Gambit

by Karna Small Bodman

  “You’re not in love with him, Mel. You’re in love with the way he makes you feel.”

  Mel tossed her head, her ponytail flapping in the breeze. “But you thought you were in love with Hunt.”

  Cammy picked up the pace and muttered. “That was different. At least I thought it was different. At the time.”

  “Sorry, I shouldn’t have brought it up.”

  “No, that’s okay. It’s just that in that meeting this morning, they said they were bringing him back from wherever he was, and so we may be working together again.”

  “But Cam, that’s great. Maybe you can work things out. I mean, he’ll be here and …”

  “No way,” Cammy said firmly. “After all we went through, you’d think he would have the decency to say good bye and at least tell me where he was going. Or call. Or something. No! I’m not going through that again. I spent enough nights crying over that man. Now it’s time to concentrate on something far more important than a botched love affair.”

  “Well, I just thought …” Mel’s comment trailed off when she glanced back and saw that the lone jogger who had been behind them their entire run was still there, but now he was getting closer.

  There were usually a few more people around, but now that evening shadows deepened over the trail, the others had evidently finished their runs and headed home. Except for the guy a little bit back, they were very much alone.

  She turned back to Cammy. “Look, I didn’t mean to open up old wounds. But when it comes to Derek Winters, you can’t fault me for having fun with him once in a while. And going out with a senator has been fun. About his opinions, though, he told me he was really undone by that last accident, or whatever it was. Seems there was a group of students from Vermont on board, heading to an environmental conference or something. Now he’s vowing to get to the bottom of those crashes if he has to bring down the whole administration to do it.”

  “Sounds like he’s starting his campaign for the presidency rather early, wouldn’t you say?” Cammy observed.

  “I guess. He’ll probably run against Jay Keller.”

  “Well, I trust you won’t tell him anything about my project. Stan wants to keep this thing under wraps in case it doesn’t work.”

  “Don’t worry. Say, it’s getting kinda late. Think we should go back?”

  Cammy slowed down, and they both turned around to see the lone jogger suddenly run right up to them. He was wearing black running shorts, a black tee shirt and had a cap pulled way down over most of his face.

  As Cammy and Melanie tried to jog past him, he reached out, pushed Melanie to one side and grabbed Cammy’s arm. She started to struggle and was stunned to see the man snap open a knife and hold it to her throat. “Dr. Talbot, you’re coming with me.”

  “I’m not … let me go … who are you anyway?” she stammered as she strained against the man’s tightening grip.

  “It doesn’t matter who I am. It’s who you are that matters. If you’re smart, you’ll come along.”

  “I’m not going anywhere with you … you …” she tried to wrench away but the knife grazed the side of her neck and she cried out.

  Off to the side, Melanie had been thrown to her knees. Now, she stood up, raised her hands to a boxer-like stance, her knees were slightly bent, about a shoulder-width apart. She lifted her right knee to waist high and pivoted on her left foot with her left heel pointing at the attacker. She thrust out her right leg, leading with the outer edge of her foot to cut him down at the back of his knee.

  He was thrown off balance, leaned backwards and lost his grip on Cammy as the knife skittered away. She pulled away as Mel shouted, “Run!” But Cammy stood there transfixed by the scene. No way would she leave Melanie alone to deal with this brute.

  Who was this guy? What did he want? Why was he coming after her? She had no weapon. She frantically looked around for a rock, a branch, something. She had that dreadful sense of panic she had felt several months ago when she was the target of a terrorist who was trying to steal her Q-3 technology and ship it overseas

  The man had tried to run her car off the road and had actually killed a young man who had been working for her at Bandaq. Back then, Hunt Daniels had arranged FBI protection for her. He had even taken her into his home for a while. She had been terrified then. Now she was terrified again as she watched in stunned silence as her best friend was engaged in a life and death struggle with this … this what?

  Melanie then sprang up and crashed her right elbow into the bridge of the man’s nose. He screamed in pain, fell down and clutched his face with one hand as blood poured out of his nostrils. But he still was able to grab Cammy’s left ankle. He yanked her down. She broke the fall with her hands and looked up just Melanie was getting into a new position.

  Mel’s last move looked like a soccer player shooting a penalty kick as she smashed her foot into his groin, and he doubled over in agony.

  “C’mon. C’mon. Whoever he is, he won’t be down for long,” Mel ordered.

  Cammy scrambled to her feet. She and Mel took off and with adrenaline coursing through them both, they made it back to the car in minutes, never stopping to look back.

  They jumped into Cammy’s Audi A4, locked the doors and roared out of the parking area. She was driving as fast as she could and hardly noticed bits of blood dropping onto her tee shirt. “Damn. The man actually cut my neck,” she said, pressing one hand to her throat.

  Mel reached for her purse on the floor, found a Kleenex and held it to Cammy’s wound. “Too bad he got you there. You don’t want a scar on your neck.”

  “Who cares about a scar on my neck?”

  “Well, it’s a place that shows. Besides, your neck is so long, it would make Nefertiti jealous.” Mel dabbed at the blood and added, “Just trying to change the subject to calm you down, that’s all.”

  It was only after they were safely back on the Rockwood Parkway that Cammy took a deep breath and said, “I’ll be okay. But my God, Mel, you were incredible!”

  “Better than pepper spray, huh?” Melanie said with a hint of bravado.

  “You bet. Your Sensei would be proud.”

  “I guess. He’s been telling us every week that women have to learn to defend themselves.”

  “Well, he’s right. But who in the world was that guy? I’ve never seen him before in my life, but he knew my name,” Cammy said, her breath finally evening out as she made the turn onto Massachusetts Avenue.

  “I have no idea. Then again, you were all over the newspapers a couple of months ago when you pulled off that trick with Q-3. Maybe it had something to do with that. And we’d better call the police.”

  “Which police? This city is so mixed up. The Park police have the sidewalks and parks. The Metro police have the streets. The Secret Service has the White House grounds. Embassy security is all over town.”

  “Yeah, but where is one of them when you need ’em?”

  “Who knows? I guess we could make a report to the Georgetown force, but what are they going to do? The guy, whoever he is, will be long gone. There weren’t any other witnesses. I doubt if I’d recognize him again since he had that stocking cap thing pulled down a ways. Did you get a good look at him?”

  “No. I was too busy figuring out which vital part to hit.”

  “Trouble is, the police in D.C. are so busy with murders and break-ins, they’re hardly going to get excited about an attempted …” she turned to Mel, “just what was that anyway? An attempted kidnapping or what?”

  “I don’t know but it sure was weird. Guy had been following us the whole way. He certainly knew who you were and was bent on taking you somewhere. But where?”

  “And why?” Cammy asked, a forlorn expression covering her face.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  THE WHITE HOUSE

  The vice president stepped out of his black limousine and headed to the basement entrance of the White House on West Executive Avenue, the driveway between the West Wing and the Old Executive
Office Building. A sign indicated that the large Empire building erected in the late 1800’s to house the State, War and Navy Departments was officially named the Eisenhower Building, but everyone still called it the OEOB.

  Jayson Keller had a spacious ceremonial office there on the second floor, but he spent most of his time at another smaller office on the first floor of the West Wing. His first meeting today was in the Situation Room.

  He walked under the awning, opened the door to a small vestibule and nodded to the secret service agent sitting at a desk just inside. He turned right into a reception area with a beige carpet, a sofa and several wing back chairs covered in a dark cherry chenille fabric.

  The clock on the wall next to the door to the Situation Room complex read seven AM. Another agent sitting to the side punched in the key code so the vice president could push through the heavy door and head in to his meeting. He dropped his cell into the protective bin where everyone had to leave their devices when entering a secure facility and strode into the conference room where he took his place at the head of the long mahogany table.

  The NSC advisor was already seated to his right, talking animatedly to Trenton LaSalle, the secretary of transportation. Trent’s parents had emigrated from Jamaica and settled in New York. He had worked hard growing up, been awarded a scholarship to NYU and got his first job with a railroad. He spent his entire career there, finally working up to the position of CEO of the company. When he became active in politics the president tapped him for his Cabinet. On this day, the secretary looked agitated as he shuffled his notes and looked over at the vice president. “Good morning, Jay.”

  “Morning Trent. I see you’ve brought your briefing papers.”

  “Always. We’ve got a lot on our plate today.”

  “We’ll get to that in a minute.” The vice president checked his watch and asked, “Where are Thorne and the SecDef?”

  “DHS just called to say that the secretary is on his way. As for Iggy, I think he just stopped to pick up a cup of coffee. He’ll be here in a minute.”

  As if on cue, William Ignatius, the secretary of defense, bustled into the room carrying a mug in one hand and a bulging briefcase in the other. The stocky man still bore a military demeanor even though he had retired from the Marine Corps twelve years before. No active member of the military could serve as secretary of defense. You had to be out at least seven years because it was a long-standing tradition that the military is run by a civilian appointee unless Congress voted a pass as they did when General Mattis was tapped to head up DOD. He settled into a brown leather chair on the far side of the conference table. “Traffic from the Pentagon’s a bitch this morning. Sorry to hold you up.”

  “No problem. We’re just waiting for Franklin Thorne.” A moment later, the door opened again, and a haggard looking man came through, buttoning his jacket on the way. Jay watched as the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security took a seat next to Iggy and mopped his brow with a handkerchief. The man’s face looked perpetually sad, with jowls hanging down like a basset hound. He looked lonely in his suit. It hung on his body and gave the image of a man with the weight of the world on his shoulders instead of on his slight frame.

  “All right, gentlemen, we’d better get started. Oh, and Austin, thanks for pushing your staff meeting back to seven-thirty. I need you here, and I thought we’d better get an early start. We’ll try to keep it brief. As you all heard in the president’s news conference, he’s asked Austin here to coordinate the search for the terrorist group or groups responsible for the latest attacks on our airplanes. And he’s asked me to get a team in place to try and speed up every line of technology we have in the works so that we can deploy a defensive system on our commercial fleet as soon as possible.

  “We all recognize the gravity of the situation,” he continued. “The market was down at the close yesterday, and God knows how it will open this morning. So let’s get a status report.”

  He turned to the man with the coffee colored complexion. Trent, why don’t you start. Bring us up to speed on the transportation situation.”

  “It’s bad! Not only have all the airlines had massive cancellations, but three of them are saying that if this goes on for another month or, God forbid, if there’s another attack of some kind, they’re talking chapter eleven.

  “The pilots are screaming. First it was the fuel tank situation. We thought we had that under control. Then it was the hardened cockpit doors. Then they wanted guns in the cockpits and more air marshals. Now they want a missile defense system. But then so does everybody.

  “And one more thing, the Air Traffic Controllers Union just held a meeting, and they’re talking about a possible strike if we don’t do something drastic.”

  “A strike?” Jay exclaimed. “They can’t do that.”

  “They did it before. Well, we all know that. Even though they had signed an agreement not to strike, they went out anyway even when the president at the time offered them an eleven percent raise.”

  “What did they want then? Wasn’t it some outrageous number as I recall?” Iggy asked.

  “Yes. Back then, they demanded a one-hundred percent raise. And when they walked, well we all know that President Reagan fired them. But that was then. Now, we’ve got much bigger problems.”

  “Why would they walk now?” Thorne asked.

  “They’re demanding safety systems, just like the pilots. And they want that dome system.” He turned to the DHS secretary. “You know, the contract that calls for the fancy radar to be set up around all the airports to detect missiles when they’re fired.”

  Franklin Thorne interrupted. “Well, I for one agree with them. I don’t mean the strike thing. I mean, I agree that we should be moving faster on that new radar. In fact, I wanted to get your support for an emergency appropriation for both of the contractors who are working on new defensive systems.”

  “But Frank, remember, nobody saw anything when those planes went down. Nothing showed up on radar, so why would we want to go ahead and spend more millions, money we don’t have right now, on some new-fangled radar system when we don’t have a clue that it’ll solve our problem?” Jay asked.

  “I thought I heard the president clearly say that my department is working to speed up the process of finding new technologies to protect our planes and that’s exactly what I’m trying to do,” Secretary Thorne replied. “In fact, I’ve got meetings scheduled up on the Hill later this morning with the heads of several committees. We’ve got to get another appropriation. I trust I can tell them that you all agree … with the president, I mean.” He cast his glance around the table but none of the other men made eye contact with him.

  “Look, Frank, you do your best on those contracts,” the vice president said. “The president also indicated that we were talking to our allies and looking at various ways to protect the country. And let me interject at this point that Austin and I met with the president and a very special scientist yesterday. I’m sure you all remember Dr. Cameron Talbot.” They all nodded.

  “The president has tasked Dr. Talbot to work on her own defensive system as well. She has a new laser technique that just might work on our planes. We don’t know yet, but she may be on to something. She’s on our team. And by the way, that’s not for public consumption. We don’t want her name or her research to make the news.” The vice president glanced around the table and everyone murmured their agreement. “So Frank,” Jay concluded. “You handle your two companies, we’ll handle the rest.”

  “But you can’t count on that thirty-something woman to come up with a brand new technology in a short period of time. That’s nonsense. Our two companies have been working on their systems for years,” Frank countered.

  “That’s the whole point,” Jay said. “They’re taking too long and spending too much money as it is, and what have we got for our investment? Zip. Zilch. So far anyway.”

  “But?” Frank sputtered.

  “I said you can handle them. For a w
hile longer, that is.” He scanned the room again and said, “By the way, where’s the secretary of state? I thought he would be back here by now.”

  Austin answered, “He’s still in Minsk.”

  “Belarus?” the vice president asked. “Why is that trip taking so long?”

  “Moscow’s trying to cut off their gas again, and he’s trying to tie up some trade issue while he’s there.”

  “Well, see if you can get his ass back here. Seems like he’s always out of town when we need him. Last week he was at that conference on investing in Wales.”

  “Why? Are we running out of them again,” Thorne asked with a frown.

  “Not the mammals, the country, for God’s sake.”

  “Sorry,” the older man said, looking down at his papers again.

  The vice president was trying to keep his temper in check. It seemed that every time they had a crisis, the head of DHS turned out to be part of the problem rather than part of the solution. He had been trying to sell the idea of an additional appropriation all over town like a regular Willy Lohman. And he was just about as successful.

  The president had once said the head of DHS was a thorn in his side. At first Jay had laughed at the use of his name, but now he understood why everyone always seemed exasperated with the little weasel. The trouble was, the president could hardly fire the guy in the midst of this crisis. No, in this situation, they’d have to put up a good front and all work together.

  “Now then, Austin, what do we have on the terrorist groups? Anything yet?” Jay asked.

  “We’ve tasked NSA to increase their surveillance. As for the CIA, I dare say most of their seventeen thousand employees are working on this problem in one way or another. They have a possible lead in South America. I don’t have anything firm on that yet, but I’m bringing Hunt Daniels back to put a terrorism task force together and analyze what we’ve got. Our agents are fanning out throughout the Middle East, the Philippines, Indonesia, Pakistan, Russia as well as Venezuela and Central America. Remember, there are tons of missiles in Nicaragua left over from when the Soviets armed the Sandinistas. So there might be a connection there.”