The Fallen: A Derek Stillwater Thriller by Mark Terry Read Free Book Online

Administration.

Chapter 14
    Richard Coffee and El Tiburón completed setting out the special wine and champagne bottles around the ballroom. Unnoticed, they slipped into a storeroom and changed out of their catering uniforms and into the uniforms of the Secret Service technicians— dark pants, white shirt, dark tie, and dark windbreakers. They carried credentials supplied by their inside man, Vincent Silvedo. They plugged in the earphones and throat mics for their surveillance kits, which allowed them to stay in touch with their own people, and with a flick of a switch, monitor the Secret Service security network.
    The storeroom contained extra chairs and tables and the carts to transport them. It was loaded with boxes and crates containing extra sound equipment, platforms, and backdrops for the stage in the ballroom.
    El Tiburón, whose real name was Pablo Juarez, used a pry bar to carefully open the crate containing guns, explosives, and other equipment. Juarez liked guns, but he really liked explosives. C4, Semtex, dynamite, claymores, ammonium nitrate, it didn’t matter. He was an expert with them, having been trained by the CIA during the late ’80s when he was only a teenager living in Colombia. Trained, rewarded, betrayed, and hunted. He had fallen, and now they would pay for their betrayal.
    He moved the explosives into a separate container. Coffee picked up the special device, his pride and joy, and carefully laid it in the center of the crate. El Tiburón smiled. He thought Coffee— The Fallen— was a genius. A madman even by his broad standards, but brilliant. El Tiburón had learned valuable lessons from The Fallen— have more than one plan; create backups for your backups; make the enemy think one thing while planning something different; think big and think global.
    On top of the explosives and other equipment El Tiburón placedflashlights, probes, and tools that the service used in preparing a security site. If anybody bothered to check, they would pass inspection, at least for a few moments. If anybody got that close to discovering them, El Tiburón and Fallen were prepared to kill without hesitation.
    El Tiburón sealed the crate with an official Secret Service seal provided by Silvedo. He looked over at The Fallen, who was studying a floor plan. The Fallen looked different than he had only months before. His hair was blond, his face clean-shaven, eyes covered by tinted wire-rimmed glasses.
    “¿Está listo?” Are you ready?
    The Fallen nodded, folding the floor plan away in his pocket. “Si. Armenos una trampa para algunos ratones grandes.” Yes. Let’s set a trap for some big mice.
    El Tiburón laughed. “Asi es que es la verdad. Si construye un ratonera major todo el mudno correrá a su puerta.” So it’s true. If you build a better mousetrap, the world will beat a path to your door.
    “Si. Y doblar la rodilla por miedo y respeto.” Yes. And bow at your feet in fear and respect.
    With a mutual laugh, the two men pushed the crate and dolly out of the storeroom and into the hallway.

Chapter 15
    After finishing with the lights, Derek used his phone to call Steve Planchette, his boss. “I’m over at the International Center. Anything else over here?”
    Planchette’s voice was as easygoing as usual. The man just never seemed ruffled by anything, even the thought of twenty world leaders and their staffs pissing and moaning about cobwebs or toilets being backed up. “Not over there, but come on back. One of the walk-ins isn’t holding its temperature, there’re some problems with one of the ranges and there might be a problem with some electrical stuff in the kitchen, too. You mind?”
    “No. I’ll be right there.”
    “Thanks, Mike.”
    Derek clicked off and began the long trod back to the Cheyenne Center through Secret Service checkpoints. He was amused that Steve didn’t seem uptight with the kitchen problems. The caterers and kitchen crew must be flipping out.
    He’d find out soon