He dragged Charley back with him to the ground and dropped out of Middleton’s sight. The crowd was surging around them, thousands of people in a stampede to get out of the amphitheatre.

Middleton hunched and bent his knees to lower his center of gravity, being jostled as he went against the tide, making it over to where they’d fallen—nothing. Blood on the ground, Archer’s pistol in pieces, no trail.

Middleton had made a career out of helping others. He’d never asked for anything in return. Right now, as the spooked crowd streamed around him, he wished otherwise.

Connie Carson and Wiki Chang sat in the cargo area of an MV-22B Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft, U.S. marines around them, game faces on, M4 assault rifles ready. They took off vertically as a helicopter would, the flying style converting to that of an aircraft as the two massive engines charged forward for horizontal flight and they were hammering hard and fast to the north.

Squashed between a marine three times his size and Carson, Chang hugged his backpack so tight it seemed he wanted to crawl in there to escape the incredible noise inside the cabin, as two other Ospreys flew in close formation.

He’d held on but no more—Chang threw up into the bag he’d been given by the crew chief. Carson patted him on the back.

“You’re . . . smiling?”

“Been a while since I’ve done an infil with marines,” she said, cheerleader exterior masking a former door-kicker with the U.S. military. She was not so much taking to the situation like a duck to water, but rather felt a happiness like a pig rolling in filth. She scratched at the fiberglass cast on her arm. “It’s not really like a computer game, is it?”

His teeth felt like they were rattling out of their sockets. As the marine seated next to him slapped a box of rounds into his M249 SAW and cranked a round into the chamber, Chang shook his head.

Chernayev called his name over the radio.

Middleton scanned around, stood tall and tried to look over heads and was almost knocked over—there, behind the press pool, the assembly still corralled in their cordoned-off area below and out of the sightline of the president, while POTUS was being evacced and the civilians exfilled en masse. Not even all the number of security personnel present were able to control this crowd moving as one.

“Over there!”

Middleton followed Chernayev’s outstretched arm and pointed finger—

Archer dragging Charley back toward the raised VIP area, the sound of a helicopter behind him.

“Two minutes!” the marine CO yelled. “Masks!”

All the marines donned gas masks.