“And don’t put in the password for the bloody version,” Hood said before handing one to the boy. “I don’t want my heart being torn out tonight.”
His son’s eyes went wide.
“That’s right. I know all about the A, B, A, C, A, B, B sequence on the Code of Honor screen. I watched you do it last time, and 1 had Matt Stoll tell me what it was all about.”
The boy’s eyes were still saucers as his father sat on the edge of the bed.
“Yeah … you don’t mess with Op-Center techno-weenies, kid. Or their boss.”
With the nebulizer mouthpiece held firmly between his lips, Alexander made a point of pressing just the Start button. Soon, the room was filled with grunts and sharp slaps as Liu Kang and Johnny Cage battled for supremacy on the video screen.
For the first time, the elder Hood was beginning to hold his own when the phone rang. At this hour, it could only be a wrong number or a crisis.
He heard the floorboards creak, and a moment later Sharon poked her head in. “It’s Steve Burkow.” Hood was instantly energized. At this hour, it had to be something big.
Alexander had used the distraction to hit his father’s proxy with two quick flying kicks, and as Hood rose Johnny Cage fell backward, dead.
“At least you don’t get to rip out my heart,” Hood said as he set the joystick down and headed toward the door.
Now his wife’s eyes were wide.
“Guv talk.” Hood said as he hurried past her, giving her a loving pat on the behind when he was behind the door.
The bedroom phone was a secure line, not a portable. Hood was on it for only as long as it took for the National Security Adviser to tell him about the explosion and to come to the meeting in the Situation Room.
Sharon sauntered in. From the bedroom, Hood heard the sounds of combat as Alexander battled the computer.
“Sorry I didn’t hear him,” she said.
Hood stepped from his pajama bottoms and pulled on his pants. “It’s okay. I was up anyway.”
She cocked her head toward the phone. “Is it big?”
“Terrorism in Seoul, a bomb blast. That’s all I know.”
She rubbed her bare arms. “By any chance, were you touching me in bed?”
Hood snatched a white shirt from the closet doorknob and half smiled. “I was thinking about it.”
“Mmmm … must’ve come through in my dream. I could swear you did.”
Sitting on the bed, Hood slid into his Thorn McCanns.
Sharon sat down beside him and stroked his back as he tied his shoes. “Paul, do you know what we need?”
“A vacation,” he said.
“Not just a vacation. Time away-alone.”
He stood and grabbed his watch, wallet, keys, and security pass from the nightstand. “I was just lying here, thinking that.”
Sharon didn’t say anything; her twisted mouth said it all.
“I promise, we’ll have it,” he said, gently kissing her on the head. “I love you, and as soon as I save the world, we’ll go and explore some part of it.”
“Call me?” Sharon said, following him out the door.
“I will,” he said as he jogged down the hall, took the stairs two at a time, and flew out the front door.
As he backed the Volvo from the driveway, Hood punched in Mike Rodgers’s number and put him on speaker.
The phone barely rang once. There was silence on the other end.
“Mike?”
“Yeah, Paul,” Rodgers said. “I heard.”
He heard? Hood scowled. He liked Rodgers, he admired him a great deal, and he depended on him even more. But Hood promised himself that if the day ever came that he caught the two-star General off-guard, he would retire. Because his professional life just wouldn’t get any better than that.
“Who told you?” Hood asked. “Someone at the base in Seoul?”
“No,” said Rodgers. “I saw it on CNN.” The scowl deepened. Hood himself couldn’t sleep, but he was beginning to think Rodgers didn’t require sleep. Maybe bachelors had more energy, or maybe he’d made a deal with the devil. He’d have his answer if one of his twenty-year-old girlfriends ever landed him, or when another six and a half years passed, whichever came first. Since the car phone wasn’t secure, Hood had to couch his instructions with care.
“Mike, I’m on my way to see the boss. I don’t know what he’s going to say, but I want you to get a Striker team on the field.”
“Good idea. Any reason to think he’ll finally let us play abroad?”
“None,” Hood said. “But if he decides he wants to play hardball with someone, at least we’ve got a head start.”
“I like it,” Rodgers said. “As Lord Nelson put it at the Battle of Copenhagen, ‘Mark you! I would not be elsewhere for thousands.’ ”
Hood hung up, feeling strangely uneasy about Rodgers’s remark. But he put it from his mind as he called night-shift Assistant Director Curt Hardaway and instructed him to have the prime team in the office by five-thirty. He also asked him to track down Gregory Donald, who had been invited to the celebration-and who he hoped was all right.
Tuesday, 6:10 P.M., Seoul
Gregory Donald had been knocked down three rows from where he’d been sitting, but he’d landed on someone who had cushioned his fall. His benefactor, a large woman, was struggling to get up and Donald rolled off, taking care not to land on the young man beside him.
“I’m sorry,” he said, bending close to the woman. “Are you all right?”
The woman didn’t look up, and only when he asked again did Donald become aware of the loud ringing in his ears. He touched a ringer to his ears; there was no blood, but he knew it would be a while before he heard anything clearly.
He sat there for a moment, collecting his wits. His first thought was that the grandstand had collapsed, but that clearly wasn’t the case. Then he remembered the crashing roar followed an instant later by the hit in his chest, a rolling impact that knocked him down and out. His head cleared quickly. A bomb. There must have been a bomb. His head snapped to the right, toward the boulevard.
Soonji!
Rising unsteadily, Donald waited a moment to make sure he wasn’t going to pass out, then hurriedly picked his way down the grandstand to the street.
Dust from the explosion hung in the air like a thick fog, and it was impossible to see more than two feet in any direction. As he passed people in the grandstand and then in the street, some were sitting in a state of shock, while others were coughing, moaning, and waving their hands in front of their faces to clear the air, many trying to get up or down or out from under debris. Bloody bodies lay here and there, riddled with shrapnel from the blast.
Donald hurt for them, but he couldn’t stop. Not until he knew that Soonji was safe.
The muffled sound of sirens tore through the ringing in his ears, and Donald paused as he searched for their flashing red lights: that would be where the boulevard was. Spotting them, he half walked, half stumbled through the powdery mist, sometimes stepping suddenly and awkwardly around victims or large pieces of twisted metal. As he neared the street he could hear muffled shouts, see hazy figures in white medical coats or blue police uniforms moving this way and that.
Donald stopped cold as he nearly walked into the wheel rim of a truck. The massive metal disk was turning slowly, shards of rubber hanging from it like dark seaweed from a galleon. Looking down, Donald realized that he was already on the boulevard.
He stepped back and looked to the right-
No. The other way. She’d been coming from the direction of Yi’s.
Donald tensed as someone grabbed his arm. He looked to his right and saw a young woman in white.
“Sir, are you all right?”
He squinted and pointed to his ear.
“I said, are you all right?”
He nodded. “Take care of the others,” he yelled. “I’m trying to get to the department store.”
The woman looked at him strangely. “Are you sure you’re all right, sir?”
He nodded again as he gently removed her fingers from his arm. “I’m fine. My wife was walking there and I’ve got to find her.”
The medic’s eyes were strange as she said, “This is Yi’s, sir.”
As she turned to help someone leaning against a mailbox, Donald stepped back several steps and looked up. The words had hit him like a second blast and he struggled to draw breath into his tight chest. He could see now that the truck had not only been knocked on its side, but blown into the facade of the department store. He squeezed his eyes shut and clutched the sides of his head as he shook it vigorously, trying not to picture what might be on the other side.