~Chapter 8~

~Chapter 8~

“Hey, Sharky, your phones off again.”
Josh was in the Security Bunker when Nathan burst through the door and shoved his blue razor phone up to Josh’s ear.
Callaway’s voice came through, urgent and slightly panicked.
“The car we found outside the perimeter fence, it was a bomb. We didn’t find anything at first, but when we started it up to move it through the gate it detonated. WE think whoever left it actually integrated the bomb into the car’s engine so we wouldn’t detect it unless we literally took the car apart.”
Josh sat back, stunned.
“Was anyone hurt?”
Callaway paused and swallowed hard.
“Most of us were packed up and leaving when it blew. We lost four of our agents and one local police officer. And, Sir..?”
Callaway’s voice cracked, “Agent Rosas was standing almost right next to the car when the bombe detonated.”
It took Josh a moment to take that in.
“Is he still alive?”
“Sir, there wasn’t enough left of him for anything to be alive.”


“Are you joking!?”
Josh had just told Lucy Vale the news about Rosas. She now stood before him in the performance hall, a look of fear and panic gleaming in her eyes.
She ran her hands through her hair and looked away a moment before glancing back at Josh. It was obvious she was trying hard not to loose it.
“This had better be one damn sick joke, or I’ll…”
“It’s not a joke. Agent Rosas is dead.”
Vale almost fell into a chair.
“Oh my god… oh my…”
And, unexplainably, she burst into tears.
Josh was shocked to say the least. He had worked with Lucy Vale in the Marines, they had both seen comrades shot down next to them, and she had never reacted like this. For once Josh didn’t know what to do.
So he let her cry uncontrollably for a few moments before trying to help her on her feet.
“I’m sorry; I know he was a close friend.”
Lucy started crying harder. She was almost wailing at this point. Tears streamed down her face and she was shaking.
Josh tried again, “Lucy, we have a job to do, we don’t have time to mourn at thing moment.”
He tried to put his arm around her shoulders, but she knocked his hand away.
“You don’t get it, do you!?”
She looked up into his face, pain and rage filling her red-rimmed eyes.
“You can’t understand; he is gone!”
Josh was taken aback by the vehemence in her voice.
“What don’t I understand?”
Lucy Vale almost screamed her next sentence.
“Ralph Rosas and I were engaged!!!”

Josh didn’t have time to react to Vale’s exclamation, because at that moment almost every fire alarm in the building went off at once. Josh left Lucy in the performance hall and ran at top speed to the Security Bunker.
When he got there, Nathan and the rest of his team where staring in horror at the security screens.
The screens showed the whole outside of the mansion was on fire.

Pyros loved his job. Known and feared throughout the criminal underworld as a cunning and ruthless arsonist, he didn’t care who or what he burned; he just wanted to see it burn.
In truth, Pyros wasn’t all that clever. He stole most of his ideas from other arsonists, and then made sure there was no one around who could lay claim to the idea. He had actually only ever had two original ideas.
One of those ideas was the “Fire Bomber”, Pyros’ Cresco crop-duster. He had bought the craft in New Zealand during a job and had the bright idea of lining the inside of the cargo containers with an industrial-grade fire retardant. This done, he could now “dust” a target with a flammable substance and get away without getting caught. Originally relying on an unstable substance like nitroglycerin to ignite his concoctions, he had recently installed an igniter that would allow him to rain down liquid fire on his victims.
The second idea he had was his “Fireball Cocktail”. A mixture of different chemicals including but not limited to dimethyl ether and diethel ether peroxide, his “Cocktail” was extremely flammable, would burn for a long time unchecked, and was extremely hard to extinguish.
And Pyros had just dropped his entire cargo on the Gold Estate.

It took seven hours and all the available fire trucks the city’s fire departments had to put out the fire. They found out quickly that water was ineffective, Pyros’ cocktail burned like a grease fire and the firefighters needed to foam the building before they could get it all extinguished.
Josh and Nathan helped out with the firefighting as much as they could while Agents Al Bono and Allen Jones escorted Lexy, Gwyn, and a few other s to the Whitehouse to join the President. Josh figured that, after the car bomb, it would take a while for anyone to set up another attack, and it would be safe for Lexy and the others for the moment.
Lucy Vale wouldn’t move from her chair in the performance hall. She sat, rocking back and forth and sobbing. She barely responded to either Josh or Bono, and Josh feared that they had lost her for all intents and purposes.
Not that he didn’t understand what she was going through. In fact, he still had nights where he couldn’t sleep and sat up all night feeling exactly as he knew she felt right then. So he left her to mourn and made do with the resources he had at his disposal to get the fire put out and the Estate’s grounds secured.

It was two tired and dirty men who tread wearily into Matt Gold’s office nearly nine hours since the firebombing. Both Josh and Nathan smelled of smoke and firefighting foam.
Nathan dropped onto one of the couches in the center of the room, and for once Matt didn’t mind the ex-Marine’s presence.
Matt turned to Josh, “You look like you tried walking through Hell.”
Nathan looked up from the couch.
“Ah feel like ah did, got any beer?”
Matt shook his head, “I’m sorry, but not on me.”
Josh sat down on the other couch, tired and sore, but not beaten by a long shot.
“I think the hit on your estate was carried out by a man called Pyros Lite. He is a professional arsonist who is known in crime circles as “Firelighter”.”
Nathan grinned at Matt, “Guess where he got that name from.”
Josh threw Nathan a warning look and carried on with his report.
“The Estate is intact and no one was injured. The fire actually never made it past the outside wall of the building.”
Matt nodded, “That is good.”
“But you might want to get new siding, the old stuff in kinda singed.”
Nathan smiled up at Matt, but the President ignored him.
“And what of the car bombing?”
Josh shrugged, “I haven’t had much time to look that over. It’s obvious I was the target and it was very well carried out. The only thing the bomber missed out on was the fact that you reassigned me from your personal security detail to that of your daughter’s. Otherwise he might have gotten me.”
Nathan had his eyes closed by now.
“Nah, you to damn hard to kill, Sharky. You’d have brushed off the glass and scrap metal and gone off to kick the ass of the jerk who set the bomb in the first place.”
Josh slapped Nathan on the shoulder and started out of the room.
“Come on, we have some more investigating to do.”
Nathan muttered something unintelligible and pulled himself off the couch.
Matt called Josh back just as he was about to leave the room.
“What about Agent Vale?”
Josh came to stand behind the couch Nathan had just left.
“She is extremely broken up over the death of Agent Rosas. It seems they were due to be married, and it was stressful enough with planning a wedding and her job here, so Rosas’ death was too much for her. I gave her leave and sent her to a counselor I know who can help her.”
Matt nodded and dismissed the two soldiers.
“Thank you for all your hard work, gentlemen, but I’m afraid your are not done yet. Find out about that car bombing and the firebombing and report back.”
“Yes, Sir.”
Josh and Nathan both saluted and left the room.
As Nathan walked out Matt could hear the ex-Marine’s final exclamation.
“Damn investigation, damn assassins, and damn the President who neglected to put a mini-bar in the Oval Office!”