by Chris Hauty
As Scott Billings races to intercept the two intruders, he shouts so there’s no question of his voice being picked up by a Motorola handset in his suit jacket pocket. “Unauthorized entry! North Lawn, east side! Seventy-five meters from residence! Closing fast!”
The two jumpers apparently realize Scott has seen them and immediately split up, one of them veering east. With no other agents currently in sight, Scott makes the spot decision to stop the intruder nearest him, doubtlessly leaving the other jumper to reach the building unhindered. Only then does Scott glance to his right and see Hayley also running, moving to intercept the second intruder. Without slowing, he waves emphatically at the intern. “Stay back! Stop!”
Hayley Chill, one of only eighteen females to successfully gender-integrate infantry training, does not stop running. Maintaining a strong, steady pace, she tracks the intruder’s course perfectly and brings the six-foot-three, twenty-seven-year-old male to the ground. A Schrade SCHF10 Survival knife, with 5.3-inch black blade, pops from the intruder’s hand and he reaches to retrieve it. Hayley scrambles behind the big man’s back, shooting a forearm across his neck, her left hand gripping her right wrist, and executes a sneak choke from armbar position with shocking efficiency. The intruder’s grip on his knife falters as Hayley applies steady pressure against his windpipe, critically reducing oxygen and blood to his entire system.
Hayley’s subduing of the second intruder has taken approximately twenty seconds, enough time for Secret Service agents to converge on the scene from every direction, weapons drawn. Two of the agents drop to their knees and assume control of the intruder’s arms as Hayley eases off the armbar and then slides out from underneath the man. She gets to her feet, putting one hand on her White House credentials for emphasis. The nervous, hyperventilating Secret Service agents aren’t entirely certain who the hell Hayley is and what she’s doing here. One agent keeps his submachine gun trained on her as he quickly scans her ID.
“It’s all right! She’s okay!” Scott comes running over from where he had held the first intruder, restraining him until the cavalry arrived. Seeing Hayley being braced by his colleagues quickened his pace. He arrives and puts a comforting hand on her shoulder to signify Hayley’s legitimacy.
The more-senior Secret Service agent lowers his P90 machine gun, glancing from the male intruder on the ground in handcuffs to Hayley.
“Who the hell is this?” the incredulous senior agent asks Scott, gesturing.
“Hayley Chill,” Scott tells him. “She’s a White House intern.”
2
KALORAMA ROAD
Hank’s Oyster Bar on Q Street off Dupont Circle is behind an unmarked door, an appropriate entry for a tavern that’s dark and doggedly traditional. Whether actually old or simply designed to appear that way is of no concern to Scott Billings. He’s had drinks here with other Secret Service agents as well as numerous dates. The joint suits him well. As he sits at the corner of the bar with the intern at his elbow, he takes quiet measure of Hayley’s reaction to their surroundings and her degree of contentment. Does she like her drink, a shot of Fortaleza Reposado over ice? Is she tired or, worse, bored? Are the staffers from the Commerce Department at the other end of the bar making too much noise for her liking? And why is he worrying about such trivialities? His job is one of the highest national importance. What exactly is the fucking deal?
He raises his glass, their second round. “To White House interns stealing Secret Service jobs.”
Hayley raises her glass to clink Scott’s. “Thanks, but skinny ties and dark sunglasses aren’t really my thing.”
Scott pretends hurt feelings. “What’s that say about my chances?”
“Chances for what?” Hayley asks with a straight face.
They drink. Hayley’s gaze roves over the interior of the singles hangout. This evening is the first time since leaving the military that she has stepped foot in a bar. In the time since then, she has had exactly five alcoholic drinks. With her workload, there had been very little time for socializing or recreation. Sleep. Eat. Work. Repeat. Day after day, month after month. Now Hayley is sitting in Hank’s, brought here by the cowboy-handsome Secret Service agent with a body like Nureyev. Life is strange, never moving in a straight line. She recognizes the agent is becoming more anxious by the minute, fretting over her interest in him. His insecurity, while foreign to him, is familiar to Hayley. She has this effect on potential sexual partners. There’s nothing to be done. The sex always seems to sort itself out. In a brief lull of their conversation, Hayley recalls she failed to do a full twenty-minute strength workout in the morning. She owes herself five sets of bicycle crunches before going to bed.
“Almost feel sorry for the other interns, having to compete with the likes of you,” Scott muses.
“I have an unfair advantage. I’ve seen more of the world than the others.”
“But that’s not all. You’ve got the inside game.”
“I don’t even know what that means.”
“The fact you’d say something like that means you’ve got the inside game.” He takes another pull off his drink, straight-up whiskey. “You’re wasted down there, sitting in that broom closet.”
“Janitor’s closet,” Hayley corrects him.
“Pardon me. Janitorial closet,” he says with a flourish. “Most people I can read like a book, their ambitions and aspirations. You’re different. This is all a stepping-stone to what?”
Hayley shrugs. “Hard to say.”
Scott grins but is privately frustrated by her caginess and reserve. Hayley perceives his impatience.
“What about you? Just another young gun for the US Secret Service?” she helpfully inquires. People just love being asked about themselves.
“Ten years protecting presidents and I can write my own ticket in corporate security. Settle down,” he says, then continues, grinning, “watch my wife raise a family.”
Hayley laughs, adding wryly, “Just because you make an obviously sexist comment doesn’t mean you’re not sexist.”
Scott lifts his glass to his lips and drains it with a tilt of his head. He gives her that moment-of-truth look.
“Well, Hayley Chill, which way is this thing going to break?”
“That’s it? That’s your pitch?” She had expected something more artful from him.
“Pretty much,” he has to admit.
Hayley takes a moment to consider the notion of going home with the Secret Service agent. It occurs to her that accepting Scott’s rather blunt proposition will mean she doesn’t have to knock off those sets of crunches when she gets home.
Hayley looks him level in the eye, meeting his gaze so intently that Scott instinctively looks away. “As long as I’m able to deliver the overnight brief to Peter Hall at 0500, then we’re good to go.”
Scott reacts, impressed all over again. “How did you snag that gig?”
“The other interns gladly delegated the task to me, and hated me for it all the same. For most college kids, sleep trumps access.”
Scott nods and checks his watch, a black-faced Rolex Daytona 6239 given to him by his mother on the occasion of his father’s death, the timepiece all that was left intact of the old man after a plane crash in Milwaukee back in 2002. “Six hours ought to be enough time, I think.”
Hayley drains her drink. “Let’s hit it,” she tells Scott as she slides down from the bar stool.
After they have had sex three times in the ranch-style home in suburban Virginia—on the kitchen counter, living room floor, and, as if by obligation, in his bed—Scott and Hayley rest. Hayley wears one of his Ohio State T-shirts. He wears a pair of boxers. She senses that he wants to talk, and avoids making eye contact. What they had done together and to each other is precursor of so many unwanted side effects. She wishes she could put it all in a box, like a soon-to-be forgotten keepsake or carnival Kewpie doll, without consequence or attachment. Hayley knows this dire mistrust of real intimacy is the hard guarantee for a life of soli
tude. But she has never felt more than an intermittent loneliness and long since determined that separateness is the better course for her. In her observations, love is annihilation of self and the ultimate declaration of insanity. As these broodings tumble through her consciousness, Hayley gratefully takes note that her lover, only minutes before a dervish of fornication and amorous calisthenics, has succumbed to a monumental physical fatigue and fallen into a deep, satisfied sleep in his bed.
* * *
WHEN THE ALARM on Hayley’s phone sounds at 4:30 a.m., she is already up and getting dressed. Scott stirs. As with all other areas of the house, his bedroom exists in a high state of dishevelment, the detritus of an ex-jock and inveterate single guy scattered everywhere. Fully awake now, he indulges in the timeless joy of watching a woman get dressed at the foot of his bed after a long night of very good sex. Scott wonders if such a pleasure has been similarly appreciated throughout the history of man, all the way back to the days of the Neanderthals. Did Neanderthal woman even wear clothes? He cracks a smile at the absurdity of his random musings.
“What?” Hayley asks.
“Nothing.” His silly speculations don’t complement the persona of a grave Secret Service agent he strives to project. “One for the road?” he proposes.
Hayley shakes her head. “I need to go. Home, then work.”
Scott accepts her refusal good-naturedly. But he is already eager to see her again and is relieved they both work in the White House complex. What the hell is happening to him? he wonders, rising from bed. Hayley isn’t above admiring his physique as much as he had hers. As sexual partners, they fit.
“This fits,” she admits to him out loud.
He envelops her in his arms and kisses her. But despite this connection with Hayley, shockingly fast and somewhat terrifying, career comes first. “We might want to keep this on the down low,” he advises.
“Yes,” she agrees. “That would be wise.”
* * *
THE REDBRICK GEORGIAN mansion on Kalorama Road squats close to the street, constructed in 1754, and in that pre-motorized era conveniently sited. The proximity to public roadway and subsequent lack of privacy today seems expensively anachronistic. One would expect to see candles burning in the windows or a horse-drawn carriage in the drive. Only the rich and powerful can afford the inconvenience of such a relic. Look closely. Triple-pane windows and instead of candlelight, there is the faint glow of amber LED on the panel of a sophisticated alarm system down below window level at the northeast corner of the stately home.
Snow drifts down from an opaque sky, leaving a tentative, sugary coating on scattered surfaces. Accumulation seems unlikely. The temperature is just below freezing. But these early flurries are a harbinger of the winter to come.
Cloaked in this haphazard dusting of snow, the mansion is dark and graveyard silent. The street and sidewalks are empty. Six figures emerge from shadows, materializing like y–urei of Japanese folklore, clad in tight-fitting dark clothing, knit caps, and stealth duty boots. Each man—self-evidently special tactics operatives—carries a stuffed duffel or backpack.
Taking care to stay on the gravel bed that frames the home’s perimeter, the operators stop under a window off the northeast corner of the mansion. One of the men, code-named “Lawford,” attaches a suppression device to the side panel of the home security system. The LED light on the console briefly flickers and then resumes a steady glow. The suppression device boasts its own LED light, verifying the device is jamming signal flow to the security console from sensors placed throughout the residence. With a gesture from Lawford, a second man, “Bishop,” slides open the window left unlocked in an earlier intrusion. A third operator withdraws a white full-body contamination suit from his duffel and slips it on. Code-named “Sinatra,” he is the unit leader.
After making what appears to be the sign of the cross, Sinatra clambers through the open window without making a sound as the other operators slip on their contamination suits. Each man follows the other through the open, first-floor window. The operators, six in number, regroup inside a formal dining room, where they pause, awaiting a signal from Sinatra. The faint sound of a television tuned to a cable news channel is now detectable, drifting into the darkened room from elsewhere on the lower level of the mansion. The unit leader gestures to Lawford, who immediately proceeds to one of two doorways leading out of the formal dining room.
Meanwhile, a fourth operator, “Martin,” withdraws a peculiar device that only superficially resembles a small-size syringe and hypodermic needle. Manufactured with a resilient, boron-nitride nanotube attached to one end of a glass pipette and coated with a micro-thin layer of gold, the injection apparatus is a nanoneedle capable of penetrating the membrane of a living cell for targeted delivery of one or more molecules into the cytoplasm or nucleus. Injection with nanoneedle is virtually impossible to detect. Sinatra watches Martin prepare the apparatus, awaiting his go-sign.
In the mansion’s modest kitchen, Peter Hall sits at a butcher-block table on a hard-backed chair perusing the morning paper while a television murmurs in the background. He had managed to sleep only a few hours, at best. Resistance to the administration’s agenda from his own party in Congress has been relentless, to say nothing of the opposite party’s near hysteria. On trade issues, relations with China and Russia, and ongoing tensions with allies in Europe, Monroe has advocated a consistent course of disruption. Such was his mandate in winning the election, a victory that few had predicted. The chief of staff lost several friends, both personal and professional, over his early support of Monroe’s presidential bid. In fact, Hall’s oldest son had broken off all contact with his dad over these political disagreements. But losing sleep and relationships is all part of the bargain in attempting to save the country from ruin. Hall’s lifelong custom had been to wake at five a.m. Since Carol’s death, this morning routine has gained even more traction. Sleep is the happy indulgence of the less burdened.
Turning the page of the front section of the Washington Post and eagerly awaiting arrival of the morning’s State Department security briefing package to be delivered by the impressive intern in his support office, Hall looks up to see three men clad in white contamination suits standing silently in the kitchen doorway. With their presence now revealed, the men respond by moving forward, in apparent choreography, toward a startled Peter Hall. Only the briefest grunt escapes the White House chief of staff’s lips as Sinatra and another operator, code-named “Davis,” take hold of Hall, restraining him while Bishop swiftly inserts the tip of a small squeeze bottle into one of his nostrils and pumps three bursts of its contents into the victim’s sinuses. Hall continues to struggle against the men, who immobilize him for the few seconds before he goes completely limp.
Sinatra and Davis gently ease Hall’s head and upper torso down onto the kitchen table as Martin appears with the nanoneedle. Working with the aid of a Keplerian Loupe, which magnifies the insertion area, the operative threads a micro-thin wire through the nanoneedle and into Hall’s jugular vein and feeds the length of it down the vein, into the right atrium of the chief of staff’s heart.
Satisfied the wire end has found its intended target, Martin attaches the other end of the wire to a battery amplifier. Once all is in order, he gives Sinatra a look. On that cue, the unit leader and Davis place their hands firmly against Hall, pressing him against the tabletop. Sinatra gestures to Martin to proceed. Without emotion, Martin flips a switch on the amplifier.
Hall’s body seizes. Sinatra and Davis continue to lean on the spasming chief of staff. After a few moments, Hall becomes still. Martin already has a stethoscope in hand, and he checks their victim for heartbeat. Finding none, he nods to Sinatra.
“Dead,” Martin declares.
Sinatra nods, businesslike and without expression. They have exactly fifteen minutes before the intern normally arrives with the daily brief. As Martin and Bishop begin to clean up and stow the apparatus, Sinatra turns and walks out of the kitchen
, followed by Davis. In the hallway, they encounter Lawford and the sixth man, “Lewis,” standing at the open door of a hallway closet. Inside the closet is an array of security and surveillance equipment. Lawford has removed the security system’s hard drive and is just about finished replacing it with another drive of the same exact specifications and manufacture.
“We’re done,” Sinatra informs Lawford.
Lawford nods, replacing the system console’s cover and screwing it closed again.
“Done here.”
Lewis scans their work area for contamination as Sinatra and Davis return toward the kitchen, where Martin and Bishop have completed staging of the scene. Hall has been placed flat on his back, a spilled cup of coffee halfway across the floor just beyond his outstretched fingertips. He looks exactly like a late-middle-aged man who has suffered a massive and fatal heart attack while perusing the morning paper at his kitchen table. Martin and Bishop stand by as Sinatra makes a thorough inspection of the dead man and the surrounding area. He finds nothing amiss.
“Good,” he pronounces, gesturing to the other operators to head out.
All six men regroup in the formal dining room. Sinatra takes a poll by leveling an index finger at each man. They all nod their heads or mumble their assent. No problems have been encountered. No trace of the operation has been left behind. All mission objectives are complete. “Let’s go,” he instructs them.