Total Power by Vince Flynn & Kyle Mills

Author:Vince Flynn & Kyle Mills
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Atria/Emily Bestler Books
Published: 2020-09-15T00:00:00+00:00

* * *

The yelling became audible when Voronova was a little more than five blocks from the J. Edgar Hoover Building. She tried to detour around it, but no matter what she did, the infuriated shouts of what sounded like hundreds of people followed.

One of the reasons she’d left at the crack of dawn was to avoid this. A high-pressure system had moved in overnight, bringing blue skies and still air that would coax people into the streets. But it was barely eight fifteen in the morning and still well below freezing. Who rioted in that? Why not wait until afternoon, when it was supposed to climb into the forties?

With no better option, she set herself on the shortest route to the FBI’s headquarters and crossed her fingers.

What she found when she arrived was well beyond anything her imagination could have devised. It wasn’t an informal gathering of a hundred scared, frustrated people in danger of losing hope. It was a near riot consisting of what must have been a thousand people, all targeting their rage directly at the FBI. Her pace slowed and she finally came to a halt in the middle of the road. The building appeared to be completely surrounded. Barricades had been erected and men in riot gear stood just behind them, absorbing the screamed insults and occasional projectile thrown by the crowd. Some protesters had crafted handmade signs talking about freedom, America, and the Constitution. A good half were armed—many with assault rifles. A bottle glinted in the sun as it arced through the air and shattered against a Plexiglas shield.

She’d never had any illusion that she was the only person listening to the conspiracy theorists on the radio, but she’d never dreamed that their influence could spread so quickly. Or so powerfully.

Eight days. That number kept swirling around in her head. The time it took to get something from a particularly slow mail order catalog. Or to secure a dentist’s appointment. Or to abandon her latest New Year’s resolution.

She took a hesitant step forward, but then stopped again. Even if she had an official SVR badge and a letter of introduction signed by Boris Utkin himself, it wouldn’t matter. The chance of her fighting her way to the barricades were pretty much zero. And the chance of her then embarking on a detailed explanation of her identity and suspicions was even less.

She would have laughed if she weren’t about to break into tears. The FBI was desperate for information and she was standing outside their headquarters with just the intel they needed. But there was no way to get it to them.

And that begged the question, what now?

She couldn’t climb the drainpipe to get back into her courtyard until it was too dark to be seen. Another nine hours at least. What about a pay phone? Were those even a thing anymore? And if they were, was 911 still operational? The FBI undoubtedly had a phone number, but how would she find it? She hadn’t laid eyes on a phone book in years.

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