by Marc Cameron
“Do you wish there were more, brother?” Kazem asked, locking eyes with the other man.
“No . . . I . . .” Raheem looked away as if to shake off a trance. “Something is not right. Our information said there would be at least eight on duty and as many as ten.”
“Thanks be to Allah that there are so few, then,” Kazem said. “It makes our job all the easier.”
Kazem looked at the other men, all fresh and eager, but, more important, they had to fall under his spell. Raheem, who always grew nervous before a rally or event, had shown a strong heart in the past. Too much independence was problematic.
The likelihood of success was directly tied to the plan’s brazenness—and to the fact that Kazem had more than a little help from the inside.
“Do you think the fence is electrified?” Raheem asked.
The man to his right scoffed. His lips were only a few centimeters above the water and he came close to blowing bubbles when he spoke. Basir was older than the others, with six years in the Army. He was the only one of the group, including Kazem, who had military experience. Incredibly strong, he had powerful forearms and a thick neck from hours of pahlevani, an ancient Persian sport that was a mixture of grappling, weightlifting, and dance. “Why would they bother electrifying the fence?” he said. “There is nothing here to steal except trucks and uniforms.”
“And yet here we are to steal the uniforms,” Raheem muttered. He moved his rifle aside and reached to wipe the rain out of his face, oblivious to the fact that his weapon was now submerged in muddy water.
Kazem and Basir exchanged glances. This man should go in first.
Kazem said, “Few people would want to take a uniform that would get them thrown in Evin.”
“And yet we do,” Raheem said. “So others might as well. Which is why they might have electrified the fence. Perhaps others have thought of how easy it would be to approach a storage facility of this type. Perhaps they have gun emplacements hidden along the perimeter.”
“Or perhaps they have dragons, brother.” Kazem chuckled, patience washing away with the rain. He put a night-vision monocular to his eye and played it up and down the fence line. Dozens of vehicles of all shapes and sizes, some white, most green or desert tan, were lined up in neat rows under camouflage tarpaulins rigged between metal scaffolding so as to make them less visible to passing surveillance satellites.
Raheem’s whisper became frantic, and the water around him buzzed from his trembling. “I am merely saying we should take our time. The soldiers will eventually see us.”
“And so they shall,” Kazem said. “But we must be bold, decisive in our movements. Even now, our brothers pay dearly in the basements of Evin Prison. Do not forget that.”
This brought solemn nods and whispered prayers from the sodden men.
“Very well,” Kazem said, making one final sweep with the night-vision device. “It is time—”
He paused, focusing on two sentries trudging along the inside of the fence beyond the warehouse. Their heads were bowed against the rain, the glow of a cigarette visible under each man’s hood. “It seems as though you were correct, Raheem,” Kazem said, passing the monocular to the left. “They do have enough sense to deploy sentries.”
Raheem’s vindicated smile bled from his face at Kazem’s next remark.
“Brother Raheem, you are with me. Basir, you lead the attack through the front gate. They will assume your truck has broken down in the rain and let you in. You must cut them down quickly when they check your identification, before any one of them has a chance to hit an alarm.” He turned to his left.
Raheem touched Kazem with a trembling hand. “With you?”
“Yes,” Kazem said proudly. “You had a feeling about the sentries. The honor of taking them should naturally fall to you.”
Basir and the rest of the men were already on the move by the time Raheem fished his rifle out of the muck. Kazem forced a smile and clasped his hand on the idiot’s shoulder, hoping to imbue in him a little courage, if not good sense. The AK-47 was durable to the extreme, but mud down the barrel would cause even it serious issues.
It did not matter. The fool would never have a chance to use it. Today, he would die as a martyr. Reza Kazem would make certain of that.
17
The assistant director of the FBI’s Criminal Investigative Division kept her face forward but shot a sideways look at Gary Montgomery. Black, shoulder-length hair bobbed as Ruth Garcia picked up her pace, coming into a straightaway around the rubberized track in the shadows of the outdoor mezzanine of the J. Edgar Hoover Building.
Challenge accepted, the Secret Service agent muttered to himself—or he would have, if he’d had the breath to mutter. His wife always told him he was built for comfort, not speed—and she was right enough. A large man like him had to dig deep in order to run neck and neck with a freaking gazelle like Ruth Garcia.
Both agents were dressed in running shorts and T-shirts, Garcia’s a dark blue raid shirt with FBI emblazoned across the back in tall yellow letters, while Montgomery’s was gray with an understated USSS five-pointed star. The shirts were avatars of personality for their respective agencies—and the agents who wore them. Where Montgomery preferred to stand in the background, Garcia was brilliant and outspoken. She spoke four languages, including the Vietnamese of her maternal grandparents, along with Tagalog, and Spanish from her father’s side. Her scrappy attitude and incredible investigative mind propelled her into rapid advancement, seeing her make special agent in charge of the Tampa Field Office before her fortieth birthday. That was followed by assistant director five years later—no small feat for the mother of two.
Montgomery had met her years before during a law enforcement pistol competition in Florida. She’d beat him by the equivalent of half a bullet hole, the ragged circle in the center of her target being a quarter-inch smaller in diameter than the ragged circle in the center of his.
Montgomery’s actual Bureau counterpart was the special agent in charge of the Washington Field Office. WFO would handle the investigation of a threat to the President in tandem with the Secret Service. The SAC of WFO was a competent guy, but Ruth Garcia was Montgomery’s longtime friend. Friendship plus competence plus access to the FBI’s vast investigative apparatus were hard to beat. Even Montgomery’s wife knew he had a professional crush on this woman. She was smart, she could shoot. And she could run, damn it. She certainly outranked him, but being the special agent in charge of PPD held tremendous sway, even across agency lines, so no one in either agency said anything when he hopped lightly over the chain of command and bypassed WFO to go straight to his friend. It didn’t pay to screw with the guy who rode the Schwinn Airdyne in the White House gym next to the President.
“Big guy’s going easy on you,” Garcia said, as if reading Montgomery’s mind. She downshifted once again to kick up her speed a notch. “You’re getting soft in this cushy assignment.”
Montgomery hunched broad shoulders, leaning forward slightly to match the new stride. He’d called her that morning, hoping to set up a meeting about what he saw as online threats to the President’s character, and the President himself. She’d suggested that they could chat during her midmorning “jog.” He should have known better. Another couple of laps of this and he’d be looking for a place to puke.
Secret Service HQ had a decent gym, better than most, but, as usual, the Feebs took things to an entirely new level. Climbing ropes, free weights, machines, heavy bags, mats for defensive tactics, and the rubberized track on which Montgomery was now surely leaving divots, took up much of the secure outdoor mezzanine level overlooking 9th Street in downtown Washington, D.C. Since the track was protected from the rain but open to the wind and outside temperatures, the workouts were bracing and more real-life than plodding along on some treadmill watching cable news.
Mercifully, Garcia ripped through only two laps before slowing to a mo
re manageable trot.
“I’m guessing you have some theories about all this,” she said, hardly even breathing hard.
“I do,” Montgomery managed to say. “These . . . kind of . . . hit pieces . . . come out . . . all the time . . . But this . . . feels . . . differ . . . ent . . .”
Garcia gave him another side eye, slowing even more. “Tell me if you need to sto—”
“I need to stop,” Montgomery blurted. He tried to walk but ended up bent over at the waist instead, hands braced on his knees. “How . . . far was that?”
“A little over four miles,” she said, grinning.
“Shit.” Montgomery coughed. “I should be able to run four miles.”
“At a seven-minute pace? Awfully fast for a sixty-year-old.”
“I’m forty-eight . . . thank you very much.” The spasms in Montgomery’s lungs began to subside. “Can we please get back to saving the President?”
“I don’t know what to tell you,” Garcia said. “Cybercrimes has a pile of intel regarding bots and propaganda warehouses all over China, Eastern Europe, and the Persian Gulf. The Internet is the battleground for the new cold war. This audio and video manipulation is relatively new—at least the level of sophistication we’re seeing here. Five years ago, I would have told you a state actor was behind this particular video, but with computers being what they are today . . . this could be some middle school kid working out of his parents’ basement in Bethesda.”
Montgomery rubbed his eyes, chasing away the last of the stars. “Our protective intelligence guys told me the same thing.” He shook his head. “Wouldn’t a kid go for the laugh? This threat of hoarding a flu vaccine is killing the stock market, not to mention terrifying everyone.”
“You obviously don’t know teenagers,” Garcia said. “They find other people’s pain hilarious.” She gave a crooked, crazy-eyed smile, looking like she knew just such a child. “Anyway, I spoke to Legal first thing this morning. They’re going to run it by the U.S. attorney for eastern Virginia, but so far they don’t see a crime here. Public figures have to take a certain amount of pelting with rotten fruit.”
“I know,” Montgomery said, hangdog.
An eerily familiar voice caught his attention from the television mounted on a concrete pillar above the free-weight area. The voice was female and husky, like Anne Bancroft with a three-pack-a-day smoking habit. It took Montgomery only a second to recognize it was Michelle Chadwick, the senior senator from Arizona.
“. . . impossible to say if these allegations are true at this juncture, but I can assure you my office is addressing this. Sanctioned assassinations, covering up epidemics, hoarding vaccine for the elite . . . Any one of these is a serious breach of the public trust . . .”
The agents rounded the corner and stopped to watch.
The crawler on the bottom of the screen said this was a taped press conference given by the senator an hour before.
“Listen to her,” Montgomery said. “Those Internet stories are awfully damned convenient.”
Garcia looked up at him, her brow knitting over narrowed eyes. “You really think she’s behind it?”
“Probably not,” Montgomery said. “But she’s sure as shit happy about it.”
“And piling on,” Garcia said.
At forty-six, Senator Chadwick was young to be on her third term in the United States Senate. She was a bony woman, gaunt even, with high cheekbones and an aquiline nose. Auburn hair draped her head like a helmet. It was common knowledge around the Beltway watercooler that the twice-divorced senator had leapt over the bounds of propriety with a staffer named Corey Fite, deciding the #MeToo movement pertained only to powerful men and their subordinates. Fite had not complained as of yet, and Chadwick’s fellow senators didn’t want to rock the boat and screw up their own quasi-consensual relationships.
Her grandfather had made his first million as a Scottsdale real estate man when he came home from World War II. Still, she came from new money so far as the East Coast aristocrats were concerned, and the chip on her shoulder was a heavy one. Jack Ryan was rich—much richer than she was. The President came from blue-collar roots and made his money instead of inheriting it, which only served to infuriate her all the more. She consistently referred to him as a Washington blue blood, going so far as to affect a boarding-school lockjaw as if she were clenching an FDR cigarette holder in her teeth when she spoke of him.
“. . . past allegations of lying to Congress, an extramarital affair, insider trading, though unsubstantiated.”
“Past allegations.” Montgomery came up on his toes, ready to rip the television off the pillar. “How about exonerated,” he spat. “Unsubstantiated my ass . . . That’s just another way of saying he’s hiding something.”
“Let’s walk,” Garcia said.
“Hang on.”
“. . . allegations of silencing anyone who gets in his way, politically or otherwise, are incredibly troubling,” Chadwick went on, “but perhaps even worse is Ryan’s utter disregard for our allies in the Persian Gulf. My colleagues in the Senate and I intend to move forward with strong measures condemning the brutal crackdown of the Ayatollah against peaceful students who only want a better life.” Chadwick looked directly into the camera, working it like the actress she was. “I say to you, Mr. President, do not just sit on your hands. Do something . . .”
A growl erupted deep in Montgomery’s belly. “You want somebody to do something?” he said. “How about I—”
Garcia jabbed him with her elbow. “I know you weren’t about to threaten a United States senator right in front of an assistant director of the FBI.”
Montgomery forced a smile. “I plead the Fifth.”
* * *
—
Arnie van Damm sat down beside Mary Pat Foley on the couch in the private study just off the Oval Office, and then sprang back to his feet half a moment later, cursing at the open laptop computer on the corner of the desk. The meeting with the principals of the National Security Council was over for now, everyone having gone their respective ways, coming up with information, options, plans—tasks Ryan would need to make decisions about.
Ryan slouched in the soft chair across from the couch, legs stretched out in front of him. Cathy said slouching was decidedly unpresidential, but this was his slouching room, away from the media and the peephole into the Oval from the door to the secretaries’ suite.
This thing in Cameroon left him feeling helpless. There was still no word on the deputy chief of mission’s wife—which meant she was still likely a hostage. Hell, the embassy was surrounded by troops, which meant that for all practical purposes everyone inside was a hostage. Ryan wanted to send in a battalion of Marines and bayonet every last son of a bitch that got in their way—but that was the reason people took hostages, wasn’t it. To keep from getting bayoneted from the start. It was usually just postponing the inevitable.
Across the office, van Damm was taking a break from worrying about the hostage crisis to shake his fist at a video of Senator Chadwick’s earlier press conference. He sat down again, the veins on the side of his neck pulsing above his collar. “She’s crossing the line, Jack.”
Ryan looked up, jarred from his thoughts about Africa. “Not quite. Notice how she couches all her remarks and tweets under the guise of wanting to find the truth?”
Foley squinted at the computer like her face hurt. “Intimidation of your political opponents? Where did she get that from?”
Ryan shrugged. “Beats me.”
“What does she have against the administration?” Foley asked.
“I’m telling you,” Ryan said. “It’s me personally. For some reason, she finds me the ultimate villain that must be thwarted. Sometimes I think she’s evil—and other times, I think she truly believes I am.”
Van Damm leaned his head back, giving an exhausted sigh. “Yeah, but your own pr
ivate goon squad?”
Ryan rubbed his face, suddenly very tired. “She’s not a hundred percent wrong there. I mean, they’re not goons, but you know what I mean.”
Foley said, “Due respect, Jack, but that is not what she means. The Campus is a scalpel. She’s talking about some sort of Robert Rogers’s Queen’s Rangers. Wanton killers. And anyway, we shouldn’t even be talking about it.”
“Why?” Ryan asked. “So I can have some kind of deniability? That’s not me and you know it. I’m all for separating myself from day-to-day operations, but I will not relinquish the responsibility for the group’s existence.”
“Jack.” Foley’s tone rose in pitch, fearing the path the conversation was taking. “Secrecy is par—”
Ryan put up hand. “Don’t misunderstand me, Mary Pat. I get the need for secrecy. But you and I don’t . . . can’t pretend I’m not aware of what’s going on. There’s a difference between executive privilege and lying—even to ourselves.”
Foley started to say something, then shook her head, thinking better of it. “Yes, Mr. President.”
“In any case,” van Damm said. “If you two are done with your existential crisis, let’s get back to what to do about Senator Chadwick. I hate to say this, but maybe you should respond. Clear your name.”
“Not a chance, pal,” Ryan said. “She wants me to engage her, but I’m not getting down in that mud. I will, however, entertain a press conference to discuss any fears about the flu vaccine.”
“She’s resurrecting tired allegations about your investments and the SEC,” van Damm said. “Everyone knows you were cleared of all wrongdoing.”
“Not everyone,” Ryan said.
“Chadwick does,” Mary Pat said. “Bringing the investigation up without clarifying that, leading people to believe otherwise, that’s an outright lie. Someone should prosecute her.”
“For what?” Ryan scoffed. “Making me cry?”
“Okay, the vaccine thing, then,” van Damm said. “Fomenting panic with half-truths has got to be illegal.”