Ria Aldenburg shook her head to clear it, then climbed back up to her knees, her mind still not quite processing that she’d been shoved to the ground along with a friend of hers. All around her men punched and shouted, police swung batons, college students and anti–Turkish government protesters kicked and shoved, ran and chased, bodies slammed into the ground, and splatters of blood soared through the air in arcs as fists met faces.
Ria rose all the way up now, thought about running, thought about grabbing a fellow rallygoer still on the ground and helping him up, but before she could decide on a course of action, a large man in a black suit came charging at her from the sidewalk, just five meters away. She looked into the man’s eyes and saw a seething fury, and she realized he held a squat black object in his right hand and was in the process of raising it over his head.
She knew she was this man’s target, and he would be on her in an instant.
Ria put her hands up in front of her, a futile gesture, she had no doubt.
The big man darkened the sun as he loomed over her, and she began to close her eyes, not accepting her fate but too paralyzed with fear to prevent it.
The man swung his arm down, swinging the object he held with it.
And then…he was gone, and the sunlight returned.
A figure had flown through the air on Ria’s right. A man in a suit, his body parallel with the grass beneath her. He’d collided with her attacker, sending the approaching man sideways to his right.
Both men hit the ground and rolled, and then the brown-haired man in the suit began fighting the darker-haired Turkish security officer for the item clutched in his hand.
The new arrival took hold of the object, then swung it violently in a backhand across the Turk’s left temple.
The big security man for the president of Turkey instantly fell to the ground and went limp on his back in the grass.
Ria didn’t have time to focus on her protector because she was suddenly grabbed from behind and spun around. A woman’s voice in her ear shouted, “Miss Aldenburg! Come with me, we’re getting out of here!”
Ria and the woman holding her began running around the statue of General Sheridan in the middle of the circle, and the young girl’s mind was even more confused about what the fuck had just happened.
Josh Duffy dropped the leather sap onto the unconscious body of the man he’d just taken it from, and then he shoved away two people who had pushed against him from behind. One was a DC Metro motorcycle officer, and the other a Turkish counterprotester in a jean jacket, but Josh was only concerned about getting the young Dutch woman into the armored vehicle and keeping any attackers off her and his fellow agent.
He took off behind Millibrew and Aldenburg, but as he neared the statue he identified a new threat. To the right of the two women Josh saw another Turkish security officer climb back up to his feet, having been knocked down by a cop who had now turned his attention to a counterprotester mercilessly kicking a college-aged boy in the fetal position.
As the man rose, Josh saw a rage on the Turk’s face that instantly told him the man had lost all control of his emotions, and there was no telling what he’d do next.
Josh was twenty feet from him as the security officer reached under his coat to his right hip.
Fuck, he thought. Dude’s going for his gun.
Josh put his hand on the grip of his own pistol, but he did not draw; instead he kept running at the man, used his left hand to grab the man’s wrist as the Turk pulled his pistol free of its holster, then slammed into him, sending him back.
The gun made its way into Josh’s hand as the man fell onto his back, but as soon as the Turk hit the grass he did an acrobatic back roll, made his way back to his feet, and then charged.
Josh tucked the Turk’s firearm into his waistband under his coat, then dropped his pepper spray, because he knew that it wouldn’t stop this guy.
The Turk took a wild swing; Josh pivoted away on his prosthesis, then spun around and landed a spinning back fist against the side of the man’s face.
The strike wouldn’t have been much if the Turk hadn’t had his own momentum working against him, but the impact stunned him, and he stumbled, then fell face first onto the steps up to the Sheridan statue.
Josh again broke into a run.
He looked up to see that Stephanie had control of Ria Aldenburg; the young woman looked back in his direction, and he could tell she’d taken a hard blow to her left cheek. It was dark and swollen, but at least she and Millibrew were still on their feet and closing in on the limo.
Duff started after them but only made it a single step before he was clutched from behind in a powerful bear hug, arresting his forward progress.
From the size of the man, he realized it was the same guy as before, and his fury was apparently more powerful than Josh’s punches.
But the man made a tactical mistake by holding him too close. Josh slammed his head back, shattering the Turk’s nose and causing him to loosen his grip. Spinning around, he punched the man once with his right fist, directly in the attacker’s bloody broken nose, and now the Turk fell to the ground screaming.
The American was moving again instantly.
He made it to the north side of the statue now, just fifty feet or so from the lead Suburban. He saw Stephanie put Ria inside it; the EU minister was already in the limo with the door shut now, no doubt pulled there by Ames.
Now Josh only had to get back to his SUV and then all three Suburbans would get the hell out of this mess.
But then it happened. A protester knocked to the cold ground by an attacker rolled in front of him; Josh tried to leap over the body, but his carbon fiber left foot caught the raised leg of the innocent man.
Duff went down hard, chest first, slamming into the grass just beyond the prostrate rallygoer.
He began to climb back to his knees, but he sensed movement on his right.
He turned just in time to see a black dress shoe moving in a blur towards his face.
And then the lights went out.
Josh Duffy sat upright in a hospital bed; his winter coat, his suit coat, and his tie had been removed, and he wore a thick bandage on his head.
He repositioned the ice pack behind his neck; he felt the effects of the morphine drip, but still his head throbbed, and his forehead stung under the thick bandaging there.
The door opened and Chuck Ames entered, followed by Special Agent Millibrew.
“How you feeling, slugger?” Ames asked.
“Slugger? Did I punch somebody?”
“Yeah, you wailed a tune on three or four guys. I’m sure your hands will start hurting soon enough.”
Josh touched the bandages on his forehead now. “They’re fine for now, but it feels like I punched somebody out with my head.”
Millibrew looked at the bandage. “Eleven stitches, the doc says.”
“No big deal,” Duff replied. “A little embarrassing, though.”
Ames looked over the bandaging now, as well as the scratches on the other parts of his face. “They say anything about whiplash?”
“More than I wanted to hear. It’s a given. No concussion, but they said however bad my neck feels right now, tomorrow morning is when the fun really starts.” He shrugged; it was painful to do so. “Not the worst thing that’s ever happened to me.”
Ames said, “That’s a pretty high bar, though, I’m sorry to say. You did one hell of a job out there. I wish I’d been there to help you, but—”
“But Ria wasn’t the principal, and you had to protect Aldenburg. I know that, Chuck.”
“Good.”
He looked around. “What about the pistol I took off the—”
“We’ve got it, along with your piece and your gear. Two cops came up behind the guy who kicked you and tuned him up with their nightsticks, dropped him right next to you. I guess the Turks will get their gun back eventually.”
Josh just leaned back into the ice on his neck. “Gotta love diplomatic immunity. They won’t even get a slap on the wrist.”
“Wouldn’t be so sure. Eleven protesters injured,” Stephanie said. “Two seriously.”
Duff noticed Millibrew staring at him, a look of bewilderment in her eyes.
“What?”
She said, “Everything that happened to you in Syria, in Lebanon. In Mexico. I have to ask…does this kind of shit just follow you around wherever you go?”
Josh laughed a little. “In my experience, usually when guns are pulled, guns are used. I’d say this turned out pretty low-key.”
“Thanks to you,” Ames said. “If you’d shot that Turkish agent when he drew on you, you’d have been within your rights, but you’d have created one hell of an international incident that nobody wanted.”
Stephanie added, “And you might have kicked off a bloodbath in that park.”
After a few minutes the two DS agents left, and five minutes after they’d gone Josh heard an authoritative female voice out in the hall, demanding to know what room Special Agent Duffy was in.
Here we go, he thought.
The door opened and Nichole Duffy raced in, a look of concern on her face. “What the hell, Josh?” She embraced him carefully. “How do you feel?”
“Like some guy used my head as a soccer ball.”
“I heard.” She looked over his bandage, then kissed him on the lips. Tightening the muscles in his face to kiss her back pulled on his stitches and hurt. Nichole said, “This is where you say, ‘You should see the other guy.’ ”
Josh closed his eyes and smiled, and that hurt as well. “I wish I saw the other guy. All I saw was his foot about an inch from my face.”
“My God.” She shook her head in amazement. “They told me you took down three of them before you got knocked out.”
“Really? Badass.” He fought through the pain of another shrug. “I honestly don’t remember.”
She leaned closer, holding his hand. “I’m proud of you, but I really wish when you left for work every morning I had a high confidence that you were going to come home uninjured.”
“Makes two of us, Nik.”
“How do you feel…otherwise?”
“Otherwise?”
She shrugged. He knew what she was talking about, but he hoped she’d let it go.
She did not. “The panic attacks. The nightmares. The PTSD. Are you feeling…okay after what happened today?”
Duff smiled. “Maybe it’s the morphine, but I’d say I feel pretty damn good at the moment.” And then a new thought popped into his drug-clouded brain. “Wait, have you gotten your posting yet?”
She didn’t seem as though she wanted to change the subject, but after a moment she nodded. “I have.”
With a little smirk he said, “Please tell me we aren’t getting posted to Istanbul.”
She laughed. “Nope.” After a pause, she said, “If I could be sent anywhere in the world that you wanted, where would that be?”
Josh wasn’t sure of the answer she was looking for. Sure, Paris or Luxembourg or Berlin would be amazing, but Josh was most interested in his wife being sent someplace where there was also a need for a new Diplomatic Security agent. Otherwise, he’d have to take a leave of absence from DS to follow her and try to find some other mundane job at the embassy he could do while she worked a Foreign Service Officer position.
He said, “There are about five openings for DS at places where there were FSO openings, so honestly, I hope they are sending you somewhere I can be useful, too.”
She squeezed his hand with a grin on her face. “They did. We’re going to Ghana, Africa. There’s a political officer position there for me and a DS opening for you there, too. You’d be a lock to get it, especially after those hijinks you pulled today.”
Josh had known they could be sent anywhere, and he’d spent the last year looking over various postings, wondering where they might go. He knew a little about Ghana, enough to know it had the most stable democracy in all of West Africa. He also knew it was a big installation, with over one hundred fifty Americans at the embassy, and a local staff several times that size.
Nichole said, “I checked. Really great schools, and residential housing looks nice.” She squeezed his hand again. “I have to leave in three months.”
Josh thought a moment. “I’ve got six months till I can go.”
She said, “Yeah, we have some logistics to work out, but we’ll get it all arranged.” She kissed him again. “Promise me you’re not going to get into any more fracases here while I’m gone.”
He promised, and they embraced again; it hurt him to do so, but he laughed as he grunted with the pain of her squeeze around his neck.
“Here’s to getting out of D.C. and getting into someplace safer.”
“Like sub-Saharan Africa,” she said with a smile.