by Vince Flynn
Stepping completely from behind the door, Rapp carefully edged forward into the small landing area just outside of Horsepower. Adams followed close behind, then slid the tiny lens under the door and began working it from one side of the room to the other.
Rapp watched over his shoulder. A couple of old metal desks came into view, and then they spotted something. Rapp gestured for Adams to bring it back. There, all the way across the room, were the shoulders and head of a man.
“Mark one Tango,” said General Campbell over Rapp’s headset. “That’s the control panel. Can you get us a better look at what he’s watching?”
Adams zoomed the camera in on the man sitting behind the door. In front of the terrorist were a dozen small black-and-white monitors mounted in a metal rack. The bottom middle two were obscured by the man’s head, but the ten other monitors all appeared to be showing images of the exterior of the White House.
Rapp turned away from the door and, in as soft a voice as possible, asked, “You’re recording this, right?”
“That’s affirmative,” replied Campbell.
“Good. We’re going to plant a monitor here and move on.” Rapp fished one of the micro video-and-audio surveillance transmitters out of his pocket and turned it on. Then, setting it on the floor, he edged the unit’s thin fiber-optic camera under door as far as it would go. Turning away from the door again, he whispered, “Are you receiving the new signal?”
“That’s affirmative.”
Rapp tapped Adams on the shoulder and pointed up the stairs. Adams retracted the snake and coiled it back into a loose loop. Before proceeding, Rapp bent over and checked for any trip wires. After making sure it was safe, he took the lead. At the top there was no landing, just the interior of the wall panel that accessed the area between the Oval Office and the president’s private dining room.
Adams pointed to a latch and said, “It opens in.” Rapp nodded. He would have preferred to have quietly drilled a hole in the wall and inserted a camera to see what was on the other side, but they were short on time. Rapp pressed the latch and held his MP-10 ready. The narrow section of the wall popped in. Pulling it open further, Rapp looked out across the hall at President Hayes’s private study. Almost instantly his nostrils filled with a ripe stench.
The smell crawled into the stairwell, and Rapp started breathing through his mouth. Remembering Adams, he turned and whispered, “I think there are some dead bodies up here. Are you going to be all right?”
Adams nodded and waved Rapp forward.
Rapp pointed at Adams and then the ground, signaling for him to stay put for a second. Rapp moved to the right and hugged the wall. The failing evening light came through the windows. In the dining room ahead, the overhead light was lit as well as a table lamp. It was as if the building were stuck in time. Several half-filled coffee cups littered the table, and a tray filled with dishes was waiting to be carted away. To the right, the pantry door was open, and Rapp could see out into the main hallway. This caused him to pull back a step.
Everything Rapp saw, the people back at Langley saw. Campbell came over his headset. “Iron Man, there is a door on your left that leads out into the Rose Garden.” Rapp’s head swiveled toward the door, and the general said, “That’s it. Let’s check it for explosives.”
“Roger.” Looking back to make sure there was no one in the hallway, Rapp moved out around the left side of the dining room table. A large plant stood next to the door and behind was the same gray metal box Rapp had seen in the president’s bedroom. From the side of the box a clear filament wire wove its way through a series of eyelet screws. The clear wire, really nothing more than fishing line, went across the base of the door, through another eyelet screw, up three feet, where it went through another looped eyelet and then began its horizontal course across the door again. Rapp followed it to the other side and stopped.
“Shit.”
“What is it?” asked Campbell.
“You can’t see the wire?”
“No.”
“It runs across the base of the door, up three feet, and then back across. But the big problem is it doesn’t stop.” Rapp walked along the wall, eyeing the clear wire as he went. “It runs all along the wall, not just the door.”
“That could be a problem.” They had guessed that the doors would be wired, so the HRT was planning to blow mouse holes in the walls to enter the building. With wire running across the walls, that wouldn’t work.
“I’m going to keep moving. We’d better hope those SEALs are good, or we’re in a lot of trouble.” Rapp walked quickly back toward the other end of the room. Instead of heading back into the short hallway, he cut into the pantry and carefully approached the door that led out into the main hallway of the first floor of the West Wing. Clutching the thick grip of his integral suppressor, he inched his way to the doorframe. His eyes were instantly drawn to the trails of dark dried blood that stained the hallway carpeting. The blood came from both directions, as if bodies had been dragged, and went into the room that was across the hall and to the right.
Rapp didn’t want to think about what was behind the closed door, but believed it was probably what was causing the grotesque smell. As he checked up and down the hallway, he noticed another bomb to his left. Rapp cringed and tried to focus the head cam on the gray metal box. This was worse than he thought. Not only was there an outer layer of bombs, it appeared there was also an inner layer to contend with. Rapp retreated to join Adams.
“Did you get a bead on that second bomb and its location?”
“Affirmative. Was the discoloration on the carpeting what I thought it was?”
“It looked like it was dry blood,” replied Rapp as he reached Milt Adams’s position. Rapp continued past him two steps and poked his head into the Oval Office. Instantly, he saw the cause of the smell. The bloated body of a man lay between the two couches on the floor. His head had fallen next to the embroidered presidential seal and had deposited a large pool of blood. Rapp edged around the first sofa and tried to get a look at the man’s face, but it did no good. His cheeks and neck were so swollen they looked as if they might break the binds of the dress shirt and necktie. The man’s hands had suffered the same gross expansion.
Rapp moved on and checked the curved wall behind the president’s desk. Near the door that led onto the Oval Colonnade, he found another bomb. The clear wire traversed the wall horizontally twice.
Exhaling, he said, “Same thing as the other room. I’m taking Milt, and we’re going to check out the interior.”
Adams was standing in the doorway, looking at the puffy body on the floor. As Rapp pulled close, he asked, “Do you recognize him?”
Adams shook his head.
Rapp jerked the barrel of his gun back in the direction from which they had come. As he walked into the dining room, he hugged the wall to his right and kept his gun up and leveled. He turned back to Adams and asked, “There’s a door right across the hall here; where does it lead?”
“The Roosevelt Room.”
“What’s in there?”
“Just a big conference table.”
Rapp nodded. “Okay. I’m going to cover you from this little room here. I want you to go across the hall to the Roosevelt Room and stick the snake under the door. And remember, stay on the left side of the doorframe. Don’t stand in the middle.”
Adams nodded his little head. Rapp had been adamant about where to stand so as not to get shot. Rapp moved out and stepped into the small pantry off the dining room. At the doorway to the main hall, he eased his head out and checked in both directions. His right hand came up by his shoulder, and he waved Adams forward.
Milt scampered through the pantry and across the hall. The door to the Roosevelt Room was just to his right, and the main door to the Oval Office was almost directly across the hall from it. Staying on the left side, as Rapp had told him, Adams eased the tip of the snake under the door and stared at the monitor. He wasn’t sure at first what it was that he w
as looking at. There were lumps on the floor and the large conference table had been overturned and flipped against the far wall. Something moved, and that’s when he figured out that the lumps on the floor were bodies. What had moved was a leg. A leg wearing blue trousers with a red stripe running down the side. Adams immediately recognized the pants as those belonging to a U.S. marine.
A pair of more discerning eyes were back at Langley, watching both the shots from the head cams and the fiber-optic snake. General Campbell’s voice came over Adams’s headset. “Milt, give me a full sweep nice and slow, and then pull back away from the door.” Adams turned the dial with his thumb and slowly moved the snake from the left to the right and then back again. When he was done, Campbell told him, “That’s good, now bug out.” Adams withdrew the snake and went back across the hall to join Rapp.
Rapp whispered into his lip mike, “Control, what did you see? Over.”
“One Tango at eleven o’clock, sitting in a chair facing your door, holding what appears to be an AK-74 in his lap.” As Rapp listened, he could hear other voices in the background. Campbell came back seconds later. “I’ve been advised that there are two other entrances into the room, one of which is blocked. On the floor we appear to have at least a half dozen hostages, maybe more. They look to be tied and wearing hoods.”
Adams, who was standing just behind Rapp, was hearing the same thing, and he added, “One of those men in there is a marine.”
“That’s affirmative. We are reviewing the tape to see what else we can get, but for now, it looks like we’ve found our missing hostages.”
Rapp peeked back around the corner and then looked at the base of the door to the Roosevelt Room. Turning his head back toward Adams, he whispered, “Milt, fish out one of the surveillance units. Bend the lens at a right angle and stick it to the base of the door. I’ll cover you.”
Adams nodded, walked quietly across the hall, and placed the camera. Rapp asked, “Control, how does the new feed look?”
“Good, we’ve got about eighty percent of the room, and the Tango is in the picture.”
Rapp turned back to Adams. “Rig me two of the black ones.”
Adams readied the first one and handed it off to Rapp, who stepped out into the hallway. Immediately to his right was a small credenza with an arrangement of wilting flowers sitting in an ornate vase. Rapp reached behind the credenza and stuck the surveillance unit to the back of it. Stepping back into the pantry, he retrieved the second unit and placed it underneath the credenza at an angle that would cover the hallway as it went in the other direction.
50
MUSTAFA YASSIN WAS proud of his work. He double-checked his progress again and grinned. With satisfaction, he flipped off the power switches on all three drills and backed the bits out of their holes. He had reached the proper depth early. Yassin did not have the brawn of men like Aziz, but he was smarter than most. The little thief had learned from dealing with men like Saddam to pad his estimates and manage his superiors’ expectations.
The main drill, and largest of the three, sat on a tripod. Yassin tugged at the base and pulled it back out of the way. The other two drills were magnetized. After wresting them from the door, he sat on his toolbox and lit up a cigarette. The plump man inhaled deeply and picked up his radio. He toggled the transmit button and called Aziz.
Aziz was snacking on a sandwich in the galley of the White House mess when he heard the call. Pulling his radio to his mouth, he said, “Mustafa, this is Rafique. What do you want?”
“I am ready for you.”
Aziz set his sandwich down and wiped the crumbs from his fingers. “Say again.”
“I am ready for you. When you arrive, I will proceed with the last part.”
Aziz was elated. “I will be over shortly.” Grabbing his MP-5 from the counter, he walked out into the mess and looked over the mass of huddled hostages. There was one person in particular he was looking for. Someone who would elicit the proper emotion from the president. Aziz circled the group looking for the face of Sally Burke, the president’s secretary and mother of five. If the president’s bodyguards chose to fight, Mrs. Burke would be used as a shield. Aziz found her sitting with a group of women. With his long thin finger, he gestured for her to join him.
Burke pointed to herself nervously and asked, “Me?”
“Yes, you, Mrs. Burke.” Smiling, Aziz extended his hand to help the woman to her feet.
Burke reluctantly grabbed it and stood. “What do you want with me?”
“Don’t worry. Everything will be all right; we just need you to talk to someone.”
“Who?”
“Don’t worry. Everything will be just fine.” Aziz squeezed her shoulder-and again told her not to worry. Then gently he turned her toward the door and led her from the room. Bringing his radio to his mouth, he said, “Muammar, meet me in the pressroom.”
TO RAPP’S LEFT was the hall leading to the main entrance for the first floor. To his right was the pressroom and a door that led out onto the Colonnade. Rapp wanted to check both of them and see if they were as strongly defended as the doors in the president’s dining room and the one in the Oval Office.
As Rapp headed for the pressroom, he heard an increase in the chatter-over his headset. At the same time he heard voices from somewhere ahead. He began rapidly backpedaling down the hallway.
General Campbell came over the headset, his voice rushed. “Iron Man, we’re out of time. They’ve stopped drilling and are getting ready to open the bunker door.”
Rapp couldn’t respond at the moment. He had more urgent things to worry about and didn’t want to give himself away by making any more noise than he had to. He made it back to the pantry seconds later and ducked out of the hallway alongside Adams. He whispered into his headset, “Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
“How much time do we have?” They cut through the dining room and into the hallway, where he pushed open the wall panel.
“We’re not sure.”
Rapp closed the wall behind him and gestured for Adams to start moving down the stairs. “What’s our best guess?” he whispered.
There was some discussion on the other end and then, “Ten minutes, tops.”
Rapp and Adams hit the landing outside of Horsepower, and Rapp pushed Adams into the tunnel. Once they were inside, Rapp closed the door so he could speak without worry of being heard. “Control, let’s take it from the top. The place is wired to the gills, and we’ve only seen a quarter of it. Our only shot is to get these SEALs in here and have them defuse a point of entry for HRT.”
“We’ve got another problem. We just discovered that one of the monitors in Horsepower is tuned to a rooftop camera.”
Rapp thought about it quickly and came up with a solution. “I’ll wait down here, and if the Tango in Horsepower sees them come in I’ll take him out.”
Rapp looked at Adams and waited for Campbell’s reply. He quickly grew frustrated with being cut out of the discussion process on the other end. After more than ten seconds of waiting, he shouted into his lip mike, “Irene, are you there?”
“Yes.”
“Keep me in the loop. I’m your only on-site asset, and we don’t have time to debate every point.”
General Flood came on the line. “Iron Man, we’ve got some logistical problems. We were off by almost thirty minutes on our last estimate, and we can’t afford to be off by that much again. Not with the president’s life on the line.”
“Then bring Delta in quicker, but we have to get Harris and his boys going, or those hostages are all dead.”
“They might be anyway,” stated General Campbell. “I’d say right now the chances of getting HRT in that building are between slim and none. And if we do get them in, the chances of them coming out alive aren’t much better.”
Rapp was pissed. The minutes were ticking away and people were getting-cold feet. “I need help. I can take out the Tango in Horsepower. I can maybe take out the Tango up in the Roo
sevelt Room, but there’s no way I can contend with all of these bombs and take out the Tangos in the mess. We need to take some risks!”
Flood’s deep voice came over the headset. “We don’t want to see the hostages die either, but we’re not about to send good men on a suicide mission.”
“We’re paid to take risks, General Flood. You’ve been out in the field, and if you were twenty years younger, you would want in, no matter how bad the odds. Put the question to Harris and his men, and I’ll guarantee they’ll want in.”
There was a moment of silence, and then General Campbell said, “I agree. We have to try.”
Kennedy and Stansfield agreed with Campbell, which put all the pressure on General Flood. It was a risky operation, but they had to try. Flood knew it. After a brief moment of reflection the chairman of the Joint Chiefs gave the approval. The second he did so, General Campbell turned around and started barking orders to the JSOC staff sitting in front of him. The officers in turn relayed the orders over secure lines.
* * *
THE MC-130 COMBAT Talon was three minutes away from the jump point when they received the go-ahead from JSOC. The navigator informed Commander Harris of the countdown, and the four SEALs moved to the back ramp with their bulky chutes and packs. Under their left arms, their suppressed Heckler & Koch MP-10 submachine guns were safely secured.
The four men stood in single file at the top of the ramp. Reavers, the jumpmaster, was first in line. He checked everyone’s chute one last time and then took up his place in the number one slot.
Harris walked up to Reavers’s side and looked out at the horizon. To the west the sun was now down, but the sky above it was still lit. To the east it looked as if the world were about to end. The sky was black from as far to the north and east as the eye could see. Looking down, Harris could see the Beltway running east to west, and to his right was the University of Maryland. Beyond the university, the city of Baltimore was getting pounded by the storm. The commander could tell from the trees below that it was gusting hard.
