Alex continued toward the vehicle that had brought her. She searched the crowd madly for Robert but still couldn't find him. She thought she saw Reynolds on the ground with a wound, but when she altered her course and ran ten feet in that direction, the man rose and staggered with the help of another man. She was no longer sure what she had seen.

Someone gave a command for all American security people to show badges and ready weapons. She drew her handgun. She moved toward her car.

Then Alex saw that the presidential limousine had taken a direct hit. The driver writhed in the front seat. His face was covered in blood. She knew she couldn't do anything for him. Half his head was missing. He was still moving, but she knew he would die. She could do nothing.

She ran toward her own vehicle. Bullets were hitting everywhere. She spun around; the wreath lay under a body that looked Ukrainian. She turned in another direction and the complete lack of reality slammed home. Two agents whom she didn't know had the president between them. They had automatic weapons drawn and were looking for a car to use to escape. The president's own car had taken a devastating hit. So had the backup limo. They were within ten feet of her, then five, then ran smack into her.

"Here!" she screamed. "FBI!" she shouted, identifying herself. "Here! Here!"

They looked. There was the number-two armored Mercedes, abandoned by the Ukrainians. She threw open the door. The keys were in the ignition. She threw open the backdoor.

The Secret Service agents looked at her and understood. They abandoned their prearranged emergency routines. They just wanted the president out of there. They pushed the president in and covered the president's body with their bodies.

For a brief moment, Alex surmised that Ukrainian security had been infiltrated by traitors. The RPGs must have been the first line of attack. Gunmen on the ground would probably be the second.

American English: a man's voice. "Out of the way, lady! Out of the way!" A marine major in uniform-the driver for the Benz-blindsided her, grabbing her shoulder and yanking her out of the way. She hit the ground hard.

Just then, Alex discovered she was right. Combat between forces on the ground. Two men with automatic handguns and ski masks made a move toward the driver's side of the Benz, confronting the driver.

The marine whirled with his sidearm, but he wasn't fast enough. The gunmen fired. The marine's eyes went wide in disbelief as the bullets threw him against the side of the car. The gunmen were only a few feet from the president.

Alex stared at the enemy for less than half a second, understanding the moment perfectly. She raised her Walther. They didn't expect that from a woman. They turned on her, but turned too late.

She was younger, faster, and smarter, and somehow G.o.d seemed to guide her hand. It was Colosimo's all over again, but this time for keeps.

She fired six shots, back and forth, back and forth, back and forth.

What happened would replay itself in her mind for the rest of her life, every surreal moment. Before either a.s.sa.s.sin could fire a shot at her, Alex saw her bullets shatter the front of the one man's face and rip a hole in his neck. His weapon flew from his hands and he sprawled backward.

She hit the second man in the sternum. He was heavier and stockier, but no match for a .9 mm round, even from her old Walther. He managed to squeeze the trigger of his weapon, but the shots flew into the sky.

Crimson pools burst from his chest as he fell.

She lurched quickly to her feet. The marine was dead on the ground beside her, the left side of his neck and face shot to pulp.

In every direction, everyone was running through a hornets' nest of automatic weapons fire and rockets. Remaining Secret Service agents closed in on the limousine. From behind her, in the backseat, two Secret Service agents huddled against the president, their weapons up.

One of them yelled, "Driver down! You! Get in!"

She knew this part of the drill too. Service procedure was to get Einstein out of the Red Zone as fast as possible. She turned and looked. The Service people meant her. She should drive.

For a split second, Alex could see the face of the president, as dazed and terrified as the guards. Like any battle, everything had gone exactly to plan until the first shot was fired.

She holstered her weapon and slid into the front seat of the vehicle. The front window was cracked but not shattered. It had been hit hard twice and showed the points of impact. But it had held. G.o.d bless Stuttgart engineering.

"I'm FBI!" she said to the agents in back.

"Get us moving!" one of them barked back. "Drive!"

Alex gunned the engine and found it responsive. "Hang on!" she ordered.

She remembered the route from the airport. She put the vehicle in gear. There was a crunching impact under the tires and she knew she was driving over the fallen bodies of the two men she had shot. In the backseat, radios crackled as the agents gave their location as well as Einstein's.

She sped out of the square. Other security vehicles fell in stride with her. She got out of the square and hit the main roads. There was still a ma.s.s of confusion, people dazed and gawking, others fleeing, some sitting by the highway in tears.

From somewhere there was a final explosion, and the car shuddered as if it had been hit again with fragments of metal. A new crack appeared on a rear window.

The vehicle now had a slight wobble to it, which told her that the wheels had been hit. She wrestled with the shuddering steering wheel. The car went into a skid at about fifty miles an hour, but she turned into it and pulled the vehicle out.

She hit a straight section on the motorway. The president started to sit up and look around, immensely shaken and surprised to be alive.

In the rearview mirror, other American vehicles were not far behind. Coming up on them, however, a brigade of four motorcycle riders. Friendly or enemy? No one knew.

"I got four outriders," she said to the agents behind her. "I don't know who they are!" She was doing seventy miles an hour and the riders were rapidly overtaking them. Four of them!

She heard the window go open directly behind her. The sound of the wind was deafening. Sirens blared everywhere. One of the Secret Service agents leaned out the vehicle from the chest up, brandishing his machine gun, looking for more trouble, waiting to see if there was the slightest hostile sign from the riders.

They were in Ukrainian military uniforms and were easily doing a hundred miles an hour. The radio in the car crackled.

"They're ours! They're friendlies!"

"I don't trust anyone," the second agent said.

The riders came up to the car. The agent leaning out the window had his automatic weapon trained on the nearest one. But the leader of the motorcyclists gave a friendly hand sign and pointed toward the airport. They were there to lead the way, or at least said they were. Alex maintained her speed. The motorcycles went on ahead and formed a wedge.

Gradually, the sound of gunfire ceased. Alex drove for seven minutes. She hit the access road to the airport. There, on a heavily guarded tarmac up ahead, sat the president's backup helicopter.

Uniformed American soldiers indicated the way for the limousine. Alex drove the vehicle directly toward the chopper and brought it to a halt fifty feet away. The rotors were already noisily spinning. The air was filled with the sound of engines, distant sirens, and violent curses.

The back doors of the limousine flew open. The Secret Service agents hustled the president out and quick-stepped to the chopper.

Alex stood by the driver's side of the door and watched the president disappear up the ramp. Her eyes drifted to the vehicle. Battered cha.s.sis, cracked windows, shredded tires. How had it had gotten there? And she realized she was trembling, at least inside. She looked everywhere for Robert but didn't see him. A horrible feeling swept her, a fear and anxiety unlike anything she had previously known.

"Oh, G.o.d, please ... ," she heard herself mumbling A man appeared next to her. He identified himself as the ranking Secret Service agent on the tarmac.

"You drove?" he asked.

"Yeah. I drove," she said flatly.

"Good job! Orders are to get all our people out of here as fast as possible. We're not waiting for anyone."

"I'll stay here. I-"

"Get in the chopper," he said.

"I-"

"Get your a.s.s in the chopper! Orders! There's only one seat left!"

"Okay."

She took a step. He reached out and put a hard hand on her shoulder. "I've never seen you before, but you sure done good today."

"Thanks."

She turned and ran to the ramp. The ramp came up practically while she was still on it. She found the remaining seat on the helicopter and slid into it. Seconds later, the helo lifted off.

Her head was pounding. Her insides were ready to explode. Though no one could see it, fear riddled her and she kept repeating prayers in her head. The gun weighed heavily in her pocket and the images of the carnage on the ground in Kiev kept spiraling back to her, as did the visions of the two faceless men she had shot.

She closed her eyes, drew a breath, prayed that Robert had gotten out the same as she had, and she opened her eyes.

She hadn't realized it, but she was sitting right across from the president, who was staring at her.

The chopper lifted higher into the sky and headed for Air Force One, which was just a few minutes away at the international airport at Borispil.

Her heartbeat plunged back into double digits. The president nodded gently at her. "Thanks."

"Yeah," was all she could say.

She tried to look out the window but there was no visibility. She remembered the dark clouds that had covered Kiev on arrival and realized that was exactly where she was right now.

On the flight to the international airport, no one spoke. What was there that could be said after what everyone had witnessed, after what had happened?

Alex leaned back and closed her eyes. Her hand drifted to her neck, searching for the small cross to touch, to ma.s.sage.

Somehow somewhere in all the horror, the chain must have broken. The cross was gone. It wasn't in her blouse or anywhere on her or on the floor of the chopper.

It was just plain gone.

FORTY-FOUR.

The president boarded Air Force One at Borispil amidst vast confusion. Alexandra found a seat by herself in the pa.s.senger section.

She closed her eyes, and much as she had done before leaving on this trip, she tried to disappear into prayer, beseeching heaven that what had happened back in Kiev hadn't looked as bad as she thought it had.

Sometimes prayers are answered. Other times they are not.

Much of the time, human events have no order, no logic, no good side. They can only be as good as is made of them afterward.

So it was today.

The flight back to Washington was fourteen hours. Before arrival, news of the terrible toll on the ground in Kiev had made its way through those survivors on Air Force One.

There were already forty-two confirmed fatalities on the ground. Injuries were still being tabulated.

Seven were members of what appeared to be a filorusski a.s.sa.s.sination squad.

Twenty-three were Ukrainian civilians, including eleven Foreign Service nationals who worked for the emba.s.sy.

Twelve remaining casualties were American citizens.

Of those, seven were emba.s.sy employees whom Alex didn't know.

Then there were the five whose names did mean something to her.

The amba.s.sador, Jerome Drake, was dead.

So was Richard Friedman, her control officer.

The note taker from the meetings, Ellen Higgins, had come out at the last minute to get a look at the president and take a photograph. She too had been killed.

So had Reynolds Martin, a.k.a., "Jimmy Neutron," who, along with another agent, had immediately blocked access to the president when the first RPG had landed.

That left one casualty, of which Alex was informed an hour before landing in Washington.

Special Agent Robert Timmons, partnered with Reynolds Martin, had been the other agent to immediately protect the president. He too had been hit with shrapnel at the outset of the attack. And he too had died on the spot.

FORTY-FIVE.

In a private room at Josephs Air Force Base when Air Force One returned to Washington, spokes people for various government agencies had sought to give out proper information updates and make some sense out of chaos and tragedy. Meanwhile, Secret Service agents in Washington, picking up the fallen standard, whisked the president to the well-fortified compound in the Catoctin Mountains of western Maryland.

In a first-floor corridor at Josephs, banners welcoming home the travelers were torn down and replaced with long sheets of paper. Magic markers were stuck with Velcro to the wall under the paper, so that anyone could write tributes to those who had died in Kiev.

Then, in the tragedy-numbed days after Kiev, Alex a.s.sumed the role of a widow to her late fiance. She phoned his parents in Michigan and broke the horrible news to them, rather than have them hear it from someone they didn't know. She talked to a small crowd of distraught Secret Service employees who had gathered on the tarmac in Washington when Air Force One returned. The death of her own fiance barely sinking in upon her, she shared what Robert had told her to say if disaster struck, that he had died doing what he had wanted to do, that he had given his life in service to a country he loved.

News media made much of Alex's personal story. They wanted to talk to her. So did the radio and TV talk shows. Publishers contacted her about possible books.

She wanted none of it. Fame, if that's what it was, had been thrust upon her at a terrible price. She declined all the offers. She tried to disappear from public view, but reporters waited for her at Treasury and at her apartment complex. With the loss of the man she had so deeply loved, all sense, color, and flooring dropped from her days.

She was put on mandatory administrative leave with full pay. She was debriefed several times, by Treasury, by the FBI, and by Michael Cerny.

Then, a week after her return to the United States, Alex flew to Michigan for Robert's funeral. Like Kiev on the day he died, it was bitterly cold. The arctic wind swept down from central Canada to drop the entire state well below freezing. But it felt even colder because Robert's parents had to do what no parent should ever have to do: bury a son.