The End Game

He was still ten feet away when he saw Tony—Damari—coming up on the far side of the president. It took a moment for his mind to register—the champagne. He’d handed them glasses of champagne for a toast, and the president was raising his glass, clicking it against Callan’s and the two of them lifted their glasses to their lips.

Nicholas shouted, “Don’t, don’t!” but someone had turned up the music and it drowned out his words, or maybe it didn’t, but they didn’t register, or they didn’t hear enough to understand.

Nicholas was shoving people out of the way, screaming now, “Don’t drink the champagne!” People were grabbing at him, asking him what was wrong, becoming alarmed. No one knew what was happening, but they kept getting in his way. He saw the Secret Service agents had heard him yelling, and were looking through the windows at him, and then they were inside, now charging across the room toward him, as if he were the threat.

“Don’t drink it, don’t drink it, it’s Damari!”

Callan heard him, finally, and she looked up, saw him racing toward her, yelling, and her glass was halfway to her mouth, her head cocked to one side, puzzled, but the president, the president.

“Stop him, stop him!” It was one of the Secret Service and he grabbed at Nicholas. Still five feet away, Nicholas dove in the air like he was after a football, eyes focused only on the glasses. His arm swept across their bodies, slapping the glass right out of Callan’s hand. He caught the bottom edge of the president’s glass, but he’d already tipped his head back before Nicholas had begun his charge across the room; the champagne was in his mouth.

“Don’t swallow!” he shouted, then crashed hard against the fireplace beside the president. Glass shattered, people started to scream. The president grabbed at his throat, fell to his knees. The Secret Service were on Nicholas, pi

No more than five seconds had passed.

Nicholas struggled to get to his feet, pulling two Secret Service agents with him, a small cut on the forehead trickling blood into his left eye. He pointed, shouted to Mike, “It’s Damari, it’s Damari, he’s made up to look like Tony Scarlatti, he poisoned the champagne!”

There was a long moment, the space between a heartbeat, when Damari turned and made eye contact with Nicholas. His face looked so much like Tony it was eerie, but his hairpiece had been knocked askew.

In that second, Mike understood, pulled her Glock out of her boot holster, and yelled, “Stop!”

But Damari ignored her, moving fast toward the glass door to the back terrace. His hand was outstretched to grab the door handle when Mike pulled the trigger three times without hesitation, and he was slammed against the glass, his head cracking it, smearing it with his blood as he collapsed.

81

KING TO C1

The security team circled Mike in a heartbeat, and she stood there, not moving, seeing the lights, hearing shouts and screams coming from all corners of the room. And over the chaos, she heard the rotors of a helicopter drawing closer.

Mike held out her ankle gun, butt first, her arm outstretched, then she tossed it to the floor and put her hands on the top of her head. She dropped to her knees, knowing if she didn’t the guards and agents would throw her down.

She heard Nicholas shouting, but couldn’t understand his words over the yells and commands from the security team. Then she heard him. “It’s Damari. She shot Damari, Tony is in the pantry, he’s been stabbed. We need medics, we need medics, the president is down!”

Secret Service was already swarmed around the president; Nicholas was being held to the side, struggling against the agents holding him back from Mike.

One agent wrenched Mike’s shooting arm behind her back. “Stay on your knees, don’t you move, keep your hands on your head!” She didn’t resist, it would be suicide to do anything other than what they were telling her right now. She felt the cold steel of an agent’s weapon pressing into the base of her neck, heard a woman’s voice, clear and strong. “The president’s down. Where is the medic?”

The vice president? Yes, Callan was okay.

A young naval officer with a huge medical kit in a red bag burst into the living room, yelling, “Here, ma’am! What happened? Was the president shot?”

“He’s been poisoned. It was in the champagne. It smelled somehow off to me, I hadn’t had any yet but he got some in his mouth before Agent Drummond knocked it from our hands. It was a fast one, given the speed at which the president had grabbed his throat and fell to the floor.”

Mike stayed on her knees, her heart pounding, and she prayed the president would be all right. She looked over to the blood-smeared glass door, at Damari’s body in the fetal position against the door. So much blood. He was dead. She’d shot him. It was over, but strangely, she couldn’t get her brain around it, couldn’t accept it yet. A measure of shock, she supposed, and knew it would pass.

How like Tony he’d looked, but not now. She’d shot him in the back and in the head. Staring at him, she felt huge relief. Now you’re dead, you monster. She drew a deep breath and waited. If she hadn’t had her ankle gun, who knew if they would have stopped him escaping. No, surely the Secret Service would have grabbed him. Though they’d only seen their guy—their agent—not Damari. Now that he was dead, she could give him the credit for coming up with a remarkable plan.

She sucked in a deep breath and smiled up at the soldier with his gun trained on her face. Another soldier spoke to him and he pulled his gun away, holstered it. He was young, not older than she was and he was pale, adrenaline raging through him. He flicked a gaze toward Damari. “You killed him dead. Excellent shooting on the move like that.”

“Yes, thankfully, yes. It’s not Tony, it’s Zahir Damari.”

“You did good,” another soldier said, and pulled her to her feet and formally handed her back her small Glock.

Then Nicholas was there and he stood beside her and together they watched two soldiers roll Damari over and stare down at a man who looked like Tony’s double. But not in death. No, not in death. The prosthetic nose was inches off-center, knocked sideways when he’d slid down the glass. An agent pulled the wig off as he felt for a pulse. When he shook his head, Mike’s heart slowed.

An agent pulled a wrist mike from Damari’s suit jacket cuff, lifted it to his ear, and said, “It’s live. This is a frigging live comms unit. He could hear everything we did, every move we made since he managed to sneak into Camp David.”

They turned from the ruin of the man to see the medic working on the president. He already had an IV started, and was pumping in something from a syringe.

“Nicholas, you said it was poison. How can they treat if they don’t know what the poison is?”

“They can’t. I imagine they’re most likely giving him Narcan. I don’t know if it will work on whatever this poison is, but it generally reverses the effects of an opioid overdose. They have to try something.”

Mike heard the medic say, “He’s not responding to the naloxone, continue chest compressions. I’m going to push flumazenil.”

Nicholas looked on, not moving, except he took her hand. “Damari succeeded, Mike. I was a second too late.”

Mike said matter-of-factly, “If you hadn’t knocked the glasses away, he’d surely be dead already, Callan, too. They have to figure out what was he given. It worked fast, so fast, he went down almost immediately.”

Nicholas suddenly jerked her after him. “Let’s get to the kitchen, maybe Damari left something behind.”