Deep State

by Chris Hauty

  “How else you think I keep this job goin’ on twenty-five years now?” he asks her.

  “Obviously by being very good at it, sir.”

  “Don’t ‘sir’ me,” he orders Hayley, extending a hand. “Leon Washington.”

  Hayley accepts his hand. “Hayley Chill, Leon. Good to meet you,” she says, feeling his close scrutiny. “What?” she asks.

  “You an intern? Haven’t seen you around down here before.”

  “Yes. I’m in White House Operations. Discharged almost two years ago.”

  “Veteran? Yeah, I thought so. You smell like army.”

  “I hope that’s a good thing.”

  “Oh, yes, it is. I’m a retired navy man myself. Now I’m here. Guess you could say I’ve been military all my life.”

  Hayley nods with sympathetic understanding. Leon continues to study her.

  “If anybody asked for my opinion round here, I’d tell ’em to bring on nothing but vets. White House could use more adults.”

  “You couldn’t get any more military than POTUS, Leon.”

  “Brass hat,” the chef says in response, using the army slang for colonels and generals. He doesn’t say it nicely.

  Hayley declines to comment. Leon smiles broadly, instantly won over by the intern. “Yeah, it’s probably best you not say a damn thing.” He produces a can of Diet Coke and a clean glass from under the counter and places them on the tray. “You best get going or we’ll both be out of a job. The president likes his cheese sandwich hot!”

  Hayley slides the covered service tray off the aluminum counter top and takes it in hand. “It was nice meeting you, Leon. See you around.”

  Leon winks at her. “You know it, doll. So long now.”

  * * *

  A BLACK SUV with tinted windows stops on L Street, just behind the Capitol Hilton and only a few blocks from the White House. Traffic is light. There is no one on the sidewalks. The location has been scouted previously and selected as one of several swap-out sites, devoid of incidental surveillance video cameras on the surrounding buildings. It’s becoming increasingly difficult to find such CCTV-free sites in the District of Columbia, which is threatening to join London and Beijing as the most spied-upon cities in the world. At last count, the UK’s capital had 420,000 CCTV cameras in the city’s center.

  Martin and Bishop emerge from the rear passenger doors of the SUV, which immediately pulls away and disappears down the street. The two mercenaries approach a white delivery van parked at the curb. Both carry large black duffel bags.

  Martin unlocks the vehicle’s doors with a remote. They load the duffel bags into the rear of the van and head to the front. Martin climbs in behind the wheel as Bishop enters on the other side. Within moments, the delivery van pulls away from the curb, executes a U-turn, and speeds away in the opposite direction from where the SUV had gone.

  5

  SHELTER IN PLACE

  Hayley reenters the Oval Office, carrying the takeout tray from the Navy Mess. The smell of the grilled cheese instantaneously fills the room. Richard Monroe breathes in the scent, inciting Proustian memories of his youth and his mother. His was nearly an idyllic childhood, spent mostly on military bases all over the US and the world. His father had been career army, and one of Monroe’s fondest memories is sitting down to the rare lunch in which his dad was home from his duties on base. His mother would make the most wonderful sandwich of rye bread; grated Jarlsberg cheese; and hot, yellow horseradish mustard, preferably Zakycoh, a Russian concoction his father secured from God knows where. One might think the president of the United States could get a decent horseradish mustard in the Navy Mess, but apparently, this has been too much to expect. Nevertheless, the boys down on the ground floor have been putting together a pretty good sandwich with the materials at hand.

  “Have you ever smelled anything so good in your entire life?” Monroe exclaims as Hayley places the tray on the coffee table in front of the president. Eschewing the glass, he snatches the can of Diet Coke, which Hayley had carefully opened just prior to entering the Oval Office, and takes a long, satisfying draw of its artificially sweetened contents.

  As Hayley turns to exit the room again, Rey anxiously hurries to place a coaster on the coffee table next to the service tray where Monroe has placed the Diet Coke. The president regards the coaster with disdain.

  “West Virginia’s not coaster country, is it, Ms. Chill?”

  Hayley pauses halfway to the door. “Not typically, sir.”

  “Drink straight from the can back home. Leave a ring on the coffee table if that’s your preference.”

  “Coffee table, sir?”

  Monroe laughs boisterously at Hayley’s mild joke. Odom twists around in his seat on the couch and regards the intern with even more interest than he had before. There is no doubt in his mind this remarkable young woman is a force to be reckoned with.

  * * *

  THE INTERSECTION OF Seventeenth Street and Pennsylvania Avenue is busy, with a US post office occupying the southwest corner and the northwest corner of the White House grounds directly across the street. The sidewalks are wide and traffic lanes four across on Pennsylvania before being forced either north or south with the avenue closed to vehicular traffic east of Seventeenth Street. Police from five different departments are on patrol at any given time. Pedestrians in the area, mostly federal employees from the various buildings in the immediate vicinity, feel safe in these confines. About the worst thing that can happen around here are protestors from Lafayette Square invading the restrooms at the local Peet’s Coffee shop.

  Martin steers the delivery van east on Pennsylvania, approaching Seventeenth Street. Bishop, sitting shotgun, has retrieved an HK MP7 submachine gun from a backpack. Both men pull on lightweight SWAT balaclava tactical face masks as Martin speeds toward the intersection. Bishop presses a button on the vehicle’s low-grade radio, tuning in a classic rock FM radio station. The Beach Boys’ “I Get Around” bounces off the bare steel of the van’s cab.

  It’s 11:47 a.m. The surrounding buildings haven’t yet disgorged their occupants for lunchtime, and therefore the sidewalks are relatively empty. There isn’t a cloud in the sky. Temperatures have risen to the low fifties. A US Park Police patrol car is parked, engine off, just across Seventeenth Street, in the pedestrians-only portion of Pennsylvania Avenue to the north of the White House complex. Inside the patrol car, two Park Police officers are in the middle of a spirited discussion regarding the relative merits of Amy Schumer’s latest movie.

  The white delivery van, approaching at high speed from the west, blows the red light at Seventeenth Street, only to slam to a stop at dead center of the intersection. Bishop leaps out of the vehicle and, shielded from view of the patrol car across the intersection, fires a long and steady burst into the air, empty brass shells flying in a graceful arc to the pavement. Without muzzle suppressor, the weapon’s report echoes across the urban canyon, an unmistakable racketing of automatic gunfire. Traffic screeches to a stop in every direction. A young woman who has just exited the post office having delivered a package for her boss at Office of the US Trade Representative screams horror movie–style. The US Park Police officers in their patrol car on Pennsylvania Avenue jump-start their response after a brief delay from shock with the driver hitting the ignition while his partner is calling on the radio for backup.

  Bishop walks to the front of the delivery van. About eleven seconds have transpired since the initial outburst of gunfire, and four seconds since ceasing. He lowers the machine gun and takes aim on the patrol car, slightly more than two hundred feet distant, and pulls the trigger. High-velocity, armor-piercing, copper-alloy-jacketed lead-core Fiocchi rounds obliterate the patrol car’s grill and shred its front tires. Both cops drop below the dash, with the one officer shouting his panicked report into the radio. After approximately twenty-two seconds outside the delivery van, Bishop backtracks and reenters the vehicle. Martin takes his foot off the brake and stands on the accelerator,
rear wheels smoking as the vehicle fishtails out of the intersection, heading south on Seventeenth Street. For three blocks around, pedestrians lie prone on the ground or cower in doorways. Traffic is stopped, haphazardly, as if in a post-apocalyptic tableau.

  * * *

  EVERYONE PRESENT IN the Oval Office, including Hayley, freezes at the sound of the close-in gunfire. There is a moment of silence and utter stillness, then both doors burst open and Secret Service agents flood into the room. In their rush, the protective detail shoves Hayley roughly aside, as well as Kyle Rodgers and Karen Rey, converging on the president who has half risen out of his chair. James Odom and Seretti are held down in their seats on the couch by agents as four other Secret Service men take both Landers and Monroe by the arms and hustle them toward the door leading to the president’s private study. Within ten seconds of the agents barging into the Oval Office, Monroe and his vice president have been whisked away to only the Secret Service knows where.

  Kyle Rodgers picks himself off the floor, where he had been pushed. For a moment, everyone in the room remains in place, unsure of what to do next or what had just happened. More Secret Service agents appear in the doorway leading into the Outer Oval Office.

  “Shelter in Place order is in effect. Everyone out! Now!”

  Despite the emergency, Al Seretti is his usual combative self. A scrappy shortstop on the University of Oklahoma baseball team and an occasional abuser of steroids, his temper is hair-trigger. “If we’re sheltering in place, aren’t we supposed to stay in place?!”

  “Oval is restricted, sir,” the Secret Service agent responds with dry sarcasm and little patience. He moves deeper into the room to ensure that all present have evacuated. Standing near the northwest door leading into the Outer Oval Office, Hayley turns to retrieve Scott’s tablet from the side table across the room. Her way is blocked by the six-foot-four Secret Service agent.

  “Out! Let’s go!” he shouts into Hayley’s face. He leaves no room for discussion, pushing Hayley toward the door.

  After Hayley, Karen Rey, and Kyle Rodgers have been ushered out of the room, the agents focus on the remaining occupants. A rattled Albert Seretti goes meekly enough, but James Odom brusquely shakes off an agent’s guiding hand. “That would be unnecessary,” he tells the agent with a lacerating tone. Odom steps around the temporarily immobilized Secret Service agent and retrieves Scott’s computer from the side table. Only then does the CIA deputy director allow himself to be shown to the door.

  * * *

  THE WHITE DELIVERY van hurtles south on Seventeenth Street, weaving through stopped traffic and blowing through intersections as police sirens wail in the distance. Both operators inside the van keep their masks on as Bishop stows the machine gun in one of the duffel bags. Martin steers the van right, onto New York Avenue, getting snarled in stopped traffic there briefly, before regaining speed again as New York transitions to E Street. By the time the van turns right on Twentieth Street, both Martin and Bishop have removed their face masks, though each keep hospital gloves on their hands. Midway between F and E Streets, Martin pulls over to the curb, parking behind a familiar black SUV.

  Their location is another quiet block, chosen for the fact there are absolutely no CCTV surveillance cameras for two blocks in every direction. Martin and Bishop exit the van and walk up to either side of the SUV, which they enter. The SUV immediately lunges away from the curb and continues north on Twentieth Street. A moment later, smoke begins to pour out of the open windows of the delivery van. Within ninety seconds, the entire vehicle is engulfed in flames. It will take more than seven minutes for a DCFD fire engine to arrive on scene and extinguish the vehicle fire, leaving only a charred hulk of its chassis.

  In the weeks that follow, Metro and Park Police departments will investigate the mysterious and violent incident at the intersection of Seventeenth Street and Pennsylvania Avenue. The perpetrators will never be identified, much less charged. Motivation for the shooting, which left no injuries, is assumed by FBI and MPD investigators to be a diversion for another crime, perhaps a robbery, which failed for one reason or another to take place.

  * * *

  HAYLEY FOLLOWS MORE than two dozen other staffers and White House personnel into the Cabinet Room. Most are quietly checking their devices for news or email, or both. No one is particularly alarmed. Working in Washington, DC, one becomes accustomed to bizarre incidents and deranged actions. As seat of the federal government, the city is destined to draw lunatics from every corner of the country. Whether angry about their farm’s foreclosure or mother’s untreatable cancer, citizens with a loose grip on their sanity are inclined to take out their frustrations and rages on the edifices and public servants that populate the nation’s capital. Though live gunfire in any circumstance is disquieting, it is assumed by most people crowded into the august Cabinet Room that the situation is being handled.

  Wedged between the habitually sweaty assistant to the president for economic policy and the twenty-three-year-old former editor of the Harvard Lampoon whose main responsibility is crafting one-liners for the annual correspondents’ dinner, Hayley frets about Scott’s tablet. Fretting isn’t a typical mental activity of the intern’s, who prefers action to anxiety. But the device is a massive reservoir of potential evidence, and she cannot help worrying about its status.

  Hayley plots how she will recover the device from the Oval Office, anticipating interference from the Secret Service or Karen Rey. Eliciting the aid of the president’s personal secretary is probably the best course of action. Madison Smith has been with Monroe since the president retired from the military. In her late fifties, Madison is also from the South. Recognizing the benefits of such an ally within the hothouse atmosphere of the West Wing, Hayley has done nothing to discourage the older woman’s offer of casual friendship. She has no doubt Madison will facilitate recovery of the wayward tablet from the Oval Office.

  Moments after coming up with this plan to retrieve the tablet, Hayley catches sight of the device nestled under the arm of the visiting CIA deputy director, the telltale Rolling Stones sticker clear identification enough. Odom was his name, right? Hayley masks her shocked reaction, aware the man is actually studying her at this very second, as if reading her mind and taunting her with his possession of the incriminating device. Hayley pretends to look past the powerful CIA official, her wildly spinning thoughts seeking traction. What is James Odom doing with the tablet? Why is he staring at her? Is the CIA involved in the conspiracy? Do they know she is aware of the plot, however dimly? Hayley wishes Asher were there and able to talk over all of these startling developments.

  * * *

  ODOM IS AMONG the last to join the herd of West Wing staffers in the Cabinet Room, finding a place to stand under John Singer Sargent’s monumental portrait of Theodore Roosevelt at the north end of the room. The atmosphere is not unlike the disaster drills he remembers from his grade-school years. It’s all such a ridiculous waste of time. The fact that he is responsible for orchestrating gunplay that prompted the shelter in place is no comfort. Between his everyday duties as deputy director overseeing the Office of Intelligence Integration, the emerging crisis in Estonia, and managing a clandestine Operation Damocles, Odom finds even his herculean time-management skills being put to an extreme test. He is due back at Langley in twenty minutes and highly regrets being thwarted in his plan to lock horns with Monroe in the debate over US policy regarding relations with Moscow. Recovering the agent’s tablet, however, goes a long way toward mitigating that disappointment.

  Gripping the SCS-100 briefcase communication system in one hand and cradling the retrieved tablet in the other, Odom considers the next sixty minutes of his day. Once the shelter in place ends, he will proceed directly to his vehicle parked less than five hundred feet from where he presently stands and text Sinatra from there. They will have to be careful in the transfer of the tablet, but Odom understands the operative has preselected drop sites throughout the city and can communicate to hi
m a location for the closest one. Then it’s off to Langley and the daily briefing at the National Counterterrorism Center. He plans to order a response in kind to the Russians’ cyberattack, with or without Monroe’s permission. The NSA has the appropriate tactical units necessary for untraceable offensive cyber actions. He will contact his liaisons at Fort Meade from the car. There is no time to waste. Moscow will up-phase their actions against Estonia within hours minus robust response. If this isn’t war, James Odom doesn’t know what is. For only a brief moment, he feels the fatigue of an old man who has run too many races. Odom wonders if willpower is a kind of psychology muscle that can atrophy with age.

  As he’s musing like this, Odom’s gaze falls on the young female intern from the Oval Office. Without a doubt, the president favors the girl. Knowing as much as Odom does about Monroe, there is no question the president’s attention is anything but platonic. Nor is it unwarranted. The young woman is unmistakably intelligent, possessing rare poise for a person her age. Again Odom feels the long-forgotten urge to recruit, a skill he hasn’t employed since his days long ago in the field. Assuming he has a few more wasted minutes cooped up in the Cabinet Room, the CIA deputy director decides to act on his impulses. Leaving his position under the Roosevelt portrait and threading his way through the restless throng inside the room, Odom makes his way toward the intern standing with others at the opposite end of the room.

  * * *

  HAYLEY SEES THE CIA deputy director making his way across the room, clearly with the intention to interact with her. Odom had been staring at her for the last two minutes. Hayley cannot imagine what he wants to say to her and braces for anything, including outright accusation. With some relief, Hayley sees Odom smile slightly as he draws nearer to where she stands.