With a Vengeance

by Marcus Wynne

  “It’s your call,” Hunter said to the Secret Service agent in charge of the Presidential Detail, a lean hard woman named Lou Ann Hamblin. “But if it was me, I’d change that AVSEC summit meeting….change the venue, the time, put it in the middle of a hardened military base, take it out to Camp David…don’t sit here and wait for the fight to come to you.”

  “I hear you,” Agent Hamblin said. “But as you already know, politicians are all about perception management. The President is adamant -- this is the White House. We are as safe here as anywhere else. The President of the United States does not run for cover when threatened. That’s what he’s got us for. The meeting goes as planned, in the West Wing Conference Room, at 1500. Period.”

  Hunter sighed. “Well, so much for that.”

  Hamblin grinned. “Hey, you’re welcome to stick around for the fireworks if you want. I’m always glad to have any extra help I can get from a gunfighter.”

  “Don’t mind if I do,” Hunter said.

  “Where you want to hang?” Hamblin said. “You can stick with me or work a post.”

  “I’ll hang with you, if you don’t mind. But when the meeting gets close, I’d like to be on the roof.”

  “Think it’s going to come from above?”

  “I don’t know,” Hunter said. “I believe in intuition and hunches. This is all about airplanes and aviation…things that fall from the sky. So we’ll see.”

  Hamblin narrowed her eyes. “I don’t want to see any of that. And I hope you’re wrong. But we’re locked and loaded if that’s what it takes.”

  Hunter looked out the window at the sky. Contrails crossed high above the capital; civilian aircraft and, today, fighters.

  “I don’t want to see that either,” he said.

  4

  The attendees started showing up early; the urgency of the communication and the constant presence of the investigation in the news gave a prod to those that might have been moving more slowly. Special Agent in Charge Hamblin prowled her checkpoints and posts, and watched as the attendees moved through a detailed screening of their persons and effects. There were no protests; the tension in the air and the sudden meeting made it clear that there were special circumstances at hand, and the additional security measures seemed entirely appropriate.

  “I’m going up to the roof,” Hunter said.

  “Watch out for the pigeons,” Hamblin said. “I’ll get somebody to take you up.”

  She waved to one of her agents doing double duty at a post. “Walk Special Agent James up to the roof,” she said. “See you later, Hunter.”

  On the rooftop, Hunter sat in an armored structure with several members of the Uniformed Secret Service.

  “What do you think?” Hunter said.

  The older of the two shrugged. “We get these alerts from time to time. Believe me, we’re ready for it. I don’t think we’re going to see anything go down.”

  The other, a much younger man with the look of a Midwest farm about him, shrugged. “I dunno.”

  Hunter nodded. Then he looked up at the sky.

  5

  In the West Wing Conference Room, a Secret Service agent entered the room and said to the assembled attendees seated around the table, “Ladies and gentlemen, the President of the United States.”

  Everyone rose to their feet, except to the secretary taking minutes, her file recorded in real time on the secure server and as a matter of routine backed up every ten seconds automatically.

  To a server at the National Security Agency.

  6

  In a large van parked on the National Mall, with a direct line of sight to the West Wing, the man known as Sword of Allah looked at his Treo. A brief e-mail message said: The meeting has begun. Seconds later, another e-mail pinged into his Inbox: the sword is high. The Sword of Allah, who was known by a number of other names, nodded to himself, and then aimed his military issue laser designator through the cut out sliced out of the metal of the van wall. He splashed the West Wing Conference Room with the laser, unnoticeable to the naked eye -- unless you were looking for it.

  7

  High above the city, Ian Bryson felt the vibration of his Treo against his thigh in the pocket of his jump suit. Beneath his helmet face shield, his face grew grim…and sad. Taped on the control panel in front of him was a curling, aged photograph of an old man in his 60s or 70s. Ian took a deep breath, then turned his stick sharply and banked his F-16 to the right, pointing his nose towards the White House far below and to his east. He activated his firing systems, ran the automated checklist, and ignored the sudden explosion of traffic over his radio ordering him to respond. He armed his missiles, and used the computerized targeting system to lock on the laser splash that only his targeting system could see. He rested his thumb on the firing switch, and checked again that his cannon was locked and loaded as he swept out of the sky like an avenging angel down onto the White House.

  8

  Lou Ann Hamblin got the message first from the electronic counter-measures facility within the White House. The detectors had picked up the laser splash and identified it as a weapons designator.

  “Evacuate the conference room, POTUS and staff to the basement shelter, now!” she shouted into her handset.

  The conference room doors sprang open and dozens of Secret Service agents crashed and unceremoniously grabbed the President and hustled him from the room. Other agents manhandled the attendees out of their chairs and shoved them into a line, herding them out of the conference room to the shelter in the basement of the White House.

  “Move! Move!” Hamblin shouted.

  9

  The anti-aircraft team scrambled. Weapons up, the latest generation of surface to air man-launched missiles…and a powered awning slid back, uncovering a rack of surface to air missiles, mini-Patriots they looked like to Hunter.

  “Counter measures!” Hunter shouted. “Counter measures!”

  In the bowels of the White House, the electronic security room activated state of the art jamming equipment to scramble guidance systems. From the rooftop, flares bloomed, and magnesium flares, incongruously bright in the daylight, shattered and provided an array of distractions for any heat seeking weapons system.

  Hunter grabbed a launcher himself, armed it, slung it to his shoulder.

  Faint and far off, but growing fast, he saw the F-16 arrowing in.

  10

  Behind him, Ian Bryson knew that his fellow pilots were quickly recovering and turning on his tail, kicking in afterburners to make up the precious moments he’d gained by breaking away. Now everything was timing…

  First the missiles…

  He felt the kick as he launched a salvo of two missiles, then he tensed himself, his finger over the trigger of his cannon with its racks of explosive shells.

  11

  “Missiles inbound!” Hunter shouted.

  But they already knew. The counter-measures crew saw the signature of the missiles but all they could hope was that the counter-measures screen in place would do what it was designed to do. The White House system, beyond top secret, had the state of the art, absolute bleeding edge in anti-aircraft and missile electronic counter-measures as part of a covert program initiated the day after 9/11.

  While it had been rigorously tested, it had never before been put to the real world test.

  Hunter settled the missile launcher on his shoulder.

  “It won’t work with the counter-measures up!” the older agent shouted to Hunter.

  Hunter sighted in on the growing dot that was the F-16.

  He clenched his teeth when the first air launched missile exploded in a brilliant array over the city; the second one plowed down to an explosion only a few blocks away.

  And the fighter grew in his sights.

  He got lock on; a steady tone instead of a beep, the amber aiming reticule turned red; he pressed the trigger.

  Launch.

  And even as the missile climbed into the sky, it was followed by two others l
aunched by the other members of the roof crew, and then a volley of rockets from the computer guided launcher behind them. The fighter was ringed with explosions and smoke -- but still it came on, and now the nose cannon launched shells as it made a gun run….

  But Hunter had mounted another launcher tube, and he took a breath to steady himself, and he locked on again, and pressed the trigger carefully between breaths, controlling his breath and his heart beat, and the missile rose…

  …and exploded it seemed directly in front of the F-16 coming on so fast, so impossibly fast…

  …and Hunter couldn’t help himself, he turned away and raised his arms to protect his head…

  …as the F-16 plowed into White House lawn in a massive fiery explosion that scattered flaming debris all across the once immaculate front of the White House…

  …and in the basement shelter, President George Taylor looked at the carnage through a video monitor, and behind him Natalie Sonnen said, “Holy fuck.”

  PART V: BORROW ANOTHER’S BODY TO RETURN THE SOUL

  Chapter One

  Fox News beat CNN; a Fox News truck from the Washington Bureau was on its way past the White House when the first diverted missile struck near it; the reporter, fresh back from Iraq, recognized the F-16 flying right at the White House and had his driver turn around in the middle of the street, and their cameras were the first ones rolling on the street to catch the aftermath of the plane crash. Then the feeding frenzy began -- roads were blocked where the two missiles from the F-16 had landed; television crews fought their way in, in some cases abandoning their vehicles and jogging along with their camera men loaded down with battery packs.

  President Taylor was cool and calm and collected, at least on camera. Off camera, he was cursing just as loudly and as thoroughly as Natalie Sonnen did. But while he cursed, and Congressman Sam Walters, a guest attendee at the now scuttled aviation security meeting, postured and preened for the cameras, Hunter huddled with the Secret Service team. The counter-measures team, along with footage from the classified satellites that kept the White House under constant surveillance, quickly determined along what azimuth the laser designator had been splashing; within ten minutes after the F-16 with Captain Ian Bryson had crashed into the White House lawn, a crew of Secret Service agents surrounded the battered utility van parked beside the grassy expanse of the National Mall. Inside, they found the military issue designator…and nothing else. A forensics team worked the van over; the first technician inside the van paused, looked at the exposed metal where a piece had been cut out for the designator, then picked up his mike and said, “You should send Hunter James out here. Right away.”

  1

  Hunter entered the back of the van cautiously, his hands and shoes swathed in plastic.

  “Check it out,” the technician said.

  Written on the bare metal inside the van, in a curiously neat hand with indelible marker pen were the words: HEY HUNTER -- HOW ABOUT THE SHOW?

  “What’s that mean?” the technician said.

  Hunter stared at the words for a long time. Then he said, “I don’t know.”

  He got back out of the van and looked up at the sky, then at the ring of expectant faces.

  “I don’t know.”

  2

  “What show is he talking about?” Lisa Coronas demanded, her voice harsh in his ear as he pressed his cellphone tight to avoid the distraction of the hiss of wind.

  “I don’t know,” Hunter said. His voice sounded too bland, even to himself. “Maybe it’s the media circus. There hasn’t been anything like this since 9/11.”

  “What are you not saying, Hunter?”

  “Nothing.”

  “I’ve come to know you. There’s something you’re not saying. Something you know. What is it?”

  Hunter was silent. Then he said, “I don’t know, Lisa. I need to think about this. I’ll get back to you.”

  “All right. We’re working the leads on the fighter pilot. His grandfather was killed over Lockerbie. Pan Am 103.”

  “That far back?” Hunter said.

  “That far back,” Lisa said. “All the way back.”

  Hunter disconnected and put his phone in his pocket. He told the forensics technician, “If you need me, get me on the cell. I’ll be around.”

  “Got it, Agent James.”

  “Is there a newsstand around here anyplace?”

  The forensics tech looked at him curiously. “There’s a coffee shop in the Smithsonian, over there. They sell newspapers and the like in the basement.”

  “That’ll do. Thanks.”

  Hunter walked across the street, worked his way through the crowd of gawkers, some of whom turned to watch him go, the look on their faces one he was familiar with: ‘Don’t I know you….’

  No, he wanted to say. You don’t know me. You don’t know anything about me.

  But whoever had written that note in the van knew something about him.

  In the basement he bought a copy of the Washington Post. He opened it up to the classified section, ran his fingers down the columns till he found what he’d known he’d find.

  Washington Area Custom Knife Show. In Pentagon City.

  …and he was remembering now, back by the river, the Alleycat saying “All God’s critters got claws, and I gets mine at knife shows…I never miss one….and then Alec’s face as he handled his combat worn Retribution, and him murmuring about going to knife shows with Raven…going to knife shows with Raven was like going to a candy store with an indulgent daddy…

  Of course he’d be there. And he wanted Hunter to be there, too.

  Chapter Two

  The man known as Sword of Allah stood behind a podium and looked out at perhaps two dozen people seated on laid out carpet, a few chairs, a couple of couches dragged forward within a storage facility outside of Centreville, Virginia.

  These were his people, those that were left.

  There were a few others, absent on missions yet to be accomplished, but for these, the last of the faithful, this would be the last meeting.

  The last discussion.

  The stunning brunette woman in the expensive track suit, long nails toying with her long gold chain -- her oldest sister had fallen from the sky over Lockerbie, Scotland, embedded into a lawn like a broken doll;

  The still, intense young athlete sitting cross legged like a samurai of old -- a Force Recon Marine whose beloved uncle had died on United flight 93 on 9/11;

  The tired looking Hispanic in a shabby business suit, whose daughter had been gutted on Flight 923;

  And so the roster went.

  All Americans.

  All angry Americans who had lost loved ones in the continuing series of aviation crimes over the years; all angry Americans who, when approached by the man who called himself The Sword of Allah, a fellow American passing himself off as a Muslim, had listened to his Pied Piper call for justice, for waking up the public, for whipping the media and the sheeple into a frenzy that would finally DO something, anything, to make things better, to save other families from the horror and the pain they’d suffered, and the endless replaying of that on television screens, over and over, their loved ones falling from the sky…

  The Sword of Allah had promised them the opportunity for payback, the opportunity to strike at the politicians and the bureaucrats, to make them feel the terror the innocent, their families, had felt -- to bring it home to them in the way that only terror could do.

  And they’d done that.

  Only a few innocents, an acceptable margin, something not talked with the rank and file, had died. Pornographers, a maintenance man, some bystanders in Washington DC, and a handful of martyrs who’d chosen to die so as to join the loved ones they’d lost to prove their point.

  And prove they had.

  Every television channel blared with continual rolling coverage of the smoking wreckage outside the White House, the rubble of the cooling towers outside the Enroute Traffic Control Center, talking heads demandi
ng action, Congressman Sam Walters denouncing the state of aviation security and domestic counter-terrorism, and endless replays of the President’s speech to the nation promising immediate resolution. A Special Task Force was convened for a top to bottom review of the system, with a mandate to provide an action plan. More of the same, but this time it would be different.

  Or so they all hoped.

  Because it was time for the final act, the final blow.

  And if that didn’t work, then these few, this band of brothers and sisters, they would be ready to take up the fight again.

  To see it through.

  “We’ve been through a lot together,” the man at the podium said. “All of us have suffered. All of us have lost. And, together, all of us have done what we set out to do.”

  His audience was silent.

  “It’s time for you all to go home. Time to get on with your lives. Go deep. Remember this. And watch for the final act.”

  Some heads nodded; others remained still, rapt on him.

  “You have the password. You can access the server, see the message if that day comes. And you can communicate securely there, on the bulletin board. But it’s time to go dark. Watch how it plays out. And then, only if what we set out to accomplish doesn’t take place, then you can act. Once again.”

  “And you?” the old Hispanic man asked, the burr of the barrio in his voice.

  The man at the podium said, “It’s time for me to see to the final act. Watch for me. My work is almost through.”