by Vince Flynn
Aziz stepped onto the landing and surveyed the room, his MP-5 gripped in both hands. He nodded for Bengazi to move out ahead while he slowly came down the steps. Neither man spoke. Bengazi had known Aziz long enough to recognize when he was spooked.
Aziz did not know exactly what he was looking for. As he peered around the room, he wondered if he wasn’t being overly paranoid. There had been very little time for sleep over the last week, and his nerves were getting raw. The truth, however, was that it is impossible to be too paranoid when dealing with the CIA. He should have thought of this possibility earlier, but so much had changed from the original plan. It was a grave oversight on his part. He had been thinking of too many things and spreading himself too thin, but he was focused now. Nothing mattered more than getting his hands on the president, and if that meant sacrificing some of his assets to secure this area of the basement, it was a gamble that was well worth it.
As Aziz moved across the room, a good ten paces behind Bengazi, his eyes searched the floor for any type of drain, grate, or pipe. While he looked, he wondered how big the sewer pipe must have been in Amsterdam. Not any pipe would do; it would have to be big, and he doubted that anything big enough to support a human would be running into the White House.
Aziz was looking under one of the large boilers when he heard a soft whistle from Bengazi. Standing up straight, he looked over to his man, who was standing with one finger over his lips and the barrel of his rifle pointing up.
Aziz stood with his neck craned upward, watching the metal duct that ran from the wall diagonally across the room to some large piece of equipment. Listening intently, he focused everything on the duct. After a short while he thought he saw something, a glimmer off the lights, a buckle in the metal. Aziz’s brow furrowed. Again he saw something, some type of movement. Aziz stepped from his cover to get a closer look.
Some twenty feet away Bengazi shook his head at him and tried to wave him back. Aziz ignored him and continued to approach the duct. Finally, when he was directly under the structure, he heard the noise. It sounded like a rat moving behind the walls of an old building. Something was definitely in the duct.
Aziz looked behind him and took several steps back, putting himself in direct line with the length of the duct. Then, raising his MP-5, he sighted in on part of the duct that protruded from the wall. With the wooden butt of the rifle squeezed tightly between his right shoulder and cheek, he depressed the trigger and unleashed a volley of automatic fire, the heavy rounds slicing through the thin metal with ease.
Nine rounds were fired in total, the noise from the shots careening off the concrete floors and walls, leaving the ears of Aziz and Bengazi ringing. The smell of spent rounds filled the air, and a cluster of shell casings rolled aimlessly about the floor near Aziz’s feet.
Aziz did not move. He stood his ground with his rifle still pointed at the duct, his eyes fixed on the straight line of bullet holes he had just laced into the thin metal. At first there was nothing, no movement and no noise other than the ringing of the shots that had been fired, and then, out of one of the holes, something dark beaded into a droplet and after an eternity it broke free. Both Aziz and Bengazi watched it fall to the ground. The drop hit the gray concrete floor and splashed into a spidered crimson pattern. Without hesitation, both Aziz and Bengazi stepped back and opened up on the duct with a relentless hail of bullets.
28
THE APARTMENT WAS nice. It had been decorated by his mother. She had insisted on flying to D.C. to help her son get settled in. Now that Dallas was an important figure in Washington, he’d have to entertain. Mrs. King had loaded up her son with the best that Williams-Sonoma, Pottery Barn, and Restoration Hardware could provide. The two-bedroom apartment in Adams-Morgan cost him nineteen hundred dollars a month, but it was worth it. It was only a couple of blocks away from some of Washington’s best nightspots, there were plenty of women around, and it was close to work.
Dallas King sat at the breakfast bar in the kitchen with a cup of coffee in one hand and the remote control to his TV in the other. He was waiting for the seven A.M. top-of-the-hour CNN news update. Dallas took a sip of coffee and looked down the hall to his bedroom. Through the cracked door he glimpsed the lean leg of his lovely little Asian hostess, Kim. She had been everything he had hoped and then some. After King finished his meeting with Sheila Dunn, he had moved to the bar for one more glass of wine. Someone must have explained to the hostess who he was because she began asking him questions about the crisis. King worked it for everything it was worth, stressing his role as Vice President Baxter’s closest adviser, complaining about the pressure, and finally telling her how much he wanted to be with her. By the time one A.M. rolled around, he had her punched out and on the way to his apartment.
As he sipped his coffee, CNN came back from a commercial break. King turned up the volume and listened to the anchor start off with the lead story of the morning. Footage of a candlelight vigil that had taken place the night before flashed across the screen. The anchor announced that an estimated fifty thousand people had taken part in the silent march from the Lincoln Memorial to the Capitol. Next came more footage of massive crowds pressing against police barricades in an effort to glimpse the White House. This relatively calm footage was replaced by images of protestors burning American flags in Gaza, the West Bank, Baghdad, and Damascus.
King shook his head and muttered, “If they keep that shit up, we’ll have no choice but to storm the place.”
The anchor and the correspondent talked for almost a minute about the official reactions of governments around the Middle East and then broke away for a live briefing being delivered by Director Roach of the FBI.
Roach stood in front of a Justice Department podium and started out reading from prepared text. The director gestured to an easel on his left, saying, “This is the photo we released yesterday of Mohammed Battikhi—the man we believe to have fired shots from the roof of the Washington Hotel during the opening moments of the attack on the White House. We now know his real name to be Salim Rusan. He is at large and considered to be extremely dangerous. Right now we are offering a onemillion-dollar reward for any information leading to the arrest of Rusan and a second individual.” One of Roach’s aides removed the first photo and replaced it with a second of a man wearing a green uniform. His hair was slicked back, and he had a gold chain with a cross hanging from his open collar.
“This man worked for the White Knight Linen Service Company,” Roach continued, “and went by the name of Vinney Vitelli. His real name is Abu Hasan. We are not sure if he is at large, but we are very interested in talking to anyone who has dealt with him in the last year.”
Roach continued to talk, giving a number to call, but King wasn’t listening. His eyes were open wide in disbelief. It couldn’t be. King stood, almost dropping his coffee cup. Tugging at the collar of his white bathrobe, he raced for the TV. “Oh, my God, it’s him!”
NO ONE IN the bunker had slept for more than a half hour at a time, and some of the agents had not slept at all. The noise of steel assaulting steel grew louder as morning approached. President Hayes remained confident that the FBI would come. He’d been through the briefings, he had listened to the experts state that the best time to attack was right before dawn. It was when people were most sluggish and hence easiest to surprise.
It started to brighten, this time of the year, around five-thirty, and the sun was up by a quarter past six. Each of the eleven felt a fevered anticipation as morning drew near, but as the hours passed by, there was collective letdown, followed by depression, as the nerve-racking sound of the door being breached gnawed at their ears. Each individual, including the president, asked himself or herself the same question over and over again. Can we hold out for another day?
Valerie Jones was coming back from the small bathroom, where she had finally, after two days, decided to remove the makeup from her face. Considering the situation, she felt that any hang-ups about her wrinkles and the dark
circles under her eyes were foolish.
Jones had spent all night thinking about the president’s rebuke the day before. She had worked far too hard to get where she was, and she wouldn’t allow anyone to pin the blame on her for admitting a terrorist into the Oval Office. In Jones’s mind the truth was never that simple. There were always eight sides to every story.
There was no way she was going to roll over now and watch her career-go up in flames. Jones had been concentrating on angles all night. Who could influence Hayes to help put the story in the proper light? Whom could she use to focus Hayes’s anger on? The first question was easy to answer. Jones knew enough senators and big donators. She could get them to whisper in the president’s ear or, if needed, lean on him. The way she would spin it would be to hold up Russ Piper and the DNC as sacrificial lambs. All Jones did was put him and his guest down in the appointment book. That menial task was hardly worth ending someone’s career over.
As far as getting her boss to focus his anger on something or someone else, Jones was working on that. She proceeded back to the couches and sat next to him. If she could get him thinking in another direction, she just might hold on to her job and her career.
President Hayes didn’t bother to look up when his chief of staff sat. Jones studied him for a second and then asked, “Why wouldn’t they have come?”
Hayes shook his head. “I don’t know. They must have a good reason.”
“Like what? Isn’t it our policy not to negotiate with terrorists?”
Hayes glanced over at her. “We don’t always stick to policy.”
“Well, who’s making the decisions?”
The president looked at her with his tired eyes. “As I told you yesterday,-if they’re following the Constitution, which I’m sure they are, the powers of the presidency will have been transferred to Vice President Baxter.”
Jones rolled her eyes. “That isn’t good news.”
The president did nothing at first and then nodded slowly in agreement.
“Why wouldn’t he send in the FBI?”
“I don’t know, Valerie.” Hayes sounded very impatient. The tension and lack of sleep were working on his nerves.
“Well, it makes no sense.” Jones moved forward cautiously. “Everything you said about the FBI striking before sunrise made sense. I don’t understand why they wouldn’t have come.”
“There’s a lot we don’t know about. They could have plenty of good reasons why they’re waiting to attack.”
Jones was keenly aware of the problems between President Hayes and Vice President Baxter. She and the president had discussed them on many occasions. If she could get the president to focus his anger on Baxter, her minor role in this debacle would be forgotten.
In a voice just barely above a mumble Jones planted the seed that she hoped would shift the president’s righteous ire in a different direction. “Or Baxter likes being president.”
IRENE KENNEDY STOOD in her office and watched the sun rise over the trees of the Potomac River Valley. Any attempt to count her hours of sleep over the last week would be a wasted exercise. They were too few and too far between. She had more pressing things on her mind, and besides, thinking of sleep only caused her to worry more about Rapp. Kennedy had been hoping to steal a couple hours on the couch in her office after the two SEALs had made it into the White House and reported back on the bombs, but that never happened. Things had fallen apart, and they had done so miserably.
At 2:23 A.M. Kennedy had been sitting in the control room at Langley when an irate Skip McMahon called. McMahon had been rousted from his cot in the Executive Office Building just minutes earlier by Rafique Aziz. He had stumbled down the hall and into the FBI’s command post in his boxers and T-shirt. Once on the phone, McMahon was further confused by the wild accusations Aziz had flung at him. Everything Aziz said came up empty with McMahon. McMahon tried in vain to deny the accusations, but Aziz only grew more irritated. As Aziz began to threaten to kill hostages, McMahon began to link the recent events with a phone call he had received from FBI Director Roach, the previous evening. Roach had explained to McMahon that the CIA would be moving some sensitive surveillance equipment into position by the east fence of the White House. In less than a minute, one of McMahon’s agents had a set of blueprints rolled out on the table before him and was stabbing his finger at the location of a ventilation duct on the South Lawn. As things fell into place, McMahon assured Aziz that he would get to the bottom of the thing within five minutes. McMahon’s next phone call was to his colleague and good friend, Irene Kennedy.
That was when the control room at Langley started to piece together what had happened. Upon receiving McMahon’s call, General Campbell ordered Harris to send one of his men into the shaft to find out what was going on. Not long after that, the two SEALs were pulled out of the shaft by an electric winch. Nick Shultz had fulfilled the SEAL code of honor of never leaving a man behind in battle, dead or alive.
When the shooting started, Shultz was trailing just far enough behind to be safe from the shots, but within reach of the gear that Craft was pulling behind him by rope. Struggling, he pulled his swim buddy back through the narrow confines of the duct, inch by inch, praying his friend would be alive when they reached the other end. It was all for naught. Craft was dead.
Now, standing at the window of her seventh-floor office at Langley and watching the sun climb into the morning sky, Kennedy wished she could turn back the clock and do it all over again. Do it right, do it the way she had wanted to from the start. Kennedy had promised herself when she got into this business of ordering men into harm’s way that she would do everything possible not to become a detached bureaucrat. Seventeen men had died under her watch at Langley, the majority of them in one seriously botched operation. Craft would bring the total up to eighteen, and as with those before him, Kennedy would visit his grave.
A knock on the door pulled Kennedy from her trance, and without turning, she said, “Come in.”
The door opened and closed, but whoever had just entered had chosen to stay silent until recognized. Kennedy finally turned and saw a far from jovial Skip McMahon standing across from her.
“Skip, I couldn’t say anything to you last night. There were far too many people around.”
McMahon, dressed in a suit and tie, stared her down—his hands on his hips and deep dark circles under his eyes. “I can’t believe you didn’t tell me.”
“I’m sorry.”
McMahon shook his head slowly from side to side. “You and I have never played these games. We’ve always been straight up with each other.”
“I know; I apologize. It’s just that things happened too fast last night. I wanted to tell you . . . I asked if I could bring you in on it, and I was told to wait.”
“By who, Thomas?”
“It goes higher than that.”
McMahon frowned skeptically. “How much higher?”
Kennedy turned away, not entirely comfortable with telling McMahon.
McMahon reached out and grabbed Kennedy’s chin, forcing her to look him in the eye. “No more games. I want the truth.”
Kennedy reached up and pulled his hand down. “You have to keep it to yourself.”
“The hell I do,” snapped McMahon.
“Don’t talk to me like that,” chided Kennedy while taking a step back. “We’re friends.”
“Well, friends don’t let friends get ambushed by hanging them out to dry.”
“Skip, this came down from above. I wanted to tell you, but I couldn’t . . . and I didn’t have enough time to convince them otherwise.”
“Who authorized those men to go in, and who decided to shut the FBI out of it?”
Kennedy sighed and said, “Vice President Baxter.”
“That motherfucker!” McMahon wheeled away from Kennedy, his fists balled up in anger. “That arrogant motherfucker. Where in the hell does he get off . . .” McMahon stopped short of finishing the sentence and strained to regain some compo
sure. Through clenched teeth, he said, “This is an FBI operation. Not the CIA and not the Pentagon. If I am not briefed fully and truthfully by you people, I will march right over to the . . .”
McMahon was cut off by the intercom on Kennedy’s desk. “Dr. Kennedy?”
Kennedy walked over to her desk and pressed the button. “Yes.”
“They are waiting for you in the director’s conference room.”
Kennedy looked at her watch. It was several minutes past seven.“We’ll be right there.” She looked up at McMahon and said, “We have to get going, but I want you to promise me you’ll keep this to yourself until I have a chance to explain further.”
Shaking his head, McMahon frowned and said, “Nope . . . I’m gonna go in there and chew some ass.”
Kennedy reached out and grabbed his wrist firmly. “No you are not. There is a lot more, Skip. And if you want to know what is really going on, you keep quiet until the meeting is over.”
THEY WERE THE last two to enter Director Stansfield’s private conference room. As Kennedy and McMahon took their seats, an agitated Director Roach was already letting the others know how the FBI felt about the current situation. “Horseshit” was the phrase he used to describe the mess the others had created and the lack of professional courtesy they had displayed.