It was almost nine o'clock when the car driven by Tony stopped close to the Embassy entrance. Burwell was still limping for the wound in his flank, but he was still able to make it to the main gate. Tony and Jack followed him a few steps behind.
Arrived at the gate, the security guards immediately approached them.
"I am Scott Burwell, I need to see the ambassador with urgency", Burwell said to introduce himself.
"Do you have an appointment?", replied one of the guards.
"No, I don't, but if you ask him, he'll meet me", claimed Burwell with resilience.
"It's a little late, maybe you should come back tomorrow morning", continued the guard. After having said that, the man noticed, in the shadow, that his interlocutor was indeed wounded. "What happened to you?", he asked indicating his flank with the head.
"That's part of the urgency. I need to see him now. Ask him please", insisted Burwell letting transpire some sufferance.
The guard stood by a little confused. Then, glancing at Jack and Tony, he added: "Who are they?"
"They're my partners. Look, call Golubev and then we'll explain everything, ok?"
The guard looked at the three of them again.
"Wait here", he ordered.
Then he got back to the cabin near the gate. After a while he came back out.
"Alright, he will see you. You can go to the next security point and then they will escort you to him."
"Ok, thanks", Burwell said while going towards the gate which was opening.
Arrived at the entrance of the Embassy, two security guards approached them and searched them for guns with a metal detector. They were clean, since they all left the guns in the car, knowing that they would have taken away from them.
The guard talked to his radio and then call them back.
"Wait!" – he ordered – The ambassador will only meet Burwell. You two have to wait here."
Burwell exchange a quick look with Jack and Tony, who had no choice than to enter a room adjacent to the lobby. Then he started walking towards the stairs with a guard.
A little annoyed by the waiting, Jack was walking through the room, while Tony sat on a chair and took his head in his hands, feeling all the tiredness of the past few days coming out again.
"Do you think we can trust Burwell?", Tony asked him.
"Right now we don't have any other choice", replied Jack.
Then, taking advantage of the empty room with only a security guard by the door, Jack pull out his phone.
"Renee, it's Jack – he said moving to a corner of the room.
"Jack, what's going on? Did Burwell believe the fake story about Turner?", responded the voice on the phone.
"Yeah, but then things got a little out of control. Burwell's men are dead and so is the other buyer."
"Oh my God, are you ok? Why didn't you call the backup team?", Renee asked with growing worry.
"We're fine. Everything happened so fast, there was no time to call it. Plus, we could still keep the cover going. Listen, there's something else. Burwell lied about having already the material in place and he admitted to me that he hadn't recovered it yet. Apparently the man he was dealing with is the Russian ambassador, Misha Golubev. I need you to do a complete search on him, ok?"
"The ambassador is involved? Oh God…anyway, yeah, we'll start looking into it now."
"Good, let me know if you find something. In the meantime, we'll try to do the same from here, we're at the embassy now."
"What? Jack, the ambassador benefits of the diplomatic inviolability, you can't interrogate him."
"I know. Right now he's just talking with Burwell, but as soon as we have proof of his involvement, we can't stop because of that, you have to contact President Suvarov and –
A blast forced Jack to interrupt the talking. Tony immediately moved closer to the window to see what was happening: two SUVs have just smashed the front gate and a group of men with bulletproof vests and assault rifles were making their way inside the embassy, shooting at the guards.
"Jack!", exclaimed Tony, while Jack was reaching the window.
"Renee, we're under assault, I have to call you back", said Jack, cutting off the call abruptly.
"How many have you counted?", Jack asked to Tony who was at the window for a little more.
"At least 10, 12. Who are these men?"
"I don't know. But something tells me that Burwell was not the only one to know about the involvement of Golubev with the nuclear material", replied Jack, moving away from the window as the shooting and screaming were getting closer to them. "We can't stay here."
Jack started to look around the room to see if there was another way out. A vent on the ceiling caught his attention and he immediately started pushing a table under it.
"Help me!", he shouted to Tony, who began pushing too. Then, after hitting the vent with his elbow, he got into it, followed by Tony a second after. Once in the ceiling, they put the grid back.
A few moments later, gunshots hit the door and the security guard who was standing by it. One of the assaulters quickly checked the room, but not seeing anyone inside, got out a few seconds after.
In the ventilation duct Jack and Tony began crawling towards the main room where most of the screams were coming from. Before their eyes, through the grate, they could see the assaulters taking hostage the embassy personal and gathering it, making everyone sit on the floor.
Jack took his phone again.
"Renee, it's still me – Jack whispered, moving away from the grid.
"Jack, what happened?", Renee asked still concerned and confused.
"A group of men heavily armed has just assaulted the embassy. We've managed to take cover, but their taking everyone hostage, probably in order to get to the ambassador", explained Jack trying to keep his voice down.
"We haven't received any alarm yet."
"Trust me, you'll get it. It's right before our eyes", Jack said, glancing back to the grid where the hostiles were still threatening the hostages to sit down and stay quiet.
"Do you think they know about the involvement of Golubev in this matter with the nuclear weapon?", Renee asked him while digiting something on her computer.
"The timing of the assault doesn't leave many doubts. Either they're here to claim the uranium or to make Golubev shut up about it, we need to get to him before they could do it or we may lose our chance to stop this potential terrorist attack."
"Yeah I know. We will contact President Suvarov and we'll send a team there as soon as he gives us his grant to get in."
"Ok, I gotta go. I'll send you some photos of these men so you can try the facial recognition."
"Ok, be careful, Jack", she added at last with a caring tone.
"Yeah."
Jack put the phone back in his pocket and then moved closer to Tony.
"Got anything on these men?", he asked in a whisper.
"Not much, except that they speak Russian to each other."
Then Jack used his phone to take some pictures to the assaulters and send them to Renee. Among the hostages on the floor, also Burwell was recognized. After finishing with the photos, Jack began talking again:
"Listen, I need to go and reach the ambassador before they do, I can't let him be killed before knowing where the uranium is."
"Jack, they're probably all over the place to find him, how do you think you can reach him first? Plus,
I think his security has probably locked him up in some panic room by now, so it would be impossible to get close to him."
"We don't know for sure where he is, but we have to try. I'll have Renee send me the schematics of the building."
Jack started moving through the duct. Tony sighed.
"A'ight, let's go."
"No, I'll go. I need someone to stay here and check what happens with the hostages in order to provide information when the FBI will arrive", Jack replied turning back to him. "I'll call you later. Mute your phone."
"Yeah", Tony said with a condescending tone.
Jack was already gone in the dark of the tunnel, using his phone as the only guiding light.
After a while, Tony noticed a second grid on the room closer to the hostiles and decided to reach it. As he was crawling through the duct, something disturbing coming from a room nearby caught his attention. They were screams.
Moving closer to the source of the noise, he barely could see from another grate what was happening. One of the assaulters was shouting to a man sitting in front a computer, holding a gun pointed at his head in order to make him do something. Besides him, another woman was in the room a few steps away from them and in complete terror. A guard was lying on the floor near the door in a puddle of blood.
"I tell you one more time, you have to give me access to the system and unlock the fire wall leading to the ambassador office", ordered the hostile to the man.
"I can't do it from here, I swear!", cried out the man in response.
"Da". A second after the hostile fired his gun and pushed away the chair with the lifeless man. Immediately the woman yelled in desperation and started crying. Turning his gun to her, the assaulter screamed:
"You. Come here."
From above the ceiling, Tony felt like a cramp in his stomach. It was an old sensation that he hadn't felt in years. He couldn't have stayed there and watched that innocent girl getting murdered, he had to do something. Despite what Jack had told him to do, he decided that he would have made a little deviation first and started crawling back to the entry point of the tunnel.
In the room, the woman was still in her place, paralyzed with terror.
"I'VE SAID COME HERE!", repeated the man visibly angry keeping his weapon pointed at her. The woman began walking towards him, shaking.
"Now you know what you have to do."
She tried to reply something, but words just didn't come out at first.
"I-I don't…"
"YES, YOU DO. Don't make me lose my patience here", he said, pressing the gun on her head. She was just standing in panic.
The door on the side of the desk slowly opened and Tony entered the room as quietly as possible. As he walked towards the man from behind his shoulders, the woman noticed him and instinctively turned her eyes on him. The hostile noted it.
"What?"
Before he could turn around to have a look himself, two hands had already taken him from behind, making him drop his gun. They began fighting, pushing each other against the desk and then the wall while the woman was looking at them with terror. The hostile managed to have the upper hand on Tony and pushed him against a library, making him smash its glass door with his back and fall on the floor.
Almost in the same instant, Tony reached the gun on the floor and the terrorist picked up a paper cutter from the desk and pointed at the girl's neck.
"DROP IT OR I KILL HER!"
"A'ight, A'ight, stay calm…I'll drop–
Before finishing the sentence, Tony fired a shot, hitting him perfectly in the head. While falling on the ground, the hostile managed to cut the girl in the lower part of the neck. Immediately, Tony run to her.
"Are you ok?"
She remained in silence, looking in shock the blood on her hand that she had just taken off her wound.
"It's over, just breath now – Tony said softly – Let me see the wound."
She nodded and slowly turned her head the opposite site to uncover her wound. Tony stared at the cut for a few seconds, gently moving away both her hair and the collar of her blouse.
"It didn't hit the jugular, ok? It's not a deep cut, it just bleeds a lot because there are a lot of small vessels in the neck, ok?" he tried to reassure her. "You'll be fine, just keep pushing with your hand for now, ok?"
"Ok", she responded with a low voice while he was gently guiding her hand back on the wound. "Who are you? Are you a cop?"
Tony couldn't help but smile a little. If only she knew that until a few hours ago he was a prisoner condemned to death for terrorism and murder.
"No…I once was a federal agent, but I'm not anymore – he admitted – Let's just say that I'm helping the FBI on provisional basis."
"So, you're like…a consultant?"
Tony smiled again.
"Yeah, something like that. Listen, we can't stay here, they're probably gonna come looking for him very soon. Come on."
Tony began walking to the door, picking up the fallen guns from both the terrorist and the guard. Feeling that she was not following, he turned around to see her staring at her dead friend.
"There's nothing else you can do for him. Come on."
Wiping out her tears, she started walking after him. After having checked that the hallway was clear, they both left the room.