by Brad Thor
“So much for professional courtesy,” said Harvath as he ducked under the tape and walked up the hill to where several small flags had been placed in the snow.
Blue tarps were pitched over the bodies to protect against further snow accumulation. Sealing the scene was the right thing to do, but there was no reason that Scot shouldn’t have been allowed in. The scene was already greatly disturbed because of the rescue efforts. Snow was one of the biggest pains in the ass to try to gather evidence in. This case was no exception. As a matter of fact, the difficulty had been compounded by the avalanche, which Harvath now knew was no accident.
Scot moved from tarp to tarp, looking beneath each one, recognizing every face. The eyes of many of the bodies were still open, staring right through him. The pattern of precise head shots on all of the bodies coupled with random bullet wounds on some didn’t make sense. He had a feeling that before this was over, he would be running across a lot of things that didn’t make sense.
Scot was trying to process the information as he walked over to one of the final tarps, under which lay the body of Sam Harper. He lifted the sheet of blue plastic and saw the body with the SIG-Sauer clasped in Sam’s right hand. A flood of memories poured through Scot’s mind, and it was almost impossible to push them out.
Whenever a president made an appearance on or near water, the Navy SEALS were called upon to provide support. Harvath had transferred to Dev Group after several years with Team Two and was part of a contingent of SEALs that assisted several such protective details for a former president who loved to race his Cigarette boats off the coast of Maine. Scot had proven himself to be extremely talented on many occasions, but when he discovered and defused a small explosive device meant to disrupt one of the president’s outings, Secret Service agent Sam Harper stood up and took notice. Harper had been looking for someone just like Scot to help improve the Secret Service’s protection of the president.
He pursued Harvath back to Little Creek, Virginia, where Scot was an active part of the SEAL think tank. It took some doing, but Harper eventually succeeded in wooing Scot on board the Secret Service team. After Harvath completed his courses at the Secret Service advanced-training facility in Beltsville, Maryland, he joined Harper at the White House. Not only did Sam Harper show him the ropes, but he made him a part of his family. Scot had lost track a long time ago of how many barbecues and holiday dinners he had eaten with Sam, his wife, Sharon, and their two daughters. The thought of how they would take this news tore right through his heart.
”What the hell are you doing?” came the voice of a very angry Tom Hollenbeck.
Without turning around, Harvath walked toward the last and final tarp, which he knew must be covering the man Harper had shot.
“Harvath, I asked you a question!”
Scot lifted the tarp and stared at the bloody body. Half of the back of its skull had been blown away.
“What the hell’s the matter with you? Assaulting an FBI officer? Damn it, Harvath, look at me.”
It took him almost a full minute to tear himself away from the body of the Middle Easterner. Silently, Scot was making a promise to Harper. He would personally deliver the bullets that would take out every last one of the fuckers responsible for this tragedy.
“Skorpion,” said Harvath so quietly that Hollenbeck almost didn’t hear him.
“What?”
“The machine pistol, it’s a Skorpion,” said Scot, turning to face Hollenbeck.
“What about it?”
“They’re manufactured by the Czechs, but are the darlings of every Middle Eastern group with a bone to pick.”
“Speaking of bones, my friend, I’ve got a big one to pick with you. I know what kind of weapon that is, but I’ve got a couple of other questions. Just what the hell were you thinking when you coldcocked that FBI agent?”
Scot shook off the melancholy trance that had descended on him when he had seen Sam Harper’s body. “He was asking for it.”
“Asking for it? He was doing his job maintaining the integrity of this crime scene. You know damn well that in a situation like this it becomes the FBI’s purview.”
“Yeah, when we call them in.”
“And we have called them in, so therefore you’ve gotta back off. Our job now is to function in a support capacity.”
“Doesn’t that piss you off, Hollenbeck? Whoever did this, breached our security, killed our men, and took the president.”
“We can’t be sure that he was taken.”
“Not you too. Come on.”
“Of course it pisses me off, but that doesn’t change the fact that the law is the law.”
“We’re supposed to be the best protective force in the world, none better. And yet, someone was able to just fly in here, wipe out our team, and then take off with the president.”
“Scot, we’re all in shock over this. None of us can believe it happened. You saved Goldilocks, though, and you should be extremely proud of that. We are all proud of that.”
“But, Tom, they took the president. Our president. Not only are our reputations and the reputation of the Secret Service at stake here, but so is his life. We can’t just sit back and do nothing.”
“Scot, the cold reality is that he might already be dead. We have no idea either way. They could dig four feet in another direction and come up with him…though I doubt it. I actually agree with you. I think he’s been grabbed, which is all the more reason for us to cooperate and play the parts we’ve been assigned. Now, let’s get you out of here. I’m gonna have to do some fast talking to keep your bacon out of the fire, and I need a few minutes to think.”
“Thinking is only going to waste time we already don’t have. We need to act.”
18
Senator David Snyder picked up the phone on the first ring, just as he had when it had softly rung hours earlier around midnight. Outside, a steady rain drummed against the windows of his Georgetown town house.
Looking carefully to see if the figure next to him showed any signs of stirring, he spoke quietly into the phone. “Yes?”
“Senator, it’s Zuschnitt. I—”
“Zuschnitt? Jesus Christ. Hold on a second. I can’t take this call here.”
Senator Snyder pressed the hold button of the black Sony phone on the oriental nightstand next to his bed. Very carefully, he slid out of bed. He put on a white Turkish bathrobe, a pair of Dunhill slippers, and made sure to close the bedroom door behind him as he left the room.
Snyder tapped the switch of the ornate chandelier that illuminated the gently curving staircase. Heavy clouds and steadily falling rain made the morning darker than it normally would be.
At the bottom of the stairs, he crossed a marble entry hall and opened the front door to retrieve his morning papers. Wrapped in plastic were copies of The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, The New York Times, USA Today, and The International Herald Tribune. Even though his aides would clip any relevant articles for him at the office, he liked to get a jump on the day’s news while he was still at home.
Shuffling into his study, he could make out the headlines on several of the papers through the plastic sleeves. They all said more or less the same thing: “Utah Avalanche. President Missing. Feared Dead.” Snyder turned on the bank of television monitors in his office, which showed studio newscasters in suits speaking to reporters in the field who were garbed in heavy winter parkas with the brightly colored logos of their respective networks prominently displayed. The sets were muted, yet Snyder could tell the reports were coming from the site of the president’s ski vacation and the avalanche. It was the biggest story in the country, if not the world.
He dropped his cord of newspapers on the couch next to the fireplace and pushed the on switch of the Heat-N-Glo remote. The fireplace crackled to life. If D.C. wasn’t wrapped within a damp, bone-chilling cold, it was ninety-five degrees with one hundred percent humidity. There never seemed to be a happy medium in this town, for anything.
Sny
der moved around to the back of his desk and lit a cigarette. He didn’t care if he kept Zuschnitt waiting.
Salt Lake City was one of the largest FBI field offices in the country. This was due to the fact that at weapons facilities across Utah, America was honoring its nuclear reduction and disarmament treaties with the former Soviet Union. In the political chess game that had raged between the two countries for decades, neither had yet grown to trust the other, and consequently, the Russians had a large number of their people in Salt Lake monitoring our dismantling-and-disposal progress, just as we had a large number of people in different sites throughout Russia for the same reason.
With all of those Russians running around, the U.S. government felt it was a good idea to keep as close an eye on them as possible, and the job fell to the FBI. Always relying on his own “inside” sources, Snyder had cultivated many contacts in domestic and foreign intelligence-gathering communities. While Zuschnitt might not have been the brightest bulb in the box, he had a nasty streak that Snyder liked, and the man had been easy to buy. Snyder now questioned whether giving him his secure home phone number had been such a good idea, but he reasoned it was better than having Zuschnitt call him at the office.
“You’re late,” said a gruff Senator Snyder as he picked up the phone and dragged on his cigarette.
“I know, but—”
“Shut up and listen to me first. Where are you calling from?”
“I’m calling from the Salt Lake field office on the phone we use to route communications through from suspected fugitives and felons. It’s the one that records all outgoing and incoming calls…Where the hell do you think I’m calling from? You don’t think I’m smart enough to use a secure line? I’m calling from a pay phone at the resort.”
Controlling his anger at the man’s insolence, Snyder responded, “Where at the resort?”
“Near the medical facility, but don’t worry. There are no other government staff around here. I’m the only one, and in my condition, I fit right in.”
“In your condition? What do you mean?”
“I got sucker punched by a loose cannon on the Secret Service. Some prick named Harvath. I guess he was head of the president’s advance team.”
“Not only head of the advance team, but he was also a member of the president’s detail. You mean he’s still alive?”
“Yeah, I guess he transferred over to the president’s daughter’s detail yesterday morning before the avalanche.”
“Who else survived?”
“As far as we can tell, only Harvath and the president’s daughter.”
“Any clues as to the whereabouts of the president?”
“At this point, nothing. The Secret Service uncovered the body of a towel head with a machine pistol, put two and three together and got seven, then called us in. The director of the FBI has Gary Lawlor on his way out here. They are treating this as a kidnapping.”
“And the media?”
“For now, they’re being kept back from the scene. They’ve been able to piece together that several agents and civilians were killed in the avalanche and that the president has not been recovered, but other than that, they don’t know anything.”
“Back to your getting sucker punched. What happened?”
“That asshole Harvath wanted to get in and take a look around where the president and his detail went down. The Salt Lake field office had directions to take over the crime scene and secure it until Lawlor arrived. Nobody was to get in, including Secret Service. Shit, you should see how bad they had already trampled it. Anyway, Harvath insisted, and I told him no. When I wasn’t looking, he sucker punched me. That was a real pussy move.”
“Yes, but he managed to get the better of you, didn’t he?” Snyder didn’t expect Zuschnitt to respond. He refiled Scot Harvath’s name in the back of his mind and returned to questioning the FBI man. “Anything further to report?”
“Besides the fact that I took three stitches in my lip, my face is swollen up like a balloon, and I’m lucky he didn’t break my jaw? No, I guess there’s nothing further to report.”
“Then I guess that’s all we have to talk about. I expect your next report to be on time, whether you have managed to get yourself bitch-slapped again or not. Am I understood?”
“Yeah, I hear you.”
“Good.”
“What do you want me to do about the press?”
“Let me think.” For a moment Snyder pondered when the right time would be for Zuschnitt to leak that the president wasn’t buried beneath the snow, but had actually been kidnapped. “You’re still wearing your pager, aren’t you?”
“Of course, all of the agents are.”
“When it’s time for you to share our little story with the press about what has truly befallen the president, I’ll page you and tell you how I want you to handle it. Understood?”
“Yes.”
“Good.” Snyder hung up the phone before the man could say anything else. Simultaneously, the black Sony phone in the master bedroom upstairs was hung up by an extremely intrigued lover who hadn’t been sleeping since the first covert call had come in around midnight.
19
Within seconds of meeting David Snyder, he could see why Mitch had found him so irresistible.
The idea of his boyfriend sleeping with his boss to get ahead had never appealed to André, but Mitch had assured him it would only be temporary and that it was just how things sometimes had to be done in Washington.
André had sat by and watched what was supposed to be a onetime thing blossom into a full-blown affair between the senator and his junior staffer. To say it bothered him deeply would have been the understatement of the millennium, but André was in love with Mitch and in love with the life Mitch promised the two of them would have together.
The fact that Mitch had dated a lot of women on the Hill was no secret, and André had accepted that as part of their cover, but Mitch’s deep involvement with Senator Snyder began to bother him greatly, especially when Mitch disappeared for entire weekends or when the senator called in the middle of the night and ordered Mitch to “hightail his little ass” over to Snyder’s town house.
It had finally got to the point where André couldn’t take any more. If he couldn’t have Mitch all to himself, he didn’t want to be in a relationship with him. It was bad enough that André had to hide the fact that he was gay, both at the D.C. law firm where he worked, as well as with his family, but to have to hide to the rest of the world the deep love he felt for Mitch was just too much. André Martin eventually reached his limit. He was through with living in secret, and he delivered Mitch an ultimatum. For the rest of his life, André knew, he would have mixed feelings about how he handled the response.
Mitch explained that he’d been trying to unwind himself from the affair for the past couple of weeks. The more he tried, the odder the senator became; distant and cold at times, downright inquisitorial at others. The senator’s temper had begun to flare, something Mitch had never seen before, only heard about. Sex with the senator became rougher, almost as if the man wanted to hurt him both physically and emotionally. Even through all of this, it was important, Mitch said, for him to have an amicable parting with the senator if he was to preserve his job. André felt he should be more important to Mitch than any job, and so to make his point, he moved out of the condo they shared. André knew he had done the right thing, but he was still racked with guilt.
Mitch told André again and again how much he loved him and that he wanted more than anything in the world to be with him. He stated that he was sure the senator was going to let him go soon; the treatment had become so bad that he couldn’t imagine that the senator would want him around any longer anyway. Mitch even said he would give it just one more week and if the senator hadn’t ended it, he would. He promised André with all of his heart that he would do it and asked him to hang on just until the end of the following week.
In his heart of hearts, André believed Mitch. His s
pirits began to lift, and he decided that if the relationship was in fact ended by the following weekend, he would move back in with Mitch. André went so far as to make late reservations for that Saturday night for the two of them at their favorite restaurant, Monroe’s in Alexandria.
When Saturday arrived, André sat by himself waiting for Mitch, and while he consumed three lonely glasses of chardonnay, he did a lot of soul-searching. Realizing Mitch wasn’t going to show, he paid the check and left Monroe’s, convinced everything had been a lie. Mitch’s job and his affair with the senator were more important to him in the end than André.
He walked back to the Holiday Inn where he’d been staying since leaving Mitch and convinced the bartender, who was closing up, to give him a final nightcap. André slugged back the Vodka and tonic, almost spitting it out when the partially astute bartender said, “Whatever she did, you’ll get over it, pal.”
After draining a third of the tiny bottles in his makeshift minibar and cursing himself for falling in love with someone who didn’t really care about him, André fell into a deep and dreamless sleep.
When he awoke the next morning, his head was pounding, but at least that distracted him from the aching in his heart. He went into the bathroom, peeled the plastic sheet from around one of the cups, filled it with water, and chased down two Advil.
Reaching outside his door, he collected his complimentary USA Today and The Washington Post. He threw the two papers onto the bed and returned to the bathroom, hoping that brushing his teeth would make him feel a little bit more human.
After brushing his teeth, André crossed the room and sat on the edge of the bed. He quickly scanned the room service menu and picked up the phone to order breakfast. He didn’t have the heart or the stomach to walk to one of the local cafés.