State of Siege - Tom Clancy [31]
There were footsteps in the hall followed by the distinctive phup- phup-phup of an automatic. The shots were followed by clattering, cries, shouts, and more footsteps. Then the hall was silent. "Whose side was that?" Charlie asked no one in particular. Hood didn't know. He left Sharon and walked toward the door. He crouched low in ease someone fired and motioned for everyone in the room to stand back, clear of the door. Then he reached up and slowly turned the silver knob. He eased the door open. There were four bodies lying in the corridor between the correspondents' room and the Security Council. They belonged to UN security personnel. Whoever had shot them was gone, though they'd left bloody tracks in their wake. Tracks that led to the Security Council.
Hood experienced a strange flashbackcom He felt like Thomas Davies, a firefighter he used to play softball with in Los Angeles. One afternoon, Davies had gotten a call that his own home was burning. The man knew what to do, he knew what was happening, yet he couldn't react. Hood shut the door and walked toward the desks. "What is it?" Charlie asked.
Hood didn't answer him. He was trying to get himself moving. "Dammit, what happened?" Charlie shouted. Hood said, "Four guards are dead, and whoever shot them has gone into the Security Council chambers." "My baby," one of the mothers sobbed.
"I'm sure they're all right for now," Hood said. "Yeah, and you were sure they'd be all right if we stayed in here!" Charlie yelled.
Charlie's rage brought Hood out of his shock. "If you'd been outside, you'd be dead now," Hood said. "Mr. Dillon wouldn't have let you into the chambers, and you'd've been killed with the guards." He took a breath to calm himself. Then he slipped his cell phone from the pocket of his blazer. He punched in a number. "Who are you calling?" Sharon asked.
Her husband finished entering the number. He looked at her and touched her cheek. "Someone who won't give a shit that this is international territory," he replied. "Someone who can help us."
* * *
TEN
Bethesda, Maryland Saturday, 7:48 P.m.
Mike Rodgers was going through a Gary Cooper phase. Not in his real life but in his movie life -though at the moment, the two lives were entirely codependent.
Op-Center's forty-five-year-old former deputy director, now acting director, had never been confused or insecure. He had his nose broken four times playing college basketball because he saw the basket and went for it, damning the Torpedoes-as well as the Badgers, the Ironmen, the Thrashers, and the other teams he played. When he'd served two tours of duty in Vietnam and commanded a mechanized brigade in the Gulf War, he was given objectives and had met them all. Every damn one of them. On his first mission with Striker, to North Korea, he'd kept a fanatical officer from nuking Japan. When he returned from Vietnam, he'd even found time to get a Ph.d. in world history. But now It wasn't just Paul Hood resigning that depressed him, though that was part of the problem. It was ironic. Two and a half years ago, Rodgers had found it difficult to report to the man-a civilian who had been attending fund-raisers with movie stars while Rodgers was chasing Iraq out of Kuwait. But Hood had proven himself a steady, politically savvy manager. Rodgers was going to miss the man and his leadership.
Dressed in a loose-fitting gray sweat suit and Nikes, Rodgers shifted carefully on the leather sofa. He slumped back slowly. Just two weeks before, he'd been captured by terrorists in the Bekaa Valley in Lebanon. The second- and third-degree burns he'd suffered during torture were still not completely healed. Neither were the internal wounds.
Rodgers's gaze had wandered. He looked back at the TV, profound sadness in his light brown eyes. He was watching Vera Cruz, one of Cooper's