Termination Orders(93)
Morgan visualized the stadium in his head, analyzing it for secluded vantage points. If he were in T’s position, where would he be? The answer was obvious.
“Lowry, Lowry, come in.”
“This is Lowry,” came his voice in Morgan’s ear.
“Lowry, the roof! Where does the perimeter intersect with the edge of the roof?”
Morgan heard clicking on Lowry’s end. After a few seconds, Lowry told him, “That would be . . . at the stadium lights right above you.”
It made sense. The light arrays would be a perfect cover from any eyes scanning the roofline, making anyone looking directly into them effectively blind. He mentally kicked himself for not thinking of it sooner. “Then that’s where she’ll be,” said Morgan. “Lowry, how do we get there?”
“Let me see . . .” Morgan heard typing on the other side. Then, “There’s a door down the hallway to your left that will take you to the maintenance area. Gain access to that, and I’ll direct you from there.”
They walked down the hallway. Finding the door, Morgan tested the knob to check if it was locked, when a voice from behind him bellowed, “Hey, what are you doing?”
It was one of the upstairs guards, in his black suit. Morgan noticed the bulge of a gun under his jacket.
“I’m sorry, sir, we were just looking for the bathroom.”
“Well, that’s not it,” he said brusquely. And then he stopped, as if he were listening to something in his earpiece. As he looked at Morgan and Conley, his eyes went wide, and his hand went for his gun. But he was too slow. Morgan elbowed him in the face and followed with a left hook to his temple. The man fell down, out cold.
He took the guard’s gun, a Colt semiautomatic, and checked it for ammo—a full clip. Morgan tucked it into his pants behind his back. Then he took the earpiece from the man’s ear and crushed it beneath his foot.
“Can you get that door open?” he said to Conley. Morgan kept lookout while Conley worked the lock with his tools. He opened it in under a minute and helped Morgan drag the unconscious man inside.
“Lowry, we’re in. Where now?”
“Up, baby, up.” He directed them through the twisting tunnels, past exposed pipes and raw concrete, until they opened a white door and saw, in the distance, the brightly illuminated dome of the Capitol and the Washington Monument towering behind it. They were on the flat top of the main section of the stadium, and on that rested the roof itself, white and undulating.
“On your left, you’ll find a ladder to the top,” said Lowry.
Morgan climbed first. When he reached the top, he looked around. There were four arrays of stadium lights, two on each side. “Lowry, which one is it?”
“How am I supposed to know? They’re all about the same distance from the podium.”
She could be at any one. Morgan looked in both directions. There wasn’t time to think about this. “I’ll go left,” he said, and he ran toward the nearest array, while Conley took the cue and ran right.
He scanned the scaffolding on the light arrays, each of which had four levels of narrow catwalks for maintenance. No sign of her on the nearest one. He sprinted toward the far lights. Below, in the stadium, the people were cheering. Senator McKay had just been announced.
Morgan approached the next group of stadium lights and saw a figure crouching on the second-tier catwalk, looking through the scope of a rifle whose muzzle extended out, in between the lights. T. He slowed his pace, stepped lightly, and didn’t say a word, careful so as not to alert her to his presence. Morgan climbed quietly onto the platform, the din below concealing whatever noise he made, his gun on her the entire time, and, once on his feet, he yelled over the applause, “Natasha! Step away from the rifle!”
CHAPTER 42
Immersed in the noise of the cheering crowd below them, Natasha looked at Morgan and the gun in his hand without emotion. She took her hands slowly and deliberately off the rifle. She looked at him without speaking. Slowly, her lips curled into a smirk.
“Away from the rifle. Now!”
She got to her feet and raised her hands, palms out. “So, you’ve found me. I suppose you think that means you won, don’t you?”
“I seem to be the one with the gun,” he said.
“Maybe. But I know something you don’t.”
“Oh, yeah? What’s that?”
“Fail-safe. Redundancy. Shooting her, this whole business with the rifle, this is Plan B. The backup. You can kill me now, and she still dies. In fact, kill me now, and you have no possibility at all of preventing her death.” She continued to smile, and Morgan recognized that she was triumphant.