As Jack looked at Dumaine’s gaze move down to his feet, lost for a moment in thought, he knew that Dumaine was thinking that no one knew about his thing with Tim Harcourt. That’s why the chairman of the Joint Chiefs had minimized Harcourt’s importance. But Jack knew how important Harcourt was to Dumaine. And that made Jack and his dad (and not to forget Agent Rodriguez) the only people in the world who would have any suspicion that the explosion over Baltimore Harbor might not be an accident, that it might be possible Tim Harcourt had been targeted for murder, not Bianca Dumaine and Phil Thuris.
But who could possibly have a motive?
At the same time, Jack thought, what could any of them do about it? The only thing they could do was keep their mouths shut.
“Parts of the plane landed in Fort McHenry, and parts in the harbor at Baltimore, so it’ll be a while before we recover the black box.”
“Jack, could I have a cup of that Cuban coffee you and your dad drink all the time?” Dumaine asked.
Jack nodded.
“Lonnie!”
Dumaine nodded back, and, distracted by the crackling fire, looked for a moment into the orange depths of its flames.
* * *
CHAPTER 89
Colonel Reza Shahzad was out on the big charter fishing boat he’d rented making long leisurely passes by St. Clair Island, moving slowly north in the Intracoastal Waterway where they were surrounded by all the other water craft using the channel. Biscayne Bay was notorious for its numerous shallow flats, so larger boats kept in the middle of the dredged channel. When they’d piloted a half-mile north, Reza’s driver would circle around and head back south again in a constant cycle. Occasionally, they made the trip around the island, following the same route as the patrol boats, but they only did this twice a day, and usually used different boats on different days, and even sometimes two boats on the same day so as not to attract attention.
St. Clair Island attracted its fair share of gawkers, tourists and rubberneckers who tried to steer their small craft close to the island just for kicks. Sometimes, Shahzad followed two or three of these boats in. But they were always sent away by the patrol boats using bullhorns. The message was always the same:
“You are entering a restricted area. Reverse course and return to Biscayne Bay!”
All morning Shahzad had been going over the strange circumstances of the exploding plane that killed Dumaine’s wife.
The most basic press reports indicated merely that she had mistakenly gotten on a plane meant for a Dumaine aide who was going to Wellfleet on business. A quick check with his people in Washington revealed nothing sinister in the accident. Everything seemed just as it had been reported in the press. No funny business.
Still, Shahzad had an uneasy feeling he couldn’t shake…
The previous day he and a couple of his men had spent out at Opa-Locka Airport, the main executive airport for private jets that served Miami. He had thought of using two private planes to get his men out, but after considering the long distance between St. Clair Island and Opa-Locka, had opted to bring in two Sikorsky S-76 helicopters. These were civilian versions of the military Blackhawk type chopper made by the same company, and while Shahzad’s people could have gotten old Blackhawks, their acquisition might have aroused suspicion. The civilian version was good enough for Shahzad.
These would land after Shahzad’s men had secured the island, taken out Dumaine and were ready to leave. Shahzad was sure if the mission went well enough, he and his men would be on the choppers and out over the Atlantic in just minutes.
After any attack on the Presidential compound, the military would shut down every airport in the area immediately. But Shahzad planned simply to head out over the Atlantic and fly south below radar. In no time they’d be in Havana. The Cubans had already been alerted to receive them. All this conceivably could happen before the Air Force could get any fighters in the air to intercept them.
Shahzad’s encrypted cell sounded.
“Yes?”
“Come back to the dock,” Seyed Gilani said, and it sounded like an order.
“What it is?”
“Just come back.”
Shahzad jerked his head and the pilot pulled the wheel hard to starboard and they made their way through the shallow water to the dock in front of one of their rented houses directly opposite Flagler Hall.
Shahzad jumped onto the dock even before the bumpers hit and ran up into an open patio area fronting the water, nicely concealed from the neighbors by tall hedges. Gilani was waiting.
Gilani poured Shahzad a cup of tea, handed it to him, and said:
“Dumaine’s wife’s mother died an hour ago.”
Shahzad’s eyes narrowed as he opened his mouth in shock, took the tea, gulped it down, handed the cup to one of his men.
“More.”
He sat down at a white wrought iron table with a glass top.
“Apparently, they had planned not to tell her that her daughter had been killed in a freak accident, because the old woman was very ill. But the mother got up to use the bathroom and heard a TV in the next room that a nurse was watching and when she leaned in and saw that her daughter had died, she collapsed dead on the spot.”
“Well, well, well,” was Shahzad’s measured response. He looked up as one of his men gave him his cup of tea. “That will mean a funeral down here.”
Gilani shook his head.
“You know, if we weren’t going to kill this Dumaine fellow, one could almost feel sorry for him with all the tribulations he’s been through.”
Shahzad allowed himself a smirk as he bit off a piece of sugar cube and raised the cup to his lips. He even chuckled in a dark tone.
“No, Seyed. No. We will show him the kind of trouble he could never imagine.”
* * *
CHAPTER 90
Since Bianca’s body had not been recovered, Dumaine decided to hold a combined funeral service for Bianca’s mom and a memorial service for Bianca at the same time down in Lighthouse Point.
He stopped working on the Transition altogether and holed up for a couple of days with the girls at home in Georgetown.
This “down time” also provided a lot of quality time with Tim, since he was now basically living in the cottage on the other side of the garage. Occasionally Tim spent the night in his apartment on Wisconsin Avenue. Dumaine wanted him in the cottage every night, but they agreed that would be too much. Tim had to make some kind of pretense of having a life separate from Dumaine.
The media had left the plane’s accidental explosion totally alone. No one in the media attributed the explosion to any sinister forces. No conspiracy theories. No terrorist plots. Nothing. It was just a freak accident that would remain unexplained because until (and if) the black boxes were found, there could be no data to analyze.
All the planning in Washington took on an added sense of urgency because the Constitution required the Inaugural to take place on January 20, so the funeral/memorial service was scheduled for three days after Bianca and Phil died. (Phil was divorced, his ex-wife lived in Boston. He also had an estranged sister in Indianapolis. Both were invited. Both accepted, impressed by the fact that a Government jet would come for them.)
A great portion of official Washington headed down to Lighthouse Point north of Fort Lauderdale for the funeral and memorial service, which took place on a crisp, clear, sunny day.
Dumaine and his party flew down on Air Force One with the President, landing at MIA. From there, they flew in choppers to the President’s estate on St. Clair Island where they freshened up before returning to the helicopters for the short flight up to Lighthouse Point.
* * *
Through his Zeiss high-powered binoculars, Reza Shahzad and several of his team watched with interest from the terrace of his penthouse apartment in Bay Harbor Islands as the three identical VH-3D Sea King helicopters lifted off from the helipads behind Flagler Hall.
As they headed north to Lighthouse Point, Shahzad strolle
d nonchalantly back into the living room of the apartment and put down his binoculars. He looked at Gilani, his eyes taking on a little squint.
“I think tomorrow night, Gilani. Why wait any longer? We are trained. We even had two or three days extra waiting for these funeral arrangements to be made.”
“As you wish,” said Gilani with a nod.
“Order the choppers to be ready tomorrow. I have looked at the weather forecast, and tomorrow night between three and four A.M. ought to be perfect. Everyone but the bare minimum security will be asleep. We will catch them totally by surprise.”
“He has already escaped us once in St. Barts,” Gilani agreed.
“Yes, and the way things have been happening, he might be out of here early for some reason we don’t know yet. And we’d lose him again. But we need tonight to observe the patrol boat patterns around the island—just to be certain they have not made any changes. One team will log the patrol boats’ movements from the Bay while another logs their movements from up here. Once we determine the time lapse for a circuit of the island, we will know when to land and exactly where.”
“Yes. We do not want to have to attack any of the boats.”
“Correct,” said Shahzad. “Though they have no firepower to speak of, they can alert the forces on the island that we are here. Better to slip between the boats, land our men, and then launch a coordinated attack on the main house.”
Gilani nodded and headed out with some of his men.
Shahzad went back out onto the terrace for a long look at Flagler Hall. It was a very big house, a palace almost, with 55 rooms, according to the floor plans they studied. He and his team had narrowed down to three the number of rooms where Dumaine would be expected to sleep.
Shahzad’s very careful analysis of the situation boiled down to this: he simply thought that his Special Ops commandos were better trained for this offensive than the forces arrayed to protect the President were up to the level required to really defend him.
Who were these people across the narrow water securing St. Clair Island? They were strictly Secret Service agents. No military. No Special Ops teams. No Green Berets. No SEAL teams. No Rangers. The most elite elements the U.S. armed forces had to offer were not there on St. Clair Island to protect their President. They would all be asleep far away in their barracks when Shahzad’s men struck.
Shahzad’s team was a highly trained military combat unit, not civilian Secret Service agents—agents who (except for a few individuals) had never been in a combat situation before in their entire lives.
He was also aware that no one had ever attempted a commando-style raid on a President in any circumstance, the kind of military maneuver that combined speed with surprise and overwhelmingly harsh violence to achieve a kill.
Given these factors, Shahzad had decided some time ago on a full-scale military assault on the President’s mansion at night, rather than a more surgical attack when Dumaine might be out traveling by car or making a speech. He had come to the realization it was better to simply go in with guns blazing, killing as many people as he could. No one would know if they’d been out to kill Dumaine or the President. He and his men would just kill them all.
Shahzad was mindful that the Supreme Leader had made it very clear he didn’t want a lot of Iranian bodies left behind, and Shahzad had given this aspect of their mission a lot of thought.
Even after the shooting started, Shahzad did not see very much in the way of additional security forces from the mainland pouring in to reinforce the Secret Service agents already on the island.
It would be 4 A.M.
There were no military units within an hour of St. Clair Island.
There was the Miami-Dade County SWAT Team, but they would take 40 minutes to deploy, and were located on the mainland in Miami, far to the south of St. Clair Island.
The night shift of the Surfside and Miami Beach police departments?
Hah! thought Shahzad.
They were hardly a threat. He had had plenty of opportunities to observe these policemen throwing their weight around South Beach, harassing homeless people, picking up girls at the Clevelander, acting like big shots. They were just a lot of fat bullies putting in time, waiting to get their pensions. When the shooting started, the few of them on duty would probably run away from the action, not toward it.
So they would not present any problem his 27 commandos couldn’t handle.
As for the Secret Service agents on the island, they were fully armed with the latest equipment. Their side arms were SIG Sauer P229s, an excellent weapon. Some agents carried the Glock 17. They also had at their immediate disposal close-combat weapons such as the short barreled Remington 870 pump-action shotgun, the FN P90 submachine gun and more likely, the Heckler & Koch MP5, a machine pistol that could do a lot of damage.
Also, these agents were expertly trained. Each agent went through a rigorous re-training program every four months.
Still, as perfectly trained as these Secret Service agents might be, they had never before been attacked by a Special Ops military commando unit that ranked among the best in the world. Shahzad would put his men up against the most elite Israeli commando units (without question the best in the world, or at least as good as anything the Americans could put in the field).
Secret Service agents were used to being attacked by individual crazies, nutcases who hardly knew how to shoot a gun. The last thing they were looking for (or were even prepared for) was the kind of action against President St. Clair that President Obama had authorized against Osama bin Laden.
However, Shahzad would not be dropping in on St. Clair Island by helicopter the way the Americans did in Pakistan when they went after bin Laden.
No, Shahzad and his team would go in by Zodiac with special quiet motors. When they were finished, in 30 to 40 minutes, the two Sikorsky S-76s (currently waiting with his pilots at an executive airport in Palm Beach) would sweep in to take them out to sea and south to Cuba.
He just hoped he could get out without losing too many of his men so that the Supreme Leader would not have to explain to the world the day after what a handful of dead Iranian Special Ops commandos were doing on St. Clair Island’s 16th Hole green. He expected he’d lose some men. He just had to minimize the loss so the Americans would not be able to point an accusatory finger at Iran. There was no way the Americans could positively identify his men as Iranians. Shahzad had made sure of that when he selected them.
His biggest threat, actually, would occur when the soldiers and agents patrolling the sea walls around the island converged on Flagler Hall after they heard the explosions caused by the RPG-7s when his men made the preemptive strike against the Secret Service field office in the bungalows because those bungalows would be history. There would be no communication between the agents on the perimeter and the ruined communications center.
Shahzad was not about to seek permission or approval from Tehran for any of his tactical decisions in the field. They would just botch his operations the way they had frustrated him so many times in the past.
No, he was on his own here in Miami, he thought as he turned around and looked across the water toward St. Clair Island, breathing in the crisp, fresh air.
And he liked it that way.
* * *
CHAPTER 91
The combined funeral/memorial service had been hastily arranged at a Methodist Church in Lighthouse Point. Bianca herself had met with the pastor to discuss plans for her mother’s funeral when it became apparent that her mother was not going to recover from her latest illness, little knowing that the pastor would be officiating not only at her mother’s funeral, but hers as well a mere four weeks later.
At the rear of the church, Jack Houston St. Clair stood next to Dumaine as people filed down the nave into the pews. Dumaine pulled out a couple of pieces of paper. He caught Jack’s eye.
“Your eulogy?” whispered Jack.
Dumaine nodded.
“Yeah. I couldn’t really put
anything together. Imagine that,” he said with a tearful smile, “a U.S. Senator at a loss for words.”
“That is hard to imagine,” said Jack, smiling back.
“Tim was really helpful getting this together.”
“He’s… quite a guy, Tim,” said Jack carefully. “I’ve had a chance to watch him in these difficult times, and I can see he has great potential, and that he’s been a big help to you.”
Dumaine glanced around the church; people were still filing in slowly. Jack noticed a slight change in Dumaine’s manner. Suddenly, he’d shifted into an all-business mode, subdued though it was. He leaned in to Jack.
“You know, Jack, I was thinking, with Phil gone, I’m going to need a new chief of staff. What do you think of Tim for the job?”
Jack struggled to hold back from gasping. His cheeks puffed out and he blinked a couple of times.
“Well, he’d have a lot, uh… a lot of things to juggle as chief of staff. It’s a very… uh, delicate position.”
“I’d appreciate your opinion, Jack. I know your dad’s the President, but you’re still a loyal Democrat.”
“Through and through,” Jack said, but he thought: Well, within reason I am.
The time came for them to work their way down the aisle to their pew.
Jack followed, shaking is head slightly as he tried to clear his brain of cobwebs. What is going on here? he wondered.
* * *
The Running Mate (A Jack Houston St. Clair Thriller) Page 31