Last Snow - Eric van Lustbader [164]
“I miss Annika,” she said, “do you?”
“I wish we were staying longer.” Jack looked out the window at the bleakness of Moscow. “I wanted to see the Bolshoi.”
Alli smiled. “But not with me.”
He smiled in return. “No, not with you.”
Alli was silent for a moment, staring at the motorcycle cops flanking their limo. “Maybe she’ll come to Washington, maybe you’ll come back here.”
“Maybe.” He put his head back; he was suddenly very tired. The moment he closed his eyes he saw Emma. He smiled at her but something was wrong.
Alli must have seen the change in his expression because she said, “Don’t be sad, Jack.”
“I’m not sad, exactly, I—”
The rest of his thought was cut off by her scream. His eyes snapped open to see everything in frantic motion. The presidential limo had skidded, most likely on a patch of black ice, and was now veering off the roadway. Still spinning, it plunged down the verge onto the median, where it struck something buried under the snow. It flipped over as it slammed into a high-tension pole. The cables broke free and swooped down like black crows out of an icy sky, striking the limo, sending a powerful charge through the car.
Alli was still screaming and Jack was out of their limo, running with the Secret Service agents toward the wreck. Sirens were wailing, people were shouting, the entire motorcade had come to a halt, the press corps piling out and running, too, cell phones out, calling, texting, Twittering, whatever means would get the news out the fastest, spreading it to all four corners of the globe even before those on the scene could determine the condition of the president and the First Lady.
Alli caught up with Jack as he waited for the two agents who were closest to swing the cable off the limo. The moment it was safely aside, he wrenched on one of the rear doors. The limo was resting on its roof, there was a welter of security personnel, both American and Russians. Because the Russians were being turned back, their commander decided his men should form the perimeter, keeping back the howling press corps.
By this time Jack had wrenched the door open. He took one look inside and handed Alli to one of her detail.
“What’s going on?” she cried. “Jack, tell me what you saw!”
Putting his head back inside Jack saw Lyn Carson cradling her husband’s bloody head. All the personnel in the front were mangled, clearly dead. Defib Man checked on the president, shook his head, and started to cry.
“Mrs. Carson,” Jack said, “Lyn, we’ve got to get you out of there now.”
She did not move, did not respond, and Jack climbed in over the body of his good friend. When he began to pull her away, Lyn screamed. Her eyes were wide and staring, she was clearly in shock. Then there were other hands helping him, and slowly the Carsons were separated. That’s when he saw that the front of Lyn’s coat was soaked through. At first he thought it was Edward’s blood and, indeed, some of it undoubtedly was, but when she passed out as they tried to extricate her he knew that something was very wrong.
THEY TOOK the president and First Lady—Edward and Lyn—straight to Air Force One, where the president’s trauma surgeon was standing by in the plane’s operating room for Lyn Carson, who had sustained abdominal damage. The American medical team worked on her for six hours, and even then the team leader could not give a definitive long-term prognosis. She was, however,