24 Hours: A Kirk McGarvey Novella

by David Hagberg

  She looked into his face. He was afraid, but she didn’t think that he was afraid of her.

  “Please sit down,” Tarek said. He stepped aside and pulled the swivel chair away from the small desk, on which was a lamp and a telephone.

  She sat down.

  “It will only be the rest of tonight, then the day, and the following night. After that, you will be able to go home to your father.”

  “Just like that?”

  “Yes.”

  “Unless my father doesn’t do what you want him to do. Then what?”

  Tarek was at a loss.

  “Maybe whatever you assholes want him to do is impossible.”

  Tarek shook his head. “Twenty-four hours, total, then you go home.” “Jerk-off,” Dot muttered. She looked up. “When I was coming around, you were talking on the phone. You told someone that I was awake. But you used some word I don’t understand.”

  For a moment, Tarek drew a blank, but then he understood. “It is your name. Thaealab.”

  “My name is Dorothy.”

  “Yes, I understand. But your code name is thaealab. Fox to your father’s Falcon.”

  Dot was breathless. The Secret Service gave their protectees code names. Her dad was Falcon with an F. Everyone in his family’s code name started with the same letter. She was Fox. But only the names of ex-presidents and their families were generally known, not the current ones.

  They had someone on the inside—and now she knew that she was in serious trouble. Tarek was just a kid, but his boss, or bosses, were pros.

  Someone knocked on the door.

  Tarek went to answer it. As soon as his back was turned, Dot picked up the phone.

  One man and two women came in. They were dressed like Westerners, like Tarek, in jeans, sweatshirts, jackets, Nikes. They would never stick out anywhere in the States, except that the man in his mid- to late thirties was dark complected and wore a beard. The two women, neither of whom was much older than Dorothy, were not wearing head coverings.

  She wasn’t getting a dial tone, and she jabbed all the buttons at random.

  The man was across the room in three strides, shouting something at Tarek. He batted the phone out of Dorothy’s hand, then smashed his fist into the side of her face, knocking her to the floor, her head spinning.

  She managed to turn onto her side before she threw up, the Coke still cool on her throat and in her mouth.

  * * *

  “The thing is, what are we going to do about you?” the man said as Dot came around.

  She was lying on her back in the bed, and the man stood over her. Her first impression was that he wasn’t like Tarek. His accent was wrong, European, maybe eastern somewhere. She thought that she might have heard the same thing on the trip to Ankara she’d taken with her dad last year. But if he was Turkish, it made no sense to her.

  Her face was swollen, and she’d lost a couple of teeth, but her shoulder no longer pained her.

  “We can do this without you. Just at the end, it will be harder for your father to accept that he lost. That America lost. But the outcome will be the same.”

  Dot stared at him. Memorizing his face. His lips seemed to move sideways when he spoke, his nostrils flared, his thick black eyebrows rose up and down with just about every syllable.

  She managed to smile.

  “Yes?”

  “I’ll dance on your grave, motherfucker, and then piss on it.”

  Hour 6

  The university campus was on lockdown when McGarvey arrived at six in the morning. Lauinger Library had been cleared but was still surrounded by uniformed cops, SWAT teams in combat gear, and plainclothes people from the Secret Service and the bureau.

  Several television vans were parked just outside the perimeter, but to this point, they’d not been told about the president’s daughter. They were only guessing that a gunman or men were holed up inside.

  A biting wind came up from the Potomac, which kept most of the students and faculty from hanging around very long. Nothing very exciting was happening except for all the cars and flashing lights. No shooting, no ambulances, no bodies coming out of the library on gurneys, nothing but the lights and the cold weather.

  McGarvey had driven over in a CIA-licensed Taurus. Alan Bernstein had followed him from Langley, and they went immediately inside and up to the third floor.

  The Secret Service had fielded at least fifty officers, a half dozen of whom had secured the northeast alcove as the FBI forensics people were finishing up their investigation.

  “Anything?” Bernstein asked one of the officers.

  “Nothing definitive to this point, sir.”

  They went back into the stacks, and McGarvey phoned Otto. “North or south?”

  “South.”

  McGarvey pulled a ladder over on its tracks and climbed up to a few shelves down from the ceiling.

  “The signal has stopped, but you should be just about on its last position,” Otto said. “A little to the right.”

  “Got it,” McGarvey said. “The History of Herodotus.”

  “Boring book.”

  “Not this one; there’s blood on the spine,” McGarvey said, and he climbed back down.

  “Did you find it?” Bernstein asked.

  “The Herodotus. Have the bureau’s forensics people deal with it. I’m pretty sure you’ll find the chip inside.”

  “It means she could be anywhere. Or dead.”

  “Not dead. Otherwise, there’d have been no need to take it from her. But it’s stopped transmitting.”

  “That’s because it gets its power from body heat,” Bernstein said. He went over and explained what the forensics people were to look for in the book and around it on the shelf.

  It only took a couple of minutes for one of the hazmat-suited technicians to retrieve the book and open it. Inside was the tiny GPS chip, stuck to the first page on a smear of blood.

  Bernstein was upset. “Not supposed to happen this way. The trackers were going to make our jobs all but foolproof.”

  “The bad guys got smart.”

  “Yeah. And the bad news is no one other than our protectees and our people are supposed to know about them.”

  “Narrows the field.”

  “But doesn’t make it easier.”

  * * *

  McGarvey and Bernstein left their cars and walked back the way the president’s daughter had to have come—past a building called the Village, another called New South, and finally O’Donovan Hall before reaching Wolfington Hall where her detail had let her off.

  “We’ve talked to Byers, her boyfriend, who claims he had no idea that she was coming to see him,” Bernstein said.

  “Do your people believe him?”

  “No reason not to. He comes up squeaky clean.”

  “I want to talk to him, anyway,” McGarvey said. “Then her detail. Are they still somewhere nearby?”

  “We’re using one of our vans as a command post on Thirty-Seventh just east of the library. They’re working from there.”

  “What’ll happen to them?” McGarvey asked, though he had a pretty fair idea.

  “Once this is resolved, they’ll go over to Cyber Crimes. We don’t want to lose them.”

  “But not back to the White House.”

  “No,” Bernstein said without embellishment.

  * * *

  Two Metro police cars, one in front and one in back, were stationed at the Jesuit residence, which was housed in a four-story brick building, a fifth story under a steep roof, and next to that another fifth beneath a broad tower with an even taller, steeper roof. Most of the windows were lit up.

  One of the cops came to check their IDs before he let them inside.

  Byers’s room, which he shared with another student who’d gone home on vacation last week, was on the third floor. He was tall and lanky, his complexion pale, but his eyes were very much alive and wide, though a little downcast this morning.

  Bernstein introduced McGarvey, and th
e kid was impressed. “The CIA.”

  “We think the president’s daughter has been kidnapped,” McGarvey said.

  “ISIS?”

  McGarvey shrugged. “Did she ever mention anything to you about being followed? Maybe someone in her group who might have seemed out of place to her?”

  “No,” Byers said. “And before you ask, no, Dot and I were never a thing. She told me that she had a crush on me because I was just about the only guy in her life who her father would approve of.”

  “Did you sleep with her?”

  “I’m gay.”

  “Did she ever hit on you?”

  “She’s a lesbian. We’re friends, nothing more.”

  It was the morning for surprises, but McGarvey didn’t let his old-fashionedness show. “She’s a metalhead. Did you know any of her friends?”

  Byers actually laughed. “That was a front too,” he said. “She told me once that she felt like the Incredible Shrinking Woman, except that the box she was stuck inside—because of her father—was shrinking even faster than she was. She was a rebel, but her only cause was her sanity. She was screaming inside, and she didn’t think anyone could hear her, or if they did, they wouldn’t care.”

  “You heard her,” McGarvey said.

  Byers nodded.

  “Do you think anyone else did?”

  “You mean the kids she hung out with?”

  “Yes.”

  “I don’t know. I was her friend, and I told her to stop acting out, come back down to earth with the rest of us. But she just laughed and asked me what I was doing to myself. I was a gay man who was immersing himself in the church, pretty much a masculine world, and I was going to commit myself to a life of celibacy. So, tell me what’s crazy or who’s nuts?”

  “I understand, but I’m looking for leads,” McGarvey said. “Somebody knew that she was going to be here—or at least on her way from here to somewhere else—and who would have told someone else who came to kidnap her. Came here to kidnap her.”

  Byers digested it. “And I’m the chief lead.”

  “So far.”

  Byers looked from McGarvey to Bernstein. “I assume that she came from the White House with her Secret Service detail. You guys might want to start there.”

  Hour 7

  At seven in the morning, the president walked into the Situation Room. The dozen people already there got to their feet until he took his place at the long table and they sat back down.

  The incident at Georgetown was being reported as nothing more than a disturbed student who’d threatened to blow himself up. If anyone in the media had noticed the presence of the Secret Service, they hadn’t mentioned it, and to this point, no inquiries had been made to the White House if something else was going on.

  Nevertheless, everyone had shown up at the various entrances to the White House grounds, some in taxis, others in their private cars—no chauffeurs. All of them, including the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, army general Clarke Wilder, and the director of the National Security Agency, air force four-star Robert Sardo, wore civilian clothes.

  More recognizable figures, such as Speaker of the House Thomas Bennett and the Senate majority leader, Kevin Yost, arrived in SUVs with heavily tinted windows.

  The others, including Joyce Trammell, Page, and T. Earle Johnston, who was the secretary of Homeland Security, used the tunnel from the Blair House.

  Page had driven over from Langley, but Bernstein was still in the field with McGarvey, leading their own special investigation above and beyond that of the bureau’s. In the meantime, Frank Lewis, who was chief of the POTUS detail, had beefed up security at the White House and for the vice president and her family, and all the other protectees had been carefully ramped up to avoid any notice.

  “Good morning,” Young said.

  “Good morning, Mr. President,” everyone around the table responded.

  Only a handful knew some of the story, but Page, Joyce Trammell, and Lewis had everything to this point. Everyone was more than curious, because the gathering represented a significant portion of the National Security Council only called out in times of significant national events, such as 9/11, the start of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the killing of bin Laden.

  “My daughter was kidnapped sometime around midnight by a person or persons unknown, who I am told are possibly connected with the Islamic State,” Young began.

  Everyone for whom this was news was shocked, but no one said a thing.

  “I got notice from Dorothy’s Secret Service detail that she had gone missing on the southwest side of the Georgetown University campus. Shortly after that, a letter was delivered to me, outlining the fact that she had been taken and the kidnappers’ conditions for her release.”

  Young read the letter.

  For a long beat, no one said a word.

  General Wilder was first. “Even if such a thing were possible, which it isn’t, the timing doesn’t make sense. Especially if, as you say, Mr. President, ISIS is behind it. They’d be demanding that we put boots on the ground to attack them.”

  “But the letter says nothing about ISIS,” Senator Yost said. “Sounds to me more like another homegrown anti-Assad group.”

  “I’m led to suspect this is directed by the Islamic State.”

  “Who is telling you this, Mr. President?” Yost pressed.

  “My people,” Page said.

  “Makes no sense,” General Wilder repeated.

  “We think it makes perfect sense.”

  “If we put boots on the ground, even a massive force, we’ll be stuck in a quagmire without end. The American public wouldn’t stand for it. This wouldn’t be some shock-and-awe campaign; it could potentially be worse than Vietnam.”

  “Exactly my point, Clarke. We might tally an impressive body count, but in the end, ISIS would have won a decisive victory, just as al-Qaeda did in Afghanistan.” “What the hell are you talking about? We own Afghanistan. Al-Qaeda is all but done.”

  “I don’t think that I’d care to drive cross-country from Kabul to Farah, even with a heavy military escort, anytime soon. And we still have boots on the ground more than thirteen years after we went in. How many? Ten thousand at last count?”

  “Al-Qaeda is no longer a serious threat to us.”

  “Thus was ISIS born,” Page said. He turned back to Young. “We cannot agree to do what they demand, Mr. President. Let us find your daughter and bring her home safely.”

  Young glanced at the clock in the corner of one of the wide-screen monitors on the wall. “Less than seventeen hours,” he said. “Can you guarantee you’ll find her in that time?”

  “No, sir, we cannot,” Mark Pollack, the director of the FBI, said.

  “No, sir,” Lewis said.

  Young looked away for a beat. It was times like these that he missed his wife’s counsel most of all. Sometimes she was his memory bank, whispering some dignitary’s name in his ear. Other times she was his ambassador of goodwill, meeting with the wife of some leader or politician opposed to U.S. policy. And at other times she had done for the country what Princess Diana had done for the UK, with her charity work across the globe. But mostly hers had been a sage wisdom.

  “Boots on the ground will not work, I agree,” he said at length. “So we need to find my daughter before the deadline is up, but do it in such a way that her kidnappers believe we are complying.”

  “Mr. President, you said that the letter had been delivered to you,” Bennett said. “How and by whom?”

  “I can’t say that at this point. But it was turned over to the bureau for analysis.”

  “We’ve learned nothing conclusive yet,” Pollack said.

  “What I mean to say, Mr. President, if it’s possible to respond to the letter writer in the same manner, could you ask for an extension of the time limit?”

  Before he’d been elected to Congress, Bennett had been chief of the Denver police. He still thought like a cop.

  Young glanced at Lewis, w
ho was in control of the video monitors. The chief of the detail nodded. “I can try,” the president said.

  “In the meantime, I suggest that the vice president and her family be moved to a place of safety,” Pollack said.

  “Her detail has been ramped up,” Bernstein said.

  Vice President Christine Morgan and her husband, Mark, plus their two children, Marc and Marney, were vacationing on the island of Oahu.

  “I spoke with her an hour ago,” Young said. “She understands the situation, but she wanted to fly back here immediately.”

  “The kidnappers may come after you, sir.”

  “I told her to stay put, and she agreed.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Young stood up. “Find my daughter,” he said, and he left the room before everyone else had gotten to their feet.

  * * *

  In his private study, he had the kitchen send over a bacon-and-egg sandwich on toast, along with a Coke. He needed the food and the caffeine. While he was eating, he wrote a note on his White House stationery.

  Plans are under way to mobilize what forces we have in the region to mount a ground attack against Al-Mawsil. This will take thirty-six to forty-eight hours. Attacks on the Syrian cities will open by air, followed by ground.

  We need time.

  Keep my daughter safe.

  He signed it, sealed it in an envelope, and left it in plain sight on his desk.

  Hour 8

  McGarvey sat with Bernstein in the Secret Service director’s car in front of the library. They had driven over to a McDonald’s, where they got Egg McMuffins, which Mac thought tasted like library paste, and coffee which tasted not half-bad.

  It was eight in the morning, and the campus had begun to come alive. The SWAT teams and the Metro PD units had left, and the last of the bureau’s forensics teams had finished gathering what meager evidence they’d found and had driven off in their two vans.

  Everything was more or less back to normal.

  “The bureau is working with Metro PD to talk to everyone anywhere within the DC area who might have seen or heard something,” Bernstein said.