Author Archive: jsomers

I‘ll be posting one chapter of my novel Designated Survivor every week throughout 2022. Download links below.

27.

Seventeen minutes before almost dozing off, Begley opened her eyes and said, “I feel like I’m in the hospital.”

“You should be in the hospital,” Renicks said as he pushed her in the chair. “We should both be in the hospital.”

The corridors of the twelfth floor were immaculate at first glance. The carpets, however, had been tracked with dirt from several waves of people marching through. Other than that it would be easy to imagine nothing at all happening in the complex. A normal day. Boredom and inactivity.

She’d spent the elevator ride pondering options. Concluded there weren’t any. With the Security Office destroyed and a number of rogue agents still roaming the complex, the chances of making significant contact with the outside world were slim. With the implications of the conspiracy so huge, chances of accidentally contacting an enemy were high. They were both injured and her estimates on time until detonation of emergency charges were pessimistic.

Her conclusion was that their only sensible course of action would be to find someplace comfortable and wait out the last half hour or hour of their lives.

John Renicks, Ph.D., she reflected, wasn’t the person she would have chosen to spend the last hour of her life with. But she also figured she could have done worse, and decided to be content.

They turned the corner and the scorched and torn-up double doors leading into the Executive Suite came into view. Equipment, including the hulking laser cutter they’d been using on the mag locks, had been dropped on the floor and left behind. Big portable lights with chrome stands and yellow metal reflectors still cast the door in a blinding white light. The walls around the door had been torn up, exposing the thick steel rods held in place by the magnetic system; only six of the twelve had been cut through. Renicks pushed her to within a few feet and she struggled up out of the chair. Approached the door. Punched in the override code she’d created just a few hours before. The magnetic locks released immediately and the steel rods snapped back into their holsters in the walls.

The suite was exactly as they’d left it. Painfully normal-looking. She pulled the door shut behind them and sealed the room again. Then dropped into the couch with a sigh and sat there for a moment, feeling more tired than she’d ever been before in her life.

Renicks dropped his bag and The Brick. Stepped out of the main room. Returned a moment later with two bottles of cold water and a small white box.

“First aid kit only had acetaminophen,” he said, tearing the box open and pouring small white pills into his hand. “Here’s four thousand milligrams. Your liver won’t forgive me, but it’ll help a little with the pain.”

She accepted the pills and a bottle of water. Swallowing the pills, she drank the entire bottle. Sat gasping on the couch. Felt instantly like going to sleep.

After a moment, Renicks said “Jesus.”

She nodded. “I’m not even a Christian,” she said, “and that about covers it.”

“You think we’re okay here?”

She shrugged. “He doesn’t have the launch codes or coordinates.” She pointed at the Brick. “Those are in there. Before they had the codes and the RLI, but not you, so they couldn’t activate the launcher. Now they have an activated launcher but no codes. So they can’t do anything. We’ll shut up and barricade the tunnel. They don’t know where it leads to, I don’t think, but we’ll barricade it.” She looked at him steadily. “We only have to hold out for a little while longer.”

He frowned at her, then nodded. “The charges.”

“The charges.”

They sat in silence for a moment.

“I wish I could call my kids,” he said.

“I’m sorry.”

“How about you. Family?”

She smiled. “More than I can handle. I’ve been avoiding them as much as possible for years.” She shook her head. “Doesn’t matter. Let’s not talk about that, okay?”

She watched him pick up The Brick. As he touched it, it sprang back to life, the screen lighting up instantly. Then he dropped it and stood up. “I’m going to shut up the tunnel. It would be funny if they just snuck in here and grabbed me, after all this.”

“Jack,” she called out after him as he walked back towards the kitchen, “I do not think that would be funny at all!”

She sat in a daze. Felt curiously calm and contented. Her leg hurt like hell. She had a few other minor aches and sprains. She was exhausted. But she felt like laughing. On one level she knew it was just an adrenaline crash. Her brain had been soaked in all sorts of chemicals, some of which it hadn’t produced in decades, and now she was enjoying their effects without the associated trauma or terror to offset them. On the other hand, it felt unreal: She was still beaten-up, still being hunted. Still charged with keeping a man she’d only met a few hours earlier alive. Until he could be killed by remote detonation of buried charges.

The absurdity of it finally made her burst out laughing. She grabbed and hugged a pillow to herself. Peals of it escaped her, uncontrolled. When Renicks walked back into the room he stood for a moment, studying her. She pointed at him.

“Is that a bottle of wine?”

He nodded, holding it up. “It is. It is not a bottle of good wine, but I have decided to be good and drunk when … when this ends.”

She nodded. “Saddle up.”

He sat down and twisted off the cap. Held it up. “Twist off caps used to be a sure sign of your federal government saving money by purchasing its wine by the ton, but no more. Twist-offs are becoming common.” He held the bottle out towards her. “Under other circumstances drinking with the amount of acetaminophen in your system would be a bad idea, but I’d say we have little to lose.”

She accepted the bottle and took a swig. It wasn’t bad. She had an idea that she would love anything right then. “You learn all this from your Dad?”

She remembered his file. Small town doctor, used to take young Jack to the office on weekends, let him help out a little. Had hopes his son would follow in his footsteps.

Renicks nodded, taking back the bottle. He looked right at her. She found that invigorating. So many men didn’t look at you. They either looked at your chest and took mental snapshots or they looked at their shoes, all aw shucks and yes ma’am. She liked how Renicks just looked at her.

“I learned a lot from Dad,” he said, taking a swig. “More or less by accident. I remember things easily. I’m not really so smart. I just remember things.” He picked up the Brick and it lit up again.

“I have a good memory,” she said. “But not for information. Numbers. Directions. If I read a book, I can’t tell you anything about it a week later. But give me a keycode to remember, and I have it for life. I still know my high school locker combination.”

They fell silent. They passed the bottle back and forth a few times. Renicks appeared absorbed in something he’d found on the Brick. Feeling much more drunk than she should have after approximately one glass of stale white wine, Begley studied him dully and wondered if he’d happened across a secret document entitled WHAT TO DO IF SECRET NATIONWIDE CONSPIRACY TRIES TO HIJACK THE NATIONAL SECURITY AND HOMELAND SECURITY PRESIDENTIAL DIRECTIVE. Fought back another attack of what she suspected was inappropriate laughter.

“What are you reading?”

He looked up. Leaned forward and relieved her of the bottle. Swirled the contents around a bit and offered her a raised-eyebrow, then took a long pull. His clothes were torn up and he was filthy. His hair stood up in odd directions, stiff and sticky. But he still looked put-together, somehow. It was the confidence, she thought. He was a man who always seemed to know exactly who he was.

“I’m translating a file President Grant placed here personally. A private memo to AG Flanagan. Written in … not code, but something meant as a code. An artificial language.” He grinned. “I’m a bit rusty.”

She raised her own eyebrow. “That is how you’re spending your — ” She hesitated over last hour alive and substituted “ — time here? That sounds like the most boring shit imaginable.”

He nodded. “Most of my career is the most boring shit imaginable. If I was going to start a rock band, our name would be Most Boring Shit Imaginable.”

She laughed. Thought this was not a terrible way to spend your last moments. Her leg was throbbing and her head was pounding. But it was peaceful. Quiet. And, she decided, she liked Jack Renicks.

Silence again. She lay back and tried to think of everything she loved. People, things. Trips. Feelings. Every memory she savored. She told herself she’d done her job. She’d protected the asset and served the interests of her country. She closed her eyes and felt sleepy, enjoying the sensation of being still and calm. She hoped —

Renicks suddenly sat forward. Hissed a curse. Knocked the bottle to the floor, where lukewarm wine chugged out onto the carpet.

“What?”

He looked back at her. “We’ve got a problem.”

She sat up, wincing as her head gave her an extra-deep throb, like she was having an aneurysm. “With what?”

Renicks stood up. “Darmity. He doesn’t need this for the codes,” he said, gesturing at her with the Brick. “He already has them.”

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I‘ll be posting one chapter of my novel Designated Survivor every week throughout 2022. Download links below.

26.

Ten seconds before crashing through the glass doors of the Security Office, Begley stared at Frank Darmity and thought, he looks crazy.

He was a little roughed-up, as if his fellow conspirators hadn’t been too gentle when locking him up somewhere. He had a crooked smile on his face that looked like he’d forgotten it was there. His eyes were bright and glassy. Blood had stained his shirt and soaked into the waistband of his pants. She remembered shooting him in the corridor; he must have been bleeding since, a slow bleed.

In his hands was a light machine gun.

It was the expression on his face more than the weapon. It was simultaneously vacant and leering. As if he’d been waiting for this moment. Had imagined it in detail. And was pausing to savor it.

The threat had shifted from behind her to directly in front. She was still chained to a heavy rolling chair. But she was armed. And Darmity was standing so close to the doors his breath was steaming the glass. Her mind did instant calculations. No numbers involved. She knew the weight of the chair she was cuffed to. She knew how weak her splinted leg was. The agents behind her might have hidden weapons, but that threat had just dropped down to second or even third on her list of priorities.

All this in a second. Then she twisted and took hold of the arms of the chair. Lifting it up in front of her, she launched herself forward, letting gravity and momentum make up for her bum leg. Crashed into the glass door. It swung out and smacked into Darmity with her weight behind it, shattering into hundreds of large jagged pieces that rained down onto the floor as Darmity staggered backwards and slammed into the wall behind him.

The chair rocketed out of her grasp and yanked her off balance. She fell to the floor. Glass sliced into the knee of her uninjured leg as she slid. Pain exploded in her splinted leg as it twisted stiffly under her. She grayed out for a second, two.

Vision fuzzing back, she looked up at Darmity. Saw the butt of the gun coming it her. Flinched a moment too late

It connected with her temple and she lost another five, six seconds.

When she came to, she was sprawled on the floor. The rolling chair was sitting on its wheels next to her. It had been chewed up, the upholstery torn and ripped. The armrest where she’d been handcuffed had snapped at a welded joint. Her arm hung by the wrist from the cuffs still, raised up in the air over her, but she could free herself easily.

Her hands were cut up and bleeding.

There was gunfire in the air.

She turned her head. Slowly, it seemed. Frank Darmity towered over her. His legs spread. The machine gun in his hands. He was spraying quick bursts of bullets into the Security Room. His eyes were just as wide. Just as glassy. His face had the same expression on it as earlier, blank and joyous.

She turned her head and looked through the jagged, broken doors into the Security Office. The walls and consoles had been shot up. One hanging fluorescent light fixture dangled from the ceiling by a wire, swinging and flickering. She couldn’t see any of Amesley’s people, or the Director, or Renicks.

Darmity stopped firing and leaned forward along the rifle, squinting through the smoke and gloom.

She felt heavy. Her head buzzed. Her whole body seemed to vibrate, but her leg wasn’t hurting her.

“Oh, fuck no,” Darmity suddenly said. Pointing the rifle up into the air, he strode purposefully into the Security Office, glass crunching under his heavy boots.

Using her elbows, she pushed herself up to a sitting position. Coughing, she pushed the handcuff off the chair’s armrest and staggered to her feet. Wincing with the pain, she pulled the gun from her waistband, checked the safety, and stepped over to the wall. Carefully, she leaned over to look into the office. Leaned against the wall to avoid falling over.

Renicks had gone for The Brick. He had it in one hand. His gun in the other. She could see this because he had both hands in the air. Darmity stood a few feet away from him, his back to her, the gun trained on Renicks’ chest.

She raised the gun. Blood was dripping down the grip. She took a deep breath and sighted directly at Darmity’s head.

Then sucked in another breath and lowered the gun slightly.

The Remote Launch Interface. The Nuclear Football. It was green across the board.

Her eyes flicked to Renicks. Two feet away from it. He’d activated it. All that remained was to key in the codes and coordinates, which were on The Brick. Which was in Renicks’ hand.

She put her eyes back on Darmity’s head. “Don’t move.”

She wished she’d had time to make sure of the location of the other agents. She knew Amesley was injured. The other three were unaccounted for.

“The bitch is back,” Darmity said without turning. “You gonna shoot me again, Agent Begley?”

Shoot him in the head, she thought. Remove him from the equation. Killing Darmity might not enable them to stop the complex from being destroyed, but it might; free to move about the complex and use its facilities they would be able to contact anyone on the outside and possibly avert disaster.

She hesitated. How far did this conspiracy go? The Director of the Secret Service, agents within the service, the President of The United States himself — who would they call? Who could be trusted? It was overwhelming. And Darmity must have some of the answers. Amesley might know more — if he was still alive somewhere in the darkened room, under hunks of plastic and debris — but Darmity was a sure thing, in her sights. To shoot a potential witness to the greatest conspiracy the country had ever seen was impossible.

“Drop the weapon,” she said, straining through pain and sweat to make her voice steady and implacable. “Step back towards me. Hands on your head. Don’t turn around.”

“How ‘bout I just shoot Professor Fancy here?”

“You can’t do that. Drop the weapon. Hands on head. Step back towards me.”

Darmity nodded. “We had this conversation before, Honey,” he said. “I can’t kill Professor Fancy. But I can hurt him.”

In a blink, he surged forward. Jammed the gun into Renicks’ belly. Renicks doubled over and Darmity clamped one huge hand around his neck, jerking him up and around. Held him in front of him, now facing Begley. It had taken just a few seconds. She felt fuzzy and slow.

“Better ‘n body armor,” Darmity said with a grin. “Now, we gonna continue our negotiations, or — ”

He paused, eyes shifting suddenly. Alarm surged within her. She knew what he was looking at. The Remote Launch Interface. Lit up green like a Christmas tree. She saw it all going straight to hell in ten seconds. Darmity with all the pieces: The launcher, the codes, the physical presence of the Designated Survivor.

She was moving before he took his eyes from the RLI.

She saw the opening: Get in behind Renicks. Jam the gun into Darmity’s ear, his neck. Push Renicks up against him to trap his arms. Just like that, the situation had changed. Keep going, she told herself. Kill him. Don’t stop.

She slammed into them and pushed the gun up into the space between Renicks’ head and shoulder, but Darmity flinched away and spun out from behind Renicks. She pulled the trigger a second too late and fired into the drywall.

She clawed her other hand into Renicks’ shirt and dropped to the floor, pulling him on top of her.

“Down!” she hissed. “Stay — ”

A burst of automatic fire split the air for a second, scattering into the wall. She heard Renicks curse and rolled him to the side, crawling awkwardly forward.

Quiet, then. Their harsh breathing. The sound of Darmity’s boot on some broken plastic.

She grabbed Renicks’ shoulder. He looked at her. He had The Brick clutched in one hand, his bag in the other.

“Make for the door! Run! I’ll cover you!”

He nodded back. She didn’t wait. There was no time for a deep breath or a momentary reflection. She got herself into a painful crouch, her splinted leg extended in front of her, and leaped up awkwardly.

“Go!”

She swung the borrowed gun out and fired three times. Across the room, Darmity ducked down behind the bank of consoles.

She stayed up. Began limping towards the exit. Gun up. Eyes scanning the opposite wall. Took a step, sweeping her leg along with a rolling gait. Moved faster.

Darmity’s head appeared across the room again, trailing a few feet behind her pace. She squeezed off one careful shot and he dropped down again.

She turned and limped for the ruined doors. Renicks crashed through and made the turn to the right. Thick shafts of intense pain exploded in her leg each time she slammed it down on the floor. But she kept going. Felt the glass crunch under her shoes. Two steps from the door she heard something behind her and she leaped, knocking some slabs of glass to the floor as she scraped through the empty door frames.

She tottered, off-balance. Renicks flashed out a hand and pulled, yanking her out of sight and pushing her roughly down into the rolling chair she’d been cuffed to.

“Sit and use that gun,” he said. A second later she started rolling backwards, dragged behind him.

She steadied herself as best she could. Brought the automatic up. Watched the hallway behind them. It scrolled away as Renicks pulled her in the chair behind him. Heart pounding, she watched for Darmity to emerge.

“Where am I going?”

“Elevators! Take your first right. The bank is just a few feet after that.”

The hallway swung to the right, and then she was looking at an empty corridor. Pristine. Untouched. She rolled to a stop and the world spun again as Renicks oriented her so the elevator’s keypad was directly in front of her. She reached up. Noticed her hand shaking violently. Hesitated a second, then keyed in the next day’s code. Immediately there was a soft ding! and the doors split open. Relief swept her — they’d just rotated the codes forward a day, as she’d suspected.

Renicks spun her again and she sailed backwards into the elevator. Sat for a few second feeling her pulse, holding the gun ready, waiting for Darmity to leap into view.

The doors rolled shut. She blinked. Leaned forward and keyed in another complex sequence.

“Where are we going?”

She licked her dry lips. Forced herself to drop the gun in her lap. “Down. Twelfth Level. I have an idea.” The Security Office had been shot to hell; she didn’t think anyone would be able to track them effectively any longer. They had The Brick and the launch codes and coordinates it contained. Renicks was with her. Darmity couldn’t launch without The Brick. All they needed to do was stay away from him for perhaps an hour. A half hour, even. It wouldn’t be long before the complex was destroyed.

She turned and looked at Renicks. He nodded and reached down, taking her hand. Smiled what she thought might be the least believable smile she’d ever seen. “Thank you,” he said.

She squeezed his hand and looked at the elevator doors.

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I‘ll be posting one chapter of my novel Designated Survivor every week throughout 2022. Download links below.

25.

Forty-five seconds before Renicks walked into the room, Begley saw one of the warning lights on the main security console light up bright red. A second later the buzzing noise of an alarm filled the room.

Amesley glanced down at the console. “There is a fire alarm on — ” he paused to examine the screen embedded in the console, “ — Level Four.”

“Renicks?” Square Jaw said, stepping over to stand next to Amesley.

She watched them while she worked on the bolts of her chair. The handcuff had been simply but effectively looped around the support of the armrest. There was a simple bolt holding the arm onto the chair, and she’d been working it with her fingers every moment that Amesley and the others were distracted. Which was most of the time. She wasn’t making fast progress. The bolt was tight and she had only her fingers to work with. She also had to keep her movements concealed, which limited her leverage.

She estimated it would take her nine hours to loosen the bolt enough to slip off the arm and free herself.

She kept working at it anyway. Waited for a better idea to occur to her.

“Killiam, check out Level Four,” Amesley said. “He’ll have displaced when the alarm went off, but see if there’s a trail.”

Killiam was chubby, and his wrinkled shirt looked like he’d stolen it from a laundromat that morning, but he nodded sharply enough and headed off, checking his weapon. Moving with purpose. Jesus, Jack, what are you doing down there? she wondered, picturing all sorts of scenarios that could result in a fire alarm, few of them good. The longer she’d been separated from him, the less confident she was that Renicks would be all right on his own. Notwithstanding that neither of them would be all right in the strictest sense, since the scenario now pretty much ended with the complex destroyed and them dead.

She looked the room over as she worked her sore, stiff fingers on the bolt. Amesley and the three remaining agents — Square Jaw, another man with a circle of curly brown hair around the edges of his head, and a plain woman with the worst haircut Begley had ever seen in real life — were poring over the systems, seeking signs of Renicks in the complex’s alerts and systems. A few feet away was the Football, left unattended.

Stay alert, pay attention, she told herself. She was trained for this. No matter how limited your options were, they could alter at any moment. Being ready was the most important thing.

She moved her eyes around the room. Most of it was still dormant and swathed in plastic. They’d dusted off only the parts of the Security Office they needed to use. The Brick caught her eye. It was forgotten, sitting on top of an unused console just a few feet from her. She kept moving her fingers over the bolt as she looked around. When she saw Renicks standing outside the glass doors, she froze. Blinked. Smiled half a smile before alarm shot through her.

Renicks pushed his way into the room, leading with his chrome-plated gun.

She surged to her feet and almost overbalanced, catching herself on the nearest bank of screens and keyboards.

“Don’t move!” Renicks shouted. He looked faintly embarrassed.

“Stop!” Begley shouted. Pushed out her free hand towards him, palms up. “Don’t come any closer!”

For a moment, there was no movement in the room.

Renicks flexed his hand, changing his grip on the gun. Licked his lips. “What?”

For a second Begley stared at him. He looked terrible. Covered in blood. His arms a maze of tiny scars. His clothes dirty and wrinkled. This was not the calm, slightly sarcastic man she’d met a few hours ago. The goddamn Secretary of Education.

Amesley turned towards Renicks with his hands up by his shoulders. Begley scanned the room, making sure none of Amesley’s people were moving.

“All right, Mr. Renicks,” Amesley said in his flat, pinched voice. “Do I believe you will shoot people? I do not.”

Renicks met Begley’s eyes and held her gaze as he spoke to the Director. “You’ve got your hands up.”

Amesley shrugged. “Plenty of people have been shot by accident, Mr. Renicks. Let’s talk like reasonable men, before you get yourself hurt.”

To Begley’s horror, Renicks smiled. “You can’t kill me, Mr. Amesley. If my vital signs flatline this complex will assume the Designated Survivor, the Acting President, is dead and will go offline, transferring executive power to another facility.”

He sounded calm and confident, but Begley could see his hand was trembling, the barrel of the gun moving in a tiny arc. He took a step forward. Begley stiffened again.

“Jack! Don’t get any closer to the RLI! It’ll activate if it senses your physical presence!”

To her relief, he stopped immediately.

“Impasse,” Amesley said, spreading his hands. Begley imagined his face: Blank and inscrutable as always. “Let’s see; I will assume that you have enough ammunition in the magazine to kill each of us, shall I? And I will assume you have an exfiltration plan, because you are a smart man, Dr. Renicks. I will also assume that it will be at least another minute or perhaps two before Agent Killiam reports in via radio and will expect a response. Very well. For the next two minutes, perhaps, you have the advantage of us. What is it you plan to do?”

“Jack — get out of here!” she shouted. Emergency vibrated throughout her body. The Designated Survivor was the key to the whole plan, and here he was, within inches of unlocking the nuclear football. “Just go!”

Renicks stood there for what seemed an eternity, eyes moving over the room. He saw The Brick and his eyes lingered on it for a moment. Then he looked at her and held her eyes again. She pantomimed, throwing her arm at him and mouthing Go! He smiled and looked back at Amesley. She did not like the smile, and the sense of emergency soured into panic.

“She’s coming with me,” Renicks said. “No one else move.”

Begley hesitated. She was handcuffed to a chair. Her leg was splinted. She would have to stand up and limp, dragging the chair behind her, passing within inches of Amesley’s people. She looked back at Renicks. She felt time slipping past them, imagined the fat agent, Killiam, hurrying back. Renicks could order Amesley and the agents to move to the side, but that would make it difficult to watch them. But she knew they had to get out of the room immediately. Every second they remained narrowed their chances of escape.

She considered telling Renicks to leave her. He was the important thing. He was the asset. She found herself reluctant to leave him on his own. He was her asset. She was pledged to protect him, and without her he would be at a disadvantage in the complex. He had to stay free until … until it ended. Until the order was given and the evacuation was complete and the complex was blown to hell. That’s what it had become: They couldn’t stop that, they couldn’t save their own lives. But they could keep him out of Amesley’s hands until the facility was neutralized.

She considered trying to immobilize Amesley and his people and rejected it. There was no time. They needed to get away before the other agents returned. If they were trapped in the Security Office it would be an untenable situation.

She stood up and cleared her throat. “Guns. Radios. Slide them here.”

Amesley turned his head slightly, but didn’t turn to face her. No one else moved. She felt the tension in the room. Time was slipping through their fingers. And she didn’t know what Renicks —

Renicks straightened up, moved his ridiculous, huge gun down slightly, and shot Amesley in the foot.

The Director screamed and dropped to the floor. Begley froze in place and stared as Renicks moved the gun again so it pointed in the general direction of the three agents.

“You heard the lady,” he said. His voice shook, but she noticed his hand was now perfectly still. “Guns and radios on the floor. Slide them to her. And keys to the handcuffs.”

There was another second of stillness. Amesley gasped and rolled on the floor, clutching his bloodied ankle. Begley was momentarily fascinated by the sight of Amesley expressing something other than mild disdain or courteous blankness.

“Do it,” Amesley hissed. “We can’t risk a firefight. We need him — ” he gasped in sudden agony “ — alive.”

The woman nodded and slowly pulled her gun and radio from her belt. Holding them up, she soft-tossed them towards Begley. The other two did likewise. She knelt awkwardly and gathered the weapons and radios, checking over one gun and pushing it into her pocket, dropping the rest into the chair.

“Come on, Agent Begley,” he ordered. His voice was still shaking. She didn’t know how long he was going to hold it together. Rushing wouldn’t do them any good. She stepped behind the chair and started pushing it ahead of her with one hand, pulling the appropriated gun from her waistband with the other. In the silence she could hear the cooling fans of the consoles.

If she’d been ordered to surrender her weapon and radio, she thought, she would have a backup.

When she reached Renicks, she leaned in close. “You know what you’re doing, Jack?”

He didn’t take his eyes from the agents. “Nope.”

“You should have stayed hidden.”

He nodded. “With you screaming on the fucking PA system? I’m not that smart, Agent Begley.”

She sighed. “If we were going to survive this, Jack, I’d be planning how to pin this disaster on you when we get out of here. All right. We back out. I — ”

She looked over his shoulder at the corridor. Stared in shock.

Frank Darmity was standing there.

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I‘ll be posting one chapter of my novel Designated Survivor every week throughout 2022. Download links below.

24.

Five minutes before setting a fire, Renicks was on the fourth floor, moving fast. He knew the main Security Office was on the third floor. He knew Begley was being held there because he’d heard it on the radio, which burst into life every few minutes. They’d discovered the bodies in the TV Studio. They’d blamed Darmity for them, which had surprised him. But he was happy to let that be.

He walked as quickly as his ankle would let him, eyes jumping from door to door, looking for clues. Most were unmarked. He’d noticed on his forced tour with Agent Begley that offices and other utilitarian rooms were unmarked, but storage units and custodial spaces usually had name plates on them using a simple code involving the level they were on and their function. Every time he saw one of those plates, he opened the door and inspected the space. His heart was pounding. He was acutely aware that there were other people crawling through the complex, looking for him. That they might appear at any time. He kept fighting the urge to spin around as he walked, trying to keep every angle in sight.

The first few doors he opened turned out to be, in order, a lavatory complete with shower, an office supply storage closet filled with toner cartridges and copy paper, an inexplicably empty room, and, finally, a long, narrow room filled with cheap folding cots that had metal rings popping from the concrete. A jail of some sort, he decided. The rings could have handcuffs or chains looped through them.

The Federal Government, he thought, had thought of everything. Except its own Chief Executive going nuts.

The fourth door he tried turned out to be a janitor’s supply closet. He stepped in quickly, turned on the light, and shut the door behind him. Set his bag down on the floor and paused, listening. He’d set the walkie-talkie’s volume as low as he could, afraid of having it burst into static at just the wrong time. When he was certain he wasn’t missing anything, he began searching the room.

There were bare metal shelving units on either side, leaving a narrow corridor between. They stretched up to the ceiling. In the rear, lodged in the chasm between shelves, was a standard custodial mop and bucket with a spring-loaded ringer. The whole room smelled sweet. Renicks walked up and down the shelves until he located a cardboard pallet of toilet paper. Twenty-four rolls. He slid it onto the floor and kicked it up towards the door. Squinted up at the ceiling. Spotted the sprinkler bud and smoke detector combo unit bolted into place and nodded to himself.

He positioned the pallet directly under the smoke detector. Tore the plastic wrap off but left the rolls of paper nestled in the shallow cardboard box. Stepped back to his bag. Extracted a plastic tube about the size of a small flashlight. Unscrewed the top. Poured a heap of strike-anywhere matches into his hand. Took a moment to marvel that he was actually about to use the contents of his End of the World Bag in its expected way.

He pushed ten of the matches under the cardboard pallet so that just their red and white tips emerged from underneath. Then he set two matches, very close together, on the floor right in front of them, so that the wooden end of the pair touched the tips of the ten. Working towards the door, he created a trail of matches, two at a time, back to front. A fuse. At the door he crouched down and counted: twenty-two matches long. With each match taking about forty seconds to burn from tip to end, he had almost fifteen minutes.

Keeping one match in his hand, he twisted the plastic tube closed and picked up his bag. Opened the door and held it open with his body, taking a moment to re-inspect his fuse. Slung the bag over his shoulder again, knelt down, and struck the match in his hand. Watched it flare up perfectly into a dancing orange flame. He knew the matches were good ones, designed to burn steadily and completely. There was no guarantee he didn’t have a bad one that would snuff out before burning down to the next match in line. No guarantee this would work at all. No guarantee of what the reaction to a fire alarm would be.

He touched the flame to the nearest pair of matches. The second they lit, he dropped the match in his hand and stepped out of the closet, slowly closing the door until it latched.

Then he ran.

Counting the seconds in his head, he speed-limped his way back along the corridor to the fire door that led to the service tunnels and ladders. He’d marked the innocuous gray door with some of his own blood as he’d emerged, enabling him to find it again. He let the door click shut behind him and leaped up onto the service ladder. Pulled himself up, hand over hand. Dragged himself onto the rough concrete landing on the third floor and pushed himself to his feet and into motion.

Four minutes done, eleven to go. If he was lucky. The matches would burn at different rates. He might have nine minutes, or twenty. Two matches might burn out too soon, in which case he would be waiting for an alarm to sound in the Security Office forever.

He opened the access door slowly. Carefully. The third floor was populated, and he had to be cautious. He slipped out of the access tunnel onto the carpet and stopped. He had no idea where the Security Office was. Or where the unknown number of Amesley’s agents would be.

He pulled out his stolen walkie-talkie and made sure the volume was set as low as possible but still audible. He’d noticed that whenever someone clicked the red TALK button on their radio, there was a loud burst of static before their voice came through. It was the main reason he’d turned the volume down, because he’d been afraid of having his position or hiding place betrayed by the noise.

Holding his breath, he clicked the TALK button.

Dimly, he heard a burst of static somewhere. Far off, muted by distance and walls.

He checked his count. If he was lucky, ten minutes left.

It was difficult to tell which direction the static burst had come from. He turned right; his best guess. The sense of being watched settled on him and pushed. He knew there were people on this floor. They could be around any corner, behind any door. Every step forward was an effort. When he found the first junction of corridors, he hit the TALK button again.

To his left, muffled but distinct, came a squawk of static.

Slowly, he stepped towards the noise. He reached into his bag and pulled out the Kimber; it felt warm and heavy in his hand. He pictured the dead agent lying somewhere below and left the safety on.

When he reached another junction, he toggled the button again. The burst of static was closer, to his right again. He slowly edged around the corner. The hall was empty. Instead of the usual blank-faced fire doors, however, there was a bank of windows with two glass swinging doors set in the center. He retreated and put his back against the wall. Eight minutes.

He closed his eyes and imagined the security camera screen he’d seen with Begley in the smaller office below. He counted the people he’d seen. Amesley and Darmity, and six or seven others. He knew from the radio chatter that Darmity was imprisoned somewhere. Amesley might have sent some of his people out to search for him. Unless some number of other others he didn’t even know about had returned to their headquarters; just because he’d so far only seen six or seven people didn’t mean that was all there was.

He hit the TALK button. Heard the squawk of the radio. Definitely inside the Security Office. No one in the hall nearby.

He waited. Seven minutes to go.

He heard the squeak of the glass door’s hinge. He froze. Heard the squeak again as the door swung shut. Waited, holding his breath. Five minutes and counting.

No one stepped around the corner to surprise him. He let his breath out slowly. Waited.

He thought about ELIRO. Felt again that he knew the word, had seen it before. It would be something personal to Grant, he thought, if the President was using it as a personal code term. He thought of the coded message the file contained: Dum tre longa tempo nun. His sense of familiarity increased. He fell back on a technique he’d used in his linguistics work, letting his mind jump from connection to connection, running through different languages he’d worked with, studied. Throwing the unknown word into sentences, see if it fit, or maybe just made him think of something.

C’était le meilleur des périodes, il était le plus mauvais des eliro.

Era un día frío brillante en abril, y los eliro pegaban trece.

He froze. Four minutes left. He knew exactly what ELIRO was. It was Esperanto. An invented language, spoken by a handful of linguists and hobbyists around the world. It was originally developed as a simple universal language, a language everyone could learn easily, to bridge borders and cultures. It had never taken off, and for century had been a curiosity. Researched by people like him, sometimes played with by intellectuals and people like President Grant. It wasn’t much of a code, but it served well enough to stop casual spying. He concentrated, trying to pull together his rough memory of the language.

He thought back to a project he’d worked on in school, translating the Bible into different languages and then having the translations themselves translated back into English, to study how nuances changed, meanings shifted. The idea being to quantify how ideas got altered throughout history as old texts were translated and re-translated. One of the test languages had been Esperanto. Eliro meant Exodus.

He paused for a second, looking around and listening. Then opened his bag and pulled out the e-reader. Tapping it into life, he scrolled through the thousands of books stored on it and pulled up an Esperanto primer, a text he hadn’t accessed in twenty years. Emily had always made fun of his insistence on keeping every book he’d ever read. he made a mental note to tell her about this when he saw her again.

If he saw her again.

After a few seconds of tapping, he knew that dum tre longa tempo nun meant, roughly, for a very long time now.

He couldn’t remember the rest. It hadn’t been very long. A last minute instruction to a fellow conspirator? Or maybe something important, something that would help derail the plot. Maybe something, he thought hopefully, that would help get him out of this alive. Or maybe it was coincidence. But that first line: History will forgive me. It had to mean something.

He needed The Brick back. He needed to see the file again.

Flushed with a momentary success, panic swept back through him as he realized he’d lost count of the time. Two minutes? One? He glanced down at the gun in his hand, suddenly remembered. Told himself that if he had it out, he had to be prepared to fire it. To possibly kill someone. Otherwise there was no point in having it in his hand.

He tightened his grip on it. Moved his thumb. Flicked off the safety.

There was a dim alarm from within the Security Office. Pushing through the layers of drywall and insulation, it was just a dull buzzing noise.

He heard the glass doors squeal open. Squeal shut. He heard a voice, moving away from him, towards the elevators. One man. He took a deep breath, checked the Kimber one last time, and turned the corner.

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23.

Ten minutes before reflecting that they didn’t make Secret Service agents the way they used to, Frank Darmity lay on the carpeted floor with his eyes closed.

It was a generic office. Just a desk, a filing cabinet, a phone. Two comfortable chairs in front, one leather chair behind. Nothing else. Small enough for a tall man to reach both walls with outstretched arms. The sort of room set aside for when a visiting dignitary brought a dozen secretaries and each one needed a desk. The sort of space that became essential if you ever did have to move the entire Federal Government into the facility, finding space for every assistant to the assistant vice everything.

The door had a simple lock. He’d given it a good look when they’d brought him in. Being gentler with him than they should have because he was one of them. Didn’t stop them from handcuffing him, but when he’d hesitated at the doorway, pretended to be bothered about being locked away, they’d given him some latitude and he’d gotten a good look at the lock.

He could kick the door open with one shot, he was pretty sure. If he didn’t mind the noise. If he was going to do some sneaking, it would take him a few minutes to pick it. He didn’t know if they’d posted a guard. First things first: He had to get the handcuffs off.

He lay with his eyes closed and relaxed. Did an inventory of every muscle and made sure each was as relaxed as possible. People didn’t realize how tense they were even when they were relaxing. You had to consciously think of each muscle group and force it to go slack. You had to be truly aware of your body. He took several deep breaths. Then slowly raised his legs, bending at the knees. Lifted himself up slightly and rolled his shoulders, slowly sliding his wrists down over his hips. It took two minutes of slow contraction. The wound in his belly burned and sizzled. He forced himself to breathe deeply and steadily, straining for every centimeter until his hands slid free behind his knees. A moment later he slipped both feet over the handcuffs and sat up.

He made a quick survey of the office. Didn’t expect to find anything in the drawers and wasn’t surprised. He had nothing handy to pick locks with.

He stepped up to the door and pushed his ear against it. Held his breath. Heard nothing.

He seethed. Amesley. He knew the Director was a soft man. An Office Man. A fucking Paper Pusher. He’d known that going in. President Grant had known that going in. That was why Grant had given Darmity his private orders, which were to keep everything on track. He hadn’t actually said that. But Darmity knew Grant was a subtle man. A man he could never hope to fully comprehend. A man beyond him. And that was okay. He was okay being Grant’s inferior. Grant was the only man whose superiority he acknowledged. The President hadn’t had to issue direct orders. Darmity understood anyway. Anticipated. And he knew that an Office Man like Amesley would go Weak Sister in tight places.

His hands curled into fists. Sneaking up behind him. When he was getting somewhere. Making the bitch squeal, drawing Renicks out of hiding. Fucking paper pushers. He’d pressed the button, and when the Button Man had shown up he’d cowered back in terror.

Softies had to learn: If you press the Button, you’re not in charge anymore.

He turned and walked back to the desk. Picked up the phone and dashed it to the floor. The sound of cracking plastic seemed loud and startling in the quiet, muffled atmosphere of the room. He waited, listening. There was nothing. Taking three steps back, he stared at a spot just below the handle of the door, right where the latch slid into the jamb. Closed his eyes. Reared back and kicked it. His foot connected solidly and the door jumped, the latch bent but holding. He settled himself, took another deep breath, and kicked again. With a vibrating pop the door snapped open and crashed against the wall outside. The offices had never been intended as holding cells. He nodded to himself. He was the only person on the whole operation who knew what he was doing.

Darmity waited, crouched, cuffed hands held in front of him. He listened for a moment. There was nothing. He approached the door slowly, listening. Stepped out into the hall and looked around. It was completely silent. He was just a few dozen feet from the Security Office. He might as well be in another state for all he could hear. He turned left, heading away from the office and started walking, scanning each door. The elevators were out, though he doubted Amesley would bother to change the access codes; he didn’t want to call attention to himself. He needed a weapon. He needed something to get the cuffs off. He needed a radio, so he could listen to the reports coming in.

He needed to find Renicks before the Softies did. He needed to be in charge of getting the Secretary’s cooperation.

Son, I’m giving you the most difficult mission of all. I know you’ve had the hardest road. I know you’ve been unappreciated — except by me. Except by me, son. I haven’t been able to give you the praise you deserve — yet. But I will. When the time comes.

He made a loop around the level, heading away from the Security Office through the empty corridors, then circling back towards it from the other direction. Everything was still and muffled by the soft carpet. The white light was harsh. The hallways seemed to get narrower as he walked. He paused at the final turn and peered around. The hallway outside the Security Office was empty. He waited. Went over the encounter with Renicks on the highway again. Had been going over it all day. Replaying it. Reliving the frustration, because if Renicks had made that call, made a formal complaint during a Continuity Event, Amesley would have been forced to pull him from the detail. Ruined everything by pushing a button.

Fucking Jumbo Softy.

Darmity watched the hall. Waited. He knew how to wait.

Our time will come, son. Your time will come.

It was amazing, still, he thought. Grant should have been a Softy too. A paper-pusher. He’d served in the army, sure, but he’d never seen action. And he was a fucking politician. Darmity had expected bullshit when he’d been invited to meet the President-elect. Flew all the way from the fucking Middle East just so some rich Senator who’d won an election could shake his hand, tell him he’s doing a hell of a job. But Grant was on a mission. He wasn’t a Softy. He was pretending. To get in. To get power. And then achieve his operational objectives.

Darmity remembered that thrilling moment when reality had seemed to shift, and what Grant was saying clicked into the deep groove in his head and made sense. For the first time in his life, a superior officer had made sense. He felt the thrill all over again. An end to bureaucracy. And end to the paper-pushing. One final button to push, and in flames and blood Grant would seize the power to remake the country as it should be. And in that instant, Darmity had been convinced he knew exactly how Grant would remake things. Exactly the decisions he would make. And he approved.

The door to the security office opened and one of the Frat Boys stepped out. Darmity had purposefully forgotten all their names. This one was young and built — there were two of them, almost twins. A fucking queer for his own body, always showing off his arms and taking off his shirt, talking about his workouts, his women. Thought having a ripped stomach and being able to bench press three hundred pounds meant he was a bad ass.

These guys, Amesley’s people, should have been doers. Instead, they were Softies, just like their boss.

Darmity watched him walk away down the corridor. The elevators, he thought, and turned to loop around towards them from the other direction. He would show him how fucking wrong he was.

Hurrying along, the wound in his belly sizzling and burning, damp with leaking blood, he paused again around the corner from the elevator bank, peering around. Seconds later, the Frat Boy emerged from the parallel corridor and pressed the call button on the elevator.

Darmity studied him. Didn’t move. Waited for the indicator light to glow, for the soft sound of the elevator doors opening. As the Frat Boy moved to step into the cab, Darmity swung around the corner and jogged lightly, angling towards the wall. He arrived at the elevators just as the door began to slide shut, ducked around and through, launching himself into the cab and crashing into the Frat Boy. They fell to the floor of the cab. Darmity had complete surprise. He took hold of the Frat Boy’s ears with his hands, jerked his head up from the floor, and smashed it down again. As hard as he could. Did it again. Heard a cracking sound. The Frat Boy’s body spasmed and then he lay still.

The elevator doors closed behind them.

Breathing hard, Darmity climbed off the agent. He got to his knees and shuffled over to the buttons, punched five buttons in sequence. The elevator started to rise. If they saw it in the Security Office, though, they’d assume it was their boy, off on an errand.

He shuffled back to the agent and went through his pockets. Relieved him of his gun, a penknife, a set of keys, and his radio.

Two floors and ten seconds later, the doors slid open again. He stepped out and looked around. Stood and listened for a moment. Then he walked to the nearest door, opened it carefully, and stepped into another abandoned office. Turned on the lights. Started going through the keys, searching for one that might fit his handcuffs.

He knew where Begley was, he thought. That was half the battle. Now he just had to find Renicks and get him to cooperate. Amesley’s plans hadn’t worked out, Grab Teams out there with nothing to grab because the old man had fucked up somewhere, gotten his research wrong. Which meant the old man, the Softy, didn’t know what to do now, wouldn’t let him go after Begley. because she was one of his. So it was up to him, as usual. To do the hard jobs. Which, he thought, was going to be fun. He smiled a little, thinking about it.

Here comes the Button Man, he thought.

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22.

Four minutes before getting really scared, Marianne Begley was trying to notice everything she could.

She had no idea if she could escape, but if an opportunity arose she had already plotted out a route in her head. Out of the Security office, left. Pass the first two junctions, then right. Eight steps or so to a supply closet filled with janitorial supplies. If she felt she had the time, there would be a short ladder she could wedge under the door handle. That would give her some minutes to work with. An air duct in the closet was reachable by climbing the metal shelves. There would be something in there to pry the grate off with. She was pretty sure there was a straight shot of twenty feet of duct that would bring her to a service corridor, and from there she would be lost in the maze again.

All of this would have to be done with a broken leg that throbbed and lanced her with agonizing pain every time she shifted her weight. The light insulating buzz from the pills had worn thin. She thought if she could somehow get to the closet before being apprehended, she would have enough time to get herself into the ducts. But that was a big if. And she was handcuffed to a heavy rolling chair for the time being anyway. She could move, pulling or pushing the chair along with her, but it weighed her down. Made everything awkward. She pictured herself limping through the corridors, being pursued, dragging the chair behind her.

Grit her teeth in frustration.

Still, if the opportunity came, she wanted to bring as many details of Amesley and his operation as possible. In case anything was useful.

There was also the elevators. She couldn’t be sure they hadn’t changed the operating codes to something she didn’t know, but she had come to suspect that Amesley had just shifted the codes forward a day. Easier. Simpler. The elevators were closer, thirty or forty feet away. If she had enough of a lead, she could make it. If she guessed the codes correctly. And even then, they would know exactly where she went, and she would be trapped in an enclosed space for the duration of the ride.

Amesley was talking with two of his agents, young men with athletic builds, serious and humorless. They were very deferential to Amesley. Any doubts Begley had about their dedication to the odd older man evaporated: These people were true believers. Whether it was in Amesley personally or whatever he was working for, they were convinced. As she watched, one of the two nodded crisply and exited the office, moving with athletic ease.

She knew Renicks was still at large. If he’d been found there would have been more excitement, more activity. He would be brought to the Security Office immediately, as he had to be in physical contact with the football to order a launch. They had retrieved The Brick; she saw it sitting out on the console Amesley was using as a desk. So they had the tactical calculators and coordinate sheets the President would use to select targets.

There was a team of agents still working on the football itself, obviously trying to undermine the biorhythmic security or crack the encryption. A hopeless task. But she understood why Amesley would order it pursued; it kept people busy, and you never knew when pure dumb luck would insert itself into an operation. While Renicks was loose, there was no reason not to try patently impossible things.

There were no other people in the office: Just three agents, herself, and Director Amesley. The rest, she assumed were out scouring the complex for Renicks. Not a hopeless mission, just a difficult one. Even without knowing the layout of the facility the way she did, it would be easy for Renicks to stay lost. A wandering child could evade pursuit for hours by sheer luck.

She thought of Renicks. Jack. A stab of worry pierced the artificial calm she’d managed to hold together. She liked the Secretary of Education, and she’d admired how well he’d held up. Stayed calm, Took orders, but offered suggestions. The sort of person, she thought, who was generally useful in any circumstance. But now he was alone, being pursued by … she stumbled over the word terrorists even in her own thoughts. These were Secret Service. This was Martin Amesley. President Grant had trusted this man with his own safety — with his family’s safety. The idea that these people were not only working to undermine the United States but were willing to murder thousands of innocent people in order to accomplish it was impossible.

She hoped Renicks was smart enough to just find a hiding place and stay put. There was no way out. Their only play was to wait either for the army to bust in and take the complex — which her professional pride insisted was impossible — or for the local evacuation to complete and be vaporized along with the entire complex.

Begley considered her own death. A lump of fear tightened in her chest, but she was surprised to find it manageable. She would die. It would be instant. She probably wouldn’t even know it had happened — whatever amount of time it took for sensory information to travel from her nerves to her brain, the invasion of fire and superheated air would be faster. One microsecond she would be here, tied to a chair in the Security Office, the next she would be … dead. And so would Jack, and all these people. But hundreds of thousands of others would be alive, and the country preserved.

Worth it, she thought. This was what she had signed up for: Protect her country with her life. That was what she was doing.

Dad, you’d be proud, she thought. And you’d finally shut the hell up about grandchildren, I bet.

Somehow, a smile appeared on her face as Amesley turned away from his agents. He stopped, staring at her in surprise, and then walked over to her. She watched him as he approached. Amazed at how normal he appeared. She’d been in countless meetings with Amesley. Countless more times in the same room while he treated her like a stick of furniture. There was absolutely nothing unusual about Amesley’s manner or gait. The man might have been chairing a weekly status update meeting.

“Agent Begley,” he said quietly as he approached, pulling another chair over and seating himself close to her. Folded his hands in his lap and slumped forward, his glasses sliding down to the end of his nose. “I apologize for the handcuffs.”

“That’s what you’re apologizing for?”

He smiled slightly. A secret, muted smile aimed at the floor. “Agent Begley, I will not insult your intelligence. I will not torture you. Mr. Darmity has been … placed under arrest for his actions. You are, in my estimation, a good agent. Patriotic, in your way. You deserve our respect even if you cannot bring yourself to understand and cooperate.” He looked up at her from under his eyebrows. Even though he was the most unassuming man she’d ever met, even though he was sitting calmly, she felt alarmed at his closeness. “I will ask you, once, if you cannot be convinced to listen to my argument, and perhaps be persuaded to help us locate Secretary Renicks?”

She stared at him. Studied his face. The mild expression and folded hands made her angry.

“How can you do this, Martin?” she exploded, once again omitting director,purposefully demoting him. “You’re going to kill, at minimum, thousands of people. Possibly hundreds of thousands. How can you betray your country like this? How can you betray President Grant?”

She expected a reaction to that. Amesley worshiped Grant, and even the hint of his disapproval would be intolerable. She waited. Watched his face.

He shrugged.

“The President would not approve of this approach, no,” he said mildly. “His standing order is that no single person is more important than our mission. He would no doubt prefer Mr. Darmity’s approach in all things.” He shrugged. “You sometimes have disagreements with your superiors. I must run my command as I see fit.”

She stared at him. It seemed to her that everything had gotten very quiet, as if the office had been suddenly wrapped in a thick blanket. There was not enough air. It was too hot. Everything muffled and far away.

his standing order

disagreements with your superiors

your superiors

He nodded at her. “President Grant is a great man, Agent Begley. You have not spent time with him. Had an opportunity to study his philosophy, his plan for America. A great man, held back by the accumulated minutiae of rules and procedures and tricks. A great man bound into ineffectiveness because he must endlessly dicker and deal to implement his plans. If you had ever been able to listen to him, I am sure you would be with us right now.”

“Oh, my God,” she whispered.

“You see, Agent Begley, it is not just a few random traitors. We are, in fact, not traitors at all. We are under orders from the Commander in Chief. Doing his work. Pulling this country, kicking and screaming like an infant, out of the morass of indecision and divisive politics. Setting its trembling feet back on the path towards prosperity and its destiny.” He spread his hands. She noted that they trembled slightly. “So, you see.”

Fear, real fear, seeped into her joints and muscles. Soured her stomach. She realized this was more than a small number of conspirators. She realized that she had no idea, really, how big this was. A film of sweat appeared all over her skin. The President. The President had ordered this. And these people had obeyed that order.

Forcing herself to focus on Amesley again, she shook her head. “Martin, this is insanity.”

He nodded. Didn’t seem upset in any way. “The country — the world — has been insane for some time. Perspective has been skewed. I don’t think you would know a sane course of action if it was presented to you, Agent Begley.” He leaned in towards her slightly. “This is not random, Agent Begley. We are orchestrating an emergency. It is precisely calibrated. The loss of life, the destruction of property is necessary. Regrettable, but necessary. We must have an emergency of sufficient scale to reduce opposition. We have the legislation written and ready. We have the Executive orders written and ready. As soon as we gain access to the launch system, as soon as we effect the collateral damage needed, the President will declare an emergency and request broad powers, suspension of Constitutional restraints, and can begin the hard work of making this country what it was always meant to be.” He sighed. “Unfortunately, we have seen our elected officials ignore arguments, ignore pressure. We are out of arguments, we have no time for pressure. All they will listen to is damage. And fear. For their own lives. Their families.”

He stared at her over the rims of his glasses for an uncomfortable few seconds. As if expecting a response from her. She had none. Legislation, she thought. Did that mean congressmen were involved? Jesus, she thought, how many people were involved in this? It was like a cult, with Grant at the head of it, handing out Kool Aid.

“All these people who will die,” she said slowly, “are innocent.”

“Yes.” Amesley shrugged. “I agree. Though that is the minority view, you should know, as many believe no one who sits idly by can be regarded as innocent. But you see, the damage is necessary. The deaths are necessary. A threat, no matter how real, that is averted may inspire some cooperation, some progress. But it will fade. When the World Trade Center was taken, there was a period of a few months when some of us had hope. Now, we thought, now the country will come together. Now we will change our disastrous course, because we have been shown the evidence of our own decline.” he shook his head. “Despite the thousands dead, the billions in damages, we forgot. We relaxed again. We lost sight of it.” He nodded. “So this must be calibrated to ensure it will not be forgotten.”

He’s insane, she thought with a shudder. She shifted in the seat. Straightened up. Tilted her head back. “They’ll blow the charges under the complex,” she said defiantly. “The President won’t be able to stop that. Even if he issues an executive order, they’ll do it. All he can do is delay things, but he won’t be able to stop it.”

Amesley nodded. “Yes. But he will delay it as long as he can. We’re prepared to accept death as the price of success or the cost of failure.” He hesitated, glancing down at his hands. “I am sorry you and Dr. Renicks will have to make the same sacrifice. I know that you have made no such pledge.”

Amesley suddenly nodded and stood up just as one of the agents Amesley had been talking to dropped his walkie-talkie from his ear, spinning to face the Director.

“Sir! We have a situation.”

Begley strained forward slightly, studying him, trying to catch every word. We have a situation. A phrase she’d heard a thousand times. The standard opening to any informal field report. He was a young man, perhaps her age. His shirt appeared to be slightly too tight. A man proud of his physique. Vain. He was vacation-tanned and his hair looked like he’d had it cut that morning, which might have been true. He was vaguely good-looking in a generic kind of way — square jaw, good nose. She thought she’d dated about six of him in college and immediately after. The sort of men who were charming as hell on a first date and exponentially less interesting on each subsequent date, until you realized you were sleeping with a man who was doing crunches in his head whenever you were talking.

“Agent Harris is dead,” Square Jaw said. “Shot in the chest. Killiam found her and Simmons. Simmons is unconscious. The TV studio’s a mess.” He grimaced. “And Kennings is unaccounted for.”

A thrill went through Begley, a combination of dread and triumph. Renicks was not hiding in some ventilation duct — he was on the move. The knowledge made her inexplicably happy.

“Renicks?” Amesley asked. His voice sounded as calm and flat as always.

The reporting agent shook his head. A single, crisp jerk of his neck. “I doubt it, sir. I had Craddock check on Darmity. That goddamn animal’s escaped.” The agent tilted his head. “I think we have a serious problem on our hands.”

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21.

Three minutes before he rediscovered gravity, Renicks was peering through the slats of a grate into the television studio. Trying to determine how many people were in the room below him. Whether Begley was still one of them.

He was bathed in sweat. Gritty from accumulated dust and dirt. Bloody. He’d pushed his bag, with the Kimber on top, in front of him as he’d crawled, following his own slime trail. Knowing that if he hadn’t retraced his steps he would have become hopelessly lost in the dark, cramped airway. When he reached the first junction, he turned away from his original path and followed the new duct. It angled upward slightly, and he quickly found himself looking directly down into the room. He could hear voices. He couldn’t see anyone, no matter how he angled his head.

Sweat dripped from him. He felt shaky. He imagined every breath, every twitch of his muscles to be incredibly loud.

He had no plan. It occurred to him that he was a terrible hero.

The murmur of voices was maddening. At least two people. A woman and a man. If they left, he could worm his way back around and re-enter the studio. The idea of staying in the ducts any longer terrified him. He felt like he couldn’t breathe. He wanted to scream and beat his hands against the tight, flimsy sheet metal walls.

He considered just hiding in the ducts. He could make his way back to the exchange he’d found; more room there. He had a bottle of water in his bag. And the Kimber.

He imagined himself making his last stand huddled in the goddamn air-conditioning. A twitchy, off-center smile crept onto his face. He stifled sudden laughter that threatened to convulse him.

Through the slats, he saw someone step into his field of vision.

A man. Wearing a suit. White earbud hanging from a wire over his shoulder. Renicks held his breath. One of Amesley’s agents. Moving with exaggerated slowness, Renicks reached forward and took hold of the Kimber. Checked the safety. Pointed it downward. Wondered what would happen if he shot through the slats. He knew the Kimber would blow right through the thin metal. Would it send shrapnel back at him? Would it queer his aim?

Could he kill someone? In cold blood?

Paralyzed, he lay there trying to keep his breathing slow and quiet. He became aware of a low noise. It was a low creaking sound, steady. All the hairs on the back of his neck stood up. He didn’t know much about ventilation systems, but he was confident this was not a good sign.

The whole duct shifted.

There was a loud wrenching noise, and he felt the thin metal jump under him, as if he’d dropped half an inch. Gripping the Kimber tightly, he stared down through the slats of the grate. The agent below had turned. Stared up at him with a quizzical look on his face.

Renicks exhaled slowly.

With a snap like a gunshot, something gave way and the world tilted. The grate vanished, and for a second it was all darkness. Then a confused noise like cardboard boxes tumbling, and a square of light opened up below him. His bag slid down, dropping over the edge, and a second later he was sliding down, head first. The duct had crashed through the dropped ceiling, hanging on an angle.

He popped out six feet above the floor and crashed into the agent. They hit the floor in a tangle. The agent rolled Renicks onto his back and squatted on his chest. Took hold of his wrist with both hands and pointed the Kimber up at the ceiling. Chunks of drywall tile rained down on them. The silver ductwork swung up and down above them, vibrating. Renicks stared up at it for a split-second. Twisted free and flopped over onto his belly just as it snapped free and crashed down on top of them.

For a second, he thought he was pinned. Two hundred pounds of agent plus half the ceiling on top of him. With a painful twist he was able to pull himself forward. Scissored his legs and was free. The Kimber still in one hand, he got to his knees and stared at the carpet for a second. Head ringing. He felt heavy and slow, and thought he’d just stay right there for a moment. Let the world end while he caught his breath. He stared at the gun. Lifted it up. It was heavier than he remembered. Warm in his hand. He put his finger over the trigger and tried to remember what it felt like to fire it. The kick. The shockwave up his arm. The involuntary jerk of his shoulder. The involuntary wince every time he fired it that had become a joke between him and the instructor.

A noise brought his head up from his chest. A woman, another agent dressed in a sober blue pantsuit, was sitting up on the floor, one hand on her forehead. She’d been knocked down when the ceiling had collapsed. He stared at her, frozen. She was young, about Begley’s age. Pale white skin and reddish, messy hair that hung down just to her shoulders. A plain, round face with a short, flat nose. A competent face unused to passion. Her hair was almost purposefully without artifice, almost defiantly messy. She wore no makeup. Her crisp white shirt was buttoned to the top and betrayed almost no shape at all. Her nails were short and unpainted. She wore no jewelry. He couldn’t see her shoes, but he knew they would be ugly, comfortable, and not new. A serious woman who wanted everyone to know she was a serious woman. Which Renicks thought meant she wasn’t nearly as competent as she wanted everyone to think.

He compared her to Begley, who made no special efforts to be attractive and yet was, who made no special efforts to appear competent, and yet was.

A lance of alarm startled him. These two had been with Darmity. Lazily, still feeling dopey and slow, he raised the Kimber and pointed it at her. Again he wondered if he would be able to shoot someone.

The motion caught her eye and she turned suddenly. Gasped when she saw him.

For a moment, they stared at each other.

Her eyes dropped to the unconscious male agent for a second. Then jumped back to him. He told himself she didn’t know him. Didn’t know anything about him. Didn’t know he’d never fired the gun outside of a range, wearing protective glasses and earplugs. He’d stayed out of their reach and he’d come crashing from the ceiling, bloody and raw. He kept the gun steady. Tried to look calm and evil. And hoped to hell there wasn’t something giving away his pounding heart, his sense of being exposed.

“Where’s Agent Begley?” he said. His voice came out as a dry rasp. He was grateful for the dust.

She shook her head. “I don’t know. Darmity took her.” She raised one hand up towards her ear. “I’m going to reach for my radio and find out for you.”

“Stop,” he said immediately. He wished he could extricate himself from the unconscious agent and the ductwork without lowering the gun, but he didn’t think that was possible.

Her hand kept moving. “I’m just reaching for my radio, Secretary Renicks,” she said slowly. Her eyes were locked on his face.

He thought about clicking the hammer back for emphasis. But his instructor had told him years ago that this was a meaningless gesture you only saw in movies. He was afraid she would know that too and it would make him look like an amateur. His knuckles were white and his arm had started shaking from the strain of holding the gun on her.

“If you don’t stop moving,” he said carefully, “I will shoot you.”

She shook her head. “No, you, won’t, sir.”

Her arm jerked downwards. His finger spasmed. The gun roared and kicked back at him. The loudest sound he’d ever heard in his life. He sprang back up straight. His hand and lower arm buzzed with the shock.

He couldn’t see the woman any more. A light spray of red blood had appeared on the wall behind where she’d been sitting. He twisted his torso and used his elbows on the carpet to pull himself out from under the agent and debris. Scrambling to his feet, he ducked down, feeling ridiculous, and duck-walked his way around the rubble. His hand had gone numb but he still clutched the Kimber, aiming it down towards the floor as he moved.

The woman came into view. Dead. Her gun in one hand. Her chest still seeping blood that slowly soaked into her shirt. Her eyes open and staring up at the ruined ceiling.

Renicks stared at her. Heart pounding. She looked like someone he could have gone to school with. He stood over her. Knew he should move. Knew that the gunshot might have been heard, that more of Amesley’s people might be on their way. Any second, they could burst in and take him. The man he’d knocked unconscious might wake up behind him. But he couldn’t move. He stared down at the dead agent. She didn’t look anything like his daughters. She reminded him of both.

Slowly, he moved to her side. Knelt down. Studied her face for a moment. Couldn’t stand her eyes, so he reached down and after a second’s hesitation moved his hand over her eyelids, gently closing them.

“I’m sorry,” he said, voice shaking.

He could feel a breakdown somewhere in the near distance. Whatever this woman had done, or intended to do, he had shot her without knowing anything about her.

He fought an urge to reach down and tidy her up. As if leaving her disheveled and bloody was wrong somehow. Like a little grooming would make up for it. He stared down at her, frozen. Then his eyes jumped to her arm, which was thrown over her belly. Like she was just resting.

He concentrated. Forced himself to move. To make tiny decisions. He flicked the safety back on the gun. Pushed it back into his waistband. Turned to make sure the other agent was still out. Stooped to retrieve his bag. The wrenching pain in his ankle as he did so made him pause and inspect himself for injuries. He was shaky from adrenaline, but aside from a million tiny cuts from his excursion into the ducts, there was nothing major.

He looked at the dead woman again. His stomach turned. He spun and staggered towards the back wall. Bent over and vomited onto the carpet. Stayed in that position for a few seconds, breathing hard, head pounding.

Then he spun away, looping the bag’s strap over his shoulder. He hesitated over the corpse and stepped over to the other agent instead, kneeling down and searching him quickly, retrieving the man’s walkie-talkie and gun. He hesitated for a moment, then pushed the radio and the new gun into his bag and went to the door. Still feeling shaky, a light film of grimy sweat all over his body, he opened it a crack and peered out into the corridor. Taking a deep breath, he opened it further and pushed his head out, looking up and down quickly.

“What they never tell you in school,” he whispered to himself as he slipped into the corridor and shut the door carefully behind him, “is that being President of the United States kind of sucks.”

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I‘ll be posting one chapter of my novel Designated Survivor every week throughout 2022. Download links below.

20.

Seven minutes before screaming in pain for the second time in an hour, Begley stared at the wrong end of Frank Darmity’s gun. It was a Beretta ninety-two with no accessories attached. She could hear the other two behind her. Both dressed in sober blue suits. Both agents. She didn’t know their names but she’d seen them before. The woman was tall and built, hours in the gym working the weights. The man was older. Forties. Still in shape, but with a belly starting to creep in from too many after-shift beers. Too many details sitting outside hotel rooms and in the backs of surveillance vans, eating pizza. Drinking sugared-up coffee. Smoking ill-advised cigarettes.

“Give me a boost again.”

“You already tried. You’re not going to fit.”

Despite the throbbing pain in her leg she forced herself to remain standing. To prove to Darmity that he couldn’t break her. Not with a blow to her injured leg. He might make her scream, an instinctual reaction. But it wasn’t going to break her. She moved her eyes from the gun to Darmity. He wasn’t going into the ductwork. He was one of those stocky men who wasn’t exactly fat. Just broad. Muscular. Heavy. His knuckles, she noted, were all scabbed up. Like he’d spent a few hours the night before punching a brick wall. Or someone’s face.

He was looking past her. At his two companions.

Begley watched Darmity’s face. Tried to feel out the physics of the situation. Two agents behind her. Distracted. Facing the wrong way. Darmity in front of her. Distracted. Holding his gun out in front of him like an asshole. The precise way you should never hold your gun. Straight out from you, easy to knock aside. Easy to snatch away. And if you were going to hold it that way, you should at least pay attention to the person you were covering.

She ran the possibilities through her mind: Reaching out. Fast. Could she pull the gun from his grip? He didn’t have his finger on the trigger, at least. No knee-jerk firing into her belly. One less finger to hold onto the gun. She had no balance. No leverage. The chances that she’d fail to take possession of the gun and end up in a losing struggle for it were pretty high.

She was unarmed. Darmity had done that much right. Even if she managed to knock his gun away, she would then be a wobbly, off-balance woman weighing about half of this slab of doughy muscle with both feet planted firmly on the carpet. She looked him up and down. Was pleased to note the large stain of blood on his shirt.

“Leave it,” Darmity ordered. “I know where Mr. Fancy’s going.”

Begley’s eyes jumped back to Darmity’s face. Did he? Alarm spread through her veins. Renicks had proven to be smarter than she’d expected. More resilient, certainly. There’d been no time to suggest a destination for him, and no way to help him find one even if she had — she herself would be hard pressed to navigate the ventilation system reliably, and she knew the complex better than just about anyone else in the world.

Darmity shifted his gaze and looked right back at her. Smiled. It was a mean little smile. Smug and cruel. She flinched back a second before his free hand flashed out. Pushed into her chest. Shoved her off-balance. Her splinted leg went out from under her and she fell painfully to the floor, teeth clicking together.

“Stay here,” Darmity said. “In case Mr. Fancy comes back. But he won’t. He’s alone and he’s scared and he’ll go and do what’s familiar. He’ll head back into the service corridors. Find a place to hide. Curl up and wait for his little agent here to find him and tell him what to do.”

Begley propped herself up onto her elbows. Her leg throbbed and her head ached. She remembered the bottle of pills Renicks had handed her, in her pants pocket. She didn’t want to take it out in front of Darmity. Didn’t want to show him weakness. Didn’t want him to guess how much pain she was in. And wondered what would happen if she took more, hearing Renicks’ warning about topping out at six. The last thing she needed was to be stoned, nodding off or getting spacey.

She considered the general amount of pain she was in, and the likelihood she would spend the immediate future being hurt. Nodding off did not, after all, appear to be a real concern.

Darmity stepped around her. She kept her eyes forward and listened. A second later his fist grasped her shirt collar and with a sudden jerk she was being dragged across the floor. Her hands flew up behind her neck and grabbed at his wrist. She stopped. She felt the muzzle of his Beretta against the top of her head. Froze instantly.

“Behave,” he said.

And then they were out in the hall. He dragged her for a few feet easily, without any sign of strain.

“Mr. Darmity?”

He laughed. It was disorienting. Sliding backwards, his voice behind her. “Funny how people start calling me mister at all the wrong times.”

She swerved, her leg jolting her as it banged against a wall. He was taking her towards the elevators. At least he’s not going to try to pull me up the service ladders, she thought sourly. The pain in her leg had dialed up fifty or hundred times from the rough handling. Beads of sweat had popped up all over her skin. “Why are you doing this? Why kill so many people?”

Without warning his hand let go and she dropped backwards, hitting her head dully on the thick industrial carpeting of the hallway. Then he was crouched over her. Knees on her arms, pinning her painfully. The gun under her chin. He had a dark shadow of beard already growing even though he’d been clean-shaven that morning. He was smiling in a precisely unhappy manner. His eyes were bright and heated.

“Because people like you and Mr. Fancy have fucked this country up, you stupid bitch. And there’s so much bullshit it can’t be fixed within the rules. Because you have to amputate a diseased limb. We’ve been waiting for it to happen any other way — for even a sign that it might be possible. Fuck that. We’re past that point. Change is at hand, Agent Begley.”

He straightened up and stepped around her again. She saw herself catching hold of his ankle. Pulling him off-balance. Scrambling for the gun. She did nothing. Let him hook his calloused hand into her shirt again. Resume dragging her. They were only a few feet away from the studio and a struggle would bring the other two on her before she could master the situation. And her goddamn leg. She couldn’t be sure of having enough torque to bring down someone Darmity’s size.

So, she let herself be dragged.

Change is at hand, he’d said. It stuck with her. She’d heard that phrase before, recently. She filed it away.

“What we need is a dictator,” he said suddenly. “Like in Rome. You know Rome? You read books? No one does any more. No one knows anything. Fucking Congress, supposed to represent the people. Don’t represent anyone I know. Can’t pass a goddamn nonbinding resolution any more, just endless arguing and tricks. We need someone to cut through the bullshit. The Romans had it right, they had that in law. When the Republic was threatened, pick someone who could handle it and make him Dictator. Get past the tricks, clean shit up. We don’t have that law, so we gotta make it happen. Gotta get Congress to pass the laws, to make themselves irrelevant. Gotta scare them.” He chuckled.

In the elevator, he punched in a sequence of buttons she didn’t recognize. They’d changed the code sets. Which meant she didn’t even know the correct codes to use, unless they simply switched to the next day’s set. She knew the next day; she made it her business to start memorizing them a few days in advance.

“I used to go to meetings,” Darmity said as the doors slid shut. “Like minded people. Pissed off people. And I’d sit there and listen. These were good people, you know? Citizens. Patriots. A lot of veterans, but not the smug kind. And they would talk, and talk. Campaigns and fundraisers and voter registration and targeting one asshole in Congress with another asshole who wanted to be in Congress. Shit, I couldn’t take it any more. So I started standing up, telling what we needed was to be teaching folks how to shoot, teaching them history, getting them angry. This country, when things go wrong we have an inalienable right to bear arms and make it right again. So they asked me to stop coming to meetings. I was making too much noise. Telling ’em shit they did not want to hear. That’s what we’re up against. That kind of stupidity. Cut through it. Just slice on through it. Get someone emergency powers and let them spend a few years fixing it all, one executive order after another. The right man, with emergency powers.” He sighed almost dreamily. “But to get emergency powers, you gotta have an emergency. That’s where I come in.”

Just outside the Security Office, he let go. “On your feet,” he ordered, pulling open the door and holding it. He stood there and watched as she struggled upright, using the wall for balance. With an exaggerated gesture he ushered her through the door.

She stopped right inside the familiar room. Five men and women she’d never seen before that morning were working the Security Office: Jackets off, sleeves rolled up. Hunched over monitors. Two were standing around the remote launch interface,. They glanced up at her for a second, then returned to their work. Director Amesley was standing in the midst of them, crisp and neat. His large, thick glasses made him appear to goggle at her, but she knew this was an illusion.

“Agent Begley,” he said, inclining his head slightly.

For a moment she stared at him, anger flooding her. She had served under Director Amesley. Had feared his temper. Been impressed with his knowledge and experience. Had even conceded that his passionate beliefs were inspiring for their depth and fire even if she did not always agree with his politics. And now he was instrumental in committing what could be the worst terrorist act in the nation’s history.

“Martin,” she said coldly.

“Come on,” Darmity snarled, taking hold of her arm and pulling her roughly after him. She lost balance and stumbled, pain shooting up her leg. He kept her from falling through sheer arm strength and almost threw her into a chair. It rolled backwards, spinning, and crashed into an unused rack of monitors and phone lines.

“Mr. Darmity!” Amesley said loudly. It was not exactly a shout. Simply a higher level of volume than his voice normally utilized.

“Shut up,” Darmity said. “You’ve been puttering around here for a goddamn hour and he’s still wandering around the complex free as a fucking bird. We’re gonna cut to the chase.” He holstered his gun and stood for a moment, looking around the security office. He spotted a walkie-talkie lying on one of the panels and stepped over to it, picking it up and turning several of the switches in small, precise increments. Then he stepped back to loom over Begley. She forced herself not to flinch away from him as he leaned over her and pressed two buttons on the panel behind her.

“Mr. Renicks!”

Darmity’s voice, spoken into the receiver, boomed throughout the room and echoed in the hall outside. Begley jumped in spite of herself. He’d patched in wirelessly to the PA system. His voice was in every room of the complex, including the service corridors.

Everyone else in the office had stopped. Stood staring at Darmity. Amesley was blank-faced as usual but Begley thought there was something in his posture, his attitude that hinted he did not approve — whether of Frank Darmity in general or this new tactic in specific, she couldn’t tell.

“I know you can hear me, buddy, so listen carefully. I could spend all goddamn day trying to track you down in the goddamn crawlspaces where you’re hiding from me like a coward. I don’t have time. So you gotta know something.”

“I’ve got your bitchy In-Suite Agent here. You prepped her nicely for us, so we won’t have to go through the trouble of breaking her leg to begin with.”

Begley stopped breathing for a moment. Amesley scowled and looked down at the floor. Pushed a hand into his pants pocket.

“Renicks, I’m not some polite agent, trained like a puppy to hold your hand while you piss, okay? You know what I was contracted for with the company? Involuntary Extraction. You know what that’s a euphemism for?”

Contracted. Begley nodded to herself. A mercenary. Blackwater, Goldhawk, XCE Incorporated — a company like that, handling military-type operations the military didn’t have manpower for. She’d worked with some of those types before. Darmity confirmed a lot of her prejudices about them, a lot of her experiences with them. Cowboys. They operated between the cracks — they weren’t under military or governmental discipline, and their corporate bosses didn’t much care what they did as long as the missions got done and everyone got paid. The problem was, you couldn’t just ignore them, have contempt for them, because a lot of them were ex-military, ex-CIA, and usually high-grade. Even the ones with no formal background had skills. She’d shot Darmity from five feet away and he was still there, operating.

“It’s a euphemism for this,” Darmity said. He took two brisk steps towards her and kicked her solidly in the leg.

She spun off the chair, screaming, and hit the hard floor of the Security Office, which sent a second shockwave of agony throughout her whole body. She screamed again, one final bitten-off howl, and then got control of herself. She lay as still as she could, face-down on the concrete, panting. Sweat dripping off her forehead. She watched it be absorbed by the stone.

“You listening, Renicks? I don’t know if you give a shit about your cute little In-Suite-Agent here, but imagine this was your daughter, man. Imagine that. This is just to give you some sound effects for your imagination, okay?”

Through the agony, Begley fixed on that. Your daughter. What did that mean? Darmity didn’t sound desperate. Didn’t sound like a man spinning bullshit in hopes of shaking something loose. He sounded smug and mean.

Begley heard him turn. The scrape of his boots on the floor. She twisted herself around to look over her shoulder, trying to manage it without moving her leg at all. Watched him striding towards her, the walkie-talkie in one hand. She clenched her teeth, determined not to make a noise. Not a sound. No matter what.

Darmity filled her vision. Then suddenly froze, one leg off the ground. His eyes rolled up in his head. He fell forward, landing on his face, unconscious. Right next to her. Close enough for her to feel the breeze of his passing.

Behind him, holding a small black device whose edge crackled with electricity for a second, was Director Amesley. He stared down at Darmity for a second, expressionless, and then looked at her.

“My apologies, Agent Begley,” he said flatly.

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I‘ll be posting one chapter of my novel Designated Survivor every week throughout 2022. Download links below.

19.

One minute before finding himself in another air duct, Renicks stood, frozen. He watched Begley tugging ineffectually at the cabinet, trying to drag it. His eyes jumped to the door as someone crashed into it, making it jump on its hinges. The lock held. It wasn’t much of a lock, though.

“Jesus, Jack!”

He blinked and sprang forward, dropping his bag and grabbing one end of the cabinet. He dragged it over to the door. Pushed it flush against it. Stood back and figured it would add another ten or fifteen seconds at best.

Repeated Stan’s words to himself: a U.S. President engineering a national emergency. Pictured the crates in the storage room. Amesley, the man ultimately in charge of President Grant’s security, running this show. The ELIRO document on The Brick.

Eliro. Renicks centered on the word again. It tugged at him. As if he’d seen it before, or ought to recognize it.

The door jumped again.

Begley turned and gave him a push. “Move!”

He stumbled backwards a step before regaining his balance. Suddenly decided Begley had grown up with brothers. Older.

“Where — ”

She pointed up. He turned to follow her arm and saw another air conditioning grate. Wide enough to wriggle into. He stood for a second, staring at it.

“Ah, fuck.”

She shoved him violently from behind. “Move!”

He whirled in time to receive several more blows to the chest. He whipped his hands up and grasped her by the wrists. The door jumped again.

“What about you?”

Staggering back, she surprised him. Pulled her weapon. Held it down against her splinted leg with her finger along the barrel. “I can’t climb, Jack. Much less push myself through a fucking duct. You’re the asset. You cannot be compromised, so climb up on the goddamn filing cabinet and get in the fucking duct.”

He stared for just a second. Brothers, he thought.

The door jumped.

He whirled and limped away, scooping up his bag and slinging it over his shoulder. Pushed his hand into his pocket and fumbled for his penknife. He pulled himself up on top of the filing cabinet, knocking the fax onto the floor. The grate over the duct was held in place by two small flathead screws.

The door jumped. There was a distinct cracking sound.

“Jack!” Begley shouted. “You don’t have much time!”

“Thanks,” he muttered, sweat streaming into his eyes as he worked the screws.

The duct plate clattered to the floor. He shoved his bag in ahead of him and squeezed his shoulders in, pushing himself up.

“Jack!”

“Jesus fucking Christ,” he hissed to himself. For a split second of panic he thought he was stuck. Then, with a searing pain along each side as the sharp edges of sheet metal screws sliced into his skin he was in. “Does she think I’m taking my time?”

Then he was in the hot, gritty, echoing world of the duct. There was just enough room for him to wriggle his way forward. He was sweating immediately. Every move seemed incredibly loud.

Until the door smashed inward in the room behind him. Until gunshots. Until Begley screamed.

He froze. Realized he’d moved out of instinct. Terror. Self-preservation. He could pretend it was because he was the Designated Survivor, the acting President. Because he had to remain free, or people would die. But he suddenly wasn’t sure if he hadn’t run because he could die. Because he was afraid.

He lay there for a second. Paralyzed.

“Mr. Secretary!”

Darmity’s voice. Other voices, then. Muffled.

Renicks pushed himself backwards a few inches. He couldn’t leave Begley alone.

Then stopped.

“Mr. Secretary! Are you really gonna run from me? Are you gonna leave this gorgeous spitfire in my hands?”

What was he going to do? He couldn’t even reach around to get to his own gun. He’d be emerging from the duct backwards. Going back was suicide. Going back was putting himself directly into their hands. Slowly, shaking with frustration, he began pushing himself forward again. Inches. He had to pull himself with his finger and push with his feet. Pushing his bag ahead of him. Swollen ankle throbbing. Metal screws catching his flesh as he moved. Sweat and grime working their way into the wounds and burning.

The President. Charles A. Grant. In the third year of an increasingly disastrous term. Renicks ran it through his mind as he listened to his own hot, claustrophobic breathing. A president almost certainly playing out the string. A lame duck. He thought of the people around Grant, the people he appointed and hired. All of them had been with Grant for years, decades. All of them had been long time confidants. All of them had supported Grant in everything he did. There had been speculation in the papers that part of Grants’ decline in popularity stemmed from the Yes-Men he had surrounded himself with, people of ability who nevertheless agreed with everything the President said or proposed. Even Gerry Flanagan. Grant with his crazy charm, a charm that inspired loyalty. A charm that inspired service.

He remembered Begley’s words about Amesley. He loves this country. And he idolizes President Grant.

Grant. Tan. Tall, Charming. He’d felt the power of the man’s charm himself. Standing in the Oval Office, being grinned at. The grin. It never left. It never flickered.

Jesus, it was possible. A president, even a weak, failing downward president like Grant had immense power behind the scenes. Executive orders, protected from public scrutiny. Add in men in other positions of power ready to take his orders. It was possible. Engineering a national emergency. Someone becomes Acting President when Grant stages an attack on himself. An Acting President in an Emergency, without all of the encumbrances and obstructions of a peacetime President. Launches nuclear missiles — where? Anywhere. A world war would be emergency enough. Or hit domestic cities, blame terrorists. Declare martial law.

And suddenly a weak and downward failing President doesn’t have to worry about an election any more.

It didn’t make sense, though. If that was the plan, why him? Flanagan, as part of Grant’s inner circle, should have been the Designated Survivor. He would have done what the President wanted. Why have him murdered so that John Renicks, Ph.D., who wasn’t part of the plot and who wouldn’t go along with things, would end up Acting President?

Maybe, he thought, Gerry hadn’t been as charmed by Grant as he appeared. Maybe there’d been disagreements. Maybe Grant didn’t think he could rely on Gerry to murders hundreds of thousands of people in order to spur a coup d’etat. That might explain why Gerry had been taken out, but not why he’d been slotted in. Unless they didn’t have that much control. They could eliminate Gerry, but there hadn’t been time, perhaps, to do anything else. Maybe they’d just done the math: Gerry wouldn’t give in, wouldn’t break. Maybe – maybe – Renicks would.

He told himself that maybe he would never know why. And that he had bigger immediate problems.

Blood was staining his shirt from the dozens of shallow cuts he’d inflicted on himself. He came to a junction. Ducts branching off to the left and right. He chose the left randomly. Simply because it seemed to lead away from the studio. Away from Darmity. Behind him, he heard a hollow booming noise. Realized he was leaving a perfect trail behind. Like a snail. Oozing blood with every increment.

He tried to increase his pace. Tried to estimate his lead. When he came to the next junction, with a duct branching off to the right, he pushed past it for several seconds, moving as quickly as he could manage. Straining his ears. He pushed back at panic, forcing himself to continue forward until he’d counted to a hundred. Then he reversed direction and struggled back to the junction. Waiting for the shout, the slap of a hand on his ankle. The sudden pinpricks of light as someone shot upwards into the duct. When he’d backed up enough to make the turn to the right, he paused a moment to inspect his false trail. It wasn’t long, but in the dim light he thought it would fool anyone following him. Long enough, anyway.

He pushed thoughts out of his head. Pushed with his toes, pulled with his fingers. Breathed. Pushed his bag. Pushed with his toes, pulled with his fingers. Breathed.

Grates began appearing at regular intervals on the bottom of the ducts. He could see through the slats into the rooms below. All empty.

The available light began to increase. He could make out a widening in the ductwork up ahead, which resolved into a large exchange, three feet wide and tall enough to sit up in. Up above, behind a heavy-looking mesh was a large fan spinning in lazy circles. He pushed himself up against the side, pulling his legs up against his chest, and pulled the Kimber out. Checked that the safety was off. He hadn’t fired the gun in two years. Had never fired it anywhere but a range.

He waited. Tried to breathe shallowly. Ignored the burning scrapes oozing blood.

Nothing happened. There was no noise behind him. No sign of pursuit.

He set the gun down next to him and rubbed his hands over his face, scrubbing. Checked himself visually. His clothes were stained with blood, but it was all superficial wounds. He was filthy and sizzling with low-level pain, but he wasn’t badly hurt. He wasn’t in the hands of someone prepared to put thousands, maybe millions of people at risk for his own purposes.

He swallowed and sat forward. Opened his bag. He had to help Begley. He had to go back.

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