Reznick ran across the roof terrace and grabbed the ex-president by the arms, pulling him back to solid ground. He looked down at Cain, saw blood spilling from his mouth. He turned to face Adamson. “Sir, I need you to focus and do exactly as I say.”
The ex-president just nodded.
“Firstly, do not move.”
Reznick reached under his jeans and pulled out a knife strapped to his calf. He bent over and cut Cain’s shirt off him. The Semtex suicide belt was fully exposed.
Reznick said, “See what I’m talking about?”
Adamson nodded.
Reznick checked the suicide belt and saw the primitive trigger-switch that activated the belt. He tried to turn it off but it stayed on red. It was clearly battery-operated. “Fuck!” It could explode at any time.
He cut off the belt and threw it over the edge, onto a grassy area down below. “Meyerstein, suicide belt cut off and located in the parkland area below. Do you copy?”
“We copy that, Jon. Good work.”
“He was going to manually detonate it.”
Reznick saw that the ex-president was wearing a tiepin, still attached to his tie. He reached out. “Mind if I take this?”
“Go right ahead.”
Reznick unclipped it and began to rub it on the stone at the edge of the roof till it became thin and sharp. He inserted it into the tiny hole in the handcuff lock and began to delicately jimmy it. He pressed his ear up against the cold cuffs as he listened to each turn. Eventually he felt the required point of the internal locking mechanism, and turned the tiepin sharply. A click, and the handcuffs were prized open. He extricated Adamson’s chafed wrist from the handcuffs and escorted him back through the doors, where two SWAT guys had arrived at the scene. “They’ll take you away from here, sir.”
The ex-president looked long and hard at Reznick. “Who are you?”
“Sir, forget about me. We need to get you to a secure location.” Reznick cocked his head at the two SWAT guys. “Get him out of here!”
Reznick turned and headed back onto the roof. A chopper with a SWAT team was overhead now, a sniper aiming down. The downdraft was making the operation difficult. He rifled in Cain’s pockets and found a picture of Hunter as a boy, with his mother and father at the beach.
He turned over Cain’s body, blood still oozing out of the two bullet wounds. Reznick stared down at the corpse of his old Delta buddy. He looked down below and saw a cordon was already set up.
A SWAT guy walked up. “We got it from here, Jon.”
Reznick stared down at Cain again. He thought back to Fallujah. He thought back to the crazy, tough-as-nails warrior he knew. Then he thought of Cain’s terrified girlfriend, assassinated on Cain’s orders.
He sensed someone was watching him. He turned and saw Meyerstein walking towards him. She surveyed the scene.
“What a mess!”
Reznick nodded.
“But it could’ve been worse. A lot worse.”
Reznick stared down at Cain.
“You okay?” she said, looking at him.
“We got blindsided on this.”
“This was an elaborate, complex, operation,” she said. “It must have been months, maybe years, in the making. And for what?”
“It was also a failure on our part. Lives have been lost. We didn’t join up the dots.” He shook his head. “What a fuck-up.”
Meyerstein’s earpiece crackled into life. She nodded. “Completely deactivated?” She paused. “Get it to Quantico labs for testing. We need to know where this batch was sourced from. Get back to me asap.” She looked at Reznick again, walked to Cain’s body and peered over the edge of the multistorey. Forensics were already photographing the discarded suicide belt. “Semtex?”
Meyerstein nodded. “What do you think Cain was going to do with Adamson?”
Reznick pointed to the cellphone on the ground. “Film him being killed for posterity.”
“Chrissake!”
Reznick blew out his cheeks. “Are we done here?”
Meyerstein nodded. “You’re done here. I’ve got a month of reports waiting for me. We’ll need to investigate – who was pulling the strings? And there’s a distinct possibility I might be kicked out of the FBI.”
Reznick flashed a wry smile. “That ain’t gonna happen.”
“Why you so sure?”
“The FBI are many things, but stupid ain’t one of them. You’ll get a rap on the knuckles, and be told not to fraternize with guys like me.”
“Yeah, if I’m lucky.”
Reznick said nothing.
“Where you headed?” she asked, looking him in the eyes.
“Might go back to New York and finish that drink of mine.”
“And after that?”
“Been offered an interesting job out in the Middle East.”
“You gonna take it?”
“We’ll see.”
Meyerstein smiled.
“What about you?” he asked.
Meyerstein curled some hair behind her ear. “What about me?”
“Business as usual?”
“Well, firstly, I’ll have to head straight back to DC and have a chat with the director.”
“And then?”
“And then I’ll go home, and shut the door, and see my kids.”
Reznick said nothing.
“Will you be available in the future?” she said, her eyes fixed on him again.
“Why?”
“I need to know. In case the director asks.”
Reznick sighed. He stared out at the water in the distance. “Tell him I’ll think about it.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
J.B. Turner has been a journalist whose articles have appeared in UK newspapers including the Daily Mail, the Daily Telegraph, the Scotsman, the Daily Express and the Herald. He worked as a freelance journalist for several years before he began work on his first novel. JB Turner is married and has two young children
Check out his website at www.jbturnerauthor.com
Follow him on Twitter @jbturnerauthor
Table of Contents
PROLOGUE
ONE
TWO
THREE
FOUR
FIVE
SIX
SEVEN
EIGHT
NINE
TEN
ELEVEN
TWELVE
THIRTEEN
FOURTEEN
FIFTEEN
SIXTEEN
SEVENTEEN
EIGHTEEN
NINETEEN
TWENTY
TWENTY-ONE
TWENTY-TWO
TWENTY-FOUR
TWENTY-FIVE
TWENTY-SIX
TWENTY-SEVEN
TWENTY-EIGHT
TWENTY-NINE
THIRTY
THIRTY-ONE
THIRTY-TWO
THIRTY-THREE
THIRTY-FOUR
THIRTY-FIVE
THIRTY-SIX
THIRTY-SEVEN
THIRTY-EIGHT
THIRTY-NINE
FORTY
FORTY-ONE
FORTY-TWO
FORTY-THREE
FORTY-FOUR
FORTY-FIVE
ABOUT THE AUTHOR