Highlander - Donna Lettow [112]
Scant minutes after the blast, the driveway in front of the embassy was pandemonium. Emergency vehicles clogged the roadway, spilling over onto the manicured lawns, leaving little room for the limousines and government cars attempting to spirit away the officials from the signing ceremony. Stunned delegates wandered in the midst of the equally shocked press corps, their faces ashen in the flashing lights of the fire trucks as they transmitted their reports across the world, and Farid’s security men were desperate to herd together their charges and evacuate them to safety.
Farid had Maral tightly by the wrist, and she fought him hard, trying to escape. “No! Let me go!” she screamed out.
The security chief didn’t want to hurt her, but his duty was clear. “You have to go. There are assassins everywhere. You’re not safe.” He escorted her firmly away from the embassy building, leading her, dragging her.
Still she struggled to get away from him. “No! Duncan’s out there. I have to find him.” Even Farid’s veneer of cold professionalism could not help but be touched by her impassioned plea, but he knew there might be little left to find. Even so, he offered her what comfort he could.
“We’ll find him, Doctor. I promise you, we’ll find him.” He opened the door to a waiting security car. “Now get in the car,” he said firmly, forcing her in.
“Farid, you don’t understand. I have to see him. I have to know!” she begged him through tears. His only response was to shut the car door and signal the driver to drive on. He turned back to the chaos.
The car moved forward several yards, then was forced to stop and wait as another company of fire equipment arrived at the scene, a hook and ladder blocking the gated entrance. Maral saw her chance and threw the door open, scrambling out of the car, taking off at a run back to the embassy. The driver sounded his hom frantically to get Farid’s attention, but in the midst of the sirens and the crowd, it was just another blare of noise.
Maral ran around the back of the emergency vehicles, careful to stay away from the building, out of Farid’s radar. She stayed in the shadows of the perimeter fence as it ran parallel with the front of the building, then cut across a crowded parking area, ducking beneath the tops of the cars, until she reached the garden that ran alongside the eastern side of the embassy, where the bomb had detonated.
She slowed her pace, horrified at the damage she could see. A twenty-foot hole had been clawed into the side of the embassy, sections of two floors lay open to the night air. Inside, she could see the first firefighters on the scene crawling carefully through the smoldering debris that used to be someone’s office. Outside the hole, a massive crater had been gouged in the carefully tended lawn. She was stunned. If that had gone off during the crowded signing … Duncan MacLeod had saved hundreds of lives.
Duncan …
She ran on, weaving through the rescue equipment, smoke and tears threatening to blind her as she scanned the garden, the firefighters, the debris for any sign of MacLeod. She found the window he’d crashed through a few short yards from the gaping wound in the embassy.
“Duncan!” she screamed, trying to be heard above the din of the emergency vehicles and the rescuers, trying to be heard in Heaven if that’s where he was now. “Duncan!” She dropped to her knees, heedless of the broken glass all around, searching for any trace.
She’d crawled several feet beyond the window when she found blood pooling on the grass. “God, please, no,” Maral whispered. She reached out, almost touching it, then pulled back. Glimmering in the moonlight in a black pool of blood she saw one of MacLeod’s golden cuff links.
“DUNCAN!!!!” she wailed