The Fallen: A Derek Stillwater Thriller (9 page)

The crowd laughed.

Langston continued. “As you know, we come together every year in these informal settings to address major issues of concern to the world. This year our top priorities are counterterrorism, world poverty, and the Middle East. I am certain that—”

Standing behind a long table, El Tiburón looked around the banquet hall, making certain that everything was in place. He had been concerned when The Fallen was late from his trip to the kitchen area. Everything had been precisely on schedule up to that point, but The
Fallen had been nearly ten minutes late in returning to the banquet hall, slipping in just as the room was filling, nodding to El Tiburón, and taking up his post next to the storage room door.

El Tiburón respected The Fallen. He admired him. But unlike the rest of The Fallen Angels, he was not swept up in the man’s charisma. Perhaps that was why he was now the second-in-command. El Tiburón, like most of The Fallen Angels, had a background in the military or intelligence. In his case he had grown up with the Colombian AUC, the Autodefensas Unedas de Colombia or United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, a paramilitary organization that sprang up in opposition to the two major terrorist groups working Colombia— the National Liberation Army, or ELN, and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia or FARC— both communist groups that worked hand in hand with the drug traffickers to overthrow the Colombian government.

Although the Colombian government largely viewed the AUC as another terrorist organization, El Tiburón thought of them as performing the actions the government was too weak to perform itself. But AUC itself was not strong, and it was The Fallen who had inspired El Tiburón with his vision and ambition. It was possible to topple the Colombian government— all governments— and all it would take was a daring enough leader.

El Tiburón wanted a smoke. He had to have the discipline not to light up. This was not the time or place for it. But they were on the cusp of announcing themselves to the planet and the craving for tobacco was strong.

He glanced across the room at The Fallen. The Fallen’s eyes were on the president of the United States, but for all his concentration and intensity, El Tiburón thought something was wrong. Whatever had happened in those ten minutes was distracting the man. That worried him. This mission was too complicated to allow for distractions.

El Tiburón glanced at his watch. Almost time, if everything went as planned.

President Langston was saying: “— and so I hope that we can put aside our politics—” the president cracked the crooked grin that had garnered him so many votes. “— well, some of the politics, anyway—”

The crowd laughed.

“— and make changes that will improve life not just for the Group of Eight or the twenty countries represented here today, but for the entire planet. So with that out of the way, let’s get to work.”

The crowded room again rose to its feet and applauded.

El Tiburón waited for the signal, his right hand in his coat pocket on the transmitter button.

The buses carrying the protestors barreled down the road toward the first National Guard checkpoint. Carlos Santos leaned over toward the driver of the lead bus and said, “Punch it!”

The driver glanced at Santos in the long, interior rearview mirror at the top of the windshield. “SOP, right?”

“Do it!”

The driver grinned. “Fuck yeah!” and stomped on the gas pedal.

In the front seat, the TV cameraman looked up from where he had been taping the protestors inside the bus. To Santos he said, “Are you crazy?”

Santos flashed him a bright smile. “Welcome to the revolution, man.”

The National Guard unit had their Humvee off to the side of the road. They had put up a barricade, but it was a pro forma type of structure, a wooden barrier that could be swung aside. The four guardsmen were spread across different points of the road, waiting.

“CRASH THE BARRIER!” chanted Santos into the bullhorn, inciting the protestors.

“CRASH THE BARRIER! CRASH THE BARRIER!”

The cameraman swung his camera toward the windshield, trying to catch it all. Next to him the reporter was talking into her tape recorder, narrating: “In an unexpected turn of events, the protestors are going to crash through the barricade on their way toward the Cheyenne Hills Resort, where the G8 Summit is just beginning.”

The school bus picked up speed, rocketing and rattling toward the barrier. The guardsmen seemed to realize at the last moment that the bus wasn’t going to stop. They scattered.

With a crash the bus slammed through the wooden barrier. The
three buses behind them followed. They could hear the sound of weapons firing. Santos was certain the guardsmen were firing in the air. Their procedure would be to radio on ahead to the last checkpoint, where a more effective roadblock would be put in place.

And a minute later, he saw that this was the case. Not only had the guardsmen rolled their Humvee into the road, but they had reinforced the barricade with concrete blocks. They stood on each side of the road, weapons raised and ready. In the distance he heard sirens. The first checkpoint had sicced the cops on them. That was good.

The driver slowed. “What now?”

“Get close and stop,” Santos said. He turned to face the protestors. “Are you ready?”

“YES!” they shouted.

“When we stop, we rush the barricade! DOWN WITH ECONOMIC TYRANNY!”

“DOWN WITH ECONOMIC TYRANNY!”

The bus came to a halt. The driver glanced at Santos, who nodded. With a flick of the handle, the door cranked open.

“OUT! OUT! OUT!” Santos shouted.

The first out were the TV people, who set up just off to the side of the road. Santos noted that the reporter was standing with her back to the barricade, so the cameraman got a good shot with her in the foreground.

Like a panicked herd of cattle, the protestors rushed out of the bus, bottlenecked at the door, then spread out onto the road, their placards raised. They were joined by the protestors from the other three buses, easily a hundred people. The protestors with makeshift drums began to thump out a heartbeat rhythm. Someone began a chant. “G8 NOT! G8 NOT! G8 NOT!”

Cautiously, standing just inside the bus, leaning out, one hand on the pole so he was higher than the crowd, Santos shouted, “WHO ARE WE?”

“WE ARE THE PEOPLE!”

“WHO?”

“THE PEOPLE!”

“GOOOOOO!”

The crowd surged toward the four armed Colorado National Guardsmen. Santos watched as the mob rushed The Fallen Angels who
had taken over the guardsmen’s checkpoint. To the driver he murmured, “Might want to take cover.”

The driver glanced in the mirror. “Uh-oh.” Behind them appeared three Colorado State Police patrol cars, sirens blaring, lights flashing.

The cameramen swung around to capture the police cars arriving. And then the first shot rang out.

The four terrorists dressed as guardsmen fired on the crowd. Screams lifted into the thin mountain air. As bodies fell, some of the protestors tried to reach the guardsmen, but were methodically gunned down. Others ran for cover. Behind the bus, the patrol cars skidded to a halt, blocking the road. The state troopers piled out, guns drawn, taking up positions behind their vehicles.

Santos noted with satisfaction that the troopers were on their radios. And the TV camera was rolling. He hoped they made it back to their satellite truck as soon as possible.

He pulled out a handheld radio and said, “El Chacal here. Phase two on schedule. Proceed.”

The voice of The Fallen came over the radio. “Confirmed.”

President Langston was acknowledging the applause when his Sherpa, Tobias Leeman, walked across the stage and leaned toward the president’s ear. From where El Tiburón stood he could not hear, but he had a good idea what was being said.

Langston cocked his head, then glanced out at the audience and raised his hand to wave. Leaning away from the microphone, he exchanged words with Leeman, nodded, and turned back to the microphone.

President Langston raised his hands for silence. “Ladies and Gentlemen, I’m afraid we’ve got a problem. We will be going into a temporary security lockdown. It appears there has been an altercation between the National Guard troops and some protestors at one of the security checkpoints outside the resort. This may require a change of schedule. For the time being, everybody will remain in the ballroom here, and we’ll get you updated as soon as we have more information. Now then, our next scheduled speaker is Prime Minister James Hollenbeck.” He turned to gesture toward the British leader.

“It is my great honor and privilege to introduce everybody to Prime Minister Hollenbeck. As you know, he and I go back a long ways. James, due to the security lockdown, you now have all the time in the world—”

All around Cheyenne Hall, emergency security lockdown was taking place. The doors to the banquet hall locked with magnetic clicks. The exterior doors to the building also closed and could not be opened until overridden from the security center. Steel security gates rolled shut over the main doors, running from floor to ceiling. In the basement levels, steel security gates dropped into place, locking down with a clank.

Not only was Cheyenne Hall secured from outside access, nobody inside would be able to get out.

Through his earpiece, El Tiburón heard The Fallen whisper, “Begin.”

El Tiburón, heart racing, clicked the button of the remote control.

Secret Service Agent Lee Padillo scowled at the monitors in the International Center’s security office. He had sent Sarah Macklin and two of her agents off to track down Derek Stillwater and nothing had been heard from her. He tried radioing her and got nothing. Where the hell had they gone?

And now all hell had broken loose out at Checkpoint Delta. That should not have happened.

Punching channels on the console, he was able to pick up radio chatter from throughout the entire National Security Event, listening in on his own agents, the Bureau of State Security, the National Guard, and some of the media. It wasn’t good. The press, all three thousand of them from around the world, were confined to the Phil Long Expo Center, where they could watch the summit via the six cameras set up in every room, allowing a 360-degree view of significant events. Confined there, that is, until news broke about the shooting. Then they all loaded up in their vehicles and headed this way, clogging the roads to the resort, threatening the state troopers and the National Guard, who were trying to get ambulances in to sort out the mess.

And now the Cheyenne Center was under security lockdown.

“This is a fucking hairball,” said a voice behind him. Padillo turned to see Agent Vincent Silvedo stroll into the security center.

“What the hell are you doing here? You’re supposed to be at the Cheyenne Center. We’re in lockdown.”

“Yeah, and I was outside when you went into lockdown.”

Padillo rubbed his forehead and glanced over at the other three agents monitoring the radios and video screens. “Jesus! Silvedo, you weren’t— what were you doing outside?”

“What do you think? Having a smoke. Then all of a sudden the doors come down and the entire building gets locked up tight.”

“Get your ass back there.”

Silvedo shrugged, then walked back toward the door. “Oh, Padillo, one more thing.”

“What’s that?”

Padillo’s eyes widened in shock as Silvedo tossed a flash grenade at him. The concussion knocked him flat. His eyes sizzled crimson. Padillo realized he was on his hands and knees, blind, dazed, confused, uncertain how much time had passed. Only seconds? What the—

He heard footsteps as if from a thousand miles away. Struggling to gain his footing, Padillo heard a gunshot, then another. And another. He was scrabbling for his own gun when everything went dead in a brilliant flash of pain.

In his earpiece, El Tiburón heard Vincent Silvedo say, “The Fallen, this is Chameleon. I have taken over security. You are a go. I repeat, you are a go.” El Tiburón tapped the button on the remote in his pocket. It sent out a signal to the 240 specially prepared bottles of champagne scattered around the banquet hall. At the bottom of each bottle was a tiny radio-controlled detonator that provided just enough pop to explode the bottles.

All throughout the room burst a startling crack! followed by the even larger explosion of the bottles themselves bursting in a spray of glass.

Prime Minister Hollenbeck, who had been rambling on about a lasting peace in the Middle East, stopped in mid-sentence, ducking automatically. Cries of alarm, screams, and the clatter of overturned chairs filled the room. At least half the crowd leapt to their feet. An even more seasoned percentage of the crowd flung themselves to the ground, hands on their heads.

Dozens of security officials from various countries reached for their weapons, spinning, looking for the problem.

Across the room El Tiburón saw The Fallen reach inside his jacket, pull out a lightweight gas mask, and pull it over his face. El Tiburón did the same, as did the other members of The Fallen Angels around the room.

When the bottles burst, the room quickly filled with a grayish vapor. The bottles were loaded with a Russian-made aerosolized derivative of the painkiller Fentanyl. A similar compound had been used by Russian Special Forces to immobilize Chechen rebels in 2002 who held seven hundred hostages in the House of Culture, a theater in Moscow.

It took less than a minute for everyone in the banquet hall to fall unconscious.

The Fallen, El Tiburón and his terrorists, all clad in gas masks, began to move around the hall. Three ducked into the storage room and immediately returned with crates filled with plastic explosives and detonators.

The Fallen shouted into his microphone, “Are the cameras shut off?”

Mikhail Alexandrov, the Russian FSB agent who was called “Charlie Brown” behind his back, stepped close to the six video cameras, and cut off the feeds. “Da! The cameras are down.”

The three Angels with the plastic explosives set about wiring the doors. The Fallen and four other men calling themselves El Escorpión, El Tigre, El Barrucuda, and El Jaguar, drew out cloth vests strapped with plastic explosives and climbed up on the stage where the leaders of the twenty most powerful countries in the world were crumpled, unconscious. Working quickly with stilettos, they cut off the men’s coats and pulled on the “suicide vests,” which they secured with steel locks. They then used plasti-ties to secure the leaders’ hands behind their backs.