Declan O’Neill hiked his rucksack higher on his shoulders and trudged down the sidewalk in downtown Washington, DC. The last time he’d seen so many people in one place, he’d been a fresh recruit at US Marine Corps Basic Training in San Diego, California, standing among a bunch of teenagers, just like him, being processed into the military.
He shouldered his way through the throngs of sightseers, businessmen and career women hurrying to the next building along the road. The sun shone on a bright spring day. Cherry blossoms exploded in fluffy, pinkish-white dripping petals onto the lawns and sidewalks in an optimistic display of hope.
Hope.
Declan snorted. Here he was, eleven years after joining the US Marine Corps...eleven years of knowing what was expected of him...of not having to decide what to wear each day. Eleven years of a steady paycheck, no matter how small, in an honorable profession, making a difference in the world.
Now he was faced with the daunting task of job hunting with a huge strike on his record.
But not today.
Why he’d decided to take the train from Bethesda, Maryland, to the political hub of the entire country was beyond his own comprehension. But with nowhere else to go and nothing holding him back—no job, no family, no home—he’d thought why not?
He’d never been to the White House, never stopped to admire the Declaration of Independence, drafted by the forefathers of his country, and he’d never stood at the foot of the Lincoln Memorial, in the shadow of the likeness of Abraham Lincoln, a leader who’d set the United States on a revolutionary course. He’d never been to the Vietnam War Memorial or any other memorial in DC.
Yeah. And so what?
Sightseeing wouldn’t pay the bills. Out of the military, out of money and sporting a dishonorable discharge, Declan would be hard-pressed to find a decent job. Who would hire a man whose only skills were superb marksmanship that allowed him to kill a man from four hundred yards away, expertise in hand-to-hand combat and the ability to navigate himself out of a paper bag with nothing more than the stars and his wits?
In the age of the internet, desk jobs and background checks, he was doomed to end up in a homeless shelter. With his last ninety-eight dollars and fifty-five cents burning a hole in the pocket of his rucksack, he’d decided to see the country’s capital before he couldn’t afford to. As for a place to sleep? He could duke it out with the other homeless people for a back alley or a park bench. Maybe he’d get lucky and someone would slit his throat and put him out of his misery.
He paused at a corner, waiting for the light to change and the little walking man to blink on in bright white.
As he waited, he noticed a couple of dark SUVs sandwiching a long, sleek white limousine. Not that he hadn’t seen at least half a dozen limousines pass in the last twenty minutes he’d been walking. But he was standing still now and had nothing else but the backs of people’s heads to stare at.
The lead SUV turned on the street in front of Declan.
Before the limousine could follow suit, a white van erupted from a side street, tires screaming, and plowed through the people traversing a crosswalk to cut off the white limousine before it could make the turn.
Another white van followed the first and raced to block the rear of the limousine, effectively bracketing the big vehicle.
Men dressed in dark suits and ties jumped out of each of the dark SUVs, weapons drawn. They’d only taken two steps when the sliding doors on the vans slashed open and men in dark clothes and ski masks leaped out, carrying submachine guns.
“Get down!” Declan yelled. He grabbed the blond-haired woman in the fancy skirt suit beside him and shoved her to the ground as bullets sprayed into the men in suits from the SUV. Declan threw his body over the woman’s, shielding her from the rain of bullets.
The men and women surrounding him dropped to the pavement out of fear or injury. Ladies screamed, children cried and chaos reigned.
While the gunmen from the white van continued to fire toward the pedestrians, more men piled out of the vans and raced for the white limousine. They yanked at the vehicles’ doors, but the handles didn’t budge.
One of the attackers aimed at the handle and pulled the trigger on his handgun.
The limousine door burst open. A black-suited bodyguard poked a gun out and fired.
The man who’d shot the door handle edged out of range, jammed his handgun through the door and pulled the trigger.
Over the top of the other side of the vehicle, another man in a dark suit emerged from inside the limousine and aimed at the man who’d just shot one of the limousine passengers.
From his prone position, Declan watched as it all went down. Whoever the security detail was guarding must have been important enough for trained gunmen to stage such a daring operation in the middle of the day, on a crowded street.
Unable to stand by while people were being attacked, Declan shrugged out of his rucksack and shoved it toward the woman he’d pushed to the ground. “Watch this,” he commanded. “I’ll be back in a minute.”
The woman lay with her cheek to the ground, her eyes wide, a frown marring her pretty features. “Where are you going?”
“I can’t just stand by and do nothing.” He bunched his legs beneath himself and pushed to a low crouch.
A hand reached up to capture his arm. “Don’t. They’ll kill you.”
“If nobody does anything, they’ll kill everyone in that limousine and the security detail that was supposed to protect them.”
“But you’re only one man.” She stared up at him with soft gray eyes.
“Just watch my ruck. Everything I own is in that bag. And stay down.” He didn’t wait for her response. Instead, he ran to the side of a Lincoln Town Car that had stopped short of the vans and SUVs caught in the crossfire.
The driver lay sideways in his seat, the front windshield having been peppered with bullet holes. He wasn’t moving, his eyes open, unseeing.
Declan moved on, keeping the body of the sedan between him and the men wielding submachine guns. He waited for the shooter closest to him to turn away before he pounced, throwing the man off-balance and pushing him to the ground. With a combination of surprise and strength, he took the man down and jerked his head back with a decided snap.
The man hadn’t even fired another round. He lay still, unmoving at Declan’s feet.
Declan retrieved the attacker’s submachine gun and moved to the next man closest to him. Again, his