Capitol Betrayal Read online

  Capitol Betrayal

  William Bernhardt

  William Bernhardt's bestselling novels explore politics, power, ambition, crime, and the law. Now he scales new heights of suspense as, in one harrowing day, lawyer and former senator Ben Kincaid enters the eye of an international storm, a crisis with consequences beyond calculation.

  Kincaid is in a meeting with the president in the Oval Office when Washington suddenly explodes into chaos. Facing an imminent threat to the White House, Kincaid is whisked, along with the president and his advisors, to the underground PEOC – Presidential Emergency Operations Center – built to withstand a nuclear blast, but vulnerable to another kind of attack.

  Inside the bunker, defense specialists realize that a malevolent foreign dictator has hacked into the U.S. nuclear defense system and now has a finger on the trigger of America's most dangerous weapons. The dictator's message is clear: Heed his demands or suffer unfathomable destruction.

  Forced to make critical, split-second decisions, the president seems to be falling apart under the pressure. The vice president wants to strip him of his powers – a move that could have a disastrous impact on national defense. But even during this time of upheaval, in order for the president to be removed, there must be a trial. With the clock winding down, Kincaid has precious little time to defend the president.

  While Kincaid faces the trial of his life, legendary CIA agent Seamus McKay races through the clogged streets of Washington, searching for a hidden command center – guarded by murderous fanatics – that now controls U.S. ballistic missiles.

  Two sides of one unforgettable story, McKay and Kincaid home in on their targets. One uses a gun – and any weapon he can get his hands on; the other employs his intuition and the law. And in William Bernhardt's spectacular thriller, as both move closer and closer to uncovering a world-shattering plot, the ultimate act of betrayal is launched from the heart of America's capitol itself.

  William Bernhardt

  Capitol Betrayal

  Book 18 in the Ben Kincaid series, 2010

  For Marcia

  my eternal flame

  How wonderful it is that nobody need wait

  a single moment before starting to improve the world.

  – ANNE FRANK

  Prologue

  APRIL 14

  9:17 A.M.

  When the second shot blasted, the crowd panicked.

  Seamus McKay swore under his breath. This sort of thing never happened in the deserts of Afghanistan, where there were rarely any crowds to panic. He never should’ve accepted a domestic assignment. But it was too late to worry about that now. There were four terrorists in there, at least three of them armed. He had kept his weapon holstered to avoid exactly the frenzied chaos that now surrounded him. But there was no point in remaining unarmed now. He drew his Glock 23 and pointed it into the air. The sooner all these tourists dispersed, the better.

  He had no idea why the four men he was tracking had come to the Washington Monument, one of the most popular tourist attractions in D.C., but none of the possible answers was good. A fully capable nuclear suitcase had been stolen from a top-secret Arlington armory, and Seamus was convinced these men had it, or knew someone who did. He mentally combined all the possible reasons terrorists with nuclear capability might come to the Washington Monument… and every potential explanation sent chills racing down his spine.

  Seamus fought his way through the crowd, both hands on the gun, making his way toward the front door against the flow. Why were they inside the monument, where several hundred tourists would be traveling up and down the elevators or perched at the top at any given moment? He needed to get there before they made it to the elevators. He stepped sideways, hands over his head, doing his salmon-swimming-upstream act, all the while being battered by screaming teenagers and overweight men wearing T-shirts and ball caps.

  Another gunshot rang out, causing the stream of maddened tourists to move even faster and with less care for their surroundings. He had to keep his mind on what he was doing, without distractions. There were four of them and one of him, and although he had faced worse odds over the course of his CIA career, it wasn’t something he looked forward to reexperiencing. The clichéd thought would be: I’m getting too old for this. But in the present case it had nothing to do with age. It was more the desire to live a real life, to experience what other men were doing in middle age, to settle down with-

  Someone cuffed him on the back of the head. Damn it all, that would teach him to let his mind wander. He swung the gun around in a perfect one-heel pivot-

  And brought it smack in the face of an elderly woman wearing a “Virginia Is for Lovers” lightweight jacket. She was carrying an umbrella, which was apparently the weapon of mass destruction she had used on him.

  The gun didn’t intimidate her. “You stepped on my foot!”

  “Beg pardon, ma’am,” Seamus said, bowing his head, then moving along again, back on his line drive toward the front entrance.

  He jumped the turnstile.

  The lobby was more spacious than you could ever believe possible just from looking at the tall, lean, sleek marble obelisk from the outside. At the far end, he saw the two elevators, and between them the famous bronze statue of George Washington designed by Jean-Antoine Houdon, the French neoclassical sculptor who had immortalized most of the great men of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Though the lobby was large, it was still jam-packed with tourists. Why? There had been three gunshots, for God’s sake. What were they waiting for, the city bus?

  He scanned the crowd but didn’t see any of the men he had been chasing. That was frustrating. Were they already riding to the top? Seamus didn’t think there had been enough time. So where were they?

  At least he didn’t see any corpses lying on the floor. That was a relief. Those men must have fired for a reason, but as far as he could tell, it was not to kill. Probably just herding crowds out of their path or, perhaps, trying to instill terror. That was what terrorists did, right? It gave him cold comfort to see how ineffective they had been. There were still far too many people in here. But he could deal with that.

  He raised his gun into the air, aimed toward a window (because damaging a national treasure could really dock his pay), and fired.

  “Listen up!” Seamus bellowed at the top of his lungs. “I’m a federal officer. This is an emergency situation. As long as you remain here, you will be in danger. I want everyone to leave the building and the immediate vicinity of the monument. Now! Understood?”

  In response, he heard a mixture of squealing and gasping and grumbling, even a muttered “Will they refund our tickets?”

  Seamus fired his gun again. “So get out now, or I’ll shoot you myself!”

  That got the crowd moving. He had to suppress a smile. Yes, if nothing else, a decade in the Middle East trained you to be good at scaring people. In a few seconds, most of the spectators had cleared out. Now if he could just find-

  Something hard bashed against the back of his head, and this time he was certain it was not an old lady’s umbrella.

  He fell forward but caught himself with his free hand and rolled around. One of his quarry was standing over him, grinning, his automatic weapon in his hands. He’d slammed Seamus with the butt and he was eager and ready to do it again. He had a deep scar-or perhaps a burn-on the left side of his face that made him both instantly identifiable and instantly threatening.

  Seamus brought his gun hand around but the terrorist was too quick for him. He knocked the gun away. It skittered across the floor and disappeared in the distance.

  Great.

  While he was ducking, Seamus brought his fist around and pounded his assailant in the solar plexus. While
he was doubled over, Seamus hit him again and again. When he saw the man’s fingers weaken, he knocked the gun out of his hand, then followed through with another blow to the neck. Hard.

  The man dropped to the floor like a withered flower. Seamus had literally knocked the wind out of him. He wasn’t dead, but he would be out of the game for a good spell. That meant-

  Another gunshot whizzed by just inches from Seamus’s head. Damn. Another one. Where was he?

  Early retirement was sounding better all the time. As long as he wasn’t retired to a coffin.

  More gunshots rang out. Seamus dove behind the priceless statue of George Washington between the elevators. He tried to spot the shooters. Staying low enough to be safe, he managed a quick survey of the lobby.

  Two men were down on the floor, at opposite ends of the lobby. And the third was above him, on a raised platform in the north corner. Probably a security roost. But perfectly adapted to becoming a sniper’s nest.

  Seamus crouched beneath the statue, pinned down like a bug. Eventually someone would tell the police what was happening, but he would be dead long before that came about. He needed a weapon, or some plan of action.

  But instead he got a major complication. He heard a sharp, abrupt ringing sound.

  His blood went cold. The elevator to his right had arrived.

  He turned just enough to see the doors opening. It was almost full of tourists who were in all likelihood going to become the next victims unless he did something fast.

  Seamus executed another perfect sidewise somersault right into the elevator. Luckily, the tourists inside made way. Before the shooter had a chance to react, Seamus reached up and pushed the button to make the door close.

  “Wait a minute!” a middle-aged man in striped Bermuda shorts said. “What the hell-”

  And then the gunshots rang out. The man stopped talking.

  Seamus saw the dents the bullets made in the door, but fortunately they closed before anyone was hurt. He pushed another button and the elevator began to rise. He could play it safe, ride all the way to the top, get out, and hope that help came quickly.

  But there was that troubling matter of a nuclear device that they must have brought to this hallowed monument, this symbol of democracy, for a reason.

  He pushed the button to stop the elevator midway up the shaft, then turned to face the eight people in the elevator. “What have you got?”

  They looked at him as if he were out of his mind.

  He grabbed an older woman by the shoulders. She had big beauty shop hair and a purse the size of a suitcase. That might be useful. “I’m asking what you’ve got! Answer me!”

  She appeared to have difficulty speaking. “I-I don’t have… anything.”

  He didn’t have time for this. He grabbed her purse and spilled the contents onto the floor. She didn’t say a word.

  He sifted through the contents. A compact-useless. Wallet-useless. Kleenex-useless. Bobby pins, car keys, chewing gum-useless.

  Hair spray. He tested it. Not a pump spray, but the old-school kind that used old-school fluorocarbons. An aerosol spray.

  Useful.

  And then he spotted what his mother used to call a rattail comb-a metal comb with a long, thin handle.

  Also useful.

  He crammed them into his pocket and barked at the others, “What have you got? Now!”

  All at once, the two women and the teenage girl in the elevator dumped their purses on the floor. The men emptied their pockets. Seamus didn’t know if they thought he was insane or if they thought he was dangerous, and at the moment he didn’t much care, so long as they complied.

  He sorted through all the junk on the floor. A Bic lighter. Absolutely useful. A rubber band. Well, you just never knew, did you? He didn’t see anything else of value. Was this really all there was?

  “Anyone else have anything?”

  The man in the Bermuda shorts shrugged-but Seamus noticed a bulge in his Windbreaker pocket. He helped himself.

  A glass flask.

  “Scotch?”

  The man avoided his gaze. “How’d you know?”

  “Smelled it on your breath.” Seamus shoved everything into his pockets. “Just stay here. It isn’t safe down there. When the coast is clear, the police will come and rescue you. Now, who can give me a boost?”

  The man in the Bermuda shorts bent over, and Seamus stepped up onto his back. He pushed open the escape panel and, with arms conditioned by years of gymnastics and regular exercise, pulled himself through the opening.

  He was inside the monument. He knew that, once upon a time, people had been able to walk down the steps, but the stairs had been closed due to concerns about safety and vandalism on the many commemorative plaques. These elevators had originally been constructed to haul materials to the top, then, after it was completed, converted to use for transporting visitors.

  He was about to use them for something completely different.

  He could see the other elevator shaft about ten feet away. The cage was below him at ground level, but the cables were right there waiting for him.

  He should be able to jump the distance. He had jumped farther, though not in a long time, and in this instance, if he didn’t make it, he wouldn’t just lose a medal. He’d lose his life, after falling about two hundred feet and splatting down on the cage below.

  Well, nothing ventured…

  He felt confident, even if he wasn’t quite as light as he had been in younger years. He stepped toward the far edge of the elevator, then took a run at it. He flew through the open space between the elevators…

  And overshot the mark and collided with the cables. His face burned against the main cable, which stung like hell. But he managed to get a grip on the cable and hold on to it.

  He’d made it.

  After that point, it was a simple matter of lowering himself to the elevator box below him. Simple until he arrived, anyway.

  As quietly as possible, he opened the escape panel at the top. The doors were open.

  He knew he would have no chance to survey the scene once he appeared in the opening. He had memorized the positions of the two men on the ground level just before the elevator doors closed. He hoped they hadn’t moved too much.

  He gripped the edge of the escape hatch and took a deep breath.

  Showtime. Five, four, three, two…

  On one, Seamus flew through the opening, swinging outside the doors and several yards beyond. The terrorist on the far right had drifted, but not so far that Seamus couldn’t accommodate the difference with a quick course correction. The man brought his gun around, but Seamus was too fast for him. Seamus wrapped himself around the man’s legs and brought him down to the ground. He squatted on top of the man, pounding him in the face before he had a chance to resist. He pressed his gun down with one hand and grabbed the rattail comb in the other. In one swift, sure movement, he drove the long thin tail of the comb into the man’s temple.

  The terrorist didn’t even have a chance to scream. He was dead in less than a second.

  And a second after that, his friends reacted. Seamus grabbed the dead man’s gun and responded, which sent the others flying. It appeared the remaining man on the ground was not armed. That would make Seamus’s job simpler. He ran under the ledge so the man above couldn’t see him, then pulled the trigger.

  Nothing happened.

  Out of ammunition. Could he never catch a break?

  The other man had a knife, a big ugly one, almost a machete. He was running toward Seamus, a desperate expression on his face, the knife raised above his head. And Seamus had…

  Hair spray.

  He would have to make it work for him.

  He waited until his attacker was most of the way to him, because he knew that if he stepped out from under the ledge he was a dead man. When the man was ten feet away, Seamus brought up the hair spray, pushed down the button, and ignited the spray with the Bic lighter.

  A stream of fire blazed through t
he air, smacking the other man in the face. He screamed and dropped the knife as his hands reflexively went to his face. All at once, his features became liquid. The flesh of his face began to blacken and burn.

  Seamus gave him two swift kicks to the kneecaps, just to make sure he didn’t go anywhere, not that there was much chance. This poor loser’s only concern would be his pain.

  That left the man upstairs.

  While the hotshot with the automatic rifle was still trying to figure out what had happened below, Seamus leaped up and grabbed the edge of the balcony ledge, pulled himself up into a crouch, then pushed off the bottom edge into the air. He found himself above the balcony and just in front of the man with the gun.

  While still in midair, Seamus kicked out, knocking the gun from the man’s hands. On his way down, he brought his elbow into the man’s nose.

  The cartilage shattered instantly. Blood spewed out in all directions. That had to hurt.

  But it didn’t stop him. On his hands and feet, he crawled toward his gun. In less than a second, Seamus calculated what was going to happen and the likely result. No matter how fast he was, the other man would reach the gun first. He’d mow Seamus down before he got halfway there.

  Unless Seamus did something to stop him.

  Seamus removed the glass flask from his pocket and pitched it with his best Nolan Ryan speed at the man on the floor. The alcohol drenched his lower body.

  Seamus had maybe two seconds before the man reached the gun. In that time, he pulled out the Bic, ignited it, used the rubber band to pin down the click switch, keeping it ignited, and threw it at the man crawling across the floor.

  An instant later, he was engulfed in flames.

  He beat desperately at the fire, but there was nothing he could do. The inferno spread with alarming speed. Five seconds later, his entire body was immolated. The cries sizzled down to whimpers and soon after that were gone altogether, lost in a hideous sea of flame and flesh. His body fell to the floor, motionless.