from the same sender. He cursed long and low before hitting speed dial. “On my way,” he told the man who answered. He glanced at the clock on the dash. “Twelve minutes at the most.” He hung up, made an abrupt U-turn and headed for the royal palace.
He made it in ten minutes, then hurried inside to the palace’s security command post. “What do we know?” he asked the room. “Where is the royal family?”
“Safe,” Major Damon Kostya replied. “The king was just about to leave with Colonel Marianescu for a tour of the air force base outside Timon when we got the news. Major Branko is with him now in the king’s private office.”
Captain Angelina Mateja-Jones—head of the queen’s security detail, who’d just recently returned from maternity leave—answered next. “The queen was with the crown prince in the Royal Garden, but they are now safely inside, with the king. Reports are coming in from all over Zakhar. Four bombs have exploded so far in Drago. Six elsewhere.”
Marek closed his eyes briefly, trying but failing to suppress his anger at the cowardly terrorists who would do something like this, who would kill innocent victims to make their political statement—whatever that statement was. “Where?” he rasped. “Has any group claimed responsibility?”
“Not yet,” Major Kostya stated, answering the second question first. “All four bombs in Drago appear to be the same type—explosives packed densely inside a loose shell of fléchettes for maximum mortality. Reports from elsewhere in the country are still unconfirmed, but preliminary reports seem to indicate the same. So the working theory is this is a coordinated attack.”
Marek nodded.
“As for where,” Major Kostya continued, “here in Drago, one bomb exploded on a train from the eastern border, just as it was pulling into the main station in the center of the city. Twenty-three people are dead, more than a hundred fifty wounded, both inside and outside the train. Another bomb went off at the refugee processing center downtown. The death toll there is lower...for now. Nineteen dead for sure, but that number could rise. And there are roughly two hundred wounded.”
“Suicide bombers?”
Angelina shook her head. She was Angelina to Marek now that she no longer reported to him, now that they were captains together and he’d become friends with Angelina and her husband, the US embassy’s regional security officer. “Not to the best of our knowledge,” she said. “A third bomb detonated at a Zakharian National Forces training facility on the outskirts of Drago. Two training officers are dead and seventeen enlisted personnel—all new recruits. Twenty-nine are in the hospital.”
Major Kostya cleared his throat. “One of the dead and two of the injured were women recruits. But they do not appear to have been specific targets.”
Marek glanced at Angelina. “What about the fourth bomb?”
“A preschool near the US embassy.”
“My God,” Marek whispered. “Children?”
Major Kostya answered him. “Miraculously, no. Eyewitnesses in the park say someone spotted the bomb and got it away from the playground before it exploded. Only one person was wounded—the woman who saved the children. Apparently she saw the man leave the bomb, which was hidden in a knapsack. Then she—”
Angelina’s cell phone chirped, and she moved away to take the call. The two men watched her stiffen. “Yes, Alec,” she said in a husky voice. “Yes. He is here. I will tell him.”
She put her phone away, drew a deep breath, then turned to Marek, sympathy on her face. “There is no way to tell you except straight-out. It is Tahra. Tahra is the woman who saw the terrorist leave the bomb. She is the one who saved the children.”
Not dead, Marek pleaded with God in his mind as he steeled himself to hear the worst. Please, God, not dead.
“Alec just called me,” she explained, referring to her husband, who was Tahra’s boss at the US embassy. “Tahra is in surgery.”
“Where?” Marek was surprised at how calm his voice sounded. As if his world hadn’t just nearly ended.
“Saint Anne’s Hospital, near the cathedral.” He nodded as he took the information in, although his brain wasn’t really functioning. “Do you want someone to drive you there?”
“No, I... My duty is here,” he said automatically.
Angelina grabbed Marek’s arm and pulled him out of earshot of Major Kostya. “Admirable,” she said fiercely. “But stupid. Do you think I will let you anywhere near the crown prince in this state? Do you think that is what the king would wish? You are not capable of functioning as a bodyguard at this moment, and no one expects you to, least of all the king.”
She waited for that to sink in, then added, “You are not even supposed to be working today. Go to the hospital. Go be with Tahra. If the crown prince’s own father is not enough to protect him along with the men who are on duty, then I will personally make sure he is safe. Your duty is with Tahra. Go!”
* * *
Marek arrived at the hospital to find that Tahra was still in surgery. And the waiting room receptionist would tell him nothing of how she was doing. Even when he claimed this was a matter of national security and tried to invoke his authority as head of the crown prince’s security detail, she steadfastly refused to disclose anything until he lied. “She is my fiancée.”
The lie helped a little, but there wasn’t much the receptionist could tell him, except that Tahra hadn’t yet come out of surgery. “But the surgeons here—they are the best,” she reassured him. “She is in good hands—the surgeons’ and God’s.”
Marek collapsed into the nearest chair, abruptly aware his muscles were trembling. Relief flooded him, and he realized he’d been steeling himself to hear the worst. The worst that could still happen, but hadn’t yet. He glanced around the waiting room and was surprised—yet not really surprised—to see Alec Jones sitting across the room. He wasn’t sure if that was a good sign or not. Was Alec waiting for a dying declaration, the way a policeman would be? When that thought occurred to him, that was when he saw the two other men in the waiting room. Plainclothes policemen for sure, he thought. Detectives. Which only made sense—perhaps they were hoping Tahra had seen something more than the knapsack she’d managed to get rid of before it exploded and killed the children the bomb had been intended for.
That brought it all down on him again—Tahra could be dying. His darling Tahra...who’d been right to accuse him of not trusting her with the truth. Why hadn’t he told her at some point during the past eighteen months, especially once they became constant companions? Because of Zorina, of course. As if Tahra could ever do what Zorina had done.
“Marek?” Suddenly Alec was standing in front of him, and he looked up at the other man. “The police wouldn’t tell me much about what happened,” Alec said, taking a seat next to Marek. “Other than to let me know Tahra was in the hospital here because she’d been wounded in a bombing. And the receptionist won’t divulge anything,” he added, inclining his head toward the same woman who’d guarded Tahra’s privacy from Marek. “Do you know anything more?”
Marek shook his head in automatic denial, then realized that wasn’t fair to the American. Tahra did work for him. Not only that, but Alec was also the principal security attaché and adviser to the US ambassador. Which meant he was entitled to know of any threat to the embassy’s
