Blown - Hardcover

FRANCINE MATHEWS spent four years as an intelligence analyst at the CIA, where she trained in operations and worked briefly on the investigation into the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103. A former journalist, she lives and writes in Colorado, where she is at work on her next thriller, The Alibi Club.

WASHINGTON, D.C., 6:02 A.M.

On the day she was chosen for death, Dana Enfield rose early and made coffee for her husband in the hushed November dawn. She had slept badly the previous night, pummeling her pillow while George looked in on three obligatory parties and made excuses for his wife. The people standing around in little clusters against the apricot-colored walls of Georgetown and Kalorama, drinks in their hands, had joked with the Speaker of the House about this morning, about the press buildup and the unseasonably warm weather and where exactly he intended to stand. They had wished her luck, Dana thought as she listened to the drip of the coffee and the creak of old floorboards somewhere near Mallory’s bedroom that might or might not mean that George was already awake—wished her luck and a great photo op, with the mental kickback inevitable among politicians. Half of them probably had money riding on the chance she’d never finish her race.

She sniffed the aroma of fresh coffee as she poured it into George’s mug, knowing she couldn’t take the caffeine’s dehydration this early in the day but craving it all the same. Then— almost as an afterthought—she reached for the sharp metal rod she kept on the counter and slit the fleshy pad of her forefinger. A bead of blood ballooned at her fingertip. She waited for the digital count to flash on the screen of the insulin monitor: within normal range.

Comforting, she thought, to be offered that assurance at the start of every new day. She lifted George’s mug to her lips and permitted herself a single sip.
The Marine Corps Marathon is fortunate in possessing a remarkable contingent of navy and civilian volunteers. Navy active duty and reserve units as well as dedicated doctors, athletic advisors, and Red Cross members from all over the country come together to ensure that our race is one of the safest in the nation. . . .

Daniel Becker had scrolled through the official marathon Web site at least twenty times in the past few weeks, committing what was essential to memory. The Marines who organized the event each year called it “The People’s Race,” because nobody was forced to qualify to enter. It was planned and executed with the efficiency of a military operation; hundreds of Marines in field dress lined the race course, handing off cups of water and bananas and protein bars at two-mile intervals. They played music, clapped, cheered on their buddies, and were extraordinarily courteous to the less athletic hordes who invaded the event in increasing numbers. So many weekend warriors had entered the lists over the years, in fact, that it was impossible to accept them all. A lottery system capped the field at fifteen thousand runners.

When Daniel closed his eyes at night, he could see the course imprinted on his brain like a snake formed from fire. Between seventy and a hundred thousand people would line the 26.2-mile race as it wound from the Iwo Jima Memorial—the pride of Marine Corps history—straight through Crystal City, past the Pentagon, across Key Bridge into Georgetown and down to the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. It kicked by the Lincoln and Jefferson monuments, the black wall commemorating Vietnam, the massive dome of the Capitol building, and back again to Virginia across the Fourteenth Street Bridge. The race had been delayed two weeks this year by the terrorist kidnapping and murder of the vice president; but with Sophie Payne’s body returned now to Washington and her funeral scheduled for the following morning, the Marine Corps had received the green light to run. Like thousands of others, Daniel was ready.

He left Hillsboro, West Virginia, before dawn, and drove straight east through Maryland until he reached the District border. He’d shopped a downtown army-navy surplus place for the standard Marine private’s uniform and peaked cap; he was wearing his black army boots and dog tags. Rebekah had clipped and shaved his brown hair so that the scalp shone through to the level of his ears. He’d strapped a plastic armband to his right bicep with a label that read race staff in big block capitals.

At five-thirty a.m., Hains Point in East Potomac Park was still open to vehicular traffic. He drove his truck to a picnic area and killed the engine, conscious of ghosts in the early morning darkness.

Once, when Dolf was maybe seven or eight, he’d driven into the city as dusk fell and parked right about here. Put Bekah and the boy in the pickup’s flatbed and tucked a blanket around them. They’d lain there, watching the bellies of the great jets soar so close to their faces in takeoff and landing that they could almost have touched the blinking lights. The scream of turbo engines was deafening, the closest thing to war Daniel could imagine. Young Dolf was exhilarated—leaping up from his blanket as though he might catch a plane’s wheel and sail off into the sky. He was always desperate to go someplace else, Daniel thought. Desperate to fly.

He was sitting here now because of that boy and his clipped wings, the wild animal joy of a child’s face when he believes his time is never-ending. He was here for Dolf and the world that boy had lost.
Dana thrust her left foot against the base of the Iwo Jima Memorial and leaned forward to stretch her calf muscles. She’d been training for six months, gradually building her mileage each week despite the injuries that plagued her body, aware that more than just her own pride rode on the outcome of this race. She was the Speaker’s wife, after all—the highly visible second wife of George Enfield, whom pundits called the next presidential hopeful—and Washington society columns followed her every move with thinly disguised malice. She was thirty-seven years old, and the diabetes she calibrated throughout the day had become as famous as her height or the clothing designers she patronized fearlessly for every official function. Dana was, by nature, a private person, but George’s gradual rise to power in Congress had forced her to submit to the press’s mania for detail. She found she could talk about her disease more easily than her soul. Two years ago, she’d become a spokeswoman for the Juvenile Diabetes Foundation.

She was a blunt advocate for stem-cell research, despite the dictates of her husband’s party, which regarded every form of fetal experimentation with horror and reproach. She flew in children with diabetes from all over the country and led tours of Capitol Hill. Sponsored hearings that supported research and put the kids front and center. Today she was running in a JDF T-shirt imprinted with the faces of those children. She’d won the signatures of ten thousand people across the country: Each had pledged a dollar to the JDF for every mile she managed to run.

You’re absolutely nuts, George had said heatedly when she began to train six months ago. Do you know what you’ll do for your precious cause if you collapse and die of insulin shock in front of a whole platoon of Marines?

“They have medical stations,” she’d replied patiently. “I’m carrying insulin in my fanny pack. I’ll eat the oranges. The protein bars. You can meet me at certain points along the race with soda pop.”

In the end, he’d agreed to do it, and not just for the pub- licity she’d begun to attract. He’d somehow managed to steal a few hours from each weekend to stand vigil during her training runs, amusing Mallory on her scooter and offering water to Mommy while she clocked her miles. He’d told the press he believed in and supported his wife. He rubbed liniment on her legs without a word, his fingertips oddly gentle as they traced her hardening quadriceps. He did ask repeatedly if she was determined to go through with it—and she understood the fear that loomed in the back of his mind. He was fifty-three years old. He’d already lost one woman he loved to an untimely death. He would never tell Dana to stay home in bed at six a.m. on race day, but he could not pretend what he did not feel.

Because parking was impossible to find that morning, even for a Congressional limousine, they’d taken the Metro to Arlington like any other marathon couple. The only difference in their situation, Dana thought, was the photographers who’d tracked them from the moment they’d left their front door in Kalorama, Mallory swinging between them. She’d hoped that Sophie Payne’s funeral would deflect attention from what some reporters were calling Dana Enfield’s Run for Her Life. But Payne was last week’s story; she was today’s.

“Let me pin your number to your shirt,” George said quietly in her ear. “It’s eight-twenty. Ten minutes to the start.”

As he stabbed a pin into her chest by mistake, four flashbulbs went off in Dana’s eyes. She wondered fleetingly if any of the reporters had trained enough to keep up with her.
Daniel lay flat on his back under the cover of some bushes, avoiding the curious and trying to quell his own jitters. For the past hour and a half he’d watched a group of Marines setting up the tables and paraphernalia for Water Point 11 and Aid Station 7, as their signs proclaimed them; about ten guys, as best he could judge from his position a quarter-mile distant. They were spinning tunes and working together like a well-oiled machine, their jacket sleeves rolled high on the bicep. Confident in their sense of mission, as he had been once.

A two-mile loop of the course skirted the river here at Hains Point, just past the Jefferson Memorial. Planes from Reagan International buzzed the landscape every few seconds. The air was fresh and clear: Today’s crowd would be enormous. The runners who survived to reach Daniel’s water...