got a through-and-through, left shoulder, lost some blood but he’s going to be fine. Looks like it cauterized itself on exit and didn’t hit any bone. I’ll give him an IV and bandage him up. He can still shoot.”
“Wolf, what do you got for me?” I said as I moved to enter the room where he and Meg were tending to Harrison.
“That vest they put on the senator is worse tech than the IED we found on the road in Nantucket.”
“Got it.” I entered the room and in two seconds registered the whole event.
Torture, videotaped, agony, horror, message to be delivered loud and clear.
Everyone in the world with an internet connection would either weep or cheer over images they would never be able to unsee.
The video would be a horrible blow to any successes our country had achieved.
The enemy had accomplished their mission by launching the most personal attack against the United States since September 11, 2001. A graphic assault against not just any American, but a sitting US senator and prospective President of the United States.
I pulled out my cell phone and turned it on to alert Tristan. As my phone came to life, a light blinked with fifteen overlapping missed calls from Si Wilson and Tristan.
As I hit Reply on Tristan’s call, Meg looked up at me with bleary eyes and said, “Nat, we lost him.”