“No one sent me, Your Holiness.”
“And what if we resorted to more persuasive techniques to make sure you were telling the truth?”
“I would invite you to do just that,” Lia told him. “I would volunteer to be questioned by any means and under as much duress as you wish. Anything to prove my faith to the Prophet.”
The imam’s expression grew stoic and flat. “In that case—”
Alaf’s words were interrupted by screams coming from the floor below, an instant before the gunfire rang out.
Lia detected brief bursts of silenced staccato gunfire, followed by more desperate screaming.
“You did this!” the imam wailed at her. “You brought them, brought death to these walls!”
“No! No! I’m telling you that—”
The heavy door burst open and the guard rushed in, brandishing a Glock handgun.
“Shoot her! Shoot her!”
But Lia had pounced on the guard before the imam’s order could be completed. The gun was in his hand and then it was in hers. Taking him by surprise allowed her to subdue him effortlessly, choking the man unconscious with one hand while the other held the gun on the imam.
“Don’t move!” Lia ordered, as the guard’s limp frame slid to the floor.
“Kill me if you wish,” Alaf said, sinking to the floor in a position of prayer. “I have made my peace with Allah.”
“Listen to me! I’m not the one here to kill you!”
More gunfire echoed below, now followed by shrieking, the screams of male and female worshippers intermingling, telling her the gunmen downstairs had come at this time to maximize casualties. A raid launched on a mosque identified by Ali Shadid’s Saudi Arabian sources as having been a front for terrorists about to launch a strike on the United States.
Lia wondered how he’d come by the information, where exactly it had been manufactured and who had managed to so effectively plant it. This was very likely the next phase in the crazed plot that had begun with the suicide bombing on the Washington Metro.
“Stop them!” the imam screeched at her. “Call them off, I beg you, before more innocents are lost!”
“Stay here,” she ordered him, readying the Glock as she headed for the door.
* * *
Lia encountered the first two shooters in the stairwell. They were masked, gloved, and dressed entirely in black—coming for Imam Alaf, no doubt. They twisted their sound-suppressed, shaved-down assault rifles on her, leaving her no choice. She aimed high, head shots only, to avoid their body armor. Four bullets, two for each, did the trick. Instinct took over, even as she recognized the distinct design and shape of a version of the M4 used exclusively by American special operators.
Operators who had come to Masjid Us Salaam, the mosque identified by Ali Shadid as the launch site of radicals planning a major strike against America.
Except that they weren’t, not here anyway. Lia could read a man’s words better than any lie detector machine. She knew Alaf had been telling the truth, just as she was certain that the evidence that this mosque was implicated in a looming terrorist strike had been fabricated.
Alerted by her gunshots, two more of the operators had just spun onto the stairs as she neared the bottom. Lia took both of them in the legs this time, both legs, kicking the world out from under them and stripping their weapons from their grasp in one fluid motion. She discarded the Glock in favor of the commando version of the M4, barreling on amid the crush of bodies pouring from both halls of worship, men’s and women’s, chased out by gunfire. Orders and signals were being barked in English as the masked special operators continued their sweep, firing indiscriminately, to a constant cacophony of screams.
Lia neared the main entrance, positioning herself to herd those fleeing through it. Each time a commando surfaced, she chased him back behind cover with a three-shot burst from her M4. She was still garbed as an Arab woman in a shapeless dress and hijab, the commandos no doubt seeing her as some wild-eyed radical Wonder Woman. They had stormed this mosque in search of something that wasn’t here, their actions somehow connected to all that Brixton and his Secret Service friend had managed to uncover so far. Whatever that was, it was clearly bigger than they could possibly have imagined, the facade of the subway bombing representing only the start.
Lia joined the last of the fleeing worshippers and then disappeared amid them in a desperate rush down the street, into the approaching wail of sirens coming from both directions.
CHAPTER
52
WASHINGTON, DC
Rendine started walking, phone tucked in a pocket. She had no destination in mind, just needed to be in motion. She had lived off the high of the Secret Service’s protective division for so long that she didn’t know what it was like to not face constant pressure. The details, the minutiae, the danger, the risks, the threats—all ingrained in her life, not just as a part but providing its very definition. It was a fix not unlike a drug, which she had been forced to relinquish cold turkey. She no longer doubted that the “leave” the director had placed her on wouldn’t be short-lived at all, or that the decision was connected to the threat the country was now facing, which the vice president might well have uncovered, leading to her assassination.
But why the visit to psychiatrist Elinor Marks? Why all the questions about Alzheimer’s disease and dementia, just days after Davenport’s visit to the White House? It made no sense.
Unless …
Rendine felt her stomach seem to dive toward her feet. She needed to call Brixton, needed to share with him the notion that had just occurred to her, which was as terrifying as it was impossible.
“Keep walking,” a voice whispered from just behind her, before she could pull out her phone. “Whatever you do, don’t turn around.”
Teddy Von Eck.
Rendine kept her gaze fixed forward, fighting the urge to look toward him to comply with his instructions.
“There’s no time, Kendra. You have to listen. No questions. I need a phone number for the burner you’re using.”
Rendine recited the digits, keeping her voice low. Aimed forward, she wondered if he’d even heard her.
“Got it,” Von Eck said. “I’m going to send you an MP3 recorded inside the White House Situation Room this morning.”
Still in motion, Rendine started to crane her neck around. “Hold on, did you say the White House Sit—”
“No! Don’t look at me! They’re on my tail. I can feel them.”
“Who, Teddy?”
“Doesn’t matter. You scared the hell out of me last night, Kendra, scared me so much I made some calls to an agent I trust, who’s part of the president’s Secret Service detail. An agent who owes me, who understands the code.”
“Code?”
“We serve the country, not just the man. I briefed him on our suspicions, and he mentioned that agents have had virtually no direct contact with the president, going back several weeks. He mentioned POTUS almost never leaves the White House anymore. He’s part of the advance security team, and during a check of the Situation Room before the meeting, he hid a cell phone, and then retrieved it after the meeting was finished.”
“How is that even possible?” Rendine asked, reminding herself to keep walking.
“We’re the Secret Service. It’s our job to sweep the room for such things,” Von Eck said, by way of explanation. “But none of that matters. What matters is what’s on the recording. I’m sending it now. Go someplace where it’s safe to listen. Don’t go home. They’ll be there.”
“Who, Teddy?”
“That doesn’t matter either, not right now. They’re on to me, which means they’re on to you. But they haven’t picked you up yet. I’d know it if they had.”
“This recording…”
“You need to hear it for yourself, Kendra. Everything you need to know is on it. I can’t tell you what to do, can’t tell you who to trust, can’t tell you how to stop it.”
“Stop what?”
Teddy ignored her question again. “Walk faster. We need to put distance between us before anyone notices. I’ll fall back, take the next side street.”
“How can I reach you?”
“You can’t,” he said flatly, the resignation clear in his voice. “Just do what I say and then nail the sons of bitches. There’s nothing more I can do. You’ll hear everything else you need to on that tape.”
Teddy’s voice was getting softer as the distance between them widened. It took every bit of her willpower to keep from turning around. She looked toward a storefront window on her right to see if he was still visible behind her, but there was nothing.
Rendine continued on, careful not to rush, doing nothing that might draw undue attention to herself. Still facing forward. She was not about to let herself turn.
Until she heard the screech of brakes and a crunching sound of impact. She stopped and swung with everyone else around her to check out the source of the collision. The street was full of rubbernecking pedestrians.
A block behind her, a delivery truck had struck someone in the crosswalk. She didn’t need binoculars to spot a man wearing a ball cap and sunglasses sprinting away from the truck, or to recognize the broken frame of Teddy Von Eck lying on the street. The condition of the truck’s front end was enough to tell her it had been a direct blow. People were swarming toward the body, but there was nothing anyone could do for him at this point.
He had known what was coming. His one final, desperate mission was to deliver the recording that a trusted Secret Service associate had made in the White House Situation Room that morning. She felt the burner phone buzz in her pocket—Teddy’s text message containing the MP3 arriving. Rendine resisted the temptation to listen here and now; that could wait until she got somewhere more secure than the street where someone had just plowed into Teddy Von Eck and killed him.
But not before he managed to pass the recording onto her. Whatever had led to the assassination of Vice President Stephanie Davenport was now tucked away in her pocket.
CHAPTER
53
WASHINGTON, DC
Brixton was waiting at Penn Station for his train back to Washington, preparing to contact Panama with all he’d learned from Sister Mary Alice Rose, when his phone rang, the number for Kendra Rendine’s burner lighting up in the Caller ID. He took a seat in the Acela area reserved for passengers needing redcaps, because it was reasonably confined and easy to spot anyone suspicious approaching, since they wouldn’t have bothered to bring any luggage with them.
“Kendra?”
“Robert! Oh my God, Robert, oh my God,” Rendine hissed, panic driving her voice.
“What’s wrong? Are you all right?”
“No, I’m not, not even close. Everything’s clear now, clear as a bell, and that bell’s about to strike midnight.”
“You’re not making any sense.”
“Because there’s no sense to make of this, none of it. First off, Patty Trahan identified Brian Kirkland as the hospital clerk who delivered the stents to her the day Stephanie Davenport was operated on.”
Brixton should have felt a sense of satisfaction over that confirmation, but something held him back. “What else, Kendra?”
He heard her take a deep breath on the other end of the line. “I think the president is mentally incapacitated. I think someone else is running the country. I think Stephanie Davenport must have found out and that’s why they killed her.”
“Slow down,” Brixton urged her. “Take another deep breath and slow down,” he added, over his own pounding heart.
“I can’t. There’s no time to slow down. I need to play you something. You need to hear this. It explains everything. You’ve got to hear it.”
“Hear what?”
“A meeting in the White House Situation Room this morning. I’ve cued up a section. I got it from a friend, an associate, just before they killed him.”
“Killed him? Who? When?”
Brixton could hear Rendine choking up. “You need to listen to the whole thing, but I want you to start with this, while I’m still on the line. I need to hear your reaction. I need to know I’m not crazy. Tell me when you’re ready.”
Brixton pressed the phone tighter to his ear. “I’m ready.”
“The first voice you’re going to hear belongs to the director of the FBI. You’ll recognize the others as the secretaries of State, Defense, and Homeland Security. Those are the ones that matter. Oh, and the first lady, of course.”
“Why do you say ‘of course,’ Kendra?”
“Because she’s running the show, standing in for her husband, who, from what I could tell from the recording, doesn’t know the color of the White House. And there’s more. She’s arranging to be named vice president. We’re witnessing a coup taking place right before our eyes.” She stopped. “Ready, Robert?”
“Ready.”
Brixton could hear a brief wisp of dead recording air before the voice of the director of the FBI began.
“Speaking of which, I’d like to move on to a discussion of the potential casualties we’re going to be facing two days from now.”
Next came the voice of the first lady of the United States.
“I believe the number will be between three and five million over time, enough time to ensure that the crisis will persist for years, allowing us to mold the country into the shape we desire.”
“That’s a terrible price to pay,” a voice he didn’t recognized interjected. “The earlier estimates were considerably lower.”
Again the first lady spoke, and her words explained the panic and desperation he had heard in Kendra Rendine’s voice.
“All great movements require sacrifice, and this is no different. How many more lives will be lost a decade down the road, two decades, if we lose power?”
Someone mumbled something unintelligible. Then the second voice came back, now loud enough to be recognizable as that of President Corbin Talmidge.
“Generators.”
Silence followed his comment.
“We have generators, don’t we? The White House has generators. So if we lose power, we’ll use generators. Nothing to worry about there. Why does everyone seem so worried? We’ve weathered big storms before.”
The striking irony of his statement produced more silence, followed by the muffled voice of the first lady saying something to her husband. Then she resumed for all to hear.
“Getting back to the subject at hand, we need to have all emergency response systems ready to go. Madam Secretary, the floor is yours.”
Brixton recognized the next voice as that of the secretary of Homeland Security.
“I’ve scheduled an emergency response, first responder drill for the following day. That way, our preparedness will be maximized, everything in place to assure we’re ready to roll for immediate deployment to the hardest hit areas.”
“Generators,” the president’s voice returned. “We need to order more generators.”
“Still there?” Kendra Rendine broke in, ending the playback there.
“Still here. And you’re right about the president. You could hear it in his voice.”
“I’m scared, Robert.”
“So am I.”
Between three and five million over time.
“We don’t know the how or the where,” Rendine continued, as if thinking along the identical lines. “I listened to the entire recording twice and there’s no mention of specifics.”
“I think I can provide some.”
He told her about his meeting with Sister Mary Alice Rose, an eighty-five-year-old nun made to “disappear” into the federal prison system after being arrested for trespassing and vandalism on the Y-12 nuclear repository facility in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. He stressed the hundreds of thousands of pounds of bomb-ready radioactive fuel stored there.
“They’re going to blow it up,” Rendine managed. “Somehow, they’re going to blow up those hundreds of thousands of pounds of hi
ghly enriched uranium.”
“The whole thing is nuts, crazy.”
“Crazy like a fox, Robert. You heard what the first lady said about sacrifices.”
“Right, three to five million sacrificed to maintain their hold on power. She knows—they know—the president would otherwise have to resign. Never mind seeking reelection, given his condition, so they think a disaster of this magnitude will allow them to win the election or to suspend it altogether. Declare martial law, if they have to.”
“They’ll never get away with it.”
“Really? Remember, Kendra, it’s three to five million over time—that’s what Merle Talmidge said, the exact wording. That means we’re looking at an ongoing disaster as the radioactivity spreads. They’ll get away with it all right, because the people will be more worried about staying alive than about Election Day. And by the time the president can no longer continue even a semblance of this ruse, their hold on power will be too tight to remove, with the first lady sitting in the Oval Office.”
“Oh my God…”
“What is it? What’s wrong?” Brixton asked, so tense he could feel his hand holding the phone cramping.
“It’s all over the news. Haven’t you heard?”
Brixton realized he’d been basically out of pocket since his interview with Sister Mary Alice Rose at the Metropolitan Detention Center. “No. What?”
“The FBI’s Hostage and Rescue Team staged a raid this afternoon on a mosque in Baltimore. There was a gunfight, during which the terrorists they were hunting apparently escaped. That can’t be a coincidence.”
“Of course it can’t, because there weren’t any terrorists, just a cover. Just like the suicide bomber on the Metro,” Brixton realized, putting it together. “We’re going to war after Y-Twelve blows, Kendra.”
“We can’t stop them alone,” Rendine insisted, her voice quivering now.
“We’re not alone,” Brixton said, thinking of the Israelis and Lia Ganz.
“You don’t understand. No one who knows anything about this is safe. They’re covering their tracks, Robert, filling in the holes with bodies inside.”
Murder on the Metro Page 23
