Brady Hawk 18 - A Deadly Force

by R. J. Patterson

  Maybe I’m overthinking this.

  Blunt trusted his hunches most of the time. And if he was right about this one, he considered that he might be about to shove a wrench into the CIA’s plans.

  He pulled out his phone and texted Wood.

  You knew about the first lady, didn’t you?

  Then came the reply.

  Sorry, we couldn’t risk you telling Young and blowing our operation.

  Blunt hammered away furiously. “Too late now. Young must be read in so we can stop the impending attack on the White House.”

  His phone buzzed with a reply from Wood: “Don’t do it!”

  Blunt turned his phone off and slipped it into his pocket. Wood and the CIA had a chance to put a stop to this, but letting Madeline Young carry on without at least a threat allowed Obsidian to be on the cusp of terrorizing a nation even more so than how 9/11 did. Watching office towers crumble in a massive metropolitan area struck fear in most Americans, but to have enduring images of the White House smoldering in ashes after an attack? That would wreak havoc with the country’s collective psyche, possibly to an irreparable point.

  Blunt took a seat in the room and waited for Young. After five minutes, the president appeared, escorted inside by a pair of Secret Service agents. The two men exited, leaving Blunt alone with Young.

  “What’s this emergency all about?” Young asked. “I thought Homeland Security sniffed out those two threats in Chicago and New York. Are there others that weren’t in my briefing?”

  Blunt’s face fell as he looked down at his feet. “There’s one we just found out about.”

  “Where? L.A.? Dallas? Miami?”

  “Washington,” Blunt said. “And to be quite specific, the White House.”

  Young scowled. “This is the most secure place in the world, you know that. I know you have to take these things seriously, but these grounds are virtually impenetrable.”

  “Not if no one suspects you.”

  Young cocked his head to one side. “You’re suggesting that it’s going to be an inside job, aren’t you?”

  Blunt nodded. “I’m not really suggesting anything. I’m telling you that someone very close to you is plotting an attack tomorrow.”

  “Is it one of my advisors?”

  “Sir, I hate to be the one to break it to you like this, but it’s Madeline, your wife.”

  Young laughed and shook his head. “You’re joking right?”

  “I wish it all was a lie, but I’m afraid it’s not. I verified this information myself.”

  “Oh, come on, Madeline is a patriot. She’d never do anything like that.”

  “I have sworn affidavits from a couple of the men in the Secret Service if you still don’t believe me.”

  “Someone must be blackmailing her,” Young said. “Madeline wouldn’t conceive of such an idea on her own. That’s the only way that makes sense.”

  “It’s perhaps more personal than you can comprehend right now.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Blunt sighed. “We think she’s romantically involved with someone.”

  Young furrowed his brow and drew back. “Think or know?”

  “You know I always shoot you straight, sir, but the signs are all there.”

  “Who’s she with? Is it one of my younger aides? My advisors? A cabinet member? You must have some sort of an idea.”

  Blunt shrugged. “We can’t say for sure, but we’re confident there’s someone.”

  “Why are you telling me this?”

  “Your country needs you, sir,” Blunt said. “Probably more than ever before—if not for the republic’s sake, for your own. We need to find out all the details if we’re going to stop this before tomorrow.”

  “What do you need me to do?”

  “I need you to clone Madeline’s phone. Think you can make that happen for us?”

  Young moaned. “That damn phone. She sleeps with it under her pillow. I can’t get her to put it down for hardly more than a couple minutes at a time. Who knows what she does on it all day.”

  “That’s what we’d like to find out. You just need to separate her from it for about five minutes, which is how much time we need to extract vital information to make a working replica.”

  “That’s going to be a monumental task,” Young said. “She’s always on social media, sharing moments and images with her massive group of followers, tweeting out ridiculous inane things that happen here at the White House. It makes me feel like my time in office is more like a reality TV show. And I’ll tell you what. If I could ban social media, I would. It’s what’s ruining this country.”

  “I’d drop everything I was doing to help you campaign if I thought this could be a reality.”

  Young chuckled. “It’s just a pipe dream. But as long as I’m sitting in the Oval Office, who knows what can happen.”

  Blunt patted Young on the back and handed him a phone. “I’ll have someone on your team connect with Alex. She’ll walk you through the mechanics of how to clone it. And don’t worry: that phone is already turned on.”

  A faint smile crept across Young’s lips. “I can handle it.”

  “For what it’s worth, I’m sorry to have to break this news to you.”

  Young shrugged. “It’s all right. I’ve felt this was coming for a while, though I didn’t think she would cheat on me. It’s probably my fault anyway. These things happen when you put your ambitions ahead of your family, right?”

  Blunt shook his head. “Sometimes they do. But I’ve almost forgotten what that’s like. It’s been so long for me. But since my wife died, my family has been my team. They’re all like my kids. And I love ‘em to pieces.”

  “That’s how it should be,” Young said. He glanced at the phone in his hand. “I’ll get this done for you. We’ll stop these bastards—Madeline included.”

  CHAPTER 25

  PRESIDENT YOUNG HAD TO SET ASIDE grief over the loss of his marriage. He and Madeline had experienced rough patches before, but the past year had been more like a never-ending downhill run. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t rekindle the magic of their early marital bliss and felt her pulling away at each opportunity. She hardly kissed him goodbye every morning, not that he was pining for her affection. The break had been a gradual one that he felt, but there hadn’t been any finality to it—until now. And it surprised him how much it hurt.

  Knowing that his wife was involved with someone else made Young physically ill. He had his share of indiscretions when it came to gambling and taking campaign donations that may not have been entirely legal. But he still held fast to the belief that his marriage was sacred ground. Yet Madeline obviously didn’t share that same value.

  He sighed as he wandered around the residential portion of the White House. Madeline could often be found at gatherings promoting whatever her cause du jour was, but her schedule on this particular afternoon was surprisingly free. Outside of a long vacation, Young couldn’t remember the last time he saw an entire afternoon empty on his wife’s schedule.

  Young ambled down several corridors and called her name. Eventually, he received a response.

  “I’m in our bedroom,” she said.

  Young spun to his right and strode down the hall toward their room. She was sitting on the foot of the bed, trying to put on a pearl necklace by herself.

  He forced a smile as soon as he laid eyes on her, noticing her struggle to latch her jewelry while keeping her hair up and out of the way.

  “Would you like a hand?” he asked.

  “If you want to give me one,” she said. “I can handle this myself.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with asking me for help, dear,” Young said, doing everything in his power to keep from lashing out at her.

  “Okay, sure. It’s a little clasp you have to pull back so you can hook the two sides together.”

  Young worked quickly to secure the necklace. “You look like you’re headed somewhere, but your schedule is empty.”
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  “Yes, I know. I cleared the afternoon, but there’s this charity event I found out about at the last minute and changed my mind,” she said. “I wanted to go, and we were able to get all the details worked out so I could.”

  “That should be fun,” Young said. “Is it at the Kennedy Center?”

  “You know I’m a sucker for anything held there.”

  Young noticed her phone sitting on the vanity counter but needed to draw her attention elsewhere so he could palm the device. He scanned the room for a distraction.

  “Are you sure this dress is warm enough?” Young asked. “Look outside. It’s so dark.”

  As soon as her eyes shifted in the direction of the window, he snatched the phone and slid it into his pocket.

  “It’s windy, but not snowing. At least not yet.”

  He forced a smile and cocked his head to one side. “February in Washington.”

  “God, I can’t wait for the cherry blossoms to start blooming. It’ll mean the end of this dreary season is almost here.”

  “Well, don’t forget your coat tonight. And by the way, you look stunning.”

  Madeline straightened up and studied herself in the mirror. “Why thank you, dear. It’s not easy to look this beautiful.”

  Or so traitorous.

  “I need to finish up a few things in my study, but you have a nice time tonight,” he said before he exited the room and headed down the hallway.

  When he reached his library, he went to work. Following Alex’s instructions, he plugged the phone into a small gray box that also led to the phone Blunt had given him. In a matter of seconds, the clone phone’s screen started uploading the information. And it moved far slower than Young would’ve preferred.

  The screen counted off the amount transferred: 5% . . . 10% . . . 12% . . . 14% . . . 17%.

  “Come on, come one,” Young said under his breath. He knew it’d only be a matter of seconds before Madeline stormed down the hall in search of her cell.

  The cloning had only hit fifty percent when Madeline’s heels clicked down the hall, and not in a leisurely manner. He knew the walk. It was the fast and furious pace, the kind he’d been all too accustomed to since his marriage had taken a downward turn.

  As her footfalls drew closer, Young looked down at the screen. It was only at seventy percent. He took a deep breath and conjured up a way to distract her until the cloning finished. While it wasn’t the best story, he figured it would be sufficient to stall her.

  Young jumped when her phone rang. He ripped the cord from her phone and placed it at the edge of his desk.

  “There you are,” Madeline said as she entered the room. In her right hand, she held another phone.

  “Is that your phone?” Young asked. “What is it doing in here? I hadn’t even noticed it sitting on the corner there until it rang.”

  “Thankfully my assistant keeps better track of her phone than I do of mine,” she said, holding up the phone in her hand. She snatched up her cell and headed toward the door.

  “I would say don’t wait up, but you’re always up no matter what time I come home.”

  “Have fun, dear,” Young said before he spun around in his chair and stared at the remnants of his failed attempt.

  He waited until he could no longer hear Madeline’s heels echoing down the White House residential corridors before calling Blunt.

  “Did you get it?” Blunt asked.

  “I’m sorry, J.D.,” Young said. “I failed.”

  Blunt sighed. “Don’t worry. We’ll figure out something. Just be on high alert.”

  * * *

  ALEX LOOKED AT THE TEXT message from Blunt and then rubbed her face. Without a clone of the first lady’s phone, there was no way to hear what she was doing or know who she was talking to. The best Alex could do was identify phone numbers who called Madeline, but everyone that mattered would cover their tracks with a burner phone that couldn’t be traced.

  As Alex sat mulling over what was the best course of action to take, one of her computers on her desk beeped, signaling it was finished with an analysis. She wheeled over to the terminal and pecked on the keyboard to view the full report. Ever since Black had given her Fortner’s phone, she’d been trying to hack it and find out what was inside. Finally, the process was finished—and she had cracked several encrypted files that Black’s expert couldn’t.

  Alex smiled a wry grin and dug into the messages. Her mouth fell agape as she read the once-ironclad messages. Over the next fifteen minutes, she called in a few favors and compiled some more information based off what she’d learned. Then she dialed Blunt’s number to deliver the good news.

  “I didn’t expect to be hearing from you again tonight,” he said as he answered the call.

  “I didn’t either, but you’re going to like what you’re about to hear—or maybe not.”

  “What is it?”

  “I cracked those encrypted messages on Fortner’s phone. Turns out she’s not in some romantic relationship with Samuels.”

  Blunt grunted. “I was hoping for some real news instead of gossip.”

  “I’m not finished,” she said. “The first lady has been in contact with Richard Joseph.”

  “That reminds me, have you finished that workup on him that I assigned to you a while back.”

  “Not yet. I’ve been a little busy with some other things. But I know enough to be dangerous.”

  “The first lady was talking to Joseph on the night of the State of the Union. Their message is very cryptic, some sort of code they’ve developed to keep away any suspicion. But I can tell it means more than it says on the surface. I’m just not sure what right now.”

  “You think Joseph is the one the first lady is involved with?”

  “Nope,” she said. “It’s Fortner.”

  “What?” Blunt asked, his voice booming through the receiver. “Are you kidding me?”

  “I would never do that, sir. Fortner and Madeline are quite the item. She was using the encryption program to send him racy texts. And apparently they’re planning on running away together after this attack happens on the White House.”

  “Where does Joseph tie into all of this?”

  “I’m not sure, but I just looked up his phone records and saw that she contacted him a half hour ago. I cross-referenced that with his schedule, and he’s headed to some fund raising event at the Kennedy Center.”

  “The president told me his wife was going there tonight, too. He said it was kind of a last-minute thing.”

  “Well, it wasn’t,” Alex said. “They’ve been planning this for a while.”

  “And what are they planning?”

  “I’m not sure, but if you start to put everything together, it’s easy to see that this isn’t about some surprise birthday party for the president.”

  “That’s for sure,” Blunt said. “Keep digging. We need to know what we’re about to wade into here, and I’ll call Hawk.”

  CHAPTER 26

  MADELINE YOUNG REMOVED her pearl necklace as she got ready for bed. Staying on her feet all day and most of the evening at the fund raiser had exhausted her. She couldn’t imagine just how tired she would be had she stayed until the end. But she needed to leave a little early for other reasons.

  When she married Noah Young, she was enamored by his winsome personality and handsome appearance. A commanding voice with a chiseled jaw line and blue eyes that twinkled when he smiled drew her in. But his ambition and drive were what made her think she’d found her soulmate. She needed someone who was a fellow go-getter, someone with the drive to press forward even when everyone else was saying stop. That was the mentality that earned her a spot as a fighter pilot in a male-dominated profession. And even when she retired from flying to support her husband’s political aspirations, she still listened to that voice in her head that challenged her to keep moving. But he stopped listening a long time ago.

  Madeline supported his dreams only because she had a few of her own, ones that she kn
ew wouldn’t likely get accomplished without wielding the power of the wife of a famous Washington politician. But her goals had changed. No longer was she interested in dedicating the rest of her life to raising the literacy rate across the globe or eradicating human trafficking, though she still believed them to be worthy causes. She wanted something for herself. While living in the midst of the capital’s chaotic state, she realized she needed attention from someone who loved her, someone who cared about her, someone who saw her. And someone who she could escape with to a far away island and live a lavish lifestyle in anonymity. And Noah Young was no longer that someone, nor was he ever going to be capable of it.

  Madeline tried to engage him in conversations that didn’t consist solely about work. But matters of the heart were glossed over, pushed aside to discuss the latest slight from a senator from the rival party or his newest policy idea. While at the height of her fame as a pilot, she enjoyed basking in the spotlight as well as the freedom to vanish into the shadows. Such a rhythm never took place as the first lady.

  What was I thinking?

  In a moment of clarity, she realized she wasn’t thinking; rather, she was bewitched by Noah. However, she never imagined that his traits would eventually lead him to the White House. Yet here they were—and Madeline couldn’t wait to leave.

  “Noah,” she called, “are you ever going to come to bed?”

  Young trudged back into the bedroom. His tie was loosened along with the top button on his white oxford shirt.

  “You look tired,” she said.

  “It’s been a long day,” he said. “And it’s not over yet.”

  “What’s keeping you up tonight? Is it that summit next month in Copenhagen?”

  He shook his head. “It’s nothing to worry about, but I’m supposed to meet with Richard Joseph in fifteen minutes.”