The Last Line (48 page)

The one with the gun opened fire.

The windshield of a Ford next to him crazed as a round punched through. At a range of thirty yards now, Teller came to a halt, brought the pistol up in a two-handed grip, and squeezed off five rounds, shifting from one target to the other. The gunman kept firing as well, putting a second round into the side of the car with a harsh, metallic thud and sending another snapping through the air somewhere above Teller's head. Teller moved forward, trying for a better angle past the parked cars. The one with the suitcase was partially obscured now by a parked pickup truck; he shifted his aim back to the one with the pistol, squeezed off four more rounds, and saw the man stagger and twist, one hand clutching at his side. He fired again at the other man as he emerged from behind the truck, saw the man crumple to the pavement beneath his heavy load.

The white car jerked forward, tires squealing, open trunk flapping with the movement. Teller took aim, squeezed the trigger … and realized his .45 was out of ammo.
Shit
.

Thumbing the Glock's magazine release, he dropped the empty magazine and slapped in a fresh one just as the car jumped through the intersection against the light. Horns blared, brakes shrieked, and then two cars slammed into each other, but the white sedan made it through the intersection, accelerating quickly.

“Two Tangos down!” Teller yelled—and then he realized that in his excitement he hadn't brought along a tactical radio. Reaching the suitcase nuke, he pulled his cell phone out of a pocket and speed-dialed Dominique.

“Chris!” he heard her say.

“Yeah! Two Tangos down, and we have one of the weapons. Get the NEST guys here fast as you can! Two more Tangos now in white four-door sedan, Virginia plates, partial license Charlie Mike 3, heading northwest on Pennsylvania Avenue. We need to stop those bastards now!”

“Walthers says we're on the way,” Dominique told him. “And we've contacted the Capitol Police.”

“You!” someone shouted behind him. “Drop the gun!”

“They just got here,” Teller said, turning. A policeman was coming across the street toward him, a pistol aimed at Teller's chest. Other law enforcement officers were converging on the scene, including one member of the Park Police riding a Segway. “Hello, Officer.”

“Drop the weapon!”

“Federal officer,” Teller said, carefully pulling out his wallet and flipping it open to his ID. “And that suitcase on the sidewalk is a small nuclear weapon. You'll want to cordon off the area until NEST gets here.”

The cop squinted as he looked at the badge and read the credentials, then lowered his pistol slightly. “A fed? Jesus! Is that really a nuke?”

“Yes. This is not a joke,” Teller said with deadly seriousness. “This is not a drill.” The Segway rolled up, and Teller pointed at it as the cop stepped off. “And I'm requisitioning that vehicle.”

“Hey, wait just a—”

“A horse would be better,” Teller added, climbing onto the contraption, “but since Congress took away your horses, I'll have to make do with what's available.”

The Capitol Police had had a mounted unit until a few years ago, which they'd used to patrol the Hill, but a cost-cutting move had ended the program. He leaned into the handlebars and the machine whirred into motion.

He thought the things were comical, but Teller had used a Segway before, renting one for a tour of downtown D.C. Like riding a bicycle, you never forgot how. You moved forward by leaning forward, and the transporter sensed the shift in weight and accelerated; you turned by leaning left or right. Top speed was only about twelve and a half miles per hour, but the avenue along the Washington Mall was thick with cars. Slaloming through the traffic, Teller rapidly closed with the white sedan, which had moved a hundred yards down Pennsylvania and come to an abrupt halt behind a D.C. tour bus. He raised his Glock, muzzle pointed at the sky, wondering if he could disable the car … but there were far too many people and cars in his line of fire. He leaned forward more, trying to coax another bit of speed from the transporter, and hoped to hell that the batteries were well charged.

The car up ahead was turning …

REYSHAHRI

PENNSYLVANIA AVENUE NW

WASHINGTON, D.C.

0856 HOURS, EDT

Moslehi swung the wheel and turned south onto Fourth Street, between the National Gallery of Art and its East Annex. Reyshahri glanced into the right-side rear mirror and caught a glimpse of someone careening through the traffic on a device that looked like a pogo stick with wheels.

The figure had a gun … and was catching up.

TELLER

FOURTH STREET NW

WASHINGTON, D.C.

0856 HOURS, EDT

He made the turn onto Fourth Street, still following the white car up ahead. Traffic here was a lot lighter, and the sedan was accelerating. Tucking his pistol back into his waistband, Teller pulled out his phone and thumbed Dominique's number.

“We're back over Capitol Hill!” her voice said. “Where are you?”

He told her. “This has got to be a first!” he added. “The U.S. Army in hot pursuit on one of these ridiculous Segway things!”

He heard the helicopter off to the east, the roar muffled to a dull clatter by the Art Gallery's east building. Twenty yards in front of him, the sedan swerved suddenly right at a stoplight.

“Target is turning west onto Madison!”

“Chris … the pilot says the target is in sight. He wants to know … how are they going to detonate those bombs?”

Teller had been wondering exactly that.

He only wished he knew the answer.

 

Chapter Twenty-Five

REYSHAHRI

WASHINGTON, MALL

WASHINGTON D.C.

0857 HOURS, EDT

22 APRIL

They swerved right onto Madison and smashed into the rear bumper of another car, an expensive luxury model. Madison Drive NW was a one-way street running past the northern tier of Smithsonian museums—the Art Gallery, Natural History, and American History. “Back up! Back up!” Reyshahri yelled.
Damn
this traffic! “Get around him!” Horns blared. The driver of the car ahead opened his door and stepped onto the street, glaring as he started walking toward them.

“I can't get through!” Moslehi screamed back.

The man looked furious, stalking toward them, fists clenched.

Reyshahri pointed to the left, through the trees lining the Mall. “
That
way!”

The car nosed left, threaded its way between two parked vehicles, then bumped up onto the sidewalk, crashed past a park bench, and plunged through a light mesh fence into a park area with widely scattered trees. Pedestrians scattered as Moslehi floored the accelerator. They bounced across the wooded area, crashed through another mesh fence, and emerged on the broad, open expanse of the Mall.

Reyshahri suddenly felt very small, trapped in this vast openness between the Capitol Dome and the Washington Monument.

They had to act
now
.

TELLER

WASHINGTON MALL,

WASHINGTON, D.C.

0857 HOURS, EST

He followed the sedan onto Madison, narrowly missing a bicycle-propelled rickshaw and eliciting an angry flurry of horn blasts. A silver El Dorado had been rear-ended by the quarry, and the driver was in the street, shaking his fist. Teller could see where the white rental had gone, though, knocking down a mesh fence and careening out onto the mall. He followed—and nearly fell as the Segway hit the curb—but then he was on hard-packed gravel, and then on the sidewalk.

He wasn't convinced the little electric personal transporter would navigate the grass beyond, though, so he swung right again and raced down the sidewalk. He could see the sedan now, through the trees, heading southwest across the Mall in the general direction of the Air and Space Museum.

How
did
the Tangos plan to detonate their nukes? Some sort of timer would be simplest—but did they also have some sort of remote control device, something that would let them set the bombs off with the touch of a finger?

Would they detonate the weapons if they found themselves trapped, unable to flee?

Sirens wailed and howled as emergency vehicles converged on the Mall. Everywhere, civilians were running, scattering, some screaming, some standing openmouthed and oblivious.

Behind him, the Super Stallion cleared the trees and thundered toward the Mall.

REYSHAHRI

WASHINGTON MALL

WASHINGTON, D.C.

0858 HOURS, EDT

“You made us get rid of our phones!” Moslehi screamed. “How are we supposed to detonate the weapons now?”

“The idea was never to detonate them while we were still in the city,” Reyshahri replied. He'd been planning to buy new phones outside of Washington, or even to use a public phone, but that no longer was an option. The opposition was too close now.

“Yes, but now we
have
to!”

Reyshahri pointed. A young woman in pink shorts and a tight black halter was standing on the Mall, talking into a cell phone. “There! That girl! Run her down!”

Moslehi grinned. “Allah be praised!”

TELLER

WASHINGTON MALL,

WASHINGTON, D.C.

0858 HOURS, EDT

Teller reached the crosswalk that headed south directly opposite the National Gallery's main entrance and made a sharp, fast turn. “Out of the way! Out of the way!” he shouted as tourists gaped and screamed and scattered to left and right. “Federal officer! Gangway!” Damn it, with the gridlock outside the city, where had all these civilians come from?

The question of the terrorists' psychology was very much on Teller's mind. These people weren't Islamist fanatics, suicide bombers determined to blow their target and themselves to bits. Reyshahri was a VEVAK officer, which meant he was a professional, and the chances were good that the others in his ops team were professionals as well—or at least that they weren't bent on self-immolation. They'd intended, almost certainly, to place the warheads, withdraw to a safe distance, and either set them off with timers or detonate them by remote control.

That didn't mean they didn't have some sort of backup plan, a way of setting off the bombs immediately if it looked like they were about to be captured and their plan was going to fail. If they were backed into a corner, they might set the warheads off here and now. They might even have some sort of dead man's switch, a device that would trigger the nukes if the man holding the switch closed was killed.

What he needed now was negotiation rather than firepower.

Ahead, halfway across the Mall, he saw the sedan abruptly swerve, apparently trying to hit a woman.

Maybe negotiations wouldn't help either …

REYSHAHRI

WASHINGTON MALL

WASHINGTON, D.C.

0858 HOURS, EDT

The car sideswiped the woman with the cell phone. She shrieked and tumbled backward. Reyshahri opened the door and leaped out of the car while it was still moving.

One part of him was horrified at the fact that he'd actually ordered Moslehi to run the woman down. Another part of him was coldly analytical. If he could get the woman's cell phone and punch in the triggering number, the woman would be dead anyway in a pair of searing white flashes of light—along with some tens of thousands of other people in central Washington.

The woman was on her back, still clutching the phone. Reaching down, Reyshahri grabbed it from her.

TELLER

WASHINGTON MALL,

WASHINGTON, D.C.

0858 HOURS, EDT

Teller couldn't get any more speed out of the Segway. It was faster than a man over long distances, but Teller knew he could sprint faster than the transporter's top speed. Leaping off of the platform, he raced across the mall as fast as he could run. The sedan had stopped, and one of the passengers was struggling with the woman on the ground, trying to take something from her.

He aimed and fired … an impossible shot while running all-out, but the noise might startle the Tango, or—just maybe—he might get lucky. The driver was on the far side of the vehicle, getting out. He heard the shot, raised a pistol, and snapped off a round at Teller.

Teller ignored him as the bullet cracked through the air a foot from his head. He'd just seen what the first Tango was trying to wrest from the woman—a cell phone—and in that instant he knew how the bad guys planned to detonate the two suitcase nukes.

The Israelis had done it first, back in the seventies, assassinating several PLO leaders by calling them and, when they'd identified themselves, sending a triggering signal through a phone line to detonate the bomb planted under the phone hours earlier. The nukes, Teller thought, must have phone receivers wired into their detonators. Call the number, and the closing of the circuit would set off the blast. The two weapons might even have the same number so that both would explode with a single call—and that call could be made from anywhere in the world.

Or by someone standing just a few feet away. Teller was close enough now to recognize the VEVAK officer, Reyshahri, from his file photos. The Iranian finally yanked the phone away from the woman at his feet and began punching furiously at the keyboard. The driver was bracing himself on the sedan now, holding the pistol two-handed and bracing it across the roof of the car. Behind him, the Sea Stallion was settling toward the surface of the Mall, its rotor wash lashing the grass and the gunman's hair.

Teller emerged from the trees bordering the Mall's central open area. To his right, the Washington Monument speared the sky above clouds of soft pink cherry blossoms; to his left, much nearer, less than a thousand yards away, loomed the stately white curves of the Capitol Dome.

Teller ignored everything but Reyshahri, continuing to fire as he ran.

REYSHAHRI

WASHINGTON MALL

WASHINGTON, D.C.

0858 HOURS, EDT

Reyshahri entered the memorized phone number—area code … seven digits …