Red Cell Seven

by Stephen Frey

  As if on cue, Maddux’s cell phone pinged. He grabbed it, scanned the SOS message, tossed the device back on the seat, swung the truck left into the farm’s driveway, and jammed the accelerator to the floor. He’d made it in the nick of time.

  CHAPTER 16

  “MR. PRESIDENT?”

  Dorn glanced away from the darkness outside the Oval Office. He’d been staring into it sadly for the last five minutes. “Yes, Stewart.”

  “Sir, it’s after midnight.” Baxter was leaning into the office from the corridor through the open door. He hadn’t bothered knocking. After all, he was the chief of staff. There was no need for him to be bound by rules others had to obey. At this point he made most of the rules when it came to dealing with the president, and in many instances knew more about what was going on than the president. In fact, Dorn would be lost without him. No, the president wasn’t going to say anything about violating protocol. He’d better not, anyway. “Why are you still awake? You need to get to bed.”

  “You sound like my mother, God rest her soul.”

  “Nevertheless.”

  The president shrugged. “I couldn’t sleep. I didn’t want to keep the First Lady up. I’d just toss and turn.”

  “You need your rest, sir. With all due respect, the First Lady can rest anytime she wants to. Maybe it’s her duty to stay awake with you and keep you company once in a while if you need that.” Baxter hesitated. “She wasn’t shot in the chest a few weeks ago, either.”

  Dorn shook his head at Baxter’s audacity. “Come in, Stewart.” He motioned at the chair in front of the desk. “Sit down. I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I could actually use your company right now.”

  As Baxter walked across the eagle, he glanced at the pretty, young African American nurse who was sitting in a chair beside the president’s temporary bed, reading a magazine. She looked up and smiled sincerely, but he didn’t acknowledge her. He didn’t have the bandwidth to get to know everyone in Washington, DC.

  “What’s bothering you, sir?” Baxter asked as he eased into the chair.

  “What do you think is bothering me, Stewart? Christ.”

  “Of course, but what part of it is bothering you so much that you can’t sleep? Which,” Baxter continued quietly after he’d leaned slightly forward so the nurse couldn’t hear him, “I feel it’s my duty to inform you, could ultimately affect your judgment very negatively. And therefore negatively affect the lives of three hundred and sixty million people in the United States of America. Not to mention another six-point-four billion people outside this country.”

  Dorn gave Baxter a prickly grimace. “It’s been nearly a day and a half, Stewart, and we have no leads. Law-enforcement departments around the country have gotten thousands of tips about suspicious people in hotels, motels, apartments, houses, schools, and malls, but none of those tips have led to anything, much less arrests. We don’t know who’s committing the attacks, we don’t know who’s behind the attacks, and we don’t know what they want.”

  “Begging your pardon, sir, but we know exactly what they want. In the short run, they want to disrupt our way of life. In the long run, they want to destroy it.”

  “The point is, Stewart, Americans are terrified to leave their homes. People are dying, our economy is grinding to a halt, and I can’t seem to do a damn thing about it.”

  “Patience, sir.”

  “Patience?” the president asked incredulously. “Are you serious?”

  “We’re doing everything we can, Mr. President,” Baxter said confidently. “Everyone’s involved at the federal level who should be involved, and they’re all completely focused. The FBI, Homeland Security, CIA domestic assets, and the DNI are all putting everything they possibly can into this crisis. My staff and I are making absolutely certain of that on a minute-by-minute basis. My staffers are constantly in touch with those people.”

  “It’s not getting us anywhere.”

  “It hasn’t even been thirty-six hours, sir. We will find the people who are responsible for these crimes quickly and bring them to justice. I promise.”

  “You do? Really?”

  “Yes.”

  “Quickly?”

  “Yes.”

  “Oh, now I feel better.”

  “Sir, I—”

  “‘Quickly’ would have been today, Stewart.”

  “You can’t expect miracles, Mr. President.”

  “Why not?” Dorn snapped. “The taxpayers spend over a trillion dollars a year on defense and homeland security at the federal level, and who knows how much more on local law enforcement. Damn it, I have to expect miracles.” He was seething. “The American public demands that I expect miracles in this situation. And they should.”

  “Easy, sir.” The strain had to be incredible, and Dorn was just letting off steam. That’s all this was. “We’re doing everything in our power. No one can second-guess you.”

  Dorn slammed his open palm down on the desk so it banged loudly and the nurse jumped. “I don’t care about being second-guessed,” he said. “I don’t care about perceptions or using this situation to our advantage politically or blaming the Republicans for it somehow. I just want arrests. I want this to stop.”

  “I’m doing everything I can for you, sir.”

  Dorn shut his eyes tightly. “I know you are, Stewart,” he agreed softly. He moaned and ran his fingers through his dark hair. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to come down on you so hard.”

  “It’s all right. I know it wasn’t personal. I know you’re feeling it.”

  The president shook his head forlornly. “Those bastards shot elementary school children today, Stewart, six- and seven-year-old defenseless children.”

  “It doesn’t get any worse than that, sir.”

  “And we didn’t catch the bastards.”

  “No we didn’t.”

  “There was an armed guard on duty.”

  “Those kinds of guards aren’t equipped to take on what hit that elementary school today. That man had no chance.”

  “Children were mowed down at that school by submachine guns.”

  Baxter nodded. “I know,” he agreed quietly. “It’s…well, it’s just awful.”

  “And do you know what the worst part of it is?”

  “Well, I—”

  “They didn’t shoot themselves when it was over because they felt so horrible for what they’d done. This wasn’t some kind of onetime, wild-rage event uncorked by years of bullying or mental illness or a fight with a spouse. This was a cold-blooded, calculated attack by assassins who right now are probably picking their next target, which might be a home, a store, even a church or a synagogue.”

  “I hear you, sir.”

  Dorn glanced at his laptop, which sat on his desk. It was still open to the page he’d been studying before he turned around in his wheelchair to stare out into the darkness out of despair. “Do you remember the DC Snipers, Stewart?”

  “Of course. That happened in 2002. I believe it was in October of that year, specifically. I remember it very well. I was down on K Street doing the lobbying thing. It was my last year doing that.” Baxter prided himself on his steel-trap memory. He worked at it, too. In what little spare time he could find, he finished crossword and Sudoku puzzles with a passion because a neurosurgeon friend had told him the brain was like a muscle in a way and puzzle workouts were very good for the memory area. “And if I’m not mistaken, you were a junior congressman from Vermont who was excessively worried about global warming, the spotted owl, and rain forests in Brazil.”

  “Bravo, Stewart.” The president clapped several times slowly. “You have an amazing memory.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  Baxter appreciated Dorn’s recognizing that, even if he was being sarcastic about how he did it. The president wasn’t nearly as effusive in his praise a
bout it as Baxter believed he should have been. He wasn’t as effusive in his praise about a lot of things his COS did as he should have been. But he was getting better, and they’d only been working together for a few weeks. Another week or two and the president would be acting more respectfully.

  “There were two of them,” Baxter continued. “John Allen Muhammad was forty-one years old, and Lee Boyd Malvo was just seventeen. They were basically a couple of coward drifters who murdered innocent civilians with a hunting rifle from long range. They shot people in Maryland, Virginia, and the District of Columbia as the victims were coming out of restaurants and stores, filling up their cars at gas stations, or just sitting at a bus stop. They used Muhammad’s car as a moving sniper’s nest. The kid would lie in the back of the vehicle on his stomach and shoot through a hole in the trunk where the keyhole was. They cut away part of the backseat so he could do that. Then Muhammad would drive away as soon as Malvo had shot someone.”

  “Yes, that’s right.”

  “Muhammad was executed by lethal injection in 2009,” Baxter continued, “and Malvo was found guilty of multiple murders and is in prison for life with absolutely no chance of parole. He was spared the death penalty because of his age at the time of the killings.” Baxter shook his head sadly. “What happened to their victims is terrible, Mr. President. But at the end of the day, the system worked.”

  “Did it?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You said it yourself.”

  “What? What did I say, Mr. President?”

  “You said they were a couple of coward drifters.”

  “So?”

  “Do you remember how long it took to catch them?”

  Baxter pushed his lower lip out as he thought about it for a few moments. “It was no more than a week.”

  “It was twenty-three days, Stewart.”

  “Oh.” Baxter glanced at the young nurse. She was staring down at her book, but she didn’t seem to be reading. Her eyes weren’t moving. They seemed locked on one spot on the page in front of her.

  “And,” the president went on, “right up until the end, right up until a concerned citizen called the police about two guys he happened to notice sleeping in a rest stop on Interstate Seventy, eighty miles west of here, late one night because he thought they looked suspicious, everyone believed those maniacs were riding around in a white van. Well, it turned out they were driving a blue Chevy Caprice.” Dorn gestured at the laptop. “The point is that two drifters with no money and very little sanity completely avoided capture for twenty-three days while they murdered ten people and critically injured three more in a fairly small and congested geographic area of this country. And all that time the FBI, the Virginia state police, the Maryland state police, the DC police, and who knows how many other county and local law-enforcement personnel were looking everywhere for them.” He paused. “But they couldn’t find them. The cops set up roadblocks, they went door to door in some neighborhoods, they begged for the public’s help. But they still couldn’t find them. It took a lucky glance by a concerned citizen. Otherwise those two might still be out there killing people.” The president put a hand to his chest, to where the bullet O’Hara had fired had entered his body. “The men who attacked our country yesterday and today are members of well-trained, well-supplied death squads. I’m convinced of that. They aren’t drifters with a few dollars left in their wallets.” Dorn’s voice was shaking. “If it took George Bush more than three weeks and a lucky break to find the DC Snipers, how in the hell am I ever going to find the assassins who shot up eleven malls and killed all those children in Missouri?”

  Baxter glanced at the nurse again as Dorn ended his speech. It was obvious she wasn’t reading her book anymore. She wasn’t even trying to fake it. She was staring at the president openmouthed.

  “Excuse me, Miss,” Baxter said.

  Her eyes raced to his. She was mortified to have been caught staring at Dorn so hard. “Yes, sir?”

  “Please leave us.” The woman stood up immediately and bolted for the door. She didn’t protest at all. “Stay right outside the office,” Baxter called as she hurried out. “Don’t go far.”

  “Yes, sir,” she called back as she closed the door behind her.

  “Mr. President—”

  “I should have completely backed Red Cell Seven right from the beginning,” the president interrupted. “I should have given them everything they wanted.”

  “No way,” Baxter retorted. “They’re cowboys. They’re going to get you in very bad trouble if you don’t do something about them. They’re a cancer on your presidency. They could end up bringing you down.”

  “If I’d shown them more support, this damn thing might never have happened. They might have found out about these death squads and stopped them before they ever got started.”

  Baxter rose slowly out of his chair. His heart was suddenly pounding. He had to do this. “I must tell you something very important, sir.”

  “What is it?”

  “You need to understand that what I’m about to say comes from a friend I’ve known and trusted for a very long time. He’s been in this town a long time, and he’s always been right when he’s told me something like this.”

  “What is it?” Dorn demanded again.

  Baxter took a deep breath as he put his hands down on the front of the president’s desk and leaned over it. “Shane Maddux wasn’t operating on his own in Los Angeles, Mr. President.”

  Dorn’s eyes narrowed. “How do you even know who Shane Maddux is?”

  “Don’t worry about it, sir,” Baxter snapped. “Worry about this instead.” He leaned even farther over the great desk and pointed at the president. “The order to assassinate you came from well above Maddux. It came from Bill Jensen.”

  Dorn gazed at Baxter for several moments. Finally he shook his head slowly in total disbelief. “You’re wrong, Stewart. Bill Jensen is a fine man, a man of principle. He would never be involved in something like that. That’s ridiculous.”

  Baxter rose back up off the desk and raised one eyebrow. “Is it, Mr. President? Is it really that ridiculous?” He hesitated. “Or does it make perfect sense? Is that what’s really bothering you tonight?”

  “What are you saying?”

  “I gave you those background checks covering Bill and Troy before they got here yesterday. I know you read them. You read everything I send you.”

  “So?”

  “So you saw that section in the report about Rita Hayes, Bill’s executive assistant at First Manhattan. She’d been with him for a long time before she disappeared a few weeks ago. And they had been intimate. They had sexual relations, and the information I have is that she was about to tell Bill’s wife, Cheryl, what was going on. And then she disappeared.”

  Dorn gazed up at Baxter but said nothing.

  “Now no one can find Rita Hayes.” Baxter leaned back down over the desk. “Are you still going to tell me that Bill Jensen is a fine man?”

  CHAPTER 17

  TROY KEPT moving through the spacious first floor, swinging the hot end of the MP5 from side to side as he cruised forward. He had to make absolutely certain there was only one stairway to the basement from this floor of the house and that this level was completely clear of resistance.

  “Come in, Idaho,” he muttered. “What’s going on up there?”

  “We’re going through the last couple of rooms on level three, and then we’re good to go. Wyoming’s going through the attic right now.”

  “Well, hurry up. It’s getting kind of—Jesus!”

  Someone darted from left to right in front of him, at the far end of the long hallway he’d just turned down for the second time. The warm body raced through the living room to Troy’s right and continued out of the house after bursting through the front door.

  Troy had almost fired, but managed
to hold up at the last instant. He hadn’t tapped the target because he couldn’t make out a weapon and the guy wasn’t acting in a hostile manner. In fact, he was running away as fast as he could. The red-orange image in the upper left-hand corner of Troy’s left lens was quickly growing smaller through the living room window, and they weren’t in the business of killing civilians.

  It sounded awful, but sometimes that made this job very hard. Facing live-or-die snap decisions was an inevitable part of this life, and you could never be a hundred percent sure of the target’s intention if you fired first. Troy had been trained to err on the side of protecting himself, but occasionally the training didn’t kick in. Hesitating could cost him his life one day. That was an inevitable reality. Worse, it might cost someone else theirs.

  Troy kept reminding himself that they weren’t a hundred percent certain Wilson Travers was even here. He’d only been quoted ninety percent, and that terrified expression on the face of the guy they’d tied up a few minutes ago in the barn kept haunting him. The guy had no idea what was happening, it was obvious. Travers might be a thousand miles from here by now—or dead.

  Even at ninety percent confidence, this could all be a massive snafu, and the individual who’d fired at them as they were coming up the porch steps might have done so in self-defense, thinking this was a home invasion. It was probably that guy who just took off—which meant the cops were on their way. Unless there were people here who didn’t want cops involved, and that guy was a defector.

  Troy took a deep breath as he pushed forward. There were always so many possibilities and unknowns—and so many opportunities to make wrong decisions. Wrong decisions here didn’t result in getting fired or being docked a week’s pay. This was life and death. Civilians didn’t understand that—they couldn’t.

  “You okay, Montana?”

  “Yes,” Troy answered. “Just hurry up, will you? We’re probably on the clock at this point. Somebody just took off out of here like a bat out of hell.”