“Roger that, Bird Dog.  This is Leader.  Hunting Pack, get ready to intercept.  Remember, they are just doing their job.  Let’s try to make sure they go home to their families in one piece.  They might be shooting to kill, but we’re better than they are at their game.  Leader out.”

Twenty seconds later the right front tire of the transport van exploded.  Bird Dog had hit it with a .308 round from his sniper rifle.  A moment later the rear tire on the passenger side of the van blew from a second shot. 

“Transport Seventeen to base, we’ve been hit.  We’re just before Mount Collier.  Repeat, we’re under attack,” the driver shouted excitedly into the microphone hanging from the dash. 

“Ten-four, Seventeen.  Dispatching local units to assist,” the dispatcher replied before inquiring further what type of emergency they were having.

A tear gas cannister tore through the passenger side window.  The car following them had slammed into the back of the van, and the lead car was off the road, but he couldn’t see why, he assumed they had also been hit with something. 

Choking for breath, the two men in front of the van exited the vehicle.  Falling to their hands and knees, they could barely see and were clutching at their faces, choking.  Through the tears and smoke, Stevens, who’d driven similar transport vans for decades, saw what looked like a SWAT team or military assault squad come up out of the woods alongside of the road.  They were wearing camo battle fatigues and gas masks.  All were carrying rifles.  He heard the shouts but couldn’t understand them as he struggled to catch his breath. 

There was the muffled sound of suppressed gunfire.  Stevens wondered why it sounded different than normal.  He was pretty sure they were carrying M-4s.  He owned one and often took it to the range.  The 5.56mm round had a distinctive sound, and these didn’t sound like that or any other similar round he could identify.

As the guard tried to get up to return fire, he was hit in the back of the thigh by something.  Just before passing out, he saw one of the prisoners… he thought it was Ross, the guy that shot the Senator, being led away, still cuffed. 

“I need to see ID for the pre-paid phones, Sir,” she said, sounding as bored as she could.

“Sure,” JD replied as he reached for his wallet in his back pocket.  He slipped his license out and laid it on the counter. 

She picked it up, looked at it for a moment and started ringing up the transaction.  JD retrieved it and slipped it back into his wallet.  He took Jane’s hand and headed back out to the car Wayne had loaned him.  He hadn’t seen her record anything from his license and hoped she forgot all about him.

It looked like an undercover cop car.  In fact, it was a 2010 Ford Crown Victoria Police Interceptor, black with deeply tinted windows.  Wayne had picked it up at auction a few years back and done a resto-mod on it, beefing up the engine and suspension and giving it a few more luxury perks.  Mainly he used it for his semi-annual pilgrimages to Disney World.

JD tapped the key fob and the doors unlocked.  Jane hopped into the car seat in back and belted herself in while JD pulled out one of the phones.  He plugged in the charger and turned the phone on.  He glanced at his watch… there was about an hour before he was supposed to get in touch with Wayne. 

Was that really over eight years ago?  It felt like forever, and like it was just yesterday. 

Christi. 

He’d wanted to marry her.  He’d asked.  She’d told him “not yet.”  That was the last time he saw her.  Eight years, eight months, nineteen days.  Her long, auburn hair waved in the breeze.  Her bright green eyes glinted, like she knew a joke nobody else was in on.  She was the most beautiful girl he’d ever seen.  Tall, slender and the way she wrinkled her nose when she laughed.  He thought again about her eyes.  They danced when she looked at him and made his heart race.

But she had disappeared after that. 

He’d been back home on leave twice.  She was gone.  Her family was gone.  None of his friends knew anything.  None of her friends knew anything.  It was like she never existed.  Christina Tatyna Nova. 

The crowd jostled around him as he slowed to a crawl, lost in the past, shocking him back into the present.  He turned and looked for carousel E.  It only took a moment, then he spotted his two bags coming around the end. 

JD moved up to grab his bags, two big duffles.  He carried them away from the crush of passengers looking for their own bags, hoisted one to his shoulder and carried the other with his left hand. 

“I should have shipped at least one of these,” he said out loud, although really just for his own benefit. 

“Need help, soldier?” he heard over his shoulder. 

JD slowly turned to face the familiar voice, flooded with equal parts of excitement, hope and dread. 

Words stuck in his throat as he looked down into her bright green eyes. 

“Christi.”

Before he could react, her arms were draped around him, one wrapped behind his neck, and the other pulling him closer to her, wrapped around his back. 

“Where…” he began to stammer, but she shushed him and silenced him with a soft, passionate kiss.

“I missed you,” she said breathlessly as their lips parted. 

“Nobody knew I was coming home today.  How did you know I was here?  And what happened?  You disappeared,” he said quietly, while examining her lips with his eyes.

“We’ll have time for all that later.  For now, let’s get you home.  And then we can get a nice dinner and talk.  Ok?”

Despite her slender build, she easily swung the other duffle up to her shoulder.  She’d always surprised him with her strength.  She didn’t look like a woman that could swing a fifty-pound pack on her back and walk away like it was nothing, but that was just what she was doing. 

“Are you coming?” she said as she turned and smiled at him over her shoulder.

He jogged a few steps to catch up with her as she deftly moved through the crowd and out the doors leading outside. 

Luckily it was a cool, reasonably dry day in Atlanta, being mid-October.  He was right behind her as she dropped the bag at the back of a black, stretch Lincoln Town Car.  The driver had hurried around and was loading the first bag into the trunk. 

“Please, Sergeant Ross, let me get that,” he said as he pulled the bag off JD’s shoulder and easily deposited it into the trunk next to the other one.  Then, before JD could think about it, he was holding the door for Christi to climb into the back of the stretch limo. 

“Wow.  Quite the show,” he said to her with a smile.  “But I still don’t know how you knew when I would be here.  And where have you been?” he said as she slipped closer on the seat. 

Before he could push her for the answers to those, and many other questions he had for her, she quieted him with finger on his lips, followed by another kiss.  And another.  And another. 

Barris was waiting again for the cheers to die down.  He was tied in the polls with the current president, and even their internal polls were up in the air.  The crowd was chanting “Barris-Hayes, for the best of days” as the Senator looked on, smiling. 

“With your help, we can return our country to the greatness it once promised, not just for the rich, but for everybody.  We can reduce the deficit by making the wealthy pay their fair share,” Senator Barris said as the crowd cheered.

Elevator Man went to the office with the right view, in the northwest corner of the building, and carefully set down his bag, then opened the window.  He unzipped the bag and pulled out a hard case.  He popped the latches and flipped the top back.  He quickly and efficiently assembled his M2010 Enhanced Sniper Rifle.  It had been modified to break down into several pieces, each less than twenty-two inches long. 

“With your help, we can prevail and rid the country of the hatred we have seen festering for the last four years… the hatred emanating from the current occupant of the White house.”

Elevator Man lifted the rifle to the desk, back from the open window.  He zoomed his scope in to view small flag waving behind the man on the podium.  He made a minor adjustment to the scope.  He reframed his target and waited for his breathing to slow. 

When he was ready, and the timing was right, he gently squeezed the trigger.  A little over a second later, twelve hundred meters away, most of Barris’s head exploded in a cloud of blood and brain tissue from the .300 Winchester Magnum round entering just below his left eye. 

At almost the same moment the shot found its target, Elevator Man started breaking down his position.  He collected his brass.  Moments later he exited the elevator on the ground floor, walked to through the front door, past a pair of Capitol Police officers who rushed into the building well after he left.  He climbed into the van idling next to the curb and drove away. 

At eleven o’clock she figured out that wasn’t going to happen.  An oven in the shop had quit.  She called Bobby Gomez to see if he could fix it.  That was ten-thirty.  He got it fixed, but the back-up of orders was killing her.  Because of the terrible traffic in the tunnel it was going to take two hours to get to Norfolk.  Everything was working again, but she wouldn’t be there until at least one. 

“Nic, I can fix this,” Bobby had said. 

“How?” 

“Don’t worry about it.  You’ll be at the waterfront at noon.  Call your boyfriend back up and tell him you’ll be there on time.  Don’t argue with me.”

“Madi, can you talk sense into your man?” Nicole said, exasperated. 

“No, but I also know he’s never told me he could do something when he didn’t have a plan,” Madison Gomez replied.  “Trust him.”

Nicole relented and called Mike’s cellular number back and told him that she would be there.  She didn’t know how, but that a friend was arranging transport.  She assumed it would be by boat, but even that would be tight at this point. 

Bobby walked into Nicole’s office, “Do you have everything you need ready to go?”

“I’m ready.  Do we need to head out?”

“Patience, Grasshopper,” Bobby replied. 

A few minutes later she figured it out.  Maybe not as much figured it out as much as saw it.  Duke Smythe’s helicopter landed in the parking lot.

Duke casually walked across the parking lot to the building and walked in the door.  “Hey Nicole.  We probably should be on our way.  I don’t have permission to land here,” he joked with a smile.  He turned and casually headed back out, after picking up a couple of cookies from the counter.  Nicole was on his heels. 

***

Mike Holland was reporting from the Norfolk waterfront when a helicopter swept straight in from Indian River.  It wasn’t police or news, but it was interrupting his broadcast.  He asked to send the live feed to the studio while it landed. 

As he turned to look at the chopper, Nicole Dixon stepped out of the front seat.  She took off her headset, set it on the seat, grabbed a duffle bag, closed the door and walked straight toward him.  His cameraman shot the whole thing.

The production team never stopped Mike’s feed, so live over the air he said, “Damn, my girlfriend knows how to make an entrance.”

“No doubt,” he heard over his earpiece.

He was still looking at Nicole walking toward him when the chopper lifted off behind her and accelerated back to the north again.  Nobody stopped her as she walked right up to him.  She didn’t know he was live. 

“Hi Mike,” Nicole said, very relaxed. 

“Whose chopper?” Mike said.

“A friend.  He wanted some cookies,” Nicole laughed, with no idea that she was live in a couple hundred thousand homes. 

“Mike, you’re still live,” he heard in his earpiece. 

“Folks, her cookies are THAT good,” Mike said, recovering and looking at the camera. 

“We’re live?” Nicole said, looking at Mike, bordering on horrified at how that must have come across on TV. 

Mike just started laughing.  “That’s live TV, folks.  Back to you in the studio, Sandy… and we’re out.”

“Thanks for warning me Mike,” Nicole said, giggling.  “I look like an idiot now.”

“You?  I look like an idiot.  You look like the coolest chick in Hampton Roads.”  Then they both started laughing. 

“I gotta say, Nicole, Mike,” the cameraman started, “first, Nicole, your cookies ARE that good, and second, that was priceless.  That’s getting played at the station Christmas Party.”  Then he started laughing, too.