by Vince Flynn
The two platforms were actually rectangular boxes constructed of one-inch plywood and reinforced with four-by-sixes and glued and screwed together. Wicker grabbed a hard plastic rifle case by the handle and laid it down on one of the platforms. With the others watching, he popped the clasps on the case and opened it. Inside sat a massive .50 caliber Barrett rifle. Sixty-one inches from muzzle to shoulder butt and weighing thirty pounds, it was one of the largest rifles in the world. It used the powerful .50 caliber Browning cartridge and was capable of taking out targets at distances in excess of one mile.
Wicker, not a particularly large man, was only a half foot taller than the rifle. Scooping the heavy black weapon from its foam encasement, he pulled the fixed bipod into its extended position and set it down. He climbed onto the platform, slid in behind the rifle, and drew close to the scope. He peered through the circular eyepiece, and within seconds he was staring at the hooded terrorist sitting in the guard booth on the roof of the White House. At this short distance, the .50 caliber Barrett would normally be way too much firepower, but considering the security afforded the terrorists by the bulletproof Plexiglas, it was the right weapon for the job. Not just one Barrett, but two.
Wicker shifted his weight and moved subtly while he kept the crosshairs of the scope centered on the hooded man six hundred twenty feet away. There was no wobbling. The platform was sturdy. Satisfied, Wicker stood and placed his rifle back in its case. While he put the case back in the corner, his men went to work to complete the project. Wicker looked at the setting sun and noticed a change in the weather just over the horizon. A welcome change. Grabbing the digital phone from his hip, he punched in a number and waited for the person on the other end to answer.
44
RIELLY DIDN’T HAVE her watch and had forgotten to ask what time it was before she was lowered into the vent. From the stiffness in her hip, she was guessing that she had been in the tiny space for at least thirty minutes, maybe even an hour. For the better part of that she had seen no movement from the room. With nothing else to do, her mind wandered and fatigue set in. Several times she caught herself dozing off only to have her head bob back up and bump the top of the vent. The cramped confines and the drone of the drills reminded her of lying in a tanning bed.
That she was not seeing any sign of the terrorists began to make her nervous. She started to wonder if the room was vacant, if now was the right time to give the signal. The problem was that she couldn’t see all of the room. If they did this again, she reminded herself, ask for a watch and a better set of instructions.
As the minutes passed by, Rielly grew more stiff and tired. Finally, when she was really beginning to doubt that there was anyone in the room, she heard a sound that was different from the steady drone of the drills. She squinted so she could get a clear shot through the slats, and Rielly saw something move. It was a shadow. There was someone in the room. A moment later the pudgy man she had seen on her previous trip stepped into the full view of the open door and stretched his arms above his head, his potbelly bulging outward.
She watched as the man moved out of sight and then approached the drills to measure their progress as she had seen him do on her first trip. When he was done taking his measurements, he tossed the tape measure onto something that was not in Rielly’s view, and then, with his hands stretched over his head once again, he started down the hall toward her, his mouth agape, a yawn squirreling its way out of his rodentlike face.
Rielly’s face grimaced in disgust at the man’s slovenly appearance and harsh features. At first she drew closer to the vent and then quickly moved back for fear of being discovered. As he neared her position, the fingers of her right hand reached up and fumbled for the black loop around her neck. Rielly found what she was looking for, and as the man turned the corner beneath her, she pulled hard on the shoelace twice.
* * *
RAPP AND ADAMS had stood alert for the first ten minutes, Adams standing by the open vent with the rope in his hands and Rapp poised at the top of the stairs, his MP-10 strapped across his chest and his silenced pistol in his left hand. Rapp had decided that the submachine gun was too much to handle for this little foray. After ten minutes of standing awkwardly across the room from each other, Rapp saw that there was a better way to utilize their time.
Crossing over to Adams, Rapp had taken the rope and asked Adams to pull out his blueprints. After Adams spread the documents out on top of one of the containers, Rapp gave him the rope back. He then proceeded to pick Milt’s brain on the layout of the West Wing. Exactly where the tunnel came out on the other end and what he could expect to find when he opened that door. Rapp and Adams had already gone over most of this before, but Rapp wanted to make sure he had a good grasp of the floor plan. He knew if he could pull off this phase of the operation, his next task would be to get into the West Wing and get a firsthand look at how the hostages were being held.
From everything they could guess and from what Rielly had told them, they knew the bulk of the hostages were being held in the mess. The problem that Rapp faced was finding out if any of the Secret Service agents and officers were still alive and if so, where they were being held. As Rapp prodded Adams about the best way to check out the other areas of the West Wing, Adams lurched suddenly.
Looking at Rapp, he spat, “That was it. Two tugs.”
Rapp was instantly moving across the floor. Looking over his shoulder,-he whispered, “If you get the recall sign, start calling my name, and bust your ass down these steps so I can hear you.” Rapp was gone, into the tunnel, racing down the steps like a running back going through a set of tires. Out of habit he had his pistol out in front of him, leading the way. When he hit the bottom step, he looked briefly down the length of the tunnel and then turned immediately to his left. Leaping down the next flight, he came to a crashing halt at the reinforced door and switched his gun from his right hand to his left.
Breathing a little heavier, he paused for a second to listen for Adams. Nothing, no warning from above. Pulling the numbers up from memory, he punched in the first eight and once again stopped to listen. Not more than two seconds later he punched the last number and stood back. The 9-mm Beretta went back into his right hand as the rubber gasket surrounding the door hissed. There was the metallic click of the locking stems retracting, and Rapp’s left hand shoved down on the door handle. It was no time to be timid.
Shoving the door open three feet, Rapp led with the pistol. The first thing his senses picked up was the sound of the drills and then a strange smell. His eyes picked up the back of the open door that led out into the hallway, and as he continued to open the steel door and step into the anteroom, the door hit something and there was the sound of metal hitting metal. The noise startled Rapp but wasn’t loud enough to be heard over the clamor of the drills. Rapp slid around the door, leading with the gun, careful to show only as much of his body as necessary.
Quickly, he jerked the pistol to the left and then the right, his eyes following. The room was empty. He approached the open door and took a quick peek down the hallway. Nothing. Taking a longer look this time, he looked up at the vent in an attempt to see Rielly. He was relieved to see that he couldn’t. Returning his attention to the task at hand, he turned and looked for the source of his and many others’ frustration.
There it sat, immediately to the left of the bunker door, touching the shiny polished steel. The black box was no bigger than a large stereo receiver. Rapp stepped over a toolbox and around another. Dropping down to one knee, he looked at the control panel and studied the dials and digital readout. The unit was manufactured by one of Westinghouse’s little-known subsidiaries who just happened to do a lot of work with the CIA, FBI, and Secret Service. Aziz had taken this baby from the Secret Service’s arsenal. Rapp pulled the box away from the door so he could get at the wires and antenna in back. He grabbed a small pair of wire cutters from his web vest and lowered the arm of the lip mike on his headset. Rapp snipped the wire that lead to the ant
enna.
“Milt, can you hear me? Milt can you hear me?” Rapp waited a couple-seconds. After failing to raise Adams a second time, Rapp flipped the jammer onto its front and looked at the perforated black metal on the back. Through the cooling slats, he could see several bound groups of wire. Turning the thing off wouldn’t work. He had to disable it. The key was to make it look as if it were still on.
Rapp plunged the wire cutter in between two of the cooling slats. The pointy nose of the wire cutter bent the metal. Rapp twisted the tool back and forth several times to get more access, and then opened the snips. As he clamped down on the first group of wires, it never occurred to him to unplug the machine first. Rapp squeezed hard, and as soon as the metal jaws of the wire cutter broke the protective insulation of the wires, sparks shot up, and Rapp was knocked back onto his butt.
With tingles shooting up his right arm and feeling as if he’d lost all of the hair on his body, Rapp mumbled, “Shit.” Shaking his right arm vigorously, he started to get back up. Over his headset he heard the voice of Milt Adams, and then someone else. A voice he didn’t recognize.
IRENE KENNEDY sat at her elevated position in the control room with a phone to her ear. On the other end of the secure line, General Campbell was explaining Lt. Commander Harris’s plan to send in a small team of demolition experts to clear the path for the strike teams. Kennedy was not excited about the plan at first, that was until Campbell explained to her that Harris and the three men he had chosen had all succeeded in accomplishing what seemed to be the most difficult aspect of the operation during a training operation with the Secret Service some eight years earlier. She still wasn’t crazy about the idea, but the fact that they had already proven they could do it went a long way.
As Kennedy listened to the general fill her in on the other aspects of the plan, her concentration was broken by a flurry of motion and voices from the two rows in front of her. When she looked up, she almost dropped the phone. The monitors that were showing the pictures that Rapp had already provided were now crystal clear, and smack dab in the middle of the big board was a picture of a shiny silver door that could be nothing other than the one to the president’s bunker.
Campbell repeatedly called Kennedy’s name. After the third or fourth time it registered, and she said into the phone, “He did it.”
“Who did it?” asked a slightly irritated Campbell.
“Mitch did. We have a picture of the bunker on the board.” Kennedy paused for a second while one of her people pointed to his own headset and spoke to her. Kennedy clutched the phone and said, “You’d better get back here right away. We have Mitch on full audio from his Motorola, not the field radio. I think he’s taken out the jammer. Hustle back. I have to let Thomas know.” Without waiting for a response from Campbell, Kennedy hung up the phone and quickly dialed the extension for her boss. At the same time she rifled through a stack of papers.
Stansfield answered on the second ring, and Kennedy could barely contain her excitement. “Thomas, Mitchell has taken out the jammer. We have him on full audio, and we’ve picked up two more surveillance feeds.”
“I’ll be there in a minute,” Stansfield calmly replied.
Kennedy hung up the phone and put on her headset as she called out Rapp’s code name over the microphone hanging in front of her lips. She came across the document she was looking for, a list of numbers provided by Secret Service Director Tracy.
45
PRESIDENT HAYES LOOKED at his watch. It was nearing five o’-clock. “Are you sure we shouldn’t wait until it’s dark?”
Jack Warch shook his head. “I’d like to, but we don’t know how much time we have.”
All of the agents were either sitting or standing around the group of couches in the middle of the room. Warch had convinced the president that their chances for survival were better if they made the break. Valerie Jones had also agreed. Not that it made a huge difference, but at this crucial juncture the less dissent the better. After getting Jones out of the way, Warch had brought the agents in, and they were now finalizing the plan.
Warch looked up at Pat Cowley. Cowley was hands down the best shot of the group with either a pistol or submachine gun. The former Supreme Court police officer had just finished a four-year stint with the Secret Service’s Counter Assault Team, where he had spent the majority of his time riding around in the back of the old, black, armor-plated Suburban that followed the president’s limousine wherever it went. These were the men that carried the big hardware. If the motorcade came under attack, it was their job to, first, cover the president’s evacuation and, second, neutralize the threat if possible. Their basic doctrine was to carry enough firepower that they could enfilade the threat with a volley of bullets while the president was evacuated from the area.
Warch continued going through the agents’ assignments one by one. He picked two agents to leapfrog behind the point as they moved, and assigned Ellen Morton and three other agents to stay with the president at all times. The last agent was to provide a rear guard if needed. Warch himself would stay fluid and try lead as they moved.
After all questions were answered and the evacuation routes were decided on, Warch got the troops lined up. Five of the nine agents carried MP-5 submachine guns along with their SIG-Sauer pistols. The others, including Warch, were armed with their pistols only. With weapons checked and ready, Warch turned to Ellen Morton and said, “Take the president and Valerie and put them in the bathroom. When we give you the all clear, you bring them out, and we move.”
As Warch turned for the door, he was interrupted by a noise he had been waiting to hear for more than two days. Simultaneously, every head in the room snapped toward the small kitchen table. On the second ring, Warch bolted toward the noise. Reaching out, he snatched his digital phone and pressed the send button.
“Hello!”
“Jack, it’s Irene Kennedy.”
Warch’s heart was in his throat. “Thank God!”
Kennedy spoke quickly, her eyes staring at the monitor in the center of the big board. “How’s the president?”
“He’s fine . . . but somebody’s drilling through the bunker door. What in the hell’s going on?”
Kennedy took a deep breath and started in. “Jack, we don’t have a lot of time, so I’ll give you the short version. Rafique Aziz and a group of terrorists have taken over the White House. They are holding hostages, and we know they are trying to break into the bunker.”
Warch was a little surprised that Kennedy knew about the assault on the door. The president was now coming toward him from across the room. “Well, what are you guys doing about it?”
“We’re working on it, but we need to speak to the president first.”
“Sure, he’s right here.” Warch handed Hayes the phone, saying, “It’s Irene Kennedy.”
Hayes took the small gray phone and held it to his ear. “Dr. Kennedy?”
“Yes, Mr. President. How are you doing?”
“Good!” exclaimed a relieved Hayes. “It’s great to hear your voice.”
“It’s nice to hear yours too, sir, but we have a lot to cover, and we’re short on time, so I’m going to hand the phone over to Director Stansfield.”
Stansfield and General Flood had just entered the room. Kennedy had her chair turned around, and as the men hurriedly approached their seats, she held up three fingers.
Stansfield grabbed his phone and pressed line three. In his normal businesslike tone he said, “Mr. President, I apologize for taking so long to get through to you, but we’ve been experiencing some difficulties.”
“What in the hell has been going on?” asked Hayes.
Stansfield started from the top and moved through the highlights of what had happened over the last three days. He covered the demands that had been made and met, and those that were in the process of being met. He told the president of the murder of his national security adviser and his secretary, and the subsequent mental breakdown of his attorney general. He in
tentionally stressed certain events and exchanges that hinted at Vice President Baxter’s incompetence. Stansfield gave him the soft sell. It was better to let Hayes come to his own conclusions than to hit him over the head with the obvious.
The president, for his part, let Stansfield brief him without interruption. President Hayes was not happy about much of what he heard. The only bright spot thus far was the news that Stansfield had managed to get someone inside the White House. And not just anyone, but the man he had just learned of several days earlier. The man the president knew only as Iron Man. A man that had been billed as the absolute best Thomas Stansfield had ever seen.
When the director of the CIA explained the vice president’s reaction to the news that Aziz was in the process of extracting the president from his bunker, Hayes lost it.
“He told you to do what?” Hayes’s face was tense with anger.
“He told us that before he would risk the hostages’ lives by ordering a raid, we would have to present him with more precise information.”
Hayes shook his head. “It sure as hell sounds to me like you had pretty good information.”
“Yes,” replied Stansfield. “We felt so, sir.”
“Well, get him on the phone so I can give him irrefutable information that he’s an idiot.”
Now came the time for Stansfield’s calm vision. His ability to slow things down when they seemed to be speeding up for everybody else had been one of his greatest assets over the years—that and his ability to approach a situation like a grand master and plot his moves far in advance. Stansfield was pretty confident where this entire situation was headed, and for now he knew it was best to keep the knowledge of their contact with the president to a bare minimum.