Election Day (John Taylor #6) - Chapter 14

Washington, D.C.

The time for the Senator’s speech at the hotel came and went, and Taylor couldn’t get anyone on the phone to tell him if anything had happened. Thankfully, they at least had working TV on the plane. News coverage was enough to confirm that Hubbard hadn’t taken his shot by the time they landed and had to shut the TV off.

She hadn’t left, so there was still time, but Taylor was pretty sure if Hubbard was going to do something, he would have done it earlier rather than later. While her schedule was pretty tight, especially for when events started, there was always some wiggle room near the end, depending on how long it took to talk to reporters and maybe work a rope line. Trying to time something so late in the event would have left a lot more to chance than Hubbard’s entire career would have trained him to be comfortable with.

The SUV they’d been assigned was still waiting for them at the airport when they landed, and Taylor left the sirens on until they were almost at the convention center. They managed to beat Caldwell, but the margin was close. Pulling up to the curb near the main entrance, Taylor and Whitaker leaped out and sprinted inside. Normally, their badges wouldn’t have been enough to allow them into a location already cleared by the Secret Service, but these agents all knew they were on the task force, and let them by.

As the agent in charge of Caldwell’s detail, Cole wasn’t there himself. Taylor did recognize the head of one of the advance teams, although they’d only met in passing during the first task force briefing. Taylor made a beeline for him, hoping once more he could talk some sense into these people.

“Johnson, right?”

“What do you need, Taylor?”

“I’m guessing Cole called you already,” Taylor said, hearing the exasperation in his voice.

“Yes, and before you ask, we’re not going to stop the event. We swept the whole place this morning and again this afternoon after you called Cole. We ran chemical sniffers and bomb dogs through every room in the building. We checked every employee already cleared against fingerprints and pictures on file. We’ve had an agent on every door into the building since we checked and no one not on our list has gotten in. We’re secure.”

“I know you and Cole know your jobs. I’m not questioning your competence Johnson, but you have to understand, this guy has been trained to do all of that. He knows the playbook, which means he knows what he needs to be able to get around it. This guy has gotten close once and he’s not done. This is the last public event till the election. This is his last shot. I guarantee you he isn’t giving up.”

“Look, you want me to sweep again, I will, but we aren’t going to cancel anything. Only Cole can make that call, and he’s made it clear he isn’t going to. I appreciate your concern and I know Cole’s been a bit … pig-headed about this, but he’s still the boss and I still have a job to do.”

“Yeah, sweep it once more. I’m going to do a once over, if you’re okay with that.”

“Sure, knock yourself out.”

Taylor had a bad habit of lumping all of the agents he dealt with by their worst members. He only had to look to Whitaker who, despite her reluctance to go against the book, was capable of changing with the situation and flexible thinking.

Taylor had only made it a few steps when he saw Packer stomping towards him.

“Not now, Packer.”

“I’ve had just about enough of you. I don’t care what the Senator thinks of you or what special powers you think you have, I’m not going to let you screw this up. This place is crawling with press already and more are on the way. The Senator will be here in ten minutes and we’ve got this thing completely orchestrated. You need to leave. NOW!”

Packer had been building up a head of steam through most of that tirade, and it would have been impressive if he hadn’t trembled like a leaf while issuing his last command. Regardless, Taylor wasn’t going to let a little weasel like Packer get in his way.

Taylor stepped into the man’s personal space, glowering down at the shorter man.

“Or what? I’m an armed federal agent, or at least enough of one to have a badge. You’re a little piece of shit who schemes and backstabs his way through politics, always looking for a way to fuck the other guy over. You’re going to what; have the Secret Service throw me out? What, you think these guys like you? Unless they get a direct order from their bosses, they aren’t going to do shit to help someone like you. How about this. I drag your ass down the hall to an unused room, beat the ever-living shit out of you, and leave you hogtied up and out of my way until I catch Hubbard, how about that?”

With each sentence, Taylor moved closer to Packer, forcing the man to take a step back each time. On the last step, Taylor shoved Packer, sending him skidding across the floor.

“John,” Whitaker said, grabbing Taylor’s arm and pulling him back a step, away from Packer.

“I don’t care how much the Senator likes you,” Packer said, his voice quivering, as he stood back up. “I’m going to make sure she knows exactly what kind of animal you are. I swear to God, I’ll make sure you get yours.”

Packer turned and stormed off, still shaking.

“He’s made a lot of friends over the years,” Whitaker said. “You shouldn’t have pushed him.”

“We can’t worry about that now,” Taylor said. “Let’s go.”

Johnson had been true to his word. As Taylor and Whitaker went through the convention center, they passed men with portable electronic boxes and dog handlers going room to room, checking for traces of explosives.

Taylor knew both weren’t going to be enough. Both the bomb detectors and dogs worked on the same thing, trace elements of specific explosives in the air. While one smelled them and the other broke down air samples chemically, they were both limited to checking for specific things. The dogs were trained using a range of known explosives such as nitrite or ammonia and the devices only knew what they were programmed for.

Dinitrophenol was a lesser controlled explosive and almost certainly not one that dogs had been trained to sniff out. While the detectors could be programmed to find Dinitrophenol, that would require Cole to have passed the information they gave him on to his techs and for the techs to have been able to update the detectors. Taylor didn’t know if adding new chemicals to the detectors database was something a field tech could do or not, but he wasn’t willing to bet everyone in this building’s life on it.

“This isn’t working,” Taylor said, stopping after they checked another room.

“We don’t even know what we’re looking for,” Whitaker agreed.

“Okay, he’s done this before, right?”

“Yeah, he blew up our apartment.”

“Right, but we don’t know the details of that yet, except that the explosion was controlled enough to not damage much else besides our apartment. We also know this stuff was designed to implode and didn’t need a large explosion, just enough to set off another device and smother it. We’re also pretty sure that he killed the VA investigator, but that came back to a gas leak. What if the reason he used a gas leak wasn’t just to cover his tracks.”

“I’m not sure I follow.”

“This stuff isn’t used to fill bombs and couldn’t be used packed in a trunk as part of a car bomb. It’s a specialized, stable explosive, right? Did he have to use the gas to make sure the explosion was large enough? Did he have to use the gas in our apartment to get it to blow the way it did, and used charges to shape the direction of the blast?”

“Maybe. So what?”

“If he uses the same stuff here, which considering how OCD he is, it seems likely, how’s he going to do it? He can just have a bunch of it sitting in a room, waiting to go off. He’ll take out … what, just that room? For this to work he’d have to basically put it right under her feet under the floor to get the Senator. The Secret Service might be target-focused, but they wouldn’t have missed that, and Hubbard knows it.”

“So you think he had to set up the device to set off something else?”

“Right. Places like this have kitchens, multiple water heaters, whatever. They have gas lines all over the place.”

“So he’s set it on a gas line?”

“Maybe, but he has to be sure the blast is large enough. This is his last show; he’s not going to go halfway, not anymore. He’s not going to care about collateral damage, not when he thinks the fate of good vs. evil is on the line.”

“You think he’s going to try and blow up the entire convention center? There’s going to be hundreds of people here.”

“I know, but I guarantee he doesn’t care.”

“This is a big place. How’s he going to do it? McVeigh needed to have a cargo truck packed to the roof with ammonia nitrate and he only took out part of the building. This place might be smaller, but we know Hubbard’s explosive is a lot less powerful. He’d have to cover the gas lines with the stuff to get the explosion to cover the whole place.”

“Come on,” Taylor said, turning and dashing down one of the corridors.

Whitaker didn’t ask, she just followed behind him. They’d briefly looked at a building map when they started checking rooms and Taylor seemed to remember a maintenance room on the map. After a few twists and turns through the back area hallways, he found the room, which held a lot of tools and a man in overalls with his name sewn onto one pocket.

“Jeff, I need your help,” Taylor said, reading the man’s name and holding up his badge.

“Uhh, sure.”

“Where does the main gas line come into the building?”

“In the basement, well … kinda.”

“What do you mean, kinda?”

“The basement here has always had some issues. It gets flooded kind of regularly, cause of how low the district is and how high the water table is. They couldn’t put the main truck and split-offs there, cause they were worried about corrosion. It’s not so bad on the pipes themselves, but places where you have joints splitting off can be more problematic. So they decided to put solid pipe going up a floor, well two actually, since the design of the first floor had already been worked out when they decided it. It’s why there’s that one weird half pillar against the one wall. They walled it off and kept it going up to the next floor, and turned that into an exchange room. Darndest thing I’ve ever seen, but it works.”

“So there isn’t access to the main gas line until the exchange room on the second floor?” Whitaker asked, slightly confused.

“I know. Like I said, darndest thing.”

“Show me where it is,” Taylor said, not caring about the design peculiarities of the building.

“Well, it’s right here,” the maintenance man said, pointing at a map of the building they had up on the wall. “We keep it locked up though.”

“Give me the keys for it.”

“I’m not supposed to…”

“Badge,” Taylor said holding it up and putting his hand on his holstered weapon. “Gun. Give me the key.”

“Right. Sure. Don’t get your pants in a twist.”

As soon as the key was in his hand, Taylor sprinted out of the room.

“Taylor,” Whitaker said, chasing after him. “Wait.”

“Cant’ wait,” he said as he dashed into a stairwell, taking the steps two at a time. “I know how he’s going to do it.”

“You think he’s going to put it on the main gas line?”

“Yes. It’s the only way he’ll make sure to get the whole building and guarantee he gets the Senator.”

“If he sets off an explosion on the main gas line, won’t it travel to the nearby buildings? Hell, he’ll probably blow himself up if he’s close enough to make sure she’s in the building before he sets it off.”

“Probably, but he won’t care. Fanatics love making themselves martyrs.”

They made it to the door of the room, helpfully labeled, and unlocked.

“Maybe the Secret Service would have left it unlocked after checking it?”

“The room to the main gas lines? No, they would have locked it back up.”

The room was warm and, oddly, had a window on one side, looking down to the street. It wasn’t a large window, a little wider than Taylor himself and going floor to ceiling. It probably had already been here and the room was designed for something else before they decided to move where the gas lines came together. They wouldn’t have wanted to compromise the outside look of the place, so they would have just left it.

Taylor moved through the room, slowly going over each inch. A large pipe came up through the floor and then split off, pipes splitting off near the ceiling and disappearing into the walls, probably above the drop ceilings in areas other people could see. Halfway up the main pipe, where the first connecter was screwed, wedged against the wall, Taylor found the device. It wasn’t large, maybe the size of a baseball mitt, and was thinner than Taylor had thought it would be. It wasn’t visible until you basically put your head against the wall and looked at it directly. There were all kinds of wires going in and out of it.

“Shit,” Whitaker said when he moved out of the way to give her space.

“No kidding.”

“Do you know how to disarm it?”

“No. I wouldn’t try even if I did. I’m not on Hubbard’s level, not even close, and you know he built in anti-tamper devices to slow anyone trying to take it apart down. Go get the bomb squad. They’ll have someone.”

“What about you?”

“I’m gonna stay here with it.”

“John, if it goes off …”

“Everyone in the building will be dead. I may go first, standing next to it, but I won’t be in any more danger than anywhere else in here.”

“Right,” she said.

She gave him a quick, hard kiss and ran out the door.

“Of course, I’d prefer if it didn’t kill me,” Taylor said to the empty room, looking across the pipes.

The bomb wasn’t like it was in the movies. There weren’t blinking lights or a cell phone. It was basically a box with brackets that wrapped around the pipe with wires coming in and out of it. From the other side, the metal brackets didn’t look out of place and someone not in the know would probably not think twice. It hadn’t occurred to Taylor that they shouldn’t be there until he passed it and looked at the back of the pipe.

Just looking at the device, it seemed like it shouldn’t be hard to remove. The bracket itself was held on by a screw on the outside of the pipe, so all he had to do was remove the screw holding the two ends of the bracket together and pull the thing off. Of course, there was no way it was actually that easy. If Taylor had to guess, it probably was set to go off if the tension on the two metal strips loosened.

Taylor stepped back, staring at the pipes. This was way beyond his pay grade, and from the looks of the device, it would probably take the bomb squad guys some time to diffuse it. They’d want to x-ray it and identify any possible triggers or traps before they tried to take it off the pipe, and there was no way they had that long. The only reason he hadn’t blown the thing yet was because Caldwell hadn’t made her big entrance yet.

Taylor looked away, out to the street. As if on cue, he could see several black vehicles coming down the street in a small convoy. In the middle of them was a bus decked out with Caldwell’s name on the side. Packer hadn’t missed a trick, making this as much of a spectacle as possible.

A small crowd was gathered on the sidewalk below him, waiting. Taylor’s eyes passed over everything, taking in details. It was something they were taught. When walking a patrol, they were trained to keep their head on a swivel. The key was to not try and stop and analyze every leaf or stone. Instead, they just took in everything and, over time, learned to listen to that voice in the back of their heads that told them something was off, out of place.

That voice was screaming at him now. He’d seen … something.

Taylor scanned the crowd again. Massed together, people all kind of blended together, aside from the occasional person dressed in enough color to stand out. What Taylor had seen wasn’t any of that.

In front of the crowd several spaces, on the other side of a police barricade that separated them from the onlookers, were news media. They’d already had cameras set up and anchors speaking into handheld microphones, announcing the arrival of the candidate for her last rally before the election. Behind them were uniformed metro police officers, mostly to keep the crowd in check and from pushing forward too much, not that Caldwell was one of those more rock star type candidates who tended to drop out early in the primaries.

Neither of those was who grabbed Taylor’s attention. Behind them, bunched up against blue police barricades, were maybe fifty or so onlookers. These looked to be mostly people who’d seen the commotion and stopped to gawk. A few steps from the back of the crowd, not far from the window Taylor was looking through, was a man in dark pants, a tan windbreaker, and a tan hat. Taylor was practically looking down on him, and his face was mostly covered, keeping him from seeing what the man looked like.

Three things caught Taylor’s attention. The first was the way he flinched when another onlooker brushed past him to get a closer look, like he was injured. It wasn’t something like a bullet wound; the reaction was more subtle than that, more like someone whose upper body was very sore. Of course, that could just be a guy who’d hit the gym a bit too hard the day before.

The second was the way he was acting. He was focused on the convoy of cars, but he kept his head tilted strangely. His hat was pulled low on his head, practically to his eyebrows, and it was as if he was trying to look across the brim of his ball cap, his chin tucked in, so as to show as little of his face as possible while still looking into the distance.

The third thing was what really grabbed Taylor’s attention. In his right hand, he held something, flat and down near his leg. Only the people at the very back of the crowd would have been able to notice the device at all, and even then it wouldn’t have been obvious. The man wasn’t furtive or twitchy, in fact he stood very still, watching the approaching cars. Taylor stared at his hand, trying to figure out what it was. Finally, the man moved, just a little, adjusting his balance, and Taylor got a better look at the device. It was long, cylindrical, with some kind of button on the top, almost like a pen, but much thicker.

Taylor was sure the man was Hubbard and the device was some kind of trigger for the bomb he was currently standing next to.

The cars pulled to the curb and Caldwell’s security detail piled out, checking the street for danger before letting her out. Hubbard was waiting on Caldwell to go inside before he set the device off, and there was no way Caldwell’s security would notice him. Not so far back on the other side of a large crowd.

There wasn’t time to warn them and there wasn’t time to run downstairs. In less than a minute, the Senator would walk through the front door and they’d all be dead. Taylor had already looked at the window when he first checked out the room. The window was thick, double-paned to help regulate the temperature in the building.

Pulling his weapon Taylor started forward and fired four times into the window, the shots spread out across the face of the glass, to break up both panes as much as possible. There was still a lot of resistance when his body hit the glass. He’d thrown his whole weight against it and it gave, but only just. The cracks from the bullets were enough to let him through, however. He didn’t have a lot of momentum, but he didn’t need a lot. Hubbard was just below him, so he didn’t need to go far, just enough to clear the building.

Taylor was on the second floor, high enough to get hurt if he hit the concrete, probably a broken bone or two. He wasn’t, however, planning on hitting the concrete. The suddenness of the gunshots and crashing glass coupled with his complete focus on the people unloading from the cars twenty yards away was enough to stun Hubbard into inaction. He looked up as Taylor smashed into him, the collision knocking the wind out of both men as they crashed to the ground.

Unlike Hubbard, who’d been completely surprised by the sudden impact, Taylor had been prepared for it. When they cashed to the ground, as Hubbard tried to get his wits about him, Taylor grabbed the man’s wrist and slammed it onto the pavement, smashing his wrist. Taylor felt bone go, and Hubbard’s hand opened, sending the trigger skidding across the sidewalk a few feet.

Taylor had never been much of a brawler, his training teaching him to rely on distance and firearms. There’s a thought that everyone in special operations was some kind of trained killer with their hands, but that wasn’t true. Sure they received some hand-to-hand training, but it was honestly not that extensive. Much more time was spent on small unit tactics and marksmanship.

Thankfully, Whitaker had been working on him. He wouldn’t ever be skilled as Whitaker, or probably Kara the way she was taking to it, but he’d been making progress. Hubbard had been closer to Taylor’s skill level than Whitaker’s, more focused on his specialty than learning to grapple.

Hubbard wasn’t out of it for long. Taylor had turned his body towards Hubbard’s right side, his focus on getting the trigger out of his hand, which left him exposed. Hubbard’s left arm wrapped around Taylor’s neck, yanking him back, starting to cut off Taylor’s airflow.

Because of the way Taylor was lying across him, the hold only cut off Taylor’s air, instead of isolating him from counter strikes like some of the holds Whitaker had shown him. Taylor drove his elbow hard into Hubbard, who was still struggling to get his breath back. His hold slackened enough for Taylor to take in a gulp and roll over, putting his body between Hubbard and the trigger.

Hubbard wasn’t out though. He rolled the other direction, coming up on one knee, facing Taylor. He glanced at the trigger and realized he couldn’t get to it, not with how Taylor was positioned. He could, however, get to Taylor’s gun, which had knocked loose when they collided. Throwing himself sideways, he rolled, grabbing the weapon with his right hand as he did.

Taylor moved. Hubbard was already coming up, the gun lifting into position. Taylor didn’t have time to grapple the man again, not before he got a shot off. Instead, Taylor grabbed Hubbard’s hand holding the grip with both of his own hands as he dropped, pulling the weapon and attached arm perpendicularly, his back towards Hubbard.

The gun roared and Taylor felt the heat of the burning gasses burn his side. The lead bullet made a whizzing sound as it skidded across the ground and Taylor could only hope that none of the onlookers was caught by the ricocheted bullet.

Taylor rolled back until he lay on Hubbard’s upper arm, clear of the elbow, and lifted up on Hubbard’s gun hand, which wasn’t difficult considering the superior leverage he had. The gun fired again, this time pointing up and at a wall as Taylor slammed it into the concrete like he had Hubbard’s left hand. The zing of the ricochet sounding out again. He heard someone scream in pain outside of his line of vision, but he couldn’t do anything about it now.

People were screaming now that there was gunfire right next to them and footsteps could be heard going in every direction. Taylor could also hear the policeman who’d been on the other side of the barrier yelling for people to clear out of the way, but they wouldn’t get to them in time. There were just too many people panicking between them and the pair wrestling on the ground.

Hubbard’s free arm wrapped around Taylor’s neck again, squeezing hard, but unable to get a good lock with the broken wrist. Taylor ignored it and the decreased airflow as he slammed Hubbard’s wrist into the concrete a second and then a third time. The gun fired again, another whizzing chunk of lead randomly veering off towards fleeing bystanders.

Hubbard screamed on the third blow, and his fingers released the weapon. Taylor made a grab for it now that it was free, but their thrashing as Hubbard released the weapon caused it to sail free, skidding out of reach. Taylor pulled back, into the chokehold until he felt himself roll up on Hubbard’s chest and could feel the man’s hot breath against his neck.

As Hubbard tried to squeeze the chokehold tighter, his now freed arm joining in the attempt, Taylor slammed his head back, smashing into Hubbard’s face. Pain shot through Taylor’s skull as something wet splashed against his bare neck and down the back of his shirt. Slamming his head into Hubbard’s face again, he felt the man finally go slack.

“Freeze,” a uniformed police officer said, suddenly looming over them.

Taylor thought he could see the tip of the bullet down the barrel of the weapon the man pointed at him.

“Fe…” Taylor tried, his voice failing him.

The pressure against his throat had slacked when the rest of Hubbard’s body went limp, but the man had done enough to make it hard to get the words out.

“Wait,” another voice called behind the officer. “He’s a federal agent.”

Taylor was finally happy to see Cole’s face as it came into view.

Pointing towards the now discarded device Hubbard had been holding, Taylor forced out the words, “Trigger. Bomb.”

Cole nodded, getting the gist. Taylor rolled off Hubbard to allow the officers to check on Hubbard and get him in cuffs. After a moment of resting on his chest, catching his breath, Taylor pushed himself up. Stretching out as he stood, he picked up his weapon and holstered it, every muscle in his body screaming at all the abuse it had just suffered.

Looking past where the crowd had once stood, past the news cameras now turned to point at him, he made eye contact with Senator Caldwell, standing frozen next to one of the SUVs.