I instinctively head to the north. Towards the tunnel. The evacuation route for the President. I have no plan; I am merely reacting. I know I cannot let the President enter that tunnel.
What can I do? The Secret Service will have very itchy trigger fingers right now. A crazed girl in bloodied, smoking clothes, leaping out of the forest is going to get a bullet first, and questions later.
It is a problem. There has to be a solution.
I almost fall over the track and dodge back into the tree line just before a Humvee full of heavily armed marines exits the gate in the fence line at the bottom of the hill, and roars up towards me.
I think for a moment that I am too late, that this is the President being evacuated. But it just circles around the small clearing at the end of the track and heads back down the path. Checking the route.
I make myself invisible at the base of a tree as they pass me.
There are more boot-steps in the forest around me now. Another patrol of marines searching. They are preparing to move the President up this track. They need to know that there isn’t an army of terrorists waiting to ambush him.
I crawl across to a fallen log, ripe and rotten with age. There is just enough clearance for me to squeeze underneath, pulling some low brush across to provide extra cover.
The marines come close. I hear one of them stop, just a few metres away, and I am sure he has seen me, but the boots move on. I wait, sharing the space with various kinds of small crawling insects, some of which find their way inside my clothes. I don’t move.
The shotgun. That is my only chance. I have never fired a shotgun in my life, but I imagine it would do a lot of damage to a car tyre. Or a Humvee tyre.
If I can stop the vehicle I might be able to save their lives.
I look down the barrel of the shotgun. I have been using it as a crutch and it is clogged with mud. Firing it could clear the barrel, or it could kill me. I have no way of knowing which.
I find a twig and scratch at the mud, managing to scrape out some of it, but pushing part of it further up the barrel. I have no way of cleaning it properly, nor enough time. I will just have to take my chances.
The fire is heading in my direction. The smoke through the trees is getting thicker and I can feel the heat even here to the north, under my rotten, scabrous log. They are running out of time.
I duck down as the Humvee of marines returns. This time it stops in the clearing, to the side of the concrete structure that is the mouth of the tunnel. I see one of the marines move to a metal door that covers the mouth of the tunnel and unlock it. It isn’t hard to guess what that key looks like. It takes two of them to swing the heavy door open, flattening it back against the grey concrete wall. There are no lights inside the tunnel, it is just a black hole in the concrete.
The marines take up position, covering all angles as they guard the tunnel, waiting for the
President and the Vice President. But the danger lies not without, I am sure of this. It is within.
The gate in the fence line opens again and two Humvees emerge at speed, bouncing over ruts in the track. Not one but two of them. Of course two of them. One for the President and one for the Vice President. The realization is a kick to the guts.
Two vehicles. But I will have time for just a single shot. Even if I can work out how to reload the shotgun I doubt that I will live long enough to make it. Secret Service agents are travelling with the Humvees, up on the running boards, weapons out, ready for trouble. The moment I fire I will become a target.
One shot.
I could try and disable the first vehicle, block the track, but it is too wide for that. The second vehicle will be able to swerve past.
One chance.
One life to save.
The President or the Vice President? It was not a choice that any American should ever have to make. Maybe a professional would know what to do. Someone like Cam, dear Cam. My first true love. My first great delusion.
Vice President Reinhardt is a woman. A family friend. Should that make a difference to my decision? She is a young, vivacious woman, the first female Vice President. The mother of two young children. Her whole life lies in front of her.
Bateman is nearly seventy. He has lived a full life. But he is the President of the United States. He is my President.
I pride myself on solving problems. But this is a problem I cannot find a solution to. My mind seems clogged, sluggish.
All kinds of emotions are flooding through me. Fear. Anguish. Rage at being forced to make such a choice. Sweat is running into my eyes. My hands are shaking and I hope they’ll be steady enough to pull the trigger.
There’s no time to think this through rationally. But nor is there time for emotion. If I hesitate I will be killing them both. If I can only save one then surely that has to be the President.
I line up the shotgun and peered down the track at the Humvees racing up towards me. I flick off the safety.
Which car holds the President?
I peer through the windscreens, trying to make out faces.
I feel cold. My breathing seems unnaturally loud. There is a lump of concrete blocking my throat. I force myself to concentrate, sighting along the shotgun, lying on the ground, the barrel resting on a tree root.
The roar of the Humvees is louder now, vibrating the leaves on the bushes around me. The mud dampens my clothing. A spider crawls across my right hand, my trigger hand.
I feel the vibrations of the tyres. They are almost upon me.
I can see the faces. In that second everything changes.
The first Humvee is not carrying the President. The driver is a marine, the front seat passenger a Secret Service agent. In the rear are two women, one of them clearly Vice President Reinhardt, easily distinguishable by her bright red hair. The other woman has long strawberry blonde hair and I think she is an aide or a press secretary. The Secret Service agent in the front seat turns in my direction and I know him, although it takes a moment for my brain to accept what my eyes are seeing.
Cam told me he’d been reassigned. He never told me where. My former bodyguard and imagined lover is on the security detail of the most powerful woman in America.
He is sitting in the front passenger seat of the Humvee, riding shotgun in the first vehicle that will enter the booby-trapped tunnel.
Does he see me? I don’t think so. My face is dirty and blackened with soot. I am peering through the roots of an uprooted tree in the shadows of the forest. He cannot see me, but I cannot unsee him.
I fire. The shotgun jerks back against my shoulder. It is like being kicked by a horse and I scream, but the sound is lost in the thunder of the gun.
The tyre explodes under the twelve-gauge blast and the front right side of the vehicle drops, the rim digging into the dirt as the rubber shreds.
The Humvee slews sideways, sliding, skidding, coming to rest with a jolt against a solid oak just a few yards up the trail.
I hear shouting and screaming. I hear, “Go! Go! Go!”
The engine of the second Humvee roars and it flies past me, swerving around the tail of the first vehicle up the trail towards the tunnel. I see the face of President Bateman in the side window as it passes, his mouth wide open, shouting, maybe screaming.
The sound and flash of the shotgun has given away my position and I roll away from the log just in time. The tree trunk, and the bushes around me crackle and spit, dirt leaps in small, bullet-sized pockets, right where I was lying.
There is no chance. No hope at all. I cannot get away. Even if I could run I would not make it.
Still I try. I will not give in, not unless a bullet enters my body and stops my heart. I hobble and drag myself down the hill, parallel with the trail, the fastest way to get away from the soldiers and agents behind me.
I glance backwards to see how close they are and see to my utter horror Reinhardt’s vehicle moving again, grinding up the trail on three wheels and a rim, heading towards the tunnel.
There is a spark of red at the mouth of the tunnel, a flash of brake lights, as the President’s Humvee disappears inside. I wait for the explosion. But there is nothing. One Mississippi, two Mississippi. Surprise turns to misery to a new kind of horror. That of knowing that everything I did was in vain.
I stop moving, despite the crack of bullets into a tree trunk next to me. Unable to go on, unable to tear my eyes away from the opening to the tunnel and the crushing of everything I thought I knew. I am a child, playing a grown-up’s game. An amateur in a professional world. I have ruined my life and for what?
The second Humvee reaches the clearing and chews its way across the dirt towards the tunnel. A Secret Service agent appears out of the trees near me, jumping onto the track not twenty metres away. I am in full, clear view. She does not shout a warning. She does not tell me to lay down my weapon or to put my hands in the air. I get this. We are past that stage of our relationship.
She drops to one knee, aiming her weapon at me. I have time to notice that it is some kind of sub-machine gun as I see her knuckle go white on the trigger.
And then the tunnel explodes.