Hidden Empire (Empire 2)

"You have Bones in the trunk?" she asked as she ran around the front of the car.

"I couldn't do anything against them if I didn't," he said.

He pulled all his gear out of the car and onto the sidewalk, then slammed the trunk closed. The light had already changed, and some cars way back in the line were honking, but not the ones whose drivers could see what he was doing.

He put on a Kevlar vest, then pulled the Noodle onto his head and switched it on, hoping that he could tune in to their communications. But of course they had thought of that and he was shut out. Meanwhile, though, the Noodle had detected the components of the exoskeleton and the thing was already assembling itself on Cole's body. It must be highly entertaining to the drivers who were staring at him, to see the equipment essentially crawl up his body and lock in place, but he didn't much care who saw him put on the suit. He had the latest improvements—there had been quite a few since the models they used in Calabar had been made—but if there had been any tweaks since he got this one a week ago, the other guys would have them and he wouldn't. Couldn't be helped—they had better contacts within the design team than Cole had.

Once everything was on, he picked up his armament. With the Bones to help, he could have carried some heavy weaponry, as no doubt the jeesh was doing. But they might have to blast their way in and through many obstacles, while Cole was counting on being admitted legally. All he needed was antipersonnel weapons. It had to be able to punch through Kevlar, at least at close range. But no explosives, nothing that might hurt White House personnel. He had to worry about collateral damage. They couldn't worry about it—if they were cautious about that, they would probably fail in their mission.

So once again, he was going to be playing by a different set of rules from his enemy. But that was always the story for American soldiers.

He shouldn't let himself think through the emotional implications of having to regard Mingo and Drew, Benny and Arty, Babe and Load as "the enemy."Yet thinking was better than feeling, for every instinct told him that these were his comrades, his friends, and it would take thought to overcome those instincts. Opposing him in battle wasn't his choice, it was theirs. They had done their best to separate him from this, to make sure he wouldn't be blamed for it. They had no malice toward him. He also had none toward them. He would take no satisfaction from killing any of them. It would grieve him terribly, after the fact. But during this operation, they were renegade soldiers attempting to assassinate the President of the United States. He would be careful to try to avoid causing collateral damage, but he could not be careful and try to avoid killing his targets. On the contrary, he had no choice but to try for a kill every time, because they would not hold back. With soldiers like these, if you did not kill, you would die.

If he was lucky, the Secret Service at the White House would account for at least a few of the jeesh. The Secret Service had been beefed up with a lot of special ops soldiers and maybe, having been alerted, they'd even stop them all. Then Cole wouldn't have to shoot at his friends. But these six were the best of the best. They might still be weakened from the nicto, but, like Cole, they had been training hard to get back up to speed. And even at half-strength, because they had the Noodles and Bones there was nobody in the White House detail prepared to cope with what they brought to the field.

As he bounded over and between cars up M Street, Cole linked up with the drones that Wills had launched for him. He jumped on top of a bus that was crossing his route at Wisconsin, and when a District cop yelled at him to stop and started to go for his weapon, Cole bounded straight at him and slapped it out of his hand. If this guy started shooting at Cole, he might hurt somebody. "Sorry," Cole said. "No time."

He turned down Pennsylvania and then it was a straight shot to the White House. Of course, with the high alert they were on, he would look as suspicious as anybody, and he would need to stop his flying progress well before the White House. What worried him was the snipers that had been permanently stationed on the roofs of the buildings around the White House since the assassination a few years ago. Their job was to kill anybody behaving exactly the way Cole was behaving, no questions asked—and he wasn't in communication with them.

"Jeep, you there?" Cole asked his Noodle.

"Ay-ay," said Jeep. "White House knows you're coming. But no sign of your guys yet. You sure this isn't a false alarm?"

"Not sure of anything, but I still don't want the snipers to shoot me on the way in. I'm coming down Pennsylvania and I know there are guys on the other side of Washington Circle, on the IFC and down at H Street."

"I'll do what I can but they don't report to anybody I'm tied in to."

The drones had to stay out beyond the periphery of the White House no-fly zone, and all four of them reported the shooting and explosions at the same time. The guys seemed to be coming in south of the Eisenhower Building, at New York Avenue, but Cole assumed that it was a diversion—there was no reason for them to use explosives to get over the barriers, so they must have planted something that would fire a rocket at the security station there.

So Cole audibled the drones' pilots to watch the rest of the perimeter, especially Alexander Hamilton Place, but possibly coming over the top of the building on Fifteenth Street.

It was Hamilton Place. The drone pilot with the best angle counted all six, so the diversion had been triggered remotely—Cole doubted they would have brought anybody else into the plot, except himself if he'd been a true believer.

So they were on the White House grounds while he was still working his way down Pennsylvania. Even though Pennsylvania was the most direct route, since it pointed right at the White House, it was also the most formidably defended. Cole jinked south on Nineteenth to F Street and was able to bound his way along at top speed until the Eisenhower Building blocked him. The gate just south of there was where the diversion had been. And sure enough, there was a huge clot of security personnel running around looking for something.

And Cole was something.

He held up his ID and shouted his name. "I am Colonel Bartholomew Coleman, U.S. Army Special Forces! This was a diversion! The intruders are on the grounds on the east side, they came in over the fence at Alexander Hamilton Place!"

They heard him—the Noodle was augmenting his voice because he had told it to, another feature to help a man injured while wearing it.

"How do we know you're not one of them!" shouted a Secret Service agent who, like everybody else, was pointing a weapon at him.

"Because I'm showing you my damn ID and telling you where they really are! Now get your brains out of your shoulder holsters and go protect the President!"

He had wasted enough time on them now. Supposedly they had been forewarned that he was coming; certainly they knew he had ID. But that didn't mean one or more of them wouldn't shoot at him as soon as he took to the air. Couldn't be helped. He couldn't go the rest of the way at regular pedestrian speed and hope to accomplish anything. Thirty seconds' head start was enough for these guys to accomplish their mission, and they had at least a minute and a half on him.

He leapt up into the air, but followed a somewhat zigzagging route because, sure enough, somebody shot at him. It was only the one shot, however, and so maybe the rest of them had realized he was a good guy—the only good guy with armaments that could match what the bad guys had brought.

Cole was coming at the White House at the south end of the West Wing. If the guys had been able to achieve strategic surprise, they might have caught the President in the Oval Office or in the Rose Garden, but Torrent wouldn't have holed up anywhere that obvious.

Cole thought through the floorplan of the White House. Where would Torrent go? Nowhere in the West Wing, and certainly not the press area. The guys had come in on the East Wing side—did they know something? No, Torrent wouldn't be thinking geography and distance, he'd be thinking what was an unlikel

y place for him to be. A room that you wouldn't look for the President in.

Wouldn't be a bathroom—those were all designed as dead ends. And he wouldn't want a small space anyway. It would be too Sad-damish to be dragged out of a hidey-hole.

"Jeep, are you in contact with Security?"