“You ask me,” Hardesy said, “we got in way too easy.”
“Bullshit,” Wade said, jerking a thumb at Reeder. “We just got ourselves a tour guide who knows his way around.”
But Reeder said, “I don’t know whether we had crazy luck or somebody’s opening doors for us. Either way, we have a job—protecting the President and his cabinet. And that won’t be easy.”
“So we move to the next stage of the plan,” Rogers said, “and head down the tunnel to the command center, secure it and make sure the President is unharmed.”
“You and I will do that,” Reeder said to her. “Lucas and Reggie will stay here and make sure we’re not caught in a pincer movement.”
Hardesy was frowning. “You really think we should be splitting up? With the grounds and buildings crawling with Secret Service and Marines?”
“You’re the one that said this was too easy—if you’re right, Patti and I’ll need cover on this end. Lucas, watch the door we came in. Reg, take a position with an angle on the living room.”
Hardesy and Wade did that, then Reeder led Rogers back to the President’s bedroom. Larger than the otherwise similar cedar-walled guest quarters, the unpretentious space had a king bed with a folksy quilt, several comfy chairs, and a big flat-screen over a fieldstone fireplace. Next to a wooden-sliding-doors closet was the sleek non sequitur of a metal door.
Rogers asked, “Gun closet?”
Reeder shook his head. “Private elevator to the command-center tunnel.”
He flipped back the notched wooden cover of a round red button, which his right forefinger was poised to push, when her hand caught his wrist.
His eyes met hers as she said, “If you’re right about that pincer movement, the other half could be waiting in there. Or at least a gunman or two of it.”
They both had weapons in hand and were angled at either side of the metal door when he pressed the button. The door whispered open onto an empty elevator.
“Lucas said it,” she sighed. “Too easy.”
He said nothing.
“So we ride down,” she said, “and the door opens and a welcome committee is waiting with a who-knows-how-many-gun salute. Suggestions?”
“We take the ride,” he said, leaning in and pointing to the panel in the roof, “but from the observation deck.”
Her eyes opened momentarily wide. “Who doesn’t like to travel first class.”
They didn’t bother disabling the security camera—if they were expected, there was no point . . . not unless their action was caught on a monitor in time for any hosts below to be alerted.
The two-hundred-foot descent happened fast and it was all Reeder could do to haul Rogers up through the escape hatch and get it back in place before their descent slowed, then stopped.
The doors slid open, and bullets sprayed the car.
When the metallic hailstorm stopped, Reeder gazed down through the gridwork of the hatch where two men leaned in, one with a linebacker build, the other wiry, both with short dark hair, immaculate business suits, and AR-15s. Feds, probably Secret Service.
The wiry one said, “Where the hell . . . ?”
When the linebacker stepped inside the car, Reeder kicked down on the hatch, swinging it to catch the man in the forehead and stagger him. Rogers dropped through the hatch, landing in a combat crouch. The wiry one was squeezing in, that AR-15 ready to spit, so she boot-heeled him in the face, knocking him back out and onto the concrete floor of the tunnel, spitting bloody teeth, not bullets. Reeder swung down right behind her, holding onto the edge of the roof, and kicking his already staggered opponent in the face as well, with the flats of both boots. The linebacker went backward and landed hard enough to knock himself cold, if he hadn’t already been.
Reeder and Rogers emerged from the elevator, nostrils twitching with cordite, ears ringing from all those rounds expended in the enclosed space. But footsteps in the tunnel were pounding their way, and that they could hear just fine.
They tucked back in the elevator as four more agents—summoned by the barrage of gunfire—rushed toward them, two with automatics, two with tactical machine pistols. Reeder and Rogers had their backs to either side of the inner doors. Nine mils in hand, angled up, they made eye contact.
Reeder lifted his head.
Rogers nodded.
He went high and she went low as they swung their guns through the open door, each picking the nearer machine-pistol agent, aiming center mass. The simultaneous squeezing of triggers doubled the thunder of the nine mils and both feds took a center hit and seemed to bow in thanks before going down in awkward sprawls, their weapons spinning and sliding out of reach.
The other two, faced with a lack of cover, retreated down the tunnel. Reeder and Rogers holstered their nine millimeters and acquired the AR-15s of the first two fallen agents and ammo as well. Moving quickly, they used zip ties to bind the hands behind the backs of all four agents.
They stood for a moment appraising their situation. The tunnel was an oversized hallway cutting through rough rock with a concrete floor and sporadic overhead lighting.
“They know we’re here now,” she said.
“You think?”
“You figure they’ll rush us?”
“Why bother? They know we’ll go to them, unless we want to take the elevator back up and devise a new plan that doesn’t include getting us killed. Of course, they can send more guns down that elevator and outflank us.”
She turned an eye toward the elevator. “You really think that elevator will still work after all those fireworks?”
“Why not? They shot the shit out of the car itself, but wouldn’t have hit the motor or any of the cables. Why, you want to go back up?”
“. . . No.”
They stayed close to the rugged rock walls, one on either side, as they moved down the tunnel, lugging the AR-15s, their footsteps, despite their care, echoing. Both knew that somewhere up ahead, guns waited. A lot of them. But short of sitting down in the tunnel, leaning back against the rock walls, and waiting for death to find them, they had no other real option.
A hissing turned Rogers around, staring at the way they came. “What was that?”
“Elevator doors closing. Thing must be functional. I’d say company’s coming.”
“Great.”
Reeder figured they were about halfway to the command center when a sound from way, way behind them might have been the elevator doors opening. He picked up the pace and Rogers did, too.
Finally they reached the entrance to the command center, an off-white wall blocking the way, decorated with the presidential seal and another seal labeled JOINT STAFF SUPPORT CENTER, RAVEN ROCK MOUNTAIN COMPLEX, surrounding a raven perched on a cliff at night. In addition a bold sign said WARNING, RESTRICTED AREA. A pair of central metal doors had a guard booth next to it.
Empty.
“Another welcoming committee,” he said, “on the other side, you think?”
Rogers grunted a laugh. “Maybe we’re the millionth visitor, and they have something special for us.”
“Maybe those doors are locked and this is a dead end.”
“Don’t sound so hopeful,” she said.
He tried a door.
Unlocked.
And when they entered into a good-size alcove facing a glass wall with metal-and-glass twin doors, they found no one waiting. Only an eerie silence greeted them.
Pistol noses up, they edged into the brightly lit room, computer terminals and monitor screens lining the walls; off to the left, a massive screen with an overhead map of Camp David, lighted here and there in red, dominated a circular command area. As impressive as all this was, the tableau before them was even more.
Nine men in black suits stood facing them in a row that was just faintly semicircular. Each had a handgun aimed at their just-arrived guests—well, eight did. The center man had his handgun in the neck of President Harrison, who was on his knees, his face bloodied, his tailored charcoal suit rumpl
ed.
“Guess I chose the wrong man to trust, Joe,” Harrison said with a weak, puffy smile. “Head of the detail—who’d have thought it?”
That earned the President a whack along the side of the head by his captor. Reeder fought back the anger and disgust at the sight, the very thought, of those privileged to protect the President betraying their oath.
The current head of the presidential detail was not anyone Reeder recognized from Secret Service days, no—too young, too new, for that. But he did recognize the man, having gone tooth and nail with the son of a bitch in an alley near the townhouse, the night this excuse for a man had dropped his flag-lapel camera. Now Reeder got a better look—short-clipped brown hair, relaxed, emotionless face . . . just another anonymous Secret Service agent . . .
. . . in the sway of the Alliance.
“Welcome,” the presidential detail head said through a slash of smile. “We’ve been waiting for you. Can’t have a political assassination until the assassins get here.”
“Heroes may not be braver than anyone else. They’re just braver five minutes longer.”
Ronald Reagan, fortieth President of the United States of America. Served 1981–1989. Formerly the thirty-third governor of California following a successful acting career.
TWENTY
Reeder—his AR-15 still at the ready, Rogers the same—said, “Why, are we here to kill the President? Or maybe the entire cabinet as well?”
Their smug host nodded toward the kneeling President. “Your target is Harrison here. The cabinet will be taken out by your Russian collaborators, of course.”
Almost casually, Reeder said, “Rocket launcher? Take the conference room out and everyone in it? What, Laurel Lodge?”
The leader chuckled, shook his head in admiration. “Well reasoned, Mr. Reeder. You were ahead of us for much of the way, you know. Have to hand you that. But at the end of the day, you and Agent Rogers and her people . . . you’ll all just be a rogue element in our government, intent on staging a failed historic coup. Of course, history will not record that you performed this task for the American Patriots Alliance, since of course that group does not, and never has, existed.”
Rogers, the AR-15 raised into shooting position, edged away from Reeder, putting a little distance between them—no need to help these traitors out by presenting a unified target.
“Ms. Rogers!” the detail head said, his smile like a skull’s. “Any further movement will initiate a firefight, and I don’t think any of us want that.”
Well, the nine-man firing squad facing them surely didn’t—the only reason she and Reeder hadn’t been cut down yet were the AR-15s in their grasps. Short of taking head shots themselves, they could take out every one of these sons of bitches before dying.
“Put down your weapons,” the leader said. “A general melee will surely take the President out early on. And I don’t think you want that.”
Harrison blurted, “I’m dead already, Joe!”
That got the kneeling prisoner another cuff alongside the head with the handgun.
Reeder took this in as casually as if someone were passing him the salt. But she knew he was roiling inside.
“I suppose,” the leader said, just a hint of tension in his voice, “I should be grateful to you for identifying yourselves as assassins making an incursion.”
“How did you track us?” Reeder asked. Still as casual as dinner-table conversation.
Tiny shrug. “We didn’t have to. Your actions stayed off our radar, and you certainly weren’t betrayed, except by your own character. You see, we knew you’d be coming, Mr. Reeder. Your vanity demanded it. Turns out the great People Reader isn’t tough to read at all.”
That got a wisp of smile out of Reeder, whose AR-15 remained leveled directly at the leader of the insurrection, or anyway this cell of it.
Rogers—with her weapon aimed to the leader’s left, figuring Reeder would handle everyone to the man’s right—said, “You can’t hope to get away with this. It’s madness.”
“If so,” the leader said cheerfully, the snout of his gun in the bloodied President’s neck, “there’s method in it. The story is already written and ready for the media, how traitors from within conspired with Russian agents in a vain attempt to wipe out the US government. You will be the chief villains of the piece, even as the nation salutes this weakling . . .”—he dug that snout deeper into Harrison’s flesh—“. . . that we’ll have turned into a hero, while the fallen cabinet will become martyrs as the nation says, ‘Thank God for Nicholas Blount, our new president.’”
“What,” Reeder said calmly over the rifle, “did they promise you and these other disgraces to the Service?”
That made the leader’s eyes narrow, his upper lip twitching. “We’re patriots, Mr. Reeder, one and all. We want a return to the roots and values of this great nation and its founders. Those of us in the Service are every day witness to the compromises and surrenders of political leaders with no moral compass.”
What complete utter, empty bullshit, Rogers thought.
“I’m guessing,” Reeder said placidly, “that you’re after the directorship of the Service. And I’m probably looking at the new White House presidential detail, which will really know its stuff having betrayed a president themselves.”
The faces above those pointing handguns no longer seemed so impassive—frowns, however subtle, could be discerned.
“Mr. Reeder,” the leader said, “you are no one to talk. After all, twenty million dollars from Ukraine sources have been deposited in a Swiss bank account in your name, and another ten million each into similar accounts for Ms. Rogers and her FBI team. You are traitors, headed for vilification today, and pages in history rivaling Benedict Arnold tomorrow . . . so spare us your judgmental condescension.”
“Sorry.” Reeder shrugged over the aimed AR-15. “I should be thanking you, anyway.”
“Thanking us?”
“For identifying yourselves as the cell operating within Camp David. Or are there more of you?”
The skull smile again. “There are patriots everywhere, Mr. Reeder.”
“I must have skipped civics class the day it was explained how killing the cabinet, the President, and Vice President, was patriotic.”
Another tiny shrug. “What could be more patriotic than the revolutionary rebirth of America? In twenty-four hours, the public will be mourning the loss of their leaders, rallying around their new president, and readying to retaliate against the Russians for what will become known as the Camp David Attack.”
“Which began,” reminded Reeder, “with the murders of four CIA agents in Azbekistan. Who set that in motion, by the way?”
Slight head shake. “Not a name you’d recognize, Mr. Reeder. A CIA official, fairly high up as you’d imagine, who is since deceased. Heart failure. Tragic.”
Reeder grinned over the weapon, still trained on the leader. “Hear that, fellas? That’s how the Alliance treats its loyal followers. If I were you, and had bought this bill of goods, I’d be reconsidering. If the President will grant me the privilege, I will offer full amnesty to any of you who put down their weapons, or come over to our side. Mr. President?”
“Done,” he said.
Their leader was frowning, irritation finally cutting through. “That’s enough, Mr. Reeder. We’re all quite prepared to die for what we believe in.”
“What was that again? To further empower a cabal of corrupt industrialists who are loyal to no one or nothing but their own self-interests? They aren’t left, they aren’t right, they’re just wrong.”
The man’s eyes and nostrils flared. “If that’s your choice, Mr. Reeder, then it’s time this Mexican standoff, if you’ll forgive the political incorrectness, comes to an end . . . no matter the cost.”
Rifle ever steady, Reeder said, “You’ll go first, friend. But before you do . . . and your men give their lives out of a misguided sense of patriotism . . . you should know that when your rocket launcher takes
out that conference room in the Laurel Lodge, it will be as empty as Senator Wilson Blount’s sense of morality.”
The frown was almost a scowl now. “Don’t bother with lies. They’re all gathered around their big table with no sense of what’s coming. It will almost be merciful.”
“Sorry to disappoint, but I directed the President earlier to move the cabinet members to the location known by code name Cactus—as head of the Secret Service presidential detail, you’ll know what that is . . .”
“Don’t bother bluffing.”
“I thought you said I was easy to read? I don’t bluff. Patti, just so you know, ‘Cactus’ is the nuclear bunker here at Camp David. And the cabinet has been instructed to stay put within, till the President himself gives them the word.”
The cell phone in her pocket vibrated and she and Reeder in a microsecond confirmed that his phone too had vibrated and, as agreed, they dropped. On the floor now, in sniper position, Reeder took out the detail leader with a burst of shots that turned the man’s head to bloody mush, while the President hit the deck, staying under the exchange of gunfire.
Taking Reeder’s act as permission, Rogers began to take one head shot after another, while behind them Wade and Hardesy came on the run, firing their own AR-15s from the hip, like Audie Murphy charging a tank. The thunder of the semiautomatic weapons fire bounced off the high walls and swallowed the smaller, occasional pops of the handgun fire from the lineup of agents, as orange tracers made a deadly light show. One of the agents managed to hit Hardesy in the chest, and he stumbled, went down on one knee but was firing again, almost immediately.
The air filled with red mist as men in oh so proper suits flew back onto the cement with their skulls cracked open and seeping, their eyes—those that had not been shot out of their heads—staring up at nothing.
The carnage was terrible and complete.
The echo of gunfire faded to a silence broken only by the ringing of the survivors’ ears. Thirty seconds had been all it took. The same was true at the O.K. Corral.
Executive Order (Reeder and Rogers Thriller) Page 25